Ok, so. I’m bored as I switched the hot water off when I went on holiday and now I’m waiting for it to heat up so I can have a shower.
hard left is usually considered to be communism/socialism. So an example of states that had those policies would be the Soviet Union from 1918-1990, China from 1949- arguably 1970 or so, Vietnam from 1970s onwards and Laos.
China is a bit complicated because officially it is still a communist country but it doesn’t really fit the definition any more.
so,
in general hard left policies are about running society for the benefit of the workers with the state in charge.
“the workers” can be argued about until the cows come home but it is basically the people who do stuff. Cleaners, carers, nurses, teachers, people who work in factories, railway staff, call centre workers as well as accountants, engineers, lawyers, managers and computer programmers.
if you do a job (paid or unpaid) you are a worker.
so hard left policies involve no (or very little) private property. The state owns everything (or nearly everything). Think of it as like working for a big company overseas. You work for the company. You live in company housing that is tied to your job. You shop at the company shop.
so in China or Russia you would be assigned housing. If you are single it might be in a dorm with other single people who also work at your company. If you have kids it might by in family housing.
a bit like how the Army has housing on army bases and as soldiers are moved around their families move with them and are assigned a new house on the new army base.
if you want to change job you apply for it just like it’s a big company and you are moving departments. Many other people might apply and the HR people in the new department decide who gets the job. Much like in capitalism, they’ll decide based on qualifications and recommendations from your current boss.
in terms of getting food and clothing etc, there’s basically two ways hard left systems run it. The first is rationing. So like during the Second World War here, you’ll get given a ration book and you swop tokens for food and clothing. Both Russia and China had canteen systems where there was a canteen at your workplace where you could get breakfast/lunch/dinner and there were also canteens on the roads where you could go outside your workplace. I’ve been to a few in Russia (pre-war) and honestly they’re pretty good.
the other way is a money system, so China had this. You got paid money for your job, and canteen meals at your workplace were free (or included in your job) but if you wanted to go elsewhere you used your money.
in both cases because meals were pretty much centralised there wasn’t an expectation of cooking at home - you could, but in general you ate communally.
clothes - again, workplace clothes would be issued by your workplace. A bit like hospitals have scrubs and the army has uniform your employer would give you clothing for work. Clothing outside of work would be above and beyond that and would be either by rations or by money depending.
in theory this means everyone (adult) is assigned a job. That workplace gives them somewhere to live, feeds them and clothes them. So (again, in theory) no-one goes hungry or unclothed or homeless.
in practice it never really worked out like that….