“communist” LOL
the soviet union was not communist
The Soviet Union was a socialist country run by a communist party.
It was a socialist state - on the way to communism atleast until khruschev took power
You lot really believe anything you’re told, Jesus Christ you’re all hopeless.
When’s China gonna get rid of it’s power?
China doesn’t need to “get rid of its power,” because the “it” in question is the proletariat.
For me personally I dont even consider china socialist.
The working classes control the state and public ownership is the principal aspect of its economy. Why would it not be recognized as socialist?
When’s China gonna get rid of it’s power?
This is the result of someone who has not once even grazed the same room as someone engaging with theory not to mind engaging with it themselves trying to have a gotcha moment.
What are you talking about getting rid of “power” that is absolutely 100% not the communist stance. Communists don’t even advocate for the abolition of government but for the withering of the state which is a separate apparatus that exists fused with the government in class society.
socialist state where we all starve whilst beria rapes young girls and drinks champagne with stalin
source: Dr. Epstien Netanyahu, tel aviv research center
WHY are supposed anarchists always so pro-capitalist and pro-fascist??
Every time you lot will listen fiercely to what Amerika has to say about its enemies and you religiously believe it hard. Why?
Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: left unityThat’s not a rule here. Don’t waste our time reporting things that aren’t breaking any rules.
because two things can be bad at the same time
The forever-relevant:
Blindly? Something doesn’t get less true if a fascist says it or if an alligator or a pig or a bird or ANYTHING else says it
saying that rape is bad is now a fascist take apparently
Rape is good when comrades do it!
The only source for this about Beria is a guy named Simon Sebag Montefiore. He’s famous for 4 things:
-
Being a loud and proud anti-communist
-
Being best friends with Ghislaine Maxwell
-
Being in the Epstein Files
-
Lying about having access to unreleased Soviet Archives
Now maybe it’s true but given the source it’s not exactly someone I’d take at their word.
Robin Shepard and Amy Knight wrote about his atrocities too
Robin Shepard
Have a linknid like to see what he cites (I’m not optimistic given his history though he held fellowships with a number of leading think tanks in the United States and Europe including the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States).
Amy Knight
A link so I can check their citation would again be greatly appreciated (however again I’m not optimistic given their toes to the American “think-tank” circuit).
But not being optimistic is no reason not to check. I just have a feeling they likely cite who I think they do (or possibly they don’t cite at all) but we’ll see.
-
holy fuck
Downvoters are all landlords
Or temporarily embarassed landlords
Unironically I love logging on and seeing which meme (it’s always a meme) is to become a battleground for the next three days
some of the arguing is legit entertaining
“Is there anything more depressing than communist architecture?”
“Mass homelessness.”
5% of nothing is what now again?
Is it too scary?
Cartoon person with cartoon opinions
Oh you’re someone who thinks communists work for free or something lol
The fact that you seriously think that people were not paid in the USSR is extremely silly.
Here we go again
The majority of those who lived in socialism regret its fall. This is consistently documented, to the point that liberal academics attempt to explain this by calling it “nostalgia.”
Meanwhile people who lived in eastern europe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF0JdAim6Pc
Which eastern Europeans? Certainly not the ones that saw their life metrics shoot up immediately. Or did you mean the deposed petty aristocrats and Holocaust partcipants?
The labels should be swapped.
It is overwhelmingly the western 12 year-olds that complain about praise for communism/communist revolutions.Also, let’s not pretend as if Eastern Europeans were oppressed by the Warsaw Pact, unlike how NATO treats the vast majority of the world.
Examples?
.ml, hexbear, etc.
I’m almost 40
sorry, I meant give examples on how bad communism was :)
It’s not like authoritarian governments ever lied with their official statistics to prove a point or anything…
No the soviets didnt. Hope this helps
Can you name a non-authoritarian government?
Authoritarianism is a meaningless word created by an actual anti-semite as a way to minimise the Holocaust by claiming the Soviet Union and the Nazis where the same because they both used state power to do things. Every state is authoritarian, all it is is a word to describe enemy-countries, like saying “regime” instead of government
It’s always very funny to me when people react to socialist accomplishments with literal disbelief. Because when I show you a scientific paper backing up the claim in the meme, you’re now in the position of either trying to rapidly backtrack and pretend that the thing you considered so good it was literally unbelievable is actually not that impressive, or doubling down and accusing Western sources of being compromised by some insidious communist conspiracy, that somehow survived the collapse of the USSR.
So which one is it gonna be?
Saved, this is a really good thing to have on hand. Thanks for posting.
