"Was the collapse of the Soviet Union a victory for Socialism?" - Discuss

[Struggle]

Before supporters of the Soviet Union consider criticising me, I do not necessarily believe the collapse of the Soviet Union was a victory for Socialism. I simply felt the notion "Was the collapse of the Soviet Union a victory for Socialism?" was an interesting question to ask on a Leftist forum.

[chegitz guevara]

It was a catastrophic defeat, from which it has taken the world revolutionary anti-capitalist movement nearly a generation to recover, regardless of whether you're Stalinist, Maoist, or Trot.

[Nolan]

I want to know who the motherfucker who voted yes is.

Anyway, the Soviet collapse is the biggest setback so far.

[Lunatic Concept]

They may not have been perfect but at least they helped finance and trade with other revolutions abroad.

[Stand Your Ground]

I don't think the Soviet Union was perfect, but it was a start and could have progressed more.

[Nuvem]

Just....stop fueling my rage. Anyone who believes that the fall of the Soviet Union was a victory for Socialism needs to spend a good long time in OI while they contemplate how fucked up and unrealistic their view of international politics is. There is NO point in Soviet history at which I uncritically support the CPSU or its policies or leadership. There were serious mistakes made throughout its history- it was the first national drive towards Communism ever attempted, so failures and mistakes were bound to happen- regardless, the Soviet Union maintained a strong anti-Imperialist stance up until Gorbachev and regardless of its revisionism continued to support global struggles abroad. To say that we should not be highly critical of Soviet policy is foolish, but to say that the fall of the USSR was a victory for Socialism is absurd and implies only the worst idealism and unrealistic expectations.

[Obs]

The anarchists' justification for voting yes on this is going to be golden.

[Diello]

I'd like to see one of the people who voted "Yes" defend their position. Not that I feel they have an obligation to do so, but I am interested to hear what they have to say.

[Aurora]

What chegitz said.

Im curious does anyone know what effect the collapse of the SU had on anarchist organisations?

[chegitz guevara]

There seems to have been a global rise in the anarchist movement in the 90s and 00s, but correlation is not causality. Nonetheless, it quite conceivable that the world historic defeat of socialism (real or perceived) lead to people who would normally have been attracted to revolutionary socialism to instead becoming anarchist.

[chegitz guevara]

I would also point out that it gave American imperialism a new lease on life by opening up whole new regions for investment and let the United States stand astride the world as an unmatched colossus, until Bush and Co. fucked things up beyond all belief. Empires are fragile things, and once you show that the Empire can be hurt and cannot impose itself, it all begins to unravel. We're probably a generation futher from the demise of the Empire because of the fall of the USSR as well.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I'd like to see one of the people who voted "Yes" defend their position. Not that I feel they have an obligation to do so, but I am interested to hear what they have to say.

The ISO wrote in it's paper that the collapse of the USSR was "a fact that should have every socialist rejoicing."

[chegitz guevara]

Of course, they believed it was a capitalist dictatorship besmirching the good name of socialism.

[Sendo]

The kind of thinking of the ISO and Chomsky is flawed if you consider saving face to be paramount for the movement. This is an idealist stance: that the reputation of communism enables or disables the US to intervene abroad, that a bad example of communism precludes a good example of communism, that the "improved" image of socialism we have now will make the bourgeoisie think twice about tax cuts for the rich or telling lies about hydrofracking in my backyard.

If John Doe's brother, James Doe, goes to prison for theft, should John rejoice when James is killed in a prison riot? Does having James dead allow John's children to again use the good name of Doe? Was James' being alive a threat to the potential for his nephew and niece?

You can criticize the USSR, but I find it offensive and downright illogical that the same man who wrote "Manufacturing Consent" and "Hegemony or Survival" can believe that global relations are better with only one superpower (hopefully two if China stays strong) or that the SU was so bad that you can applaud the rise of Yeltsin and the restoration of capitalism.

[coda]

i remember it being quite the disaster and very irresponsible on the Soviet Unions part

[Ovi]

Replacing state capitalism with market capitalism is not a victory for socialism. But I voted yes; perhaps next time, we might get a real socialist revolution.

[Unclebananahead]

I hope the few yes voters will bear in mind the 1991 Soviet referendum in which Soviet citizens voted on the question of whether or not to keep the SU in existence as "a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics in which the rights and freedom of an individual of any nationality will be fully guaranteed." A vast, overwhelming majority voted in the affirmative on this question, firmly establishing that Yeltsin and his collaborators had very very little in the way of any sort of real popular support. Yeltsin the Democrat went on to forcibly disband the Russian Parliament when they weren't cooperative enough with his free market policies, and in the process having killed somewhere in the neighborhood of two thousand people who were protesting this vile act. Basically there's absolutely nothing to celebrate in the counter revolutionary coup which befell the Soviet Union.

[Revolutionair]

I voted no. One capitalist state made room for another.

[gorillafuck]

Even if you consider the USSR to have been capitalist (and it was enormously flawed, but it wasn't capitalist), replacing a capitalist state with another capitalist state still wouldn't be considered progressive. Left Communists consider the USSR to have been capitalist but they don't celebrate it's fall because it was replaced by a capitalist state.

