Eva Durant wrote:
>
> >
> > I did not say that the Russians produced no consumer goods.
[snip]
> > During the Communist era, consumers goods were affordable, but getting them
> > required hours of standing in line. Now consumers goods are available,
> > often foreign and unaffordable for most people.
[snip]
I still believe the organs of Western propaganda
were pretty much correct when they described the
situation of consumer goods in the former USSR and
its "satellites" as "cheap prices for unavailable
goods resulting in people having to wait in very long
lines" (so we have one kind of waste in a capitalist
economy -- the potlatch due to enterprises which
competitively fail --, and another kind of waste
in bureaucratic socialism -- people wasting
massive quantities of labor time standing in line).
But what I'm thinking about here is something different.
Obviously we haven't had such problems in The West:
at least middle class people
in the United States didn't experience it until the
arrival of HMOs (well -- I now do recall the
*oil embargo*...). On the other hand, at the end of
WWII, the United States had much more than 50% of the
planet's entire industrial production capacity,
whereas the Soviet Union had been devastated, so
I think we should EXPECT that things would be better
here.
Now: almost without fail, whenever there's a *sale*,
frequently the things one wants are *out of stock*.
Cat food is on sale, and I can almost count on
only flavors my cats won't eat being available.
I am not meaning to trivialize the sufferings of the
populations of the "Iron Curtain nations", but
I do think the the pot has often called the
kettle black, and maybe Winston Churchhill
should have checked to see if there were
any barriers to full elaboration of human
potential on *his* side of the line, for the existence
of which he -- and, probably more, Truman -- had
no small responsibility, "between Stetin on the
Baltic and Trieste (or wherever it was) in the
Adriatic" (is there a word "lockout" in the
Anglo-English language?, e.g.).
\brad mccormick
--
Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but
Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world.
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
-------------------------------------------------------
<![%THINK;[SGML]]> Visit my website: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
