☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆

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Joined 7 years ago
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Cake day: January 18th, 2020

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  • GDR was a socialist state where means of production were publicly owned, and that fundamentally made it better than the current capitalist state. Yes, it had its contradictions, but it also existed under immense pressure from the west. The west didn’t have to shoot people trying to flee because it had a massive economic advantage. It’s kind of hilarious for people to pretend that capitalists would take a moral high ground if the positions were reversed. Doubly so now that privacy and rights are being rolled back right across the western sphere.

    I have in not a single sentence praised the transition to capitalism, nor will I.

    I mean you just made a false equivalence to whitewash capitalism in the same comment. Also, anybody who uses the term authoritarian exposes themselves as having a deeply infantile understanding of politics.

    All states are authoritarian by their very nature, they differ in being extensions of different classes class based on the type of social organization within the state. The extent to which any particular state exerts its authority depends on the given conditions and circumstances it finds itself in. The whole idea that a socialist system creates some latent desire for exerting authority at the helm is beyond absurd. What you have in practice are class dynamics and class struggle. Nazi Germany and modern Germany are both authoritarian bourgeoisie states. And the key difference between them is that nazi Germany was in economic crisis and needed to violently suppress the working class to protect property of the capital owning class. Those same circumstances are once again starting to crop up in modern Germany hence the stratospheric rise of AfD.

    It’s also not possible to refer any liberal capitalist state a democracy in any meaningful sense. Liberalism consists of two main parts. First is political liberalism which focuses on wholesome ideas such as individual freedoms and democracy. Second is economic liberalism which centers around free markets, private property, and wealth accumulation. These two aspects form a contradiction. Political liberalism purports to support everyone’s freedom, while economic liberalism enshrines private property rights as sacred in laws and constitutions, effectively removing them from political debate.

    As a result, liberalism justifies the use of state violence to safeguard property rights, over supporting ordinary people, which contradicts the promises of fairness and equality. Private property is seen as a key part of individual freedom under liberalism, and this provides the foundational justification for the rich to keep their wealth while ignoring the needs of everyone else. Thus, the talk of freedom and democracy ends up being nothing more than a fig leaf to provide cover for justifying capitalist relations. So, a liberal state cannot be democratic by its very definition.

    The GDR failed because global fascist forces won a victory over USSR.



  • No, they’re looking at what life for regular people is like udner a capitalist regime.

    And claiming that people stuck together in spite of the government is a real galaxy brain take there bud. The reality is that GDR’s socialist policies eliminated unemployment, provided cheap housing and childcare, and guaranteed basic necessities for everyone, which created material security is what allowed neighbors to look out for each other instead of competing for survival as they are forced to do under capitalism. The community you remember was a direct outcome of a system designed to put human needs above profit.

    The wall was a defensive measure against a fascist West that was actively trying to undermine the GDR economically and politically as has been documented beyond all doubt. Meanwhile, the ransacking you witnessed after 1990 proved exactly what the GDR was protecting its citizens from. Dismissing all of that as rose-colored glasses is truly the height of intellectual dishonesty.

    It’s always the people who got theirs and have zero empathy for the needs of others who praise the transition to capitalism in post Soviet states. You’re all telling on yourself there.