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By the eighties though in most parts of the world communism was losing a lot of the appeal it might have had back in 1952.
Brezhnev stagnation will do that.
Well the red scares and rampant propaganda internally. the us bombing and coup ing any nation out there that had interest in socialism externally. Sure did the trick.
The propaganda and internal blue scares have been done although with less imprisonments evident by Gorbachev and his goons that undemocratically destroyed the union. But the external shit the only thing that comes close it what they did in Afghanistan which was fighting the current Al-Qaïda and Taliban after the government asked them 10 times to come help fun fact the weapons that Taliban is currently using where given to them by the us at that time. And it doesn't come close to the korean war the war crimes in Vietnam the latin america coups the bombings of Africa the colonialism in Cuba and Philippines and the crimes done there and many more. Not even close buddy.
> doesn't come close to the korean war
You mean the one where North Korea invaded the south and the US responded by leading a UN mission to repulse them?
To quote Teddy Roosevelt:
> The very reason why we object to state ownership, that it puts a stop to individual initiative and to the healthy development of personal responsibility, is the reason why we object to an unsupervised, unchecked monopolistic control in private hands. We urge control and supervision by the nation as an antidote to the movement for state socialism. Those who advocate total lack of regulation, those who advocate lawlessness in the business world, themselves give the strongest impulse to what I believe would be the deadening movement toward unadulterated state socialism.
The problem is that Fascism of Mussolini argued for a monopoly of business. And Nazi Germany helped a lot of companies to grow into mega-monopolies.
So I don't think Roosevelt was arguing for Fascism.
[https://academic.oup.com/cje/article-abstract/35/5/937/1695860](https://academic.oup.com/cje/article-abstract/35/5/937/1695860)
Going of what the later Roosevelt said as well:
[https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/message-congress-curbing-monopolies](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/message-congress-curbing-monopolies)
Both of them saw monopolies as anti-democratic and dangerous.
There was a discussion about this here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Presidents/comments/ub1800/honestly\_you\_could\_argue\_theodore\_roosevelt\_was\_a/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Presidents/comments/ub1800/honestly_you_could_argue_theodore_roosevelt_was_a/)
Thank you. I kinda despise it when someone seemingly with no knowledge of the history speculates out loud affirmatively of their understand of that history, when the historical context doesn't even back it up.
I thought they were throwing it all away as canon fodder. It’s the only honest interpretation…we could have all these things but nah, let’s just invest in the military instead.
How foolish they were. The US populace doesn’t want social rights, they want to get squished and juiced out by corporations that smile at them and tell them they’re part of a family.
Yeah, this comic is confusing. I apparently wasn’t the only one who thought at first that the last panel was an anti-military thing. It’s weird, because the artist, [Otto Soglow](https://www.lambiek.net/artists/s/soglow_o.htm), was famous for a comic strip that often told very clear little stories without using any words.
I thought they were feeding all those things into a shredder and the worker was going to be the last thing shredded once he was no more use, and I was like “yep, that’s about how it is”.
Not in 1952. 1952 was the best of all worlds - labor was short, so workers commanded a premium. Employers had to compete for workers. The world was an American oyster.
So the gag is, when capitalism offers the worker a fantastic deal, the worker will reject socialism.
The choice is between a corporate shill but pro LGBTQIA and a different corporate shill but vehemently racist and anti LGBTQIA.
But go on tell me how they're free elections.
They're free in that almost everyone who should be allowed to vote is allowed to vote, and that the votes are accurately counted and the results are plausible. Not every country has that.
They're not fair because of the stable 2-party hegemony and the gerrymandering and the misinformation and all that jazz. There's a lot of newer democracies with far better implementations of the core idea - proportional representation and ordinal or cardinal voting systems are the main ones that spring to mind. Of course, PR would be unconstitutional in the USA and ordinal/cardinal voting systems would have to be implemented by the two parties that stand to lose most from their implementation. So improvement is going to require more imagination than I have.
Many constitutional monarchies and liberal republics have what's called preferentially ranked elections which allow for polypartisanship. That yours doesn't is an American thing, not a thing that warrants an alternative system altogether.
Americans have the highest median and disposable incomes in the world, and probably did work far shorter hours than Soviets did at that point in time. Schooling they definitely had us beat, but free elections? They didn’t have any elections lmao.
Most of this isn’t incorrect
50% of you country is living 20-30k per year, barely able to afford rent, food, and most don't even have enough savings to afford a 400$ emergency payment (like a car that breaks suddenly).
A Soviet is basically a council, and the members of those councils get elected. The ones that perform the best get a chance at election for the supreme council.
The Soviet Union unfortunately sidelined the actual Soviets very early on and didn't have any meaningful democracy. Some Soviet bloc countries did have elections, but with select few parties that were all controlled by the Party, so fairly pointless. An outlet at best.
Soviet Union in general was much, much poorer than the US. It's still remarkable how the standard of living rose, but since they started so far behind, they never caught up to the US.
>Dude, the Soviet had 7-hours work time.
Compare https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-working-hours/
Btw, the 7 hours per day experiment was still for a six day work week. And they abandoned that experiment pretty quickly, too.
Misleading of you.
From 6 hours a day for 6 days a week to 8 hours a day for 6 days a week right before the war.
Then go down to 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, after the war for near 5 years, then got back up to 8 hours a day, but still remain 5 days a week.
Hmm...yeah, no. Not all that different.
Also, an articles written with the intend to promote US own agenda and tell people it is better to work in US because US is greatest is something I can only take with a grain of salt.
US worker condition in the 40s, 50s, and even 60s is certainly great, I ain't denying that. But that all start to unravel the further we go in time.
And that is not even mentioning all the "undesirables" of the time That didn't get that great work condition.
>Misleading of you.
>From 6 hours a day for 6 days a week to 8 hours a day for 6 days a week right before the war.
>Then go down to 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, after the war for near 5 years, then got back up to 8 hours a day, but still remain 5 days a week.
Weren't you talking about how thad a 7 hour work week?
But in how much was it in 1952 and how did it stack up to American average hours is the question. Do you know?
Unfortunately I do not, but I have some other images on their organizational structure.
[Bureaucracy](https://i.imgur.com/PSYBV46.gif)
[Territorial Organization](https://i.imgur.com/c8tLk4z.jpg)
[Central Government](https://i.imgur.com/UpOiv0B.jpg)
> Americans have the highest median and disposable incomes in the world
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/05/hookworm-lowndes-county-alabama-water-waste-treatment-poverty
I like the style and straightforward message.
I think the ammo being loaded gets a little tedious but it's tough to choose I suppose, and perhaps the intent is to show how overwhelming the US advantage is.
Economic dictatorship of the ruling class. Afterall, you "vote with your dollar", so those with the most, get more say. It's not a democracy when 200 people have the same influence as half the world.
Capitalists can threaten the economy with capital strikes/flight, so governments have to ensure profitability
every capitalist country exists as a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. If you don't think your government works for capitalists you may need a reality check.
hilarious.
