Meanwhile the fairest economic system ever:
this is such bullshit. the “elite” housing in the thumbnail just resembles the style of housing built in the country from the 1930s up until 1955. in accordance to first the postconstructivist and later the socialist realist architectural styles. those “worker’s palaces” were in fact, as the name suggests for ordinary workers and not just societal elites.
meanwhile the latter building resembles a standardized panel-built residential complex built after khrushchevs 1955 speech recommending architectuts to make more economical use of the USSR’s limited building resources. while postwar scarcity and haphazard building practices did in fact initially lead to a decrease in living quality, those issues were mostly resolved by the onset of the second generation of Soviet standard industrial housing construction by the 1970s. what all of those complexes have in common though, is that all of them provide a much higher quality of life to the common worker than anything built after 1990.
and yes, certain people, “elites” if you will, did in fact have a considerably higher quality of life than most people, but those differences where negligible in comparison to the Russian empire or any capitalist régime past or present.
yeah, communist elites had access, not wealth. they had connections and could arrange things. note that this is still massively less corrupt than capitalist elites, where the corruption is built right into the system, and is mostly legalized.
well, and some of them used their connections to get the nice houses taken from the bourgeoisie. at least i assume it was that way in the SU too. i know my grandma’s older sister got a pretty nice house and dacha in hungary. but of course they then didnt (and couldnt) turn that into a real-estate empire or whatever ghoul shit capitalist elites do.
true. also those (relative) privileges also extended to important engineers, scientists, managers and veterans of the great patriotic war. all of those groups are infinitely more deserving of wealth and prosperity than the “people” who get rich under capitalism
Economically, a true equality will never happen., however, I could deal with the world a lot better if the wealth disparity between the richest and poorest person was under 15 times higher or something like that instead of the 2478 times or higher that it is under capitalism.
even capitalism works better when the ratio is 15 instead of a bazillion, but capitalism has no mechanism to stop it from eating itself
Even Marx had some praises of Capitalism. Funny how just doing your best to make things more equal can result in better outcomes! It’s almost as if having high score boards and encouraging people to reach the top of that numbers game just encourages people to whatever it takes to do so.
i learned about this from playing Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic. those older style buildings: really nice living conditions but so slooow to build and bricks while easy to manufacture are so expensive
mass production of panels FTW. can throw up a massive apartment complex for my micro-district in mere weeks
soviet “elites”: the same house as “peasants” but with funny spikes on top and a slightly different accent colour
Are you telling me that the corruption was so bad in the USSR that some of their corrupt elites could have…
Checking my notes here…
A 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment? While their poorest people were forced to live in 1 bedrooms and 2 bedrooms with 1 bathroom?
Obviously this is proof that the USSR was bad.
Ebil authoritarian gomunism is when extra bedroom
American senator to public: We cannot stand for this.
American Senator in private: So if I allow your company to bulldozer a few city blocks to replace them with 10 bedroom 13 bathroom Mansions… I could have one of them for a low rate that guarantees 200% ROI?
I can? Great! Where’s the government subsidies request form I have to fill out? Oh I don’t have to? perfect
Looking at soviet history, it was funny how much projection was on soviet elites. Sure they had higher luxuries than average workers. It is not easy to make the guy who handle billions of dollars work close to minimum wage. But their life standard difference was nowhere near capitalists. That was the entire reason they wanted ussr destroyed
According to that image, Soviet Elites has slightly larger housing and nicer brickwork. I can’t imagine capitalist elites tolerating something this basic
Capitalist elites literally blow steam out of their ears the poors sometimes aren’t doomed to homelessness or other forms of homelessness (basement dwellers, couch surfing with rich friends, etc.)
How can they enjoy their decadence when those uppity poors might still have a place to call home? Only the rich should even have the luxury of paying rent!
“if people have what they need, how will I get them to debase themselves for my own enrichment?”
As the libs love to say
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good
Me: please just vote for someone who will help us even a little bit
Libs: vote for our evil war criminal and stop with the purity tests and maybe we will help, but did you even get a Pell grant?
Libs: vote for our evil war criminal and stop with the purity tests
and maybe we will help, but did you even get a Pell grant?fixed
I forget they basically stopped even pretending they would change things after Obama. Joe and Kamala both ran on “nothing will change” campaigns.
Listen. I’m a practical guy. I believe in evidence-based policy-making and setting realistic goals, which is why we should adopt the policies of the Maoist Campaign Against the Landlords here in America.
Homes are dystopian af
As a member of the politburo I love my pointy box its so much better than the peasant non pointy box
If you ask the average American their ideal degree of wealth inequality in a society, they’ll describe the Soviet Union to you. And then they get mad at the Soviets!
Meanwhile in the US: here’s your 250sqft shitbox, now pay me 2K a month and no I will not fix the AC. Like for real these comparisons fall flatter and flatter the more people are unable to afford even the most basic rentals.
I have noticed in recent years that people have been coming around more and more to supporting the idea of commieblocks. Over here in Aus we’ve been in a “housing crisis” for decades and they keep saying we don’t have enough houses for everyone (in order to artificially inflate their value of course) and the idea of fixing rent to your income instead of it being whatever the landlord can get away with. Most don’t fully believe me when I say it was only 4% of income in the USSR, but it still gets them thinking, rather than just dismissing the entire thing outright.
I like how the two Soviet buildings look practically identical.
Also, i bet whomever made this never lived in the XIX-early XX century house like that on the left pic. Some of them looked like a fucking caverns with something like 4-5 m ceiling and heat insulation was a concept lost in the architect vision. I vastly prefer live in commieblock.
