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>>Though, it's amazing that with all that religious belief in "communism can't work", the capitalist world joined so fast to suppress the idea, without letting it fail on the market of ideas for its own flaws.
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>I don't see where capitalism tried to suppress communism, other than to outdo it.

Surrounding USSR in 1919-21 or so. Iron curtain. Outdoing (or trying to outdo) the communist propaganda with anti-communist propaganda. Believe me, I've been on the receiving end of both of these, and they were equally ugly, and used about 5% of truth and invented the rest. And, last but not least, harboring/aiding terrorist units to insert into communist countries. As if it wasn't terrorism if citizens of a communist country are targeted.

> Look at the automotive industry. Would you rather have a Russian made car, or a German made car (BMW, Mercedes, etc), or even a Japanese car like Honda, Toyota, Nissan, etc.? Capitalism has driven these vehicle manufacturers to develop the best products and the marketplace sets the price based on supply and demand. Even the American made cars have come way up in terms of quality, and hopefully will continue as the competition forces them to do better.

I've had my share of eastern cars, and they're not that bad (except the Trabant, but that's because it was too old). Russian cars used to come with a bunch of tools (because the next mechanic may be a hundred miles away), were ugly, robust, gas-guzzling, and would start at incredibly low temperatures. There were stories about a Moskvich hitting a truck and truck getting damaged.

But this lack of competition applies only to planned economy, as was in the Eastern bloc. We had market economy, it's just that the players on that market weren't privately owned, they were self-managed enterprises. So we did have quite a set of successful products, were approaching a billion bucks of tourism income (which we actually did achieve, if the gray economy counts :) - and the cars were the exception that tested the rule. The factory which made Yugos (remember those) had always claimed that they were the livelyhood of 20 or 30 thousand families, and that the domestic industry needs to be protected... which in the end meant they never achieved proper quality control. They achieved the impossible - to sell a car from a communist country in USA - but failed on maintaining the level. Because they have never built the proper company culture etc etc - they were big enough to have politicians protect them from the market at home. Sounds familiar?

I figure if Americans ever decided to try some socialism, they'd find a way to do it right, or at least better than what previous attempts. Of course, being a programmer I don't have the vision - I only assume that it should be a better one.