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Yeah, the communists have destroyed this in the eastern part of Europe nearly perfectly EDIT: Why am I getting downvoted for a factual, accepted, well research

Yeah, the communists have destroyed this in the eastern part of Europe nearly perfectly EDIT: Why am I getting downvoted for a factual, accepted, well researched and well known statement?

dvh 8y ago
Coming from commie part of Europe I feel ya. I've recently saw documentary about Japanese family that makes same product for third generation, this would not be possible here as communists didn't allowed private business, people get separated from soil during collectivization and the link got broken. It will take many years to get restored, if ever...
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  If you have a family running a bakery, then you have a communist revolution, surely you still want the family to run the bakery? Under federal planning, for example, you just now supply them without charge and receive the needed goods; ensuring the family have what they need. It doesn't seem it's a necessity of communism, rather a specific thing that happened in this case?
  - badpun 8y ago
    Communist’s perhaps biggest point was that the means of production (a bakery in this case) should belong to „the people”, which in practice meant the state.
    - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
      Yes, perhaps I wasn't clear; you still need people in the bakery - or a bakery - to make the bread, assuming you want people to eat. So, the best people to do it are those with experience as bakers. There seems no reason why in short term you wouldn't use the existing means of production, and the existing skilled people. Obviously the ownership changes. Your last clause, is the kicker, just as it is now in Western Democracies, the State is supposed to be "the people" here now too, but in both cases it instead appears to be some small cadre of an in-group instead. However, none of that seems particularly pertinent to whether you keep using a bakery and the bakers you have when you transition from private to collective ownership. Consider an example, Woolworths - a general store in UK and elsewhere - collapsed and in some locations the workers bought it for themselves to run as a collective. The same people did the same jobs, largely, immediately after the change just that the profits [and liabilities] were shared amongst them instead of belonging only to the owners.
      - TomMarius 8y ago
        > So, the best people to do it are those with experience as bakers. There seems no reason why in short term you wouldn't use the existing means of production, and the existing skilled people. That is not what happened. What happened is that Stalin ordered to kill them. It was paranoia on top of other things (breaking the nation was not ment just as a side effect). They reorganized the society very quickly once they could start organizing people into agricultural communes (JZD in Czech) and steal everything (literally) from them in the process. Of course we know how well it worked.
ricardobeat 8y ago
Wording. Your comment feels more like vitriol than fact statement, regardless of being correct. It’s an interesting point. Is there a perceptible difference for Berliners between E/W shop types?
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >Your comment feels more like vitriol than fact statement, regardless of being correct. It's just about the shortest, blandest way to make that statement. That it's borderline "vitriol" or considered offensive to say X did Y when that is fact (or as close to fact as you can get with a subjective matter like this, nobody is going to say that communism was good for Eastern Europe) says something about culture here in 2019.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    > That it's borderline "vitriol" or considered offensive says something about culture here in 2019. I'm literally writing this comment from mobile while standing in a crowd near anti-communist protest in Prague. I can't really wrap my mind around this culture change.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      It makes no sense. That's why I'm calling attention to the absurdity of it.
    - pjc50 8y ago
      People are very tired of the mildest bit of social democrat market intervention being denounced as "communism". Like "Nazi" it's a word that has been overused into uselessness, so it gets reflexively downvoted. Besides, communism in the original sense is realistically dead. The Berlin Wall has been down for almost 30 years. So people complaining about it in the present come across as McCarthyite. (I think your original comment would have gone down better if it had been clearer about the past tense - that communism did destroy a lot of small businesses, but this is not an ongoing thing)
simongray 8y ago
It doesn't seem that factual, accepted and well-researched when this article directly contradicts your statement: > In such a skewed retail landscape, many small shops found they could compete by specialising in goods neglected by generalist department stores, especially since retail space was cheap and in plentiful supply behind the Iron Curtain. So while you may be right, you may also be wrong. Maybe it's not as black&white as you make it out to be.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  I think you are misunderstanding the article. Going to the east, these specialised shops directed by the communists, put in place of previous, private ones, have in no way anything to do with the small family businesses you're trying to compare them with. They often literally shot the whole owner family. Everything of this is documented and taught in primary schools all around eastern Europe. All the small businesses in Prague city centre were destroyed, today it's dominated by various minishops with Russian matrioshkas and other scam shit and Vietnamese (they rent it, not their fault) marketplaces selling fake weed and overpriced chips, drinks and cola, and of course by scam exchange places. This used to be space full of small coffee shops, restaurants, specialised family businesses etc in the 1920's. My home city Hradec Kralove (100k citizens) has nearly completely empty wider city centre - since the revolution, no one even wants to do business there. All small business owners were killed or killed by proxy (uranium mines, all of this uranium was then "given" to/taken by the Russians for free), their property confiscated and never recovered (to whom anyways).
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    Do you, or does anyone, know enough to give an example of a specialist shop in the East; a button seller, say; that existed prior to the Berlin Wall, that was "destroyed" and what system took it's place to fill the particular need? Like, people still needed fabric and buttons?? Did all single goods-type shops close, like butchers, bakers, etc.. How was supply managed? Presumably those killed refused to give up ownership to the state?
    - 8y ago
fyfy18 8y ago
In my post-Soviet city that doesn't seem to be the case. I know of a shop that just sells car batteries - literally nothing else. They have maybe 30 products in stock, and can order it if you need something else. I don't think they have a web store.