Do you know anything about the data behind this paper? Why was there a spike in rent costs in 1928?
I don’t know too much about that year in particular.
Ex soviet block kid here, even got CCCP stamp in an old passport.
This might be true, but it might be worth considering that by late 70 it would not really matter that much. You could hardly get anything with the money left, basic food products included.
Buying meat in a store would be a thing of a chance or you got nasty scraps, and there was really little other options beyond popatos and a few other very basic foods. In my country most of 80s people would que for most of the day to buy toilet paper, and one your run around the city based on rumor on where something could be gotten. This created a massive black market, but there prices would make an average pay worthless. And also any western foreign currency would be worth much more than local, as they were key for smugglers, anyone looking to escape to the other side and tightly controlled (if you were even given a passport and were allowed to travel abroad you could buy a very small amount of currency, much below what would be needed to sustain oneself). Anyways stuff like this, institutional inertia and stiffness, plus repression of any attempts at change created a feedback loop of a massive shadow economy and corruption that chocked the system and created a deeply pathological culture that has been an issue in the region since.
Cool story
You understand your whole post is because capitalist systems have always fought to deny resources to communist-leaning systems, right?
So for example, the problems Cuba is facing right now aren’t problems with communism but a problem with the fascist dictatorship next door working to deny it resources.
When you’re being starved by a kidnapper, your own personal finances aren’t your primary problem.
You understand your whole post is because capitalist systems have always fought to deny resources to communist-leaning systems, right?
Which resources? What was so unavailable to them? Was any of it in Afghanistan?
So for example, the problems Cuba is facing right now aren’t problems with communism but a problem with the fascist dictatorship next door working to deny it resources.
Absolutely. But I’m not discussing a small isolated island.
So the USSR was denied resources but not the other way around?
You do understand that denying resources to others is literally the primary goal of capitalism, right?
It happens at literally every level. Capitalists claim the word is “earning”, but at every level it’s just denying resources to others.
Yes
What does this mean?
The experiences of my family (in the USSR) were not as you describe. Things were cheap and necessities were available. Getting some things was more difficult for non-price reasons. That also seems to align with studies like what the CIA conducted about access to nutrition in the USSR.
Overall, that was a significant improvement over what came before, as well as over what came after.
Where did they work, and did they live in Moscow? Some regions or particular stores by key plants were much better supplied, but honestly I’m not sure if you could find one family in USSR that would claim stores were well supplied in the 80s.
Also I come from one of the satellite state. Food was taken out from the country, while there were protests over look of food in the stores. Kinda hard to claim it did not happen. There were rail carts welded to tracks to by workers trying to stop it…And yeah, Russia was an absolutne shitshow both before and after, no question about it. I’m just addressing oversimplified vision of what money meant in state capitalism.
Where did they work, and did they live in Moscow?
Not in Moscow. Not in any administrative centers.
but honestly I’m not sure if you could find one family in USSR that would claim stores were well supplied in the 80s.
“Well-supplied” compared to what? Would you say that stores in most of the capitalist world were well-supplied?
Also I come from one of the satellite state. Food was taken out from the country, while there were protests over look of food in the stores. Kinda hard to claim it did not happen.
Movement of food between the republics doesn’t seem to be hard to believe, but also does not seem to be malicious.
I’m just addressing oversimplified vision of what money meant in state capitalism.
It’s rather silly to call planned economy “state capitalism”. For most of its existence, there wasn’t even the capitalist class - i.e. a class of people that owned the means of production as private property and used other people’s labour to extract profit from said means of production.
“Well-supplied” compared to what?
Compared to this broad choice of vinegar on the shelves.Would you say that stores in most of the capitalist world were well-supplied?
Quality wise? Fuck no, obviously. But there is at least food one could steal if not buy. There’s enough so that theres abundant waste to run free soup kitchens and the likes. As opposed to there being not enough, while food is exported from your country. Yes capitalist economy is terrible, but for some there is a framework of comparison. One you chose to ignore/deny.
Generally my point is exactly that living experience of a soviet satellite state was not much different from that of a capitalist colony. There’s no food? To bad. Workers rebel? You drive a tank over them.
This does not negate atrocities of capitalism, or imperialist experiments and induced famine. It’s just that this was mirrored under another banner, one you consider incapable of harming it’s subjects for some reason.
Compared to this broad choice of vinegar on the shelves.
So, you can’t actually say what you are comparing the USSR to? (It is overwhelmingly likely that you are comparing the USSR to colonial metropoles, and ignore most of the world.)
