Does this quote apply to how people feel about the Soviet Union here on RevLeft? [Archive]

OCMO

6th March 2010, 19:07

If you live in a NATO country, it's more like "Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no brain. Whoever wants it back has no brain." Having to live in fear of being nuked isn't an improvement for the working class, and having a repressive authoritarian state as the prime example of what "Communism" is doesn't help when you're trying to agitate. The fall of the Soviet Union has only helped those spreading communism in the NATO countries because those born after 1989 don't necessarily see the communists as the major enemy of freedom and democracy.
This isn't very accurate. I live in a NATO country, and the fall of USSR didn't help the left. The same with Italy, for example.

What you wrote aplies more to north europe (germany, netherlands, belgium, etc) and the UK for being "targets" in a invasion at the time.

Lyev

6th March 2010, 20:16

Sort of. Now there is nothing to stop the US empire.
Inaccurate; China. They're definitely catching up. I suppose it's a competition between China's vast population and America's vast military capacity. These are the main two strong points of the two powers.

Anyway, I think it's quite an astute quote, albeit from a capitalist perspective. In the USSR they were awful for repressing political dissidence, but everyone was entitled to a job and a house, whereas capitalism just doesn't care about the individual. Now that Russia and the eastern bloc are capitalist, after being under "communist" rule for so long, the life expectancy has dropped by about 10 years on average, since the "end of history". You just have to look at the bigger picture, because capitalism has an awful lot of blood on it's hands too.

Tablo

6th March 2010, 20:39

Despite the lack of political freedom offered under the state-capitalist regime the people were better taken care of before. Not that I EVER want to see the Soviet Union again..

cb9's_unity

7th March 2010, 03:23

RadioRaheem84

7th March 2010, 03:28

It's safe to say that there is no one quote about the USSR that could express the varying beliefs of revlefters.

However the quote applies entirely to the feelings of Russian nationalists. The USSR turned Russia from a rural backwards laughing stock to a world super power. I'm a giant critic of the USSR, but the country's growth in power over the last century is undeniable (and the growth of their nations power is all nationalists care about).

The growth of the USSR from the agricultural laughing stock of Europe to the economic and political powerhouse of the Cold War was amazing. I mean it was enough to terrify the imperial powers as the USSR exhibited an alternative to post colonial rule in the third world's eyes. For a nation to skip what took Western nations centuries of industrialization in a decade or so was amazing at the time. Granted the USSR was no bastion of freedom but it wasn't an "evil empire" either.

Robocommie

7th March 2010, 05:03

I would like to second the notion that the USSR, while a repressive regime, did do an amazing job of advancing Russia as a nation. It had many many problems, but I think some of these problems in a way were the result of the USSR being the first to do what they did. There weren't really any historical examples to run a country the size of Russia and all the other republics in a socialist way, everything they did, they were doing for the first time.

In a way, we benefit from our own place in history, being at the ass end of the 20th century instead of the opening, we have nearly an entire century of socialist policies to comb through and look for examples of what worked well and what didn't work so well, build on the good and revise the bad.

I think one big thing I will say in support of the USSR, even in it's later stages, is that it could be a serious source of support for other socialist governments and rebel movements. Communist rebels around the world had an avenue for getting a shitload of Kalashnikovs and a shitload of ammo, along with funds and Soviet advisors, simply because they were on the same side in the Cold War, generally speaking. Since the USSR has fallen, and China's become Dengist, there's nobody to take that role.

infraxotl

7th March 2010, 06:19

The USSR wasn't the perfect socialist Utopia that many starry eyed Chomsky leftists expected. I wonder if Putin really said that, though, because it sounds awfully familiar to another laughable reactionary slogan I often see attributed to various famous western political figures.

cb9's_unity

7th March 2010, 06:49

The USSR wasn't the perfect socialist Utopia that many starry eyed Chomsky leftists expected.

Care to explain this? I wasn't aware Chomsky supporters thought so highly of the USSR.

