[Atlantis]

Below I have translated an excerpt from Herta Mueller’s latest book “My homeland was an apple pip” (Mein Vaterland war ein Apfelkern). Herta Mueller grew up as part of the German speaking minority under Ceaucescu’s dictatorship in Rumania. She received the Noble Price in Literature in 2009.

“The shop window in the mind

This ubiquitous ugliness was the only equality under socialism. And it was intentional; it was part of the program of the dictatorship. We lost the will to live because of the goods manufactured under socialism: concrete buildings, furniture, curtains, crockery. As if all the materials, whether cement, wood, glass, porcelain, even the branches, are in themselves brutal and vulgar, as if no beauty can be created from these materials. As if all the matter in this country jumps by itself into the state, into the will of the regime. The ugly equality depresses the mind, makes apathetic and undemanding; that is what the state wanted. For socialism the heaviness of mind was ideal; the joy of life makes people spontaneous and unpredictable. Misery makes ugly. Instead of meat, the state gave us waste products; pig feet with claws, the people called them sneakers; or chicken feet with claws and chicken heads that were doused with water and frozen together in heavy blue-red blocks of ice. They were hacked to pieces with an axe and divided in portions. The people carried them with their bare hands. In this misery, even a handkerchief did not help. On the way home, the ice was dripping, as if dogs were marking their territory with blood-stained urine. And for these waste products everyone had queue up for hours.

Socialism means the expulsion of beauty. Shortly after the regime changed, I saw that this systematic ugliness applied to all of Eastern Europe. Whether in Poland, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, everywhere the same miserable Romanian shop windows - yellowed paper napkins with lace pattern border, on top of them and arranged in a triangle, dusty fruit juice bottles, on both sides of the cabinet yellow-brown curtains and above all masses of fly shit. It is the shop window of the East; in all of these countries I felt a bit at home. Such a shop window is a way of life. It is depressive and it transmits its depression to all passersby on a daily basis. Even if you only look at it in passing, this shop window is already in the mind.

I think beauty is something to hold onto, it guards or protects us. Ugliness makes every environment repulsive; you cannot be at home in ugliness. If beauty is completely absent for a long time, gloom sets on the mind. People become totally defensive and aggressive. These are apparently quite different characteristics, but they both appear in the brutalization and are mixed in one and the same person. Perhaps one can only maintain ones balance in an unpredictable mixture of both. Just as there is also the mixture of absence and ecstasy. Or absence and despair. Or rapture and despair. I think all the characteristics had already been distorted long ago because of the hopelessness in which people had to live. They intensified into a psychosis, were vented and disappeared at will. It didn’t need a particular reason for anything; inside of me too, all states were latent. I was caught off guard by my own emotions.

Yes, I was thinking in images in everyday life, in thought images. I had trained myself to observe in order to protect myself, perhaps even from myself. It became a habit because it worked. I oriented myself at the outside so as not to tilt inward and to fall back on myself. And I know to this day that distraction works best through careful observation. I decided on a subject without intention, for example birthmarks. I counted them in the face, the neck of the passers-by, the longer I occupied myself with them the more they resembled pebbles grown on the skin. Or walking sticks like vanilla pods. I instinctively created an image which accompanied me. There was also beauty in that. Aesthetics is not merely “stylistic” but also substance. Aesthetics determines the content of all things, not just the sentence when writing."

[ComradeTim]

"The Ubiquitous Ugliness of Statist Socialism".

Fixed the title for you.

[Atlantis]

"The Ubiquitous Ugliness of Statist Socialism".

"The Ubiquitous Ugliness of Real Socialism".

I know its hard for Western champagne socialists to come to terms with reality. But outside of your fantasies, reality does interfere.

[Uberak]

And, how has capitalism treated our aesthetically pleasing buildings?




Oh......

Well, what has the modern capitalist Western world produced in terms of art, architecture, food, and culture?

As for shitty food, ever heard of McDonalds?



Concrete buildings? That's basically any sort of modern architecture that doesn't use glass.

And, I guess America's hordes of Walmarts and generic plazas are truly aesthetically pleasing. How about the skyscrapers that the West brags about? Aesthetically, they are just spires of concrete and glass, especially the more modern ones. In fact, these processes are encouraged by our capitalist systems due to being financially better for the corporations that partake in them. A lot of aesthetically pleasing buildings were torn down for cost reasons, especially in America due to the LACK of regulation.