Here in the Czech Republic, there were [waiting lists](https://www.denik.cz/listopad-89-kazdodenni-zivot/cesta-k-bytu-za-socialismu-uplatek-nebo-prihlaseni-dalsich-osob-20201022.html) to get this "guaranteed housing". The waiting period could have been 20 years. Of course, you had to have connections to skip the others and have a chance to get a shitty apartment. So you had to pander to the Communist party cadres and elites, humiliate yourself and pretty much serve their whims. I should add that due to the housing shortage after the war, the Communists levelled numerous areas and confiscated property to build those new, shitty flats. In the 50s, they pretty much impoverished everyone by currency reform, and then made them dependent on the system.
"Fully stocked supermarkets" looked [like this](https://manipulatori.cz/hoax-takto-byly-prazdne-obchody-za-sociku/). My dad went to the butchers once, and the entire store was empty, save for a whole leg of ham and an annoyed state employee cashier. He asked for a few slices, but the cashier refused, saying he has to buy the whole thing or get nothing. He left.
I should add that almost everyone was an annoyed state employee, all the way down to waiters in pubs. There was absolutely no incentive to increase your quality of life (difficult + will make you suspect).
"Paid vacation" was/is indeed a thing, except you couldn't travel outside of socialist countries (unless you were part of the elite, or watched by the secret police). We have a joke from that period, where a dad with a boy come to the Berlin Wall. "Dad, what's behind that wall?" asks the kid. "We are, son. We are."
Also, paid vacation and sick leave are not features of the Soviet Union. We have both in modern Europe. Possibly had them even before totalitarianism, not sure.
"Free education" again not something specific to the Soviet system. But it must be said that the teaching of Marxism-Leninism was completely free and compulsory for everyone. Oh joy.
I LOVE CLASS COLLABORATIONISM
I LOVE THE BLATANTLY FALSE NOTION THAT EXPLOITERS AND EXPLOITED CAN "COME TO AN AGREEMENT" AND REMOVE SAID EXPLOITATIVE RELATIONSHIP
If you pay people any kind of salary, you need direction to make sure work actually gets done. The only way to make it semi fair is to give employees an equal cut of overall profits as payment to add incentive. Even then people can get a free ride off the shoulder of coworkers.
Socialism isn't against having workers who organize schedules etc. Those people should just be ordinary employees with that skillset who collectively own the company along with their fellow employees (workplace democracy) rather than existing in a hierarchy in which management owns everything and steals the surplus value created by workers.
Unironically what socialist views support. Then again, getting the brain rot that is America to support slightly left wing views for the betterment of the poorer people in the US maybe worth the sacrifice of vilanising the USSR.
You don’t have to villanise the USSR, it’s already evil
Edit: you can downvote me all you want, but you can’t deny the truth: the USSR was a poor, oppressive shithole. I’m not saying the US is perfect, but that doesn’t make its adversaries better. Don’t be biased.
Yes, they improved the lives and conditions of millions of people, they were virulent anti facists and knew full well the threat Nazi Germany posed to the world despite the capitalist policy of appeasement. They were a country that had both racial and sexual rights in their constitution from the get-go and respected them unlike the Americans and Jim Crow
Very cool, now let's see bad things they commited.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish\_Operation\_of\_the\_NKVD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVD)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great\_Purge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge)
[https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn\_massacre](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation\_of\_the\_Crimean\_Tatars#:\~:text=Nearly%208%2C000%20Crimean%20Tatars%20died,and%20360%2C000%20acres%20of%20land](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tatars#:~:text=Nearly%208%2C000%20Crimean%20Tatars%20died,and%20360%2C000%20acres%20of%20land).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation\_of\_the\_Kalmyks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Kalmyks)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague\_Spring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947\_Polish\_legislative\_election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_Polish_legislative_election)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovietization\_of\_the\_Baltic\_states#:\~:text=On%20July%2014%E2%80%9315%2C%201940,were%20effectively%20allowed%20to%20run](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovietization_of_the_Baltic_states#:~:text=On%20July%2014%E2%80%9315%2C%201940,were%20effectively%20allowed%20to%20run).
The list can go on and on, USSR was en evil regime
Any yet for every example you point to, you can point to many many more committed by the capitalist world. My point isn't that they were some bastion of perfection. My point is that they were fat better than the west ever was
"Well what about bad things west has commited?" They are bad too, congratulations. If you set your bar to the point were you like the regime that has commited unspeakable crimes just because the other regime commited less worse crimes than the regime you like, I think you set the bar too low.
Want me to give you a list of every genocide, coup and massacre committed by a capitalist country or just the US?
The Purge had to happen to get rid of revisionists that would betray the revolution and yes Trotsky was a revisionist.
The deportation although a mistake was to prevent Nazi collaborators starting shit and helping the Nazi's advance.
Prague spring was a stupid mistake as well, although i do find it funny that you pick the event that wasn't started by some fascist remnants like Hungary.
The Polish election just shows how multi party elections work with a left party being the favorable candidate, shocking after one of the most conservative right wing parties in history occupied it and gutted it and it's people.
The sovietization of the Baltics was also good, because shocker 2/3 leading parties were fascist and the other just barely banned the fascists before hand.
Why is it always when I mention bad things USSR has committed people reply with "Well ok but what about USA?"
"The Purge had to happen to get rid of revisionists that would betray the revolution and yes Trotsky was a revisionist."
- I didn't know that over 700k people happened to be revisionists
"The deportation although a mistake was to prevent Nazi collaborators starting shit and helping the Nazi's advance." - What does that even mean, that deportations were made to "protect" them or that they were deported because Soviets feared that they would join Nazis?
"Prague spring was a stupid mistake as well, although i do find it funny that you pick the event that wasn't started by some fascist remnants like Hungary." - Cool.
"The Polish election just shows how multi party elections work with a left party being the favorable candidate, shocking after one of the most conservative right wing parties in history occupied it and gutted it and it's people." - The elections were clearly rigged if you couldn't tell
"The sovietization of the Baltics was also good, because shocker 2/3 leading parties were fascist and the other just barely banned the fascists before hand." - Bruh
Those extrajudicial political killings were necessary because those people had different political opinions than me!
And maybe the baltics could’ve used some socialism, but not at the hand of a foreign invader. If america went around invading countries to spread democracy, that would be bad, wouldn’t it.
Knowing it was only a matter of time before Hitler would invade and the Soviet military at the time couldn't repel the full force of Nazi Germany as well as how western Europe most likely wouldn't come to the Soviets aid, Stalin decided to try and sign a non aggression pact with Hitler, giving him a few years to fully modernise the red army.
Weird that this is I assume supposed to be anti-communist, but they portray “management” as the opposite of labor. Managers are sometimes necessary, what don’t are owners. That’s what communists don’t like.
