I'm really having a hard time debating when somebody brings up that the standard of life is better in a capitalist society than it is in a socialist society.
Should I point out the exploitation of 3rd world countries?
What can I read to get a better understanding of this and how would you argue here?
Also somebody brought up the miserable situation in Venezuela. I said it came about after Chavez' death, but I'm not sure about this. Did socialism fail in Venezuela or what happened?
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Socialism never existed in Venezuela, they only want it. If you're going to judge socialism by Venezuela, you'll also have judge it by Bolivia (which has the fastest growing economy in Latin America.)
The fact of the matter is that the living standards in a country aren't entirely based on the economic system it has. Socialist countries tend to be poor because they were already poor under capitalism. And that entirely disregards the huge advancements of quality of life in previous socialist experiments.
Ecuador too. Hell, Correa flat out told Maduro the exchange system was retarded.
Then why did Germany do so much better than the Soviet Union after WW2?
A number of reasons, namely because West Germany had the resources of the entire imperialist system being poured into it after the war.
If we're talking standard of life, I'd say the state that had no unemployment or homelessness (DDR) would win. Obviously the West had a higher standard for the upper class, but that's a pretty cherrypicked example.
You probably shouldn't be debating if your understanding of socialism is that minimal. Socialism is for common ownership, not fixed prices and market regulations.
Why wouldn't it have? Western Germany wasn't excluded from the capitalist global economic order. The USSR's economy was generally doing fine nonetheless though until the mid-70's, by which time the centralized planning system had been eviscerated anyway.
Gee I wonder why…
But people in the DDR didn't get anything for the work they'd done. Most people didn't even have a car.
If standard of life was so good in the DDR why did people keep trying to flee from it?
How was the Western bloc imperialist while the Soviet bloc wasn't?
the general answer is that Imperialism has inherently economic goals but the truth is the USSR was also considerably Imperialist, although they generally exported Ideology rather than culture.
But isn't the point you're making, that a market is important for the well being of the population?
That would be very contrary to socialism.
I didn't mean to imply that the eastern bloc wasn't imperialist, it definitely was.
trade ≠ "a market"
Because resource exploitation wasn't the goal, at least not initially. By the 60's it was though and the USSR was already exploiting impoverished nations like Cuba as vassal-states.
No, I'm saying not being a completely isolated economy is important for the well-being of a population.
debates are pointless. concentrate on your understanding of socialism/communism.
what is the point of debating indoctrinated sheep, the only language the sheep understand is the language of dominance.
But the different socialist economies weren't isolated. The USSR wasn't isolated from Czechoslovakia, Poland, Cuba etc..
That sounds pretty hot. Are you trying to trigger me?
pls stop pretending to be aroused by everything (or just do it in private with me please)
But the USSR did not rely on Third World labor and resources. Take away the labor slaves of the West and you basically have the same shithole that the Warsaw Pact was.
I mean, it does not eradicate the argument about the living quality in the West, but it ruins it's moral groundwork.
The facts are recking your ass. You have to change the theory if all facts are against it.
Point out the success of Mondragon Cooperative and how their unemployment was like a fourth of the average unemployment in Spain during the height of the 2008 recession.
Unemployment of the Castille region, where Mondragon dominates.
In Venezuela, the means of production belong to the bourgeoisie, therefore, it isn't socialist. It baffles me how even some people here actually believe Venezuela is a socialist country, when it obviously isn't.
Polls tend to show that across Eastern Europe there is very little perceived difference between quality of life in the USSR, and after.
Clearly you have failed to concentrate on your own understanding of socialism and communism.
Point out the epidemic of chan posters.
There has never been a socialist society yet.
You mean communist. There have been socialist attempts, some which were even successful.
Norway, Sweden, Finland, etc. Get outta here with your No True Scotsman nonsense.
You forgot your shitposting flag.
Epic!!!
I didn't disagree with your post. That's a shitposting flag.
This forum has nonsense like "Gay Nazi" ":DDD" and "Bunkerism." And yet you call out a rational ideology like mine to be shitposting. Top Kek
Socialism IS communism. Lower-stage communism, to be precise.
There have been some attempts to get there (=revolutions) indeed, none of wich successful.
Revolutions are never successfull. We can only achieve socialism with a peaceful, political revolution. Step 1: Vote progressive officials into office.
The importance of the distinction is that communism is an ideal that has not been reached via socialism yet. Socialism has been implemented; communism has not.
