Why are "Socialistic" Countries Poor?

[Meditation]

I know that real socialism was never tested,but in countries that claim that they are "socialistic" why are they so poor,why is there even an bigger corruption than in capitalistic states.

[GPDP]

I know that real socialism was never tested,but in countries that claim that they are "socialistic" why are they so poor,why is there even an bigger corruption than in capitalistic states.

Define corruption. How are "socialistic" states more corrupt than capitalist ones?

Not defending so-called socialist states, btw. I'm just curious as to why you would claim they were more corrupt.

[Nox]

I know that real socialism was never tested,but in countries that claim that they are "socialistic" why are they so poor,why is there even an bigger corruption than in capitalistic states.

Umm... No, you're totally wrong.

Western Europe is socialistic, and even though we're about to go down the shitter, we're still much better off than the USA or other non-socialistic countries in terms of quality of life etc

Even Cuba manages to have a better life expectancy, literacy rate, healthcare, and quality of life than the USA all while being blockaded by the world's largest trading partner.

And to answer your part about corruption, the USA is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, you can literally buy presidency and the corporations have puppets in congress.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Umm... No, you're totally wrong.

Western Europe is socialistic, and even though we're about to go down the shitter, we're still much better off than the USA or other non-socialistic countries in terms of quality of life etc

Even Cuba manages to have a better life expectancy, literacy rate, healthcare, and quality of life than the USA all while being blockaded by the world's largest trading partner.

Well, I don't think you'll find many people who will agree with you that Europe is "socialistic".

Also, saying that Cuba is being blockaded is stretching it a bit. Cuba is subject to a trade embargo by the USA, the USA does not have a fleet of gunships circling Havana.

[danyboy27]

I know that real socialism was never tested,but in countries that claim that they are "socialistic" why are they so poor,why is there even an bigger corruption than in capitalistic states.

Beccause socialism or communism require industrialisation and ressources, and verry fews places in the world have both, that why communism need to be somewhat global, beccause without a minimum of international involvement, socialist countries will become isolated and governement will resort to extreme to keep the whole thing working.

Most socialistic governements that emerged since the last century lacked natural ressources or the industrial capacity, so its not so surprising that those experiments gone terribly wrong at the end.

I am not an utopist, its impossible or verry hard to get to a point where everything is perfect, but the circumstances where modern socialist emerged couldnt have been worst.

It was basically like trying to teach to a secluded tribe economics, Marketing and expecting those folks to behave like modern capitalists in a blink of an eye, it couldnt be done without a great deal of damage resulting of a neverending chain of trial and error.

[Tim Finnegan]

Loren Goldner discusses Bordiga's analysis of "socialism" in the peripheral nations (http://libcom.org/library/communism-is-the-material-human-community-amadeo-bordiga-today)

S'good stuff.

[Renegade Saint]

Because the countries that describe themselves as "socialistic" were usually ever poorer before they became 'socialistic' (is that even a word?). But they're often better off than comparable more explicitly capitalist countries. For instance, Cuba has the highest HDI in the Caribbean region after Barbados (which is just a tiny tourist trap)-and that includes continental Latin American countries that border the Caribbean-pretty damn impressive when you're embargoed by the largest economy in the world that happens to be 90 miles away.

Also, they may be "socialistic"(whatever that means, exactly), but they're not socialist.

[RadioRaheem84]

Most of the WHO reports I've read about the Eastern bloc put the Bloc nations at an even or just a bit lower living standards than their western counterparts. They outranked the poorer nations in Europea like Portugal and Greece.

People are forgetting that most of these nations were backwards, feudal, fascist or right wing dictatorships before the communists came.

What was so poor about Albania in comparison to how it is now or to other capitalist nations in the periphery of global capitalism?

[m1omfg]

Radio Raheem, you're right, through I'll tell more facts.

In 1988, 54 percent of East German households had a car, and the consumption of meat per capita was higher than in West Germany (95 kg vs. 76 kg per capita). Looking up the 1990 UN Human Development Index report and you see that, Japan being on the best, 130th place (the index wasn't first place = best back then, it had the worst countries at the top and the best on the bottom) with a HDI of 0.996 - The GDR is 110th with 0.953, Czechoslovakia 106th with 0.931, USSR 105th with 0.920, Bulgaria 104th with 0.918, Hungary 101st with 0.915, Yugoslavia 100th with 0.913, Poland 98th with 0.910, Romania 90th with 0.863.

So much for socialist countries being "poor", I personally know people from USSR, Czechoslovakia and Hungary who told me that they had a good life under communism (and there wasn't really much lines until the 1980s, only for some kinds of meat and tropical fruit like bananas) and one of them is a capitalist today, so it is not just "well, I'm so poor now so I'm nostalgic even for those goddamned commies".

Socialist "poverty" meant not having a color TV (just black and white), and not having bananas and oranges, instead apples, pears, plums... (all products that were produced domestically were available always, the severe shortage of anything imported were caused by chronic hard currency shortage). Food and other normal needs were perfectly satisfied (with the exceptions of Poland, Romania and the immediate postwar years).

