Perpetual Soviet Socialism

[Agnapostate]

I'm not familiar with the precise elements of every faction present here on this specific issue, but is there anyone who maintains that the USSR was socialist in nature throughout its entire existence?

[Luisrah]

I may be wrong, but I don't think anyone here does.

But I may be wrong

[bricolage]

I've seen Stalinists write that Soviets were still active and in workers control up to the 1980s so maybe some of them do.

[bailey_187]

Me.

[Intelligitimate]

I believe the USSR was a dictatorship of the proletariat throughout its entire existence. I don't believe they had socialism in 1917 (neither do any of the Bolsheviks) to probably around the early 1930s when the elements of a genuine socialist economy started to take concrete forms. Much of this was dismantled by the late 80s, though not completely. The first period represented an economy in transition to socialism, and the last period a transition away from socialism. When elements took control that wanted a formal return to capitalism, the the transition was complete with nearly everything you see in the beginnings of capitalism, including a hyper phase of Primitive Accumulation by the new Russian bourgeoisie.

[Jimmie Higgins]

When elements took control that wanted a formal return to capitalism, the the transition was complete with nearly everything you see in the beginnings of capitalism, including a hyper phase of Primitive Accumulation by the new Russian bourgeoisie.You mean like massive industrialization, slave labor, 5 year plans.

You folks should really read some "State and Revolution" because what Lenin talks about in there looks nothing like the USSR. Where was the democracy, the instantly recallable representatives with workingman's wages? In fact, the USSR looks a lot like what Lenin describes in there as what happens when opportunist social-democrats take power - the cream of professionals and the peasantry take privileged beurocratic posts while little actually changes in the worker's relationship to production. What good is a nationalized economy without worker's power?

The russian revolution many have failed to bring about socialism let alone communism, but things like 1917 and the Paris commune show the potential for a real "dictatorship of the proletariet" rather than a dictatorship over the prolitariet.

[Intelligitimate]

You mean like massive industrialization, slave labor, 5 year plans.

There was no slave labor in the USSR. This is just your hysterical Cliffite garbage you spew from your cult.


You folks should really read some "State and Revolution"That isn't a book your cult sells. I don't think they would appreciate you advocating people read a book that isn't trying to get the Wolf's and D'Amato's of your cult rich.


because what Lenin talks about in there looks nothing like the USSR.lol, that is a complete and utter lie.


Where was the democracy, the instantly recallable representatives with workingman's wages?There was never any bourgeois democracy in the USSR, yes. I know this disappoints the liberals in your cult greatly, but for actual revolutionaries, this isn't a problem.


In fact, the USSR looks a lot like what Lenin describes in there as what happens when opportunist social-democrats take powerExcept it doesn't at all. Only in the realms of Cliffite propaganda does the USSR resemble any such thing.


- the cream of professionals and the peasantry take privileged beurocratic posts while little actually changes in the worker's relationship to production.lol, you couldn't demonstrate that if your life depended on it.


What good is a nationalized economy without worker's power?Considering the working class was in power, this is a retarded question.

[bailey_187]

little actually changes in the worker's relationship to production. What good is a nationalized economy without worker's power?

Walter Reuther, later the anti-Communist president of the United Auto Workers, who worked in a Soviet auto factory in the 1930s said, "Here are no bosses to drive fear into the workers. No one to drive them in mad speed-ups. Here the workers are in control. Even the shop superintendent had no more right in these meetings than any other worker. I have witnessed many times already when the superintendent spoke too long. The workers in the hall decided he had already consumed enough time and the floor was given to a lathe hand who told of his problems and offered suggestions. Imagine this at Ford or Briggs. This is what the outside world calls the 'ruthless dictatorship in Russia'. I tell you ... in all countries we have thus far been in we have never found such genuine proletarian democracy"... (quoted from Phillip Bonosky, Brother Bill McKie: Building the Union at Ford [New York: International Publishers, 1953]).


There were also special courts to hear industrial disputes to which only workers had access; managerial personnel could appear there only as defendants and were barred from initiating cases. Even before matters came to court, there were ways that the workers on the shop floor could let a troublesome director know who was boss.[Mary McAuley in "Labour
Disputes in the Soviet Union," Oxford 1969 (pp. 54-55)]



Quoting from David Granick in his book, "The Red Executive":
"Management is operating under severe ideological and practical
handicaps in its efforts to keep down worker criticism. One factory director . . . implied that production meetings were a real ordeal for him. But at a question as to whether workers dared to criticize openly, he said, 'Any director who suppressed criticism would be severely punished. He would not only be removed, he would be tried.'" (New York, 1960, p. 230)



Brilliant. The USSR was not Socialist because it was not how it was exactly described by Lenin in "State and Revolution".

[Jimmie Higgins]

There was no slave labor in the USSR. This is just your hysterical Cliffite garbage you spew from your cult.

