Why do planned economies work so well in Rural, Industrializing nations, but so badly in developed ones?

East Germany was not at the level of Mexico. You are deluding yourself here. It had arguably a similar starting point to West Germany, and never caught up.

This is still a measure of living standards, regardless.

Can you explain how countries like Norway exploited third world labour, but the soviets didn't when they bought huge amounts of products from India?

Its easy to assume that position without realizing that:

1) The USA, the largest industrial base in the world, was left absolutely intact by the war while eastern Europe had to be rebuilt from scratch and never had the same amount of industrialization pre WWII that western Europe had

2) NATO had their overseas empires to extract resources from, Africa, southeast Asia and Latin America to be exact, while the Warsaw Pact did not. It should be stressed that even though France and UK dont have their colonies under one government anymore they continue to dominate them economically, proving to be equally as effective, if sneakier, form of sustaining their wealth.

it is not. The only thing that hugely lowered standard of living in european socialist republics such as east germany, czechoslovakia, and so on was the fact that they had much less civil liberties. Otherwise they were closing in on living standard of scandinavian countries, without need of exploitation of third world countries THANKS to planned economy. We can only imagine what would happen if soviet union were not afraid that they will get too powerful.

French colonies were a net loss.

West Germany had massive support from the USA, there is no way it would have gotten the Marshall Plan or its debt forgiven if not for the Cold War. Also the GDR still had their living standards rise.

They are part of NATO, an extension of USA.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor

...

Yeah, thank god for the freedom fighters that manged to kick the french out but not their banks

Is that why France spent 14 years straight at war with its own colonies after WW2?

Okay, so the fact that far fewer in these nations owned televisions, had cars or the ability to take holidays doesn't count?

Sure, if you discount this stuff, i guess you can argue that they had equal living standards.

Furthermore, if the centrally planned system worked so well, why did it stagnate?

So why did these rising living standards stagnate in the 80's?

Corporations still compete with one another, and they're usually not under direct state management.

A Military Alliance doesn't mean Norway and Denmark are actively exploiting the third world. And I notice, in typical tanky fashion you've avoided responding to my 2nd point.

What is freedom without the freedom to enrich oneself?

No, that was about empire for the sake of empire.

niceme.me

It's almost as if the Indian Products bought by the Soviets was made in literal sweatshops.

Unless westerners were buying more than one TV or car per household on average, you are not telling truth, and I would like to see source. If you count unemployment as holidays, then you are right at this point.

It did not stagnate, just grow too slow thank's to soviet sabotage of these countries. Thank Chruščev for that.

Having direct political and military control of the region would obviously be the best scenario, but in lieu of having their empire crumble around them they went for financial dependence, just look at how the UK satellized the Latin American countries after their independence thanks to financial control. Its not hard to see user

Oh, and if i can ask, that forced labour used by the soviets wasn't exploitative, was it?

Are you unironically pretending the tv ownership rate was the same in the east, and that just as many took holidays? What fucking sources are you smoking?

Why the fuck would they sabotage their puppet states? And how? Why did the USSR slow too?

USSR wasn't the one that colonized the Raj to make sweatshops. Or granted power to the bourgeoisie upon independence.

No, it was corrective. Low rate of recidivism, too. So not at all like private prisons in USA.

You're the only one posting a meme here.

I'm an anarchist. i've no interest in defending capitalism.

Ah, that justifies the flagrant human rights abuse.

No user it dosent

...

...

Something clearly must've shown you through all that propaganda that it was untrue. may I see it, comrade? I'd love to hear about the sunny holidays Ceausescu's people enjoyed!

considering the USSR was the 2nd largest economy, whilst the 2nd best, east germany, was 17th, i don't think that was a major risk.

So let me understand, the soviet system failed because they deliberately wanted to be capitalist rather than succesful?

And all those EVIL Red Army soldiers who surrendered. God, I'm glad they got their just deserts!

Proofs? Sounds like western propaganda.