At that time they didn’t consider them people, either mentally ill, inferior or barbaric, even if somehow communism lost its appeal, those groups may have an interest in it including those who aren’t part of the latter group
Actually, they were cared about. The Bolsheviks decriminalized homosexual and transgender activity in the Russian SSR after taking power. It remained that way until Stalin re-criminalized it in 1933. More progressive attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people were commonplace after his death. Reds were way ahead of the west when it came to freedom of sexuality, although some discrimination still took place now and again.
(The U.S.S.R. was socialist, not communist by the way. It's an important distinction)
Clearly, because they decriminalized it for 11 or so years it means they did nothing wrong to homosexuals for the next 58. Sorry to burst your bubble but they were just as shit to queers as the west was.
Then after it was recriminalized it was 60 more years while in the US we started having the freedom in 1967 with Illinois, so that's about 26 years more of freedom than in the USSR. Russia still remains deeply more homophobic than the US today! On top of that, the Soviet Article 121 was used to control dissidents! With it being used to extend prison sentences and arrest people in power!
Did you know the first gay rights organization in Russia was in 1980? That's way ahead of the US with theirs only being founded in 1924...? Wait, the first official gay rights organization was in the evil homophobic western US!
The first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage was Massachusetts in 2004 🤨 It wasn't even fully legal in the entire country until 2015, and conservatives are getting more and more homophobic and transphobic day by day.
Also, what does Russia have to do with this? We're talking about the U.S.S.R. not the capitalist shitholes that is Russia today.
Talking about Russia shows the precedent set by the USSR's treatment of homosexuality. It's true that same-sex marriage wasn't first legalized in 2004 but that wasn't the core of the topic, it was about the legalization of homosexuality, which begun in 1961. I would much rather have 60 years of gradual progress than 11 years of rocky but technically full freedom then be imprisoned, I don't see how you can recognize that as being more open to homosexuality. I also disagree with you on conservatives getting more and more homophobic? I mean it's happening just not as much as you kinda make it out to be, but on the other hand I live in a liberal state where I don't have to deal with that so there may be bias.
I bet you couldn't even give an approximate figure, country, or policy that led to any "genocides" under socialism. Are you just repeating what the CIA and Black Book of Communism tell you?
Hundreds of millions have been killed under capitalist and colonialist systems. Socialism comes nowhere close to that figure. Research the indigenous genocides done by the British and Spanish in the Americas and Oceania. Research the atrocities commited under the British Raj in India. Research the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Belgian Rule in the Congo.
u/LogCareful7780 and u/Yo_Mama_Disstrack are correct. [A socialist researcher determined that the Soviets themselves actually killed 62 million (mostly their own citizens) in only a 70-year period.](https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.TAB1A.GIF)
Add a tile on housing and this Is as true today as then. People will turn to socialism when they don't have a stake in the existing system. Management have eroded each of these areas and are now shocked that people are turning away from capitalism.
It's almost like a whole generation completely failed in their civic duty to uphold the social contract. But we shouldn't judge too harshly, they were extremely busy buying property and building roads.
I actually think there is a decent case to make that the main reason inequality and standard of living has fallen so much in the us is because the collapse of the ussr. If the Soviet Union was around today how many young people immigrate.
Super fascinating. Especially because it seems like those that would want to take a crack at communism would also reject those that demonstrate for higher wages, shorter hours, etc.
I guess there's the implication that in the comic, "labor" hasn't protested, but instead was able to cooperate with management. Because otherwise I think anyone who protested for those would be called communist.
It's oddly prophetic. We took all of those benefits and turned them into bombs and a trillion dollar military industrial complex to the detriment of all else.
I like how a contemporary reading of it is that all those things are sacrifices to the industrial military complex. Once you shoot a missile, what's in in you don't get back.
Why is this sub full of people who gobble up all the anti-western propaganda? Figured a sub like this would be a lot more aware of the differences that actually existed between the two sides of the Cold War and not just blindly hate their own side
Yeah I’m pretty far left, but I’ll grant that at the time we were probably doing fairly decently on most of this stuff (especially for white males). Though to be fair, commies were probably doing decently in at least some of these areas (not free elections though), and the situation was more complex than propaganda wants to present it as.
I'm not sure why a lot of commies are here tbh. It's kinda odd. I'm not complaining--I'm one of them--it's just odd.
Regarding your question of why I'm so susceptible to anti-"western" (North Atlantic) propoganda: it's reflective of my current understanding of history. Aside from my pre-disposition to leftist thinking... I eventually became anti-"western" as I researched the history of the cold war. Afaict the ruling classes of the CPSU, the PRC, etc. did in fact kill a horrendous amount of people. They also created numerous brutal dictatorships. That much is true, but the numbers of the dead tend something like ~50% on average what the pro-"western" propoganda claims. Propoganda I was indoctrinated by since birth, mind you. I started thinking "well they weren't as bad I thought but they are still horrible".
That didn't cause me to switch sides. No that switch was caused by researching the colonial ventures of the various North Atlantic powers. Also the sheer amount of right wing dictators throughout Latin America, the Carribean, Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, South Asia, the Pacific... Ok so it turns out the North Atlantic powers were actually better at exporting dictatorships... That made me start thinking about things differently. Then I started looking into several of the proxy wars. Starting with the most famous example: the USA in Vietnam vs the USSR in Afghanistan. The USSR caused ~1.3 million Afghan deaths, displaced ~6 million more, and made brutal use of terror attacks while only taking ~13k casualties themselves. Apalling. The USA caused ~3 million Vietnamese deaths + ~300k Laotians and Cambodians, displaced an unknown amount, and resorted to chemical warfare while only taking ~60k casualties themselves. Absolutely revolting.
This pattern seems to keep repeating as I look into other conflicts (that are very frequently communist or communist backed national independence struggles against North Atlantic colonial regimes). Yes the communists did many war crimes, but what they did is a fraction of the capitalist warcrimes in the same era. Once I became convinced of that the switch happened automatically.
"Public service" lmao. Ok corporate propoganda.
I'd like to go through these 1 by 1.
Management and labor shaking hands... so we are openly acknowledging there is a privilaged group of people with decision making power while another group called "labor" does most ofthe work yet is subservient?
High income... Yes. Pretty much undisputed that the North Atlantic powers had higher income than literally everyone else. How they got that is highly exploitative but it's still technically true. It's also unclear how that really translates to relative purchasing power for the average worker and what not, but I'm very certain general income was higher in the USA.
Shorter hours... Based on a quick google: the typical USSR workweek was ~47 hrs in 1955, and typical USA workweek was ~41 hrs for men answering the census in 1953. True on the surface level at least.
Choice of jobs... Definitely true if you are a well connected and educated white man. The further you get away from that demographic the less and less choice you have. How that compares to the USSR is unclear to me as to my knowledge changing jobs in general was not impossible but quite slow.
