I stopped being a communist

[Anonymous No.17638890]

You know what convinced me?

I used to repost this CIA report, that was supposed to convince others that Soviet citizens were fed MORE and BETTER than American citizens

But then I got hit with this reply:

[Anonymous No.17638893]

1/2
">>The CIA drew no conclusions about the nutritional makeup of Soviet or American diets<<

Bravo. I could stop there, but fuck it.

You've posted a one page summary of a CIA report. The full thing is here (https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000498133.pdf).). Now for starters, some important things. This CIA report is not looking at what Soviet citizens ingest, it is about food supply. This is very important. Secondly, even within this report you can see there are some huge inequalities across the Soviet Union. Meat consumption in Estonia was 81kg per capita per year, in Uzbekistan it was 31kg. Fruit consumption had an average of 40kg per person per year, but across Siberia it was 12kg.

The report indicates that the Soviets had slightly lower calorie in take than America. This understates things considerably.

Firstly, Soviet citizens conducted vastly more strenuous work in a significantly colder climate. They did not have the luxury of things like personal cars, or working 9-5 jobs in comfortable offices. The total recommended daily amount of calories for a Soviet person ranged from 2,800 to 3,600 for men and from 2,400 to 3,100 for women, depending on their occupation (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4481043/)) In the United States, estimates range from 1,600 to 2,400 calories per day for adult women and 2,000 to 3,000 calories per day for adult men. So right away, it is very important to remember that the Soviets need higher calories than Americans.

[Anonymous No.17638899]

>>17638893
2/3
Adding to this, the Soviet Union was notoriously ineffective at getting food into its citizens. The Soviet Union was the world's largest milk producer, but only 60% of that actually ended up in people (https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/0000-701-1-Gray.pdf).). In the United States, 90% of milk produced was consumed by humans. General Secretary Gorbachev noted that reducing field and farm product losses during harvest, transportation, storage and processing could increase food consumption in general by 20%. So any of those figures you see in CIA reports, you can basically take down by one-fifth.

If you read this (https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/9556127/Hamm_gsas.harvard_0084L_10406.pdf?sequence=3)) dissertation you get some useful points:

>>per capita consumption figures likely overstate actually available amounts, given that the Soviet Union’s inadequate transportation and storage infrastructure led to frequent shortages in stores, as well as significant loss of foodstuffs and raw products due to spoilage... In 1988, at the height of perestroika, it was revealed that Soviet authorities had been inflating meat consumption statistics; it moreover transpired that there existed considerable inequalities in meat consumption, with the intake of the poorest socioeconomic strata actually declining by over 30 percent since 1970... Government experts estimated that the elimination of waste and spoilage in the production, storage, and distribution of food could have increased the availability of grain by 25 percent, of fruits and vegetables by 40 percent, and of meat products by 15 percent.<<

[Anonymous No.17638904]

I'm not sure if >>>/pol/

[Anonymous No.17638909]

>>17638899
3/4
Despite subsidising food by something like 10% of GDP food was still more expensive than in the West (https://idp.springer.com/authorize?response_type=cookie&client_id=springerlink&redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Fbook%2F10.1007%252F978-1-349-05438-1))

If you actually READ (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/politics-work-and-daily-life-in-the-ussr/ABF461080177EB6CFF9540B85CEFBDAE)) about the daily life in the USSR you will find assessment such as >>The prevailing system of food distribution is clearly a major source of dissatisfaction for essentially all income classes, even the best off and even the most privileged of these.<< As you love CIA reports, here (https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol12i2/html/v12i2a06p_0001.htm)) is another one which warns against the sunny outlook in the Western literature:

>>In summary, I went to the USSR with a set of notions about what to expect that I had formed over the years from reading and research on the Soviet economy. I also had a collection of judgment factors,partly intuitive and partly derived from this same research and reading, that I applied in drawing conclusions and speculating about probable future developments in the Soviet economy. My four months of living in the country itself, however, greatly altered these preconceptions and modified the implicit judgment factors in many respects. No amount of reading about the Soviet economy in Washington could substitute for the summer in Moscow as I spent it.<<

>>As a result of this experience I think that our measurements of the position of Soviet consumers in relation to those of the United States (and Western Europe) favor the USSR to a much greater extent than I had thought. The ruble-dollar ratios are far too low for most consumer goods.

[Anonymous No.17638911]

>>17638890
>>17638893
>>17638899
GO BACK
>>>/pol/
KYS KYS KYS
STOP SHITTING UP THE CATALOG FAGGOTS

[Anonymous No.17638917]

>>17638890
Hey faggot this this is the literature board.

