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Americans on Capitalism vs Communism (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (2 children)

"Under comunism every one is equal" No. It follows the "from each according to their capabilities, to each according to their needs" idea
The "phenomenon" you describe is not the cause nor related to the causes of famines within the Soviet Union or China.
Compare "production output" from pre-soviet to Soviet Russia. It was one of the most rapid and dramatic increase in productive output in known history. The first 5 year plan saw gross industrial output increase by 118%.
"It also creates parallel economies of bribes and favours because well connected and productive people still want to be above every one else, this gives unfair advantage mafias and criminals." That very accurately describes the post soviet kleptocracy and modern Russian capitalist state.
"In my opinion, no pure system is good if it's comunusim or capitalism. You have to have a bit of everything" then it stops being communist or capitalist at that point but something else entirely like socialist, syndicalist, communalist, etc. putting every possible form of socioeconomic organization on a capitalist-communist spectrum is extremely reductionist.

Overall wildly inaccurate, uninformed and heavily biased take. Second paragraph shows you have good opinions and solid instincts, you should work on making them a bit more informed.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

Excellent comment.

[+] [email protected] -10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

First of all, thanks for a constructive comment. Rare find when discussed politics online.

In theory, yes, but in practice, it was not like that. A director of a company would earn max 30% more than the low level employees. If you would perform exceptionally, no one would care. And then you would stand in line for 7h to buy a banana because everyone had almost equal amount of money. Don't get me started. How many years would you have to wait to get a car.
On second thought, I agree with you on this one. It's more a central control and inability for private people to own business and means of production that caused famines.
5 year plan is a horrible example. As it caused a famine that killed 5.7 to 8.7 million people. It's huge sacrifice for a 118% production growth. Take a look at this article on wikipedia It's like Russian land conquests through history, yeah great you now have lots of land but at what costs. Blood and bones of your brothers and sisters and all your neighbors.
Absolutely, this was happening under Soviet rule. There was a massive trade of favors and bribes. It was not monetary, however. Perhaps someone got some nice cheese from france, so now you can skip line at a hospital. Or perhaps you know a guy in crimea that could host your friend in a beachhouse, and your friend happens to be in charge of allocating appartments so you get one a bit nicer than the other people. Source: geneactions of stories of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and great grandparents. I'm from a country that was a former Soviet state.
Fair point.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

Get started. Don't waste both our time with numbers pulled out of your ass and wild speculation. So long as the Soviet Union is our example, how many hours of work did it take to purchase a vehicle? How many hours would you actually need to stand in the "banana line"? Was that even a thing?
5 year plan was a perfect example because it highlights that maybe "productive output" isn't the best/only metric to judge by ;)
Sure, I'd argue that's a bit different but fair enough. However, you should look into if it was better or worse under communism and whether that was a causative effect or correlative with other events going on at the same time?