Back to the op. If there is any positive lesson the USSR can teach us (or prove to us), it's that a free market isn't the force that can make a nation more powerful.

infraxotl

7th March 2010, 07:24

The USSR wasn't a flawless ideological slice of heaven so they disassociate from it and eagerly accept all the bourgeois/trotskyist lies.

cb9's_unity

7th March 2010, 09:07

Ouch, "bourgeois/trotskyist". That's a pretty harsh generalization.

Chomsky claims to be a libertarian socialist/anarcho-syndicalist. His ideology had nothing riding of the success or failure of the USSR because libertarian socialists had been substantially criticizing it since the beginning. Beyond that, I don't know of Chomsky ever supporting the USSR.

Btw, I'm neither a 'Chomskyist' or a Trotskyist so I'm not defending my own ideology. I'm just pointing out what your saying doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

bailey_187

7th March 2010, 12:51

The fall of the Soviet Union has only helped those spreading communism in the NATO countries because those born after 1989 don't necessarily see the communists as the major enemy of freedom and democracy.

Prove it. I think this statement is complete bullshit. Whatever obscure brand of Communism you represent, i don't think you have had much success in NATO countries.

infraxotl

7th March 2010, 16:18

Btw, I'm neither a 'Chomskyist' or a Trotskyist so I'm not defending my own ideology. I'm just pointing out what your saying doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

As a popular leftest intellectual he does a pretty good job of poisoning the well. There are a lot of Chomsky fans that aren't libertarian socialists or even all that aware of philosophies beyond a very vague progressivism.

Psy

7th March 2010, 16:45

The growth of the USSR from the agricultural laughing stock of Europe to the economic and political powerhouse of the Cold War was amazing. I mean it was enough to terrify the imperial powers as the USSR exhibited an alternative to post colonial rule in the third world's eyes. For a nation to skip what took Western nations centuries of industrialization in a decade or so was amazing at the time. Granted the USSR was no bastion of freedom but it wasn't an "evil empire" either.

True yet imperial Japan also shocked the world by being able to rapidly industrialize in the early 20th century leading up to WWII and rebuilt under the similar centrally planned economy (the only difference from the USSR being that Japan was a true state-capitalist economy where the Japanese bourgeoisie state planned for the bourgeoisie class in the interest of the bourgeoisie) so I don't see see why any post colonial nation would have saw free-market as a viable route.

RadioRaheem84

7th March 2010, 17:03

True yet imperial Japan also shocked the world by being able to rapidly industrialize in the early 20th century leading up to WWII and rebuilt under the similar centrally planned economy (the only difference from the USSR being the Japan was a true state-capitalist economy where the Japanese bourgeoisie state planned for the bourgeoisie class in the interest of the bourgeoisie) so I don't see see why any post colonial nation would have saw free-market as a viable route.

Well you could say the same thing for nearly every nation that dropped laissez-faire in favor of state planning. Nazi Germany rose pretty quickly too because of this, even after it was economically bankrupt, politically humiliated/exploited and smashed industrially by the Western Powers after WWI.

The USSR though was unique in that it promoted anti-colonialism and anti-bourgeois state capitalist alternative, even though it was still bureaucratically run. But the scale and size of industrializing a nation like Russia and doing it without private enterprise was amazing to the people in the third world.

The USSR wasn't the perfect socialist Utopia that many starry eyed Chomsky leftists expected. I object to this statement. For one a great majority of leftists acknowledge that the Soviet Union was not democratic but also that it wasn't the evil empire the US pinned it to be. Secondly, Noam Chomsky is anything but a supporter of the former USSR. It's ridiculous for you to assume that considering the enormous amount of evidence to the contrary. The most Chomsky has ever said is that the USSR successfully (while admits that it was on the back of workers) industrialized the nation in a short span. Something of which took the Western Powers centuries to do.

Psy

7th March 2010, 17:31

Well you could say the same thing for nearly every nation that dropped laissez-faire in favor of state planning. Nazi Germany rose pretty quickly too because of this, even after it was economically bankrupt, politically humiliated/exploited and smashed industrially by the Western Powers after WWI.