Quality wise? Fuck no, obviously. But there is at least food one could steal if not buy.
And yet, people in the USSR weren’t struggling with food as much as most of the capitalist world. Hell, there is a famine in Madagascar.)
Yes capitalist economy is terrible, but for some there is a framework of comparison. One you chose to ignore/deny.
What is that “other framework”? Pillaging Africa, Asia, and elsewhere outside of Europe?
Generally my point is exactly that living experience of a soviet satellite state was not much different from that of a capitalist colony. There’s no food? To bad. Workers rebel?
Okay. What famines are you referring to that happened during your adulthood in the USSR?
You drive a tank over them.
Like when?
It’s just that this was mirrored under another banner
Okay, what people did the USSR engaged in colonialism against, and which ones did it subject to genocide?
Also, I am going to point out again that no, neither what came before, nor what came after was/has been better.
So, you can’t actually say what you are comparing the USSR to? (It is overwhelmingly likely that you are comparing the USSR to colonial metropoles, and ignore most of the world.
I’m comparing it to potential availability of food in the breadbasket of Europe in which currently half of the farmland is not used to stop “overproduction”. When you manage to make food unavailable in the legal system in such a place it is an achievement.
Hell, there is a famine in Madagascar.
Pretty sure there were some in USSR like you know, 1/3 of Ukraine starving to death? Or was it governments/systems fault only if its a capitalist state?
What is that “other framework”? Pillaging Africa, Asia, and elsewhere outside of Europe?
Well “my” state never had any colonies, it was busy enslaving and exploiting local population of Eastern Europe, so that’s one possible reference. Another would be that I’ve actually lived through some, and I’m surrounded by millions of other people who lived though what you seem to support uncritically. Just as I’ve lived through capitalist colonisation of my state, visited USSR, Russia and China.
That’s the point where you claim that the charts you have handy are more important.What famines are you referring to that happened during your adulthood in the USSR?
My dear friend, the very problem is that there was no famine, at least in my (non USSR) state. The system was just so innefective.
Like when?
Like when that picture was taken, Wujek mine strike, 16 dec 1981. But there was 2 years of tanks on the streets then, while a mass trade union was dismantled, leaders imprisoned or killed of.
USSR engaged in colonialism against, and which ones did it subject to genocide?
Well using state names to make it easier; Poland and Ukraine are an easy pick, and Ukraine rather firmly stands in the second category. A number of central Asian states and populations were also forcibly moved and/or starved of.
It’s funny how you admitted that you were not comparing the situation with any sort of actual cases, but a hypothetical case of what the Ukrainian SSR could have done. All while falling to mention that Ukraine’s agricultural output decreased between 1980 and 1990.
Also, why did you opt to lie about 1/3rd of the Ukrainian population dying in the 1930s, and also presenting that case as a famine that happened during your adulthood?
It’s pretty clear that you can’t actually explain why you think that the USSR was somehow worse in this regard than most of the capitalist world (where people die by starvation en mass even today).
Ignoring the fact that this conversation has been steered towards an explicitly liberal/market economics/consumerist framing…
A 2013 Gallup survey showed that 66% of Armenians thought the dissolution of the USSR was harmful
In a 2016 survey, 69% of Azerbaijanis believed life was better under the USSR.
In a 2016 survey, it increased to 53% of Belarusians saying life was better under the USSR
Another Pew survey, also in 2017, showed that 43% of Georgians thought the dissolution was a good thing, compared to 42% who thought it was a bad thing.
In a 2016 survey, around 60% of Kazakhs above the age of 35 believed life was better under the USSR.
A 2013 Gallup survey showed that 61% of Kyrgyz thought the dissolution of the USSR was harmful, compared to 16% who thought it was beneficial.
A 2013 Gallup survey showed that 42% of Moldovans thought the dissolution of the USSR was harmful, compared to 26% who thought it was beneficial.[7] Regret about dissolution later increased to 70% according to a 2017 Pew survey, with only 18% saying the dissolution was a good thing.
Levada polling since the mid-1990s on the preferred political and economic system of Russians also shows nostalgia for the Soviet Union, with the most recent polling in 2021 showing 49% preferring the Soviet political system, compared to 18% preferring the current system, and 16% preferring Western democracy, as well as 62% saying they preferred a system of economic planning compared to 24% preferring a market capitalist economy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalgia_for_the_Soviet_Union
Some one points out their lived experience of lack of food and most basic supplies.
explicitly liberal/market economics/consumerist framing [well akshuly’s into capitalist statistical data]
Wonder why people like you have such a hard time gaining any popular support. Must be CIA.