I voted no, obviously. It was a very flawed, very bureaucratic, degenerated socialist state. That's better than capitalism.

[Marxach-Léinínach]

Although my opinion is that the Soviet Union was basically just a radical social democracy from the Kosygin reforms onwards, I still think its collapse was a catastrophe

[revolution inaction]

no, it wasn't a vicotry for socalism, but it was benifical to socalism, for decades the soviat union help to repress genuinely communist movements around the world, and its existence diverted many people who would have been socialists into the hopeless dead end of state capitalism.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

It was only a victory in the sense that the distorted line of socialism as held by the Soviet Union ceased to be the system in the world that called itself an alternative to capitalism. Now people no longer point to the SU when you mention socialism, because it failed to uphold its own existence. Perhaps this means there is a clean slate now for the case for socialism, which no longer has the smudge of the Soviet Union that put so many workers off of embracing the case for their own liberation.

However, it was not a victory for the workers in those states, who's miserable lives saw one oppressive regime replaced with an even worse one, thus leaving them shafted from the last century into the new one.

Ideologically it may be a victory, but practically? It is indifferent in its relation to the people at the bottom, who were actually better off under that distortion of working class liberation.

[Chimurenga.]

for decades the soviat union help to repress genuinely communist movements around the world,

Bullshit. Without the Soviet Union, the revolutionary movements of Cuba, Korea, Vietnam, China, Nicaragua, Grenada, Albania, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and all over Africa, would not have been possible. The Soviet Union demonstrated how a workers state go from a backwards broken nation to a worlds superpower in less than half the time it took Capitalist countries. This alone inspired millions of people who then took up arms against their oppressors on a scale never witnessed before or since. This had to do with the Soviet Union and their building of Socialism.

The fall of the Soviet Union was a huge setback for the world communist movement and would've been an extremely vital ally in regards to the revolutionary movements that we see in Latin America and Southeast Asia today.

[Revolutionair]

If the USSR is really what socialism should look like, then I better join my bourgeois organization. The USSR was a capitalist bureaucratic republic, but without any of the liberal freedoms you get in democracies.
It's like capitalism, but without the good parts. Which still leaves over 90% BTW. For example you still had the USSR invasion of Afghanistan and eastern Europe, which could be called imperialism. But you didn't have the comforting feeling of voting (yes I know that voting doesn't change anything but I'm talking aesthetics here).

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

Bullshit. Without the Soviet Union, the revolutionary movements of Cuba, Korea, Vietnam, China, Nicaragua, Grenada, Albania, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and all over Africa, would not have been possible. The Soviet Union demonstrated how a workers state go from a backwards broken nation to a worlds superpower in less than half the time it took Capitalist countries. This alone inspired millions of people who then took up arms against their oppressors on a scale never witnessed before or since. This had to do with the Soviet Union and their building of Socialism.

The fall of the Soviet Union was a huge setback for the world communist movement and would've been an extremely vital ally in regards to the revolutionary movements that we see in Latin America and Southeast Asia today.
That's not entirely true. Remember that there was no world power around to help Russia into its revolution when it occurred. Revolutions will happen thanks to the oppressed classes, not thanks to a superpower that waves a red flag. I'm not going to deny that the soviet union played a huge role in these revolutions though, I am just saying that revolutionary struggle would have happened regardless of the existence of the Soviet Union, and we could even speculate as to say more so.

Imagine if the nature of the Russian revolution was entirely qualitatively different, or if it didn't happen at all. The world may look very different today without the burden of the Soviet Union's degeneration into a bureaucratic, all powerful state, that has violated the principles of working class liberation!

The point is that the Soviet Union should not be held up as the only force in the 20th century that allowed revolutions to occur, it is dangerous to think such a thing. We must remember that revolutions are the product of the oppressed classes becoming conscious of their conditions and actively changing them.

Imagine what America could look like if the ruling class didn't have the luxury of pointing to the east every time the word socialism was thrown around? Or indeed any western, industrial nation?

[Sendo]

It was only a victory in the sense that the distorted line of socialism as held by the Soviet Union ceased to be the system in the world that called itself an alternative to capitalism. Now people no longer point to the SU when you mention socialism, because it failed to uphold its own existence. Perhaps this means there is a clean slate now for the case for socialism, which no longer has the smudge of the Soviet Union that put so many workers off of embracing the case for their own liberation.

However, it was not a victory for the workers in those states, who's miserable lives saw one oppressive regime replaced with an even worse one, thus leaving them shafted from the last century into the new one.

Ideologically it may be a victory, but practically? It is indifferent in its relation to the people at the bottom, who were actually better off under that distortion of working class liberation.

If you think that people are MORE likely to embrace socialism now that the specter of the USSR is gone, then you are woefully mistaken. If anything, I hear it cited as an example of why socialism will fail. People will still point to it. And if that bothers, then it will only get worse with time. As the USSR fades into memory and eventually into a dead memory, the slanders will pile up. If it was still around you could at least be able to point to its positives. And don't say there were none; I'm sure there are things in the UK and the USA you can find that we support like the 8-hour day and overtime at 150% laws and regulators like OSHA no matter how underfunded they are.

