Subject: Mobility in "socialist" eastern europ

Gar Lipow lipowg at sprintmail.com
Mon Apr 15 16:31:59 PDT 2002


On Mon, 15 Apr 2002 11:35:12 -0700 joanna bujes <joanna.bujes at ebay.sun.com> said

> My experience backs up what you're saying. When I was in Romania in the > sixties, my parents told me that I had to get straight A's (10s) if I wanted to go to the university. In other words, my performance would need > to be nearly perfect in order to overcome the negative marks against me:

> 1) I was privileged by being the daughter of intellectuals who

>2) did not belong to the party.

>Had I had "healthy social origins," like being the daughter of peasants, the bar would have been lower.

Gee reverse discrimination. But note that Pary members had no such criteria. The fact that there was a question of social mobility at all is a pretty good indicator that "Communism" had a pretty strong caste system, and probably a class one. In a truly classless (or casteless) society - even a socialist one, let alone a communist one - the question of social mobility would not arise.



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