Complete newfag here.
Let's say that under socialism i want so have some kind of hobby like photography and music, how can i have the beautiful products thatyou h only capitalism could offer? In modern days we have a lot of guitar brands, a lot of tv brands a lot of camera brands and also a lot of smartphone, i can go to the shop buy one and that's it, i heard that in the soviet union with the planned economy you had to wait some time to get your product delivered, so if i wanted in the soviet times to learn to play the guitar, for having one i had to wait a long time that i could use to actually taking courses and son on.
Pic related, based Zorki 4 of soviet manufacturing,
also thread on technology brought by socialist states in the past.
CONSUMER PRODUCTS UNDER SOCIALISM
Parker Collins
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Hudson Phillips
Why do you care what brand a product is you fucking degenerate? If we have a unified standard with variants and modular components, you can have all the same functionality you do under capitalism. Branding is just a name and logo. You don't need a capitalist company to replicate any of the actual features that are associated with a brand because of patent, copyright, or trade secret.
Luis Sanchez
of course i don't care, i know that capitalism stops innovation with the fucking patents and copyright laws, but you have also to consider the fact that there are a lot of people that prefer a brand over another because it suits them their need better than the other, how do you explain this? also in the soviet union were different manufacturers of things.
Gabriel Cooper
Your whole take is wrong on so many levels. Although:
You've come in good faith, so I urge the other people here, not to be too harsh.
Parker White
Consumer goods being optimized for different purposes isn't unique to capitalism or impossible under socialism.
Sebastian Walker
the fucking aesthethics of this Elektronika VM-12
Christopher Rivera
I'm pretty loyal to my toothpaste soap brands
Nicholas King
ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu
Read Chapter 8 ("The Marketing of Consumer Goods") to find out more about consumer products under past and future socialism.
Asher Ross
I own 2 Zenits, beautiful cameras.
As convenient as it is to acknowledge the truism that socialism as it has actually existed was well capable of bulk production of tanks, trains, STEEL, infrastructure and such but inadequate for consumer goods, the truth is that capitalist restoration actually hit light industry (that is to say, consumer goods) the hardest. They were simply producing a quantity of consumer goods in accordance with their general level of development, so ofcourse the US was putting out more. Rosstat shows declines as strong as 80% in the production of some consumer goods between 1992 and now. That's not even factoring in the decline between 1988 (the peak of the soviet economy) and 1992.
Capitalist restoration has shown us the consumer goods meme is just that, a meme.
Elijah Hill
They will be abolished and recognized as superfluous to life
Jayden Morgan
Looks practical. Did average soviet have access to hopefully standardized components and were allowed to fix their own shits? That alone should be enough to convince lots of DIY fags to embrace socialism
Kayden Martin
The Soviet Union got couped too early for this to happen. If you interested in computer science and the Soviet Union, then read the book I linked here:
It talks about how a socialism of the 21st century will use cybernetic planning via (super-)computers and how that will be superior to the planning of the 20th century and capitalist market anarchy.
Ryder Hughes
this is actually interesting, thanks, maybe in the next days i will do some infographics about this book
Joshua Thompson
what isn't superfluous to life?
David Turner
thanks for reminding me I own this thing
Jordan Collins
This is actually terrible. We don't need a million brands that provide slight variations on the same blueprint. We need Free Blueprints that manufacturers are required to adhere to (or publish modifications), so you know exactly what you're buying. How often can you actually tell that what you're buying isn't shit, with all the deception and marketing? Instead of shopping based on brands, we should be shopping for specs.
Socialism would obviously have free blueprints, and it has in the past. Aside from that, Cockshott's planning system would make it very easy to plan production of just as many goods as in capitalism, but the elimination of redundancy, planned obsolescence, and marketing would reduce the number of goods offered naturally.
Alexander Lewis
You seem to be insinuating that having a "choice between brands" gives you some sort of influence over your products. In the past, Brands hand some sort of substance to them, and there was something like a lineage to products, but today for the most part Bands are just decoration, the stuff you buy is mostly produced by nameless organisations, that sometimes exist only briefly to produce one thing.