Even Nelson Mandela has defended the USSR for their support of the ANC through the 1980s. This specter of pseudo-leftism managed a lot better than the Western powers who had no problem with apartheid.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

If you think that people are MORE likely to embrace socialism now that the specter of the USSR is gone, then you are woefully mistaken. If anything, I here it cited as an example of why socialism will fail. People will still point to it. And if that bothers, then it will only get worse with time. As the USSR fades into memory and eventually into a dead memory, the slanders will pile up. If it was still around you could at least be able to point to its positives. And don't say there were none; I'm sure there are things in the UK and the USA you can find that we support like the 8-hour day and overtime at 150% laws and regulators like OSHA no matter how underfunded they are.

Even Nelson Mandela has defended the USSR for their support of the ANC through the 1980s. This specter of pseudo-leftism managed a lot better than the Western powers who had no problem with apartheid.
I accept much of that, but the fact that the USSR isn't there anymore means that their model and sets of policies did ultimately fail, it is as if the world can start afresh, without the burden that workers point to when socialism is discussed.

As the Soviet Union stood on its last legs, the majority of the work force in industrial countries weren't exactly focusing on its positives, perhaps they weren't even aware of any positives due to the propaganda they were subjected to, but that is neither here nor there when we consider that, overall, the soviet union was hardly being upheld as an example of a decent alternative to capitalism.

I wont deny that there weren't positive things about the USSR. There are positive things about many different regimes, it is positive that I am able to live in a house that is heated, or that I can eat relatively well. These things are irrelevant though - if you are happy with what you have, then you do not have enough. The USSR has died, it was inevitable, there is no superpower that is calling itself socialist now, so we can argue for something entirely different. We could do this anyway, but we can hopefully do it with more ease now, based on the current conditions, without that unfortunate burden to our principles.

[Spawn of Stalin]

No it was a great tragedy, and any progressive person will agree with me. Even though the Soviet Union was a mess after revisionism kicked in, it still provided an alternative, now imperialism does whatever it wants, that is bad for all socialists, not just Leninists. Any chance of progress was squashed basically overnight and there is no excuse for thinking otherwise.

[Unclebananahead]

Imagine what America could look like if the ruling class didn't have the luxury of pointing to the east every time the word socialism was thrown around? Or indeed any western, industrial nation?

This is irrelevant to the bourgeoisie, who will always hate, despise, and repress genuine worker's revolutionary movements whenever they manifest as if they were 'demons freshly emerged from the gates of hell.'

Take the repression of the IWW in the US as just one example. Though the most intense repression may have occurred during and after the Russian revolution, prior to this major event the bourgeois 'powers that be' still did not hesitate to calumniate the IWW in its media organs, to break strikes, and to murder strikers and organizers through police brutality, hired muscle, and trumped up charges.

The fact remains that the continued existence of the USSR (however flawed) could have potentially been a critical ally to the various revolutionary movements around the world, as well as a counterbalance to the currently virtually unfettered reign of US imperialism. I don't understand how anybody desiring the advancement of revolutionary anti-imperialist struggles globally could not regard this as a terrible setback.

[RedStarOverChina]

"A victory" for socialism? :blink:

Another "victory" like that and we'll be living like serfs.

[Niccolò Rossi]

No.

Nic.

[Wanted Man]

The ISO wrote in it's paper that the collapse of the USSR was "a fact that should have every socialist rejoicing."



This is also the position of the International Socialists here, who are basically on the same line (although the American ISO were expelled from the IST in 2001). I'm therefore fairly confident that members of other IST parties, like the British SWP, will have similar sentiments. Chomsky has voiced this position as well. The one advantage of anarchism, at least, is that anarchists don't have to uphold some ridiculous "party line", and therefore their opinions on this matter differ wildly.

Although many people in this thread seem to be amazed that it's even possible to call yourself "progressive" and vote "yes", it is in fact a common position among exactly that demographic.

Clearly, in the minds of the IST, Chomsky, etc., all the economic and social decay in Russia and other former republics, the shock therapy and all its effects, are but a small sacrifice for the (as of yet purely hypothetical) possibility that some day all the workers of the world will unite under their brand of "pure communism" without wondering about the horrors of that dark place that the Soviet Union was.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

This is irrelevant to the bourgeoisie, who will always hate, despise, and repress genuine worker's revolutionary movements whenever they manifest as if they were 'demons freshly emerged from the gates of hell.'

Take the repression of the IWW in the US as just one example. Though the most intense repression may have occurred during and after the Russian revolution, prior to this major event the bourgeois 'powers that be' still did not hesitate to calumniate the IWW in its media organs, to break strikes, and to murder strikers and organizers through police brutality, hired muscle, and trumped up charges.

The fact remains that the continued existence of the USSR (however flawed) could have potentially been a critical ally to the various revolutionary movements around the world, as well as a counterbalance to the currently virtually unfettered reign of US imperialism. I don't understand how anybody desiring the advancement of revolutionary anti-imperialist struggles globally could not regard this as a terrible setback.
But surely you can appreciate that the state of the USSR definitely helped the bourgeoisie in its repression of any mass movement? That is the main point at hand, the USSR was far too much of a distortion of socialism to be pleasing to the eye of the majority of the western proletariat, that is a fact. Add this to the fact that the SU called itself a 'worker's state' and then the capitalists' anti-worker propaganda machine and you have a proletariat that is largely misinformed about socialism and in turn, put off from the idea.

