In East Germany, a gamer scene emerged just before the fall of communism. Teenagers met at a computer club to swap and play C64 games. The state watched with interest.
Fascinating – and chilling, of course – story.
In East Germany, a gamer scene emerged just before the fall of communism. Teenagers met at a computer club to swap and play C64 games. The state watched with interest.
Fascinating – and chilling, of course – story.
just before the fall of communism
To be fair communism has not been built
1. Someone introduces communism
2. Communism fails with poverty and genocide
3. “But that was not real communism” (retard face), goto 1
It’s mostly true. Most Communist states practice a form of Marxism-Leninism, where the Dictatorship of the Proletariat becomes a single party state apparatus. In theory it’s only supposed to be a temporary step on the way to full Communism, but due to the fact that people are mostly bastards it never actually reaches that point.
No true Scotsman…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
Edited 2018-11-24 11:44 UTC
We too are being monitered and logged.
Government agencies are doing this on a previously unimaginable scale, thanks to the digital revolution and under the cover of ‘national security’.
The difference from the old East Block countries is that in our wonderful, capitalist societies, private companies get to play too, so their billionaire owners can grab even more of the commons.
Yeah, communism for the rich, 80% of the wealth for the top 1%, 50% for the top 10.
@viton:
that’s a tricky one. nobody is actually forcing anyone to use social media. add perhaps some nice VPN to it and one can really minimize the internet footprint. and still, most people know that they’re vulnerable and yet freely choose to give out as much personal data as possible.
I find the collecting of cellphone metadata a more direct invasion of privacy – that shit really freaks me out.
edit: bunch of typos.
Edited 2018-11-24 00:37 UTC
With the note at the end about being threatened by western lawyers after the fall of the Berlin wall, I love the contrast between the very real threat that the Stasi represent, and the rude awakening into western capitalism.
This blog tends to complain a lot about the evils of capitalism, which are many. It is good to remember occasionally the frightening reality of what the socialist alternative really looks like. (If you don’t care to look at Venezuela where they are trying it out again)
Venezuela is a corrupt dictatorship. It’s government has nothing to do with socialism.
LOL, of course – and Santa Claus is real.
then gives us an example where socialist ideas weren’t turned into dictatorships? when every try for a socialist society has turned to a brutal dictatorship, it clearly shows it’s a shitty and a retarded concept, that can be easily exploited. the fact that some people are still trying to sell it as a good model/concept is beyond retarded; as is putting people in groups and not treating them as individuals.
capitalism has 1001 problems, including corruption, and yet there are successful capitalist countries.
Canada, Sweden, Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway, Ireland, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Australia, and now I’m bored.
Edited 2018-11-24 10:44 UTC
Canada, Sweden, Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway, Ireland, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Australia, and now I’m bored.
those are all capitalist countries; with netherlands aind ireland being tax havens; Norway being the european version of S. Arabia (will stop the comparison before being called Islamophobe); Canda and Australia having very very strict immigration policies based on qualification (in the eyes of SJW such policies are racist)…and now i’m getting bored.
ideologues such as you Thom (and your equivalents on the alt-right) should really try to understand that welfare is not socialism; as well as having free education is not Stalin’s Russia.
Edited 2018-11-24 11:09 UTC
And yet, whenever someone suggests spending a little money on helping the dozens of millions of Americans living in extreme poverty instead of spending it on socialism for the rich (massive tax breaks for the wealthy and large corporations), people immediately start shouting BUT SOCIALISM and BUT VENEZUELA.
Capitalism held in check by socialism is easily the most successful form of governing that we know of so far. It leads to the least amount of poverty, the best healthcare systems, the most optimal infrastructure, the least inequality, the lowest crime rates, the least corruption, and people who consistently rate as happier and more satisfied.
We’re dealing with a definition problem here. You seem to think that “dictatorship” = “socialism”, which is entirely nonsensical. Heck, the largest socialist program in the world is the US military, and yet fascists and extreme right jack off to it every single day.
