What Caused Shortages In Communist Countries?

Why did communist countries have issues with food shortages and with other things?

 

The original concept of communism if largely misunderstood by the countries fanatical leaders.
If the country is unable to produce enough food due to its climate, they should concentrate on manufacture, then do balanced import exports.

Going it all alone will never work, particularly if the country suffers bad weather.
The former British empire worked on these principals. Even since independence, since little hostility was involved, many of these trading agreements still exist today.
That was until China came along and upset the applecart. LOL

 

Right. It’s better to have a cadre or privileged white obscenely rich men own the means of production rather than the people who actually do the work……corporations should be allowed to monopolize entire sector of the economy at everyone else’s expense……trickle down works great(for the already rich)….communities and poor people don’t count….and the gift of colonialism keeps on giving for Africa. What a travesty.

 

BUY MORE. BUY MORE NOW.

 

Who knows what an economy with capitalism under control might look like. Not only in the colonial nations, but in America also. In Montana a guy named Frank Little thought “one big Union” might help reign in the Anaconda Company. Pinkerton thugs hung him from a RR bridge in Butte. In Chile, same actors didn’t like Allende’s nationalizing the copper mines so that other company, the CIA company, dispatched the Allende government and brought in Pinochet….a super thug. And the fate of Nicaraguan Ortega. Capitalists bring every economic weapon to the war when true populism threatens. I say true because T s brand of “populism” is a sham. Why do you think The Magas want to ban books, squash public education, and keep women in the Kitchen?

Thank God for Greta. It’s time for the history above to be taught in schools.

 

"The Great Leap Forward" started by Mao Zedong in the late 50s seems to be one of the worst examples of communist economics leading to severe food shortages.


What Happened in the Great Leap Forward?

Rather than stimulating the economy, the measures undertaken by the Great Leap Forward resulted in massive food shortages, leading to famine and starvation—ultimately, tens of millions of Chinese citizens died as a result.

Great Leap Forward: What It Was, Goals, and Impact

 

The communist system was designed for the empowerment of the world's poverty-stricken and underprivileged who formed 99 per cent of humanity, and to protect them( by self-organisation and self-direction) from the exploitative clutches of unethical feudalism and capitalism.

However, the system in its infancy did not get the necessary quality leadership , space and time to develop into a coherent and well developed system after the initial period of trial and error which any new system needs to refine itself to healthy working order.

The russian communists had to face civil war, the early loss of leaders like Lenin and Trotsky and other leaders which could have developed a more potent system, incompetent leaders in Stalin, hostility from the feudal and capitalist countries, and brutal Nazi invasions. Mao was a good military general and political ideologue but poor administrator,statesman and economist.

Dictatorship of the proletariat, was still a dictatorship meaning that there was no fool-proof decision-making process , accountability, proper checks and balances in the system to ensure a correct course of action leading to a healthier state.

Perhaps if the communists had come to power in UK or France or Europe through democratic elections , a better coherent and well developed system with competent personnel could have been created.

Democratic communism would have been a better success story than dictatorial communism.

 

If you ask the well known Austrian economist they would likely say that the lack of market prices is what hurts centrally planned economies.

"Criticism of Centrally Planned Economies

The concept of central planning is subject to heavy criticism, especially from scholars in the Austrian school of economics. One major critique, associated with Friedrich Hayek, is that central planners cannot efficiently respond to supply and demand. In a market economy, businesses respond to price signals by increasing or decreasing the production of their goods.

In a planned economy, there are no price signals, so planners cannot accurately forecast which products will be needed or not adapt to changing conditions. This means that there may be unnecessary shortages or surpluses of certain goods."

From:

Centrally Planned Economy

Investopedia

 

What Communism did do, was inspire Socialism, which is still alive today in the most successful democracies.

Successful Socialist Countries:
Mexico
Canada
Norway
Sweden
France
Spain on and off
Germany
Greece
India

Communist countries fail to address human greed so they eventually fall due to corruption at the highest levels.

 

Same issue that causes food shortages everywhere--people don't / can't feed themselves ( and don't try) and now have to depend on structures organized by dozens of middlemen large and small.

 

The US is an example of how capitalism dominates agriculture, with just a few oligopolies controlling most of the world's food supply. Our country is large enough and fertile enough, we sell cheap corn to Mexico, and they grow more expensive corn. A trillion here, and a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking real ears of corn, which require larger automated tractors these days. Even China is becoming dependent on capitalists for their food, and are among the largest purchasers of land in the US. Money and technology drive the market, which is exploding. For example, with depleted oceans, fish farming is now a huge business, and everyone is developing Vertical Farming, up to 8 stories tall buildings with plants on vertical conveyor belts. The idea that current farming reflects what's happening is a joke in bad taste. For example, beef is much more likely in the near future to be grown in a Petre dish, while coffee will almost certainly be synthetic.

Thanks in part to the war in the Ukraine, the world's food reserves are at an all time low, just as the jet stream and Gulf stream appear ready to change. Capitalist countries are infamous for corruption, while communist ones are infamous for incompetence, attempting to control everything, only to fail repeatedly, but modern technology is coming to the rescue for both. The 1% that controls everything, can't agree, ensuring AI is the future! The AI they keep producing are sexist, agist, racist, and homophobic, because the Shannon Entropy they use suits their ideas on reality, and their own machines are playing their own game better than they can. Ensuring self-organizing systems will be required in the very near future, to level the playing field and create a new ecological foundation for the economy.

You don't kill Terminator Robots with a rocket launcher, you use robots that are self-organizing and programmed to promote life. Self-organizing systems that no idiots can corrupt, because the damn machines comprehend Three Stooges slapstick better then they do. The US and China can stockpile all the drones they want, but self-organizing systems will inevitably make them expensive. Imagine Terminator robots running farms, or cleaning the ocean, when they're not needed for defense.

 

The amount of socialism practiced by those countries may vary. Anyway this got me thinking back when Bernie Sanders said his idea of socialism was Denmark. Bernie got some pushback from the PM of Denmark.

Denmark's prime minister says Bernie Sanders is wrong to call his country socialist