As I said earlier, imagine if there was no distorted form of socialism that the bourgeoisie could point at every time workers started to become conscious? The bourgeoisie can only go so far in repression the will of the masses, and the USSR was a great aid to them in this.

[Niccolò Rossi]

I want to know who the motherfucker who voted yes is.

Go have a sook.


Anyway, the Soviet collapse is the biggest setback so far.

A blow to class consciousness across the globe, certainly. The 'biggest set back so far', hardly.


They may not have been perfect but at least they helped finance and trade with other revolutions abroad.

Cool story bro.


Just....stop fueling my rage.

Go have a sook.


Replacing state capitalism with market capitalism is not a victory for socialism. But I voted yes; perhaps next time, we might get a real socialist revolution.

How does that logically follow. Don't be silly. You just give these soviet-o-philes ammunition.


Left Communists consider the USSR to have been capitalist but they don't celebrate it's fall because it was replaced by a capitalist state.

I would go further than this. The collapse of 'really existing socialism' meant the victory of the western ideologues touting the 'end of history'. It threw back in the minds of millions of workers the possibility of any alternative beyond capitalism.


no, it wasn't a vicotry for socalism, but it was benifical to socalism, for decades the soviat union help to repress genuinely communist movements around the world, and its existence diverted many people who would have been socialists into the hopeless dead end of state capitalism.


If something is beneficial for the cause of socialism, how can we not call it a victory? You're arguing semantics here.

And yes, no doubt, Eastern Bloc capitalism did it's upmost to crush workers struggles at home and abroad. In case you forgot though, so did the 'free', 'democratic' nations of the West...

Nic.

[revolution inaction]

Bullshit. Without the Soviet Union, the revolutionary movements of Cuba, Korea, Vietnam, China, Nicaragua, Grenada, Albania, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and all over Africa, would not have been possible.

What revolutionary movements existed in those countries where defeated, usally by "communists" suported by the ussr



The Soviet Union demonstrated how a workers state go from a backwards broken nation to a worlds superpower in less than half the time it took Capitalist countries. This alone inspired millions of people who then took up arms against their oppressors on a scale never witnessed before or since. This had to do with the Soviet Union and their building of Socialism.

the soviet union was not a run by or for the workers, it was capitalist.
people taking up arms for one faction of the bourgeois against another is nothing to be proud of.



The fall of the Soviet Union was a huge setback for the world communist movement and would've been an extremely vital ally in regards to the revolutionary movements that we see in Latin America and Southeast Asia today.
the soviet union never supported a revolutionary movement throughout its entire existence, although i suspect those "revolutionary movements" you refer to have nothing to do with revolution either.

[Sendo]

But surely you can appreciate that the state of the USSR definitely helped the bourgeoisie in its repression of any mass movement? That is the main point at hand, the USSR was far too much of a distortion of socialism to be pleasing to the eye of the majority of the western proletariat, that is a fact. Add this to the fact that the SU called itself a 'worker's state' and then the capitalists' anti-worker propaganda machine and you have a proletariat that is largely misinformed about socialism and in turn, put off from the idea.

As I said earlier, imagine if there was no distorted form of socialism that the bourgeoisie could point at every time workers started to become conscious? The bourgeoisie can only go so far in repression the will of the masses, and the USSR was a great aid to them in this.

This is based on nothing unless you have some statements in newspaper articles from workers who said that the USSR turned them off to socialism. I believe that's true for students, but I don't think that applies to many workers. I think workers who actually familiarize themselves with socialism critique it or embrace it irrelevant of the USSR.

As Unclebananhead said, the repressions and mud-slinging started before the Bolsheviks. In fact, the CPUSA (when it was non-revisionist) was its strongest during the Stalin years. Especially during the Depression years. The working-class was bought off in the 1950s, the white workers were told told that racism benefited them, and we no longer relied on the USSR to beat Hitler or Tojo. It never mattered what was true about the USSR, the US just demonized it. Check out some old propaganda, it recycles the old Jew poisoning the well-water myth but with water fluoridation.

If anything, the USSR made the government stop slandering socialism! From 1941-45, Roosevelt maintained a pro-Soviet line. As a matter of fact, this was the only time that "Mission to Moscow" was not only not repressed, but propagated!

Lincoln accepted Marx's letters congratulating him on the Civil War and Roosevelt enacted the greatest social democratic plans we had and from 1941-45 made the Soviets to be good guys. At every other time in our history, socialism has been denigrated. In the US at least, few changed their opinions of socialism in 1992. The government may have shut up about communism, but when pressed on the issue they will come down hard. Look at relations with China. To boot, the hatred for socialism has been internalized.

The Tea Party didn't start in 1927.