You do know, that two things can be bad at the same time? The fact that someone criticizes something they experienced, does not necessarily indicate support of another system. I’ve committed my life to anti-capitalist struggle. Only as opposed to you there’s no misinformed nationalist nostalgia in my family.
Also find me any people over 40 who are not nostalgic about the times of their youth. Human minds have this key mechanism of mostly pushing out bad experiences, so we can go on living. When that stops working one ends up with a heavy depression.
You do know, that two things can be bad at the same time?
They said the line!
So… people have to explain most basic thing in politics often, and you think its a flex?
I don’t need to have the same mindless thought terminating cliche parroted at me constantly, but you people do it anyway
Asking people, sadly, is not the reality check it should be. Trump was voted after all.
What does this even mean
I mean 2 things:
- In Memory things were always better than they actually were.
- Asking random people what they want gives you a big portion of answers that are things that are actually super harmful to them. Most people are simply too stupid and/or easy to manipulate/steer/… Hence things like people depending on immigration voting for Trump… go bankrupt later…
The liberal when presented with the prospect of democracy: “Actually no the masses are too stupid to make their own decisions.”
And that is even ignoring various other economic indicators that showed worsened living conditions after the fall.
Yes, if you have very little, you can still have less.
Pretending as if people in the USSR had very little compared to the rest of the world is incredibly silly.
Yeah, now scroll to the beginning of this discussion.
I think it’s pretty uncontroversial that the USSR ended on a low note.
Decades of economic isolation by western powers, constant conflict with the usa, loss of faith in the government through some of the destalinisation measures and liberalisation of the economy all took their toll.
If history had gone a bit differently and revolutions elsewhere hadn’t been stamped out paving the way for the rise of the Nazis and the ascension of the USA on the back of nuclear horror things might’ve gone a lot better.
They would not, the very the idea was corrupted to the core. By stamping out Prague spring the Chinese scenario of limited or experimental capitalism was made impossible. It would collapsed on itself anyways. Source: grew up in post communist country, seen the results
You understand prague spring was a communist movement against revisionist brezhnev govt right?
Nah, it was counterrevolutionary. It ultimately would have weakened socialism, which still existed in the Soviet Union, rather than establish a new socialism. This is also why the IMF was involved.
Source: grew up in post communist country, seen the results
You saw the results of capitalism’s shock therapy. I dunno how you can be this dumb at blaming at a problem on something’s ABSCENCE
By stamping out Prague spring
Suppressing NATO-backed nazis is not a bad thing, contrary to what you claim.
I would disagree, even tho NATO had some influence in prague spring, it was still largely a pro communist movement against the revisionist USSR
Deleted my original reply - I do think I was too rude.
But no, I cannot agree with you. I find it naive to, at this point, believe that NATO-backed groups - whether they pretend to be for workers’ rights like Solidarnosc, or are more openly anti-socialist like the Mujahideen - were in any way socialist.
I would disagree
Siding with nazis so brazenly? Ok.
even tho NATO had some influence in prague spring, it was still largely a pro communist movement against the revisionist USSR
It’s pretty silly, in this day and age, to believe that NATO-backed groups - like Solidarnosc, like the Mujahideen, like the Daesh, etc. - were in any way benevolent or socialist.
So you’ve seen the results of neoliberalism and you blame Communism for that?
If communism was so good, why did it fall to neoliberalism? I thought it was stronger and more powerful.
This is an incredibly silly question. The USSR was opposed by all of the world’s empires together, which employed the most expensive propaganda, spying, and military organisations in the world.
Furthermore, after the fall of the USSR, the living standards of many people became very clearly worse.
I have many friends that were children of the block like you. Talk to them and they all share your same opinion. It is fucked up today the western youth is now glazing on the old USSR days when you talk to everyone who experienced them and they were garbage.
Personally speaking I don’t want to have to wait in a bread line every morning.
You understand 9 million people starve to death every year under capitalism right? while simultaneously humanity wastes 1/3rd of food rightt?
You have many friends that are either fictional or fucking morons
Everyone I talk to that comes from the USSR says the same as OP. It was horrible, and capitalism is way better.
So maybe you’re the one who’s a moron, or maybe (and this is the most likely thing) the truth is in the middle.
That’s crazy, everyone I talk to that comes from the USSR says it was great and far better than capitalism.
