Romanians say communism was better than capitalism

[Black_Rose]

(Wrong forum, I meant to put this in politics. )

Nani?!! (Anyone who watched any anime should know what this interrobang means!)

I would never regard Romania as the epitome of a socialist country, especially under the rule of Nicolae Ceauşescu, who built the opulent People's Palace in the midst of austerity by exporting the country's production to remunerate the holders of foreign loans to Western banks, causing a substantial drop in living standards. It seems that many of the economic blunders of Ceauşescu Romania are the consequence of policy blunders, such as borrowing money from Western financial institutions and deciding to pay it off at the expense of the people's welfare, not overt bellicose Western imperialism.


Conducted in August and September this year by the Romanian polling organisation CSOP, the survey (http://www.actmedia.eu/top+story/opinion+poll%3A+61%25+of+romanians+consider+commun ism+a+good+idea/29726) found that over 49% of respondents agreed that life was better under the late Communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu, while only 23% think that life is better today. The remainder gave a neutral or 'don't know' answer.
The reasons given by the participants for their positive evaluation of the communist period were mainly economic, with the availability of jobs cited by 62% and decent living conditions by 26%; the provision of housing for all was referred to by 19%.

The survey was sponsored by the government-funded organisation IICMER (the Institute for Investigating the Crimes of Communism and the Memory of Romanian Exile), in order to help guide the institute in its work to 'educate' the population about the evils of communism. Among the most bitter disappointments for that organisation were the answers given to a question which asked whether the participants or their families had suffered under the communist system.

A mere 7% of respondents said they had suffered under communism, with a further 6% asserting that although they personally had not suffered, a family member had suffered. Again, the reasons given were mainly economic, with most of the small group who had direct or family experience of suffering under Communist Party rule citing the shortages which occurred in the 1980s when Romania implemented an austerity programme in order to repay the country's foreign debt. A small fraction of the minority who had suffered during the communist period said they had lost out by having their property nationalised, and a handful (6% of those who had experience of suffering under communism) recalled that they, or a family member, had been arrested at some time while the communists were in power.http://21stcenturysocialism.com/article/romanians_say_communism_was_better_than_capitalism _02030.html


I would imagine that many Romanian citizens would be sympathetic to capitalism, given what they dealt with during Ceauşescu regime.

I could postulate two contributing factors that explain the results of this poll.

1.) Capitalism is really bad, in so far, that it does not provide rudimentary economic security such as guaranteed employment, access to health care, housing, etc.

2.) A nostalgia bias where people discount the detrimental aspects of the past, and focus on the difficulties of the present and future. Note that the survey was done after the collapse of the world financial markets and the advent of the European sovereign debt crisis.

------
I am still incredulous. Are the Romanians really objectively comparing the capitalist and communist systems or this is an irrational bias that is influenced by a current crisis of capitalism?

[Kamos]

This is most likely an irrational bias seeing as Ceaucescu was the worst Eastern Bloc socialist leader ever (having fascist leanings himself - he was an admirer of Hitler and some of his ideas as far as I know). Basically, this is how the almost obligatory Eastern European fascism manifests in Romania.

[Искра]

All old people say that it was better before, so that's hardly an argument.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

All old people say that it was better before, so that's hardly an argument.

One of my problems with the Marxist-Leninists when they show pictures of older people holding signs that depict Stalin or blame youth in former socialist countries when they turn to fascism (what happened in the past,happened in the past; it is the present now and the rantings of youth's grandparents is hardly an incentive for young people to be communists; at least not when their are nationalist fuckers waving slick propaganda).

[TheRed]

All old people say that it was better before, so that's hardly an argument.

But who better to take an opinion on communism from than a person who has exspienced it first hand? Even if they lived in a backward oppressive society (ex. North Korea, china or USSR) they still should understand the dream of a perfect communist society and should educate the young to fight for the dream they couldent achieve.

[Ocean Seal]

All old people say that it was better before, so that's hardly an argument.
No, its actually a pretty reasonable argument. Romania wasn't socialist, it was state-capitalist, but its still a hell of a a lot better than neo-liberalism. It goes to show that the west didn't liberate any of these countries from their oppressors, or give them democracy. Its not an argument to bring back Romanian style socialism, but just to show that their both shit systems.

[A Marxist Historian]

(Wrong forum, I meant to put this in politics. )

Nani?!! (Anyone who watched any anime should know what this interrobang means!)