[revolution inaction]

I would go further than this. The collapse of 'really existing socialism' meant the victory of the western ideologues touting the 'end of history'. It threw back in the minds of millions of workers the possibility of any alternative beyond capitalism.

if workers supported some thing like the soviet union as an alternative then they where just supporting an other kind of capitalism, and that does nothing to advance the possibility of socialism, it is only a distraction for people who might other wise come to a genuinely socialist position




If something is beneficial for the cause of socialism, how can we not call it a victory? You're arguing semantics here.

its never a victory for socialism when the living conditions of millions of workers are reduced.



And yes, no doubt, Eastern Bloc capitalism did it's upmost to crush workers struggles at home and abroad. In case you forgot though, so did the 'free', 'democratic' nations of the West...

Nic.

yes they where vary much alike exempt the ussr pretended to be socialist.

[Wanted Man]

But surely you can appreciate that the state of the USSR definitely helped the bourgeoisie in its repression of any mass movement? That is the main point at hand, the USSR was far too much of a distortion of socialism to be pleasing to the eye of the majority of the western proletariat, that is a fact. Add this to the fact that the SU called itself a 'worker's state' and then the capitalists' anti-worker propaganda machine and you have a proletariat that is largely misinformed about socialism and in turn, put off from the idea.

Actually, communists got a lot of mass support at times when the USSR still existed. The height of this was right after WWII, when the USSR took Berlin and the communists in occupied countries led the resistance. "Distortion" or not, there was quite a bit of prestige for the USSR and those who identified themselves with it. This eventually lowered by several early Cold War events like the Berlin blockade, the Czechoslovakian seizure of power, etc.

That also kind of complicates things. Seizing power in Czechoslovakia was a logical move for the communists there and for the USSR, which supported them; but the prospect of that kind of takeover may also have led to a drop in support for western CPs. Even if there was little wrong with that takeover from where I'm standing, it was certainly used by great effect by, for instance, the massive campaign to have Italian-Americans send letters to their Italian families, warning them of the consequences of voting for the PCI.

What supporters of the "yes" action are doing is applying their 21st-century ideals of how to improve popular support for communism to judge events of 20-65 years ago. The problem with this "victory for socialism" is that it's a very abstract kind of "victory". It's a victory because, maybe, perhaps, at some point in the far future, people may be more inclined to support communism. Well what the hell kind of victory is that?

I think this is shifting close to the idea that all kinds of reactionary developments are actually "victories for socialism" because that way, people will have a more accurate view of what capitalism essentially is, and that this should lead them to revolt. But then, of course, we should oppose all progressive reforms, support all reactionary developments, support the mass immiseration of as many people as possible, etc., which I'm pretty sure is not a very fashionable position.

So anyway, back to the USSR topic. For groups like the IST, there is at least a direct material incentive to taking this position, because they need to recruit radical liberal college freshmen every year. But that, of course, is hardly a "victory for socialism". That's like saying that we should fully support exaggerated concepts of Soviet totalitarianism in order to attract "Stalin kiddies" who play too much Red Alert, and who never have to learn about pesky stuff like Marxism, workers' democracy, classlessness, statelessness, etc. How can hypothetical future recruitment for your group be a "victory for socialism" when it doesn't actually work towards socialism?

[Kléber]

Funny to see the Maoists and Hoxhaists defending a state that Mao and Hoxha considered to be capitalist, fascist, and imperialist, and even helped destroy by their sectarian collusion with US imperialism. The heterodox Stalinists of China and Albania even went so far as to wage armed struggle against the Soviet army and pro-Soviet regimes. I'm wondering, do the Maoists and Hoxhaists believe that their decades-long "anti-revisionist" jihad against the USSR was a giant mistake, or do they uphold the "people's war" against "Soviet fascism" while supporting the Soviet revisionists at the same time? I'm confused.


If anything, the USSR made the government stop slandering socialism! From 1941-45, Roosevelt maintained a pro-Soviet line. As a matter of fact, this was the only time that "Mission to Moscow" was not only not repressed, but propagated!We may both have voted "no," but come on, that's just about the worst reason why the existence of the USSR was a good thing. Stalin was beloved by Western imperialists for reactionary reasons, not progressive ones - because he axed Comintern and executed the old Bolsheviks, not because he still called himself a Communist and a Bolshevik. You might as well say it was great that the Nazis had a pro-Soviet line from 1939-41.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

To all replies, I should have stressed that I was talking about the USSR at the end of its reign. I understand that many workers saw good in it in its earlier days, but by the time of its collapse, it was hardly supported by a majority of the proletariat in the west.

The USSR was not looked at fondly by the majority, in Britain anyway, and I think this explains why Trotskyists organizations did very well in the 80s as they rejected the USSR and called for something different.

[Kléber]

I should add that the USSR didn't "collapse." That term perpetuates the capitalist lie that the planned economy was inferior to the market and thus fell apart on its own. What actually happened is that the treacherous, cowardly Stalinist bureaucracy capitulated to imperialism, in spite of the continuing military and economic might of the USSR as well as popular support for maintaining the Soviet power.

[Wanted Man]

The USSR was not looked at fondly by the majority, in Britain anyway, and I think this explains why Trotskyists organizations did very well in the 80s as they rejected the USSR and called for something different.

Well first of all, what you're talking about here is entrism in the Labour Party by these people. An effort that the majority of their tendency ended up rejecting. That's not to deny that they achieved a lot of support and organised important popular movements, but still.

