pringsteen (u/pringsteen)

pringsteen commented on The antidote to civilisational collapse – An interview with Adam Curtis (2018) economist.com/open-future... · Posted by u/marton78

luckylion · 4 years ago

My point is: even if they wanted to become Denmark, there's no way that's going to happen in 30 years, and you won't see much progress 30 years, which is an extremely short amount of time.

pringsteen · 4 years ago

Firstly, were the pro-democracy activists in the Soviet times not aware of this constraint, or did they choose to ignore it? Secondly, the Communist period only lasted 50 years. Before the Second World war Poland was a (post-feudal/capitalist/republican) European country like many others. So why was that 50 years extremely significant, but the following 30 years just barely time to get started with change?

You are judging Soviet-era Poland on the society which actually existed, while judging post-Soviet Poland on what they claim they are trying to achieve. That isn't fair. If you judged them both on what they said the goal is, you would have to compare the democratic paradise with the equally utopian and unrealistic communist paradise which was supposed to be just around the corner. Or you could judge them both on the actuality, in which case the present day looks like just a newer iteration of a grim, hopeless and broken society.

pringsteen commented on The antidote to civilisational collapse – An interview with Adam Curtis (2018) economist.com/open-future... · Posted by u/marton78

luckylion · 4 years ago

> I think it's fairly clear that if being a modern Western democracy like Denmark was what they wanted, then they failed to achieve it.

In 20 years? How on earth would they have pulled that off? Denmark, Sweden, West Germany, The Netherlands etc stand on hundreds of years of relative wealth and industrialization. Sure, the world wars didn't leave them untouched either, but it's much, much easier to rebuild an industry than to build it in the first place. And then they had the Marshall Plan, 50 years of peace, 30-40 of which were a giant seemingly never-ending economic power boost.

Comparing that to a country that only emerged from Soviet occupation in 1990, joined the EU in 2004, and didn't have a long history of self-determination more of less in its current form is like comparing a 12yo to a professional athlete and saying "well, if he wanted to, he could run a 5-minute mile, the other guy can do it as well, clearly he just doesn't want to".

pringsteen · 4 years ago

It seems ridiculous and frankly patronising to claim that the last 30 years of Polish history are an abortive attempt to become Denmark, rather than a sincere and partially successful attempt to become something which is neither Denmark nor socialist Poland.

pringsteen commented on The antidote to civilisational collapse – An interview with Adam Curtis (2018) economist.com/open-future... · Posted by u/marton78

piokoch · 4 years ago

"in the 80s everyone from the top to the bottom of Soviet society knew that it wasn’t working [...]. Everyone knew it was fake, but because no one had any alternative vision for a different kind of society, they just accepted this sense of total fakeness as normal."

That's not true. Communistic system existed only because it was maintained using brutal force and terror. Alternative vision was known very well, even in Soviet Union people knew how life can look, they knew that people in Germany, France or Denmark are living in much better conditions. Propaganda works only to some extent, if it is totally disconnected with reality, it stops working.

I have witnessed the fall of communism. As soon as people were no longer afraid of Soviet tanks, they knew what to do. Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, etc. switched to democracy and capitalism over the night as soon as they could. This was not an easy process, but there was no doubt what the the vision was and what was the goal.

pringsteen · 4 years ago

This is an interesting comment, because arguably although those countries did know well what they didn't want (Soviet domination, socialism and the one party system), it's not at all clear, from the developments in these countries, what they did want, or how they intended to achieve it:

- Poland now has an extremely illiberal system of government, without the basic republican separation of powers, secularism, or civic freedoms. - Hungary also is run by an extremely rightwing government which dismisses most foundations of democratic republics using antisemitic conspiracies. If - Romania is run by kleptocrats and considered borderline too corrupt to be a full member of the EU. - Despite the GDR having been integrated very smoothly and quite generously into Western Germany, the exemplar of a stable Western European democracy, around half the voters in the former East support either pro-communist or xenophobic, pro-fascist parties. - Lithuania fails to guarantee basic rights to minority groups. - Bulgaria - both communism and fascism remain extremely popular. - and so on. You also loaded your examples - the countries which did join the EU are generally quite a lot better than the ones which didn't such as Moldova, Ukraine, etc.

To be clear - I think that Poland and Polish people have an absolute right to self-determination, and it was never ok for them to be dominated by the Soviet Union, whether by soft power or by violence. However, I think it's fairly clear that if being a modern Western democracy like Denmark was what they wanted, then they failed to achieve it. They have the absolute right to be what they currently are, but they should at least be honest about it.

There's also an irony that in the 1970s and 1980s, when progressives in Poland claimed that they wanted Western-Europe style liberal democracy, the communist apologists, both in Poland and in the Soviet Union said that they were actually fighting for domination by the Catholic Church, inequality, exploitation by rich capitalist countries such as Germany, antisemitism, and so on. Well, they got rid of communism, and what did they adopt? A right-wing, institutionally antisemitic, illiberal system, socially controlled by the Church, and trapped in an economic system run by richer countries.