Except that Japan wanted to exploit rest of Asia not kill the non-Japanese populations of Asia. Japan's policy for its spear of influence in Asia was similar to that of the USA policy for South America, so instead of purging Eastern Europe of Eastern Europeans to make way for Germans, Japan simply setup puppet states that let the Japanese bourgeoisie rape these puppet states of their raw materials and labor force to fuel industry back in Japan. Thus Japan is actually a better model for struggling bourgeoisie then the Nazis.

The USSR though was unique in that it promoted anti-colonialism and anti-bourgeois state capitalist alternative, even though it was still bureaucratically run. But the scale and size of industrializing a nation like Russia and doing it without private enterprise was amazing to the people in the third world.

True

el_chavista

7th March 2010, 17:35

The western powers' intervention never ended. Reagan budgeted billions of dollars for the destabilization of the soviet block. I think the final Trojan horse was the western banks' credit and the economic directives that came along with it. In dealing with augmenting the workers productivity for the sake of the bureaucratic layer, the apparatchiki realized their power and factual ownership of the economic production means.

Kléber

7th March 2010, 17:58

The capitulation of the USSR was definitely a blow against the working class.

Deformed workers' states under revisionist leadership are sort of like the US republic after 1815. It was the last survivor of the bourgeois-democratic revolutions (monarchy had been restored in Britain, France, the Netherlands and Haiti), but it wasn't "democratic" any more than the USSR and China were "socialist" (the "democracies" like the USA and First French Republic even squabbled with and fought each other!) and the bourgeoisie didn't have total power; it was technically in control, but the Southern US / British aristocracies maintained their traditional authority. As Engels and Lenin said, the revolutionary class may fall into the habits of the exploiters it replaced if its culture is too low to establish new forms of production. It was necessary to have a Civil War in the US to complete the American bourgeois revolution; in Britain, due to the international situation, the feudal aristocracy was phased out more peacefully through interbreeding with the bourgeoisie.

We need new socialist revolutions in China, Cuba, and North Korea in the spirit of the revolutionary struggle of 1861-1865 which completed the American revolution! The working class has to organize itself and achieve political independence, and then get rid of the military dictatorship of the quasi-bourgeois gangsters (either peacefully like the British bourgeoisie got rid of their aristocrats, or violently like Lincoln had to, if the bureaucracy won't accede to the democratic demands of the proletariat), tear up the revisionist power-sharing arrangements which characterized the last 100 years of the workers' movement in the oppressed countries, and establish real socialism, which can't literally exist without democracy and can't succeed in a single country isolated from (and at war with) the global economy!

As a popular leftest intellectual he does a pretty good job of poisoning the well. There are a lot of Chomsky fans that aren't libertarian socialists or even all that aware of philosophies beyond a very vague progressivism.
1.) Do you have Trotsky and Chomsky confused?
2.) Are you aware that there are also neo-liberals and pseudo-anarchists who identify with Stalin?

infraxotl

7th March 2010, 18:05

I object to this statement. For one a great majority of leftists acknowledge that the Soviet Union was not democratic but also that it wasn't the evil empire the US pinned it to be. Secondly, Noam Chomsky is anything but a supporter of the former USSR. It's ridiculous for you to assume that considering the enormous amount of evidence to the contrary. The most Chomsky has ever said is that the USSR successfully (while admits that it was on the back of workers) industrialized the nation in a short span. Something of which took the Western Powers centuries to do.

How are you guys interpreting what I said as Chomsky supporting the USSR? I'm saying that the USSR was practically the best thing the left has ever had, yet some (reactionaries, chomskyites, trotskyists etc.) seem to believe it has "set communism back" in the west. It wasn't the USSR that did that, it was the bourgeois in the west and the leftists that did nothing to stop them.

Maybe the USSR was "undemocratic", but it troubles me that some leftists actually believe it's better to have a dictatorship of the bourgeois (capitalist "democracy") than a dictatorship of bureaucrats that at least have some sense of duty towards the people.