Indeed, we still live under feudalism. Or is it antique slavery? Wait…
The distiction is INSIDE communism (which is in no way an "ideal" that can be "implemented"), between lower-stage (=socialism) and upper-stage.
And no, lower-stage communism has never been reached.
They will say that 3rd world countries don't have real capitalism.
I hope you don't like whatever little democracy you have.
But that's wrong.
I don't think you know why they closed off the border in the first place – it had nothing to do with keeping people in and everything to do with preventing people crossing the border while taking socialist-produced goods over to the West to sell for a profit. The people who attempted to escape thereafter had likely attracted the ire of the Stasi for whatever reason; most DDR citizens weren't troubled by them beyond surveillance.
What part?
Socialism is not an overarching term used to describe "low level communism". That's stupid.
And yet it is. It has been the classical marxist definition of socialism for over a century now.
Anyway, what is your definition of socialism then?
If you can cite that in any meaningful way, I'll eat my words.
it had nothing to do with keeping people in and everything to do with preventing people crossing the border while taking socialist-produced goods over to the West to sell for a profit
Citation needed. I'm open to this idea but what do you base this denial on? I can't find reliable sources stating this
Germany received tons of money from the USA, they got their debt canceled three times.
Plus, the "ussr" not doing good during the cold war is a propaganda lie. My parents lived in one of the SSR republic and they were both orphans from poor families. Yet they had great living standards and managed to study at uni, just like anybody else. Everyone had housing, a job, or at least money to live.
The only big difference between the west and USSR is that the production in the latter was not as massive and in the US, thus the "poor, not working" argument.
And also Cuba is a socialist country (even if to some it is debatable) and has the best doctors in the world. While americans shat their pants because of ebola, Cubans were helping Africans to fight the disease.
It was part of the official reason of the authorities of East Berlin, I read it in a journal paper years and years ago. The only other place I can remember it being repeated was Stasiland, pp.170-171:
gen.lib.rus.ec
Not exactly the most scholarly source. I can't be fugged trying to find a journal article atm, but if I can find one easily enough later I'll post it.
I don't care if you "eat your words"; what I'd like to know is your definition of socialism.
Anyway, if you insist:
>What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society
K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha programme
The communist society emerges from a capitalist one, not from a socialist one.
Lenin, The State and Revolution
No, please don't
Morales is a lot more moderate than his rhetoric lets on. He's honestly a bit of an idiot, they more or less elected a random particularly charismatic coca farmer because they were tired of being the CIA's bitch and having like 50% of their agriculture get constantly firebombed.
Fuck they only recently had the funds to rebuild possibly the deadliest and shittiest road on the planet, I'd say economic growth has more to do with how abysmally poor they were in the past
Crapitalism is much like religion: It is always bad, but it is less bad when kept in check by opposing forces (in this case socialism), and more bad when left free to express its malignancy.
Even leaving aside the fact that, between any two nations with similar GNI/capita (including Bolshevik dictatorships at the height of the Cold War versus similarly poor fascist nations), the more socialist one will almost always be more prosperous for its people; there's the other fact that the the overwhelming majority of 1st-world nations are more socialist than the US to begin with, the US being rather unique for ranking as high in GNI/capita as it does. These suggest rather strongly there's nothing inherently anti-economic about socialism.
stfu
the first socialist country on wikipedia's list is Cuba, at 40 you mong. on that list there are no socialist states higher than the US.
Many Soviet states actually experienced betters standards of living compared to their Western counterparts up until the 1980s, not just materially, but also in the realm of certain rights. East German women for example were emancipated much earlier their their West German counterparts and experienced economic and social liberties women in the West could only dream about.
please don't
Bolshevik dictatorships stack up very well against comparably poor countries, especially other totalitarian ones. Even in terms of pure wealth, they're only so poor because they're dictatorships, and the only dictatorships that rank high in GNI/capita are a handful of petrostates and tax havens.
This is your brain on reformism.
Get out of our intellectual discussion you swine
Nope. You can't debate that point because it is objectively true. "Capitalist countries" beat socialist countries everywhere. More money, more freedoms, lower working hours, better quality of goods/services, etc, everything. Unless you use the American definition of socialism which is "BUGMINT == GOMMIEZ :DDDD" that is.