So basically, your complaint either makes no sense or you also dislike modern capitalism. Either way, aesthetics is subjective, but you're lamenting a lack of value placed on aesthetics that is common with the modern architecture of both West and East. Though, I guess you probably stick around in relatively well-maintained European cities and haven't really taken a good trip down into Detroit or any major American city for that matter, especially their suburbs.

(Note that Detroit and other major American cities still have plenty of great buildings within them. Just that they are more relics than anything else, and the threat of being turned into a parking lot is always looming over them, especially in Detroit.)

[Soulflytribe]

I felt like suffocating while reading the extract, Atlantis.

I once heard a guy saying that socialism is a boring social state. His point was that, before anything else, socialism is just that: extremely boring! A boring social state that will make even the most optimistic among us lose the will to live - it's no coincidence that until today the suicide rate in what used to be the Eastern Bloc is so high, it takes time to heal.

No freedom nor any chance of material progress to fulfill your dreams, and consequently live your life the way you want to, is certainly not what people desire for themselves. Under such regimes, you are dehumanized, your individuality is annihilated, the possibilities of self-realization are completely shattered. You become a pet dog of the ruling elite. A dishonest person might argue that in capitalist democratic countries you can be poor too. Yes, you can, but the chances of improving your life still exist! There's still hope to lean upon. While in socialist dictatorships there's none! A dishonest person might also bring McDonalds to the discussion, comparing its "shitty food" to the rotten food people living in socialist Romania had to eat! But guess what, under capitalism you have infinite choices of food, you don't have to eat at McDonalds, but in what used to be Romania the people would have to eat their ration of "pig feet with claws", or "chicken feet with claws", or "chicken heads", if they wanted to remain alive.

[ComradeTim]

"The Ubiquitous Ugliness of Real Socialism". I know its hard for Western champagne socialists to come to terms with reality. But outside of your fantasies, reality does interfere.

Have a read.

[Atlantis]

I felt like suffocating while reading the extract, Atlantis.

I grew up in the West but visited Soviet countries a few times. It was indeed very suffocating and oppressive to even visit for a day only. It has marked millions of East Europeans until the present day. Under socialist rule people became small and mean. The xenophobic excesses we see in Dresden and throughout the former communist block countries are a direct result of socialist rule. In Germany, it was the East Germans who were most vicious about the bailout programs for Greece, even though they themselves benefited from an unprecedented transfer.

It is quite astonishing how Western Marxists are determined to ignore the real socialism. Do they believe themselves so superior that they know better how to implement socialism than the millions who have come before them? Human hubris knows no limits. Some of my friends back in the 60s and 70s were Marxists. Some even went to study in East Berlin or Moscow. Today, they are near retirement age and quite happy to live in a capitalist society. They wasted their entire life, and most of them are very disillusioned.

Socialist rule in Eastern Europe was a great tragedy. People who have experienced the real socialism have no sympathies for socialist dreamers.

@uberak, capitalism produces its own ugliness, but believe me it is nothing like life in the former socialist East Europe. People do have the possibility to improve their life. The problem in the West is more that people have too much. For people in the former communist countries a McDonalds was like a five-star restaurant. The ugliness in the West is more due to spiritual poverty than to material poverty. It doesn't take much to enjoy life. The fear and oppression in the socialist states killed all joy of life and made people mean.

[Piccolo]

I suppose it depends on your perspective. You could argue that living in a leafy, affluent Western capitalist suburb was better than living in a Soviet housing bloc. But life in a Soviet housing bloc was probably better than living in a Western housing project, ghetto, or trailer park.

I am not sure every Eastern European thinks life was drab and grey under state socialism. Zsuzsanna Clark, who grew up in socialist Hungary, had many positive things to say about her life under socialism. According to Clark:

When people ask me what it was like growing up behind the Iron Curtain in Hungary in the Seventies and Eighties, most expect to hear tales of secret police, bread queues and other nasty manifestations of life in a one-party state.

They are invariably disappointed when I explain that the reality was quite different, and communist Hungary, far from being hell on earth, was in fact, rather a fun place to live.

The communists provided everyone with guaranteed employment, good education and free healthcare. Violent crime was virtually non-existent.

