I'm new to Socialism. This image is pretty demoralizing to me. Why did socialist states grow so little...

I'm new to Socialism. This image is pretty demoralizing to me. Why did socialist states grow so little? Is it misleading?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Soviet_economic_reform
marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-6/red-flag.pdf
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_System
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_System_of_Socialism
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Mechanism
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

It's pretty fucking hard to calculate the GDP per capita for a socialist economy. Those numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt. You are better off looking at the economic growth, and socialist states had a steady economic growth. Not as fast as a caprialist growth cycles but without the busts. Socialist economic development literally never ends, capitalist development does once it peaks.

Why was this? And if so, why did the USSR collapse if it was still growing? And thank you.

GDP is not designed for planned economies, and is extremely poor at describing any form of actual prosperity and stability. To put it into perspective, Venezuela has a higher GDP than Russia.

The USSR's collapse was less an economic disaster and more a sociopolitical one. The party had completely alienated the population via its 60s reforms and the later reforms. These reforms gave bosses massively increased power over their workers and even allowed them to sell and buy things on the open market at the expense of their worker's wages. Instead of dealing with the problems this caused, the party sought to further solidify it and protect it. Economic stagnation was a result and a factor in the revolts, but not the defining factor in what caused people to seek independence.

Don't look at GDP, look at purchasing power.

Because modern capitalist growth usually has foreign investment firing up the economy. West Germany for example got the Marshal Plan, whereas East Germany didn't, it even had to pay reparations. It didn't have as much industrial base as West Germany, and got most of its scientists moving to Russia. Yet, they managed to keep with western Germany quite well. They never stopped growing, and if the GDR was arround today, it probably wouldn't look that much different from Western Germany.
It didn't collapse, it was politicially dismantled from above. At no point did the Russian people want to dissolve the USSR, nor did the economy collapse. Pdf related is the standard read for that.

How does purchasing power compare with say, East Germany and West Germany?


Thanks. Were these reforms also applied throughout the Eastern Bloc?

Depends on the country. For the most part, yes. Albania vehemently opposed it, and while the Albanian economy was disastrous, that was less the fault of central planning and more the hand they had been dealt by fate (look at pre Hoxha Albania, shit is terrifyingly bad), plus massive isolation.

The USSR didn't collapse, it was destroyed by a coup. The economy had been sabotaged by liberal market reforms which introduced shortages of goods that hadn't been seen since the second world war and increasing separatism. The fall itself was engineered by the likes of Yeltsin who ignored the referendum on the preservation of the union.
The west subverted and destroyed the soviet union, tearing apart its carcass for profit and leaving the population of the ex soviet block in the hell they're in today.

This is mostly correct, post-Stalinist USSR is revisionist, he is talking about the Kosgyn reforms:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Soviet_economic_reform
That doesn't mean that capitalism was fully restored in the USSR, but it was clearly on the track to do so. Some people like Albert Szymanski argue that the post-Stalinist USSR under Brezhnev was still socialist, and defend it:
marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-6/red-flag.pdf
So the analysis of the late USSR has to be a little bit more nuanced, despite political errors that have been made.
That's not the right word for it. It didn't achieve its expected growth, but it never stagnated.

As the other user said, depends on the country. Poland for example always was more of a market socialist economy. Hungary and the GDR however didn't liberalize the economy.
Economists still argue that. However the purchasing power of the Ostmark was about the same as the Deutsche Mark. The problem is that socialist economies don't trade with their currency, they have a seperate currency for that, and you weren't allowed to bring money into the GDR. So, we never got to see the currencies in competition.

So if Hungary and the GDR didn't ever abandon their workers to control over their bosses, why were they both so eager to abandon the party?

bruh… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_System

I don't know much about Hungary. The dissolution of the GDR was a case of German nationalism (reunification). Many also celebrated the destruction of the wall because it was their chance to see their families again. It was also a ruse. Western propaganda painted a picture of Germany where gold and honey comes out of the tub, but certainly this wasn't the case. Most East Germans got disillusioned quite quickly, I've talked to one and he said he was shocked as he had never seen drug addicts, homeless people, ghettos and trash on the streets before. I don't want to apologize for everything the GDR leadership did. Honecker was a gerontocrat in the end, and should have stepped down earlier. The whole Stasi surveillance was somewhat understandable (considering the cold war) but blown out of proportion. That being said, western governments have the same amount of surveillance, you just feel it less. It's surveillance with a human face.

On a grander scale, the collapse of the rest of the Eastern Bloc makes sense when you realize that the Soviet nuclear umbrella retreated. If the GDR stayed socialist, they would have to face isolation and sanctions. The only countries that survived from that era is North Korea and Cuba, and both faced food shortages in the 90s due to the stop of imports of pesticides and fertilizers from the USSR. They've overcome these problems, but you can see that the decision to stay socialist in 1991 brought hardships with it, as the west was pushing to corner these last pockets of resistence.

Bruh, that lasted for only 5 years
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_System_of_Socialism

Wrong link en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Mechanism

You need to understand that Socialist country never had an oportunity for peacefull development. This list is pure nonsence becouse at the end of the war East Europe was in an awfull shape. Millions of young people dead, cities destroyed, earth burned. Meanwhile western countries had been far less damaged and they could exploid other countries.
Even french ex president admits that without their colonies France would be a third world country.

My bad then. I don't know much about Hungary, I remember reading an article talking about how Hungary opposed market reforms. Must have been mistaken.

Another thing you understand is that Socialist countries had some of the quickest rise of literacy and life expectancy in the world.

Lastly a quick google search will reveal that majority of the people were dissapointed with capitalism right after it came and want good old days back.

It's no problem, there is a mountain of propaganda (for and against but mostly the latter) obfuscating actual facts, so it's easy to skim over such things. The majority of the bloc at least flirted with markets in the sixties, which is pretty disappointing.

Remeber the mantra comrade!
"It's not true communism"
Just say it out loud multiple times and you'll start beliving it.
That's the trick.
Even my non-binary m2f girlfriend did it.

EBIN TROLE ALERT!!

I never understood this mantra in the west. Countries that were Socialist, people miss socialism and say that it was good,

wot

m2f girlfriend here. Get back here and fuck my non-binary boi-pussi

Because it compares 1938 to 1990, the year those countries collapsed. it's one of the most dishonest metrics you can use. I'm sure if they used 1980 or 85 it would paint a much different picture.