Kléber

7th March 2010, 18:13

infraxotl:
You seem to be implying that anybody who criticizes any policy of the Soviet government is a capitalist-restorationist. This view prevents us from properly analyzing Soviet history and separating the good from the bad. Your position is similar to that of the old apologists for feudalism, who claimed that the society they were in was the best society possible, so therefore bourgeois democrats ought to shut up about lordly privilege and stop formulating their whiny revolutionary ideology.

Marxism and Leninism were revised by state censorship in the USSR. It is one thing to defend socialism against myths, it is another thing entirely to defend phony-communist gangsters' distortions of Marxism as the "best thing the left has ever had."

infraxotl

7th March 2010, 18:33

Kléber

7th March 2010, 18:47

Yes, but before we bring something back, we've got to figure out how we lost it. You suggested that anybody who analyzes the historical process of market capitalist restoration, is automatically a restorationist if they dare to criticize any policies of a "socialist" government which led to restoration.

Trotsky (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/index.htm), who you mentioned in particular, predicted that the bureaucratic elite would eventually restore outright capitalism, in line with its own economic interests, if its political dictatorship over the workers continued indefinitely.

Robocommie

7th March 2010, 18:47

Maybe the USSR was "undemocratic", but it troubles me that some leftists actually believe it's better to have a dictatorship of the bourgeois (capitalist "democracy") than a dictatorship of bureaucrats that at least have some sense of duty towards the people.

There's a lot of injustice under the current US government and it needs to be replaced, but at the very least I don't have to worry about KGB agents banging on my door in the middle of the night and arresting me for publishing an article critical of the state.

Robocommie

7th March 2010, 18:49

Trotsky, who you mentioned in particular, predicted that the bureaucratic elite would eventually restore capitalism, in line with its own economic interests, if its political dictatorship over the workers continued indefinitely.

It's strange to me because that also sounds like Mao's theories, but Mao is usually seen as having been a development from the Marxist-Leninist line of thought, or at least that's what I've come to understand.

Kléber

7th March 2010, 18:58

During the ruckus of the Sino-Soviet split, Mao seemed to be inviting the charge of Trotskyism (with which he was slandered by the Soviet press), and even wheeled out his own Maoist theory of "permanent revolution" (which, like so many interesting facets of Mao's ideology, was soon shoved back in the closet, never to be heard about again) and he briefly talked about a "bureaucratic capitalist class" that could restore capitalism from within China (contrary to Stalin's assertion that restoration could only be accomplished by foreign imperialist influence). Meanwhile such actual Trotskyists as could be found in China were buried underground with a bullet hole in their head and a sign reading "Nationalist Spy" around their necks, or serving out an indefinite jail sentence. So yes, Mao did use elements of Trotskyism as a sort of dirt clod to throw at Khrushchev and justify the split, but he washed his hands afterwards. Stalin had also used Trotsky's ideas (5-year plan, collectivization) against Bukharin and his Right Opposition once the Left Opposition was out of the way and it suited his purposes.

When some Maoists in Hunan (http://www.marxists.de/china/sheng/intro.htm) tried to revive those ideas of Mao's in 1967 they were branded as "Trotskyists" by the man himself, and suppressed by the army along with all the other Cultural Revolution trends deemed too radical by the "party center."

Ravachol

7th March 2010, 19:01

Sort of. Now there is nothing to stop the US empire.

The international working class I might hope...

RadioRaheem84

7th March 2010, 19:02

How are you guys interpreting what I said as Chomsky supporting the USSR? I'm saying that the USSR was practically the best thing the left has ever had, yet some (reactionaries, chomskyites, trotskyists etc.) seem to believe it has "set communism back" in the west. It wasn't the USSR that did that, it was the bourgeois in the west and the leftists that did nothing to stop them.

Maybe the USSR was "undemocratic", but it troubles me that some leftists actually believe it's better to have a dictatorship of the bourgeois (capitalist "democracy") than a dictatorship of bureaucrats that at least have some sense of duty towards the people.

I appologize. I don't know how I read something besides this in your last post.