Brief search tells me it's not true.
quora.com/Why-did-Joseph-Stalin-execute-one-million-returning-Soviet-prisoners-of-war-at-the-end-of-WW2

The fact that he grew massively indebted to the IMF proves that the status of the Warsaw Pact nations weren't homogeneous and should not be viewed as such

'According to the historian G.F. Krivosheev (РОССИЯ И СССР В ВОЙНАХ XX ВЕКА. ПОТЕРИ ВООРУЖЕННЫХ СИЛ. Статистическое исследование ), 1,836,562 Soviet POWs returned from German captivity. 233,400 of them were convicted of treason and sent to the GULAG to serve out their punishments. Very few were actually executed out of hand, but a lot of them did die in the prison camps afterwards. However, there was a general amnesty after Stalin’s death in 1953, so most of them had to serve only 8 years or so, rather than their original 15 or 25 year sentence. That counts for something, right?'

It's not as if the Soviets didn't engage in this sort of international trade as well.

Undialectical.

now you are no longer arguing in good faith. You can't just claim that westerners had more TVs and after asking for source start to throw strawmans at me.
What you think is not relevant. What is relevant is decision of bolsheviks under leadership of chruščev.
Soviet system failed because after honest revolutionaries died out, politicians with too big power over republics started to act withing their own personal self-interest. I'm not utopian, I'm not claiming that Stalin should have made transition to direct democracy, I'm just saying that leadership of CCCP betrayed workers of the world thanks to embracing revisionism.

...

Mate, trade has been one of the constants for human society's developement. There is virutally no country on earth that does not engage in trade, nor no society on Earth that hasnt engaged in trade unless their culture would dictate them a role of reclusive/isolationalist society. Fuck even with global gommunism achieved there would still need the movement of resources and materials along the globe, perhaps not in a market sense but exchange will still exist.

Except I'm asking as to why it functioned worse, not acting as if it were a mystery. The fact the Soviets were at arms against most of the world means little, when one considers they were up against more of the world and largely embargoed during their huge growth in the 30's, yet the stagnation came largely during the detente period.

And how are these strawmans?

Yet such a decision isn't supported by anything I've ever read. Khruschev didn't oppose the growth of east Germany or Hungary. They opposed movements to cut themselves off from ML ideology, as seen in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

That's fine. I'm not saying that isn't true. What I am suggesting though is these reforms and revisionism still kept power in the vanguard system, up until 1989. And as such, is still a failure of Central Planning.

Are you telling me then that 1 in 6 Soviet POW's were collaborators and all justly sent to prison? Man, who knew Russians loved Nazis so much.

Dude, i agree with all this. i just don't see how Ceasescu's work with the IMf discounts his legitimacy.

1 in 8
Not an argument.

So 1 in 8 Soviets all collaborated with the Germans. And they all deserved it. Ok.

Could you also tell me about how much Homosexuals deserved 5 years in labour camps, btw?

God fucking damn are you what they mean with the term Anarkiddie?

They dint, imprisoning someone cause they like the man ass is as revisionist as they come and a legitimate criticism of the USSR and *any* soc state.

Im not the tankposter but jesus christ man

Okay, so if it is a legitimate criticism of the USSR, why are you quoting it? What is your point?

It fits me and the tanky's original argument that the USSR did indeed exploit people, through whatever excuse it had, for forced labour. I never said that was an element of socialist doctrine.

The debate is not whether the Eastern Bloc is socialist. The debate is over central planning, which isn't an exclusive part of Socialism.

seems to work fine for illiterate brainlet used to argue on reddit like you. I'm still waiting for you to prove that people in socialist countries had much lower access to common comfort goods. TVs or cars you offered as example is simply bullshit, but I would agree with hair-dyes or milions designs of jeans, which are unnecessary goods not contributing in significant way to quality of life.
Yes, as long as they proved their everlasting allegiance to soviet union.
Is this the intellectual power of illiterate faggots like you?
dude, I can use same logic, look how africa is doing with markets and central planing will still prove itself superior.

Do you know anything about East Germany? Any data? What is your point? That the GDR wasn't growing? The GDR suffered damage from the war yet completely reconstructed without any famine or shortages, unlike the industrialization in poorer countries.
Seriously nigga? The GDR was made to pay reparations, whereas the FRG got propped up with billions of $ in accordance with the Marshal Plan. The FRG also had access to Third World labor, actually, these Free Trade agreements we see neoliberals pushing these days with the included investment protection laws were invented by West Germany in their relations with Africa. The GDR could never import stuff this cheap.
Where the fuck did planned economies stagnate? Drop the memes. Stagnation doesn't mean "not growing as much as you'd like it". The problem with a revolution in the First World is rather be the boycott problem, which makes a revolution mostly undesirable for the First World worker.

