Under what economic system is a country's armed forces stronger? :Capitalism or Socialism?

The Soviet Union mustered an undefeatable army during the Second World War, and so did the Capitalist Allies.

There are examples of both. I think the economic system matters less than how well the army is outfitted, trained, and inspired.

Don’t forget that Israel’s army would have to go in the “Socialist” column.

Totalitarian states of the right and the left have the advantage (when their leaders feel secure) of being able to suppress demands for spending on non-military domestic programs, levy high taxes, and/or suppress wages and build up their standing military forces during peacetime.

Germany was able to take advantage of their preparations going back to Hitler’s assumption of power (1933) at the start of World War Two (1939). Meanwhile France and Britain, despite having a significantly larger combined GDP than Germany, did not start preparing for war in earnest until Hitler annexed the rump of Czechoslovakia in 1938. While their armies had been much larger than Germany’s in 1933, they had not been modernized or especially trained as throughly as the forces the Germans raised. This had much to do with the astonishing speed of their victory over the Allies in France and Belgium in 1940.

The one gap Germany was never able to challenge was the disparity in naval surface ships with the Royal Navy. The German Navy had been counting on a major war with Britain not starting until 1945.

But an interesting contrast to this example is the Soviet Union in 1940–1. The Red Army was massive. By sheer numbers of men, artillery pieces, tanks and aircraft it should have been the strongest force in the world. But much of the equipment was obsolescent and, much more importantly, the officer corps had been disrupted by extensive purges ordered by Stalin. Officers who were not shot or thrown into prison had to take on levels of responsibility much greater than what they had been trained for. This resulted in severe embarrassment when they were put against the Finns in 1940 and nearly fatal disaster against the Germans in 1941.

OK, short form answer for you: it’s complicated.

A country’s armed forces are almost invariably stronger when the soldiers are citizens of that country as opposed to mercs mercenaries. The economic machinations of the country are much less important.

Capitalism is. A socialist economy is stagnant.
An arms race is how a capitalist economy(US) broke a socialist economy(USSR). Remember the tear down that wall thing? Capitalism is a self perpetuating system until government gets in the way and inhibits its growth. Buying and selling things is essentially the natural order of things. Government involvement is required to establish and maintain a socialist system. Like and airplane going straight up a socialist economy will only go so far before it stalls and falls, tumbling out of control to the ground.
A successful military requires motivated and well trained personnel but if the personnel lack the equipment necessary to confront an enemy their time and lives are wasted. A healthy economy is needed to not only produce arms and equipment but that same economy must solid enough that money can be spent to investigate new things. The R&D also serves to encourage the troops in that the tools their government is giving them are superior to their adversaries.

@tominhouston – you say, “Government involvement is required to establish and maintain a socialist system.”

Government intervention also helps a Capitalist system. Frankly, the closest thing I can think of to a Capitalist system that is untouched by Government would be what’s going on in Somalia. I would not want to live in that situation, myself.

@tominhouston Turn the clock back to 1945 and let Patton have his way (“Give me two weeks and I’ll have us at war with those sons of bitches and I’ll make it look like their fault!” (from the movie)). I don’t think the outcome would have been a certain western victory, despite the U.S. having greater GDP than the USSR.

Seeing that there really hasn’t been a socialist country or nation in history (socialism means public ownership of the means of production directly implying democratic decision over its usage, the Soviet Union, China, etc. were all dictatorships so there was defacto no public ownership, ergo no socialism), this question can not really be answered.

It doesn’t matter anyway, because what is relevant is how fast and effective the government can acquire and transform resources into military assets, and in that regard, totalitarian systems of any kind have an advantage over democratic systems, because they can reroute resources at will and without much resistance from the people and without any regard over going into debt, whereas democratic systems need to convince its voter base of the necessity of spending resources on military assets and then keep the expenditures in check.

Of course this disadvantage of democratic systems is easily overcome by the generous application of propaganda, which however would drive the democratic systems closer to being totalitarian (see Cold War persecution of Communists in the US, the fear mongering of the Bush administration and the patriot act, etc.).

Which leads to the next point of troop morale and motivation. While democratic systems may rely on the spirit of their soldiers, engineers, scientists and general working population building the military hardware defending a free society, a totalitarian system would rely on propaganda to create loyal fervour of equal, if not exceeding solidity and extent.

In terms of quality of equipment, it depends on the motivation. Sure, in a democratic system, there is the pride of living in a free nation, (and getting paid lots of money) but in a totalitarian system there is equal pride fostered by propaganda (and the threat of being shot in the neck), making motivation a no issue in the comparison, giving both sides equipment of equal quality in theory. Of course, if you look at history you will see that the Soviet Union did have equipment that exceeded the US’ equipment, like the AK47 outshining the M4 and M16 in reliability, sturdiness and usability in different environments. Or after the Unions collapse, West Germany got its hands on Soviet Migs from East Germany, where they found that, in contrast to their western counterparts, the Soviet fighters had helmet mounted target acquisition gear and even the Soviet air to air missiles were superior to what the western nations were currently developing, leading to a cancellation of the entire current project. That might be due to the lesser need of Totalitarian systems to achieve low costs, which will cause democratic nations to go for a cheaper, yet worse alternative. An example is the HK416, a German improvement to the American M4, which was superior to the original in pretty much every regard, but was more expensive. American special forces jumped at them and bought them for their soldiers, but later the government came in and took them away, forcing them to use the inferior M4.

To summarise, totalitarian systems have a substantial edge in assembling a strong military, because they have much greater leverage in obtaining and transforming financial, physical and human resources, while the military strength of democratic systems depends on the willingness of the population to support the military, which in turn depends on the severity of the threat posed by foreign/internal powers. That is why the military industrial complex in the US is so keen on creating adversaries to justify spending so much money on the military (Cold War, then Saddam Hussein, now terrorism).
that was a bit long, gomenasai ^_^

@ragingloli Thanks for the thoughtful answer.

@ragingloli /me bows down to your wisdom (+1GA)

do not take my word for it though, that is just my opinion.

I don’t think the economic system really has much to do with it. Democratic armies tend to have a better win / lose ratio than other political systems armies, but democracies can be both capitalistic & socialist at the same time.