But yes I agree. I think the West has put us into a really tight spot. The USSR was undemocratic but preferable to a third world despotism, all the while the US liberal democracy, where we were free to express our opinions was dominating the economic sphere like hegemonic monster, impaling democracy wherever it arose in the third world. If we said anything positive about the USSR, like no one starved or went without medical attention, then we were seen as Stalinist pigs, but if we railed against the foreign policy of the US, then we hated freedom.

So yes, a lot of leftists are hypocritical in that they feel comfortable denouncing the USSR as a beast in a nation like the US that acted like a beast toward democratic struggles in the third world. Ironically, the USSR was less of a detriment to democracy than the US was, yet so many people see the opposite as true.

RadioRaheem84

7th March 2010, 19:04

There's a lot of injustice under the current US government and it needs to be replaced, but at the very least I don't have to worry about KGB agents banging on my door in the middle of the night and arresting me for publishing an article critical of the state.

No, you would just have to worry about US client state thugs busting into your home if you were a union leader in the third world.

RadioRaheem84

7th March 2010, 19:09

The creator of this topic wanted to know if the quote "...Whoever wants [the USSR] back has no brain." applies to how we feel about the USSR. Putin is implying that anyone who'd rather have the USSR than the capitalist mess they have now is dumb. It's not about properly analyzing Soviet history, it's about if you believe the dissolution of the USSR was a step forward or not.

It was and it wasn't. It was a step back that we now have another capitalist giant to worry about but it was a step forward in that we now have the remedy for future attempts to establish socialism; more democracy. We've learned the lessons of the USSR and will strive for something better.

CartCollector

7th March 2010, 19:28

than a dictatorship of bureaucrats that at least have some sense of duty towards the people.

Brezhnev had a Rolls-Royce and Mercedes-Benz, a swimming pool, and gave himself military service awards for his birthday multiple times. Tell me how that counts as "duty towards the people" any more than it does for bourgeois leaders.

Prove it. I think this statement is complete bullshit. Whatever obscure brand of Communism you represent, i don't think you have had much success in NATO countries.

You know what, in hindsight, I should have just said the US and left it at that. I got it from Wikipedia's article on the CPUSA, which says: "There has been some increase in membership since the early 1990s once Communism became less of a threat after the Soviet collapse." Not that I'm arguing that the CPUSA is Communist as opposed to Social-Democratic, but still, it shows that less and less people are afraid to call themselves Communists.

Really, now I think the bigger problem with Americans becoming Communists isn't that they don't want to become their government's enemy but that they don't want to become their government's friend, thanks to red-baiting and the perception that government = socialism.

infraxotl

7th March 2010, 19:30

Kleber,

I agree that proper analysis of Soviet history is absolutely important, but when it comes to Chomsky and many other leftists you might as well be analyzing Soviet history with Robert Conquest, it'd do just as much good.

Brezhnev had a Rolls-Royce and Mercedes-Benz, a swimming pool, and gave himself military service awards for his birthday multiple times. Tell me how that counts as "duty towards the people" any more than it does for bourgeois leaders.
.

I'd be lying if I said I was a huge fan of post-Stalin USSR, but while indulgences of corrupt bureaucrats are shameful they still are preferable to the massive privatization that occurred after the collapse of the USSR.

Kléber

7th March 2010, 19:31

RadioRaheem84:
I wouldn't say there is more democracy now. More democracy for the petty bourgeoisie and market capitalists, yes. They no longer exist under the thumb of high ranking officials and army officers. However, political dissidents still get murdered, criminal cliques still control electoral politics, the state still hemorrhages money through corrupt "second salaries" to unaccountable officials, etc. The only political freedom for the proletariat exists on paper, and that was true during the harshest repressions of the Stalin era as well. Anti-democratic beasts of the feudal past have even re-emerged from the bowels of history to torment the Russian workers; the Cossacks in Rostov (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1083193262895229896#) and Black Hundreds type fascists are back in force as the paramilitary arm of capital. Ultimately, the working class of the former USSR gained no more from Gorbachev's reforms than did Chinese workers from Deng's.

