20 years since the wall came down.

[weltweit]

.. scratch that

 

[stethoscope]

Poor socialists

I guess it would be easy to mock the collapse of thier collective farms and gulags and stuff but underneath all those piss poor banners and statements I am sure their hearts were in the right places at least at the very beginning.

Always been a capitalist ever since my earliest business of nicking empty pop bottles to go and recollect the deposit on but being so cynical and cut throat can be a tad wearying after a while. Financiall rewarding but ultimately not very fufilling.

Part of me would happily go and work on a collective farm and enjoy a good old sing-song in the evening singing jolly folk songs about Tractor factorys and the like, at least for a couple of weeks.

Sounds to me like you're a bit ignorant

Socialism has never stopped individual endeavour or entreprenuerialship and development, it's just ensured that people don't get fucked over in the process, that there's redistribution of that income and wealth, and that the state retains some ownership.

Looking at how much has been lost to this country through years of mostly Tory and then Nu Lab privatisation and selling off of assets, I'd say we'd been better off keeping some socialist principles.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Back when Eastern Europeans were driving around in Trabants my family owned an Austin Maxi so I dont feel too superior

Hmmm, Austin Maxi was more of a Wartburg or Lada equivalent, the correct equivalent for a Trabi would have been an Austin Allegro.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Well it was of course not an exact comparison as the trabbie was an eastern car for the masses and the S Classe a western luxury car for the elite.

But the image made me think of development, of the benefits brought by competition which was absent in vehicles of the DDR.

Average western cars were significantly safer in accidents than the trabbie, which just folded up in an accident. Well I could go on - and on etc ..

But there were benefits of competition .. clear to see.

Well yay for capitalism, then!



By the way, how crowded were the roads when you visited East Germany?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Has anyone thanked Hasslehof yet?

Hasselhoff can fuck right off. The only connection he had with the fall of the Berlin Wall was that the Stasi threatened to play some of his tunes to the protesters and they stampeded the Wall in fear!

 

[weltweit]

By the way, how crowded were the roads when you visited East Germany?

Not much traffic iirc

 

[likesfish]

Hmmm, Austin Maxi was more of a Wartburg or Lada equivalent, the correct equivalent for a Trabi would have been an Austin Allegro.

and they were built by commies too

socalism could'nt feed themselves the system did'nt fucking work its going to take another 10 years for germany to bring the east up to the same state as west germany

 

[weltweit]

Tonight is the night, 20 years ago tonight when the wall was torn down.

Do you remember where you were at the time?

I watched it on TV, I might have been in Cardiff or I may have been in England with my parents I can't fully remember.

 

[weltweit]

... socalism could'nt feed themselves the system did'nt fucking work its going to take another 10 years for germany to bring the east up to the same state as west germany

I have to agree, they made a grand experiment, it was a worthy experiment but in the end it failed.

 

[BLT]

Socialism has never stopped individual endeavour or entreprenuerialship and development, it's just ensured that people don't get fucked over in the process, that there's redistribution of that income and wealth, and that the state retains some ownership.

Do you have a cite for that? Or evan an explanation of how this makes sense to you? Something like, 'all the countries which called themselves socialist weren't really socialist after all'?

(On the tangent: I learned to drive in the family Maxi, and have always thought it a perfectly fine car.)

 

[BLT]

I have to agree, they made a grand experiment, it was a worthy experiment but in the end it failed.

In the absence of the guinea pigs' informed consent, about as worthy as WWII Japanese medical experiments on POWs.

 

[butchersapron]

Do you have a cite for that? Or evan an explanation of how this makes sense to you? ...

You're right, for the wrong reasons.

 

[weltweit]

In the absence of the guinea pigs' informed consent, about as worthy as WWII Japanese medical experiments on POWs.

Oh I would not be so harsh.

There are lots of idealists who believe in communism and socialism, East Germany and the Soviet block gave them a canvas to experiment with their philosophies. I think it is good that they had that chance but now it is over, they had long enough and their ideas were proven as bankrupt failures.

 

[Badger Kitten]

I remember the wall coming down, and Ceaucescu being shot. Two months later I set off to work in Poland for a year.

Exciting, but poverty-stricken times.

 

[butchersapron]

Oh I would not be so harsh.

There are lots of idealists who believe in communism and socialism, East Germany and the Soviet block gave them a canvas to experiment with their philosophies. I think it is good that they had that chance but now it is over, they had long enough and their ideas were proven as bankrupt failures.

He says in 2009.

 

[audiotech]

Poor socialists

I guess it would be easy to mock the collapse of thier collective farms and gulags and stuff but underneath all those piss poor banners and statements I am sure their hearts were in the right places at least at the very beginning.