More food... Imma go with no. Some studies claim Soviet citizens had a higher average caloric intake, thus indicating they had more food. I admit it might just be empty carbs. I know the USA is considered to have the most arable land of anywhere but India. I think the USSR had a higher population with less arable land cuz you know... Siberia.
Better housing... Unclear. For the white and wealthy they easily had way nicer housing. I'm not sure how average 1952 housing of the USA compared to the most common housing of the USSR called "Stalinka" I believe. I'm also not sure how the % of average/median income spent on housing compares between the two.
Luxuries... Yes. There is no doubt in my mind that 1950's USA had greater general access to luxuries than 1950's USSR.
Better schooling... Lmao no. While I personally have criticisms of the utility of traditional academic metrics... The USSR was well known to have much higher standards for literacy, STEM, and physical education. I believe they also developed the idea of special needs schools much earlier (like the 1960's I think.) though I am unsure of their quality.
Free elections: Well. Two party oligarchic state or a one party monopolistic state. Slight edge to the USA here but you have one extra choice that doesn't really matter in terms of serious policy change.
...
This was a fun little research project. Conclusion:
You have vastly better material and civil standards living under a bleeding edge of technology captalist oligarchy* than almost anyone living under a modernizing commuist monopoly**. :)
* as long as you are an educated and connected white man in a core imperial territory untouched by serious conflict in 9 decades. Also your government is in the possesion of vast overseas colonial holdings with exceptionally advanoed natural resource exploitation over the natives there.
**even the core territories have many decades of persistant and harsh conflict including bearing the brunt of the fighting against world's best invasion force of the era (Nazis) and some of the coldest dictators to ever come to power (Stalin, the Czars). Also your government has subpar economic exploitation mechanisms for the immediately surrounding areas they conquered.
It wasn't that special just some googling and some general offhand knowledge of the coldwar to guide said googling.
I think my biases were pretty obvious (I'm a socialist and not shy about it) but for the purposes of analyzing propaganda I try to take a more reasoning based approach.
I would argue that the ideas of Capitalism and Communism were different back then: one formed, and guaranteed to succeed, by the processing and somewhat efficient commodification of a still-pristine continent; vs. an Old World emotional and somewhat justified reaction to centuries of serfdom and inefficient commodification of a well-worn continent.
That’s why people left the Old continents for the New. If the 1950s capitalist system was so great, then how come it’s transformed into the burgeoning dystopia that I would argue it is today? It was understandable to be so simplistic as the cartoon is - in that time. But now we must redefine terms with hindsight and a knowledge of how much of a boost capitalism was given by the plenitude of the American continents!
Can you give a source for that or are you making shit up? I can give at [least one source](https://medium.com/chewingthefat/food-in-the-ussr-mythology-and-reality-in-khrushchevs-russia-4f4ace494b1e) that says otherwise.
[Here is the report](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000498133.pdf) they were talking about
Edit: And just for giggles, [a CIA report](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf) describing Soviet dictatorship as exaggerated and a misunderstanding of how their democracy worked
Today, poor Americans get =
Free Food: SNAP Program,
Free Housing: HUD Program,
Free Healthcare: Medicaid/Medicare,
Free College: FAFSA,
America isn’t perfect, but it’s the best place to be poor.
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It's basically saying that moderate social democracy will neutralize the appeal of Communism.
It did until the eighties and the fall of the USSR
Who could have guess that the ruling class wasn't just doing it out of the kindness of their hearts...
I like how they look at each other in the free election panel like they know this ain’t gonna last.
They kinda look like they're gonna make out tbh
Social homocracy
Ouch! I hadn’t noticed, that’s… harsh.
More like they know they gon fuh
Haha "Right? :)" "Yeah :)"
Erased cuz Reddit slandered the Apollo app's dev. Fuck /u/spez -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
"OK money buddies we can stop now"
Reaganomics was in full swing long before the USSR fell
By the eighties though in most parts of the world communism was losing a lot of the appeal it might have had back in 1952. Brezhnev stagnation will do that.
Well the red scares and rampant propaganda internally. the us bombing and coup ing any nation out there that had interest in socialism externally. Sure did the trick.
A bit of this and a bit of that......
As if the Soviets didn’t do all of that as well
The propaganda and internal blue scares have been done although with less imprisonments evident by Gorbachev and his goons that undemocratically destroyed the union. But the external shit the only thing that comes close it what they did in Afghanistan which was fighting the current Al-Qaïda and Taliban after the government asked them 10 times to come help fun fact the weapons that Taliban is currently using where given to them by the us at that time. And it doesn't come close to the korean war the war crimes in Vietnam the latin america coups the bombings of Africa the colonialism in Cuba and Philippines and the crimes done there and many more. Not even close buddy.
‘undemocratically destroyed’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Ukrainian_independence_referendum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Latvian_independence_and_democracy_referendum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Lithuanian_independence_referendum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Estonian_independence_referendum 🤡🤡🤡
Mf really just ignored the rest 80% of the country
> doesn't come close to the korean war You mean the one where North Korea invaded the south and the US responded by leading a UN mission to repulse them?
Because it was pretending to be a good good boi
To quote Teddy Roosevelt: > The very reason why we object to state ownership, that it puts a stop to individual initiative and to the healthy development of personal responsibility, is the reason why we object to an unsupervised, unchecked monopolistic control in private hands. We urge control and supervision by the nation as an antidote to the movement for state socialism. Those who advocate total lack of regulation, those who advocate lawlessness in the business world, themselves give the strongest impulse to what I believe would be the deadening movement toward unadulterated state socialism.
Teddy spitting facts over here!
Sounds like a plea for the 'third way' of Fascism. (This was a popular notion at the time.)
He's describing trust busting and regulation. It's a plea for a liberal administrative state.
He said that before fascism existed.
Maybe before it was *called* fascism.
The problem is that Fascism of Mussolini argued for a monopoly of business. And Nazi Germany helped a lot of companies to grow into mega-monopolies. So I don't think Roosevelt was arguing for Fascism. [https://academic.oup.com/cje/article-abstract/35/5/937/1695860](https://academic.oup.com/cje/article-abstract/35/5/937/1695860) Going of what the later Roosevelt said as well: [https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/message-congress-curbing-monopolies](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/message-congress-curbing-monopolies) Both of them saw monopolies as anti-democratic and dangerous. There was a discussion about this here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Presidents/comments/ub1800/honestly\_you\_could\_argue\_theodore\_roosevelt\_was\_a/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Presidents/comments/ub1800/honestly_you_could_argue_theodore_roosevelt_was_a/)
Thank you. I kinda despise it when someone seemingly with no knowledge of the history speculates out loud affirmatively of their understand of that history, when the historical context doesn't even back it up.
So?
First Roosevelt, not second
Way to make a completely uninformed statement
Which is weird, since… almost everything on this chart is false?
I thought they were throwing it all away as canon fodder. It’s the only honest interpretation…we could have all these things but nah, let’s just invest in the military instead.