Anything’s possible when you make shit up kiddo
Yeah man capitalism is way better, for sure
Okay, I wish you to live in a communist country then
I wish that for me too
Group 1: we should go the left path around the volcano
Group 2: we should go the right path around the volcano
Centrists:
Are you american? It’s a very typically american worldview, dividing things into two opinion camps. Good vs evil etc. Beleive it or not, capitalism and communism both are not purely evil through-and-through. I live in a country where our blue (right wing) govt is seen as socialist in the US. I would NOT say the current govt are particularly socialist though. I guess it could be called “somethi g in between”, with tax funded healthcare+education, but still entrepreneurship that comes with the “capitalist” view of liberty/freedom to express your ideas even though the govt doesnt like it (famously illegal in communist states).
Take capitalism and put socialist-looking spray paint on it to fool the subjects into thinking its partly socialism. Works every time as long as you feed the subjects imperial slavery loot.
“Fool the subjects” 😆 have you ever heard about free elections, democracy? We have voted our way to progress. Which communist country have ever had a fair, truly free election? And what is even imperial slavery loot in this context?
You know what happens at the end of the bread line?
You get bread. For free.
Here you have to wait in line too. But when you get to the end, you have to pay, and millions of people can no longer afford it.
I’m 41 in the USA and there are blocks and clocks of tent cities in my city.
I never realised Lemmy is full of 60+ year olds who would have been old enough to have any meaningful experience of the USSR. (And even then at 61 you’d only just be catching the end where everything was going to shit due to many complex factors).
- I am 49
- My friends are older and younger but the messaging is the same
- USSR fell in 1991
- Who are you to define “meaningful”?
Ok so you were 14 when the USSR fell and 8 when Gorbachev came to power. You were a child. At that age you simply don’t have the depth or breath of experience for it to be meaningful. Same as 14 or 8 year olds now don’t have the experience to really have wider political input. If you haven’t worked, had to get a house, engaged with the state using your “experience” to derive conclusions about it is nonsense. Not to say younger people can’t have opinions but they simply can’t defer to experience as generally they lack it but this can be substituted with study, statistics etc.
Lol I’m Canadian I’m talking about my friends with the real world experience growing up in the bloc.
And to throw is back how old are you? What is your experience? Pray tell what makes you an expert?
how old are you?
Mid-30’s
What is your experience
Personal experience with the USSR? None. But I never claimed to have any. Otherwise experience: I’m Chinese originally rural but through scholarships I was put in the position to be able to earn a PhD and 2 masters and now live in a city. But this really has nothing to do with what we were talking about. I never claimed to have personal experience of the USSR.
Pray tell what makes you an expert?
I wouldn’t call myself an expert but I’ve read many studies and books about the USSR as well as my second masters being in Marxist Theory so I would call myself relatively informed.
All of this is however a dodge that has nothing to do with the point at hand which is that appealing to experience when in reality you have effectively 0 makes no sense. If you’ve never worked or engaged with any facets of the state appealing to experience to draw general conclusions about it is plainly ridiculous.
Not the person whom you asked, but
Who are you to define “meaningful”?
To get a good view on the matter, it would require having worked and having gone through a process of getting new housing both before Gorbachyov and after the fall of the USSR. Something tells me that people who earn, say, 30 000 or so rubles (or an analogous sum) per month today were in a much better spot back before Gorbachyov.
I won’t disagree but you’re (intentionally?) shifting goalposts.
As already stated and the easiest example is I’ve been told by multiple friends about waiting in the bread line for their parents for hours. As a North American imagine having to wait for the state to give you your bread for the day and having to wait 6 hours in line to get it. Is this really what people want to glaze?
This is also ignoring the rampant corruption that also existed in the USSR at the time too. You could argue it was more corrupt than we have in North America now.
It is hilarious to try and negatively compare a country where corruption can sometimes be a threat to the rule of law, with a country where corruption IS the rule of law.
People in the UK today wait in line to get access to food banks run by charities and mutual aid groups because they can’t afford to feed themselves and their children.
You are an arrogant buffoon.
I won’t disagree but you’re (intentionally?) shifting goalposts.
In what way would this be a shifting of goalposts?
A child is likely not going to have much familiarity with important things that are important in this context - in particular, things like getting a job, prices compared to salaries, not having to deal with layoffs, and being able to get new housing. Those things do need to be accounted for.
We also need to take into consideration that Gorbachyov’s administration significantly reduced the living standards, and it was his goal to dismantle the USSR. So, we should compare the years before him with the full on restoration of capitalism that people keep claiming to be an improvement.
As already stated and the easiest example is I’ve been told by multiple friends about waiting in the bread line for their parents for hours.
