Due to evolution, people will generally prefer to eat more calorically dense foods like meat, fat, and sugar whenever it's an option. In the west people could afford more meat, fat, and sugar, while people in the USSR could only afford a smaller amount of that, so they had no choice but to consume cheaper food like grain and eggs.
The difference in their diets wasn't intentional, it was merely the result of westerners having more ability to acquire what they wanted, while soviets were stuck with what they could get.
Additionally, every part of the world has different regional cuisines that are based on what ingredients were historically available and cultural norms. So even if you compare the diets of two societies that are otherwise equal in most ways (like UK vs. US) there will always be significant differences in what they eat.
Nothing about the aims of socialism can be inferred from this report.
If you take into account the effects of subsidies (which are social programs) on the availability of certain types of foods and how lobbying efforts form which subsidies make their way into law and practice, the aims of different forms of social programs definitely can be inferred. Further, the dollars spent on lobbying efforts come indirectly from the profitability of certain industries under given subsidy programs, so that sort of magnifies the effects of those dollars, based on where and what industries they are focused on.
These are all choices made by societies, indirectly or directly, at some level. None of them are just given. There's definitely an influence from differing environmental factors (land use, suitability and availability, differing climates, soil types, etc across the globe), but none of them have to be the way they ended up.
All of that may be outside the scope of this report, but they are definitely contributing factors. Summed up, they speak to the aims of a given social structure.
It depends on the timeframe, in the 1980s, there were no bread lines because food was plentiful.
During the main timeframe where there were bread lines, the US had soup lines.
Life under the Soviets was a marked improvement for the Russian people compared to life under the Tsars (not so much for the satellite states of the Soviet Union, those people were often actively harmed by being part of the union.)
I always say, true communism isn't possible without true democracy. Leaders must be elected in elections that actually matter.
It's likely not something that is possible with first past the post voting, or any ordinal voting system. A cardinal voting system could do it. My current favorite is STAR.
Pedantry corner: Communism’s goal is to achieve a communist society, which is defined by being stateless. In a true communist society there would be no need for elections nor government. Now, how to actually get there… is where people disagree, especially anarchists and marxists.
Back on topic, I think the electoral system Cuba and Vietnam use are already a better starting point. There are no parties (parties are allowed to exist but they don’t run in elections, not even the Communist Party), every candidate is independent and they cannot self-nomimate or be placed by someone higher-up, they must be nominated by their community, and everyone gets an equal opportunity to run their campaign.
it’s baffling to me that voting (or democracy for that matter) for a lot of people means, electing a person every 4-5 years and expecting them to be “good” leaders.
if the process isn’t directly tied to accountability at all times, how is that democracy? you elect lesser of many evils (in most places you won’t even have more than 2 “eligible” candidates) and that’s it?
whatever voting system you have, it will not solve this systemic problem.
The TLDR is Arrow's Theorem, that basically says that all ranked voting methods (and particularly first past the post) tend to result in two party dominance over time. This is the "lesser of two evils" effect, because either side doesn't have to convince their supporters that they're good, just that their opponent is worse.
You are not engaging the more general problem, which is not specifically the number of evils, whether two or more, nor the process by which one evil may be selected among many.
The general evil is the ideal of representation, or according to some, at least representation lacking consistent and absolute accountability to the represented.
You're using some sort of weird known only to you verbiage. That's why I'm not engaging with it.
The problem is simple, and known. First Past the Post voting has been mathematically shown to cause the rise of a two party political system. Once you have two opposing parties, they don't have to work for the good of the people anymore, they just have to sling enough mud at the competition.
There is no single problem, and many of the problems are not necessarily simple.
Many perceive a problem from decisions that affect them being made by elected representatives.
Others may be more agreeable to elected representatives making decisions, but demand much greater participation by and accountability to the constituency.
Communists have long been critical of representative government, because it enforces a class disparity of elites over the governed, not broadly different from aristocratic rule.
Yes, yes, we all know that the dream is to live in a fully stateless society.
But we also know that a fully stateless society isn't actually possible, because then who would organize the large infrastructure projects?
There's quite a bit more that government do, but I don't really care about law enforcement. Most crimes go unpunished as police don't actually try to solve crimes, just enforce laws on the poor and minorities...
International trade and such are a big one.
And a military, because that's how the last two attempts at stateless communism failed.
So if you must have a government (and you really must), then it should be the best one possible.
Any form of dictatorship is right out. That's a flat betrayal of the communist dream, and places the people into a new form of feudalism. It stops being the dream of communism and starts becoming the nightmare of Leninism, or worse, Stalinism.
Direct democracy is the dream, but you quickly run into an issue of scale. You would need dedicated communication channels to constantly broadcast information about proposed laws and regulations, and the entire population would need to spend a good portion of their time reading and researching, and not you know, working on their own shit.
This leads to a representative democracy. You pick people whose full job is to read and research that shit. They then have aids and staff who further read and research.
Now, there are several problems that can crop up with representative democracy, but if you look back at the posts above, the specific one I referenced, the "Lesser of two evils" has one cause. First Past the Post voting.