I would never regard Romania as the epitome of a socialist country, especially under the rule of Nicolae Ceauşescu, who built the opulent People's Palace in the midst of austerity by exporting the country's production to remunerate the holders of foreign loans to Western banks, causing a substantial drop in living standards. It seems that many of the economic blunders of Ceauşescu Romania are the consequence of policy blunders, such as borrowing money from Western financial institutions and deciding to pay it off at the expense of the people's welfare, not overt bellicose Western imperialism.

http://21stcenturysocialism.com/article/romanians_say_communism_was_better_than_capitalism _02030.html


I would imagine that many Romanian citizens would be sympathetic to capitalism, given what they dealt with during Ceauşescu regime.

I could postulate two contributing factors that explain the results of this poll.

1.) Capitalism is really bad, in so far, that it does not provide rudimentary economic security such as guaranteed employment, access to health care, housing, etc.

2.) A nostalgia bias where people discount the detrimental aspects of the past, and focus on the difficulties of the present and future. Note that the survey was done after the collapse of the world financial markets and the advent of the European sovereign debt crisis.

------
I am still incredulous. Are the Romanians really objectively comparing the capitalist and communist systems or this is an irrational bias that is influenced by a current crisis of capitalism?

This has been the result given in most attempts at polling in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe pretty consistently. Especially in Russia and Ukraine of course. If anything, this is weaker lately as memories start to dim. During the '90s, just about every country in Eastern Europe voted the former Communists back into office for a while, and then got disgusted with them because they didn't bring back "communism." (Stalinism would be more accurate, but that's how people think of it.)

Even in Poland, the country where the workers went out on mass general strikes to get rid of "communism" and bring in capitalism, the renamed former Communist Party was voted back into power for a decade, and Solidarity was voted out.

If anything, Rumania is a bit behind the curve here as Ceausescu was so disgusting.

-M.H.-

[Rafiq]

This only shows how terrible capitalism must be over there, for them to say the old times were better...

[A Marxist Historian]

This only shows how terrible capitalism must be over there, for them to say the old times were better...

Come to think of it, capitalism is a bad thing in general.;)

-M.H.-

[Yazman]

Do you want the thread moved to Politics?

[Black_Rose]

Do you want the thread moved to Politics?
That was my original intention, but I had two windows where "Reply to New Thread" opened, and I forgot where on the forum I opened them. I don't know. I doubt it would facilitate more discussion there.

[Yazman]

Alright, well if you want it kept here then it'll stay here.

If you change your mind at any point, then let me know ASAP (or you can post in here) and I'll move it for you.

This goes for anybody else by the way - if you need your thread moved, just let me know.

[NewSocialist]

All I can say is things must be *really* bad in Romania if a part of the population is missing the days of Ceausescu's National “Communist“ dictatorship. The man was practically a fascist, as can be seen by his cult of personality, promotion of nationalism, insane dictatorship, and so on and so forth. Pretty sad. But maybe the Romanian people are now ready to give actual communism (read *internationalism*) a chance now.

[Black_Rose]

cult of personality, promotion of nationalism, insane dictatorship

The same can be said about Stalin, but I would never say that he is a fascist.

I don't necessarily think a cult of personality or nationalism (in the context of national liberation and defending a country's sovereignty against imperialist threats) is bad.

[A Marxist Historian]

All I can say is things must be *really* bad in Romania if a part of the population is missing the days of Ceausescu's National “Communist“ dictatorship. The man was practically a fascist, as can be seen by his cult of personality, promotion of nationalism, insane dictatorship, and so on and so forth. Pretty sad. But maybe the Romanian people are now ready to give actual communism (read *internationalism*) a chance now.

Not according to what I've heard. Ceaucescu's crap has poisoned the water, and Romania is a country with an *extremely* bad history. Only place in Europe with a worse tradition of anti-Semitism than Ukraine. "Borat" wasn't shot in Kazakhstan for the "Kazakh" scenes but in Romania, and the Romanian villagers had a lot of fun joking with Western cameramen about "the running of the Jews."

The nostalgia is due to purely economic reasons, that workers were much better off in a noncapitalist state, despite the North Korean style bizarre cultism, nationalism and brutality of the Ceaucescu regime. Basic social welfare stuff, no unemployment, free health care and education etc. Internationalism in Romania died with Rakovsky.

-M.H.-

[Black_Rose]

The nostalgia is due to purely economic reasons, that workers were much better off in a noncapitalist state, despite the North Korean style bizarre cultism, nationalism and brutality of the Ceaucescu regime. Basic social welfare stuff, no unemployment, free health care and education etc. Internationalism in Romania died with Rakovsky.

