Like some really dumb person asking dumb shit and believing 100% whatever their guests tells them, but cool?

  • star_wraith [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I mean, there probably is something to the idea that if you grow up in a society where your material needs are addressed and you don't have to worry about losing your job, your home, going hungry, or paying for medical care... it's possible to take those things for granted and then get upset you don't have some of the consumer goods capitalist societies have. However, my hunch is that in the Eastern Bloc countries, a lot of the working class or others who get left behind in capitalism didn't take these things for granted, and it was mainly the labor aristocrats (or those who saw themselves as potentially in a labor aristocrat class if their society went capitalist) who really advocated for adopting capitalism.

    • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      This is actually the argument in Parenti's Reds and Blackshirts about why the Eastern bloc collapsed. They basically didn't believe their own propoganda about how bad capitalism was and were like "but I want a Nintendo" and now they're all just "wow ok fuck this is way worse than we thought."

      • Gosplan14 [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Halle an der Saale (Saxony-Anhalt - former GDR)

        Elections Result:

        December 1990 - 34,1% FDP (Libertarian), 24% CDU (Conservative), 19,5% SPD (Socdem), 13,4% PDS (Formerly Communist, Gorbachevite), 7,0% Greens (Libs)

        October 1994 - 33,3% CDU, 30,5% SPD, 23,5% PDS, 6,2% FDP, Greens 4,3%

        The enthusiastic switch to a free market system made the :ancap-good: go from every 3rd adult on the streets supporting them to having a fourth of the votes that the once hated (sadly formerly) communist party had in just four years lol

    • Gosplan14 [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      those who saw themselves as potentially in a labor aristocrat class

      It's actually interesting, as I saw today the results of the 1987 Polish Referendum, from a country that was deep in crisis for about 7 years and had literal martial law for two years.

      Question 1: Do you wish radical economic reforms?

      Yes - 66,0% No - 27,7% No Answer - 6,3%

      Question 2: Do you wish a deep Democratization of the Political System?

      Yes - 69,0% No - 24,6% No Answer - 6,4%

      While the results aren't really good, it's better than the abysmal results of the post-1990 polish left.

      However, by examining the local level, you can see some interesting stuff.

      Voivodeship Łomża (Eastern Poland, Rural)

      Question 1: 57,03% YES - 33,73% NO - 9,24% NO ANSWER

      Question 2 58,78% YES - 31,73% NO - 9,50% NO ANSWER

      Meanwhile in Warsaw

      Question 1: 79,36% YES - 17,24% NO - 3,40% NO ANSWER

      Question 2 83,04% YES - 13,88% NO - 3,08% NO ANSWER

      Showing the better paid (due to industrialization and service economy jobs) and better supplied capital city labor aristocrats being the force least sympathetic to AES in the horribly mismanaged country.

      Meanwhile in the GDR, it was East Berlin, Leipzig and the rural East Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (in modern terms) being the strongholds of the SED/PDS in 1990, while the mountainous areas were the ones where counterrevolution, tradition and neofascism reigned supreme.