Arrow's Theorem is a major problem for representative democracy, but it's not a problem without a solution. You simply ditch FPtP in favor of a cardinal voting system like STAR.
That's the first step. The next is Apportionment. The US has one of the least representative democracies around due to a law passed in 1929 called the Reapportionment Act of 1929. It capped the size of the House at 435 members, despite the population tripling since then and adding two extra states, that number stands.
After the apportionment is fixed, there need to be term limits. I'm in favor of consecutive term limits. As in, you're not limited to the total number of terms, but to the number of terms in a row.
After that, well, there are a few nitpicks, but most things would sort themselves out with those three fixes.
Terse judgments about impossibility are not generally meaningful, and the particular objections you chose are not particularly persuasive.
However, I think the broadest issue is not your insistence that the state is necessary, but rather your assumption that it must encompass all of politics.
A truly stateless society is only possible when everyone is 100% self-sufficient.
This can mostly be done on a community scale, provided that the communities number no more than about 150 individuals. After that, you need to start forming some sort of governing body.
People can come together in amazing ways when there's a desperate need, and often the community response to a disaster is better than the government one. But when the roads need paving and the sewers need fixing, you turn toward the government to handle it.
Or, here's a big one. Environmental protection. That really needs government backing. You as a single person cannot do it. But we as a collective can, and that collective is a government.
Do you know what those "organizational bodies at a scale above the level of the community" are called? They're called governments. i.e. the State.
The simple truth is that the whole "stateless society" falls apart the second you have communities larger than 150 people, because our brains literally can't handle it. We have physiological limits to the number of relationships that we can maintain.
And spoiler, humans like to live in cities that have vastly more than 150 people.
Now, think about all the people who have full time jobs maintaining the infrastructure to keep a city going. Do you think "the community" could come together and do all that? No, they've got shit to do. I personally can't sit in hours of planning meetings per day to schedule sewer maintenance so that the entire city doesn't get cholera and die.
Which is why I vote for people who do have time for that shit. And then I trust that the people I vote for will have the power needed to close streets as needed to get things done.
Now, I have issues with the process of voting. But that's because First Past the Post is flawed and easily abused. I have notes, and would like a better voting system, but I still want a voting system.
Do you know what those “organizational bodies at a scale above the level of the community” are called? They’re called governments. i.e. the State.
No, a regional or even international body is not necessarily a government in the sense of your objection, as a state power that asserts authority through coercion.
I am sorry, but you are conflating various distinct concepts as one. You have not adequately understood the ideas against which you are asserting strong objections.
And you've not actually put forward anything different beyond “organizational bodies at a scale above the level of the community”, which is a government.
Yes, these bodies will have the power of coercion, because that's how you get shit done at scale.
Imagine a farm or factory is dumping chemicals into a watershed. There are very few options for stopping that shit without some sort of coercion, and I prefer my coercion to not be in the form of mob justice, which requires a functional government.
But that's just me. Why don't you enlighten me on how the above scenario would work in your dream of a stateless society.
You have also entered into several instances of a false dichotomy, including through your insinuation that all societies are either disordered, or must be kept orderly by a coercive authority.
I feel you are more likely to benefit from explanation of certain ideas if you are not encumbered by such kinds of fallacious reasoning.
There is not only a single way a stateless society may function, just as there is not only a single way a state may function.
A member of a hunter-gatherer group might lack knowledge of states, but they still occur, in all their variations.
The topic of stateless society is obviously large, just like the topic of states, or any other topic in politics. It is not suitable to be expounded in a discussion thread.
Again, if you genuinely are interested, then I encourage you to seek resources from which you might gain meaningful understanding.
Meanwhile, please stop whining that actual possibilities are somehow limited by your own personal frame of experience, knowledge, or imagination.
The fact that you're unable to link to any of these "resources" says that you don't know them.
The only stateless societies you can point to seem to have less than 150 people (hunter-gatherers) Because that's all that the human brain can support. Anything more requires bureaucracy. And that is the beginnings of government.
All my research says that it's biologically not possible to have a stateless society of more than 150 people. You've given me literally nothing to refute this.
You've answered none of my questions about infrastructure or handling inter-community disputes, or really anything at all.
All you've put forward is that you think that the entire concept of representative democracy is flawed for reasons.
Reasons that rely on a very specific verbiage that you never bothered to explain, because you likely cannot.
At this point, I can conclude that you have no clue at all about anything. The only links you've provided have been to Wikipedia articles on logical fallacies that you seem to be engaging in.
All my research says that it’s biologically not possible to have a stateless society of more than 150 people. You’ve given me literally nothing to refute this.
Perhaps one useful starting point for you would be learning about tribal societies.
Tribes are non-state sociopolitical structures that unify bands or villages. Bands and villages are local groups that typically have less than a few hundred members.
Again, tribes almost always consist of less than 150 individuals.
You don't seem to understand this one simple fact. I can point to about a dozen examples of small communities that are effectively stateless. They all contain less than 150 people, because that's the number of relationships that a human brain can maintain before it breaks down.