-M.H.-

Of course, Romanian populace's perception of "communism" closely tracks the underlying economic conditions.




A September [2010] survey by the CSOP polling group showed about half of respondents - 49 percent in a poll with a 2.9 percent margin of error - said life under communism was better than it is now.
In contrast, a survey by the Romanian Institute for Marketing and Polling taken in 2005 amid optimism that EU membership was around the corner had 64 percent of participants believing the country was moving in the right direction under free-market democracy.



...


The economy continues to shrink after a 7.1 percent plunge in 2009 although at a slower pace. In a nation with an average monthly income of euro325, most here can only roll their eyes at the Prada outfits and Louis Vuitton bags on display on the upscale Calea Victorie.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/jan/18/in-romania-turmoil-fuels-nostalgia-for-communism/?page=1#article

These comments are interesting yet bewildering as they suggest that they are influenced by bourgeois propaganda.


"This isn't capitalism, in capitalist countries you have a middle class," complains convenience store manager Maricela Popa. Society here, she says, is divided into a tiny minority of rich people and a vast impoverished underclass.



Popa, like others, remembers the days when most enjoyed a steady job, state housing, and government-subsidized holidays on the Black Sea coast.


"I regret the demise of communism - not for me but when I see how much my children and grandchildren struggle," says 68-year-old retired mechanic Simion Berar. "We had safe jobs and decent salaries under communism. We had enough to eat and we had yearly vacations with our children."
No, you are wrong, credulous, and naive! That is exactly capitalism! I am reminded of this from Henry CK Liu:


Capitalistic democracy would base its mandate on the individual's acceptance of responsibility for his own welfare through the exercise of private property rights. Since it would promise only equal opportunity to a good life rather than a good life itself, its ideology would require neither authoritarian moralization nor totalitarian control, because individual failures would not imply dysfunction of the system. Rather, such failures would be deemed necessary in the selection process to keep the system healthy, the concept of the survival of the fittest being the foundation of capitalistic social Darwinism. Social welfare safety nets would be tolerated in capitalistic democracies merely as humanitarian compromises, a decadent liberal concession from the theoretical sanctity of market efficiency. For the true believer of capitalism, economic efficiency should ideally be maintained with social euthanasia of the economically unfit.

Charity is bad economics, except when charity contributes in the short term to reducing other high costs of preserving law and order, of preventing crimes of the poor (not on the poor), social unrest or revolution. The most efficient method of eliminating poverty is to let the poor die with natural obsolescence. It is the fear of poverty that provide the psychological fuel for economic initiative. Making poverty sufferable through social welfare programs would erode the vitality of the economic system, so market capitalists argue.

The power of the state in a modern capitalistic democracy would be restricted to that of maintaining national security, preserving basic human rights as defined in the liberal tradition of the Enlightenment, which would not include the right of individual economic security (except the value of money; thus when wages increase, its called inflation, but when share value rises, its called growth), of protecting the sacredness of private property rights in order to insure the efficient functioning of the market mechanism and upholding the principle of return on capital as the driving force in human society. Within the rules of market economy, the individual in a capitalist democracy would enjoy broad freedom as long as the exercise of which is consistent with the security interest of the state, compatible with the preservation of capitalism and compliant with the traditional moral standards of its local community. The trouble is that truly free markets, like absolute equality, is a myth. Markets in a complex global economy in modern time would in reality be shaped by factors external to national borders and functional industry boundaries. The so-called unseen hand of the market would constantly require national governmental policies and regulations to prevent it from sub-optimization and to protect it from manipulation by powerful special interests domestically, by policies of other national governments and by business strategies of transnational, multinational and international enterprises. Capitalistic democracy would appear to be materialistically efficient due largely to its shedding of the costly burden of social responsibilities. It would operate with clear purpose, because material gains are stimulated by material incentives, relatively unencumbered by metaphysical morals.

Capitalism is paradoxically tied to the perpetuation of poverty, because it needs the fear of poverty as an negative incentive for the individual to work.http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/1999m06.b/msg00122.html

Emphasis mine

In other words, capitalism requires the perpetuation of poverty as a negative economic incentive for productivity (even in the midst of global industrial overcapacity where there is individual scarcity despite industrial plenitude (http://henryckliu.com/page8.html)); the essence of capitalism regards mercy for the poor as a sign of weakness, incompatible with its Darwinian tendencies to cruelly dispose of the economically unfit.