That isn't a book your cult sells. I don't think they would appreciate you advocating people read a book that isn't trying to get the Wolf's and D'Amato's of your cult rich.:rolleyes:Get back to me when you can make a reasoned argument. Even if your straw-man about only reading books we publish was true, considering that Haymarket books publishes out of print books from other groups like Sindeny Lends' books and from other traditions and works by members of other organizations or independant marxists like Mike Davis we'd still have a broader understanding of marxist politics and hisorory than a lot of people who like to respind to reasoned arguments with: "'tisn't - naw-uh, worker's had power in the USSR! Why, how? Cos... you suck!".


There was never any bourgeois democracy in the USSR, yes. I know this disappoints the liberals in your cult greatly, but for actual revolutionaries, this isn't a problem.See, you wouldn't make this mistake if you had read "State and Revolution" what I described here is what Lenin called "Worker's democracy" which comes out of the destruction of bourgeois democracy. It's practically the entire point of the book.

Give it a read sometime - Lenin is much better for reading and thinking about critically than worshiping as an idol. In fact he talks about how opportunists worship Marx while ignoring his actual arguments - much like the USSR did to Lenin himself... let's keep the rotted corpse, but ditch the actual revolutionary tradition.


Brilliant. The USSR was not Socialist because it was not how it was exactly described by Lenin in "State and Revolution". No, not because it wasn't "exactly" like... it's because it wasn't "anything like". I'd hope that the full creative powers of a self-liberated working class could come up with more than what Lenin outlined in a short pamphlet.

[bailey_187]

Ok, forget my last line. I would edit it out but you quoted it. The rest of my post still stands though.

[bailey_187]

Anyway, the idead that the managers and bureacrats were some sort of Elite or "ruling class" is false. As JA Getty has pointed out, statistically, the higher rank you were in the party the more at risk you were in the purge.

The Bureacrats and managers were (rightfully) under intense pressure. For example, "A former chief of construction recalled that during six weeks of 1938 there were 28 seperate investigations of his performance, for instance, of f how well he supervised work norms and allocated wages" (R. Thurston - Life and Terror..pg170)

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I will only speak for myself, as somebody who doesn't belong to any specific tendency/faction, when I say I wouldn't classify the USSR as Socialist.

As much as I am not a supporter of Stalin, I would say that during the late 1920s and early 1930s, there were certainly some Socialistic features evident in the USSR, most notably the urbanisation of peasants and of course rapid industrialisation, which was the most Socialist of tools in Russia, due to its unique geopolitical problems, and awkward socio-economic situation (because so many people in pre-industrialised Russia were peasants).

[Intelligitimate]

Get back to me when you can make a reasoned argument.

lol, as if you gave a shit about what Lenin says about socialism. Lenin said in 1917 that "Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the entire country.” Lenin goes on and on about how socialism is not merely “worker's control.”


At first our slogan was workers’ control. We said that despite all the promises of the Kerensky government, the capitalists were continuing to sabotage production and increase dislocation. We can now see that this would have ended in complete collapse. So the first fundamental step that every socialist, workers’ government has to take is workers’ control. We did not decree socialism immediately throughout industry, because socialism can only take shape and be consolidated when the working class has learnt how to run the economy and when the authority of the working people has been firmly established. Socialism is mere wishful thinking without that. That is why we introduced workers’ control, appreciating that it was a contradictory and incomplete measure, but an essential one so that the workers themselves might tackle the momentous tasks of building up industry in a vast country without and opposed to exploiters.

Everyone who took a direct, or even indirect, part in this work, everyone who lived through all the oppression and brutality of the old capitalist regime, learned a great deal. We know that little has been accomplished. We know that in this extremely backward and impoverished country where innumerable obstacles and barriers were put in the workers’ way, it will take them a long time to learn to run industry. But we consider it most important and valuable that the workers have themselves tackled the job, and that we have passed from workers’ control, which in all the main branches of industry was bound to be chaotic, disorganised, primitive and incomplete, to workers’ industrial administration on a national scale.


There the workers are learning to do this and are forming central organs of administration; there we are having to reconstruct the Supreme Economic Council; for the old laws, passed at the beginning of the year, are already out of date, the workers’ movement is marching ahead, the old workers’ control is already antiquated, and the trade unions are becoming the embryos of administrative bodies for all industry.


We have introduced workers’ control as a law, but this law is only just beginning to operate and is only just beginning to penetrate the minds of broad sections of the proletariat. In our agitation we do not sufficiently explain that lack of accounting and control in the production and distribution of goods means the death of the rudiments of socialism, means the embezzlement of state funds (for all property belongs to the state and the state is the Soviet state in which power belongs to the majority of the working people). We do not sufficiently explain that carelessness in accounting and control is downright aiding and abetting the German and the Russian Kornilovs, who can overthrow the power of the working people only if we fail to cope with the task of accounting and control, and who, with the aid of the whole of the rural bourgeoisie, with the aid of the Constitutional-Democrats, the Mensheviks and the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, are “watching” us and waiting for an opportune moment to attack us. And the advanced workers and peasants do not think and speak about this sufficiently. Until workers’ control has become a fact, until the advanced workers have organised and carried out a victorious and ruthless crusade against the violators of this control, or against those who are careless in matters of control, it will be impossible to pass from the first step (from workers’ control) to the second step towards socialism, i.e., to pass on to workers’ regulation of production.