Comrade! I'm merely sprouting the nonsense the capitalists told me! That East Germans had shitty cars, of the few that did! They could never go on holiday, and few had televisions! please comrade, show me what you saw that pulled the wool from your eyes!

So why did the system stagnate if this was all Khruschev had interest in?

Do you really believe Dubcek was an ML?

And please stop using slurs.

Dude, I always said from the start that central planning works great in agragrian, industrialising nations.

Forgot reply

Idunno man, maybe because you just said that Ceausescu directly working with the IMF and turning his country into a gigantic state-controlled capitalist apparatus somehow dosent discredit him as a socialist leader

So did Western Europe, though.

Yes, these are all fair arguments. Despite all this however, The GDR to grow, especially in the early 60's, before facing stagnation in the 70's. So what happened then? why did the economy slow in growth?

Yes, the GDR did pretty well in its early years, even with all its troubles, yet its slowed growth came in past reconstruction.

The Soviet Union's annual GDp growth dropping massively?

'With average GNP growth slowing to an annual 3.7% rate between 1970 and 1975, and further to 2.6% between 1975 and 1980'

The argument has never been about if it was a failure of socialism. I am a socialist. The argument was on planned economies.

See:
Idunno man, maybe because you just said that Ceausescu directly working with the IMF and turning his country into a gigantic state-controlled capitalist apparatus somehow dosent discredit him as a socialist leader

Why did you just post the same reply? The discussion was never on 'Was the eastern Bloc real socialism'. I don't deny Ceausescu wasn't a socialist.

I'm too young to remember socialism properly, but I talk with people around me. The only thing they hate their former socialist republic for is lack of civil liberties.
It did not stagnate, just grow slower. Read thread.
Democratic centralism of czechoslovak socialist republic proves it.
reddit seems to be better place for you, nigger.
yes, and you never proved that it do not work pretty good (read: better than capitalist markets) even in developed countries.

Are you actually relying on soviet nostalgia, despite the fact it's principally the younger generation that misses it most?

Stagnation in economic terms is still slower growth. Economies flat out not expanding at all is a much greater cause for concern.

I see you're a Holla Forums racist who's been rejected.

Okay, how about the lower wages, the fact russians voted in their song contests through turning their lights off, the fact that East Germans ordering a car had to wait actual years, or the fact that Poles had to wait years to have a phone line installed?

Fine, I apologize for my sperging catman

That's okay, user.

The Comecon didn't have a wage problem, they had record savings due to high wages and little to spend those wages on.
This was bad planning and even seen as bad planning by technocrats in the USSR in the 1960's. When technocrats said the only way forward was cybernetics and modernizing the economy those in GOSPLAN got cold feet because it would mean automating the bureaucracy and the fear of A.I. taking their jobs meant they sabotaged attempts to modernize planning.

I am not. I'm very anti-bolshevik person, self-described anarchist. I however value statements of people living in socialist republics over some random western brainlet without sources like you.
Ok, I'll accept your suggested definition of "stagnation". Can you now prove that this "stagnation" was worse off for quality of life for majority of people than markets can offer?
If you don't count occasional posts on 4/pol/ many years ago, I was never been Holla Forumsyp. You, on other hand, are just average liberal trying to act smug between friends because you have read a few articles about anarchy. I despise faggots like you.
What about higher buying power, especially for factory workers?
This is pretty funny, but not really relevant
in contrast when people right now have to save up/get indebted for car for a few decades?
I know that Poles had it pretty shitty, but I do not believe this story

Fair point, but a consumer goods shoratge is an issue regardless.

isn't thsi further evidence of Central Plannings' weakness? Considering such a change wasn't being pushed by consumer demand as it would be in a market economy, so the shift towards this and modernization was slowed? Granted such a change wouldn't always necessarily happen in a market system, but considering the bureaucratic nature of central planning, changes such as these don't undergo necessary opposition.

Uh huh. Says the guy who's given 0 sources outisde personal anecdotes.

The discussion wasn't actually on 'Did people enjoy living under central planning?' as you're trying to make it, it was on why these systems slowed, which sadly isn't covered by your martyr DemocraticSocialist01.

How about the points I gave you? That phone lines were lacking in huge amounts of households? that cars had waiting times of up to 15 years?

