Keep in mind, about that line where he says they made DDR the largest prison on Earth, just to keep in perspective: the USA, since 1970, has quintupled its incarcerated population, currently making up about 1/5 of the world’s prison population.
i cant with this people, they are the real spoiled ones taking everything they got in socialist states for granted and complain how hard they had it: “uh it was so hard, we did not have oranges? Can you believe that??? how can a society possibly function without oranges, literally 1984” I give you the choice:
A: live in a society where human rights like housing, food and clothing are treated as such and the vast majority of peoples needs are met (no oranges)
or
B: live in a society where you need to pay for your human rights and where only the rich can carefree finance their lives without sinking in unpayable debt while homeless people roam the streets and get beaten by the police for being poor (with oranges)
Apparently the “2/3 society” was a hotly discussed topic in the late GDR, because liberals went that “if only 2/3 of the society lives well at the expense of getting everything to run well, then it’s worth pursuing.”
They got what they wanted.
A nationalistic “the state was supposed to take care of me, but I am unhappy. This is the lazy people’s fault” was very popular in the 80s - east AND west.
I’ve got the second one now and I still can’t afford fresh oranges usually smh
one of the great baffling issues of the later soviet union was how little people appreciated things like safety nets, housing, security in old age. And how much people would really like the new phone
i mean you had all of capitalism pumping out propaganda for decades.
The section in Blackshirts and Reds where he details what it was like for people in former Soviet countries when they realized they had been duped by capitalist propaganda and lost all those things they took for granted was really fucking sad
well the fall of the soviet union was really sad
Hot take: I agree
“A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic” -J. V. Džugašvili
Stasi also forced you to do this
Knowing
cultists, the thought of women enjoying sex outside of transactional obligations is intimidating to them and makes them uneasy.
“Communism bad because no oranges and bananas!”
That’s literally the pop-history definition here why the gdr failed because of muh bananas, jeans and coffee.
How long does something have to exist before it’s not considered a failure? Or is everything a failure and always was if it collapsed eventually?
Only socialism. Anything else isn’t.
It’s the history written by the labor aristocrats and petite bourgeoisie who thought they’d make out better under capitalism than socialism. It ignores the many millions of working class individuals who suffered and died and who would gladly take security and safety over fucking oranges. But we never hear their stories in the west. We only hear from businessmen, journalists, academics etc who decry “no oranges” and ignore the suffering of the masses.
man, screw bananas. if we can’t have bananas without absolutely screwing over Guatemala or Colombia or whoever, we just shouldn’t have them.
Unless I’m missing something, I don’t see why there has to be a dichotomy. In a communist world, no reason we couldn’t fairly compensate workers and manage the environment for growing bananas.
…waited 10–12 years for a car and it wasn’t cheap…
Meanwhile, in capitalism, cars are so cheap that so many car ‘owners’ get into a debt that lasts longer than the car. Some of them even find out that after weeks or months of payments, their credit application can be refused and the car can still be taken off them.
Yeah that part confused the hell out of me. Cars over here can cost more than a small house.
Hey speaking of apartments, this bozo leaves out what happened to GDR citizens immediately after reunification. Anyone in the FRG could make a claim on property in the East that was “taken” from them or their ancestors in the process of Germany being divided. At one point, over half of all residential dwellings in the East were claimed by leeches in the West. Even though a lot of claims didn’t end in evictions, so many GDR citizens had to live under the threat of being made homeless (and many were).
You had to wait for a car but it’s not like in the US where a car is a mandatory (and incredibly expensive) requirement to live. They had public transport. And part of the reason they had to wait so long (and also why bananas et al were hard to come by) is that the capitalist world tried to strangle the economies of the Eastern Bloc as much as possible.
Also, the Stasi didn’t come after you just for complaining about the government. Lots of people complained. They came after you if they suspected you were on CIA or BRD payroll, or were a capitalist wrecker, or a fash, etc. Good faith complaints were fine. The book I cite in the source below has an opinion poll that was made shortly after reunification. Former GDR citizens responded to what they liked the least about life in the GDR, and the Stasi were pretty low on the list. Travel limitations were clearly #1 IIRC, but that can’t be blamed entirely on the GDR as the capitalist west also placed restrictions on the travel of GDR citizens.
Source: Stasi State or Socialist Paradise. Haven’t read any Victor Grossman but he’s pretty great on this subject, too.
You had to wait for a car but it’s not like in the US where a car is a mandatory (and incredibly expensive) requirement to live
In capitalist Singapore right now there is a $10,000 tax on owning a car and not many people do for this reason (on the grounds that Singapore’s infrastructure couldn’t work if it had to accomodate everyone in the city having a car)
That seems cool and good if people can work without a car anyway
Yeah from what the guy was telling me they have pretty extensive public transport. Land there is just too expensive to waste on car parks