Capitalist poverty means that at least 25000 people starve to death everyday. And don't respond with writing about North Korea, the reason why DPRK starves is the fact that the USSR no longer sells oil at 1/10 the normal price to them, meaning tractors rust and everything stopped functioning. DPRK does not prove "socialism blows", it just shows what would happen if the world suddenly run out of oil. DPRK is no more a typical socialist country than Somalia, where the situation is much worse, is a typical capitalist country.

[Jose Gracchus]

Because the Stalinist economy is a failed development model, and because nearly all Stalinisms formed in states that had been very impoverished, undeveloped, and unfavorably integrated into the world division of labor.

[Rocky Rococo]

it goes back to Lenin standing Marxism on its head. Marx's historical materialism dictated that the sole factors that make socialism possible are advanced massive technical means of production, and a highly developed, socially self-aware working class. Lenin turned the revolutikonary praxis into one where a form of government was conceived, not out of those factors, but in order to create those characteristics out of the most backward, undeveloped semi-feudal societies. Since that time, Leninists in other, even more backward countries than Tsarist Russia have seized power from time to time. Thus nowhere that has been proclaimed a case of "actually existing socialism" been created on the advanced economic foundation marx considered a prerequisite. The result is that "socialism" in power has been not a movement for the liberation of labor, but rather a system for forced labor conscription in usually hideously underfinanced crash programs of industrialization in the world's most backwards nations and regions. Not a recipe for creating social wealth.

[Искра]

Firstly, to people like Nox - Keynes was not socialist.

Secondly, Eastern europe is poor because of transition from state capitalism to market capitalism. Trought process of privatisation minorty took over the means of production and since neoliberal doctrine was main ideological force run by state and capital elites workers rights were reduced. Also Stalinists/Titoists.... suppresed workers movement and developed wokrers who obey instead of workers as revolutionary force, so when state and capital make anti-workers reforms workers sit at home and obey.

[m1omfg]

*Sigh ... even when a person writes something to disprove preconcieved notions, people still have them. Most socialist countries were far from poor. Of course westerners who are taught from birth how they are privileged and special wouldn't know. Because all that exists in the world are happy priviledged westerners and poor third world kids with bloated bellies right? Then why did almost all of the socialist countries occupy the first 40th places in the human development index. And much of Eastern and Central Europe is not really "poor" either. India, a country that is pimped in the media as a "booming economy" has a child malnutrition rate of 50 percent. Look at the data and talk to people who actually lived there (not anticommunist "emigres" in your country) instead of falling for the old Nazi/Western stereotype of backward subhuman Slavs who can't rule their own countries.

Also the West had many pockets of actual, grinding poverty during Cold War. Portugal had a literacy rate of just 70 percent in the end of 1970s and a near third world health status, same through less severe with Greece and Spain. The West wasn't and isn't a paradise full of shiny happy people and the communist world wasn't a caricature consisting of Gulags, tank parades and bread lines.

To put it another way, the Eastern Bloc was "poor" compared to the richer parts of the West, but rich compared to everything else. People in India and the developed world looked up to the USSR and the Eastern Bloc because they weren't like "ew these poor commie ppls they don't have 3 cars per family" but "WOW, this is so much better than the starving hole I have to live in".

What tells a lot about the average West's conception of the communist world is the fact that even most people here think that the Eastern Bloc was a part of the USSR. It wasn't. The quality of life was actually higher than the USSR in a lot of satellites (but much lower in Poland and Romania). So, if people call EB countries "Soviet" then I can call NATO countries "American". Turkey? American! France? American!

The true reason for "everything outside the West is misery" propaganda is to provide a pretext for "spreading democracy" type imperialism.

And everybody who says "well, but the buildings were gray!" (the last resort of Western "antistalinism") after this deserve to be hauled off to a "colorful" West African slum.

[Ocean Seal]

Umm... No, you're totally wrong.

Western Europe is socialistic, and even though we're about to go down the shitter, we're still much better off than the USA or other non-socialistic countries in terms of quality of life etc

Even Cuba manages to have a better life expectancy, literacy rate, healthcare, and quality of life than the USA all while being blockaded by the world's largest trading partner.

And to answer your part about corruption, the USA is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, you can literally buy presidency and the corporations have puppets in congress.

I'm going to have to disagree here.

The United States is not corrupt. Corruption like you stated would imply that there is a loss of integrity which implies that they would abuse their power to do something illegal. This is in fact not true. In the United States it is perfectly legal for the rich, through various methods to donate millions to political parties which they think will benefit them. It is perfectly legal and open to the people that corporations are buying off the Presidency. It is not legal by some perversion of the law, but it is the Constitutionally given right to the ruling class to buy off politicians. Ask any lolbertarian and they'll tell you that the founding fathers had this in mind. To not defend the right of corporations to have complete control over who we elect would be to defile the Constitution: and that's bad.

[RadioRaheem84]

*Sigh ... even when a person writes something to disprove preconcieved notions, people still have them. Most socialist countries were far from poor. Of course westerners who are taught from birth how they are privileged and special wouldn't know. Because all that exists in the world are happy priviledged westerners and poor third world kids with bloated bellies right? Then why did almost all of the socialist countries occupy the first 40th places in the human development index. And much of Eastern and Central Europe is not really "poor" either. India, a country that is pimped in the media as a "booming economy" has a child malnutrition rate of 50 percent. Look at the data and talk to people who actually lived there (not anticommunist "emigres" in your country) instead of falling for the old Nazi/Western stereotype of backward subhuman Slavs who can't rule their own countries.