I mean, you don't know anything about me. i actually grew up in a working class background and haven't ever been a liberal. you on the other hand are am alt-right teen who got bored of r/The_Donald because it wasn't 'Counter Culture' enough and saw some Stalin memes on ifunny.

Doesn't mean much with fewer consumer goods available, with these being of a lower quality.

in b4 you tell me all about the stunning performance of the Trabant

It is very relevant.

Yes, this happens in capitalist societies. The argument was never that capitalism was a good thing. But are you unironically saying that you'd rather be a doctor in Polnady who waits 15 years for his Polski Fiat 73, than a builder in West Germany who has to pay off his debt for his volkswagen? are you seriously telling me these 2 are comparable? Stop deluding yourself.

Oh, it gets worse. the south east used manual exchanges until the 80's.

Pick one m8

They also really weren't. Trade unions were incredibly powerful in pre-liberalization India and standards in Indian factories were quite high. Almost all major industrial accidents in India were either by Western corps (Bhopal) or post-liberalization.

Also, imprerialism implies the export of capital and that didn't happen from the USSR to India

That's a good point.

'in 1987 India, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Argentina, Egypt, Turkey, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Malaysia together accounted for 75 percent of Soviet imports'

Did all these guys have those same rights?

Not to mention, whilst Indian workers still held rights, it's still private ownership, and still exploitation.

Where do you get your data? Calculating the GDP is always troublesome with socialist economies, but the average estimates state that the GDR had a higher growth rate than the FDR:
zeit.de/wirtschaft/2009-11/gerhard-heske-ddr
Between 1950 and 1989 the GDP of East Germany grew arround 558%, the one of West Germany 538%. The West also suffered slower growth rates during the early 80s due to the oil crisis.

Now let's look at the period in question, 1980-1990. Pdf related is the economic data. I just typed in the GDP differences between '80 and '89 into the calculator and came up with the GDP growth rate: In this decade, the GDR grew 126%, and the FRG 118%. So your assumption doesn't seem to be based on facts.

These are fair sources, and you're right here, i was wrong. Evidently, Planned Economies can indeed continue growth past industrialisation.

Still, that doesn't change the fact East Germans had less access to consumer goods than their western neighbours, as well as lesser housing standards.

Can't speak to other countries considering that I'm Indian, but is your argument hat the Soviets shouldn't have traded internationally for required goods because they couldn't control the governments of all the countries of the world?

I think that's a deliberate choice of the central plan. You face a butter vs guns vs heavy capital equipment tradeoff in any economy and the countries of the Warsaw Pact invested in the latter two largely because of the threat they believed NATO posed. I can't say I would disagree with them given madmen like Reagan were in charge

Nope, it's responding to the Tanky's point that only western countries used exploited labour.

Frankly, capitalist economies faced similar stagnation in the 70s (stagflation) and got out of it by intensifying exploitation of the third world and their domestic proles. So it's not as though stagnation was limited to Communist countries, it's just that their policy options were more limited given their relationships, both economic and ideological with the Third World

So do you think, had the eastern bloc cut their military spending, living standards in the Eastern Bloc would shoot up? I'm not attacking, just genuinely asking, since those sources do offer a new perspective on their economies.

What also confuses me is if their growth was so high, why they still had such major inefficiencies in things like product distribution or housing. Could devolving the bureaucracy to a more local level get around this?

Yeah but there's a distinction between Western corps with globally integrated supply chains that grab profits at every stage of the production process versus the Soviets who purchased directly from the national bourgeoise. Yes, there's exploitation in both cases, but one is objectively better for the development of the productive forces of poor countries' economies

That was largely a result of the 70's oil crash. the problem had similar effects on the USSR, though the slowed Soviet Growth began in the late 60's.

I wouldn't go as far to say their system was to exploit the third world, since they'd been doing that before this point. The 70's recession was recovered from through mass privatization and industrialization. See thatcher closing the mines and Reagan intensifying rust belt unemployment.

I do believe that would be the case and that imperialist aggression was a leading cause of the overinvestment in the military among Warsaw Pact nations.

And yeah, there were inefficiencies in central planning systems, but I'd argue they were still far better for the average person than our modern capitalist economies where people go homeless even as condos are built by the bucketload and shelves are full as people eat out of the garbage.

