Life if you weren't in the party

[orihara]

Is it true that if you weren't a member of the Communist party living in the Eastern Bloc countries, that they made your life miserable?

[tuwix]

I'm not sure if anyone here was ever a member of the party there. However, it's difficult call such party communist as well, as calling Chinese state capitalists 'communists' is just joke. Communism doesn't assume enforcing a state and building a new form of capitalism (for example state capitalism). Any 'communist' who does it is just stupid pretender.

[Bala Perdida]

It sounds like you're asking if they deliberately made your life miserable. :laugh:

But to actually answer your question, no. Your life was miserable because of lack of resources and such, as well as how tight the the authority was. This varied by regime of course. For example a person in Yugoslavia lived much better than a person in Romania. Although living conditions in the Eastern Bloc were still lower than in the Western Bloc. Not horribly lower in some places, but still lower.

[jake williams]

It was like the Stonecutters, there were special tunnels and free soft drinks.

In all seriousness though, it had a lot more to do with restricting your ability to hold certain political, or politicized, positions in society than it had to do with making you miserable in everyday life. So, if you're not a party member, you might have trouble becoming a journalist or an economics professor or a mayor or something, but if you were working as an engineer or a kindergarten teacher, no one was going to spit in your drink or randomly beat you or take away your potato ration card.

If anything there was an element of elitist paternalism that made it easy to not mind very much if someone didn't want to join (because it was easy enough to just say "oh, they're just not politically conscious").

[The Idler]

It should be of concern when any substitutionist party comes along and plays at representing society as a whole.

[Thirsty Crow]

Is it true that if you weren't a member of the Communist party living in the Eastern Bloc countries, that they made your life miserable?
No, it's not true.

The extent to which holding a party card in Yugoslavia was important is that you could not hold senior managerial and political positions. Of course, this wasn't legislated but a matter of common practice. Other than that, you could live life without regard for being a member.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

They made each of us get up in the morning before we went to bed and walk 27 hours in the snow, barefoot, to the soap factory where they would kill us and then make soap out of our bones, and the next morning we would have to do it all over again.

And we liked it that way.

It doesn't really make sense to talk about "the Eastern Bloc" - the experience of workers living in the various state that followed the Soviet model varied according to the specific state, and generally followed the level of economic development - i.e. things were fairly alright in the advanced (to the point of decaying) "goulash communism" in Hungary or Yugoslavia (which never did have a specific name - brudet communism? ahahahasorry), but Party members had significant material privileges during the late NEP period and the period of the first Five-Year Plans in the Soviet Union (and in postwar East Europe, where Party membership meant access to imported goods stores etc., at least in Yugoslavia).

During the Civil War, of course, pretty much everyone was miserable, but Party members had higher rations, as I recall it, along with sailors and the spetsy.

[Tim Cornelis]

Being a member of the ruling party provided career opportunities not available to non-members. Being a regime critic ensured you stayed at the bottom of the social hierarchy, like working the mail room with no prospect of a career. This applied generally in Eastern Europe throughout the 1960s-1980s. But being neither a member nor a critic did not result in a miserable life.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

There were a host of incentives and advantages to joining the Communist Party, but they didn't make your life miserable if you didn't. Those countries would have collapsed otherwise as most people were not CP members (although I guess there was some level of misery as evidenced by the fact that these countries collapsed, but it wasn't determined by one's party membership). They often reserved misery for actual dissidents (of course, they often made no distinction between leftist dissidents and those who wanted to restore the free market or roll back the gains made for the working class, so of course that's still a problem)


It was like the Stonecutters, there were special tunnels and free soft drinks.


Who keeps the martians under wraps? The CPSU does!

[Die Neue Zeit]

During the Civil War, of course, pretty much everyone was miserable, but Party members had higher rations, as I recall it, along with sailors and the spetsy.

That's almost correct. Card-carrying Bolsheviks didn't have higher rations. They simply had guaranteed, even if rationed, food supply.

That kind of emergency-only scarcity "privilege" between not starving and being on the edge (or worse) is a temporary socioeconomic distinction that I don't mind seeing for the worker-class-for-itself in relation to everyone else, including other workers who really should be a minority at this point.

[Brutus]

That's almost correct. Card-carrying Bolsheviks didn't have higher rations. They simply had guaranteed, even if rationed, food supply.

That kind of emergency-only scarcity "privilege" between not starving and being on the edge (or worse) is a temporary socioeconomic distinction that I don't mind seeing for the worker-class-for-itself in relation to everyone else, including other workers who really should be a minority at this point.

Or someone who thought "if I join the party I'm guaranteed food", which then gives you a communist party that isn't really communist.

[DOOM]

I remember many stories, where non-members in Yugoslavia faced repression. But that was probably regional. No one cared for the fucking party in the rural areals.

[Comrade Jacob]

No doubt in nations like Romania that would be the case, but all of them? I'm not sure, I agree that you'd defiantly get benefits from being a member.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Or someone who thought "if I join the party I'm guaranteed food", which then gives you a communist party that isn't really communist.

You missed my point entirely.

[Brutus]

You missed my point entirely.

Which was? That class-conscious workers- or ones that appear class-conscious- should get priority over non class-conscious workers?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Which was? That class-conscious workers- or ones that appear class-conscious- should get priority over non class-conscious workers?

On face value: In such circumstances, yes, and that I have already discussed filtering mechanisms for member prospects to address your issue of "someone who thought 'if I join the party I'm guaranteed food'."

The point: No, because a revolutionary period requires majority political support by the working class as a whole for the class-for-itself. That support is best measured at the party card register, not at the ballot box.