The USSR lasted from 1917 to 1991, so it fits the criteria set by you for a long term success.
"So they ran out of food because of "market reforms'"
What are you referring to? The famines they inherited from the tsarist regime? I really don't know what you are talking about.
"I think if we scaled back socialism including military spending the poor would benefit"
I agree with the scaling back the military, but I wouldn't call the military socialism. Socialism isn't just government doing stuff. Socialism is when production is directed towards social need, not profit. Amoungst other things.
Socialization and nationalization aren't the same thing.
http://blog.victimsofcommunism.org/breadlines-and-shortages-the-soviet-food-supply/
Basically all government is socialism. We could have free healthcare but instead we have "free" military.
You've never read communist litterateur then.
This is ideological propaganda.
Why wasn't Napoleon a socialist then? He nationalized the tabacco industry.
The victims of communism is literally ideologically driven propaganda. Get a better source and we might have a conversation here.
The source I sent you about quality of life came from a capitalist economist, who did a scholarly assessment of both situations.
The link you gave me is a blog. Not really very scientific.
I read some of the communist manifesto but I support things like personal property rights.
There probably needs to be some leeway. You could make a case that some of our businesses and industries are at least partially nationalized.
Yeah I'm not super motivated to research the failed USSR right now.
You haven't read the manifesto
Marx writes in chapter two,'Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that"
Marx supported personal property Rights.
Personal property and private property are different forms of property.
No one wants to take your toothbrush. Literally no one.
"Yeah I'm not super motivated to research the failed USSR right now."
Because if you did you'd realize all the lies you've been told.
'You could make a case that some of our businesses and industries are at least partially nationalized."
And what does that have to do with socialism?
http://laissez-fairerepublic.com/tenplanks.html
You don't understand the context of the manifesto.
It isn't the method to achieve communism, it's what the party he wrote the manifesto for should do if they gain power.
Imediate policy isn't the same as end goal.
You should read the whole manifesto and not what biased people have to say about it.
Edit
Read the book.
Stop thinking what other people tell you to think.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm