Comment by jojobas
2 years ago
It was incredibly expensive to have dozens of research institutes work on esoteric architectures at their pleasure. The majority of the population worked their asses of in poverty to make thousands of tanks and dozens of submarines, not entertain some computer scientists.
Sounds like the problems of acrappy economic theory
Not the theory, a crappy economic reality. If the economy were sound the computer researchers should have been able to fund their own research by commercializing it, instead of expecting handouts funded by the working class's hard labor.
My understanding of planned economies is that credit, investment, and profits are controlled by the state.
In any way starting a commercial enterprise would surely mark them as capitalist class traitors, wouldn't it?
3 replies →
The theory might or might not have worked if the leadership wasn't hell-bent on converting the entire world into their ideology by military force.
Which it kind of had to do lest their citizens noticed they live in abject poverty compared to other countries.
So in other words the crappy economic theory drove the militarism, lest the population recognize the fallout of the theory for what it was?
8 replies →
The article presents a beautiful, self-contained, anecdotal but representative example of why communism never worked, doesn’t work, won’t work, and wouldn’t work in your imaginary parallel spider-man universe scenario.
6 replies →
I don't get it. Are you arguing that the majority of Poles enjoyed being forced to pay (indirectly) for military equipment, and that that particular pleasure or pride and its consequences hence can be used to browbeat everything and everyone else? "Comrade, stop whistling? Don't you know you cannot be happier than us, who have to work for planes and guns?"
No, he wrote about motivation of ruling class, not rest of Poles.
Of course, and then you have to remember that the ones calling the shots were not even Polish, and the situation was common for the whole Eastern Bloc. The Polish government was appointed from Moscow. Stalin went so far as to send one of his top brass, Rokossovsky, to be Polish minister of Defense.