So anyway, if their position on the USSR was so decisive, why haven't they improved on that since? Surely they should have done even better if they no longer had the Soviet Union hanging around their necks?

One can think of all kinds of correlations between different organisations and their positions on the USSR. All the communist parties that stuck to Eurocommunism were decimated in the polls and liquidated themselves into social-democratic formations, or turned into ineffectual groups full of squabbling factions. On the other hand, parties that expelled the eurocommunists and stuck to their course eventually recovered. Is unreconstructed "Stalinism" automatically the road to success, then?

More likely is that, since correlation does not imply causation, there are other circumstances determining these differences.

[Rafiq]

The fall of the Soviet Union was a huge setback for the world communist movement and would've been an extremely vital ally in regards to the revolutionary movements that we see in Latin America and Southeast Asia today.

That is a stupid thing to say.

The only thing that the Soviet Union did when collapsed, is destroy the power balance tremendously, and create a bunch of Capitalist arguments such as "COMMUNISM FAILED".

No, it wasn't a hgue set back for world Communism, in fact, the Soviet Union wasn't anything close to Socialism to begin with.

You think they funded those world wide groups because they cared about them?

Yeah, no.

They had their fair slice of the pie.

Although I am opposed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, it definitely shouldn't have represented world-wide Socialism.

[S.Artesian]

Drove down life expectancy in the fSU to, at one point, below 60 years for men. Tremendous upsurge in tuberculosis. Huge waves of unemployment and declining living standards. Thousands of women forced into the sex trade.

It was one of, if not the, greatest defeats the proletariat has ever endured.

[S.Artesian]

That is a stupid thing to say.

The only thing that the Soviet Union did when collapsed, is destroy the power balance tremendously, and create a bunch of Capitalist arguments such as "COMMUNISM FAILED".

No, it wasn't a hgue set back for world Communism, in fact, the Soviet Union wasn't anything close to Socialism to begin with.

You think they funded those world wide groups because they cared about them?

Yeah, no.

They had their fair slice of the pie.

Although I am opposed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, it definitely shouldn't have represented world-wide Socialism.


It was a huge set back for the workers in the Soviet Union. They didn't get any "fair slice of the pie."

You don't have to embellish the fSU, you don't have to adhere to its path from 1928 or 33, or 37 on to recognize that it was born in the proletariat's revolution and that it's destruction had horrific consequences for that class, locally and internationally.

[S.Artesian]

I should add that the USSR didn't "collapse." That term perpetuates the capitalist lie that the planned economy was inferior to the market and thus fell apart on its own. What actually happened is that the treacherous, cowardly Stalinist bureaucracy capitulated to imperialism, in spite of the continuing military and economic might of the USSR as well as popular support for maintaining the Soviet power.


That's not exactly the case. The economy was beset by myriad problems; the ability to transport goods from countryside to town in sufficient quantities had even been compromised. Productivity in the oil and gas fields had declined dramatically as, in a race to earn hard currency, the bureaucrats had overworked the fields and neglected even basic maintenance of equipment and the existing reservoirs.

Certainly the steps taken by the bureaucracy-- allowing privatization of agriculture, which amounted to subsidizing private agriculture, hastened the collapse, but the economy was collapsing.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Not to imply support for Gorbachev, Andropov, Chernenko, that old crank Brezhnev or even Kruschev, but to find a basic 'yes/no' answer to this question you only need to look at the state of Socialism in the world 1991-2010.

[Obs]

What revolutionary movements existed in those countries where defeated, usally by "communists" suported by the ussr
For instance? Let's see just how much of an ignorant child you are. Name a movement in, say, Africa, that you would have supported, that was repressed by communists backed by the USSR. I dare you.

BTW, we're still waiting for an ideologically sound reason to vote yes on this poll other than "yeah man the Soviet Union was capitalist so if it collapsed that means a capitalist state collapsed! Smash the state! Woo!"

[Kléber]

That's not exactly the case. The economy was beset by myriad problems; the ability to transport goods from countryside to town in sufficient quantities had even been compromised. Productivity in the oil and gas fields had declined dramatically as, in a race to earn hard currency, the bureaucrats had overworked the fields and neglected even basic maintenance of equipment and the existing reservoirs.

Certainly the steps taken by the bureaucracy-- allowing privatization of agriculture, which amounted to subsidizing private agriculture, hastened the collapse, but the economy was collapsing.
You're right, but I think a "collapse" still implies an inherent rottenness in the structure of the planned economy, rather than in the method of its administration in the Soviet Union. We agree there was still something worth saving while the planned economy existed, and the solution was for workers to repair the cracks in the structure, not assist the oligarchs in tearing it down and selling the rubble to the highest bidder. So it would be more accurate to say the economy was looted and then demolished by bureaucrats rather than risk implying that a workers' state passively "collapsed" on its own. There was a social collapse, of course, the breakdown of productive society in the wake of privatizations, layoffs, and the subsequent disaster. But the landmark political event which enabled the vast majority of privatizations, which most people call the "collapse" of the USSR, was not a spontaneous or popular occurrence as the choice of word implies - it could be more accurately termed a capitulation of the ruling caste to international finance capital.