Also the West had many pockets of actual, grinding poverty during Cold War. Portugal had a literacy rate of just 70 percent in the end of 1970s and a near third world health status, same through less severe with Greece and Spain. The West wasn't and isn't a paradise full of shiny happy people and the communist world wasn't a caricature consisting of Gulags, tank parades and bread lines.

To put it another way, the Eastern Bloc was "poor" compared to the richer parts of the West, but rich compared to everything else. People in India and the developed world looked up to the USSR and the Eastern Bloc because they weren't like "ew these poor commie ppls they don't have 3 cars per family" but "WOW, this is so much better than the starving hole I have to live in".

What tells a lot about the average West's conception of the communist world is the fact that even most people here think that the Eastern Bloc was a part of the USSR. It wasn't. The quality of life was actually higher than the USSR in a lot of satellites (but much lower in Poland and Romania). So, if people call EB countries "Soviet" then I can call NATO countries "American". Turkey? American! France? American!

The true reason for "everything outside the West is misery" propaganda is to provide a pretext for "spreading democracy" type imperialism.

And everybody who says "well, but the buildings were gray!" (the last resort of Western "antistalinism") after this deserve to be hauled off to a "colorful" West African slum.

'Nuff said. :thumbup1:

The propaganda that these nations were "poor" especially in relation to mind numbingly poor nations around the world is ridiculous. Yugoslavia and Albania alone made capitalism look like an ancient system.

We just tend to knee jerkingly follow the propaganda about these counties because we're afraid of defending "stalinism".

[Jose Gracchus]

God, this knee-jerk Brezhnevite apologia is idiotic. The economies of these states were failing and "hold on to 'ur butts" and full-steam ahead was not an option. Yes, in many cases the Soviet sphere guaranteed a higher material standard of subsistence than the lesser domains of the West. But a moral appeal to welfare does not change the fact that the Stalinist states were not socialist, were not in transition to socialism, and were internally and materially decrepit in a way the Western states were not. If you read Marx and Engels, I see no suggestion that history's judgment need make us feel good or need not result in deaths. The fact is that the material content of the Stalinist regimes was not as robust and dynamic as Western capitalism, and it was the very personnel who manned these systems who elected to pursue no other course than to impose Western market models from above. The working-class was absent. There was simply no way the "central planning" system could maintain itself in the face of the '80's and '90's economic development. The Eastern European satellite states were utterly dependent on Soviet military, economic, and political support. As the original Stalinist system in the USSR foundered, its entire apparatus and ruling class lost political support for the unreformable system, shut down the subsidies to the USSR's buffer zones and Third World strategic allies, and opted for selling-out over a political-strategic struggle which they had been losing for decades, and stood to continue losing, only worse.

Brezhnevites remind me of the "feudal socialists" Marx talks about in the Manifesto, who, not content with the judgement history has pronounced on extinct social forms, contrive to bring back some lost utopia, that was really reactionary and contrary to the development of productive forces and the concentration of the factors of production. The same goes for the Stalinist fossils, the cooperative movement, and peasant land reforms.

I would love to see a shred of evidence that the Soviet Bloc was not economically and socially ailing, and seemingly incapable of pursuing reforms that could sustain it. There was no historical plausibility for the "stick with Brezhnev" option which implicitly is poised by these panegyrics for the dead Stalinisms.

The Left needs to get over the Soviet model and subsidized bread and jobs--20th c. specters, not the abolition of classes--and come up with a program for revolutionary transition that is not based on an improvisation accreted from everything from the Bolsheviks reactive response to the outbreak of civil war and socioeconomic collapse*, to Stalin and his strata using the state to win political struggles, and fashion a military-command center for a forced-draft industrialization and collectivization. Interestingly, if you read Nove and elsewhere it becomes clear that the later shape of the Soviet economy and thus Soviet model was contingent on all kinds of twists-and-turns of Stalinist politics. For instance the actual scientific economic planners, developing theories of planning in VSNKh, were pushed aside and purged in favor of political placemen in the previously less vigorous GOSPLAN, so the Stalinists could push the countryside until it screamed, and use the resulting reaction from the Bukharinists as a pretext to purge them and consolidate power. This isn't what the future looks like.

*(The Bolshevik leadership opposed workers' self-management and military nationalization and poised instead "workers' supervision" under which capitalist owners would remain for a considerable time to try and repair the economic collapse; it was only the civil war and terror which led inevitably to the concentration of all concerns in the state; a contingent, not an ideological, factor.)

[Tim Finnegan]

The Eastern European satellite states were utterly dependent on Soviet military, economic, and political support.
To be fair, the Poles had a pretty good sideline selling coal to the Brits during and after the miners' strike. Because, y'know, "constructing socialism" is all about siding with imperialist bourgeois powers to crush their own working class.

[m1omfg]

Comrade, nobody in this thread wants to bring Stalinism or Brezhnevism back. I agree that the economy of the Eastern Bloc was stagnating and slowly failing, so? The economies of the Western states are failing right now. You know, there's a saying "Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones".

There is the thing also that economic stagnation does not mean poverty. You can have a country with a 1 percent growth GDP rate that has a good standard of living and a country with a 15 percent growth rate that works its citizens to death. You do know that Pol Pot's Cambodia actually had a positive economic growth rate while torturing millions of their own people to death?

And there is also the little thing - if "Brezhnevist-Stalinism" was worse than capitalism, then why did the Eastern Bloc economies start to rapidly decline after the reintroduction of the "free market"? I agree that Brezhnevism is not really socialism as we want it, but I disagree that it is worse than capitalism.

Why are you comparing EB to the West anyways? The question was not "was EB poorer than the West" but "Why are socialistic countries so poor?". The answer is that the question does not make sense, considering that most socialist countries actually were not poor. Poor, as in actual poverty, not "everything less luxurious than US suburbs".

[Die Neue Zeit]

God, this knee-jerk Brezhnevite apologia is idiotic. The economies of these states were failing and "hold on to 'ur butts" and full-steam ahead was not an option. Yes, in many cases the Soviet sphere guaranteed a higher material standard of subsistence than the lesser domains of the West. But a moral appeal to welfare does not change the fact that the Stalinist states were not socialist, were not in transition to socialism, and were internally and materially decrepit in a way the Western states were not.

[...]

The Left needs to get over the Soviet model and subsidized bread and jobs--20th c. specters, not the abolition of classes--and come up with a program for revolutionary transition


Comrade, nobody in this thread wants to bring Stalinism or Brezhnevism back. I agree that the economy of the Eastern Bloc was stagnating and slowly failing, so? The economies of the Western states are failing right now. You know, there's a saying "Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones".

There is the thing also that economic stagnation does not mean poverty. You can have a country with a 1 percent growth GDP rate that has a good standard of living and a country with a 15 percent growth rate that works its citizens to death. You do know that Pol Pot's Cambodia actually had a positive economic growth rate while torturing millions of their own people to death?

And there is also the little thing - if "Brezhnevist-Stalinism" was worse than capitalism, then why did the Eastern Bloc economies start to rapidly decline after the reintroduction of the "free market"? I agree that Brezhnevism is not really socialism as we want it, but I disagree that it is worse than capitalism.

Folks, if enough non-worker environmentalists popularize the "zero growth economy" concept under bourgeois-capitalist relations, it would in fact make full-blown economic Brezhnevism, but with environmental and information-technology considerations, such an economic program for "revolutionary transition."

[Pretty Flaco]

To put it simply, because most "socialistic" countries were very poor before they came that way and because they lack adequate resources to industrialize and expand their infrastructure because typically they try to be very self sufficient and typically try to shy away from trade with the US or other larger modern states which have vast resources available.

EDIT: I"m referring to contemporary states, I have little knowledge over the USSR era states.

[ColonelCossack]

Umm... No, you're totally wrong.

Western Europe is socialistic, and even though we're about to go down the shitter, we're still much better off than the USA or other non-socialistic countries in terms of quality of life etc

Even Cuba manages to have a better life expectancy, literacy rate, healthcare, and quality of life than the USA all while being blockaded by the world's largest trading partner.

And to answer your part about corruption, the USA is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, you can literally buy presidency and the corporations have puppets in congress.

This, except I don't think Europe's "socialistic" in any shape or form.

I've heard, though, as you say, that the UK's welfare state is suffering its worst attacks since its creation.
Not creation as in creationism, obviously. Da fok? ok now I'm just fishing for reasons to say that because I'm pathetically reminiscent of Krusty the clown. Sorry, OK?

[RadioRaheem84]

es, in many cases the Soviet sphere guaranteed a higher material standard of subsistence than the lesser domains of the West. But a moral appeal to welfare does not change the fact that the Stalinist states were not socialist, were not in transition to socialism, and were internally and materially decrepit in a way the Western states were not.

I think you're missing the point. A lot of us in here were trying to dispel the argument that the block nations were poor or in any which way shape or form akin to third world capitalist countries. That is the mission of the propaganda system in the United States.

When most people think of socialist countries they think of poor capitalist countries and will literally argue with you til their blue in the face that those are not capitalist nations but socialist ones.

This is because the media tells them that socialist Bloc nations were extremely poor and authoritarian.

The point isn't to praise the Bloc nations as successes of socialism but just to clarify a historical error, massive one at that meant to derail any real moves toward socialism by the masses.

[NewLeft]

Well, when the IMF says austerity or die...

[RadioRaheem84]

Brezhnevites remind me of the "feudal socialists" Marx talks about in the Manifesto, who, not content with the judgement history has pronounced on extinct social forms, contrive to bring back some lost utopia, that was really reactionary and contrary to the development of productive forces and the concentration of the factors of production. The same goes for the Stalinist fossils, the cooperative movement, and peasant land reforms.

Wow, you read way too deep into some of the posts in here.

[Ism]

I think it is important to mention the effects of the Marshall Plan post-WW2. Unless I've misunderstood something, it was a key factor in regards to rebuilding the Western European economies. USSR suffered rather great losses in WW2, and some economic assistance could've been appropriate. However, they didn't receive any because USA issued the Marshall Aid, and I believe that is part of the reason for the setbacks of USSR compared to the Western world, even though those setbacks were relatively minor.

What I just said can be interpreted as Stalinist apologism, which it isn't. I just think it is important to mention that WW2 devastated Europe and, because of the Marshall Aid, Western Europe were almost immediately better off than USSR. I often wonder how the world would have looked like today if it weren't for the Marshall Plan.

Am I right, or is this irrelevant? I'm terribly exhausted, so I apologize if I might've written some garbage. :)

[Tovarisch]

Before you claim that socialist countries are poor, look at some of the capitalist countries

Somalia (Free market, especially if you are a pirate)
Hong Kong (Child labor, slums, ghettos)
Singapore (Barbaric punishments, high suicide rates)
India (Child labor, extensive slums)

And tons of under-developed African countries with supposedly "free" market economies

The worst socialism has to offer is North Korea, Greece, and Venezuela. Yet those countries have good education systems and people are not starving or dying of thirst

[RadioRaheem84]

Venezuela? Greece? :confused:

[Tovarisch]

Venezuela is doing ok economically, but they have one of the highest crime rates in the world due to a irresponsible justice system. Greece is on the other hand in a very bad economic crisis

[Tim Finnegan]

Venezuela is doing ok economically, but they have one of the highest crime rates in the world due to a irresponsible justice system. Greece is on the other hand in a very bad economic crisis
Neither of those are "socialist countries" under even the most desperately expansive definition.

[Lanky Wanker]

What better way to kill off socialism than by giving it a bad name? It's partly due to the fact that we often label poor countries as socialist, not necessarily the other way round. Cappies will always pick and choose the bits that suit their argument.

[Lanky Wanker]

Somalia (Free market, especially if you are a pirate)
Hong Kong (Child labor, slums, ghettos)
Singapore (Barbaric punishments, high suicide rates)
India (Child labor, extensive slums)


Pun intended? :cool:

[agnixie]

I think you're missing the point. A lot of us in here were trying to dispel the argument that the block nations were poor or in any which way shape or form akin to third world capitalist countries. That is the mission of the propaganda system in the United States.

When most people think of socialist countries they think of poor capitalist countries and will literally argue with you til their blue in the face that those are not capitalist nations but socialist ones.

This is because the media tells them that socialist Bloc nations were extremely poor and authoritarian.

The point isn't to praise the Bloc nations as successes of socialism but just to clarify a historical error, massive one at that meant to derail any real moves toward socialism by the masses.

Even by capitalist standards (world bank standards at least), most of the eastern Bloc falls in the same "middle range" wealth as the wealthier parts of latin america. For relatively similar reasons, too, most of these countries were ex-Russian or ex-Ottoman territories which abandoned feudalism much later than the rest of Europe (note that Turkey is in NATO for example). The central European post socialist states like the czech republic and croatia are actually in the High income category on world bank lists.

It doesn't particularly help that much of western GDP increases comes down to things like finance (finance and insurances account for almost 21% of the american GDP), additionally autarchy does limit what you can and cannot do, not everyone sits on top of coal or oil fields, not everyone has a highly educated population (high literacy in the wealthier european countries was reached much earlier than in eastern europe), and part of our industrial wealth comes down to things like planned obsolescence :p - Many of these countries had to overcome this, capitalist hostility AND economies geared towards mostly producing raw material either for foreign investors (as in the case of latin america, eastern europe and southern europe) or colonial metropoles (for countries like Vietnam);

[m1omfg]

What you seem to forget that Latin America has a gini index of 40-70 while Eastern and Central Europe under socialism had a gini index of 15-25, with the exception of the USSR which had around 35 due to undeveloped Central Asian parts. In short, income distribution in EB was extremely equal while income distribution in Latin America is extremely unequal. Latin America is not really GDP per capita poor, the income is just too skewed towards the rich. In the EB, the top managers earned 3-4x the income of a farm worker while in Brazil a doctor earned 150x as much as a janitor and the difference between the doctor and a rich man was even greater. You'd see many ordinary grey apartments and modest family houses in the EB, but no slums or golden mansions or gated communities.

[RadioRaheem84]

drab grey public housing did not equal extreme poverty.

[m1omfg]

drab grey public housing did not equal extreme poverty.

Comrade, you are right. But it did not equal any poverty at all. USA style suburbs are extremely wasteful and kitch anyways. I grew up in a EB panel flat so I know.

[Smyg]

Sweden has that too. :rolleyes: Such lovely miljonprogram.

[Apoi_Viitor]

One thing that needs to be looked at, is you have to put the countries in context. Saying that the average citizen in the USA is better off than the average citizen in the Soviet Union proves nothing. The fact that Western Democracies were better off than all of the previously existing socialist states has everything to do with the fact that they were exponentially richer then the countries the communists inherited.

However, when you compare similar (in terms of starting GDP) capitalist and "communist" countries, you find that almost universally the communist counterpart does better. For example:



In 1913, Mexico and the USSR had almost exactly the same income per capita --in 1990 dollars, the Soviet Union’s income was $1,488, compared to Mexico’s $1,467 (see Graph One –data here and throughout the paper is from Maddison 1995). Mexico would not be held up as the model of liberalism since then, but having said that, democracy, private property and the market played a far larger role there than in the USSR. Yet, in 1989, Soviet income per capita was 46 percent larger than Mexican income, compared to about 1 percent larger in 1913. Despite suffering through two incredibly damaging world wars, a civil war, the Stalin-induced famines that killed millions in the 1930s, his jail and gulag system that killed millions more, and a range of environmental disasters, the Soviet Union’s growth over the period of communism put Mexico’s to shame.


Better yet, here's a post that I often make in thread about the death toll during the great leap forward.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2293642&postcount=8

Anyways, this topic comes up all too often. And this thread has inspired me to go and write a book about this...

[Jose Gracchus]

What you seem to forget that Latin America has a gini index of 40-70 while Eastern and Central Europe under socialism had a gini index of 15-25, with the exception of the USSR which had around 35 due to undeveloped Central Asian parts. In short, income distribution in EB was extremely equal while income distribution in Latin America is extremely unequal. Latin America is not really GDP per capita poor, the income is just too skewed towards the rich. In the EB, the top managers earned 3-4x the income of a farm worker while in Brazil a doctor earned 150x as much as a janitor and the difference between the doctor and a rich man was even greater. You'd see many ordinary grey apartments and modest family houses in the EB, but no slums or golden mansions or gated communities.

Income measures are misleading. Firstly, there most definitely was economic incentives, inegalitarian wage distributions, and the like, even if it was much better than the West. Secondly, in the USSR and the EB more generally, wages were not the primary means of social and economic advancement and influence. Rather, access to difficult-to-acquire goods and services, via connections or outright through the black market (and by extension there, access to foreign hard currency) became the main means of determining one's social standing. The EB economies were consistently hit with the symptoms of suppressed inflation, in queues, forced savings, etc. Therefore the Gini index does not capture how inegalitarian, elitist, rank-conscious, and not economically just the EB is, especially considering the extent of an "insiders v. outsiders" dynamic (those who were politically reliably and absorbed into the apparat were able to benefit from more connections, more access to goods-and-services which were unlawful for the workers). Another problem late in the Brezhnev stagnation was the extent to which mental labors came to be considered a mark of social superiority over any manual labors, even skilled ones. An enormous number of people entered the ideological and social sciences, even though employment and pay was lower due to glut than say, oil workers. Yet no one wanted to be an oil-worker, because of the social framework.

Because the social system had become so cynical and corrupt, the best thing that could happen to you in "socialism" was you could call in a lot of favors, had a bunch of US dollars or Deutsche marks stuffed under the matress, and worked as a professor or bureaucrat rather than a lowly industrial worker, which was "beneath you".

[KR]

Because they arent socialist.

[阿部高和]

Define "Socialist country".

[m1omfg]

What do Westerners never understand that is that those "evil bloc housing" were a norm in EB states. They were not for marginalized ghetto groups, they were for ordinary people. 20 years after capitalism returned, most people still live in them, what do you think, that they were demolished? Actually, they are very comfortable inside.

[Jose Gracchus]

Define "Socialist country".

Contradiction in terms. "Countries" are not "socialist". Modern countries, as such, as actually a creation and prerequisite of capitalism.

[RadioRaheem84]

Because the social system had become so cynical and corrupt, the best thing that could happen to you in "socialism" was you could call in a lot of favors, had a bunch of US dollars or Deutsche marks stuffed under the matress, and worked as a professor or bureaucrat rather than a lowly industrial worker, which was "beneath you".

So the state capitalist economies brought whole new problems with it, this is understandable. These social problems still were remarkably contrasted with utter abject poverty in neighboring nations like India.

The problems in the USSR and the Bloc were unlike those in the third world or heck the first world for that matter. Their historical development brought autarky, corruption, massive beauracracy, constant state of war which created a devastating paranoia that was used to trample on citizens.

But these nations were able to create so much without resorting to massive imperial campaigns and impoverishment of distant lands and not to mention sections of their own nation.

There was a marked difference between these worlds; first, second and third. The first and the third are more inter-related and only influenced the second in lieu of strained relations, economic blockade, sabotage, etc.

I think what you're describing are the detailed problems associated with the EBs social historical development and the faults with state capitalist planning. But I think this total trashing of them is ahistorical and doesn't help to understand what we can learn from the former blocs.

[Black_Rose]

Another problem late in the Brezhnev stagnation was the extent to which mental labors came to be considered a mark of social superiority over any manual labors, even skilled ones. An enormous number of people entered the ideological and social sciences, even though employment and pay was lower due to glut than say, oil workers. Yet no one wanted to be an oil-worker, because of the social framework.






Ironically, Jose, you just presented an argument to the common capitalist retort about the incentive of becoming a doctor in a socialist society, which the capitalist (correctly) assumes fewer economic incentives to become a doctor in a socialist society. I always assumed that mental laborers would command significantly higher social status than manual laborers in any society, and it would not be a problem attracting the mentally talented to perform necessary social tasks.

I said this in an earlier thread:



Robear:After that example he asked me why an individual would go through 8+ years of schooling to be a doctor without receiving any sort of compensation.