But perhaps the best thing of all was the overriding sense of camaraderie, a spirit lacking in my adopted Britain and, indeed, whenever I go back to Hungary today. People trusted one another, and what we had we shared.

You can read the rest of her article here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -life.html

Plenty of Eastern Europeans, especially older ones who experienced both state socialism and capitalism, regularly poll in favor of state socialism.

As far as ugly buildings, every society produces its share of ugly architecture. We could make an argument that pre-capitalist modes of production had some of the most beautiful architecture in history.

The Roman Pantheon under the ancient mode of production.



Chartres Cathedral in France under feudalism.

[KlassWar]

Any system feels asphyxiating to its disempowered classes: Bourgeois elements find socialism ugly because it doesn't cater to their tastes and doesn't allow their accumulation of wealth and status. But that's precisely the point: Under socialism, they're not in charge and they're not supposed to enjoy the perks of being in charge.

[taltom]

What's being called here "statist socialism" is actually an understandable response to an intolerable situation. Time and again, when the resources of a group have become too concentrated in a small elite circle and the have-nots rebel successfully, the new regime's first actions must be strictly utilitarian - there is no surplus for pleasing architecture. All is pragmatism. It's only wealth that can finance cathedrals and museums. When that wealth is withheld from the impoverished majority and the imbalance becomes too great, revolution seeks to restore a more equal level. But that means that each citizen receives only a pittance more than he had before. Rather than live in a hovel, he may now live in a concrete cave 10 stories above the street. What else is the new government to do with what now seems to be dreadfully small resources?

In almost every case, however, that enforced redistribution fosters new redistribution as the new government members find themselves in positions of influence. The urge to hoard is intrinsic to the human, as is the urge to flaunt wealth. Now the revolutionaries build themselves fancy palaces and public works with their names on them, but tell the populace that these are essential. There is no escaping this. Calling for different behavior is futile, as thousands of years of history have firmly proven.

[Cartertonian]

I think your premise is faulty from the start.

You appear to infer that the brutalist architecture and austere living conditions of Eastern Europe were part of a deliberate Socialist plan, whereas as far as I'm concerned the people of Eastern Europe would have been just as likely to be living in such conditions under the benevolent, happy, caring, sharing influence of free-market capitalism [/heavy sarcasm]

Marx and Engels were writing at a time when many other ideologues and theorists, like Henri Fayol, Max Weber, Frederick Taylor etc, were all trying to find ways in which to turn sentient beings into organic automatons, whose only purpose in life was to service and to serve the machines of industrialisation and in turn fatten the wallets of the factory owners. Socialism is a product of that time and that historical context. The factory owners would have had no qualms about their de-humanised workforce living in grey, dismal tower blocks and living drab, unrewarding lives.

That the Soviet experiment failed to liberate the workers from such a fate is a failure of that particular attempt at implementing Socialism, but it is not the fault of Socialism itself.

[Potemkin]

The factory owners would have had no qualms about their de-humanised workforce living in grey, dismal tower blocks and living drab, unrewarding lives.

To be fair to the early capitalists, many of them did make an effort to provide decent housing and living conditions for their workforce. Some of them constructed entire 'model towns'. However, the iron law of competition gradually destroyed these early humanitarian efforts, and the 'model towns' turned out to have been little more than Potemkin villages. By the end of the 19th century, the ruling class had pretty much given up on trying to create "capitalism with a human face", and most of the British working class were living drab, unrewarding lives in grey, dismal slums (and, from the mid-20th century onwards, in grey, dismal tower blocks). This is why socialism only really became a significant political force in Britain from about 1900 onwards - capitalism had had its chance, and had clearly failed. The fact that it would fail had not been obvious in the early 19th century - indeed, its massive expansion of the forces of production had offered great hope for the future, but that hope foundered as it became increasingly obvious that the massive expansion of the forces of production under capitalism was also, and inevitably, accompanied by a massive concentration of this increased wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people.

[Political Interest]

And capitalism is really so beautiful? I can go down the street and see countless beggars and disillusioned alienated people all over the place.

It is funny, I saw a Russian movie set in the last days of the USSR and saw how horrible it looked. The funny part is that those images are all things I could see where I was living in the capitalist West. There were alcoholics, drug addicts, prostitutes and all other cases of social misfortune in the part of London where I was. Everywhere I walked it was filthy and disgusting, casinos, disgusting kebab houses, rude people. There is no social cohesion, only alienation and individualism. There is nearly always a homeless person every few blocks you walk.

