People could leave East Germany. Just not to enemy powers. Pretty common during wars. Especially when a foreign army has invaded your own territory and refuses to leave.
unless of course you refused to do what the Stasi told you, then they'd send you literally to Siberia. and if it's that normal, how come the people on the western side never had such restrictions? oh, and btw, I take it you are also fine with child labour then?
There was no collapse until after the communist system was dismantled. Plus, you think Italy's numbers were not inflated?? Especially in the 1980s and the 'sorpasso' propaganda by the stupid Socialist Party. Gets you decent food, education and health care?? Beats living in an oppressive state that doesn't even automatically give you those things. Not to mention the fact that the DDR was far less oppressive than its predecessor.
And if you actively dissented against the capitalist democracy nothing would happen, right?? Just ask Andreas Baader or Giuseppe Pinelli. I have never said it's 'normal', war is not 'normal'...but you think that in Western Europe you could freely become a scientist or worker for, say, the Soviet Union?? Just ask those Italian partisans who fled to Czechoslovakia after the Christian Democracy 'won' the first after-war elections. No, not really. Hardly an East German exclusive, though.
I find it funny how you just brush aside any shit that happened in the east, but get a hard-on because of anything that happens in the west. at no point did I claim the west is without faults, no idea where you got that from. and that you'll find many parallels between east and west is not really surprising, given that people are people, no matter on which side of the fence they are. I've lived in both the east and west, believe me, I've found many of the things I've despised in the east also in the west. but there are fundamental differences. freedom is of course relative, and I'm not claiming people in the west are free in the truest sense, but I've certainly got far more freedom now than would ever have been possible in East Germany. that's just a fact. living with something like the Stasi is really a pain in the ass. though when it comes to surveillance society, Britain is certainly catching up fast. the other massive minus of communism, and that's not even related to dictatorships, that's an inherent flaw of the system, is it's incredible waste of talent.
communism was made to collapse, and it was it's own fault. there was absolutely no reason to put that many resources into arms, specially for a system which claims to look after it's people first. the SU already had more than enough hydrogen bombs to take out the entire world, but it was just never enough. and like Russia today, the SU started to become far too reliant on oil to support it's economy. they spent most of their money on prestige projects, were more interested to show the west the finger than to actually look after it's people. sure, people didn't exactly live in poverty, and certain basic services were all for free, but as the saying goes, 'man doesn't live on water and bread alone'. and then the SU made their final mistake, when they invaded Afghanistan. then the Americans could persuade OPEC to play with their oil output a bit around, to make the price of oil suddenly drop, because the Muslims were pissed with the Russians. and out of the window went a massive chunk of the income the SU was banking and relying on. that was what finally broke the back of the SU economy. when Gorbachev came in, it was already too late. you call him a war criminal, but the people which destroyed your dream land were the ones before him.
I don't think communism was a well-thought out practice putting marxist theory in place, so I could understand you claiming that Marxism was never really tried out and is far superior to what we have nowadays (I don't buy into 'marxism will always inevitably lead to leninism or stalinism'). However, claiming that the communist states were far superior to thge western countries is just laughable. As Lasaan said, not everything the western countries did was great, and not everything we do today is great. But you can't just make up that eastern germany had to lock their inhabitants within their own system to prevent them from leaviung to the west, while western germany didn't have to do anything of that source. You can't just make up that many people in former communist countries complain aboput the current system, but that far more of them really despise the communist system much more, and see it as something that the USSR forced upon them. So much about occupying powers, btw.
Actually, I'd argue that Marxism by necessity leads to an oppressive system. Whether you'd call that Leninism or Stalinism, I don't know, but oppressive non the less. Communism/Marxism sounds really great in theory and if it would work, I'd be all for it. Unfortunately it doesn't work, because it goes against human nature. That's why people have to be forced to partake in this society free of personal possessions. People want to accumulate stuff, they want to work for themselves and their family, not some abstract notion of a collective. People want to be able to outperform their neighbor by hard/smart work and they feel cheated when this can't be done. So you either have to implement 'adjustments' that will reduce personal freedoms step by step, or the entire thing will immediately collapse on itself. The early Soviet Union is actually a good example. At first, Lenin tried to implement Marxism in as pure a form as possible and it immediately lead to massive famines and a breakdown of Russian society. Marxism, by its very design, punishes performance. That's why Lenin had to change course, which automatically lead to an oppressive system. If you can't reward performance (via wealth), then you automatically have to punish those who don't want to perform in such a system (from re-education to labor-camps). Communism is all sticks and no carrots. Eventually this has to lead to a totalitarian state.
Re: Tunisia Unfortunately, the example IRAN (which isn't an Arab country, to be fair) isn't really encouraging. I think there's a fear in the West that the current Arab dictatorships might get replaced by governments with connection to Islamic Fundamentalism. Hopefully, the Tunisians (after rightfully toppling their currupt dictator) will prove that democracy isn't a thing of impossibility in the Arab World!
Wow, you seem to be a real Romania expert... I don't make any comment to the situation in Romania & other Eastern European countries (yes, there's some really inapt - especially when it comes to fighting corruption & unemployment - and to a certain extent nationalistic governments doing a bad job these days ... however, the situation is still far better than before '89) but just want to tell you that i.e. the Romanian town Sibiu (where I grew up, btw.) has got an unemployment rate of which many cities in Western Europe can only dream about! And this thanks to many Western (especially German) companies which have been settled there in order "to exploit the native population and pay slave wages" (according to you)... I doubt you have any idea of the population's situation during the last 5-10 years of the Ceausescu regime (don't know whether it's comparable with the current situation in Tunisia, though) ... so you better stop trying to make us believe how good life had actually been in all Eastern European countries before the fall of the "Iron Courtain" and how bad it suddenly turned since them joining the EU. But well, when knowing about your far-left political attitude, I'm not really surprised to see this kind of comment from you. Una notte piacevole.
Re: Tunisia before you start mocking other people, you might want to get a clue about the Arab world!!! seriously, that's just a really stupid thing to say!
So you think I have no clue about the Arab World just because I mentioned the non Arab country Iran (which turned from the Shah's dictatorship into an Islamistic one)? What I meant is for example the situation in countries like Egypt, where the alternative to Hosni Mubarak & his son is the MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD. Do you really think this would be the perfect democratic solution for the country? Let's hope that Tunisia will manage to become a role model for the Arab World and prove that democracy and Islam (outside Turkey) aren't contradictions (how many believe)!
@ benztown: You equate Marxism with Leninism, basically. Marx never said people should be forced to do anything, and he certainly didn't call for a dictator to destroy a social class by taking all their belongings away and put people who have no clue in charge (which is basically what caused the famine in Ukraine). To say that it was some kind of pure Marxism that caused this is just wrong. For it to work, however, you'd need less of a revolution as marx envisaged, but a society-wide acceptance of it. That's why it is hard to implement, and of course we don't know if it would work or not. Because it never was tried. If you look at how it was implemented in Russia or China, you also have to note how both countries were basically in a state of war, so can hardly be called normal to begin with. There has been the first self-immolation of a man in Saudi-Arabia, by the way.
I didn't mean to say that Marxism is the same as Leninism, but rather that it inevitably leads to Leninism. The point is that you'll never get a society-wide acceptance while at the same time you cripple any incentive for people to actually try to improve things. The famine in the Soviet Union was not so much a result from putting incompetent local leaders in place, but rather from taking away any excess produced by farmers. Which means that there wasn't any incentive for them to produce more than they needed themselves. Why spend days harvesting crops when you can neither eat nor sell them? But that is the fundamental principle of Marxism. Ludwig van Mises already analyzed all the failures of Marxism in his 1922 book [ame="http://www.amazon.com/SOCIALISM-Lib-Works-Ludwig-Mises/dp/0913966630"]Socialism[/ame] which is regarded as a milestone in economics (also available for free here: http://mises.org/books/socialism.pdf). This book was written in the very early days of the Soviet Union and was rather directed at the theory of Marxism than at the actual implementation. Yet it accurately predicted how it would turn out and it made a great case against Socialism from almost any angle conceivable which holds true to this day.
