4 ms·
> the workers stole from the factory, all the time, at every level. I think the context is important. These were people in poverty, in an extremely mismanaged
by dmos62 5mo ago
> the workers stole from the factory, all the time, at every level.
I think the context is important. These were people in poverty, in an extremely mismanaged society. You could get very little from actual shops. Most things would have to be bartered for. Stealing from the state accounted for a very important part of peoples' sustenance. My grandfather would try to explain it like this: even if you had money, there wasn't anything to buy. In that sense, even the factory managers were poor. Sarah C. M. Paine says that, in terms of buying power, the First Secretary of USSR's wife was poorer than an average American middle-class wife.
- pjc50 5mo agoYes. Hence the stories of people (Brezhnev?) being astonished and baffled at simply walking into an American supermarket. Of course, one reason why there wasn't much on the shelves was it had been already stolen by other people closer to the source ... (something of a generic problem of low trust societies, not specific to Communism. I think we sometimes don't appreciate how valuable a high trust society is to us in the West, which is why people trying to destroy it by looting from the top are particularly dangerous: the rot spreads from the top)
- mft_ 5mo agoDoes the stealing come from the low-trust society, or does the societal situation drive people to theft, which we then label ‘low-trust’?
- zorked 5mo agoIf there are extremely poor, high-trust societies, then trust is its own variable. If not, then it's a post-hoc explanation.
- mft_ 5mo agoI suspect it's an imperfect correlation. Other factors like level of income inequality, efficacy/harshness of law enforcement, societal cohesion, would likely influence.
- jsiepkes 5mo ago> Yes. Hence the stories of people (Brezhnev?) being astonished and baffled at simply walking into an American supermarket. Way later even; It was Yeltsin who wandered (it was unplanned) into a grocery store in Texas [1]. [1] https://www.cato.org/blog/happy-yeltsin-supermarket-day-0 https://www.cato.org/blog/happy-yeltsin-supermarket-day-0
- Scroll_Swe 5mo agoAnd still people on this very site and especially on Reddit and TikTok want communism.
- dmos62 5mo agoDo they? I've not seen that.
- Scroll_Swe 5mo agoHasan & Mandani is bigger than ever
- mittensc 5mo agocommunism means taking everything from regular people to give to the elite.
- tharkun__ 5mo agoFunnily enough capitalism is trying to do the exact same thing! I guess communism was more efficient at doing it! (bit tongue in cheek of course - I guess capitalism is better at pretending/leaving enough scraps for the masses so they don't notice as much)
- glacier9147 5mo agoCapitalism is just really good at telling people the reason they are poor is because they just don't work as hard as the elites
- Scroll_Swe 5mo agoYet people want to live in capitalist countries the most. Curious.
- 5mo ago