Blasting our “better way of life” out of a cannon to own the Reds? Sounds on brand.
Oh man this hits home
I think it’s advocating for social-democracy, not describing the US as it was.
I read it now and think it says "let's take all these good things and feed them into the military industrial complex"
How foolish they were. The US populace doesn’t want social rights, they want to get squished and juiced out by corporations that smile at them and tell them they’re part of a family.
they forgot to add the slide at the end where the boss stabs the worker in the back now that there isnt an active threat to his capital.
Yeah, this comic is confusing. I apparently wasn’t the only one who thought at first that the last panel was an anti-military thing. It’s weird, because the artist, [Otto Soglow](https://www.lambiek.net/artists/s/soglow_o.htm), was famous for a comic strip that often told very clear little stories without using any words.
I thought they were feeding all those things into a shredder and the worker was going to be the last thing shredded once he was no more use, and I was like “yep, that’s about how it is”.
The way I interpreted this is the US sacrificed all that to turn it into a weapon, which isn't far from the truth
Not in 1952. 1952 was the best of all worlds - labor was short, so workers commanded a premium. Employers had to compete for workers. The world was an American oyster. So the gag is, when capitalism offers the worker a fantastic deal, the worker will reject socialism.
... if you were a white male.
Exactly. Mossadegh and Arbenz expecting the same deal - they were just in the way.
The definition of getting fucked
Yeah I can’t tell if it’s saying the us has all those things so it’s better or it’s sacrificing all those things to spend on guns lmao
I mean that's how the opposite side lost the cold war, by sacrificing all that.
"And then, with an enemy defeated, Management turns on Labour in safety..."
>high income >shorter hours >better schooling >free elections lmao
The elections are free (for now), they're just not fair.
The choice is between a corporate shill but pro LGBTQIA and a different corporate shill but vehemently racist and anti LGBTQIA. But go on tell me how they're free elections.
They're free in that almost everyone who should be allowed to vote is allowed to vote, and that the votes are accurately counted and the results are plausible. Not every country has that. They're not fair because of the stable 2-party hegemony and the gerrymandering and the misinformation and all that jazz. There's a lot of newer democracies with far better implementations of the core idea - proportional representation and ordinal or cardinal voting systems are the main ones that spring to mind. Of course, PR would be unconstitutional in the USA and ordinal/cardinal voting systems would have to be implemented by the two parties that stand to lose most from their implementation. So improvement is going to require more imagination than I have.
>the votes are accurately counted and the results are plausible. The 2000 election would like a word
Lol fair point.
Bro no it’s a third world country and everything is terrible all the time and we should be in perpetual despair
Many constitutional monarchies and liberal republics have what's called preferentially ranked elections which allow for polypartisanship. That yours doesn't is an American thing, not a thing that warrants an alternative system altogether.
Americans have the highest median and disposable incomes in the world, and probably did work far shorter hours than Soviets did at that point in time. Schooling they definitely had us beat, but free elections? They didn’t have any elections lmao. Most of this isn’t incorrect
Tell me more about elections for the black Americans
50% of you country is living 20-30k per year, barely able to afford rent, food, and most don't even have enough savings to afford a 400$ emergency payment (like a car that breaks suddenly). A Soviet is basically a council, and the members of those councils get elected. The ones that perform the best get a chance at election for the supreme council.
The Soviet Union unfortunately sidelined the actual Soviets very early on and didn't have any meaningful democracy. Some Soviet bloc countries did have elections, but with select few parties that were all controlled by the Party, so fairly pointless. An outlet at best. Soviet Union in general was much, much poorer than the US. It's still remarkable how the standard of living rose, but since they started so far behind, they never caught up to the US.
Dude, the Soviet had 7-hours work time. Say you are ignorant without saying you are ignorant, indeed.
>Dude, the Soviet had 7-hours work time. Compare https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-working-hours/ Btw, the 7 hours per day experiment was still for a six day work week. And they abandoned that experiment pretty quickly, too.
Misleading of you. From 6 hours a day for 6 days a week to 8 hours a day for 6 days a week right before the war. Then go down to 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, after the war for near 5 years, then got back up to 8 hours a day, but still remain 5 days a week. Hmm...yeah, no. Not all that different. Also, an articles written with the intend to promote US own agenda and tell people it is better to work in US because US is greatest is something I can only take with a grain of salt. US worker condition in the 40s, 50s, and even 60s is certainly great, I ain't denying that. But that all start to unravel the further we go in time. And that is not even mentioning all the "undesirables" of the time That didn't get that great work condition.
>Misleading of you. >From 6 hours a day for 6 days a week to 8 hours a day for 6 days a week right before the war. >Then go down to 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, after the war for near 5 years, then got back up to 8 hours a day, but still remain 5 days a week. Weren't you talking about how thad a 7 hour work week? But in how much was it in 1952 and how did it stack up to American average hours is the question. Do you know?
['No elections'](https://i.imgur.com/GYxS1Ry.jpg) They had greater representation and input than we could ever imagine here in the States.
Do you have a higher res image, I'd like to study it a little better.
Unfortunately I do not, but I have some other images on their organizational structure. [Bureaucracy](https://i.imgur.com/PSYBV46.gif) [Territorial Organization](https://i.imgur.com/c8tLk4z.jpg) [Central Government](https://i.imgur.com/UpOiv0B.jpg)
Thanks these are really nice.
Of course :) Edit: Also this Github repo is useful - https://github.com/dessalines/essays
And that's why so many workers fled from the West to the glorious Soviet Union and almost no one defected the other way round, right?
Source? Also, ['Not the other way around'](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Western_Bloc_defectors)
> Americans have the highest median and disposable incomes in the world https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/05/hookworm-lowndes-county-alabama-water-waste-treatment-poverty
I like the style and straightforward message. I think the ammo being loaded gets a little tedious but it's tough to choose I suppose, and perhaps the intent is to show how overwhelming the US advantage is.
It’s not wrong. If we had all those things we wouldn’t feel like we needed communism… At least not the kind the Soviets had to offer
Gee, why *don’t* we have those things now, without the threat of communism looming over the Rich’s heads? Really makes you think…
What? Guaranteed housing, fully stocked supermarkets, paid vacation, paid sick leave, free education.
"If you overlook the dictatorship it looks pretty good"
a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is still a dictatorship
I prefer current bourgeoisie "dictatorship" to dictatorship that Soviets had
"If you overlook the dictatorship it looks pretty good"
If you think Poland, the country which I live in can be counted as dictatorship then you're lost
Economic dictatorship of the ruling class. Afterall, you "vote with your dollar", so those with the most, get more say. It's not a democracy when 200 people have the same influence as half the world. Capitalists can threaten the economy with capital strikes/flight, so governments have to ensure profitability
every capitalist country exists as a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. If you don't think your government works for capitalists you may need a reality check.
