Mikhail Gorbachev has died

The United States didn't do enough to help Russia transition to democracy in the 1990s. There was no "Marshall Plan" after the Cold War like there was after World War II. This was a huge mistake, and we see the consequences now, with Russia having turned back toward totalitarianism and imperialism. Sadly, it seems that Gorbachev's efforts were mostly for naught. But it was courageous at the time to open up the Soviet Union to glasnost and perestroika.

Of course Yeltsin was a big part of the problem too.

The locals in power have to want to do it too. As soon as enough don’t want it, it is over.

I’m skeptical of the idea that you can impose Democracy.

You can't impose democracy, but if democracy and associated ideas such as the free market spectacularly fails the people – as it did in the 90s – then that certainly doesn't help. We probably could have done a thing or two to make it fail less. Would that have made a meaningful difference? Hard to say for sure, but it would have been worth to try.

Not "ideas" failed the people, but the implementers - which turned out to be straight up robbers, dividing past empire's industrial base amongst them, like western idol Khodorkovsky or Berezovsky.

Where the politicians were less corrupt, the free market worked spectacularly well, like in Poland.

So it wasn't real capitalism?

Every economic system has capital, even socialist ones, it just means property. What distinguishes capitalism is that individual rights over capital are respected.

Capitalism is based on private property rights, and individual economic freedoms to buy and sell your labour or property. That means it’s fundamentally reliant on the robust rule of law to enforce those rights, the rights of those purchasing property and services, etc. It’s those rights that enable the trust required for a functioning market. Corporatist, oligarchic and cartel based systems are often described as capitalist, but they’re really not capitalist because they don’t respect individual rights over capital any more than communism does. Like communism they’re just stitch-ups.

The role played by the rule of law often gets down played or even criticised by libertarian free marketeers. They think it’s needless regulation and just government interfering in free markets. But without the rule of law you get bloody free for alls like in Russia in the 90s.

The idea that capital is ahistorical (or at least, traces its origin to the concept of human property itself by being 'just' property) is not a claim to be made as though it were uncontroversial. In fact, many people proposing non-capitalist systems disagree the idea that capital is 'just property' for good reasons, which may be worth considering.

You argue that the capitalist system presupposes these rights and the rule of law; I would say that historically speaking capital itself (more importantly its production process) presupposes these rights and capitalism presupposes capital.

It doesn’t matter what you call it, capital is the same thing regardless of its ownership structure. Let’s call it woogum and the woogumist system if you like, that doesn’t change anything.

Capitalism is commonly defined as a system of economics based on private ownership, and associated rights such as free exchange of labour, free markets, etc as against state ownership. Systems based on cartels, oligarchies and corporatist systems aren’t capitalist because the oligarchs, corporatist entities, etc become part of the state system. They assume powers normally the prerogative of the state. Obviously there are different degrees, no two systems are identical and all such systems have some level of private ownership and trade. It’s all a matter of degree. Even the Soviet Union had some level of markets and private exchange.

You're just restating your definition of what you define capital to be and my point is that some qualified people disagree on that definition. You can call your definition 'woogum', but the fact is that there's no book called Woogum, yet there is probably a book called 'Property' and I'm certain there's a famous one called 'Capital'.

'As against state ownership is an interesting bit to use as part of the definition, because it creates the whole rest of your argument for you (by which you must say that a term like 'state capitalism' is nonsensical, but I disagree). This is fundamentally an issue of definitions, and I'm more than happy to agree to disagree on that, or even to go with your definition, and I'll use capital-prime to denote what I'm talking about.

However, according to Wikpedia (quoting Samuelson) capital is "those durable produced goods that are in turn used as productive inputs for further production" of goods and services" - so while a subclass of property, certainly not 'just property'. This also raises an empirical question, that is, in a given society what are those 'durable produced goods...' as they exist in the macroeconomic sense? Yet others view capital as a social relation. I'm saying there are multiple perspectives on the definition, but that's the nature of multiple interested parties talking about a politically, ideologically, and socially charged subject.