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Comment by inglor_cz | Hacker News Reader

I grew up in Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.

The fundamental problem was unproductivity, which resulted in shortages of consumer goods and queuing for things such as sports shoes.

The system boasted enormous production of coal and steel, but was much worse in producing "less interesting" items such as "glue that worked", "washing machine that would not vibrate like hell" or even enough toilet paper. At one point, we had a shortage of sanitary towels.

Dissatisfaction with those elementary things contributed to the Velvet Revolution much more than lack of political freedoms. Plenty of people can live with their mouths shut, but they start getting really resentful if their new shoes leak.

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Děkuji. You've given me more context for the sport shoe factory scene in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StjIv33zJ9c&t=1833

(wait until 30:51 for shoes being glued. Anyone know what the machine at 31:13 is?)

My head-canon for ex-ussr 90's includes "jawa" cycles, "abibas" shoes, and "USA california" caps: what was it like for ex-warsaw pact?

Q. Why were Adam and Eve the first communists?

A. They have no clothes, no shelter, only an apple to eat, and are being told this is paradise.

My wife grew up around Moscow during the last phase of the USSR and she said that although there wasn't that much stuff, there was enough for everyone. People complemented any minor shortcomings by growing stuff in their gardens.

I have no doubt that countries in the periphery of major communist states had it worse... Just like countries in the periphery of capitalist states have it worse today.

If you ask members of the communist elite how communism was, they would probably tell you it was amazing. If you ask the lowest class of capitalists, they will tell you that capitalism is horrible - These days even many members of the middle class will tell you that capitalism is horrible; unfortunately the US capitalist system can't drain China so much anymore (now that China has become an economic superpower) so now it has to drain its own citizens locally.

Why do you think democrats are so keen on increasing immigration? You think they actually want more Elon Musks and Sudar Pichais to compete with them? They want more wage slaves to drain from! Elon and Sundar are immigrant bait!

Americans are going to find out for the first time what capitalism is really about.

> I have no doubt that countries in the periphery of major communist states had it worse...

Not really, satellite states like czechoslovakia had it comparably better to the countries in the union.

The situation is more complex than that. There was a past before Communism and that past determined the relative wealth of individual countries in the Soviet bloc.

Czech part of Czechoslovakia was one of the industrial centers of Europe since the early 19th century and it was mostly spared from the bombing campaigns of WWII. As such, we had much better living standards than ordinary Russians. When the Soviet-led task force occupied us in 1968 to prevent our split from the Soviet Bloc, the obviously better living standard demoralized the Soviet soldiers who genuinely believed that they were coming to our rescue. The first wave was recalled back to the USSR and their replacements were closed off in remote barracks, not to come into contact with our civilian life.

But rural countries like Bulgaria had very shitty living standards in Communism. My father's family is from Bulgaria, even today the country does not look anywhere near as good as the West and may never catch up.

> I have no doubt that countries in the periphery of major communist states had it worse... Just like countries in the periphery of capitalist states have it worse today.

When the Russians came to "liberate" certain Eastern European countries, they said: "We have it better than the oppressed people of the USA, and your country is even richer than Russia, so give me that watch!". Fwiw, I think they truly believed they were doing better than the US.

My point is that both communism and capitalism have problems. Both systems have shown themselves to be corruptible. The 'ideal form' of either system can never be achieved because of corruption.

People voted with their feet, statistically speaking, and a theory that doesn't explain it isn't usable.

If there is a lesson here for followers of Marx, the ability to make jeans or coca-cola (i.e. whatever fad the lowest-denominator consumers want this month) is a very important characteristic of a system.

This leaves out the very violent wars (sometimes bordering on something like genocide [0]) that have been waged by the capitalist world against communism.

[0]: E.g., a CIA backed government killed ~1 million people with connections to the communist party in Indonesia.

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/05/18/how-jakarta-became-...

Rubbish.

Look at the most pure capitalist systems in the world and you will see more corruption and 1%'ers than in the way less "pure". Like Scandinavia vs the US. It isn't rubbish at all.

Tautology, if you ask me - it's a meaningless statement that misses the point because corruptible is not binary, communism has a much worse track record re corruption than most capitalist countries. Sure, just like anything ever involving human elements, both are corruptible, but what's important is how bad does it get?

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