“This is the new model, where you work in these plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick says.
The USSR didn’t have any limits to choosing an employment since shortly after WW2, what are you talking about? By the late 70s, around 10% of positions in the economy were vacant and there was full employment, and people weren’t forced to work anywhere. The average unemployment duration was 15 days.
The USSR didn’t have any limits to choosing an employment
You were distributed to a place by the state after finishing your education. If you left that place too soon, you’d be frowned upon and that’d be mirrored in your labor book (USSR had such a document, basically a dossier documenting your whole history of employment with characteristics, you could get such a “flattering” characteristic by a superior not liking you that you’d never be accepted to a good place after, and you couldn’t refuse or lose a record in your labor book).
and people weren’t forced to work anywhere.
Being unemployed for too long was literally, seriously, illegal in the USSR. Google for “тунеядство”.
People with something really bad in their labor books (say, dissidents) or some other necessary documents (being German after the war, being Jewish in a wrong period of time) had problems finding a place that would accept them, and would sometimes be prosecuted for being unemployed (that was usually informal employment, because you still had to eat something).
But in general yes, some kind of employment was always possible. Dying from hunger or being homeless was almost ruled out. Most of the population lived in some sort of “acceptable poverty” - conditions very bad by US measure, but with the previous correction. That’s sort of one good thing that most people from ex-USSR agree on.
And the US still has millions of slaves to this day, completely legally. We use slaves to fight forest fires. How fucked up is that? Hell, the modern US has managed to create the absurd phenomenon of the full-time employed homeless person. Oh, and and the peak of the USSR? The US trapped millions of people in a hellish nightmare of a legally induced racial caste system.
If you ignore the slavery, the homeless working multiple jobs, and the US’s historic racial caste system, you can make the US sound utopian.
Youre not wrong, but the above proposal will make it worse not better. Born to a factory worker, youll have to work in that same factory your entire life.
Come on man it took one google search to read about the centralized labour programs, liquidation of foreign ethnic groups, and militarization of labour. This isn’t even counting the estimated 10 million or so people in forced labour gulags.
So if I wanted to change jobs or quit a job to go into higher education, do you know if that was possible, how hard was it to do? Because available positions does not equal job mobility, as you need permission from the factory manager and the state and those are harder to get when qualified workers are scarce.
I’m not talking about that. Read what I wrote. Could I leave my job at the factory to go to university? Didn’t I need permission from the factory manager and from the state to leave my job? Couldn’t either refuse?
Could I leave my job at the factory to go to university?
Yes… as is evidenced by an entirely free education program.
If you’re making the claim that “factory workers of the USSR had no freedom to go to college”, then supply some evidence please. Stop beating around the bush.
Fine…I’m going to ask chatgpt, since nobody knows and I’m not a historian of the USSR:
"In the USSR, while higher education was indeed free, the process of leaving a job to pursue higher education was not entirely straightforward. Workers, including those in factories, were required to obtain permission from their factory manager and the state to leave their job and enroll in university.
This permission was not always guaranteed, and the scarcity of qualified workers could make it more difficult to obtain. The factory manager and the state had some control over the mobility of workers, which could limit an individual’s ability to leave their job and pursue higher education.
It’s not that factory workers had no freedom to go to college, but rather that there were certain bureaucratic hurdles they had to navigate to make that transition. The availability of free education did not necessarily translate to unrestricted job mobility or easy access to higher education for all workers."
I also asked about the 1956 reforms:
"After 1956, the Soviet Union introduced some reforms that aimed to increase social mobility and access to education. The Soviet government implemented policies to encourage workers to pursue higher education, and it became easier for individuals to leave their jobs and enroll in university.
However, it’s still important to note that the process of leaving a job to pursue higher education was not entirely without restrictions. While the reforms after 1956 did increase access to education, the state and factory managers still had some level of control over worker mobility.
It wasn’t until the late 1980s, with the introduction of perestroika and glasnost under Mikhail Gorbachev, that the Soviet Union began to see more significant reforms that increased individual freedoms, including the ability to change jobs and pursue education with greater ease."
There. If anything there is factually wrong (gpt hallucinates a lot), let me know.
Sorry if I somehow offended your holy cow, but I actually wanted to know how you change jobs in a communist economy. Fuck me for asking, right? At some point, zealotry gets counterproductive, which is unfortunate, because socialism needs to get more popular, not less with approaches like that.
The USSR had lifetime factory jobs, too.
The USSR didn’t have any limits to choosing an employment since shortly after WW2, what are you talking about? By the late 70s, around 10% of positions in the economy were vacant and there was full employment, and people weren’t forced to work anywhere. The average unemployment duration was 15 days.