I am not a Marxist or even really a left wing socialist but I am certainly not someone who supports free market, Thatcherite/Reaganite, cowboy capitalism.

What does liberal capitalism really do for anyone? It allows people to make lots of money but leaves those who cannot compete destitute or consigned to living with state support. Today the capitalism of the West leaves no room for human development. All that is left is the fight for gay rights, mass immigration and deconstruction of all collective identities. Cultures are eroded and we just become a big capitalist melting pot where life is about working as a salesman and feeling hip and cosmpolitan.

Continental Europe have managed to create a more humane type of capitalism but Anglo-Saxon cowboy style capitalism is one of the most soul destroying systems imaginable. A person has to actually live in it and experience it before they can claim that it is so wonderful. I am far more impressed by the capitalism of the non-Anglo world. Capitalism in the Anglo world is ruthless. Finland and Sweden are good capitalist countries but can we really say America is a model worthy of imitation?

[mikema63]

The ubiquitous ugliness of the human condition would be far more accurate.

[SolarCross]

And, how has capitalism treated our aesthetically pleasing buildings?




Oh......

Well, what has the modern capitalist Western world produced in terms of art, architecture, food, and culture?

As for shitty food, ever heard of McDonalds?



Concrete buildings? That's basically any sort of modern architecture that doesn't use glass.

And, I guess America's hordes of Walmarts and generic plazas are truly aesthetically pleasing. How about the skyscrapers that the West brags about? Aesthetically, they are just spires of concrete and glass, especially the more modern ones. In fact, these processes are encouraged by our capitalist systems due to being financially better for the corporations that partake in them. A lot of aesthetically pleasing buildings were torn down for cost reasons, especially in America due to the LACK of regulation.

So basically, your complaint either makes no sense or you also dislike modern capitalism. Either way, aesthetics is subjective, but you're lamenting a lack of value placed on aesthetics that is common with the modern architecture of both West and East. Though, I guess you probably stick around in relatively well-maintained European cities and haven't really taken a good trip down into Detroit or any major American city for that matter, especially their suburbs.

(Note that Detroit and other major American cities still have plenty of great buildings within them. Just that they are more relics than anything else, and the threat of being turned into a parking lot is always looming over them, especially in Detroit.)

Ugliness in capitalism is accidental, it results from attempting to please customers differing requirements. An artifice, be it a building or a teapot, aims to satisfy a human want which comprises three broad aspects: aesthetics, utility and cost. A human will desire all three but natural constraints and circumstances mean that the customer will have differing priorities for each one. If a capitalist wants to please a customer who is very poor then he will mold his design to that customer's requirements who will desire low cost first, utility second and aesthetics last. For example when I and my new wife returned to the UK from her relatively poor country we had very little. I had been a bit of wastrel and practically an orphan and she though from a better family and had achieved professional status in own country her savings didn't amount to much when translated into British money. We both went to work as soon as we could on landing in the UK, but it takes a while for a surplus to be saved from income whilst we had nothing and needed everything. So then we were poor and had poor person wants. One of the things we wanted then was a coffee table for our practically empty flat. We found one in well known chain of stores for just 10 pounds. It's flat areas were made of chipboard and it's legs were hollow plastic tubes and it was small. It was also a bit rickety but it was vanishingly cheap. It suited us perfectly for that time as our preferences were for cheap over utility and utility over aesthetics. A year on and it had collapsed from use but by then we had a small surplus from a year of working
so we bought a bigger, stronger and more beautiful one at the cost of 150 pounds.

Looking at your picture of old palace or temple or theatre (not sure which it is) converted into a carpark I do not see ugliness I see people catering to different wants. People do not want old palaces so much, but do want the utility of a place to park their car. And then there are the cars themselves! Are they not beautiful? There is a high requirement for utility in a car but even in cheap cars we see some offering of aesthetic value.

The OP indicates that ugliness in socialism is deliberate and ubiquitous. That is quite different from capitalism where the ugliness comes from pleasing differing requirements and is far from ubiquitous.

[Prosthetic Conscience]

On the other hand, the Moscow subway was famously beautiful under the Soviets, especially compared to the drab London Underground of the same period.