[Anonymous No.17638918]

>>17638909
4/4
Cabbages are not cabbages in both countries. The cotton dress worn by the average Soviet woman is not equivalent to the cheapest one in a Sears catalogue; the latter is of better quality and more stylish. The arbitrary 20 percent adjustment that was made in some of the ratios is clearly too little. The difference in variety and assortment of goods available in the two countries is enormous—far greater than I had thought. Queues and spot shortages were far more in evidence than I expected. Shoddy goods were shoddier. And I obtained a totally new impression of the behavior of ordinary Soviet people toward one another.<<

One of the true experts on consumption and nutrition in the USSR is Igor Birman who wrote the book (https://books.google.com/books/about/Personal_Consumption_in_the_USSR_and_the.html?id=_hexCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false)) on this topic. You get some interesting stats, like the USSR consume 229% the amount of potatoes as the United States but 39% the amount of meat. He also shows that the Soviets were not hitting their own "Rational Norms" for the consumption of meat, milk milk products, eggs, vegetables, fruits or berries. For example, while the Soviet Rational Norm for for fruit was 113kg, the actual consumption was 38. The US actual was smack bang on 113kg. You get some other fun facts like potato consumption in Tsarist Russia, 1913 was 113kg and after all of Stalin's industrialisation and collectivisation and decades of development, this increased to... 119kg in 1976.

Just an extra study I've found: In areas of the Soviet Union, 93% of men were Vitamin C deficient, while in neighbouring Finland this was 2% (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8641247/).).

**Soviet diets were not good. They did not hit their own set guidelines. Stop being a hack.**"
>>17638904
it's not /pol/ because it's relevant to the topic of whether socialism has any value in the context of central planning apparently being such a failure. I didnt know.

[Anonymous No.17638924]

>>17638918
>it's not /pol/
You are a fucking retard.

[Anonymous No.17638928]

>>17638918
KYS FAGGOT

[Anonymous No.17638974]

>>17638918
>it's not /pol/
>it's relevant to the topic of whether socialism has any value in the context of central planning apparently being such a failure
so... it's /pol/.

[Anonymous No.17638991]

>>17638924
>>17638928
>>17638974
if that's the case, marx discussions that aren't strictly about sociology should entirely fuck off from lit to pol

that's not happening
so you fuck off

[Anonymous No.17639001]

>>17638991
>if that's the case, marx discussions that aren't strictly about sociology should entirely fuck off from lit to pol
I agree. Sociology isn't /lit/ either, so that should fuck off too. But most of all, you need to fuck off.

[Anonymous No.17639007]

https://voca.ro/1c1TrltZBssg

[Anonymous No.17639013]

>>17639001
nah, keep crying

[SAGE No.17639031]

[SAGE No.17639037]

[Anonymous No.17639038]

>>17638890
>>17638893
>>17638899
>>17638909
>>17638918
If the theory is correct but turns out bad in practice, then it was practiced badly.

[Anonymous No.17639039]

bravo, you might be one in the 3th percentile of people who have changed their opinion on anything in an imageboard.

[Anonymous No.17639046]

>>17639038
Generally if the theory doesn't conform to facts, you change the theory, not the facts.

[SAGE No.17639047]

[Anonymous No.17639054]

>>17638904
>>17638911
>>17638917
>>17638924
>>17638928
>>17638974
>>17639001
>>17639031
>>17639037
>>17639047
commies absolutely seething lmao

[Anonymous No.17639057]

>>17638890
If you're being genuine, good for you anon. It's important to remember that you can be critical of capitalism, especially as practiced in America, without being a Communist. You don't have to go full AnCap.

[Anonymous No.17639061]

>>17639057
I'm serious. I literally did not know just the sheer scale of deficiencies. I was convinced that it all "just worked" but the data and anecdotal sources seem to refute that. It's weird. Why isn't this taught anywhere?

[Anonymous No.17639071]

>>17639054
>commies absolutely seething lmao

[SAGE No.17639077]

[SAGE No.17639080]

[SAGE No.17639089]

[Anonymous No.17639090]

>>17639080
>>17639077
>>17639071
lol why are you trying to get rid of this redpill. does such redpilling harm your subversive efforts?

[Anonymous No.17639092]

>>17638890
>1/2
>2/3
>3/4
>4/4
what the fuck are you even doing op

[SAGE No.17639094]

[Anonymous No.17639095]

>>17638890
>>17638893
>>17638899
>>17638909
>>17638918
It took you this much effort to realize that communism sucks?

