The reason you never produce enough, even with the same amount of people as before, is because human beings are hard wired for justice, and equality, and fairness. Let me explain.
Since no matter how hard you work, you never eat more, there's no incentive to work harder than you need to. So why work harder than the laziest man? Why produce more than the dumbest dude who is terribly inefficient? Why do more than someone else is doing for the same bowl of soup?? That wouldn't be fair. If it's ok for him to only produce x amount by the end of the day, then fuck it, that's all you're going to produce too.
Of course, the commissars eventually realize this, and you start getting quotas. Except as a result, while the inherently productive people are fine, the inefficient lazy idiots (who communism is SUPPOSED to be helping) are failing the quotas and getting punished. Off to the gulag to break rocks, or off with their head.
If you can't make what your effort is worth, you'll lower your effort to make what you're paid (ie the famous quote: "The govt pretends to pay us and we pretend to work"). In the end the quotas can't be raised back up to what you're capable of under capitalism because if they do too many below you fail the quotas. They are damned if they do and damned if they don't and the result in either direction is low productivity.
All because man is inherently fair and can not stand inequity or injustice.
I want to add on to this:
The reason you never produce enough, even with the same amount of people as before, is because human beings are hard wired for justice, and equality, and fairness. Let me explain.
Since no matter how hard you work, you never eat more, there's no incentive to work harder than you need to. So why work harder than the laziest man? Why produce more than the dumbest dude who is terribly inefficient? Why do more than someone else is doing for the same bowl of soup?? That wouldn't be fair. If it's ok for him to only produce x amount by the end of the day, then fuck it, that's all you're going to produce too.
Of course, the commissars eventually realize this, and you start getting quotas. Except as a result, while the inherently productive people are fine, the inefficient lazy idiots (who communism is SUPPOSED to be helping) are failing the quotas and getting punished. Off to the gulag to break rocks, or off with their head.
If you can't make what your effort is worth, you'll lower your effort to make what you're paid (ie the famous quote: "The govt pretends to pay us and we pretend to work"). In the end the quotas can't be raised back up to what you're capable of under capitalism because if they do too many below you fail the quotas. They are damned if they do and damned if they don't and the result in either direction is low productivity.
All because man is inherently fair and can not stand inequity or injustice.