This is true, because they had access to western economies and could trade with them with a very deflated currency, trade with Third World countries, access to constant loans due to high credit rating and a growing migrant working class, particulary from Turkey. On the housing question, I am not sure if i disgaree. People outside the inner cities did have small houses in the GDR, and there was no homelessness unlike in the FRG.

In general, planned economies seem to get in trouble once you mix them with market-forced and export oriented businesses. Capitalism gets a foot in the door and the law of value and profitiability become increasingly important factors, "unprofitable" plants are becoming a problem, there is a drive towards more liberalization, etc.

1. The economy barely has relation with politics. Politics are about power relations
edx.org/es/course/poverty-prosperity-understanding-oxfordx-oxbsg01x-0

In capitalism, in socialism state and economy are merged.

That's fair enough, but what about low productivity under planned economies? Is thsi a meme?

According to a book I read, Eastern Bloc factories needed 5 times as long periods to build a refrigerator.

Which book?

Lower productivity makes sense to some extent because the incentive (unlike under capitalism) was not to creative capital intensive processes, but rather to substitute labor for capital whenever possible to ensure full employment. So from a per capita perspective, workers were less productive, but that wasn't the point of the economy to begin with.

I think the main problem here is that if you use a capitalist economy's metrics to measure a socialist economy, it will by definition fall short. But if you do the opposite, the same thing will happen. You have to decide which standard is better for the vast majority of people and id say it's the socialist one

says the guy not giving even those anecdotes
maybe in early socialist days when cars were not so common even between westerners.
you could simply say that you are middle class kid who want to anger father by stuffing too much stuff in your ass and calling yourself """leftist""" by embracing most cancerous western propaganda.
does mean much with being able to afford more services, food and even better quality products they are able to afford now.
how?
no, I'm telling you that I would prefer being builder in east germany than in west germany.
nice how you can shift from comparing west and east germany, and when you are out of arguments, you shift to comparing socialist poland to today's living standards.

GO BACK TO REDDIT ALREADY YOU WORTHLESS NIGGER

Because all attempts in implementing a socialist economy have been done without the technologies required to manage such a complex system being available, i.e. computers that are powerful enough. Due to this and other reasons is that the USSR saw a tremendous early boom (because they essentially were building a state/workers-sponsored form of capitalism) and stagnation starting in the 60s - their economy was too complex for them to manage in centrally, which is why the "market socialists" proposed the use of such mechanisms (incentives and taxes to indirectly control investment, etc.) to handle the problem. In addition, the management of a centrally planned economy that doesn't depend greatly on computer systems requires a humongous bureaucracy, and we all know how that ended in the USSR: they became aparted from the working class and eventually led the bourgeois coup that caused the dissolution of the Union.

However today, thanks to the very development of capitalist society worldwide, we do have the technologies to handle a complex, modern economy in a system that is centralized in it's calculations and decentralized in it's management ("capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them…"). As says, large multinational corporations do use very complex computer systems to plan their business models, in a centralized manner that however, only benefit the few investors of the company.

Therefore,
No. If anything, market economics reproduce the commodity form, the embrionary form of capitalism even if in a "socialist" society. What we need is to abolish the commodity form and install a communitary management model for the resources of society at large.

You should read Paul Cockshott. He expouses a series of arguments in favor of computer-planned socialism and communism, here: dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/quito.pdf

Didn't the US moving to a semi-planned economy in WW2 make its economy over the course of less than a decade grow to astronomical heights from stagnation despite plenty of goods having been made with no productive purpose just to help out the war effort?

Thank you, this is really interesting. So supposedly, could resource management be handled entirely by computers?

I was implying more a devolution of the bureaucracy to a more local level, but thank you for this.

Except I have quoted actual sources. you haven't.

This was actually during the introduction of the Trabant in 601 in the mid 60's.

Dude, my family lived on welfare for 6 years. Just cos I'm not an edgy asshole like you.

Because it exposes failures of the Soviet System in managing its people.

Then you're deluded, and you know it.

Pretty much every nation in the west had automatic phone systems even back then. The Us ditched them in the 50's.

I mean, it should be quite intuitive.
It's relatively easy to central plan the allocation of basic resources. If you just say "Oh, we want a factory" that's a relatively easy matter to figure out the inputs and then combine them to generate outputs. (i.e. bricks, machinery, land, labour = a factory.)