[Kléber]

For instance? Let's see just how much of an ignorant child you are. Name a movement in, say, Africa, that you would have supported, that was repressed by communists backed by the USSR. I dare you.
Since you seem to be supporting any and all pro-Soviet regimes in Africa, would you support Nasser, the pro-Soviet nationalist leader of Egypt, or the pro-Soviet Egyptian Communists who were tortured and murdered in his jails? What side would you be on in the Ogaden War - when two pro-Soviet nationalist regimes went to war with each other?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

NHIA:


The ISO wrote in it's paper that the collapse of the USSR was "a fact that should have every socialist rejoicing."

Indeed, it should, and did. It signalled the end of Stalinists State Capitalism.

Of course, those who think otherwise will be able to point to the heroic defence mounted by the organised working class of the 'workers' states' in E Europe and the FSU in the period 1989-90, won't they?

To help them out, here's a picture of the massed ranks of workers defending 'their' state:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/USSR.jpg

The poll is in fact missing one option: 4) "A defeat for Stalinism"

[RadioRaheem84]

How could anyone take the silly line that the USSR's collapse was a victory for socialism?

Look at the world today. I would give my left eye for a deterrent like the USSR. The US blatantly does whatever it wants now and they force feed that 'end of history' shit down everyone's throats.

The USSR was far from perfect but it was the lesser of two evils among the superpowers in the Cold War and now we're left with a hegemonic State running wild in mad dash to instill neo-liberalism around the globe.

[RadioRaheem84]

NHIA:



Indeed, it should, and did. It signalled the end of Stalinists State Capitalism.

Of course, those who think otherwise will be able to point to the heroic defence mounted by the organised working class of the 'workers' states' in E Europe and the FSU in the period 1989-90, won't they?

To help them out, here's a picture of the massed ranks of workers defending 'their' state:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/USSR.jpg

The poll is in fact missing one option: 4) "A defeat for Stalinism"

Oh please, most people who champion the fall of the FSU just want to save face in front of their non-communist/leftist friends.

That's what all the anti-Soviet bashing is mostly about.

[Kléber]

To help them out, here's a picture of the massed ranks of workers defending 'their' state:
The working class lacked effective organization, but workers did fight back in spite of the cold dead hand of Stalinism and the empty promises of reactionary "reformers." This is a riot that broke out in Moscow in 1993 when trade unions were prevented from making their customary May Day march:

PoqvSch9Q1g

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^Thanks for that Kleber, but, with all due respect, I fail to see how this answers my request.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

RadioHead:


Oh please, most people who champion the fall of the FSU just want to save face in front of their non-communist/leftist friends.

So, you have no evidence that workers defended 'their' state.

[Kléber]

^^^Thanks for that Kleber, but, with all due respect, I fail to see how this answers my request.
Well I respectfully fail to see the point of your request. If there was no well-organized fightback to, say, a union being busted or an industry being deregulated, would that justify such a thing? Is bourgeois reaction permissible so long as it is unanswered in kind by the class action of the proletariat? Is it okay to torture a prisoner if he or she does not protest?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Kleber:


Well I respectfully fail to see the point of your request. If there was no well-organized fightback to, say, a union being busted or an industry being deregulated, would that justify such a thing? Is bourgeois reaction permissible so long as it is unanswered in kind by the class action of the proletariat? Is it okay to torture a prisoner if he or she does not protest?

Here it is again, then:


Of course, those who think otherwise will be able to point to the heroic defence mounted by the organised working class of the 'workers' states' in E Europe and the FSU in the period 1989-90, won't they?

Bold added.


If there was no well-organized fightback to, say, a union being busted or an industry being deregulated, would that justify such a thing?

Again, with all due respect, these are not comparable. In E Europe and the FSU, we are dealing with what are alleged to be workers' states (deformed, degenerated, or whatever), not unions fighting the boss.


Is bourgeois reaction permissible so long as it is unanswered in kind by the class action of the proletariat? Is it okay to torture a prisoner if he or she does not protest?

Same point.

[syndicat]

It's hard to say yes or no. There was no socialism there. So it's dismantling by the bureaucratic elite....a revolution from above...was not a destruction of socialism. After the Communist regime was consolidated it became a bureaucratic class mode of production, that is, a regime of domination and exploitation of the working class. So it's dismantling and evolution into private capitalism (of a particular vicious sort) was not a defeat for socialism.

But it had disastrous consequences for the working class in that country. That's because the bureaucratic class regime embodied a certain "deal" between the bosses and the working class in which workers had a somewhat less nasty form of work contrrol and had certain subsidized commodities...their variant of social democracy or safety net. And these were things were completely slashed. So the inability of the working class to insert itself into history at that point....a product of decades of totalitarian rule that generates passivity in the working class...was a disaster for the working class, but also a product of the type of bureaucratic pseudo-socialism that existed there. So, in that sense, the defeat for the working class was a logical outcome of the earlier defeat of the working class in 1918 or thereabouts.

[Spawn of Stalin]

RadioHead:



So, you have no evidence that workers defended 'their' state.
The results of the referendum prove that workers wanted to defend their state, simply that they lacked the means to do so, the revolutionary party had become a counter-revolutionary force, the force that the workers wanted to defend their state from, from a Leninist point of view it would have been practically impossible for their demands to be met.

