this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2025
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The GDR was forced to pay reparations for the damages the Nazis committed against the soviets, and the USSR was in no position to build them back up as the west did for west Germany. Even still, the disparity in the GDR was far lower than in western Germany, and that includes housing.
You should include prison and work camp inmates in your disparity considerations. A non-economically forced, neglectable income in context of exponential aggregation should weigh a lot right there.
Also, how capitalist was that Marshall Plan exactly?
Sure, even when prisoners are included disparity in capitalist nations is far higher. It's also not like western Germany actually de-Nazified either, they were protected, entrenched, and in many cases evacuated in Operation Paperclip.
The Marshall Plan was extremely capitalist, in that it was a plan by a capitalist country to protect its profits.
Fascism is not an economic category. How was far broader politically suppressing, normalist, centralist GDR not been fascist anyway.
Fascism is when a capitalist state resorts to more violent measures domestically to protect and entrench bourgeois rule. It cannot be separated from this context. The GDR suppressing Nazis and spies from the west while maintaining a socialist economy isn't fascism, it's socialism under constant siege and threat.
Only the rich may prosper in scenarios of radical regime changes. They simply translate money into power, security, education or mobility. Everyone else has to step down and to suffer more or less.
Aside, fascism and capitalism aren't congruent. There is more to fascism than just economic exploit and vice versa, etc. This is why I said you mixed up categories. Or maybe you are just overgeneralizing.
Finally, transformations into Socialism have to happen globally (Marx said, I believe). That's due to the "constant siege and thread" radicals get; why things turn out bad. You just can't come up with completely new rules within a game of 280 more players.
First of all, you're wrong about socialist states, they've historically been tremendously uplifting for their working classes. There simply isn't the "translation of money into power" you're posturing about, but instead a dramatic reorientation of society to where the working classes are on top. The rest of your comment is based on this essentially false premise.
Fascism isn't capitalism generally, fascism is capitalism in specific conditions. I am generalizing, but I'm not wrong here either.
Communism must be global, but each country can become socialist before then, and actually must. The reason communism has to be global isn't because of "siege," or claiming society can't change, it's because in order to abolish class all production and distribution must be collectivized. Things don't "turn out bad" in socialism historically.
No translation of money into power maybe in the case of GDR. But a lot into mobility.
None of this implies equivalence to former modes of production.