Socialism at its essence represents mercy for the working classes.

[Cheung Mo]

Things must be really bad then. Romanians are nostalgic for a fascist megalomaniac who:

-favoured an extremely racialist ideology.
-opposed a woman's right to choose and supported a policy of radical natalism on par with Hitler's.
-sided against the USSR on every geopolitical conflict.
-Offered diplomatic recognition to Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile.
-Allied with Apartheid South Africa
-Sucked off Richard Nixon for money and starved his compatriots to death to pay off the debt to Uncle Sam, all while maintaining a ludicrously opulent lifestyle.

The people running that country now would have to try to be worse than Ceausescu, much like the Islamic Brotherhood has a tough slog if its aim is to bring more poverty, misery, and oppression to the average Egyptian than Mubarak's regime has wrought.

[A Marxist Historian]

Things must be really bad then. Romanians are nostalgic for a fascist megalomaniac who:

-favoured an extremely racialist ideology.
-opposed a woman's right to choose and supported a policy of radical natalism on par with Hitler's.
-sided against the USSR on every geopolitical conflict.
-Offered diplomatic recognition to Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile.
-Allied with Apartheid South Africa
-Sucked off Richard Nixon for money and starved his compatriots to death to pay off the debt to Uncle Sam, all while maintaining a ludicrously opulent lifestyle.

The people running that country now would have to try to be worse than Ceausescu, much like the Islamic Brotherhood has a tough slog if its aim is to bring more poverty, misery, and oppression to the average Egyptian than Mubarak's regime has wrought.

Be it noted that all the crimes of Ceaucescu listed, except for the austerity measures to pay off the debts, are political not economic, and from the standpoint of an apolitical white male Romanian-nationality worker, don't affect him directly.
The austerity measures under Ceaucescu, bad as they were, are probably much less bad than what is going on in Romania now, with the world crisis of capitalism. Certainly the workers just about everywhere else in Eastern Europe were better off under the old system than they are now. Look at "model, booming" Poland, with its 20% unemployment rate and a huge part of the working class desperately fleeing to Western Europe to get work, just like Mexicans fleeing NAFTA to America.

Probably the current Romanian regime is just as crooked as Ceaucescu was. And it is if anything more racist and anti-Semitic, what with Iron Guard revivalism going on. Nazi collaborators during WWII who enthusiastically participated in the Holocaust are now "national heroes" they're building statues to.

As I mentioned before, Romania is a country with a horrible history. I mean hey, Count Vlad Dracula the Impaler is the great historic national hero! What more can you say...

Again like I said before, and has been confirmed by others in this thread, under Ceaucescu you had no unemployment, free education and health care, etc. etc. etc. As awful as it was in so many ways, at least it wasn't a capitalist country. So working class nostalgia is quite understandable.

-M.H.-

[Die Neue Zeit]

I mean hey, Count Vlad Dracula the Impaler is the great historic national hero! What more can you say.

Correction: He was a hero of sorts to Romania's peasants, peasant culture, and radical peasant populism. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/march-rome-antecedent-t149756/index.html?p=2026747)

[A Marxist Historian]

Correction: He was a hero of sorts to Romania's peasants, peasant culture, and radical peasant populism. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/march-rome-antecedent-t149756/index.html?p=2026747)

Not just peasants! He was after all the feudal noble who first liberated the country from Turkish rule, more or less, in the process impaling thousands of people, far from all of them nobility.

Also the real basis of the Dracula myth, as that was actually his name.

The phenomenon of peasants admiring particularly vicious feudal nobles who murdered other nobles in particularly unpleasant ways, and were too busy with that to get around to killing very much of the general populace, is not confined to Romania.

Thus you had Ivan the Terrible, who set back the development of Russia by a century, burning to the ground Novgorod, the only real city Russia had, and exterminating Jews. The peasants liked him as he was too busy killing all non-peasants to get around to them very often.

Or Good King John in England, the only feudal English king the peasants really liked, Magna Carta or no Magna Carta. (The Robin Hood myth was fostered by the ruling class to dissipate that, as the nobility really hated "John Lackland" as they called him.)

-M.H.-

[Q]

I am still incredulous. Are the Romanians really objectively comparing the capitalist and communist systems or this is an irrational bias that is influenced by a current crisis of capitalism?

I think it is comparable to how Western Europeans view the seventies, when they still had a lot of securities in life via the welfare state. "Sure, it was far from perfect, but it is better than what we have now". In the Netherlands, the SP dwells on this nostalgia and is often called "conservative" for it (which is kinda true really).

