How Does a Communist Economy Work?

[Salvador]

No Sophia , you misunderstood me , I by no means was referring to you in any way , the phone thing just got mixed up I guess , what I was referring to is the general sentiment that our "western friends" are showing that things like phones were foreign to us, so I must have taken your phone example out of context.
Pardon me for letting you feel bad about what i wrote in any way.As many things socialist the buses may not have been always as good but their were frequent and in overall public transport was sort of a Soviet priority and also a way to make the regime look nicer , like the Moscow and Leningrad (ST Petersburgh) metros which are a unique piece of art rather than a metro station.

 

[mheslep]

A friend of mine from the former USSR tells the story of a guy who goes out to buy a car, hands over his money, and is told he can pick it up in ten years. He asks "Morning or afternoon?" He's asked "It's ten years from now - what difference does it make?" He replies, "The plumber is coming in the morning."

(I would love to have a Trabant. The 601S Deluxe.)

You have friends in high places V50

 

[mheslep]

... communists made sure that everything was close to where people lived .

The communists did this, and not the medieval layout of European towns going back a thousand years?

 

[mheslep]

... Today China, Vietnam, Cuba and North Korea all call themselves "communist" but they are only similar in that they are nominally communist authoritarian regimes with distinctly varying degrees of repression. Their economies are quite different. I don't think Lenin would have accepted the economies of China or Vietnam today...

Yes, N. Korea and Cuba still qualify I think as Marxist economies, whereas China and Vietnam appear to have have largely capitalistic, free trade economies with undemocratic governments.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Ok I think I now got the problem , the problem for many of you here is the tendency to "overkill". What i find especially funny about that is that you overkill even after someone who has real actual proof not just wikipedia articles and a bunch of anecdotes says differently.
Yes there were devices that were made badly and yes the part about the manufacturing dates is also true , but do I really have to photograph my old tv in the basement and give you the full year by year work hours to prove that also good stuff was produced in the USSR ? It just so happens to be that electronics is my thing and we have had that TV , made in 1989 by the way (a year of much turmoil) and it went on for 15 years everyday with no problems.How about that why is nobody talking about that ?

From the wiki article:

In the mid-1980s, up to 70% of the televisions manufactured by Ekran, a major household electronics manufacturer, were rejected by quality control inspection.

You have one working TV, one, and you're offering it as proof soviet manufacturing of consumer goods was not "crap." Who is committing the "overkill" here, who is raising anecdote to the level of proof?

The notion that the existence of any good soviet products kills the idea they were overall bad products (informally, "crap") is a straw man logical fallacy:

A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not advanced by that opponent.[1]

The so-called typical "attacking a straw man" argument creates the illusion of having completely refuted or defeated an opponent's proposition by covertly replacing it with a different proposition (i.e. "stand up a straw man") and then refuting that false argument ("knock down a straw man") instead of the original proposition.[2][3]

It was not claimed by me, or in any link, or by mheslep, that it was impossible to find a working soviet consumer good. All that was claimed is that the percentage of bad ones was always so high that soviet manufacturing was completely below first world standards (informally: "crap"). Therefore, you pointing to the existence of one good soviet TV, or ten, or a thousand, or a million, is in no way a refutation of the claim of an unacceptably high percentage of them being bad. You are refuting an argument no one made: a straw man.

When a teacher tell you, "You got 50% of the answers wrong on the test, therefore, you will receive a failing grade," I think it's kind of useless to say, "Ok I think I now got the problem , the problem for you here is the tendency to 'overkill'. What i find especially funny about that is that you overkill even after someone who has real actual proof of 50% correct answers, not just some 50% that says differently."

Your overly-long posts have many straw men peppered throughout.

 

[mheslep]

Also I don't like your attitude...

Uh oh. Will you report me to the political officer?

 

[Mark44]

Emphasis added by me...

Your overly-long posts have many straw men peppered throughout.

+1

 

[mheslep]

even though the USSR did the majority of the bloody work in defeating Nazi Germany

Yes, after Stalin made a 1939 pact with Nazi Germany to carve up and butcher eastern Europe, followed by Hitler invading Russia two years later (surprise!), yes the Soviets suffered the deaths of millions in defeating the Nazis on the eastern front. Stalin’s 1941 suicidal purge of his officer corps had more than a little to do with initial Nazi successes in the Soviet invasion.

 

[PeroK]

I'll never forget how humiliating it was when I stayed in the UK in a host family for 10 days when I was at high school and the lady felt the need to show me how to use the toilet.

That is just so British! It's entirely possible she would have shown any visitor, from any country, how to use the toilet. If you read, for example, Bill Bryson, an American writer who lived in Britain for many years, his books are full of similar anecdotes about British over-concern that things may be bewilderingly different for their foreign visitors. For example, some people were amazed that there were Woolworths and Kellogg's Corn Flakes in the US. And could hardly believe that they were actually American companies!

 

[Sophia]

Ok, I spent about an hour trying to write a post about socialism and the Roma community and explained why it is another factor of nostalgia and why many think socialism would help this community. It concerns the topic of the tread because it deals with economy and uneployment of about 320,000 people only here and I assume there are many more in the whole USSR.
However, eventually I decided not to post it because it might have caused problems even if it wasn't meant to be racist at all. I have saved it in a text document and may send it in a PM in case anyone is interested.

 

[Pepper Mint]

I'll never forget how humiliating it was when I stayed in the UK in a host family for 10 days when I was at high school and the lady felt the need to show me how to use the toilet.

I think it wasn't such a big deal. There are very modern, automatic and thus expensive toilets and one might need instructions for first time use. Other cases might be for example issues with the host's, so she needed to guide you to use it properly.