Always been a capitalist ever since my earliest business of nicking empty pop bottles to go and recollect the deposit on but being so cynical and cut throat can be a tad wearying after a while. Financiall rewarding but ultimately not very fufilling.

Part of me would happily go and work on a collective farm and enjoy a good old sing-song in the evening singing jolly folk songs about Tractor factorys and the like, at least for a couple of weeks.

Today they're called 'away days', where everyone is expected to think in the same way under the dictatorship of monopoly capitalism.

The apparatchiks of the GDR were accountable to the local people they represented at least, CEO's on the other hand are accountable to whom?

 

[butchersapron]

Today they're called 'away days', where everyone is expected to think in the same way under the dictatorship of monopoly capitalism.

You support the idea of monopoly capitalism now then? What exactly won you to that postion away from the traditional SWP/IS approach?

 

[likesfish]

ceo's havre to make money fro pension funds mostly.
they also have to obey the law something the commies states never bothered about.
also face competition form other ceo's
It's far from perfect nut given the choice people perferred the west.
Thats why they put the wall up people voted with there feet.

old joke east german to west german you love only money
west german thats true we lock our money up in banks you lock all your people up

A socalism thats demands a vast network of informers and guns and mines and guardtowers to keep people is obviously wrong

 

[audiotech]

You support the idea of monopoly capitalism now then? What exactly won you to that postion away from the traditional SWP/IS approach?

idiot

 

[audiotech]

ceo's havre to make money fro pension funds mostly.
they also have to obey the law something the commies states never bothered about.
also face competition form other ceo's
It's far from perfect nut given the choice people perferred the west.
Thats why they put the wall up people voted with there feet.

old joke east german to west german you love only money
west german thats true we lock our money up in banks you lock all your people up

A socalism thats demands a vast network of informers and guns and mines and guardtowers to keep people is obviously wrong

another, dimwit.

 

[butchersapron]

idiot

It just sort of happened? You just throw around concepts that you don't understand?

 

[LLETSA]

ceo's havre to make money fro pension funds mostly.
they also have to obey the law something the commies states never bothered about.
also face competition form other ceo's
It's far from perfect nut given the choice people perferred the west.
Thats why they put the wall up people voted with there feet.

old joke east german to west german you love only money
west german thats true we lock our money up in banks you lock all your people up

A socalism thats demands a vast network of informers and guns and mines and guardtowers to keep people is obviously wrong

Nothing like a coherent analysis to clear up an argument.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

=
I still wish the soviets had had the jump on the yanks and rolled on into france, making a nice soc/dec client state of britain.

Before they got to France, they would have been met with theatre nuclear weapons on the West German Plain. That likely would have led to a nuclear escalation, meaning things would have turned out a touch different.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Would it really have been so bad?

Ken Mcloed envisioned a socialist scotland client state, and a southern enclave of England who were still US capitalist loyal. Scotland was left to it's sovereignty as an example of how non-empiricist the soviets were.

It could have worked man. Those sodding yanks

You'd have to ask the parents of a girl I dated back whenever. They escaped into West Germany via tunnels. Some of their friends were shot in the attempt.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Shoddyness was a problem, you only have to look at the Wartburg and Trabbant, both of which had waiting lists of years duration.

When the wall went up, there was a BMW motorcycle factory caught on the east side. It was renamed cossack and kept making motorcycles which were in demand across the whole eastern bloc. However, when the wall came down it transpired that the factory was still making the same model of motorcycle that it had been making when the wall went up!

They had plenty of these

but the average Russian couldn't get a refrigerator that worked.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Sure, it is an argument I have used myself, only one nation has ever used nukes and they used them against civilians.

As I noted in another thread, from 45 to 49, the US was the only country in the world with nukes. Had it been the type of country to do so, it could have flattened its enemies, ie Russia and China, with impunity, and without fear of nuclear reprisal. It didn't do so.

 

[DotCommunist]

that was big of them. I'm sure the citizens of Nagasaki are grateful.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

that was big of them. I'm sure the citizens of Nagasaki are grateful.

You're missing the obvious point. If the US was the warmonger you like to think it is, it wouldn't have passed up the opportunity to strike first at defenceless enemies. I suspect that had it been the USSR with the only nukes, Stalin wouldn't have passed up on the chance.

 

[DotCommunist]

Nah. Stalin was an avaricious nightmare, but not a fool.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Nah. Stalin was an avaricious nightmare, but not a fool.

That's all a matter of conjecture. What's a fact, is that the US had the chance, but didn't avail itself of it.