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People were paid for work and you'd buy groceries with money.
by koverda 7y ago
People were paid for work and you'd buy groceries with money.
- asdf21 7y agoSo... capitalism?
- rrssh 7y agoSocialism, it’s in the country name.
- vkou 7y agoA transition state towards communism. That's what the government officially called it. The country spent 74 years in that 'transition' state. It had little in common with the socialist democracies of Europe, nothing in common with the communist proscriptions of Marx, and some in common with the much maligned state capitalism of today's China.
- inawarminister 7y agoYes. Real communism have never been tried. Perhaps impossible to try. We'd be better off brainstorming a new, 21st century solution to the excess of capitalism, rather than relying on the industrial past.
- anoncake 7y ago> We'd be better off brainstorming a new, 21st century solution to the excess of capitalism, rather than relying on the industrial past. That sounds like something a socialist would say: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/socialism-as-a-set-of-principles https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/socialism-as-a-set-of...
- anoncake 7y agoDemocratic People's Republic of North Korea
- legitster 7y agoWhat makes communism communism is central planning. Money becomes more of a voucher than a measure of value.
- claudiawerner 7y agoIt depends who you're talking to. If you're talking about what the founders of modern Communist theory thought Communism is then you're incorrect; Marx sets out in Capital specifically what he considers to be wrong with money and wage labour in general - its genesis in commodity exchange, as Engels said, money is contained "in embryo" in the fact of commodity exchange. The USSR, as a matter of fact, operated under mostly capitalist conditions, capitalism distinguished by: * The predominance of wage labour in the economy * The goal of economic activity as the accumulation of capital * Private ownership of means of production (this is the "mostly" part - the USSR did not have much private ownership, which sets it apart from other capitalisms, but Marx was careful to point out that even under simple "public ownership", society becomes a "general capitalist") In short: if there is wage labour, it is most definitely not "Communist". Money in its function as money in the circuit of capital, that is, C-M-C', remains money, not merely a symbolic "voucher". Socialists have proposed the idea of non-exchangable labour vouchers, but this is a far cry from real money which was what the USSR had. The ruble was just as much money as the dollar.
- vkou 7y agoNit - the goal of economic activity in the USSR was not entirely the accumulation of capital - it was production of what were considered necessary goods. Televisions, automobiles, bombs, tanks, that sort of thing. This is, in some ways different from economic activity for the purpose of making more money (Which, in addition to producing things like television, automobiles, bombs, and tanks, also ends up producing things like advertising.)
- jhbadger 7y agoThere was certainly advertising in the USSR and other Eastern Bloc countries. Here's an article describing how bizarre it was: https://www.rbth.com/blogs/continental_drift/2017/05/18/soviet-spiel-why-ussr-produced-ads-non-existing-products-765399 https://www.rbth.com/blogs/continental_drift/2017/05/18/sovi...
- c22 7y agoIn capitalism many people get paid without work (they get paid for having capital).
- asdf21 7y agoCan you not own any real estate period in Communism?
- anoncake 7y agoThat obviously depends on the communist you ask. I don't think many would support privately owned real estate – that is, land you own but don't use it yourself but rent it out or use wage labor to do something with it. Personal property – property you use yourself like a house you live in – is a different matter.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago土地是国家的。
- RmDen 7y agoYes.. like the joke goes.... The factory worker says: ‘They pretend to pay us an honest wage and we pretend to do an honest day’s work.’”
- razius 7y agoInteresting, we had sorta the same saying in romanian, "they pretend do pay us, we pretend to work".