Not great that they had to wait for hours, but this is an inconvenience compared to not having access to food at all. Going to remind you that many people do die by being unable to access food under capitalism. Would you actually say that the situation in, say, Africa, or non-socialist Asia, or in post-USSR Russia and Ukraine was somehow better?
As a North American imagine having to wait for the state to give you your bread for the day and having to wait 6 hours in line to get it.
You are talking about a place with “food deserts”, and where people do die by being unable to access food at all.
Also, consider that most of the world does not live in the Imperial Core. Rather, the Imperial Core’s wealth is predicated on plundering the rest of the world. You likely only considered the living conditions in the USSR and in the Imperial Core (and not the Russian Empire, not the post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine, and not elsewhere).Also, you do realise that breadlines are sometimes a thing in the US to this day, as well, right?
This is also ignoring the rampant corruption that also existed in the USSR at the time too. You could argue it was more corrupt than we have in North America now.
“Corruption” is a very nebulous accusation that liberals love to throw at NATO’s enemies. Anyway, can’t exactly compete in corruption with states that have literal lobbying.
Meanwhile every edgy teenager on .ml is an expert who lived through the entirety of the soviet union
When you can’t attack the message, simply attack the messenger.
Of course, this will raise questions later about why a bunch of edgy teenagers are better at predicting the course of world events than you.
You are keep implying that the vast majority of people lived better in the Russian Empire, and that praising the Russian Empire this way is somehow not edgy.
I don’t think I’ve seen even a single person on ml claim personal experience but instead deffer to data and other sources which is entirely valid in my opinion
I have a friend in China that pays around 3500rmb a year (incl electric, heating, ac, internet) for a place in a mid tier Chinese city. It’s a 10 minute walk from a metro, fairly new, and she prepaid two years of rent working a gig job at minimum wage for 2 months. Her girlfriend also works minimum wage and they said they aren’t even employed right now and they saved some money up from their sporadic gig jobs and are now taking a 2 year vacation because they just wanted to chill, I guess. They send me cute lesbian pictures of them on the beach somewhat regularly. They say no one bothers them about being queer, though their families are still in a somewhat hilarious feud over who should take on whose name
I’m sure everyone here has it cheaper! 🤡 China is a capitalist nightmare don’t you know?
That part of who should take whose name is amusing. Great post.
mid tier Chinese city
Which one?
3500rmb a year
That seems insanely cheap, did you miss a zero in there? I’ve seen nice apartments for 2-3K rmb/mo in T2 cities, per year seems crazy.
I’ll ask if I can mention the location, I didn’t say specifically for privacy reasons. Its possible the specific region she is in subsidizes the housing for low income people, idk the specific logistics of how she came to that price. She did mention they don’t live in a city center but it didn’t matter because it had train access.
I got permission to talk about the feud! Traditionally in this region, the wife of a husband would go live in the husband’s family’s house and basically help take care of the house and his family, usually indefinitely. Nowadays, everyone can afford a cheap apartment so usually a certain time each year (usually Chinese New Year and a couple of other holidays) wives go live in the husband’s family’s house during the celebrations and are a part of the husband’s clan, then they go back to their apartment afterward. Basically, both extended families of this lesbian couple are really salty and wanna double dip on having their kid and the wife stay in their house so they can have two extra women around to gossip and clean with lol. They really don’t want to share! They’ve floated a lot of ideas but have come to a stalemate on the matter, I’m really curious how it’ll resolve when they get “married” (as much as you can be legally in China rn, anyways).
People online, and especially newspapers, always act like China is having a gig nightmare, and that everyone is stuck in unemployment hell. But they obviously don’t see the totality of the economy, they are just looking at one number or another. A large number of unemployed people can be good because that can be a long period of personal, consensual downtime from work.
This sort of life being possible in China makes me desire immigration to non-major city areas over there. I only have concerns of freedom of information and access to the greater internet- censorship on a national firewall level is something I’m simply not able to tolerate.
IMPORTANT: I am an American with a public education, and have no real knowledge of what life’s like there in terms of freedoms. I’ve just heard things.
Would you mind going into a bit of detail about how accessing the greater internet works over there? That is, if you know anything. I think I am correct in assuming you are not currently residing there. Would love another’s take on this.
The big issue with immigrating directly to China is that you will only be allowed to stay in their higher tier cities, this is because of the Hukou system which treats every region of China like its own country with visa restrictions, essentially. Its great for preserving cultures but not so great if you like to travel a lot. So its unlikely that you could take advantage of the collective lands rules as a foreigner unless you married into a family in an area with collective lands. You can obviously visit any region of China but visas/hukou do have limits if you try to go for residency.