Of course, I agree with you 100% on democracy itself being conducive to the formation of proletarian class consciousness.

GPDP

7th March 2010, 19:37

I wonder if Putin really said that, though, because it sounds awfully familiar to another laughable reactionary slogan I often see attributed to various famous western political figures.

I assume the quote you're talking about is the following:

If you're not liberal when you're young, you have no heart. If you're not conservative when you're older, you have no brain.

Indeed, it sounds a lot like the quote being discussed in this thread.

CartCollector

7th March 2010, 19:37

Inaccurate; China. They're definitely catching up. I suppose it's a competition between China's vast population and America's vast military capacity. These are the main two strong-points of the two the powers.

China needs the US and the US needs China. China needs a market for its goods and wants the extra money from US bonds and the US needs cheap labor and stimulus money. So no I don't think they will go to war with each other since it would be detrimental to both countries.

Kléber

7th March 2010, 19:38

I agree that proper analysis of Soviet history is absolutely important, but when it comes to Chomsky and many other leftists you might as well be analyzing Soviet history with Robert Conquest, it'd do just as much good.

So we can "analyze" Soviet history, but with the caveat that the leaders were infallible?

I wish you'd read half as much of Trotsky as you had of Chomsky (diff person) and Conquest.

Robocommie

7th March 2010, 19:40

No, you would just have to worry about US client state thugs busting into your home if you were a union leader in the third world.

Fair enough. That however, is a condition inflicted on those nations by American hegemony. I was commenting on the idea that the principles of liberal democracy in the US are worse than the bureaucratic regime in the USSR.

RadioRaheem84

7th March 2010, 20:00

If you're not liberal when you're young, you have no heart. If you're not conservative when you're older, you have no brain.

This is often touted as a quote to Churchill, but then Churchill must've called FDR as a man with no brains.

infraxotl

7th March 2010, 20:01

Thanks RadioRaheem84, you said it better than I could. English isn't my first language so I'm sure my meaning could be conveyed better sometimes.

So we can "analyze" Soviet history, but with the caveat that the leaders were infallible?

Having a finger on the pulse of society is important, the left didn't have the foresight to make a proper decision on how to handle anti-communist propaganda in the West so I do consider it hypocritical for them to disassociate with the USSR because apparently Stalin wasn't prescient enough for them.

Maybe keep the analysis to people that are on the same page for now. The public already uses USSR/China/Cuba as evidence of the failure of the left so public denunciation of those countries by leftists only further entrenches their biases against us.

RadioRaheem84

7th March 2010, 20:12

The left, at the time, really didn't know how to handle being bombarded with disinformation and real figures concerning the former USSR. They knew the USSR was a bureaucratic police state but they also knew that people weren't dying from hunger, or having to pay for education or that there wasn't this massive income disparity. This would throw anyone off, especially when the emphasis in the US and Europe on Freedom was about property rights and private capital. The denial of pursuing one's ambitions to become wealthy was seen as the ultimate breech on freedom.

Yet, instead of pushing the buttons and saying that while the USSR may not have been democratic toward their own people, that at least there was a modicum of democracy there where as the US preached democracy at home but practiced the most brutal fascistic tactics abroad and with client states too. The ridiculous amount of people that died in Chile, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Argentina, Iran, etc. over US political and business interests far outweighs the crimes of the USSR during the Cold War, regardless of the undemocratic nature of the regime.

These points are obfuscated in the US and leftists are afraid to make these points heard because they might be painted as Stalinists.

