{"id":104506,"date":"2026-09-01T03:00:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T07:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=104506"},"modified":"2026-08-30T13:06:45","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T17:06:45","slug":"under-communism-everyone-has-a-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/under-communism-everyone-has-a-job\/","title":{"rendered":"“Under Communism, everyone has a job”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sandy Petersen<\/a> responds to the “Under Communism, everyone has a job” claim that has been circulating recently thanks to the rising popularity of useful idiots:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“Under Communism, everyone has a job”. This is absolutely true. <\/p>\n

Here’s what else was true. <\/p>\n

1) You were ASSIGNED your job AND the region for that job by the state (i.e., a bureaucrat). You were required to stay in your job at least 3 years. <\/p>\n

2) After 3 years, if you wanted to switch jobs, you needed the approval of both your labor board AND your employer. If you switched too often (for example: every 3 years), there were legal penalties, up to imprisonment.<\/p>\n

3) Promotions were based on party membership, loyalty, and sucking up. I’ve talked to a lot of former Soviet citizens, and zero of them thought merit was of use. Also many nice jobs were only for party members.<\/p>\n

4) Wages were pretty even across the board. A factory worker, engineer, and factory manager had similar salaries, so it was indeed egalitarian, but didn’t have a lot of incentive. The higher-rank workers did get perks to make up for it. They might get a vacation dacha<\/em> on the Black Sea. Or a “company” car with a chauffeur. That sort of thing. The higher-ups had better stuff. <\/p>\n

5) You needed a passport to travel inside your own country. You couldn’t just move to Leningrad and look for work. Or even go on vacation without permission. <\/p>\n

6) You had a union. It was state-controlled. You could not go on strike. If you criticized your factory manager, you would be arrested. Yay unions. <\/p>\n

If you look at the above, they are an evil capitalist’s wet dream. Think of a movie with a foul imaginary super-corporation so beloved of science fiction movies — they would support every one of those initiatives. <\/p>\n

Because that’s what the Soviet Union was — the biggest, most evil corporation that ever existed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sandy Petersen responds to the “Under Communism, everyone has a job” claim that has been circulating recently thanks to the rising popularity of useful idiots: “Under Communism, everyone has a job”. This is absolutely true. Here’s what else was true. 1) You were ASSIGNED your job AND the region for that job by the state […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25,7,53,1119],"tags":[780,95,433],"class_list":["post-104506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-history","category-politics","category-russia","tag-communism","tag-jobs","tag-sovietunion"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-rbA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104508,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104506\/revisions\/104508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}