Please, what’s your source on your claim?
You were distributed to a place by the state after finishing your education. If you left that place too soon, you’d be frowned upon and that’d be mirrored in your labor book (USSR had such a document, basically a dossier documenting your whole history of employment with characteristics, you could get such a “flattering” characteristic by a superior not liking you that you’d never be accepted to a good place after, and you couldn’t refuse or lose a record in your labor book).
Being unemployed for too long was literally, seriously, illegal in the USSR. Google for “тунеядство”.
People with something really bad in their labor books (say, dissidents) or some other necessary documents (being German after the war, being Jewish in a wrong period of time) had problems finding a place that would accept them, and would sometimes be prosecuted for being unemployed (that was usually informal employment, because you still had to eat something).
But in general yes, some kind of employment was always possible. Dying from hunger or being homeless was almost ruled out. Most of the population lived in some sort of “acceptable poverty” - conditions very bad by US measure, but with the previous correction. That’s sort of one good thing that most people from ex-USSR agree on.
I’m sorry, do you seriously think the USSR lacked classes/stratification?
Yeah if you ignore the Gulag system you can make a lot of the USSR sound utopian.
And the US still has millions of slaves to this day, completely legally. We use slaves to fight forest fires. How fucked up is that? Hell, the modern US has managed to create the absurd phenomenon of the full-time employed homeless person. Oh, and and the peak of the USSR? The US trapped millions of people in a hellish nightmare of a legally induced racial caste system.
If you ignore the slavery, the homeless working multiple jobs, and the US’s historic racial caste system, you can make the US sound utopian.
Youre not wrong, but the above proposal will make it worse not better. Born to a factory worker, youll have to work in that same factory your entire life.
Well?
I challenge you to point out where I praised the US. I’ll be super impressed if you can.
This is a flagrant whataboutism. The US’s history of enslavement and atrocities don’t undo those of the USSR.
Come on man it took one google search to read about the centralized labour programs, liquidation of foreign ethnic groups, and militarization of labour. This isn’t even counting the estimated 10 million or so people in forced labour gulags.
So if I wanted to change jobs or quit a job to go into higher education, do you know if that was possible, how hard was it to do? Because available positions does not equal job mobility, as you need permission from the factory manager and the state and those are harder to get when qualified workers are scarce.
Higher education was free in the USSR as stipulated by its constitution.
I’m not talking about that. Read what I wrote. Could I leave my job at the factory to go to university? Didn’t I need permission from the factory manager and from the state to leave my job? Couldn’t either refuse?
Yes… as is evidenced by an entirely free education program.
If you’re making the claim that “factory workers of the USSR had no freedom to go to college”, then supply some evidence please. Stop beating around the bush.
Fine…I’m going to ask chatgpt, since nobody knows and I’m not a historian of the USSR:
"In the USSR, while higher education was indeed free, the process of leaving a job to pursue higher education was not entirely straightforward. Workers, including those in factories, were required to obtain permission from their factory manager and the state to leave their job and enroll in university.
This permission was not always guaranteed, and the scarcity of qualified workers could make it more difficult to obtain. The factory manager and the state had some control over the mobility of workers, which could limit an individual’s ability to leave their job and pursue higher education.
It’s not that factory workers had no freedom to go to college, but rather that there were certain bureaucratic hurdles they had to navigate to make that transition. The availability of free education did not necessarily translate to unrestricted job mobility or easy access to higher education for all workers."
I also asked about the 1956 reforms:
"After 1956, the Soviet Union introduced some reforms that aimed to increase social mobility and access to education. The Soviet government implemented policies to encourage workers to pursue higher education, and it became easier for individuals to leave their jobs and enroll in university.
However, it’s still important to note that the process of leaving a job to pursue higher education was not entirely without restrictions. While the reforms after 1956 did increase access to education, the state and factory managers still had some level of control over worker mobility.
It wasn’t until the late 1980s, with the introduction of perestroika and glasnost under Mikhail Gorbachev, that the Soviet Union began to see more significant reforms that increased individual freedoms, including the ability to change jobs and pursue education with greater ease."
There. If anything there is factually wrong (gpt hallucinates a lot), let me know.
If you want to play with AI slop, maybe log off lemmy and start doing this on your own… Not a single source cited.
Sorry if I somehow offended your holy cow, but I actually wanted to know how you change jobs in a communist economy. Fuck me for asking, right? At some point, zealotry gets counterproductive, which is unfortunate, because socialism needs to get more popular, not less with approaches like that.
Tankie spotted
Bro, shut the fuck up if that’s all you’re going to add to the conversation Jesus fucking Christ dude
Average interaction.