The problem comes when you have to start estimating further ahead for what you'll want or need. This remains manageable when you're still talking about needs and industry, but it quickly becomes unwieldy when we're moving towards consumer goods. Everyone wants bread - but some people want a television while others would prefer a chess-set to three televisions. Sometimes people randomly decide they want to buy a dozen plastic triangles each, other times people obtusely refuse to buy an exciting new product like a personal computer. It's a planning nightmare, especially when you've got an administration concerned with the efficient allocation of resources rather than the profit motive. (Because, I mean, who the fuck needs plastic triangles? It's a stupid desire, but you have a political push for you to provide products people want, meaning you have to burn valuable plastic on this weird thing, and odds are you're either going to overproduce or underproduce and both are undesirable. The money-surplus you'd normally get from selling the overproduction at knockdown prices isn't a factor here since you've just wasted actually-valuable inputs like plastic.)

The natural counter of course is that the USSR should never really have tried to follow the consumerist development path at all, since it was essentially trying to play a capitalist game that arose after material needs were better met in the first world. A question deriving from this, of course, is whether they could "market" such a policy to the population easily. (i.e. would Soviet citizens prefer a fulfilling job with clear social value, or just get upset at the knowledge the westerners are playing with their plastic triangles right now?)

damn now i really want a plastic pyramid for my desk actually.

Couldn't you just have a "bare bones" planned economy to provide for the really basic needs - maintenance of infrastructure, building new infrastructure, providing for research, government organization, disaster recovery, public healthcare, and a small subsidy of food for the desperate - and just allow the populace to run a gift economy for consumer goods?

holy shit

I had no idea france was that awful/reactionary. That straight up sounds like something the US would do. I always thought france as being the most "woke" western european nation.

100% this. That said, they were useful for propping up uncompetitive industries. In fact, colonies are a great way to slowly phase out stagnating industries without rapid job losses (barring the fact it's exploitative). This is what happened in the French textile industry in the late 19th century for example

France arguably treated its colonies worse than the British did if you believe that's even possible.

That issue could be remedied by overproducing and storing "just in case".

Theoretically, it all depends on how you go about the planning. The Soviet's and derivative countries used a very particular system of planning that may not have been ideal. An economy where private businesses provide all the goods and services bu the government buys and distributes them is arguably a planned economy where planning occurs after the fact. The phrase "planned economy" is vague and implies a multitude of very different models, sort of like the word socialism actually.

Ceausescu was a socialist leader, though. The fact that he wanted to pay the country's debts unlike other countries doesn't discredit that, if anything it only enforced it further.

Bad planning is not evidence against planning. That would be like saying the Charge of the Light Brigade is evidence against military planning because they actually did have a plan, a stupid poorly communicated plan but a plan none the less.
The west was also dragging its feet in modernization. Take containerization in shipping where it goes all the way back to the first world war and starts becoming practical after WWII. It took all the way till the 1990's for the USA to fully adopt containers for shipping, sure the USSR wasn't any faster in its adaption but the fact remains that the means existed after WWII to use containerization to streamline shipping yet the free market couldn't see the benefit till half a century later.

Where in the world? Isn't money relations power relations as well?

The USSR's economic problems were derivative of its political problems having a planned economy which can't effectively be criticized or influenced by the people leads to bureaucratization and stagnation.

And what would be the alternative? The consciously arranged alternative? A dance of another nature. A dance to the music of use, where every step fulfilled some real need, did some tangible good, and no matter how fast the dancers spun, they moved easily, because they moved to a human measure, intelligible to all, chosen by all.

This is a pretty interesting discussion of the problems with the soviet economy. Written by a liberal but one who tries to be even handed.

slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/24/book-review-red-plenty/

This. People forget that the USSR stripped Germany naked, plundering money, natural resources, commodities, and even physically removing or destroying "fixed" industrial capital, all while piling millions of expelled "ethnic Germans" from Eastern Europe into the already starving Germany. It wasn't until clear into the mid-1950s that the USSR reversed course and started economically propping up the DDR.

This stemmed in large part from the similar Morgenthau Plan to permanently convert Germany into a "light industry and pastoral economy" by the western allies (which, if fully implemented, would've caused famine on an enormous scale, and crippled the entire European economy), but they were intelligent enough to kill it within a couple years, switching to the widely hailed Marshall Plan.

It was after world war 2

I was honestly expecting at least some more commie sympathizers in the comments, but i found only pacifists and too much math for my little brain. Shame