 

[Sophia]

That is just so British! It's entirely possible she would have shown any visitor, from any country, how to use the toilet. If you read, for example, Bill Bryson, an American writer who lived in Britain for many years, his books are full of similar anecdotes about British over-concern that things may be bewilderingly different for their foreign visitors. For example, some people were amazed that there were Woolworths and Kellogg's Corn Flakes in the US. And could hardly believe that they were actually American companies!

Oh, I wasn't aware of that :)

 

[Salvador]

I want to acknowledge one user of PF here , even though he hasn't participated in this very debate , Jim Hardy , he is an American and I believe he loves his country no less than some of you here do but apart from you he is always open and interested in the way things are elsewhere and shows nothing but respect to others and their cultures which is shown back to him from me and possibly many alike.It's always interesting to exchange ideas with someone who is actually willing to listen just as much as talk, you have a long way to grow folks like it or not coming from me but that's just the way it is and the sooner you start doing that the smarter you may become before death - the ultimate equalizer takes away your souls.

 

[Sophia]

I share Salvadors main point and I would sum it up as follows:

I can take two sheets of paper, one for capitalism and one for socialism. Each will be divided into two columns - one for pro's and the other one for con's. Some of us can fill both columns on both sheets. On one side, there may be more pro's, but no column would be left blank.
What I've seen in this debate is total unwillingness to do this exercise.
It's a shame because if everyone agreed with this method, the discussion could have been much more fruitful.

Edit: the exception is Mark44 with whom I exchanged a few PM but he didn't write here so frequently or I don't remember his posts

 

[Vanadium 50]

On one side, there may be more pro's, but no column would be left blank.

What would you say is the biggest "pro" in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge?

 

[Salvador]

There is no pro , but what you Vanadium sadly and seemingly fail to understand as folks before you that the reason why socialism /guerilla warfare communism turned out so bad for these small third world countries is because their very understanding of life and hierarchy is bad and evil , to counteract my argument let me ask you this , show me a country which was really good off and advanced and then turned to communist ideology and socialist lifestyle?
Give me one country that was far better off before it turned to socialism ?

The point is for most of the third world guerilla warriors and communist sympathizers it's all just a slogan and a naive hope of being the Messiahs of their societies and bringing change to a country which is barely a tribe with low education and poor intellect.
For countries like Russia it was much more than just that, and our way of life wasn't necessarily a grass soup which again is very stupid and disrespectful.

Take any system whether capitalism or other and apply it to a bunch of violent societies with rather ancient religious and social standards and see what happens , by the way how is democracy in Libya going, how about Afghanistan , have they achieved the "freedom of speech" or are they still working on the "freedom of suicide bombing" ??
Just don't tell me you could look with a straight face and say that all the bad outcomes of these countries is simply because an ideology made them to be such or maybe it's because well I don't know ... their crazy themselves ? Look at the blacks , how many of them participated themselves and sold their brothers and sisters to slavery just to complain later that the bad bad white folks have everything to do with their problems , which they are complaining till this very day even though the white folks got their act together and agreed to move on and advance instead of living off humanitarian aid.
There is an unwritten rule which goes like this , every country or nation or a bunch of people who are capable of advancing and have the capacity to think will advance sooner or later , while everyone who is literally too lazy or incapable of advancing will forever stay that way and then the liberals will come along and blame everyone else for their problems while in reality there is no one to blame.
This is true both for countries and for individuals , just look at the many countries that were literally devastated by war and various ideologies like hardcore communism, nazism etc , many of them are better off then others who did not go through all of that simply because they have the capacity to trial and error and then move on.
Vietnam , Germany , Japan , China , and yes many of the former USSR states are actually better off than you would imagine.And that has nothing to do with an ideology because ideology wise we should be dead altogether by now.

 

[Sophia]

What would you say is the biggest "pro" in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge?

Nothing. I'd put into into the negative section.
So simple :-)

 

[Sophia]

The section with pictures and videos would be nice. I don't know if the others would be interested but I want to see pictures from Latvia.

One of the reasons I think some countries are too patriotic is that the others are weak. I don't know about Latvia because you are the first Latvian I've met, but I'll tell you what's my perspective of what I see here.

The first characteristic that children learn in first grade is that we are a "nation of doves". It is explained that we've always been oppressed. By Tatars, Turks, Russians and mainly Hungarians (I don't believe in Hungarian oppression but it's something that is firmly present in popular opinion). These big empires were so though and cruel but we were humble, hard working, quiet and this is the strategy that we used for survival. This concept is repeated each and every year in Slovak and history lessons, in all grades 1-13. Only in higher grades , something like national uprising and attempts for suverenity are mentioned.
This concept becomes so deeply rooted in the average citizen that we believe that oppression and our submission is something that has always been and always will be. It is our fate.

When other nations feel this weak attitude, it is natural they feel more powerful, just like when a weak and strong personality meet.
Just look at how the EU treats us. It's only what the UK, Germany or France want. When there's a common problem or idea that V4 (Poland, Hungary, Czech and Slovak Republic) which represent 65 million people, want to deal with, it's always taken as a nuisance. You get our money, so be happy and keep quiet.
It must be even tougher for the new baltic countries because I've never even heard of them in the context of the EU.

What I feel needs to be done is that we must begin to change the preception of our countries at home, by our people so they become stronger and more confident. We have such a rich natural and cultural heritage, but almost no one has heard of it or cares. The older I get the more I'm proud of our nature, mountains, caves, healing water and wonderful folklore and art. We are tiny countries by why can't we be as proud as Switzerland? And we have reasons to be! I'm so sure Latvia has many gems I've never heard of because all I hear about are Western countries.

So I hope that one day, we can become as confident as they are and we must start now with ourselves.

 

[Dale]

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Edit by Evo: Thread closed