There are some loopholes to getting Chinese citizenship, you can move to for example Taiwan or Hong Kong, get residency / citizenship in those places, and then the mainland would consider you a citizen by proxy. But usually if you’re moving from one region to another you can only live in the higher tier cities. You can read a little more about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou
Its great for preserving cultures but not so great if you like to travel a lot.
Possibly but that wasn’t the intent of the Hukou system. It’s goal was the prevention of massive slums forming on the borders of the majority cities during rapid modernisation (which in turn leads to rapid urbanisation). There is currently massive hukou reform ongoing such as restrictions effectively being lifted for cities under 3 million population.
Thanks a lot! This is invaluable to know and look into before I ever begin to seriously considering uprooting my life. I wouldn’t mind going through the paces to attain a life I find desirable, but it depends on how prohibitive things are if the time comes to make decisions like this.
Also are you in USA? Afaik there are new rules for Canada that are more lenient
Yep, USA. Part of my potential plans were to go to Canada first, though, for their better relationship with other countries!
Why did the USSR allow rent? Isn’t that stealing from the workers with a Landlord who didn’t earn it?
Mao had the right idea of Landlords.
Because buildings don’t maintain themselves?
So landlords are good if they are painted red, cool.
You’re being facetious. Rent is not capital harboured for the maintenance of lands or buildings. From Wiktionary:
I want to make this point absolutely clear: landlords in Australia have been a cohort that’s been cultivated by the capitalists as a bulwark against labour domestically. In law and in economic-systems privileges have been carved out solely for them, to the detriment of the industrial-capacity of Australia to produce tangible goods.
Australia has a housing crisis–which is not a state that is unique to Australia. Housing is a human right. Australia’s government acknowledged this and promised to act on it. It has failed in every domain–deliberately!
The right to housing is clearly supported by international law, indeed at the very foundation of the international human rights system in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This Declaration, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, establishes an internationally recognised set of standards for all persons without qualification. Article 25 of the Declaration provides, “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including … housing”.
—Chris Sidoti, Human Rights Commissioner, 4th of September, 1996.
Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to which Australia is a party, recognises the right of all people to adequate housing and commits state parties to take appropriate steps to ensure the realisation of that right. Article 11 recognises, “… the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing…” and that “States Parties will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right”.
I do encourage readers to read the linked document (especially Australians). It will help shed light on why the privileged children of Western-democracies are looking back at the USSR as an ideal to work towards whilst they face worsening material conditions with the political classes unanimously declaring: it will get worse; deal with it. Users such as whoisearth@lemmy.ca are being, I think, disingenuous.
The children of Australia are aware that the adults (that are in privileged positions now, shaping Australia’s future political- and economic-landscapes) were the recipients of public-housing, cheap private-housing and free tertiary-education, whilst ending those same programs for them. This injustice is further inflamed with the deliberate inflation of asset-classes, of which housing has become an overwhelming salient sore-point in the Australian context.
Rents in Australia do not go towards the maintenance of the property. They overwhelmingly go towards the financing of new mortgages. A rental-property is a political-license to freely create private misery for your tenant as you attempt to extract unjust amounts of capital to finance a mountain of new mortgages in an attempt to join the politically protected class: landlords.
I pay $300.00 AUD a week to rent a room, with no access to laundry or cooking facilities. Meanwhile the property fails Australia’s national-standards for housing. There are no smoke-detectors in the bedrooms. A glass-panel in one of the windows has a hole in it. The bathroom’s exhaust fan does not work. Mold is a never-ending issue. These conditions are illegal, but good luck getting the landlord to meet his legal-obligations! If you live in Australia you know tenants are treated as an underclass.
Tenants are supposed to maintain the building and the land, not the rent. That’s the expectation and the reality here. It is certainly different to what I’ve read of European-tenancy expectations. I can only defend Australia by saying it’s a young, naive nation led by lazy and entitled morons.
In Australia homelessness is increasing. Asset-classes are over inflated. Rents are crippling. Wages are insufficient. The leading thought of the domestic political-class is that A.I. will increase productivity, leading to higher wages which will erode that asset inflation, leading to a nice, comfortable equilibrium. Of course this ignores the fact that the historical gains of increased productivity have gone towards profits, not wages. Somehow the future gains will be different! Everyone knows that’s a lie, which means the current cohort of leaders are promising nothing. No change. We will continue this course of destructive neoliberalism.
What the USSR accomplished was remarkable. What the Chinese have accomplished is astonishing. All under the frame-work of socialism, working towards communism. Meanwhile the Western-democratic nations seem to be in endless internal-squabbles, external-wars and domestic degradation.
