this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2025
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Socialism
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Socialism is (supposed to be) a solution to homelessness, regardless from which perspective. But homelessness is not the only problem societies develop, honestly. For example, GDR had huge fairness issues as the planners of resource distribution completely lacked transparency of checks and balances.
Above architecture was at least never meant to be for their leader and his staff (six degrees of separation) but for workers (everybody but them regardless of performance).
The GDR was forced to pay reparations for the damages the Nazis committed against the soviets, and the USSR was in no position to build them back up as the west did for west Germany. Even still, the disparity in the GDR was far lower than in western Germany, and that includes housing.
You should include prison and work camp inmates in your disparity considerations. A non-economically forced, neglectable income in context of exponential aggregation should weigh a lot right there.
Also, how capitalist was that Marshall Plan exactly?
Sure, even when prisoners are included disparity in capitalist nations is far higher. It's also not like western Germany actually de-Nazified either, they were protected, entrenched, and in many cases evacuated in Operation Paperclip.
The Marshall Plan was extremely capitalist, in that it was a plan by a capitalist country to protect its profits.
Fascism is not an economic category. How was far broader politically suppressing, normalist, centralist GDR not been fascist anyway.
Fascism is when a capitalist state resorts to more violent measures domestically to protect and entrench bourgeois rule. It cannot be separated from this context. The GDR suppressing Nazis and spies from the west while maintaining a socialist economy isn't fascism, it's socialism under constant siege and threat.
Only the rich may prosper in scenarios of radical regime changes. They simply translate money into power, security, education or mobility. Everyone else has to step down and to suffer more or less.
Aside, fascism and capitalism aren't congruent. There is more to fascism than just economic exploit and vice versa, etc. This is why I said you mixed up categories. Or maybe you are just overgeneralizing.
Finally, transformations into Socialism have to happen globally (Marx said, I believe). That's due to the "constant siege and thread" radicals get; why things turn out bad. You just can't come up with completely new rules within a game of 280 more players.
First of all, you're wrong about socialist states, they've historically been tremendously uplifting for their working classes. There simply isn't the "translation of money into power" you're posturing about, but instead a dramatic reorientation of society to where the working classes are on top. The rest of your comment is based on this essentially false premise.
Fascism isn't capitalism generally, fascism is capitalism in specific conditions. I am generalizing, but I'm not wrong here either.
Communism must be global, but each country can become socialist before then, and actually must. The reason communism has to be global isn't because of "siege," or claiming society can't change, it's because in order to abolish class all production and distribution must be collectivized. Things don't "turn out bad" in socialism historically.
No translation of money into power maybe in the case of GDR. But a lot into mobility.
None of this implies equivalence to former modes of production.
how do you think this lack of transparency can be fixed?
Having read Luhmann (systems theory) and being grown up in post-GDR East-Germany I'd say: Capitalist democracies (power) delegate most resource management to a different functional system (finance). Transparency is strongly regulated, can be fought for through a third separate functional system (law) and can be observed though a fourth functional system (mass media).
In GDR, all these delegated systems strongly depended on the centralized planning. So to make one possible conclusion: to fix that transparency issue to a certain degree, you could delegate resource plannig to a decentralized, self-managed system.
I understand, that some present decentralized, self-managed systems are Monopoly games, also considered capitalisms. But this doesn't hold true for all. Most are just very decentralized and just almost self-managed systems. Law fights monopolies. Lawmakers dampen extreme aggregation and extreme poverty.
Approaches to transparent Socialisms should not only include transparency as a starting condition but also the constant structural reproduction of it from within. From scratch, it is hard to come up with completely different functional systems (not power-finance-law-media) that harmonize better than what we have. (game theory) Luhmann said, we have to fix it step by step until we come to a better, different system. Marx also knew that wanted workers to become self-aware, solidary and tough enough to accomplish adjustments against the rich. You see, this democracy already looks totally socialist when compared to the 1920s.
Cheaper rents (though flats overflow) would solve a lot of Germany present day problems like
It has to be done using public investment (tending or subsidies). We don't have that yet. Workers should fight for THAT and NOT for lashing basic income receivers harder.
You're making a critical error in erasing the class character of the state. Modern Germany is closer to fascism than it is to socialism if we are to take a Marxist analysis. Laws in capitalism exist with the consent of the largest capitalists, and any independent org is allowed to the extent that it upholds the status quo. What workers should organize for is the overthrowal of the capitalist state and replacing it with a socialist one.
IDK why you bring up fascism and how to put Maxist analysis in context. I doubt state overthrowals ever had been beneficial for the working class, certainly not more than for the rich.
I brought up fascism because there's absolutely no basis to saying modern Germany is "more socialist" now. It's still a dictatorship of capital.
Secondly, working class revolution and establishing socialism has been greatly beneficial for the working classes in the USSR, PRC, DPRK, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, and even partial overthrowals such as in the Bolivarian revolution and Nicaraguan revolution have been tremendously beneficial. Socialism works, and disparity within socialism, though real, neither comes close to capitalism nor is erasing disparity the goal of socialism, but creating a society focused on satisfying the needs of everyone.
Sorry, you mix up too much for me. What's a low disparity in an overall poor country worth anyway.
What did I mix up? Further, again, I agree, lowering disparity isn't the primary concern but instead directing the economy towards improving the lives of the working classes through a working class controlled and directed state and economy. Capitalist economies are directed towards profits above all else, and Germany in particular is an imperialist country that plunders the global south.
Lawmakers do not fight monopolies.
Lawmakers serve the merchant class,
and any laws protecting it will be circumvented.
The only exception is when
the lawyer class fears a socialist revolution
and decides to take a left turn
within the capitalist system,
going full social democracy,
in order to preserve the capitalist system,
as an alternative to taking the fascist route,
which the US did when FDR came to power,
which ended with Nixon's administration.
The German lawyer class right now serves the US merchant class. They have been since 1945 and 1990.
Laws protecting German workers stem from the FDR-Johnson era.
It is also on the brink of collapse as the German lawyer class decided to hand over everything to the US oligarchs.
Germany's present day problem is a total collapse of its merchant class from what's left of it.
It's bread and butter, the German car industry is about to go down soon.
There is no left turn coming to the rescue from the US this time around.
The US no longer fears a socialist revolution from the worker and academic classes imitating the USSR, while its raw power is fading instead of rising on the world stage and thus has decided to take the fascist route.