5 ms·

The communists won't confiscate your phone or laptop, that's personal property. They would take your factory away, yes.

aries1980 7y ago
They did it in Hungary. Even the country had good telco infrastructure, only the armed chiefs, vets (important role in a self-sustaining economy), doctors had phones at home. I lived in a major city and only in 1996 you could get a landline. Personal computers were on COCOM lists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinating_Committee_for_Multilateral_Export_Controls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinating_Committee_for_Mul... So yeah, they did take your personal belongings. If you had a pretty wife or daughter, the local armed chiefs might take them too.
- mogget 7y ago
  ^this. Thank you for providing some perspective. Both of my parents immigrated to the US from countries occupied or torn apart by Communism. I think the many downsides of the Communist ideology are lost to younger modern Americans (and I think many Western Europeans?)... the Cold War is not even a memory for many, and its easy to deconstruct its lessons as part of oikophobic self-criticism. It seems fashionable to expound Leftist ideology today and extol the virtues of Communism since "now we have the technology to do it right!". Even the "This time we'll do Communism right!" refrain is historically old. For a more modern example of pervasive, invasive control, look no further than China. Why confiscate glitzy consumer toys when you can just monitor and control everything? ;) I spent a semester in Budapest back in '92, and I recall a Central European History professor wryly observing: "The only Marxists left are all in the West."
  - lostmsu 7y ago
    China is not a communist country: they don't have the N1 criteria: "a socioeconomic order structured upon the common ownership of the means of production".
    - aries1980 7y ago
      Isn't The Party controls the means and The Party represent the people?
- onetimemanytime 7y ago
  >>So yeah, they did take your personal belongings. If you had a pretty wife or daughter, the local armed chiefs might take them too. Even worst, they had their way with females after arresting their husbands and fathers as enemies of the state. Now that was some consensual relationship...

aries1980 7y ago

They did it in Hungary. Even the country had good telco infrastructure, only the armed chiefs, vets (important role in a self-sustaining economy), doctors had phones at home. I lived in a major city and only in 1996 you could get a landline. Personal computers were on COCOM lists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinating_Committee_for_Multilateral_Export_Controls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinating_Committee_for_Mul... So yeah, they did take your personal belongings. If you had a pretty wife or daughter, the local armed chiefs might take them too.

mogget 7y ago
^this. Thank you for providing some perspective. Both of my parents immigrated to the US from countries occupied or torn apart by Communism. I think the many downsides of the Communist ideology are lost to younger modern Americans (and I think many Western Europeans?)... the Cold War is not even a memory for many, and its easy to deconstruct its lessons as part of oikophobic self-criticism. It seems fashionable to expound Leftist ideology today and extol the virtues of Communism since "now we have the technology to do it right!". Even the "This time we'll do Communism right!" refrain is historically old. For a more modern example of pervasive, invasive control, look no further than China. Why confiscate glitzy consumer toys when you can just monitor and control everything? ;) I spent a semester in Budapest back in '92, and I recall a Central European History professor wryly observing: "The only Marxists left are all in the West."
- lostmsu 7y ago
  China is not a communist country: they don't have the N1 criteria: "a socioeconomic order structured upon the common ownership of the means of production".
  - aries1980 7y ago
    Isn't The Party controls the means and The Party represent the people?
onetimemanytime 7y ago
>>So yeah, they did take your personal belongings. If you had a pretty wife or daughter, the local armed chiefs might take them too. Even worst, they had their way with females after arresting their husbands and fathers as enemies of the state. Now that was some consensual relationship...