In fact, in the last few years even Japan's great corporations have started to look a bit like dinosaurs, lumbering helplessly in pursuit of the little startups of Silicon Valley. Socialist economies could not avail themselves of this new opportunity, and so they began to fall beind instead of catching up. Communism failed as an economic system because people stopped believing in it, not the other way around. A market system, of course, works whether people believe in it or not. You may dislike capitalism, even feel that as a system it will eventually fail, yet do your job well because your family needs the money you earn.
Capitalism can run, even flourish, in a society of selfish cynics.
But a non-market economy cannot. The personal incentives for workers to do their jobs well, for managers to make good decisions, are simply too weak. Because people believed in it. I don't mean that people went singing to their jobs, praising the motherland. And I also mean that because people in authority believed in the system, they were willing to impose brutal punishments on those who did try to take advantage.