Soviet consumption goods were inferior because military monopolised R&D resources, and because they didn't have anything like a right to return faulty goods. There also was less of it, because the soviets weren't as rich a many western countries. Durability was somewhat higher and it was easier to get spare parts because there was a higher level of component sharing.
Structural differences are You won't get special luxury versions of standard goods, because it's better focus all your capacity of making the standard good the best it can be. Consider for example processors where the standard chip is a gimped version of the flagship chip, and this is done for no reason other then justifying different price ranges.
For Socialist production Inter operability will be better, no more proprietary plugs, formats … , everything becomes open-source, and has the potential to form a community that can modify the products to better suit users both via changes in software but also hardware components. Everything becomes repairable, and nothing gets subjected to planned obsolescence. At least for technological gadgets you'll be better off.
Most communists don't understand stuff like fashionable consumption, status symbols, or products whose purpose is self-expression. The base assumption is that those are the result of psychological fuckery to increase sales and do not represent some innate human behaviour, because that behaviour didn't exist before the age of consumerism. (Go look at early adverts, they only list functional qualities of products) There is some sort of reification of consumer goods were they aren't seen just as objects, but on top of that are imbued with the qualities of social relations that usually only exist between people. The assumption is that once products are seen for what they are, it becomes possible to enjoy quality over superficialities. We hope that this goes towards a direction where well made is valued over the current rather frustrating way of shiny exterior with mediocre internals.
Easton Long
Not all of them. products like refrigerators, sewing machines radios, etc. still work even today, even as modern fridges and shit break down after 3-4 years because capitalist planned obsolesce.
That's a very generalized and loaded statement there.
Wyatt Hall
I don't believe photography is a good example here because 1. as far as I know the USSR had the entire spectrum from cheap trash to very expensive and high quality cameras. 2. The sort of cellphone cam that is good enough for 99 % of photography has become dirt cheap and technology is unlikely to move backwards. Do you have any idea how many cameras are out there in the world? If for whatever bizarre reason camera production stopped for a decade or two or three, that still wouldn't make photography an exclusive hobby.
In the GDR, you had to wait several y e a r s for a car you ordered. But nothing else was extreme like that. It wasn't like you had to pre-order bread. Waiting lists happen when prices are low and don't react to demand. It's a short-sighted populist policy, not something that must happen under socialism by the logic of the system.
Lincoln Cooper
Ok no argument here , but longevity isn't the only metric for quality.
Fine maybe i chose the wrong expression, there isn't a lack of theoretical understanding, but there clearly is disbelieve on a personal level.
Luke Allen
Bad example. Chips are released with multiple different tiers due to binning. For example, a chip with defects in 2/4 cores will be sold as a 2-core chip. Defects are an inevitable part of chip manufacturing, and chips that are high enough quality for server or HEDT can be less common than ones with some defects.
Daniel Scott
Shostakovich's 13th Symphony and beer
Connor Morgan
There would be different models of devices under socialism that meet different needs. This has nothing to do with "brands."
As long as there are capitalist nations around I imagine we'll arrange a method for you to use labour tokens to order goods internationally.
You'll be able to go to the store to buy stuff under socialism just fine (although using labour tokens), but since stores are going the way of the dinosaur anyway, registering to have your product delivered will be more common and easier for the planning algorithm. I'd personally suggest we have a common storehouse in every community where products can get delivered on something like a biweekly basis. That way we don't have to go by every single house and still supply people with the personalised goods they need.
This won't be a problem nowadays because of how efficient computerised planning would be. You'll get your guitar delivered in reasonable time. Maybe not as quick as Amazon can offer but then again we won't be torturing our deliverers either.
Sebastian Scott
Nope yields have increase enough that, you'll likely getting a intentionally gimped chip, not one that had defect, especially in the lower budget segments.