Would any of ye have liked to live in a communist country?

Alun

Fleawuss wrote: »

No. I always think of them as cold, grey, boring, with sad people trudging through slush watched by pig eyed secret policemen. And cabbage. People gnawing on cabbage. So no.

That's pretty much it, having visited East Berlin back in the 80's.

A dreary, grey place where you could still see bullet holes in any building not on the main thoroughfares. Cloaked in yellow sulphurous smog from the burning of brown coal. And that was the centre of Berlin, I dread to think what the rest of the country was like.

andekwarhola

philstar wrote: »

Norway is the place for you then

A lot of countries could afford to be if they were one of the largest oil and gas exporters in the world with a population of 5 million. :pac:

kupus

josip wrote: »

I'm bringing my son to see kuća cveća this afternoon after he finishes school

Don't forget to bring him to see brijuni islands...no need to change car plates anymore:pac::pac:

seamus

Alun wrote: »

That's pretty much it, having visited East Berlin back in the 80's.

A dreary, grey place where you could still see bullet holes in any building not on the main thoroughfares. Cloaked in yellow sulphurous smog from the burning of brown coal. And that was the centre of Berlin, I dread to think what the rest of the country was like.

To be fair, one of the problems is that just as the soviet union was in its hayday, brutalist architecture was in fashion.

Brutalist architecture is ugly as sin as well as being really depressing, but hundreds of thousands of these things went up all over the world, and a ridiculous amount of them in the soviet union. .

Then they ran out of money. And unlike in the west where private business interests could/would pull down ugly buildings and invest and rebuild, this never happened in the USSR and their towns and cities continued to be dominated by this blocky, grey expressionless and boring architechtural style.

If the USSR had been at its peak during the Georgian era we would likely be applauding the innate beauty of the former USSR countries.

josip

kupus wrote: »

Don't forget to bring him to see brijuni islands...no need to change car plates anymore:pac::pac:

Don't get spooked but we're booked into a Pula campsite on the 23rd
Although Goli Otok is where I'd really like to see and where I threaten to send the young fella when he misbehaves.

What's the license plate story? I'm curious.

HalloweenJack

Guaranteed job FTW.

BoJack Horseman

philstar wrote: »

Norway is the place for you then

Norway isn't socialist.
Been there a couple of times, it's very capitalist.

seamus

seamus wrote: »

To be fair, one of the problems is that just as the soviet union was in its hayday, brutalist architecture was in fashion.

Brutalist architecture is ugly as sin as well as being really depressing, but hundreds of thousands of these things went up all over the world, and a ridiculous amount of them in the soviet union. .

Then they ran out of money. And unlike in the west where private business interests could/would pull down ugly buildings and invest and rebuild, this never happened in the USSR and their towns and cities continued to be dominated by this blocky, grey expressionless and boring architechtural style.

If the USSR had been at its peak during the Georgian era we would likely be applauding the innate beauty of the former USSR countries.

Actually I quite liked the Soviet Union architecture. The problem is that it wasn't maintained. Moscow and St. Petersburg are quite beautiful cities. The massive apartment blocks, the epic style government buildings, etc. Awesome. Red Square at night with the snow covering the area is one of my favourite memories of city areas.

Same with all the memorials. The WW2 memorials around moscow are very beautiful and powerful looking.

Don't get me wrong though. I wouldn't have wanted to live in such a country while mainstream communism was the main gun in town. But I enjoyed living in Moscow for 6 months after it embraced capitalism.

andekwarhola

HalloweenJack wrote: »

Guaranteed job FTW.

Actually a good analogy for a communist country.

A giant, even more wasteful civil service with added executions.

kupus

Serb and Croatian cars used to change their own plates to other countries plate before borders due to history.

josip

kupus wrote: »

Serb and Croatian cars used to change their own plates to other countries plate before borders due to history.

Ah, I thought the original comment was made about Jugoslavia.

silverharp

I dont like queueing or waiting to buy stuff, I mean how long would it have taken to have a pizza delivered in Moscow back in the 80's?

DEFTLEFTHAND

Hercule Poirot wrote: »

The countries that we call Communist weren't actually practicing the true Communist ideology, rather the Communist ideology was used a tool to enforce a tyrannical regime - if you were offering me the chance to live in a true Marxist, Communist country then yes I would give it a go but Lenin, Mao and Stalin can go f**k themselves

It's an impossible ideal to achieve. It fails because of human nature.

mzungu

silverharp wrote: »

I dont like queueing or waiting to buy stuff, I mean how long would it have taken to have a pizza delivered in Moscow back in the 80's?

You would still be waiting for it now.

mariaalice

Hercule Poirot wrote: »

The countries that we call Communist weren't actually practicing the true Communist ideology, rather the Communist ideology was used a tool to enforce a tyrannical regime - if you were offering me the chance to live in a true Marxist, Communist country then yes I would give it a go but Lenin, Mao and Stalin can go f**k themselves

Would you live in Cuba?

seamus

seamus wrote: »

Which is exactly why it fails.

Humans when placed in a community innately form "states" and "markets". It's a core social instinct that's evolved, and the reason why as a species we're so successful.
A system of government which attempts to remove these cannot succeed since they will continue to exist regardless of what the government says about it.

Proof? Cite?