I am not exactly a fan of the current crop of Arab leaders. Just because someone is "secular" or "stable" does not mean they deserve our support, though as we are all foreign policy realists now, I guess we prefer them to the Islamists. Which is why this happening in Tunisia may have a possibility of success (which I define as a relatively liberal, consentual gvoernment, not the Berkerley Coty Council). Tunisia apparently has a small Islamist movement, so hopefully what replaces the old regime is something relatively liberal and not Hamas or Iran light (amd yes, I know that Iran is not an Arab country, but they are one prototype of Islamist government, Saudi Arabia being the other). By the way, has anyone blamed Israel yet?
AFAIK, the wife of the former Tunesian dictator did...something about sacrifices that had to be taken to support their palestinian brothers against evil Israel which caused the economic problems in Tunesia that led to the unrest. That was shortly before she stole 1.5 tons of gold from the Tunesian central bank. Edit: Actually it wasn't shortly before this. I back checked the story and it's from a 2002 interview of Leila Ben-Ali, so it appears as if nobody has blamed Israel directly as of yet...
From today's Wall Street Journal: Thousands of anti-government protesters, some hurling rocks and climbing atop an armored police truck, clashed with riot police Tuesday in the center of Cairo in a Tunisia-inspired demonstration to demand the end of President Hosni Mubarak's nearly 30 years in power. I wonder if the US-Egypt friendly will have to be called off. What is happening in Egypt and elsewhere is far more important than soccer.
everything starts and ends with Iran. the persian empire changed the world. the 1979 revolution changed the world. and now the 2009 presidential elections protests have spread everywhere. Iran truly invents everything. anyways, until you face hardship you will never go out and protest. right now people around the world are fed up, and with networking technology it is easier than ever to communicate to set up protests. so what we are seeing is that country by country, unhappy people are going out to protest in hopes of political changes. racism is diminishing, religion is diminishing, therefore the concept of nations is being challenged for the first time. people have to be smart enough to go one step beyond their own boundaries, unite, and try to achieve a centralized world economy. unfortunately evil entities such as neoconservatives, zionists, and panarabists are trying to fight this because they endorse racism and religious intolerance in order to gain an immoral, unfair advantage over other human beings.
When the Arabs unite, the US and Iran will suddenly become best friends. It will take a long time for these two events to occur, however. Probably not in my lifetime.
Things continue to escalate... http://english.aljazeera.net//news/middleeast/2011/01/20111251711053608.html
What is different here to Tunisia, at least according to media report, is that it started out big to begin with (or rather, it got big in an instant, instead of gradually). Now if the Egyptians keep up the pressure mubarak may be in problems. 10% of Egyptians are christian, on a more or less unrelated note.
The other differences being: 1. There are 80 million Egyptians to only 10 million Tunisians. Egypt is the natural leader of the Arab world. A Tunisian style breakdown would be orders of magnitude more impactful on the region.. 2. In Egypt, radical Islam appears to be option #2 in a way it isn't/wasn't in Tunisia. Scary times.
In Tunesia, the military sided with the protesters, that was the crucial factor. Who will the military side with in Eqypt when push comes to shove? Mubarak, the liberal protesters or the muslim brotherhood?
It is worth keeping in mind that in quite a few of these countries the military is one of the more professional, less politicized and less corrupt instititions relatively speaking. Its involvement will not necessarily be on the side of the status quo.
In which way? Btw: As we know, the result was/is another dictatorship. Unfortunately, the Iranians haven't been successful. The question is whether the Tunisians & Egyptians (maybe other Arabs to follow) will be doing a better job in the end... If Mubarak should share the same fate as the Tunisian dictator Ben Ali, there's only to hope that THIS person will be the next president. However, if the "Muslim Brotherhood" should take profit, the ME might be facing scary times indeed (spreading of religious fanatism & radicalization of the whole region possible). And Egypt's tourism would probably totally break down, so the economic situation for its population will get even worse! So let's hope that the corrupt & oppressive Arabian dictatorships (which are obviously too stupid for realizing their failure - same like i.e. the Shah in Iran '79 and the Eastern European dictators '89) will get replaced by democratic alternatives (although many are pretty sceptical). First, these protests resp. revolution attempts have to be successful, though...unlike those in Iran 2009.