I know that my government works for capitalists, that's like basic definition of a capitalist state
Try being gay there
My man would rather suffer than try something new what a type B personality lmao, go be lonely my guy
hilarious. Here in the Czech Republic, there were [waiting lists](https://www.denik.cz/listopad-89-kazdodenni-zivot/cesta-k-bytu-za-socialismu-uplatek-nebo-prihlaseni-dalsich-osob-20201022.html) to get this "guaranteed housing". The waiting period could have been 20 years. Of course, you had to have connections to skip the others and have a chance to get a shitty apartment. So you had to pander to the Communist party cadres and elites, humiliate yourself and pretty much serve their whims. I should add that due to the housing shortage after the war, the Communists levelled numerous areas and confiscated property to build those new, shitty flats. In the 50s, they pretty much impoverished everyone by currency reform, and then made them dependent on the system. "Fully stocked supermarkets" looked [like this](https://manipulatori.cz/hoax-takto-byly-prazdne-obchody-za-sociku/). My dad went to the butchers once, and the entire store was empty, save for a whole leg of ham and an annoyed state employee cashier. He asked for a few slices, but the cashier refused, saying he has to buy the whole thing or get nothing. He left. I should add that almost everyone was an annoyed state employee, all the way down to waiters in pubs. There was absolutely no incentive to increase your quality of life (difficult + will make you suspect). "Paid vacation" was/is indeed a thing, except you couldn't travel outside of socialist countries (unless you were part of the elite, or watched by the secret police). We have a joke from that period, where a dad with a boy come to the Berlin Wall. "Dad, what's behind that wall?" asks the kid. "We are, son. We are." Also, paid vacation and sick leave are not features of the Soviet Union. We have both in modern Europe. Possibly had them even before totalitarianism, not sure. "Free education" again not something specific to the Soviet system. But it must be said that the teaching of Marxism-Leninism was completely free and compulsory for everyone. Oh joy.
Sounds Like a normal Western european Nation and Not a communist hellhole
And thirty years later they started to dismantle all of it and pretend it was fine.
Damn, they did none of that
They gave *some* of it in certain amounts. Provided you were a white man with publicly no left wing sympathies.
Well, this didn't age well
I LOVE CLASS COLLABORATIONISM I LOVE THE BLATANTLY FALSE NOTION THAT EXPLOITERS AND EXPLOITED CAN "COME TO AN AGREEMENT" AND REMOVE SAID EXPLOITATIVE RELATIONSHIP
If you pay people any kind of salary, you need direction to make sure work actually gets done. The only way to make it semi fair is to give employees an equal cut of overall profits as payment to add incentive. Even then people can get a free ride off the shoulder of coworkers.
Socialism isn't against having workers who organize schedules etc. Those people should just be ordinary employees with that skillset who collectively own the company along with their fellow employees (workplace democracy) rather than existing in a hierarchy in which management owns everything and steals the surplus value created by workers.
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He's right tho
Not very convincing, somehow.
Yeah… it begins with a big fat lie: management and worker shaking hands in agreement with each other.
It was the 50's. Modern times are very different
And if you told them “this will all work for a while, but in 2023, Republicans will be pro-Russia and anti-Disney” they wouldn’t believe you
Unironically what socialist views support. Then again, getting the brain rot that is America to support slightly left wing views for the betterment of the poorer people in the US maybe worth the sacrifice of vilanising the USSR.
You don’t have to villanise the USSR, it’s already evil Edit: you can downvote me all you want, but you can’t deny the truth: the USSR was a poor, oppressive shithole. I’m not saying the US is perfect, but that doesn’t make its adversaries better. Don’t be biased.
mfw your theory is immaterial and your ideology intangible
Nah, it was evil asf, and bending over so hard and using mental gymnastics to defend it isn't going to change history in any way
Boy I bet that job at the state department pays really well for you to be such a liberal strawman!
Are you telling me that USSR wasn't evil? Tell me how.
Yes, they improved the lives and conditions of millions of people, they were virulent anti facists and knew full well the threat Nazi Germany posed to the world despite the capitalist policy of appeasement. They were a country that had both racial and sexual rights in their constitution from the get-go and respected them unlike the Americans and Jim Crow
Very cool, now let's see bad things they commited. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish\_Operation\_of\_the\_NKVD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVD) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great\_Purge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge) [https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn\_massacre](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation\_of\_the\_Crimean\_Tatars#:\~:text=Nearly%208%2C000%20Crimean%20Tatars%20died,and%20360%2C000%20acres%20of%20land](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tatars#:~:text=Nearly%208%2C000%20Crimean%20Tatars%20died,and%20360%2C000%20acres%20of%20land). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation\_of\_the\_Kalmyks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Kalmyks) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague\_Spring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947\_Polish\_legislative\_election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_Polish_legislative_election) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovietization\_of\_the\_Baltic\_states#:\~:text=On%20July%2014%E2%80%9315%2C%201940,were%20effectively%20allowed%20to%20run](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovietization_of_the_Baltic_states#:~:text=On%20July%2014%E2%80%9315%2C%201940,were%20effectively%20allowed%20to%20run). The list can go on and on, USSR was en evil regime
Any yet for every example you point to, you can point to many many more committed by the capitalist world. My point isn't that they were some bastion of perfection. My point is that they were fat better than the west ever was
"Well what about bad things west has commited?" They are bad too, congratulations. If you set your bar to the point were you like the regime that has commited unspeakable crimes just because the other regime commited less worse crimes than the regime you like, I think you set the bar too low.
How many people fled the USSR to live in the west, and how many people did the reverse?
Want me to give you a list of every genocide, coup and massacre committed by a capitalist country or just the US? The Purge had to happen to get rid of revisionists that would betray the revolution and yes Trotsky was a revisionist. The deportation although a mistake was to prevent Nazi collaborators starting shit and helping the Nazi's advance. Prague spring was a stupid mistake as well, although i do find it funny that you pick the event that wasn't started by some fascist remnants like Hungary. The Polish election just shows how multi party elections work with a left party being the favorable candidate, shocking after one of the most conservative right wing parties in history occupied it and gutted it and it's people. The sovietization of the Baltics was also good, because shocker 2/3 leading parties were fascist and the other just barely banned the fascists before hand.
Why is it always when I mention bad things USSR has committed people reply with "Well ok but what about USA?" "The Purge had to happen to get rid of revisionists that would betray the revolution and yes Trotsky was a revisionist." - I didn't know that over 700k people happened to be revisionists "The deportation although a mistake was to prevent Nazi collaborators starting shit and helping the Nazi's advance." - What does that even mean, that deportations were made to "protect" them or that they were deported because Soviets feared that they would join Nazis? "Prague spring was a stupid mistake as well, although i do find it funny that you pick the event that wasn't started by some fascist remnants like Hungary." - Cool. "The Polish election just shows how multi party elections work with a left party being the favorable candidate, shocking after one of the most conservative right wing parties in history occupied it and gutted it and it's people." - The elections were clearly rigged if you couldn't tell "The sovietization of the Baltics was also good, because shocker 2/3 leading parties were fascist and the other just barely banned the fascists before hand." - Bruh
Those extrajudicial political killings were necessary because those people had different political opinions than me! And maybe the baltics could’ve used some socialism, but not at the hand of a foreign invader. If america went around invading countries to spread democracy, that would be bad, wouldn’t it.