[Anonymous No.17639100]

>>17639094
Bump. You're not hiding this you treacherous pieces of dog shit

[Anonymous No.17639102]

>>17639090
I'm very much anti-communist and very pro my board so get the fuck out of here you are the sperm your mother forgot to swallow.

[Anonymous No.17639105]

>>17639100
Bumping is discouraged on this board, you piece of shit tourist NIGGER.

[Anonymous No.17639107]

>>17638904
>>17638911
>>17638917
>>17638924
>>17638928
>>17638974
>>17639001
>>17639031
>>17639037
>>17639047
>>17639071
>>17639077
>>17639080
>>17639089
>>17639094
>>17639102
Guys.. I think OP broke the commie bot..

[Anonymous No.17639112]

>>17638890
Nice research, I would add that meat and fish substitutes would have to be called the basis of our diet in the commie block - we ate kaszanka very regularly (it's a blood sausage generally made of buckwheat and pig's blood) and even invented "paprykarz" - it was a can of rice with just a minimum fish (and paprika) to make it palatable and actually resemble a taste of fish.
We also had some huge hopes one time when our party announced that they are working on the technology of making food from
krill (there were supposedly huge amounts of these floating in oceans), but they collapsed in a short 10 years span of these strenuous efforts- thus saving us from trying this delicacy.

[Anonymous No.17639115]

>>17639105
Bump. Go back to sucking off that shit covered dragon dildo you fucking communigger freak

[Anonymous No.17639121]

>>17639112
Whales eat krill. Just eat the whales, there's lots of meat on a whale.

[Anonymous No.17639128]

>>17639115
Read the sticky. If you need to bump it means your thread is shit and should not be here.

[Anonymous No.17639152]

>>17639128
OP here. the bumping guy isn't me

[Anonymous No.17639173]

>>17639128
Bump

[Anonymous No.17639219]

>>17638909
>Despite subsidising food by something like 10% of GDP food was still more expensive than in the West
particularly this convinced me to leave communism

[Anonymous No.17639235]

>>17639112
Btw, don't you think that it was a bit fishy that it was impossible for private citizens to get these (basic) information due to the total travel and information restrictions in and out of the communist bloc? Spies had to do this (lol) because not a private person would voluntarily go back there if they once let him out (some apparatchiks etc. could travel *sometimes*)

[Anonymous No.17639245]

>>17639071
Religious zeal is foolishness embodied. Your favorite member of the baby torture tribe, Marx or Trotsky were uninterested in governing non-baby torture tribe members well. They wanted a global peasant revolt so that jews could rule everywhere.
85% of first Soviet Politbureau were members of the baby torture tribe.

[Anonymous No.17639258]

>>17639038
If the theory doesn't the first, second, or third time, then the theory is wrong and does not reflect reality at all. Honestly, what is the point of reading theory that leftists shill when they have never worked? Never forget that theories are just assumptions and educated guesses at best.

[Anonymous No.17639279]

>>17639112
>"paprykarz" - it was a can of rice with just a minimum fish (and paprika) to make it palatable
Chances are that the "can" part was the most expensive part of this (and a pure waste), but they couldn't know because commies don't believe in market prices so they cannot measure value.

[Anonymous No.17639282]

>>17639038
Why are you emotionally invested in a fucking theory made by a baby torture cultist? It's psychopathic no matter what so you can safely ignore it in favor of simply being just in real life, all the while seeking to undermine banker mafia (also made up of of many baby torture cultists).

[Anonymous No.17639581]

>>17639282
>>17639245
based

[Anonymous No.17639609]

>>17639092
He's from twitter

[Anonymous No.17639751]

>>17638890
pointlessly posting this on /lit/, first thing I see when I come on here. what the fuck is even happening to this board anymore lol

[Anonymous No.17639948]

>>17639061
Propaganda

[Anonymous No.17639978]

>>17638890
very nice

[Anonymous No.17639984]

>>17638890
This belongs on /pol/ or /his/.
Sage

[Anonymous No.17640048]

>>17639984
What are you even babbling about, it's a pure /lit research with tons of /lit sources.

[Anonymous No.17640071]

>>17638890
Ok, but how is this literature?

[Anonymous No.17640088]

You could just ask anyone who lived thru ussr how much they lacked food.

[Anonymous No.17640098]

>>17639038
>The theory is perfect, but humans are incapable of enacting a practical manifestation of it.
>To protect the theory, we must abandon human reality.
Take a step back and give your head a shake.