“liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.’ Mikhail Bakunin

  • Ferrous@lemmy.ml
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    25 days ago

    It is widely believed that while the Soviet Union may have produced these benefits, in the end, Soviet public ownership and planning proved to be unworkable. Otherwise, how to account for the country’s demise? Yet, when the Soviet economy was publicly owned and planned, from 1928 to 1989, it reliably expanded from year to year, except during the war years. To be clear, while capitalist economies plunged into a major depression and reliably lapsed into recessions every few years, the Soviet economy just as unfailingly did not, expanding unremittingly and always providing jobs for all

    https://gowans.blog/2012/12/21/do-publicly-owned-planned-economies-work/

    • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub
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      25 days ago

      Yet, when the Soviet economy was publicly owned and planned, from 1928 to 1989, it reliably expanded from year to year

      This claim is laughable considering that the vast majority of Soviet citizens lived in abject poverty during that period, and the whole system collapsed due to lack of money. If the economy was “reliably expanding” then why were their bread lines?

      The infamous bread lines, people queuing up before dawn to get milk, scarce produce, bare shelves at supermarkets and empty clothing stores became an everyday reality. We didn’t have connections to The Party, nor veteran benefits—as both sets of my grandparents were too young to fight in the war—so we lined up like everyone else. Often, the distribution of food was limited to a certain number of pieces per person. I was frequently dragged to stores by grownups in my family so we could get two packs of detergent instead of one. Or two loaves of white bread instead of one. Or two pea coats. Whatever appeared in stores nearby.

      https://www.forbes.com/sites/katyasoldak/2017/12/20/this-is-how-propaganda-works-a-look-inside-a-soviet-childhood/

      There was nothing economically successful about the USSR, it brought poverty to its entire population, aside from a handful of powerful political figures who enriched themselves at the expense of everyone else.