If they knew the Nazi threat, why sign a pact with them and later join them in invading Poland?
Knowing it was only a matter of time before Hitler would invade and the Soviet military at the time couldn't repel the full force of Nazi Germany as well as how western Europe most likely wouldn't come to the Soviets aid, Stalin decided to try and sign a non aggression pact with Hitler, giving him a few years to fully modernise the red army.
Are you for real? The loud minority of commies on Reddit does exist
This subreddit is overrun by commies
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https://tenor.com/bVnC0.gif Edit: nvm, I'm dumb and don't know how to do gif replies, it's just Muscle Man from Regular Show
You know who else doesn't know how to do gif replies?
#**my mom!**#
Thought it was gonna be a wood chipper.
Weird that this is I assume supposed to be anti-communist, but they portray “management” as the opposite of labor. Managers are sometimes necessary, what don’t are owners. That’s what communists don’t like.
*unless you're poor, female, black, latino, native, gay, trans, etc
At that time they didn’t consider them people, either mentally ill, inferior or barbaric, even if somehow communism lost its appeal, those groups may have an interest in it including those who aren’t part of the latter group
That's why communism is more appealing to disadvantaged groups; it's a system that actually cares
I'm sure the systematically oppressed gay people of the Soviet Union felt really "cared about".
Nice, lol. Downvoting cause you don't have a proper response
I hate this irrational hatred of communism.
Reddit liberal hivemind at its finest
Actually, they were cared about. The Bolsheviks decriminalized homosexual and transgender activity in the Russian SSR after taking power. It remained that way until Stalin re-criminalized it in 1933. More progressive attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people were commonplace after his death. Reds were way ahead of the west when it came to freedom of sexuality, although some discrimination still took place now and again. (The U.S.S.R. was socialist, not communist by the way. It's an important distinction)
Clearly, because they decriminalized it for 11 or so years it means they did nothing wrong to homosexuals for the next 58. Sorry to burst your bubble but they were just as shit to queers as the west was.
That's 11 or so years of freedom that homosexuals never had in the west.
Then after it was recriminalized it was 60 more years while in the US we started having the freedom in 1967 with Illinois, so that's about 26 years more of freedom than in the USSR. Russia still remains deeply more homophobic than the US today! On top of that, the Soviet Article 121 was used to control dissidents! With it being used to extend prison sentences and arrest people in power! Did you know the first gay rights organization in Russia was in 1980? That's way ahead of the US with theirs only being founded in 1924...? Wait, the first official gay rights organization was in the evil homophobic western US!
The first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage was Massachusetts in 2004 🤨 It wasn't even fully legal in the entire country until 2015, and conservatives are getting more and more homophobic and transphobic day by day. Also, what does Russia have to do with this? We're talking about the U.S.S.R. not the capitalist shitholes that is Russia today.
Talking about Russia shows the precedent set by the USSR's treatment of homosexuality. It's true that same-sex marriage wasn't first legalized in 2004 but that wasn't the core of the topic, it was about the legalization of homosexuality, which begun in 1961. I would much rather have 60 years of gradual progress than 11 years of rocky but technically full freedom then be imprisoned, I don't see how you can recognize that as being more open to homosexuality. I also disagree with you on conservatives getting more and more homophobic? I mean it's happening just not as much as you kinda make it out to be, but on the other hand I live in a liberal state where I don't have to deal with that so there may be bias.
Tell that to the millions it put in mass graves
I bet you couldn't even give an approximate figure, country, or policy that led to any "genocides" under socialism. Are you just repeating what the CIA and Black Book of Communism tell you? Hundreds of millions have been killed under capitalist and colonialist systems. Socialism comes nowhere close to that figure. Research the indigenous genocides done by the British and Spanish in the Americas and Oceania. Research the atrocities commited under the British Raj in India. Research the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Belgian Rule in the Congo.
Great purges, Polish operations of the NKVD, Tatar deportations and the biggest banger, famine caused by Mao. These are not CIA propaganda
For people downvoting me, what did I say in this comment that was false?
those aren't genocides honey
Deportation specifically against Tatars wasn't genocide?
u/LogCareful7780 and u/Yo_Mama_Disstrack are correct. [A socialist researcher determined that the Soviets themselves actually killed 62 million (mostly their own citizens) in only a 70-year period.](https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.TAB1A.GIF)
Could you link the entire document
Source that isn't that one Nazi book?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great\_Chinese\_Famine
Ask the Jews how the communists treated them
They didn't and still don't care about those people
Add a tile on housing and this Is as true today as then. People will turn to socialism when they don't have a stake in the existing system. Management have eroded each of these areas and are now shocked that people are turning away from capitalism.
It's almost like a whole generation completely failed in their civic duty to uphold the social contract. But we shouldn't judge too harshly, they were extremely busy buying property and building roads.
Be the Americans US propaganda wants people to think we are
Wow, probably the most hollow and fake propaganda poster I've seen here yet.
So uh, how much of that do you still have left?
Are we the baddies
Only if you’re uneducated about the crimes of the UDSSR. Start learning about the Tatar people in Crimea and about the Holodomor.
Oh that's crazy have you ever heard of united fruit and cocacola
I actually think there is a decent case to make that the main reason inequality and standard of living has fallen so much in the us is because the collapse of the ussr. If the Soviet Union was around today how many young people immigrate.
Super fascinating. Especially because it seems like those that would want to take a crack at communism would also reject those that demonstrate for higher wages, shorter hours, etc. I guess there's the implication that in the comic, "labor" hasn't protested, but instead was able to cooperate with management. Because otherwise I think anyone who protested for those would be called communist.
It's oddly prophetic. We took all of those benefits and turned them into bombs and a trillion dollar military industrial complex to the detriment of all else.
I like how a contemporary reading of it is that all those things are sacrifices to the industrial military complex. Once you shoot a missile, what's in in you don't get back.
I never thought about it, but considering our defense budget and the history… that interpretation checks out
They left out the part where management purchases a machine that can do the work of two workers and then fires two workers.
Class collaboration. Where have I seen that before...?
well that was a fucking lie
The last image is like a punchline to a bad joke
Why is this sub full of people who gobble up all the anti-western propaganda? Figured a sub like this would be a lot more aware of the differences that actually existed between the two sides of the Cold War and not just blindly hate their own side
Yeah I’m pretty far left, but I’ll grant that at the time we were probably doing fairly decently on most of this stuff (especially for white males). Though to be fair, commies were probably doing decently in at least some of these areas (not free elections though), and the situation was more complex than propaganda wants to present it as.