Lyev

7th March 2010, 20:23

Despite the lack of political freedom offered under the state-capitalist regime the people were better taken care of before. Not that I EVER want to see the Soviet Union again..
Yah, to get back to the discussion at hand, this is basically Putin's quote re-worded. This was posted here a while ago. It's a little piece of writing from a Lithuanian communist (the English isn't great) that accounts how better people were under the Soviet system, generally.
There are some people that wonder what the thing is nostalgia for Soviet Union and how it could be possible?Nostalgija It’s very simple. I’ll try to explain his briefly using four generations as an example.
1) Grandma.Free Smetoninė (before Soviet Union) Lithuania. Thefamily had many children. There was a little something to eat.One of the sons of the family for the last penny is sent to teach in the city. However, the family will have greater to show up.Daughters for bourgeoisies should work all the summer for just regular meals. It was great happiness if their daughters were given away second-hand clothes as farewell. Not that the word "great happiness" it was simply unprecedented festival.
2) Mom. Soviet era. After a decade of war has passed. The family lived in his house and had its own land (some can tell there was no private property, but does it matters how it was legally set up. You just had your land for your needs. Of course not square kilometres size, but more than enough for even very big family), a few cows, a few pigs, sheep, and hens. All children studied. It was mandatory. I would say this was quite a difference in comparison with grandma’s generation. Primary classes were in local village. Higher classes have to travel to the nearest town. To save time children went to boarding school (I do not know if word “boarding” is right. It’s some sort of secondary school where you can sleep at nights) Every weekend children come back to farmstead, helped parents. Every Saturday evening someone in the Village organised dance parties. Musicians were villagers. So many good small adventures happened there. It’s something nice to remember. Maybe it not sounds as paradise, but believe me, my mom remembers it with great dose of nostalgia. Why? It’s just because to be happy do not means to have things. It means to have something to live for, to have someone to love, to have a dream, to have family, friends. After graduating from high school all children were gone through to higher education, received dormitories, scholarships which was not only enough for regular meals and dress, but still was sufficient for gifts for family. Beinghigher education children received work assignments (unemployment was illegal). Several years later they received flats.Every weekend, children come back to the loving family or go to stay with relatives or friends. Life was simple. Tomorrow was certain. Mind was free. And believe me that was very comfortable. (I added the bold)

I'm not trying to give excuses for Stalinism's authoritarian streak, but if we look at this historically (feudalism (before 1917) -> Lenin and Stalin industrialise -> then the fall of communism, and over to capitalism) then we find that in the middle period, when there was repression of political dissidents, yet there was free education, housing and healthcare, the majority of people were better off. Russia under capitalism is arugably shittier than it was when it was the USSR. If in the Soviet Union was degenerate form of socialism, and still people were better off than in capitalism or feudalism, think what socialism will be if it's actually implemented to it's full potential...

FSL

7th March 2010, 20:25

In dealing with augmenting the workers productivity for the sake of the bureaucratic layer, the apparatchiki realized their power and factual ownership of the economic production means.

Raising productivity is a necessary step in getting to communism. Productivity is Q/L, value of somethings is L/Q. You want to get all products to have zero value. Imagine how high your productivity must be?

The post 1956 reforms had a negative impact on productivity. If the "rulling nomenclature" just wanted many things for themselves then they needn't have changed the soviet economy in the way they did.

Kléber

7th March 2010, 23:19

Having a finger on the pulse of society is important, the left didn't have the foresight to make a proper decision on how to handle anti-communist propaganda in the West so I do consider it hypocritical for them to disassociate with the USSR because apparently Stalin wasn't prescient enough for them.
The real dissociation from the principles on which the Soviet Union was founded is the substitution of emperor-worship for scientific social analysis.

Trotsky went to his grave insisting that the USSR was still a workers' state and should be defended against imperialism and restoration by all class-conscious workers.

Maybe keep the analysis to people that are on the same page for now. The public already uses USSR/China/Cuba as evidence of the failure of the left so public denunciation of those countries by leftists only further entrenches their biases against us.
You seem to imply that the working class is too dumb to understand why the "socialist" states collapsed. Actually, they are very interested in what happened and they want an explanation. Keeping the "shameful past" from them smacks of a tacit admission of guilt in the face of bourgeois propaganda, and they are smart enough to put that much together - that's partly why so many good Reds abandoned their reticent CP's after 1956.

No part of communist theory should be arcane secret knowledge for the revolutionary mystics, slices of which are brought out on holidays and special occasions and translated into the vulgar tongues for the dues-paying masses, unless you're advocating a retreat to the elitist organizational practices of the revisionist Second International.

