Hacker News Reader

Comment by theodormarcu | Hacker News Reader

It was similar in Romania, but it lasted until 1989. The workweek was 6 days long. My parents dealt with it until the revolution. It’s funny how socialism was worse for the average worker in that way.

View on HN

Because it wasn't socialism. It was a centrally planned capitalist economy. There were still commodity production, accumulation of value and a State that regulates value. The only way in which USSR and the Eastern Block was socialist is the way they called themselves. If they called themselves aliens, it would make about the same sense. Even Lenin called the system "State Capitalism" in his works. Socialism in the classic Marxist sense -- which is the exact same thing as communism, communism/socialism divide nonsense comes from Stalin and makes no sense -- is the society after capitalist economy collapses, and the natural force that makes capitalism possible is value generation. It's simply by-definition not possible to talk about socialism in a society that still has value (money), the division of labor (job), class (worker vs employer) and state (a body that regulates trade which is integral to capitalism). Marxism is above all materialism and ideologies like Marxism-Leninism is the most anti-Marxist thing imaginable.

Is that socialism though? It did begin that way but sticking a label on a savage dictatorship doesn’t make it true.

"Dictatorship of the proletariat" necessarily collapses into plain dictatorship almost immediately, because there's no room for pluralism and dissenting factions. That's the problem with all the Leninist/Trotskyite/Maoist inheritors of Marxism. It was also the key difference between the social-democrat states of Europe west of the Berlin wall and the Communist states east of it.

No it doesn't , DotP necessarily means factionalism and such, democratic centralism simply necessitates an agreement to be abided to by all constituents of said group

Since this account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle, we've banned it. That's not allowed here, because it destroys the intellectual curiosity this site exists for. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Much more explanation if anyone wants it:

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Ceaucescu's hated austerity was because it was attempting to pay off the national debt to western countries.

There are plenty of other notionally capitalist countries that have suffered bitterly under a similar kind of debt yoke (e.g. Greece).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com