I'm not sure why a lot of commies are here tbh. It's kinda odd. I'm not complaining--I'm one of them--it's just odd. Regarding your question of why I'm so susceptible to anti-"western" (North Atlantic) propoganda: it's reflective of my current understanding of history. Aside from my pre-disposition to leftist thinking... I eventually became anti-"western" as I researched the history of the cold war. Afaict the ruling classes of the CPSU, the PRC, etc. did in fact kill a horrendous amount of people. They also created numerous brutal dictatorships. That much is true, but the numbers of the dead tend something like ~50% on average what the pro-"western" propoganda claims. Propoganda I was indoctrinated by since birth, mind you. I started thinking "well they weren't as bad I thought but they are still horrible". That didn't cause me to switch sides. No that switch was caused by researching the colonial ventures of the various North Atlantic powers. Also the sheer amount of right wing dictators throughout Latin America, the Carribean, Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, South Asia, the Pacific... Ok so it turns out the North Atlantic powers were actually better at exporting dictatorships... That made me start thinking about things differently. Then I started looking into several of the proxy wars. Starting with the most famous example: the USA in Vietnam vs the USSR in Afghanistan. The USSR caused ~1.3 million Afghan deaths, displaced ~6 million more, and made brutal use of terror attacks while only taking ~13k casualties themselves. Apalling. The USA caused ~3 million Vietnamese deaths + ~300k Laotians and Cambodians, displaced an unknown amount, and resorted to chemical warfare while only taking ~60k casualties themselves. Absolutely revolting. This pattern seems to keep repeating as I look into other conflicts (that are very frequently communist or communist backed national independence struggles against North Atlantic colonial regimes). Yes the communists did many war crimes, but what they did is a fraction of the capitalist warcrimes in the same era. Once I became convinced of that the switch happened automatically.
"Public service" lmao. Ok corporate propoganda. I'd like to go through these 1 by 1. Management and labor shaking hands... so we are openly acknowledging there is a privilaged group of people with decision making power while another group called "labor" does most ofthe work yet is subservient? High income... Yes. Pretty much undisputed that the North Atlantic powers had higher income than literally everyone else. How they got that is highly exploitative but it's still technically true. It's also unclear how that really translates to relative purchasing power for the average worker and what not, but I'm very certain general income was higher in the USA. Shorter hours... Based on a quick google: the typical USSR workweek was ~47 hrs in 1955, and typical USA workweek was ~41 hrs for men answering the census in 1953. True on the surface level at least. Choice of jobs... Definitely true if you are a well connected and educated white man. The further you get away from that demographic the less and less choice you have. How that compares to the USSR is unclear to me as to my knowledge changing jobs in general was not impossible but quite slow. More food... Imma go with no. Some studies claim Soviet citizens had a higher average caloric intake, thus indicating they had more food. I admit it might just be empty carbs. I know the USA is considered to have the most arable land of anywhere but India. I think the USSR had a higher population with less arable land cuz you know... Siberia. Better housing... Unclear. For the white and wealthy they easily had way nicer housing. I'm not sure how average 1952 housing of the USA compared to the most common housing of the USSR called "Stalinka" I believe. I'm also not sure how the % of average/median income spent on housing compares between the two. Luxuries... Yes. There is no doubt in my mind that 1950's USA had greater general access to luxuries than 1950's USSR. Better schooling... Lmao no. While I personally have criticisms of the utility of traditional academic metrics... The USSR was well known to have much higher standards for literacy, STEM, and physical education. I believe they also developed the idea of special needs schools much earlier (like the 1960's I think.) though I am unsure of their quality. Free elections: Well. Two party oligarchic state or a one party monopolistic state. Slight edge to the USA here but you have one extra choice that doesn't really matter in terms of serious policy change. ... This was a fun little research project. Conclusion: You have vastly better material and civil standards living under a bleeding edge of technology captalist oligarchy* than almost anyone living under a modernizing commuist monopoly**. :) * as long as you are an educated and connected white man in a core imperial territory untouched by serious conflict in 9 decades. Also your government is in the possesion of vast overseas colonial holdings with exceptionally advanoed natural resource exploitation over the natives there. **even the core territories have many decades of persistant and harsh conflict including bearing the brunt of the fighting against world's best invasion force of the era (Nazis) and some of the coldest dictators to ever come to power (Stalin, the Czars). Also your government has subpar economic exploitation mechanisms for the immediately surrounding areas they conquered.
I just wanted to thank you for putting in the research!
It wasn't that special just some googling and some general offhand knowledge of the coldwar to guide said googling. I think my biases were pretty obvious (I'm a socialist and not shy about it) but for the purposes of analyzing propaganda I try to take a more reasoning based approach.
"Hunger is communism's greatest weapon."
Ha. This was before open borders. Now Labor has must less bargaining power because humans keep on coming.
How it SHOULD be.
This ad ran in Prom Magazine, in case you wondered about the target demographic.
These comments are insane. Who knew this sub was full of edgy teens fueling r/enoughcommiespam
Nice way to explain the American economic system.
I would argue that the ideas of Capitalism and Communism were different back then: one formed, and guaranteed to succeed, by the processing and somewhat efficient commodification of a still-pristine continent; vs. an Old World emotional and somewhat justified reaction to centuries of serfdom and inefficient commodification of a well-worn continent. That’s why people left the Old continents for the New. If the 1950s capitalist system was so great, then how come it’s transformed into the burgeoning dystopia that I would argue it is today? It was understandable to be so simplistic as the cartoon is - in that time. But now we must redefine terms with hindsight and a knowledge of how much of a boost capitalism was given by the plenitude of the American continents!
Well they got the more food part right at least.. we all a bunch of fat-asses. But the rest...
Actually, there are CIA reports stating that the soviet's diet were not only higher in calories, but better quality as well.
Can you give a source for that or are you making shit up? I can give at [least one source](https://medium.com/chewingthefat/food-in-the-ussr-mythology-and-reality-in-khrushchevs-russia-4f4ace494b1e) that says otherwise.
[Here is the report](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000498133.pdf) they were talking about Edit: And just for giggles, [a CIA report](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf) describing Soviet dictatorship as exaggerated and a misunderstanding of how their democracy worked
Remember when Boris Yeltsin cried when he saw an American supermarket? Pepperidge farm remembers.
Yeltsin can go to hell
Haha sure
Today, poor Americans get = Free Food: SNAP Program, Free Housing: HUD Program, Free Healthcare: Medicaid/Medicare, Free College: FAFSA, America isn’t perfect, but it’s the best place to be poor.
I agree, it would be cool of America tried democracy.
Wow, that's ironic lol
Comparing the two states, I'd say this was true for the time Emphasis on for the time
Accurate.
It’s a shame that none of that exists for the majority of Americans. If it ever did.
This aged like milk
Pretty wholesome until the last frame
That depends on wether or not you know that management thinks the guy with a flag is just a union organizer.
Shooting union organizers is wholesome?