The ugliness was not 'ubitiquous', nor was it designed to oppress. Many socialist bureaucrats may have decided that functionality was everything, and used their limited resources that way, but there's no evidence it was some plot to oppress everyone. They knew a happy population would be a compliant one. Capitalist economies spend a lot more on appearances, because it's all part of marketing.

[annatar1914]

Hey PI, I just thought I'd respond to your thoughtful post on this problem;

And capitalism is really so beautiful? I can go down the street and see countless beggars and disillusioned alienated people all over the place.

Yes, especially where I live and work, I can relate to that. What is worse is the opacity or invisibility with which people in these conditions become to those who are prosperous under this system.

It is funny, I saw a Russian movie set in the last days of the USSR and saw how horrible it looked. The funny part is that those images are all things I could see where I was living in the capitalist West. There were alcoholics, drug addicts, prostitutes and all other cases of social misfortune in the part of London where I was. Everywhere I walked it was filthy and disgusting, casinos, disgusting kebab houses, rude people. There is no social cohesion, only alienation and individualism. There is nearly always a homeless person every few blocks you walk.

I think I disappoint my Russian friends somewhat when they send me Russian movies in subtitles to watch, showing a critique of the old Soviet system and it's flaws, and I have to smile, because the most discontented elements are people who would be discontented anywhere in a modern urban setting.

I am not a Marxist or even really a left wing socialist but I am certainly not someone who supports free market, Thatcherite/Reaganite, cowboy capitalism.

My generation was the one that first saw those effects growing up in the late 1970's and 1980's here in America. I didn't thrive and prosper, but a few did, and it was hoped that their spending on goods and services would lift everyone else up, but that was a lie. We shipped all the Middle-Class manufacturing jobs to slave laborers elsewhere, and drowned in debt just to stay afloat.

What does liberal capitalism really do for anyone? It allows people to make lots of money but leaves those who cannot compete destitute or consigned to living with state support. Today the capitalism of the West leaves no room for human development. All that is left is the fight for gay rights, mass immigration and deconstruction of all collective identities. Cultures are eroded and we just become a big capitalist melting pot where life is about working as a salesman and feeling hip and cosmpolitan.

It's enough to make a person a Communist, as a Spiritual development if not a revolutionary one, although i'm not sure that this is precluded in my worldview. If St. Constantine could seize the Throne of Rome in battle and transform the Empire as far as he could, why not someone else under slightly different circumstances?

Continental Europe have managed to create a more humane type of capitalism but Anglo-Saxon cowboy style capitalism is one of the most soul destroying systems imaginable. A person has to actually live in it and experience it before they can claim that it is so wonderful. I am far more impressed by the capitalism of the non-Anglo world. Capitalism in the Anglo world is ruthless. Finland and Sweden are good capitalist countries but can we really say America is a model worthy of imitation?

Sweden and Finland and the EU in general are destroying themselves in other ways, and America truly isn't worthy of emulation.

[Joe Liberty]

That the Soviet experiment failed to liberate the workers from such a fate is a failure of that particular attempt at implementing Socialism, but it is not the fault of Socialism itself.

Ah yes. Capitalism has to be perfect, but all of the many failures of socialism are because nobody has really tried it yet.

In all honesty, I think socialism can work, but not on a very large scale.

[mikema63]

Nobody is actually asking for capitalism to be perfect, there is no such thing as perfect. Capitalism simply aligned with a value system that I do not share.

Anything can be scaled up if your clever. Anything can be modeled mathematically if you try. Why wouldn't you be able to electronically track who is consuming what, where, and at what rate and then predict how much will be needed to produce and where you need to send it? We certainly have the technology to do that. The main problem would be people stockpiling something to sell it off to a capitalist country, but that isn't an insoluble problem.

[SolarCross]

Nobody is actually asking for capitalism to be perfect, there is no such thing as perfect. Capitalism simply aligned with a value system that I do not share.

Anything can be scaled up if your clever. Anything can be modeled mathematically if you try. Why wouldn't you be able to electronically track who is consuming what, where, and at what rate and then predict how much will be needed to produce and where you need to send it? We certainly have the technology to do that. The main problem would be people stockpiling something to sell it off to a capitalist country, but that isn't an insoluble problem.

Wouldn't you just end up with capitalism then? Except one enormous leviathan mega of mega corps instead of myriads of companies large and small?