Duly noted she was not indeed from Russia, but the Ukraine, however I'm going to assume most Americans don't know the difference.
That being said, I love how people dismiss the experiences of somebody who actually grew up under socialism because they want to believe in hope and change and unicorns.
Also, on a related note - "No, no education bubble to see here folks. Move along now. Back to your lives citizens."
Here, let me poke at that again for a second.
ReplyDeleteCapitalism, or the theory of free markets is a theory on the way markets behave in the absence of regulation. This absence of regulation is otherwise known as freedom. The absence of a tsar commanding your wages so to speak. Thus what you really want is not capitalism, or even an understanding of it, what you want is freedom.
Tough if everybody understood how freedom worked, there would certainly be more of it around.
I especially love it when people start trying to educate me about the USSR.
ReplyDelete"But there were good things in the Soviet Union," they say.
"No, there weren't."
"But the medical care was great."
"No, it was horrible and barbaric."
"But the education was wonderful."
"No, it was really worthless."
"But I read in a book how Soviet Union was good."
"And while you were reading that book, I was actually living in that horrible system."
Clarrisa,
ReplyDeleteWhat you're dealing with is identical (not "similar to" or "akn to") but IDENTICAL to a religion.
I have the exact same experience as a preacher's kid. Christians always try to get me to go back to church and they say, "but Christ loves you"
"No, he doesn't. It was a money making scam to take your money and employ people."
"But you'll go to hell."
"No I won't, the church is just there as an obsoleted model of government replaced with secular isntitutions now."
ie-one people believe in a religion, no amount of fact can dissuade them. They define themselves and pride themselves on it. So socialist-lovers in the US WON'T listen to the Russian who lived it, just as Christians won't listen to the preacher's kid who saw everything behind the scenes.
"What you're dealing with is identical (not "similar to" or "akn to") but IDENTICAL to a religion."
ReplyDelete- You are absolutely 100% right. People get a fanatical glow in their eyes whenever they start praising the "good and mighty USSR" and they just stop listening to reason. It's really scary to observe that, to be honest.
""No I won't, the church is just there as an obsoleted model of government replaced with secular isntitutions now.""
- You are a very brilliant person.
Heh, "brilliant?"
ReplyDeleteI don't know, seemed pretty obvious to me that until eh...the 1500's or so, religion was the government, the legitimacy of which was falsely based on a "god."
It's an observation you can see throughout human cultures and civiliations where the SAME EXACT phenomenon occurs despite these civilizations having never been in contact with each other. Religion arose not because some burning bush told Moses to climb a mountain, religion arose because society needed to be governed or anarchy would ensue. Plus, look at the laws different religions establish. Very similar, all of which are geared towards benefiting and governing a society.
Another interesting thing you can observe is economics. It's no shock that gold (as well as silver, salt, and other items) because the defacto currency in these separated civilizations. There's nothing religious or "magical" about gold, it's just rare and has the traits the make it a good currency.
I grew up knowing Cubans, East Germans and Romanians that had escaped their socialist paradises (I will blame my bourgeois parents for that, how dare they hang out with rejects of the workers' paradise).
ReplyDeleteI moved to England in the 90s, where the University's student union body seemed to think Marxism was great and long live socialism... and down with the system, woooohooooo!
I met too many brownshirt vegans and too many girls desperate to have a minority boyfriend to prove how non-racist they were (as opposed to going out with the right person for them, regardless of background). Amnesty International was very popular, so was the Anti-Nazi League (i.e. the Youth Communist Party).
I graduated in 98 and started working, which led to much travel across a formerly great country (including staying at a Holiday Inn in Manchester with a perimeter barbed wire fence and german-shepherd patrols walking the perimeter). This is what made me start planning my escape from the cesspit formerly known as England in 02, succeeded in 04. I hate to say this, but hard Socialism conquered England where the nazis failed.
Now that I am in North America, my neighbours are from Czechoslovakia, my best friends are Hungarian and I know a fair few Serbians and Croatians. Not one of them has anything good to say about Socialism, and they are all shocked that parties in Canada such as the NDP get so many votes.
But what do eastern europeans know about the workers' paradise, eh?
Believed to be one of the reasons Ayn Rand pegged the USSR so well.
ReplyDelete@ Clarissa, now I'm no leftist nor a lover of the Soviet Union, but to say that the education was worthless in the Soviet Union seems wrong because if the education was worthless, why is it that the Soviet Union was the #1 enemy of the United States? Why is it that the Soviet Union was able to send the first man in space, the first satellite in space, etc... Other than that, I agree with every part of your critique of the Soviet Union. Now, if I have misinterpreted what you said, please explain.
ReplyDelete