BR: Even if doctor's salaries are merely 4.5 times of that of the lowest decile, I'm sure that many would still want to be doctors because they still earn the prestige of being a doctor (and presumably the state will finance their education, unlike in some Western countries). Also, people like [professional] athletes would still play if their the value of their contracts are cut in half (but I believe that most athletes "deserve" their salary within the context of the capitalist system, in the sense that the are producing value, and not the owners.)http://www.revleft.com/vb/self-interest-t164792/index.html

I don't consider that to be a problem uniquely immanent to the USSR and EB: most M-Ls do not even content that the USSR and EB were absolutely egalitarian, only that they less economically and socially stratified than comparable Western economies (and some EB countries provided better economic security than Western economies or at least made it a primary priority). It is obvious that the same system of social status was always evident in most Western, capitalist economies, and this tendency is further exacerbated in the epoch of neoliberal globalization where the relative value of knowledge labor to manual labor profoundly increased due to the increased mobility of capital.

Again, this is just another tu quoque retort that capitalist economists, but I am not arguing against a capitalist or reactionary here, so this response is not construed to assail the substance of your arguments. Of course, tu quoque means "you too" and you're not a capitalist/neoliberal. :)

Perhaps, we M-Ls have a Cold Warrior mentality, and we don't view the collapse of the EB and USSR as anything to celebrate, even though they restricted civil liberties or their collapse was economically inevitable. There is indeed a profound moral element to my revolutionary leftism, and although it is an anathema for me view the working class with contempt, I still harbor disdain towards the Western working class, even manual laborers, for collectively believing the Reagan foreign policy rhetoric that it was a geopolitical imperative to eradicate global "communism". By doing this, they were essentially supporting their economic dispossession.

[Jose Gracchus]

Uh, the USSR's development did not require conquest and impoverishment of lands within their own nation? Central Asia was more or less obliged to follow the urban regime in European Russia by military force in the Civil War. Stalin extract the industrial fabric of Manchuria, China, Korea, Eastern Europe and Germany, as well as countless war-slaves in order to aid accumulation. Whole swathes of Central Asia and elsewhere are dilapidated, despoiled, environmentally destroyed (the Aral Sea, anyone? the nuclear testing?).

I'm "trashing" them precisely because this model is not viable today as a way of forced-development the world market won't finance, socialism, whatever. Setting up a Stalinist system today would not work, and in fact would go very badly.

The historical emergence of Stalinism should itself be seen as a contingency of a perfect storm of material factors, where else but Russia would the formation have been plausibly consolidated. In what time other than the Great Depression and post-WW1. And all of the other Stalinisms which emerged were dependent on the original organism. "New Democracy" in Nepal has no USSR to lend it national security against the Western Bloc, and to sell it machinery, offer advisers, equipment, ad nauseum.

No isolated underdeveloped state today is going to be able to state-nationalize everything, and buy off special kit from mercenary US and UK businessmen and corporations, the industrial materiel necessary to implement the program. It is a dead relic of history. I think a lot of leftists here and otherwise are too fixated with a kind of moralistic or welfarist appeal to "do something--anything--for workers" or "anything is better than neoliberalism", which has led to a recuperation of all kinds of dead-end politics, like opportunistic support for reactionary national liberation, social democracy, or Stalinism. None of these are plausible ways forward for proletarians in these conditions. I feel it is very important to explain to people why we should not push "in the interim" fro a recuperation of Stalinistic or social democratic practice and reform and program, because none of these are plausible and in fact seek to reach back to an early stage in world development.

[red1936]

Which specific Socialist state are we talking about? What exactly do you define poor as?

The USSR 1918-1953 was not poor, it achieved the fastest industrializtion in history, without relying on colonies (like the European powers) or a permenant under class to provide cheap labor (United States), what is your definintion of poverty? compared to the conditions of the Russian empire the people of the United Soviet Socialist Republics were very well off. Do you mean compared to people in the United States who have neo-colonies to keep them abouve the world average in wealth.

Revisionist states like say... Cuba are not as poor as you would think in fact, In fact the UNICEF declared Cuba the only country in Latin America that does not suffer from Childhood malnutrition. Although Cuba spent most of its time as a Kruschevite colony that shared the same problems with development as the rest of Latin America, but instead of being dominated by American imperilaism were dominated by Soviet Social-imperialism. Cuba had one major crop (Sugarcane) that it sold to one market (Soviet Union) which the sale of the product was dependant upon the contions set by the power in question, in this case the Soviet UNion. However Cuba still maintains a UN applauded healthcare and education system for its people.

If you would like an in depth anyalisis of each individual Socialist nation or "SOcialist" Nation, PM me

[RadioRaheem84]

Jose, I was saying that there are aspects that can and should be taken into consideration. Things we can learn from,improve and branch upon. The blocs gave us a glimpse of what can be done. The point is that it defeats neo-imperial propaganda that everything in the former blocs were utterly ineffectual.

[Jose Gracchus]

I guess I don't choose to use this community to debate things we all agree upon, more or less. I think we should emphatically take this tack with any attempts at red-baiting and Cold War propaganda in interactions with those outside the communist community, but I guess I don't see so much of the practicality among us. We should be honest with ourselves about the past. I think sadly, there's very little they can teach us. More about what not to do, and how not to do things, then how to do them.

I mean what do you/would you take away for a modern revolutionary program?

