Somebody: But this is the old catch 22 of socialist revolutions, isn't it? On the one hand, you need war, a breakdown of the social order, and schism or major weakness in the ruling class to make a plausible attempt at overturning the existing class system. On the other hand, the wholesale destruction of productive forces and attendant demographic disasters this brings about means that any new socialist state has to start not at zero, but at minus 100, and is poorly placed to survive, let alone thrive, in a world of capitalist powers. To survive, mind you, I'm not even addressing the possibility of actually posing a superior alternative to the market economies.
Incidentally, this is why I always find ecosocialist mutterings about zero-growth or low-growth sustainable socialism so amusing. By necessity, any new socialist society will need to grow at least as rapidly as did Stalin's Soviet Union, simply to exercise the right to exist. In fact, every socialist and left-nationalist regime has known this, which is why they all have prioritized economic growth as much, if not more (being often willing to sacrifice consumer consumption), than the capitalist nations.
Hugo Chavez has tried to have his cake and eat it too, by offering a subsidized consumer spending spree and high-growth petroleum driven economy - but this too has run into serious problems as of late, even before the global crisis hit them. Something has to give - in Venezeula's case the result has been that the money going to support cheap gasoline and consumer goods hasn't been available to support an national industrial expansion, for all the talk of endogenous development.