The Soviet gulags existed from the 30s to the 50s. They are no way shape or form contemporaneous to us, nor a discussion of the late 1980s. That’s like me bringing up Andersonville.
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Follow the thread of the argument: @shaddack called life in the Soviet Union “humane”; I pointed out that calling a system that used gulags, terror-famine, and show trials as a matter of policy “humane” is silly, as was his further argument, that implied leisure is more important than civil rights.
Even as late as the 1980s, Soviet citizens couldn’t vote, couldn’t travel outside Warsaw Pact nations, couldn’t publish political opinions. The gulags were the flashier, obvious instance of Soviet illiberal authoritarianism, but not the only one.
The point is that, for all our problems, the West is freer than the USSR ever was. We do terrible things, but not on the scale they did.
At the same time as the height of the gulag and the Stalinist purges, we had a similar system of repression and terror here, with the nadir of race relations coming in the immediate period after the first world war. While Stalin was throwing people into the bottomless pit of the gulag, we were torturing, burning, and maiming people in the name of racial purity. I doubt a black American at the time would have called American “freeer” at the time.
It might be better to argue that the arbitrary expansion of unchecked state power can lead to horrific ends, yeah?
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For the hundredth time, scale matters. The United States killed and maimed thousands; the USSR killed and maimed millions.
Here, you and I absolutely agree.
I honestly don’t think that “scale matters” to the African Americans living through that.
Probably, but the subject under discussion is the relative merits of two different political and economic systems, not the viewpoint of a black American in the 1950s.
I think that’s rather relevant, since until the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s, they lived in a state of constant terror underwritten by the law - that is American citizens lived that way. This was not a minor thing. The American system was in part underwritten by that terror. Also, by the near genocide and dispossession of Native Americans. Not too little exploitation of Mexican Americans and Asian Americans also.
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My general theory is that people want to do some kind of work they find rewarding, raise families, have a social life, and not starve or lack basic needs. If you’re in a system that lets you do this, you’ll be relatively happy. If your ability to do these is impaired, you won’t be. It doesn’t really matter what that system is.
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One of the issues I have with libertarianism: On both a moral and practical level, I see very little difference between threatening someone with a pink slip, fines, and debt, threatening them with the promise of Hell, or threatening them with a literal gun to the head.
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As someone said earlier in this thread, a good empirical unit of measurement is attempted migration/defection. The Iron Curtain kept people in, and lots of people tried to get out, at great risk to themselves and their families. In contrast, discontent Americans had porous borders to the north and south, yet relatively few people attempted to escape by those routes. Now, maybe there’s an argument to be made that capitalist democracies with their veneer of self-determination and agency are better at instilling false consciousness in the minds of the oppressed—and that the more straightforward propaganda of socialist and communist systems is less effective despite it being their clear objective—but I think that if this is your argument you have the burden of proving it.
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What are you arguing? Did anyone say those things didn’t happen?
What I’m saying is, for every one black, Indian, latino, and asian person terrorized and murdered by the American government, there were ten kulaks, dissidents, homosexuals, and royalists terrorized and murdered by the Soviet government.
A man who kills ten people is objectively worse than a man who kills one.
You don’t see a difference between a pink slip and a pistol? Seriously?
No, it’s not my argument. I’m saying that when people say that they felt their lives were better under the Socialist system, when they actually lived under that system, maybe we should at the very least dismiss them out of hand. the reality is more complicated than people going to places are doing so because it’s freeer. You could point to the huge influx if immigrants into the middle east for work for example, where in some cases they are not going to more democratic places (guest workers in Saudia Arabia). I’d suggest that the reasons for migrations are not singular. Take internal migration within the US. Racist terror in the south prompted migrations north. African Americans really weren’t much freeer there, maybe a modicum so, but they still were victimized by a racist system.
I’m in no way trying to downplay the very real problems of the Soviet Union, BTW. I’m saying let’s try and see it for what it actually was - a complicated place that is more than just gulags and oppression. I think the pictures in the story actually do reflect the reality as much as the gulags do.
I’m arguing that we should listen to people who actually lived there and see what they have to say about their lives during that time. And I don’t want to mitigate what happened, just reflect reality a bit better.
And I really do think you’re underestimating the actually violence and brutality that built this country. It was built on slavery and genocide for example. My point is not to say that the Soviets were better, because I don’t think that. We should just recognize that we have our own violent history of oppression, which in no way entirely negates the positives. Also, that we are still dealing with real problems of oppression in this country today.
I would argue that @shaddack 's comment that started all of this didn’t reflect reality very well, and that pointing out that incredible violence was needed to achieve his humane life actually presents a more complete picture than he did.
I’m not refusing to recognize that the United States is violent and oppressive. My only point is that the Soviet Union was more violent and more oppressive. And I don’t think that can be argued.
I didn’t read the comments of others as saying life in the first world was freer than life in the second world, just that it was better. As you suggest, there are number of dimensions upon which we can measure quality of life, and I suspect that the first world was ‘better’ along multiple dimensions, and not only from an economic point of view.
And I’m not sure that many people are saying that life under the socialist/communist system was better than life in the first world. They may be saying that their recollection of life 30 years ago seems better than life in the same country today, but it’s mainly those in states that have failed to transition to market economies and functional democracies that say this. By which I mean that Slovenians or Poles are much less likely than Russians to look back fondly.
This isn’t a direct rebuttal or response to your point, but you might find it interesting to take a look at (forced) migration within the Soviet Union, as well as the cynical and intentionally divisive border-drawing they engaged in with their republics.
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Gerrymandering, anybody?
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Every tool I had in Russia was made of titanium. It being so cheap in Russia made sure that all the tools were amazing and lasted forever.
It’s a real shame that Americans never got to use any Russian goods, they were really amazing.
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Having faced both, no.
The difference between threatening someone’s life versus threatening their survival is a very thin line. If you’ve ever been one sick day away from a homeless shelter, it gets much thinner.
In a capitalist society, money isn’t just money, it’s your only means to access food, clothing, shelter, and medical care. A job isn’t just something that needs to be done, or something you do because you enjoy it, it’s something you do because it’s the only way to prove to others that you deserve to live. That’s why we keep talking about “job creation” despite becoming a post-scarcity world.
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I feel stupid for even entertaining this, but a gun ends everything. You’re dead. At least with a pink slip there’s the possibility of, y’know, another job.
Are you saying you’d rather be dead than out of work?