Sounds to me you are spouting dogma and are not interested in anything except bowing down to your god.

mariaalice

I like to think AH/Boards represents a broad spectrum of views, yet how come no one has come on defending communism bar the odd comment along the line of...but but it wasn't real communism!!!. Looking at the Irish electorate and who they elect they are those who espouse Marxism etc.

riffmongous

What are people actually comparing to here in this thread? 50s -80s ireland wasn't the nicest place in the world either right?

dan1895

kupus wrote: »

Serb and Croatian cars used to change their own plates to other countries plate before borders due to history.

Put it in "H"

seamus

Deleted User wrote: »

Proof? Cite?

Sounds to me you are spouting dogma and are not interested in anything except bowing down to your god.

Which god?

Next thing you're going to start calling us "sheeple" and continue claiming that nobody has ever done communism right, if it was done right it would work.

Just started college last year did we? What is it? Sociology? Or just Arts?

seamus

seamus wrote: »

Which god?

Next thing you're going to start calling us "sheeple" and continue claiming that nobody has ever done communism right, if it was done right it would work.

Just started college last year did we? What is it? Sociology? Or just Arts?

There is no proof of that humans must form markets in communities. Except for primitive communism, they must find a way to allocate surplus value, this varies on economic systems. Without classes a state cannot form, but a government would still be present in some form, more local but some centralization obviously. In Marxism, a state and government are different things. It would be stateless but not necessarily government-less because a government, in the simplest form, is simply people coming together to make rules and to make life easier through collaboration. We developed markets because resources were scarce and it's hard to have an efficient non market economy without modern technology.

We now have modern technology and most resources simply aren't scarce (only scarce in areas because of markets and the bourgeois states that rape many parts of the world) There will be a polycentric economy that relies on a mostly on a more lateral than hierarchical way of organizing the governments and communities of the world, with obviously some collaboration on higher levels on certain issues. There would be no reason to have a market allocate resources (in full communism) when we have more and more technology (therefore less scarcity) and the ability to allocate resources without a market.

One way to do this is described here (https://libcom.org/files/CommonVoice3.pdf). The work written by Robin Cox is what I'm referring to. He describes why markets aren't always the best way of allocating resources, and how a polycentric economy can allocate resources more efficiently than a market economy. If you have any more, objections/disagreements to my post or his work, I'd be happy to clarify.

kupus

josip wrote: »

Don't get spooked but we're booked into a Pula campsite on the 23rd
Although Goli Otok is where I'd really like to see and where I threaten to send the young fella when he misbehaves

If you really want to scare him take him to jasenovac concentration camp. It's about an hour from Zagreb. Since you are going to tito park I assume you are travelling from Belgrade, so it's on the way to pula. Pula is a nice lil city but it's busy everywhere as its Italian ferogusta time. Check out rovinj and porec as a day trip. Don't forget to Get some nice local Malvasia wine and olive oil.

BrokenArrows

I agree with you, in theory. In theory, communism works. In theory. - Homer Simpson

Its a great idea if humans were mindless drones with no ambition. However humans always want something better then everyone else and will not be happy to have the same as their neighbors.

All that communism does is allows the corrupt to profit greatly and the masses to be equal. And equal at a **** level.

My wife is russian and her mum tells stories of what it was like. Yes you got an apartment for free (eventually). One of her friends got married and they applied for an apartment, they eventually got issued with a 2 bedroom apartment 16 years later at which point they had 4 kids and were living with her mother.
You queued in hundreds for basic goods and got your allowance. New clothes were in very very high demand and there was never enough for everyone. Black market was a big thing.

A Little Pony

Marxism/Socialism/Communism is against human nature as a system of government.

BrokenArrows

What we need is a good dictatorship.

I volunteer to be the Emperor Broken Arrows I. You will celebrate me by breaking arrows.

A Primal Nut

Hercule Poirot wrote: »

The countries that we call Communist weren't actually practicing the true Communist ideology, rather the Communist ideology was used a tool to enforce a tyrannical regime - if you were offering me the chance to live in a true Marxist, Communist country then yes I would give it a go but Lenin, Mao and Stalin can go f**k themselves

But you need an iron fist to enforce Communism. If you remove the government force, then people will naturally start trading with each other.

whisky_galore

Dr Turk Turkelton wrote: »

Why in all this talk of communism is everyone referring to the demoralising grey sh1thole that is Eastern Europe?
If I was going to communist it would be lying on a Caribbean beach sipping a mojito and puffing on a big cigar ala Cuba.

Why do so many Cubans want to dash across the straits to the bad old capitalist U S of A so?

Wigglepuppy

HalloweenJack wrote: »

Guaranteed job FTW.

Unfortunately it has been shown that jobs are not guaranteed under such a system.

riffmongous wrote: »

What are people actually comparing to here in this thread? 50s -80s ireland wasn't the nicest place in the world either right?

Oh don't worry - the spurious comparison with "backward" Ireland (which was not a communist country) has been made!

I guess people are just comparing any country with personal and economic freedom.

Wigglepuppy

mariaalice wrote: »

I like to think AH/Boards represents a broad spectrum of views, yet how come no one has come on defending communism bar the odd comment along the line of...but but it wasn't real communism!!!. Looking at the Irish electorate and who they elect they are those who espouse Marxism etc.

Mostly not though.

And there is one person here (possibly a second) who thinks communism is the biz. Seems about in line.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.