[Tovarisch]

Define "Socialist country".
Technically it's a caste-less society, but since no country is even close to that description, many people lower the standard to "Socialist democracy" which is a capitalism-based market system with heavy social elements. Welfare state too. Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Nederland are sometimes referred to as Socialist democracies due to collective health care and a safety net for the underprivileged

[Black_Rose]

I doubt many M-Ls are interested in composing "panegyrics for the dead Stalinis[ts]". Instead, most of us are largely interested in salvaging the reputation of former socialist states

Jose, would you acknowledge that the EB and USSR have some redeeming aspects to it, especially when compared to contemporary capitalism? However, I will concede the nature of this question corroborates your general description of M-Ls as being predominantly engrossed in welfarism/moralism as their comparisons of EB states, USSR, Cuba, and occasionally DPRK aim to Western economies to establish the moral superiority of those states or to portray those states as the victims of minatory imperialism.

To use another baseball metaphor, by using the standard arguments of the M-L repertoire, I could not find the strike zone (as the M-L arguments are best used against those who claim capitalism/neoliberalism is morally superior or that the former socialist states were uniquely repressive. Again, the tu quoque argument only works if your opposition if your opponent is guilty of the same criticism that he/she indicts one, and even then, its primary function is not to negate/address the substance of their criticism, but to invalidate the person (or his/her philosophy or political affiliation) who levies such an accusation as virtuous or morally consistent.) Since the M-L arguments are not even germane to your points about the corruption and inefficiency of the USSR/EB, we're throwing balls and you're drawing base-on-balls.


Jose, I was saying that there are aspects that can and should be taken into consideration. Things we can learn from,improve and branch upon. The blocs gave us a glimpse of what can be done. The point is that it defeats neo-imperial propaganda that everything in the former blocs were utterly ineffectual.

Yes, I would certainly regard the DDR possessing modern medical and information technology as a morally superior state, even though its consumer goods would probably be inferior to western goods (and besides I am quite content without owning a "smart"phone). It is indeed a fantasy to imagine its existence in the early 21st Century, and I lament the fall of the DDR because of the potential I perceive from it if it just managed to persevere.

[RadioRaheem84]

I mean what do you/would you take away for a modern revolutionary program? What the USSR and the Blocs showed the world is that there was an alternative to the development of the capitalist model. Nations did not have to rely on the West for development or rely on their multinationals for investment.

The USSR shook the foundation for which the capitalists stood on.

We now know that we can make something better happen and that TINA is utter BS.

What the USSR and the Blocs showed us was what some post capitalist problems would look like in the same vein that capitalism in it's early stage retained elements of feudalism.

When I saw a documentary on Socialist Albania I was floored to know that a nation (as far remote as one debate it was from real socialism) could do something like what it achieved. Living under the ravages of capitalism, something like Albania seems so distant and impossible, and supposedly I live in the best country the world has to offer. This isn't to praise the former nation but that the concept of an economy built to meet people's needs is possible.

There is no excuse for the capitalists, their deck of cards has toppled. Their class is truly revealed as an empty shell to me because of the history I read about the Bloc nations.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Another problem late in the Brezhnev stagnation was the extent to which mental labors came to be considered a mark of social superiority over any manual labors, even skilled ones. An enormous number of people entered the ideological and social sciences, even though employment and pay was lower due to glut than say, oil workers. Yet no one wanted to be an oil-worker, because of the social framework.

Huh? :confused:

I'm under the impression that the exact opposite occurred. Typical teachers, accountants, grunt economists, and so on weren't as well-paid as factory workers or even farm workers. I'm also under the impression that this particular pay gap remained or even widened.


Ironically, Jose, you just presented an argument to the common capitalist retort about the incentive of becoming a doctor in a socialist society, which the capitalist (correctly) assumes fewer economic incentives to become a doctor in a socialist society. I always assumed that mental laborers would command significantly higher social status than manual laborers in any society, and it would not be a problem attracting the mentally talented to perform necessary social tasks.

I said this in an earlier thread:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/self-interest-t164792/index.html

Comrade Paul Cockshott made a similar argument about doctors. "Socialist" countries tended to have more supply of doctors than the supply-restricting US.

The Berlin Wall was built mainly to combat brain drain resulting from the greater supply of more mental work vs. the lesser demand for such.


No isolated underdeveloped state today is going to be able to state-nationalize everything [...] I feel it is very important to explain to people why we should not push "in the interim" for a recuperation of Stalinistic or social democratic practice and reform and program, because none of these are plausible and in fact seek to reach back to an early stage in world development.


I think sadly, there's very little they can teach us. More about what not to do, and how not to do things, then how to do them.

I mean what do you/would you take away for a modern revolutionary program?

If you don't have policy planks "in the interim," then you can't have a complete program. I suspect you've become a programmatic "maximalist" like the KAPD, and yet the "maximalism" has and can again yield opportunism by saying that we have to implement certain reformist and sub-reformist immediate measures which non-worker states can do with ease (provided the right public policy paradigm shifts like what the "Re-imagining Capitalism" folks at The Nation are trying to do).

For example, a more labour-influenced eurozone would have to:

1) Establish a state monopoly on foreign trade (for control of trade policy)
2) Exercise eminent domain in a pro-labour manner
3) Nationalize the entire financial system
4) Set up coops to replace faltering and/or regulation-violating small businesses and bigger workplaces
5) Exercise greater management over the labour market