1. Immediately after the October Revolution, the trade unions proved to be almost the only bodies which, while exercising workers’ control, were able and bound to undertake the work of organising and managing production. In that early period of the Soviet power, no state apparatus for the management of the national economy had yet been set up, while sabotage on the part of factory owners and senior technicians brought the working class squarely up against the task of safeguarding industry and getting the whole of the country’s economic apparatus back into normal running order.

2. In the subsequent period of the Supreme Economic Council’s work, when a considerable part of it consisted in liquidating private enterprises and organising state management to run them, the trade unions carried on this work jointly and side by side with the state economic management agencies.

This parallel set-up was explained and justified by the weakness of the state agencies; historically it was vindicated by the establishment of full contact between the trade unions and the economic management agencies.

3.The centre of gravity in the management of industry and the drafting of a production programme shifted to these agencies as a result of their administration, the gradual spread of their control over production and management and the-co-ordination of the several parts. In view of this, the work of the trade unions in organising production was reduced to participation in forming the collegiums of chief administrations, central boards, and factory managements.

Lenin very clearly had a hand in the creation of the economic planning of the USSR, and directly equated it with socialism.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Of course, to the poster above, we must remember that conditions in Russia at the time Lenin was speaking were hugely different to those we face today.

Then, in Russia, the industrialised working class was small. Most of the exploited classes were poor peasants, who had no experience in management, self-sufficiency or indeed participating in running even the smallest economic branch such as a line on a factory.

In most first world nations today, workers are more informed and skilled, and often make up a larger percentage of the population, in terms of those living in more urban areas.

In 1917 Russia, workers' control on its own may not have led to Socialism. In fact, it would probably have led to anarchy in all honesty, it did need a guiding force, be it a vanguard party or the Constituent Assembly. However, conditions today have changed, and it is clear that this part of Lenin's theory is not as relevant today as it was in 1917.

[ComradeOm]

Anyway, the idead that the managers and bureacrats were some sort of Elite or "ruling class" is false. As JA Getty has pointed out, statistically, the higher rank you were in the party the more at risk you were in the purgeNot surprising given that the purge was directed primarily* at Stalin's rivals within the state apparatus. This in no way contradicts the notion that the bureaucracy was a ruling caste, in the same way that divisions amongst the bourgeoisie (whether liberal elections, national wars, or coups) imply that capitalists do not form a ruling class today

You can also note that the highest ranked victims/figures in the Soviet Union 1936 were more likely to have taken part in revolutionary activities in 1917

*I say primarily because there were obviously countless ordinary Soviet citizens also caught up in the violence. Being of Bulgarian or German descent, for example, was also liable to damn you in the eyes of the state

[Dimentio]

You mean like massive industrialization, slave labor, 5 year plans.

You folks should really read some "State and Revolution" because what Lenin talks about in there looks nothing like the USSR. Where was the democracy, the instantly recallable representatives with workingman's wages? In fact, the USSR looks a lot like what Lenin describes in there as what happens when opportunist social-democrats take power - the cream of professionals and the peasantry take privileged beurocratic posts while little actually changes in the worker's relationship to production. What good is a nationalized economy without worker's power?

The russian revolution many have failed to bring about socialism let alone communism, but things like 1917 and the Paris commune show the potential for a real "dictatorship of the proletariet" rather than a dictatorship over the prolitariet.

Lenin probably wrote that book to gain political support. My five joules.

[ArrowLance]

Of course, to the poster above, we must remember that conditions in Russia at the time Lenin was speaking were hugely different to those we face today.

Then, in Russia, the industrialised working class was small. Most of the exploited classes were poor peasants, who had no experience in management, self-sufficiency or indeed participating in running even the smallest economic branch such as a line on a factory.

In most first world nations today, workers are more informed and skilled, and often make up a larger percentage of the population, in terms of those living in more urban areas.

In 1917 Russia, workers' control on its own may not have led to Socialism. In fact, it would probably have led to anarchy in all honesty, it did need a guiding force, be it a vanguard party or the Constituent Assembly. However, conditions today have changed, and it is clear that this part of Lenin's theory is not as relevant today as it was in 1917.

The workers today are still not skilled in management. As Lenin said, the bourgeoisie will have a large advantage over the proletariat without the aid of the state.

Of course the workers could wield the state, but that is not completely possible with the less educated and often somewhat reactionary working class. And so a vanguard is erected.

I think you will find things have changed less from 1917 to the present than from 1848 to 1917. And even from 1848 to the present, the working class is in much of the same condition. And although peasants may not be a large class today, Lenin's ideas still do apply to the workers in general.