And a news flash for you, most cities and towns have more than 150 people.
Again, tribes almost always consist of less than 150 individuals.
No. As I explained, the local groups that are limited in size to several hundred individuals are called bands or villages. Tribes are structures that unify bands or villages.
You are not engaging the discussion or refining your understanding.
You consistently have exhibited sloppy reasoning and have adhered to inaccurate terminology.
I suggest stepping away for a few days.
Then, when your head is clear, you might read about tribal structures. Once you have opened to a broadened understanding of the structure for various past and extant stateless societies, if you are still interested in the subject, then you might begin to review some of the materials in libcom.org and The Anarchist Library. Since literature on the subject reaches back about two hundred years, I doubt you will struggle due to a poverty of sources.
If you later have doubts about material you have read, then you might present them on discussion boards. I think your asking sincere and informed questions, after some background reading, would be more productive than the present course.
No election should be anything other than proportional. Even better is sortition. However you need an apparatus very different from a liberal democracy to make it work, which is good, we need to stop making governments that look like liberalism. Which is a core part of the failure of the soviet union and communism to date, that saying you’re doing socialism isn’t enough, we need novel organization of people.
The massive issue with proportional elections is that if you have a very unpopular incumbent, and 5 seats up for election, you need more than 80% of the population to vote against that incumbent to get rid of them.
The other issue is that the current popular proportional voting system is STV, which has some serious flaws. There are proportional versions of things like Score which are much better.
The solution I tend to favor, though, is tiny districts. For the US, there should be far more than 435 districts. I've seen different numbers bandied about, but 1400+ is a good place to start. I've seen proposals for 6500~ districts.
Why would some fraction of seats be up for election?
Yes, many systems exist and stv is meh, that’s not really a point against a proportional system unless you think fptp is a point against single winners and in that case the proportional systems looks a lot better.
Districts are arbitrary and abusable, just sample the will of the population and build bodies that look like the population. You can get tiny districts by forcing choices at the smallest level possible.
A proportional system will have multi-member districts. That's the point. Unless you think that a national election can account for the needs and desires of a local population.
You don't want to have someone from LA speaking for the needs of people in Kansas. Hell, you wouldn't want people in LA speaking for the needs of people in Sacramento.
That's where districts come in. To solve the issues with districts, you have two choices, either multi-member proportional districts, or shrink the districts down to the point where any resident can voice their opinion to their representative and expect a response.
Right now, the US has districts with more than 1 million residents. If even 1 in 1000 people have concerns that they voice, their representative will just ignore it all, because tens of thousands of voices are impossible to listen to.
That's why smaller districts are key, even if you have multi-member proportional districts. No more than maybe 100k people per district.
A smaller district is also much harder to pack, crack, or otherwise gerrymander.
There is no downside, unless you have a favorite political party that only exists due to the current broken system.
Yeah, it is very high. Other sources place intake a shade above 2500cal/day for their selected demographic. I really wonder where they’re getting their data from.
that’s about 2 large sized big mac combos w refills from mcdonalds, it’s only difficult if you’re live somewhere without fast food or have your own dietary restrictions or your a observing jewish soviet russian living in siberia in the 1970’s
It’s difficult to compare diets across countries like this because of differences in lifestyle and genetics. I am actually a nutritionist but it’s like 2 am here, I’ll run some numbers tomorrow and double check this but I suspect it’s probably right.
So it turns out this is actually super hard to analyse by modern standards (I am also coming at it from another country with different guidelines again, which complicates it a bit) so take all of what I’m saying with a pretty hefty grain of salt.
We don’t group foods together like this any more, but it seems to have been the done thing back in the '80s-'90s so I’m a bit out of my depth. These days potatoes wouldn’t be lumped in with grain / carbohydrates, they’d count as vegetables. Likewise eggs wouldn’t go with dairy, they’d go with meat and fish as protein.
Calorie intake depends heavily on demographics; age, sex, physical activity level, etc, so it’s really hard to assess for huge populations like this and there’s fuck all information about the USSR in that area from this time. Generally speaking though, NHS recommends 2000cal/day for women and 2500 for men. So, they’re both way over on that, but the USA is over by more. WHO recommends no more than 10% daily energy from sugar. Again, they’re both over on that, but the USA is over by a lot more. Fats are recommended to be 20%-35% of daily energy; this article doesn’t account for fats from dairy or meat so the numbers quoted here are low, and impossible to separate out. I did, however, find a journal article from 1985 while trying to work all this out. This one puts men aged 40-59 at 2567cal/day in the USSR and 2554cal/day in USA; a 13 calorie difference (that’s about half an ounce of apple) with USSR higher, but a lot closer to modern NHS guidelines for both. For the USSR; 38% from fat vs. 40% from fat in USA. Again, both over, but USA over by more.
In conclusion, this data is badly categorised, way too high-level, and too over-generalised to really draw much of value from, but speaking really broadly, yeah. About the same amount of food. Neither is ideal, but the Soviet diet is probably slightly better. I’d really, really like to see the sources they used.
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