Likewise, I expect many people in Eastern Europe (who can remember it, so basically anyone older than 30) long back to the time when they still had the security of a job, cheap food, good education, cheap living space, etc, etc. Sure, you weren't free to say what you think, but that freedom is often only partially today (if you criticize the government too much, expect thugs at your door "explaining" why you are wrong) and came at the price of secure bread on your plate.

Also, any researcher calling Romania "communist" clearly shouldn't be taken too seriously.

[A Marxist Historian]

I think it is comparable to how Western Europeans view the seventies, when they still had a lot of securities in life via the welfare state. "Sure, it was far from perfect, but it is better than what we have now". In the Netherlands, the SP dwells on this nostalgia and is often called "conservative" for it (which is kinda true really).

Likewise, I expect many people in Eastern Europe (who can remember it, so basically anyone older than 30) long back to the time when they still had the security of a job, cheap food, good education, cheap living space, etc, etc. Sure, you weren't free to say what you think, but that freedom is often only partially today (if you criticize the government too much, expect thugs at your door "explaining" why you are wrong) and came at the price of secure bread on your plate.

Also, any researcher calling Romania "communist" clearly shouldn't be taken too seriously.

Sure, things were better in the '70s in West Europe than now, but you certainly didn't have free education, no unemployment (in fact unemployment was often pretty damn high back then), cheap or nonexistent rent, free government-paid vacations, etc. etc.

And a two tier system of native workers with social benefits and good pay and cruelly exploited immigrants with hardly any benefits.

And a situation in which factory workers were better paid than doctors, lawyers and other petty bourgeois, something Czech petty bourgeois in particular complained about incessantly.

In West Europe, reforms to a considerable degree motivated by the example of East Europe and the USSR got abolished after the Wall went down and the USSR collapsed. In East Europe, including in Romania, you had a fundamental transformation of the whole social system, on the backs of the working class, and one of the most drastic declines in working class living standards in East European history.

Apples and oranges.

And since Romania was governed by the Romanian Communist Party, formally the description is valid albeit highly unscientific. Can't really fault the researcher on that basis.

-M.H.-

[Q]

Apples and oranges.

Sure there were huge differences. But the main point I was driving home was that people who lived in that period longed back to the past because they had a more secure life, despite all its problems. Also, there is a rather common human tendency to paint the past more rosy than it actually was, so they forget about the unfreedom, the secret police, etc.

In fact, the reason there was a welfare state in the west had a lot to do with the fact that there was a "really existing socialist" society behind the Iron Curtain, but that's a side point.

So, when a "Marxist-Leninist" says that "socialist" Romania was better than current day Romania because people say the 'good old days' were so much better (a rather common argument here on Revleft), I do take issue.

[A Marxist Historian]

Sure there were huge differences. But the main point I was driving home was that people who lived in that period longed back to the past because they had a more secure life, despite all its problems. Also, there is a rather common human tendency to paint the past more rosy than it actually was, so they forget about the unfreedom, the secret police, etc.

In fact, the reason there was a welfare state in the west had a lot to do with the fact that there was a "really existing socialist" society behind the Iron Curtain, but that's a side point.

So, when a "Marxist-Leninist" says that "socialist" Romania was better than current day Romania because people say the 'good old days' were so much better (a rather common argument here on Revleft), I do take issue.

Unfreedom, secret police and all that are political issues not social, and, unfortunately, not usually at the top of the mind of your average unpolitical person.

Romania was not a "socialist society," as some of our so-called "M-L's" like to claim. (The idea that either Marx or Lenin would be anything but nauseated by Ceaucescu is absurd).

But neither was it capitalist. You had a corrupt and brutal bureaucracy pushing people around, with all sorts of extra nasty features in the case of the Big Bad C, but the fundamental economic structure of the society did not rest on the extraction of surplus value from the working class to power the capitalist profit engine.

In America, the problem isn't so much that the rulers are evil (and Ceaucescu was definitely an evil son of a *****) but that the workings of the capitalist system *guarantee* that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, no matter who is running the place. Not true in the old Romania!

So objectively, in Marxist terms and from the standpoint of the working class, Ceaucescu's Romania was qualitativle superior to the current state of affairs. That workers in Romania recognize this shows that they are not stupid. Actually, they'd be pretty dumb not to, if you're broke, unemployed and homeless just about anything is better.

-M.H.-