Yeah, the communists have destroyed this in the eastern part of Europe nearly perfectly EDIT: Why am I getting downvoted for a factual, accepted, well researched and well known statement?

dvh 8y ago

Coming from commie part of Europe I feel ya. I've recently saw documentary about Japanese family that makes same product for third generation, this would not be possible here as communists didn't allowed private business, people get separated from soil during collectivization and the link got broken. It will take many years to get restored, if ever...

pbhjpbhj 8y ago
If you have a family running a bakery, then you have a communist revolution, surely you still want the family to run the bakery? Under federal planning, for example, you just now supply them without charge and receive the needed goods; ensuring the family have what they need. It doesn't seem it's a necessity of communism, rather a specific thing that happened in this case?
- badpun 8y ago
  Communist’s perhaps biggest point was that the means of production (a bakery in this case) should belong to „the people”, which in practice meant the state.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    Yes, perhaps I wasn't clear; you still need people in the bakery - or a bakery - to make the bread, assuming you want people to eat. So, the best people to do it are those with experience as bakers. There seems no reason why in short term you wouldn't use the existing means of production, and the existing skilled people. Obviously the ownership changes. Your last clause, is the kicker, just as it is now in Western Democracies, the State is supposed to be "the people" here now too, but in both cases it instead appears to be some small cadre of an in-group instead. However, none of that seems particularly pertinent to whether you keep using a bakery and the bakers you have when you transition from private to collective ownership. Consider an example, Woolworths - a general store in UK and elsewhere - collapsed and in some locations the workers bought it for themselves to run as a collective. The same people did the same jobs, largely, immediately after the change just that the profits [and liabilities] were shared amongst them instead of belonging only to the owners.
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      > So, the best people to do it are those with experience as bakers. There seems no reason why in short term you wouldn't use the existing means of production, and the existing skilled people. That is not what happened. What happened is that Stalin ordered to kill them. It was paranoia on top of other things (breaking the nation was not ment just as a side effect). They reorganized the society very quickly once they could start organizing people into agricultural communes (JZD in Czech) and steal everything (literally) from them in the process. Of course we know how well it worked.

ricardobeat 8y ago

Wording. Your comment feels more like vitriol than fact statement, regardless of being correct. It’s an interesting point. Is there a perceptible difference for Berliners between E/W shop types?

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>Your comment feels more like vitriol than fact statement, regardless of being correct. It's just about the shortest, blandest way to make that statement. That it's borderline "vitriol" or considered offensive to say X did Y when that is fact (or as close to fact as you can get with a subjective matter like this, nobody is going to say that communism was good for Eastern Europe) says something about culture here in 2019.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  > That it's borderline "vitriol" or considered offensive says something about culture here in 2019. I'm literally writing this comment from mobile while standing in a crowd near anti-communist protest in Prague. I can't really wrap my mind around this culture change.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    It makes no sense. That's why I'm calling attention to the absurdity of it.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    People are very tired of the mildest bit of social democrat market intervention being denounced as "communism". Like "Nazi" it's a word that has been overused into uselessness, so it gets reflexively downvoted. Besides, communism in the original sense is realistically dead. The Berlin Wall has been down for almost 30 years. So people complaining about it in the present come across as McCarthyite. (I think your original comment would have gone down better if it had been clearer about the past tense - that communism did destroy a lot of small businesses, but this is not an ongoing thing)

simongray 8y ago

It doesn't seem that factual, accepted and well-researched when this article directly contradicts your statement: > In such a skewed retail landscape, many small shops found they could compete by specialising in goods neglected by generalist department stores, especially since retail space was cheap and in plentiful supply behind the Iron Curtain. So while you may be right, you may also be wrong. Maybe it's not as black&white as you make it out to be.

TomMarius 8y ago
I think you are misunderstanding the article. Going to the east, these specialised shops directed by the communists, put in place of previous, private ones, have in no way anything to do with the small family businesses you're trying to compare them with. They often literally shot the whole owner family. Everything of this is documented and taught in primary schools all around eastern Europe. All the small businesses in Prague city centre were destroyed, today it's dominated by various minishops with Russian matrioshkas and other scam shit and Vietnamese (they rent it, not their fault) marketplaces selling fake weed and overpriced chips, drinks and cola, and of course by scam exchange places. This used to be space full of small coffee shops, restaurants, specialised family businesses etc in the 1920's. My home city Hradec Kralove (100k citizens) has nearly completely empty wider city centre - since the revolution, no one even wants to do business there. All small business owners were killed or killed by proxy (uranium mines, all of this uranium was then "given" to/taken by the Russians for free), their property confiscated and never recovered (to whom anyways).
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  Do you, or does anyone, know enough to give an example of a specialist shop in the East; a button seller, say; that existed prior to the Berlin Wall, that was "destroyed" and what system took it's place to fill the particular need? Like, people still needed fabric and buttons?? Did all single goods-type shops close, like butchers, bakers, etc.. How was supply managed? Presumably those killed refused to give up ownership to the state?
  - 8y ago

fyfy18 8y ago

In my post-Soviet city that doesn't seem to be the case. I know of a shop that just sells car batteries - literally nothing else. They have maybe 30 products in stock, and can order it if you need something else. I don't think they have a web store.