I feel like an assumption I come up against a lot with liberals is that the USSR had basically the same ownership class structure and wealth distribution that similarly developed capitalist classes had. I tried Binging this but don't have a good sense of what authors to trust.
its complete bullshit and unabashed lies. the most powerful people in the soviet union lived in apartments and visited dachas the size of a suburban yankee home. the comparison is fucking comic.
literally just send this link whenever libs talk about this and laugh at them. amongst comrades we can talk about how its unfair for the servants of the people to skip line for champagne, but it may aswell be in a different universe from wealth inequality talked about from conspicuously unequal capitalist nations.
Reminds me of how liberals and western leftists were upset when a Vietnamese diplomat went to visit Marx’s grave and then dined at a fancy restaurant, paid for by the French host accompanying him
communism = no food. if a communist eats they are hypocritical corrupt party apparatchik :theory-gary:
personally as the one true leftist i was outraged that the vietnamese government funded a trip to Paris for a functionary whatsoever. what if they enjoyed themselves? this would be the end of communism.
and mind, when people say this , they imagine that "to be true to communism" every party member needed to be an ascetic monk. because hypocrisy is the only language of the liberal
The Death of Stalin gets a lot wrong (whatever, it's not supposed to be a documentary, it's funny), but it's great that they accurately show Khrushchev and Molotov living in these incredibly modest apartment flats in Moscow.
even that dacha stalin was living in is a fucking joke compared to the white house (which itself is modest compared to european state residences)
check out world inequality report
https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/syfnwDImxC.jpg
https://wir2022.wid.world/www-site/uploads/2023/03/D_FINAL_WIL_RIM_RAPPORT_2303.pdf
In the early 20th century, income inequality in Russia was especially high (the top 10% income share was close to 50%), but it dropped significantly after the 1917 revolution. After the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent “shock therapy” (a mixture of abrupt privatizations and deregulation), incomes at the bottom and the middle of the distribution declined. Conversely, the very rich gained substantially from the new economic regime, large-scale privatizations and very little control over financial flows. Tax evasion among wealthy Russians is particularly high.
Holy smoke I realize I've accessed and referred to these reports way before I even knew who Piketty is
Eh I don't think that's true. Having good politics doesn't make you smarter. Honestly I'd rather read someone with good scholarship and bad politics like Piketty than someone who has good politics but bad scholarship like :parenti:. I don't read to be told what to think, but to have access to reliable facts.
Hey rad, thanks! I just cracked Piketty's Capital today. Didn't know he was involved in a yearly report very cool
In the early 20th century, income inequality in Russia was especially high (the top 10% income share was close to 50%)
isn't the current US way worse than this?
45% according to the report that was posted. (scroll to the bottom and up like 4 pages)
"Wealth" in the USSR is probably going to be hard to quantify. I mean, guys like Stalin, Khrushchev and Gorby all pretty much had very modest means. None of them had secretly stashed wealth - Gorby had to make Pizza Hut commercials and do speaking tours to make ends meet. And you're talking about the absolute upper eschelon there. I think if you're dealing with someone who is focused on the wealth of party leadership, you can actually find out what personal wealth they had, but it wasn't much. Libs will point to the fact they access to personal cars with drivers, lots of travel, meals made for them, etc, but a.) none of that is "wealth" and b.) that's the same access that even low-level politicians have across the world.
If you're talking to someone about more societal inequality, you can look at ratios of pay between workers and high-level managers. In the GDR I seem to recall this ratio was 3:1 but don't quote me on that.
Walter Scheidel had a lot of interesting information in his The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century ( amazon | Arr! ), but keep in mind the USSR is not the sole subject of the work. And tbh, as interesting as it all is, it's dry as hell. Lots of numbers and graphs and whatnot.