For the record, South Korea was a military dictatorship under the sponsorship of the US government. Literally two generations of people who still think that military dictatorship is the best example of liberal democracy.
…some revealing Wiki articles ~about US-sponsored South Korean dictatorship:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Struggle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-American_sentiment_in_Korea
These remind me of things in my formerly Soviet bloc place in the 1980s; apparently both Koreas were quite dirty – some South examples from around the time of the main conflict:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodo_League_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_uprising
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Corps_incident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_Massacres_of_1950_in_the_Kore…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shootingkoreancivilians.jpg
…at least since then the South got its act together; as for North, no comment is unfortunatelly necessary. :/
Also, a blast from 2009: “Are there riots in Korea? Seriously, I am more scared of South Korea going ballistic over Starcraft 2 than North Korea having the technical aptitude to get an ICBM together.” ;D
They are generally Democratic Socialist countries. You’re confused by the Americana of using “Socialist” when you mean “Communist”. Democratic Socialism is real, distinct from Communism, and works.
If you mean Communism, use the word Communism. Don’t communicate poorly and then act indigent when you’re dunked.
You asked for examples where socialist *ideas* weren’t turned into dictatorships. The precision is important, because Thom’s examples were of socialist ideas, not of ideologically pure socialist states. Which you didn’t ask for, though perhaps that was what you meant to ask for.
@thom:
as easy it is to blame USA for everything, that shit is mostly on Venezuela – at the height of oil prices and economic boom, they did literally nothing to diversify it’s economy and were dependent on oil and nothing else.
also, they could sell oil to China who doesn’t a rats ass about USA vs Venezuela, is ideologically a lot closer to Venezuela and needs oil (like a lot of it) – one would think they would be natural allies. especially china being a “role model” for every lefty on this planet (how sweat shops come into play with lefty fanboys is beyond me).
Edited 2018-11-24 13:27 UTC
You didn’t say socialist countries. You said socialist ideas.
Those countries all espouse socialist ideas to various degrees.
Most of modern Western Europe.
Maybe Venezuela had fared better had the US not played such an active role in undermining its economy…?
Allow me a few notes regarding how to properly name things (which is one of the two main problems in relation to computers, along with cache invalidation and off-by-1 errors):
1. Why does it seem to be a problem to use the proper name of a state? You don’t call the USA “North America”, or the Netherlands “Netherland” or “Holland”. The correct name would have been German Democratic Republic (GDR), not “East Germany”.
2. Officially, the GDR was not a communist, but a socialist country. However, that does not change the fact of its fall.
Apparently, programs in BASICODE (~Java of the 80s) were transmitted, also just before the fall of communism, by the state broadcaster, so certainly with some some sort of approval by the GDR regime …I quote the relevant parts of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASICODE
Apparently these perfect socialist utopias are perfect for everyone except the people that live within them and have to pay for them.
It is ridiculous to suggest and socialist government is ideal in Europe. Every single one of them have escalating debt and are being perverted by corruption. The biggest example is the EU itself, with indirect representatives so overwhelmingly keen to push self-destructive immigration rules on member states. The whole phony political correctness movement being pushed across Europe is largely no different than the one pushed in the United States. It is a tool to control what used to be considered healthy feedback to government representatives. European representatives are being cut off from their own people by agendas that originate anywhere but from within their own borders. And the further up the foodchain the worse it gets. It doesn’t take a lot of research into global politics to figure out where these strategies originate.
Oh, here we go…
Considering major economic crisis all comes from the USA (1929, 2008, …) it’s a sign that (deregulated) capitalism ain’t the best system around. And no, poor people don’t benefit from the riches’ tax breaks and cuts.
So you never heard of Ostalgie… (also, http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/ratrace.html “you can use the fact that people did not feel poor in the 1950s as an argument for a more radical egalitarianism than even most leftists would be willing to espouse.”)