That doesn't answer my question. What decides who prospers and who suffers? Good and evil, or the way a society produces and distributes?

In the socialist bloc, the lives of the working classes, the industrial workers and peasants, were enormously uplifted. Like the example above, housing was a high priority for socialist states, who used a mass housing campaign on a scale unprecedented in history. Life expectancy in Russia doubled in the span of a couple decades from the low 30s. Literacy rates also skyrocketed to 99.9%, when in some regions native languages weren't even alphabetized. All of these are examples of the gains of socialism.

If the workers generally won out, who suffered as compared to before? The aristocracy, nobility, landlords, and capitalists did. On an unprecedented scale, their prior places of privledge were ruthlessly attacked, their armies killed, and those who resisted were rather mercilessly gunned down. Their property was appropriated for the new ruling class, the working class.

My point here is that societies are not good or evil. What determines who benefits most in society is largely what class dominates society and runs it in their own interest. The socialist countries are exceptional not because they are morally just, but because the ruling class for the first time in history was also the majority of society, rather than a tiny minority.

Not being allowed to plunder Africa and Asia is not suffering.