If our program is correct and true then no part of it will wither in the sunlight. A real Leninist combat organization isn't afraid of petty-bourgeois lies, because it is ideologically invincible, therefore it should have no fear of democracy and open discussion.

infraxotl

8th March 2010, 01:43

A person isn't dumb because they won't believe the guy passing out socialist newspapers on the corner when he says that everything they've learned through their media and schooling was a lie. I think it's wrong to expect people to be attracted to communism when everything they probably know leads to the common conclusion that "it's a good idea in theory, but it doesn't work in practice" and you insist on explaining to them why they're right that "socialism was bad in these instances, but it will work when we do it the right way in the future!"

Just being right isn't going to bring about a revolution. Humans don't run on pure reason and logic.

RadioRaheem84

8th March 2010, 03:32

Agreed. When I step away from my Marxist books, revleft, my Ipod which is chock full of Marxist, leftist lectures, and Manu Chao songs and step into the real world, I can see how people find our way of thinking to be from outer space. Our mode of thinking comes with an entirely different set of presuppositions than the rest of the population does not possess. When we speak of things like money, economy, socialism, capitalism, interests, class, exploitation, we have totally different meanings for these words than they do. It's because we analyze society for the way it works underneath the surface while everyone else views things differently. They see the economy and politics as separate, they view money as soley an exchange value and see no creation of value in labor. Our views on property rights would confuse and scare the shit out of them. You guys get the idea.

Point is, next time, go to your local mall and watch all the consumption, marketing and consumerism involved in it and how the people interact with it like its second nature. Now picture a group of revolutionaries or even workers going in to expropriate the mall. Most of the people would faint in terror because that's how they view us and that's why people look to the state for protection. Even if we would try to explain it to them that we're doing this on their behalf, and that we're forever changing the social relations in the workplace for the better, they would still have not a clue about what we mean. They have no basis to when they grew up in a society that taught them this is how life should be because of A.) Human nature B.) Thus is life C.) A fundamentalist like respect for private property and D.) Socialism = State Capitalism, thus fully ending your freedom and transferring you to life in hell of a bureaucratic police state (USSR).

Why else, I mean for Pete's sake, why else would people die for the bourgeois?

Kléber

8th March 2010, 05:13

I'm afraid that we aren't going to get far beyond the concept of 20 revolutionary kids "expropriating" a shopping mall if we don't have a political perspective that can be confidently taken out and shown to the working class in its entirety.

"They" don't "scare" of "intellectual" concepts; in fact, workers avidly digest the works meant for intellectuals, but if the revolutionaries are scared to talk to the broader working class, then consciousness isn't going to just develop spontaneously.

A person isn't dumb because they won't believe the guy passing out socialist newspapers on the corner when he says that everything they've learned through their media and schooling was a lie.
The fight to reclaim the history of the workers' movement against constant attempts by the bourgeoisie to mystify, discredit and erase it, is an uphill battle, but we can't back down from it.

I think it's wrong to expect people to be attracted to communism when everything they probably know leads to the common conclusion that "it's a good idea in theory, but it doesn't work in practice" If you accept the claim that the Soviet, Chinese and Cuban states were "socialist" then you are the one perpetuating bourgeois lies that claim that military dictatorships are the natural expression of socialist ideology in practice.

and you insist on explaining to them why they're right that "socialism was bad in these instances, but it will work when we do it the right way in the future!"There was no "socialism" in any instance, nor did I say anything close to the words with which you have quoted me. Socialism simply doesn't exist without democracy. The Soviet government's claim to have established "socialism" in 1936 was rubbish; inequality between managers and officials on the one hand, and workers and lumpen elements on the other, was even greater than what Lenin had called "state capitalism" in 1918.

Just being right isn't going to bring about a revolution. Humans don't run on pure reason and logic.
Obviously a transitional approach to politics is needed. But our task is precisely to provide reasonable political leadership and a logical social and historical analysis to the workers, unless you think that Marxism is an idealistic, irrational ideology of which we ought to be embarrassed.

What Is To Be Done? (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/)