Communism And Prom Decorations

From PJ O'Rourke's All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty:

The East German political system, like the Dippoldiswalde septic system which survives it, didn't work. Getting a mass of people to labor, will-they, nil-they, toward abstract goals for the sake of people in the mass doesn't work. It can be done temporarily in dire emergencies such as last-minute decoration of the gym for the prom or during famines or when Nazis invade. Even the Soviet Union worked while Nazis were invading it. But on the morning after V-E Day, the proletariat was sloshed on the job again, Stalin was back to killing people, and the peasants were hiding their pigs.