Welcome to the Empire Files podcast. This is your host, Abby Martin. This is the audio of our show.

You can watch the episodes on our YouTube channel or at the Empirefiles.tv.

Another right-wing blogger recently promoted an interview that you and I did, kind of Marxism 101,

and he was shouting out to his audience saying, look at this, he said, a Marxist professor unironically praising the Soviet economy.

Can you believe this?

You know, I watched the interview again.

And isn't it a fact, though, that the Soviet economy, I mean, had a planned economy.

It did have some amazing developments because it was planned. And can't you

uncouple that from its political failures? Absolutely. For me, it is the most bizarre kind of

willful ignorance to make believe that the Soviet Union, for that matter, the People's Republic of China,

haven't succeeded at economic growth.

You can be critical of all kinds of things about those societies.

I am, in many ways, critical of various parts.

But that doesn't require making things up.

You have to be careful.

Economically, the Soviet Union, Russia, was the poorest part of Europe in 1917, just

like China was one of the poorest parts of the world in 1949 when they each had their

revolutions.

They set themselves a number one priority to stop being poor and become instead rich, or at least

a lot richer than they had been, something which Americans understand is an objective,

because a lot of us include that among the things we would like to do. So then as economists

know, you measure how much did their economy grow? You can measure it by the amount of goods

...