Presumably the rent went to the government, which was considered as a stand in for the people, right?
In modern China they have landlords, but it actually makes rent cheaper because the managerial cost is offloaded and the government has driven rent prices to the floor by creating a massive oversupply of housing production. It’s very fascinating that there are landlords at all, it almost feels like a trap. I’d kill to talk to one, I wonder how the numbers work
It wasn’t private rent. More like a housing cooperative where the members are pitching in for common maintenance.
i love this picture, it’s right before the men get sent down into the radioactive nuclear power plant that’s nearly about to wipe out all life on the planet because of the soviet unions communist corruption and incompetence👍
wipe out all life on the planet
I really would love to know where you guys hallucinate this shit
Lmfao you are insane
Party loyalty > actually knowing what you’re doing with nuclear power
They knew what they were doing, and thats why a worse catastrophe was prevented
Very famously the reactor melted because of competence. You are very smart. Rectors melt down because of smart people!
Lmfao you are insane
You get your real life opinions from TV shows.
He said:
They knew what they were doing
The response involved more than 500,000 personnel and cost an estimated 18 billion rubles (about $85 billion in 2026).[2] It remains the most destructive nuclear disaster[3][4] and the most expensive disaster in history, with an estimated cost of US$700 billion.[5]
The government did not publicly acknowledge the disaster until two days after the explosion, when elevated radiation levels were detected in Sweden.[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
Sounds like they knew what they were doing 🤣
Facts are banned here, I’m sure you’ll be banned too.
I see something in the commentary I can’t exactly define. It’s probably bigger than a single word can encompass. Regardless of how revolutionary and forward thinking the leaders of a polity are they are still leading groups and individuals who have their own cultural beliefs, of which their positions would be inherently antithetical towards revolutionary ideas–if they were not the revolution would have occurred earlier. There’s a cultural threshold that must be passed before revolutionary activities can occur, but that threshold may be with a minority of people who can enable those activities to start. They will still be leading a majority who simply do not care intellectually. Most people do not give a thought towards the economic system they live under.
A white-class who materially benefits from a black-class’ oppression will be racist towards that class regardless of what the leading mouthpieces say, especially if that benefit has been enforced throughout many generations. “Equality feels like suppression to the privileged.” When a strong revolutionary polity enters a territory they–by definition–are fought against. It’s intellectually lazy to call this push-back the “suppression” of religion–ethnicity, sexuality or any other category–by the revolutionaries.
Revolutionaries were on the correct lines. One cannot attack the revolution’s failings on the actions of uninterested participants or more accurately: counter-revolutionary actors. The communists were more socially progressive than the capitalists. That’s a fact not up for debate. Communists are more socially progressive than capitalists.
Rents should be abolished. It’s a tax and I do wonder why taxes are still in use by national-governments today. They’re inefficient and create absolutely needless friction and dissent amongst payers. Money has long left the bounds of reality. Of a nation state to issue money, but then tack back a small fraction due to cultural-legacy, should it not be ridiculed? Likewise the ill effects of landlords has been well documented economically: their patronage is solely for the oppressive effects on you–the worker.
My rent is 1.5% of my income. I’m good.
“I’ve got mine, fuck everyone else”
I didnt say to fuck everyone else. I consider myself super lucky and the housing market it totally fucked and needs fixing. I didnt mean it like that, that’s my bad.
You didn’t use those words but anyone with a functioning brain knows that is exactly what you meant
Rich kid or living under a bridge?
Basically a bridge. Super rural, middle of nowhere.
Mine is 0%.
Mortgage otoh is 15%. Dont feel good about that because of my tax rate
Oh yeah I should have accounted for taxes and utilities. I’m probably about the same at 15%. Dunno why I felt lead to talk out of my ass.
That face is real. No overtime pay for emotional damage.
In the morning 10 comments. Now 110.
Let’s see who is the debatelord vibe basing facts against cowbee…
He has the patience of a saint. We should all aspire to ground our views as thoroughly as him and to be as charitable when explaining our reasoning to others.
Seeing Cowbee around after joining Lemmy has reinforced my belief that I’m doing the right thing by being ruthlessly patient and positive with others. That dude’s awesome, he recommended me, a total stranger, some introductory ML literature (and I haven’t had the time to read it yet…), which I’m sure he gets questions about very often.
(If you see this, Cowbee, thanks again! I’d love to chat some after I’m done reading what you’ve provided me. :) )
Go for it! And thanks for the warm words!
