[snowpid]

Sorry Eastern Germany was a communist place. Lefties are just angry that it failed so they do the usual excuse ("it was better than Capitalism" to "Usa is the reason why it wasn't working" to "It wasnt real communism." To "we should try communism." )

The most productive areas of Eastern Germany were private but Commies didn't like it so they shut it down in 70s. Hence Eastern Germany became poor.

[flohofwoe]

It was called "real socialism" (or "Real existierender Sozialismus" in German), because the party elite was fully aware that the promises of a socialist utopia collided hard with reality in East Germany (and the rest of the Eastern Europe socialist countries). So the propanda idea was basically to hold the carrot dangling in front of the people of achieving "actual socialism" as a first step, and then at some later point (maybe a few hundred years in the future) "communism" (as envisioned by Marx/Engels) - "just work harder and then it will get better, you'll see Genosse!".

Of course nobody in their right mind believed such bullshit (not even most party members).

Private companies were shut down a lot earlier than the 70's, more like the 50s and early 60s. Later this was relaxed again. It was actually possible again in the 80s to run a small privately owned business (my parents were both self-employed). A privately owned company in East Germany still doesn't mean that there's any competition though, or ability to be better off than a worker in a state-owned company. The entire economic enviornment just wasn't compatibly with the idea of running a business that's not controlled by the state.

Still, compared to some of the poorer Eastern European countries, East German people were somewhat well off. Maybe on a level like Portugal or Greece, but of course piss-poor when compared to West Germany. And in any case much worse when it comes to personal freedom of course (which was a much more critical problem than the economic problems).

Also, all those things don't change the fact that East German engineers sometimes came up with brilliant solutions despite the less than ideal conditions.

[forgetfreeman]

One hardly needs to be either a leftist or angry about anything to accept the rather obvious critique of capitalism that the general lack of durable products on the market provokes. It is fairly uncontroversial that designed obsolescence is ubiquitous.

[throw10920]

> accept the rather obvious critique of capitalism that the general lack of durable products on the market provokes

This doesn't have anything to do with capitalism, but apathy of consumers. The lack of durable products is because consumers don't value durable products enough to seek them out and pay more for them. In a communist or command economy, the exact same thing would happen if the leader decreed that goods needed to be cheaply made. There's nothing intrinsic to capitalism here.