Hammer and Tickle - Trailer

Watch the trailer of 'Hammer & Tickle'

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Ben
• Lewis
• Hammer
• and
• Tickle
• Trailer
• Communism
• Jokes
• Sketch
• Cartoon
• Soviet

[ferociousmadman]

Well if capitalism is dying why is every country except for the most isolated and outdated using it as a form of economics and existence? Even China is a very capitalistic nation, and they claim to be communist!

[chechtube]

Ingenious! I have really enjoyed it and laughed my head off!

I was born in this perverse insane system (Prague, Czech) but have lived in freedom for 24 years now - the commies hated humour and you could get two-years-jail for such jokes...

[lipovan87]

@Scientisticsoviet

Reply via personal message.

That way comments don't have to be broken up.

[Scientisticsoviet]

@lipovan87 I will link yo the book on the subject in a private message. It's really impressive; Combines a wealth of empirical data and synthetic research. "Farm to Factory: A reinterpretation of the Soviet industrial revolution." by Robert C. Allen

[Scientisticsoviet]

@lipovan87 Indeed Allen does go over the fact that military spending was a smaller problem. He notes however that in the realm of research, it was comparatively much more important, notably because the sort image of no experimentation and tinkering was actually a myth.

[Scientisticsoviet]

@lipovan87 Now an few issues with what you say. The problem is actually that they did upgrade old facilities, and as even Gosplan gathered on several occasions, this was much costly then "greenfield" investment. To the point where Japanese steel mills where actually larger then Soviet and American ones (despite the image of American and Soviet gigantism respectively), yet this precisely why they were more efficent (scale economies).

[Scientisticsoviet]

@lipovan87 Note that free market suffers from coordination and factor mobility issues as well, if not moreso (especially in developing countries). That being said, at no point are the OECD countries operating in a purist sort of free market. Not at all.

[Scientisticsoviet]

@lipovan87 For long term strategy though, the vast manpower, agricultural fields and to some degree mineral wealth of Asia would have a much wiser investment. Still, I suppose the shock of WWII compelled the control of Eastern Europe.

[lipovan87]

@Scientisticsoviet

In short, the USSR couldn't upgrade their facilities to far without running into the skills problem. Soviet economic ideas urged self-production instead of trade (which was handled at the national level which reduced the COMECON to defacto demanding tribute). The restrictions on labor flows are one of the problems that misaligned workers. The military spending was a problem but minor compared to the structural problems imposed by Communist management.

[lipovan87]

@Scientisticsoviet

Provides many key benefits tied people to their workplaces (instead of letting them to move) and may have encouraged them to work harder. Despite those efforts, the requirement that organizations accept lazy and unskilled people added the problems of what to do with them. That one would be provided for even if one just did the minimum removed the desperation that fuels normal workers. Soviet factories were famous for slow and inefficient production.(Cont.)

[lipovan87]

@Scientisticsoviet

Caused a massive misalignment of manpower. Good factory workers became poor technicians and then terrible scientists. Eventually, projects ran out of skilled workers and had to choose what was important and what wasn't. The priority was military production but the problem was inherent in the who system and labor flows weren't as free as a Free Market.

Motivation was a key factor. The establishment of a collective mentality where the workplace (cont.)

[lipovan87]

@Scientisticsoviet

The Soviet Union made significant leaps in building quantity. They imported US technology in the 1930s (FDR liberalized trade restrictions), copied it, and and modified it slightly as the Soviet scientists began to reverse-engineer the technology.

Trying to build higher technology equipment runs into one of the most serious problems in Communist societies, the limited number of skilled workers. There was a massive push to train experts but that (cont.)