this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2024
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That's what it means to have a democracy for the ruling class.
How is this different from any other regime that ever existed?
They rule, we work. Laws are for the peasants anyway.
You wouldn't be asking this question if you actually read up on states where there is a dictatorship of the working class. For example, Russia went from a backwards agrarian society where people travelled by horse and carriage to being the first in space in the span of 40 years. Russia showed incredible growth after the revolution that surpassed the rest of the world:
USSR provided free education to all citizens resulting in literacy rising from 33% to 99.9%:
USSR doubled life expectancy in just 20 years. A newborn child in 1926-27 had a life expectancy of 44.4 years, up from 32.3 years thirty years before. In 1958-59 the life expectancy for newborns went up to 68.6 years. the Semashko system of the USSR increased lifespan by 50% in 20 years. By the 1960's, lifespans in the USSR were comparable to those in the USA:
Quality of nutrition improved after the Soviet revolution, and the last time USSR had a famine was in 1940s. CIA data suggests they ate just as much as Americans after WW2 peroid while having better nutrition:
USSR moved from 58.5-hour work weeks to 41.6 hour work weeks (-0.36 h/yr) between 1913 and 1960:
USSR averaged 22 days of paid leave in 1986 while USA averaged 7.6 in 1996:
In 1987, people in the USSR could retire with pension at 55 (female) and 60 (male) while receiving 50% of their wages at a at minimum. Meanwhile, in USA the average retirement age was 62-67 and the average (not median) retiree household in the USA could expect $48k/yr which comes out to 65% of the 74k average (not median) household income in 2016:
GDP took off after socialism was established and then collapsed with the reintroduction of capitalism:
The Soviet Union had the highest physician/patient ratio in the world. USSR had 42 doctors per 10,000 population compared to 24 in Denmark and Sweden, and 19 in US:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0735675784900482 (sci-hub for access)
USSR defeated a smallpox epidemic in a matter of 19 days https://www.rbth.com/history/331857-how-ussr-defeated-black-smallpox
The Social Consequences of Soviet Immunization Policies https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/1997-812-03g-Hoch.pdf
Professor of Economic History, Robert C. Allen, concludes in his study without the 1917 revolution is directly responsible for rapid growth that made the achievements listed above possilbe:
Study demonstrating the steady increase in quality of life during the Soviet period (including under Stalin). Includes the fact that Soviet life expectancy grew faster than any other nation recorded at the time:
A large study using world bank data analyzing the quality of life in Capitalist vs Socialist countries and finds overwhelmingly at similar levels of development with socialism bringing better quality of life:
This study compared capitalist and socialist countries in measures of the physical quality of life (PQL), taking into account the level of economic development.
This study shows that unprecedented mortality crisis struck Eastern Europe during the 1990s, causing around 7 million excess deaths. The first quantitative analysis of the association between deindustrialization and mortality in Eastern Europe.
So, how do people who lived under communism feel now that they got a taste of capitalism?
Adult mortality increased enormously in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union when the Soviet system collapsed 30 years ago. https://archive.ph/9Z12u
Former Soviet Countries See More Harm From Breakup https://news.gallup.com/poll/166538/former-soviet-countries-harm-breakup.aspx
The Free market paradise goes East chapters in Blackshirts and Reds details some more results of the transition to capitalism.
You can give exactly the same data about Germany and what, does it make communism any better in this context? Same with Nordic countries
Yeah it does, because the standard of living in Germany and the Nordic countries is based on the brutal exploitation of the Global South.
Just compare West "capitalistic" Germany and communist East Germany
Good idea
Western Germany regions are still paying to the east one "solidarity tax" to help with the post socialist past underdevelopment. Is it also illusion?
The illusion is that transition to capitalism actually improved the lives of the majority.
Nah, eastern germany regions stay exactly where they were - underdeveloped. Even after more than 20 years, population of the east moves to west Germany causing economic havoc to those regions. On paper you can claim almost everything
the fantasy land you inhabit sounds fascinating
Not more utopian than your beloved USSR
one of us actually lived in USSR, but do tell me what it was really like
Yes, one part in the soviet Ukraine, second part in socialist Poland. Which party of my family missed the best of communism? [FULL IRONY MODE]
Do tell what horrors your family lived through. I bet your family was subjected to terrible things like free education, housing, healthcare, and guaranteed retirement. Must've been absolutely terrible for them.
Free Healthcare as long as you manage to survive the queues and not to die in between. Same with everything. Good propaganda bloke, people kept waiting for own flat 30 years and even after that you didn't get it without connections. My parents weren't in the party, the all bought the flat in that bad capitalism.
Not mentioning my father beaten down by prison guards because taking part in students protests. So called "path of health"
lmfao of course your family were anticommunist scumbags
Whole country was anticommunist scumbags? 68, 80, 82? People were protesting because high prices of groceries, basic products, lack of flats, no work opportunities for educated people. You have no slightest idea what you're saying. My father and mother were protesting as students, but my father's father was in the party, director of the cheese factory and even that fact didn't protect my father. You're really commie scumbag for advocating violence for the protesting people. Allegedly protesting and human rights were guaranteed in those communist countries constitutions
Pretty much every poll shows that majority of people were perfectly fine living in USSR, and polls show that majorities of people who lived through the collapse agree that life was better during Soviet times. But there will always be people like your family. People like your father were a cancer destroying the society.
Polls signed by USSR officials. Yes. you're laughable. Like 100% support like in North Korea otherwise gulag
If you call the majority of the country cancer, it's a clear sign you're commie scumbag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law_in_Poland in 1979 - 81. Whole country, students, workers, artisans were protesting against just lack of basic goods, cheap flats and no job opportunities and you call it "cancer". You summed up your political movement well.
Plenty of polls were done after USSR fell and scumbags who took power tried to prove how terrible it was. The majority of the USSR never shared your sick views. Meanwhile, it's absolutely hilarious how you pretend your capitalist paradise has no repression while UK jails people for tweets and French police brutally assaults protesters every single day. And of course, Poland is going back to its fascist roots now that your ilk is in charge. You deserve everything that's coming to you.