You should honestly stop trying to drag all this ideological baggage around, since leftists will never ever live the 20th century down. Start by addressing the problems of the 21st century, then slap a label on it.
See and do some actual research first.
You should go first, since you are the one with the controversial position. As for me, see China.
rbth.com
america.aljazeera.com
gallup.com
There's so many more, literally just do some basic googling yourself.
Also the position that life in the USSR was significantly worse than life in capitalist Europe or the USA at the same historical time is only controversial in the USA.
Or do you really believe all that cold war propaganda the US government did?
Sorry, was not significantly worse
First , these polls do not in any way, shape or form demonstrate the superiority of Soviet socialism over capitalism, only that Soviet socialism is superior to the failed privatization attempts of the 1990s. Russia in the 1990's is obviously not indicative of capitalism as a whole.
Second, I did not restrict myself to Eastern Europe like you. Convenient, since China is a clear example of a capitalist country beating a socialist country out of the water 100%.
Third, GDP was a fraction of the United State's anyway, as evidenced by this graph. (source at
akarlin.com
Fourth, the Stasi/NKVD had no equal in the West. To say that this had no effect on the quality of life in the Soviet bloc is ridiculous.
lets face it, no one on the internet is going to listen to this simple logic when there are memes to be made.
socialism only distributes poverty,
a true capitalistic society distributes wealth,
what you have in the west today is not true capitalism but cronyism filled with regulations&taxes that are anti small/medium business
the current western governments bail out the wealthy,& keep monopolies in power while they ask for high taxes from the average citizen
a good capitalist government would create an environment for capitalism and is in itself not corrupt - the west 1900-1980,semi capitalist China 1990+
a good socialist/lefty government distributes poverty as fast as they can - just look at Venezuela or N.Korea
...
You understand that the areas without lights are small countryside villages and don't have anywhere near the population/building density to give off enough light to be seen from space, right?
...
Is this not the same as what we do with socialism?
These polls were recent.
Are you saying Russian capitalism doesn't count as capitalism in general, but Russian socialism does count as socialism in general? Pretty shitty reasoning.
Also, you keep banging on about China: firstly, Maoism is not socialism in general. Secondly, China today is not capitalism in general, nor even in ideal, as most of China's industry is state owned.
Now, where is your evidence? Show me that socialism in general is economically worse than capitalism in general.
Pretty related, this one is a gold mine 8ch.net
don't know where you got the anti corporation message in there, anti cronyism is the central point , there's nothing wrong with being incorporated
it's government subsidizing businesses that in a free market would either fail or not be able to stay a monopoly that is bad
trash opinion piece, a dumb guy that confuses corporatism with cronyism, just read the comments
it signifies that north korea cant afford to light up any city other than Pyongyang at night, a true socialist paradise
obviously North Korea should put all of their powers into putting lots of lights in pic related because of le space meme, instead of putting towards more important things
Look at the western side of the map. The United States of America cant afford to light up anything that's not a major city, a true free market paradise.
Alright, I gathered the fucks necessary to do a little research.
Basically, the GDR economy was fucked. It had been looted by the Soviets in the wake of WWII; it suffered shortages of everything it needed to rebuild in the aftermath of that; and this in turn led people to flee to the west: known to the party faithful as Republikflucht.
That's the short of it. By 1961 the economic cost of the migration alone was estimated at 120 billion marks, let alone all the other problems. Added to this was Kruschev's keen disinterest in funneling Soviet funds in to an economic black hole.
Yet, despite these factors, the GDR leadership was trying to catch up to the FRG economically, and over-take it. The FRG had the Marshall plan and hadn't been looted of its industrial base; by contrast, the GDR had nothing. It was utter stupidity.
economy, engineers and skilled workers were leaving in irreplaceable numbers.
So you can understand why, then, they needed to construct the wall. This is obviously glossing over the geopolitical aspects and whatnot, but fundamentally the crisis was an economic one.
Source: gen.lib.rus.ec
the best way to compare it though is to look at the sizes of towns and population density,
The population density of western USA is lower than N.Korea ,and even then the western USA has far more regions lit up and you can see the many towns that are there
in addition, the picture taken of N.Korea isn't as high up as the one taken of the USA, as the USA is far larger in comparison to N.Korea
more pictures of a failed state,impressive user
Epic
i'd say that the state there is pretty strong
Interesting, thanks for posting!
oil prices fell ie. the market worked in america (once we got the retarded lefties off our backs)