[Sir Comradical]

Bullshit. Without the Soviet Union, the revolutionary movements of Cuba, Korea, Vietnam, China, Nicaragua, Grenada, Albania, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and all over Africa, would not have been possible. The Soviet Union demonstrated how a workers state go from a backwards broken nation to a worlds superpower in less than half the time it took Capitalist countries. This alone inspired millions of people who then took up arms against their oppressors on a scale never witnessed before or since. This had to do with the Soviet Union and their building of Socialism.

The fall of the Soviet Union was a huge setback for the world communist movement and would've been an extremely vital ally in regards to the revolutionary movements that we see in Latin America and Southeast Asia today.

Agreed. However the original claim that the USSR helped suppress genuine communist movements does hold water, especially when it came to their support for the new nationalist regimes in the third world. The USSR sold weapons to the Indian government at a time when they had already undemocratically dismissed Kerala's first Communist ministry and they continued arming the Indian state while it was suppressing Naxalite movements across the country. I suppose a more revolutionary position would have been for the USSR to support the Naxalite movements at the expense of antagonising the Indian state. Had they pursued that path globally, they wouldn't hold much influence with the newly formed post-colonial nationalist regimes around the world. No wonder the modern Indian Maoist movement loathes the USSR's foreign policy post-Stalin.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^Indeed, in order to exploit further the working class of the FSU (etc), and compete with international capital and the internatioanl division of labour, the Stalinist elite found they had to restructure their state, and attack the working class in new ways not allowed before.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Spawn of Stalin:


The results of the referendum prove that workers wanted to defend their state, simply that they lacked the means to do so,

But, if it was 'their state', they can't possibly have lacked the means. The fact thay they lacked the means only underlines my point.

Compare the FSU (etc) in 1989-90 with the way workers fought in Nepal in 2006, the Lebanon, in Serbia, France, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia recently -- and now in Burma (1988 and 2007), Kyrgyzstan (April 2010) and Bangkok (April 2010) -- to name but a few -- places where there was no 'worker's state' to defend.

And what referendum was this?

[syndicat]

Indeed, in order to exploit further the working class of the FSU (etc), and compete with international capital and the internatioanl division of labour, the Stalinist elite found they had to restructure their state, and attack the working class in new ways not allowed before.

yes, exactly. and they looked with envy on the much higher incomes of the capitalists in the west and hoped they could go that route if they could convert their class position to that of private accumulator of wealth.

the support the USSR gave to various 3rd world nationalist regimes (that is, local ruling elites) in the cold war era didn't have anything to do with proletarian emancipation but everything to do with the geopolitical struggle with the major capitalist powers.

[Spawn of Stalin]

Spawn of Stalin:



But, if it was 'their state', they can't possibly have lacked the means. The fact thay they lacked the means only underlines my point.

Compare the FSU (etc) in 1989-90 with the way workers fought in Nepal in 2006, the Lebanon, in Serbia, France, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia recently -- and now in Burma (1988 and 2007), Kyrgyzstan (April 2010) and Bangkok (April 2010) -- to name but a few -- places where there was no 'worker's state' to defend.

And what referendum was this?

The well known 1991 referendum in which the workers expressed massive support for the existence of a Soviet Union. Yes, by now the state was corrupt as hell, bent on restoring a total market system, but the fact is the workers had something worth saving and they knew it. Wasn't turnout for that vote like 90% or something? And the total yes votes amounted to well over 80%.

[S.Artesian]

Anyone who thinks the collapse or fall of the fSU is a cause for rejoicing should probably write a letter of thank you to Milton Friedman, the slimebag Gaidar [Yeltsin's very own "Chicago Boy" and deputy PM], Stanley Fischer-- the IMF's Deputy Director and a "Chicago Boy," Jeffrey Sachs and those fucking thieves from Harvard's Russia Project who enriched themselves, and the other assorted thugs, goons, oligarchs, scam artists-- all of whom made out not like but as bandits.

As for defense of "their state"-- There was certainly that defense and that resistance to Yeltsin-- within the very government itself as Yeltsin was forced to call in the military to blast away at the parliament which wasn't going along with his "distressed sale, asset liquidation" economic program.

Outside the parliament in the streets of Moscow and other cities demonstrations were organized and crushed by the military as Yeltsin dressed himself up as the Slav Pinochet.

And the results of this moment some, with their heads stuck firmly up their own, and Friedman's ass[es], refer to as "joyous"? Besides the monumental collapse in living standards? Besides the forcing of thousands of women into the "Natasha trade"? Well, for one, geniuses, the rapid decline in living standards in Cuba.

For another, the jettisoning of the Freedom Charter by the ANC in South Africa as there was no force capable of offsetting, of offering economic support to counter the demands of the stock, commodities and bond markets.

And you know what other joyous event took place after this collapse and destruction of the economy and the subsequent decline in Yeltsin's popularity in Russia? The war in Chechnya, as there's nothing like war to distract people from the misery they dwell in during peace time.

[S.Artesian]

You're right, but I think a "collapse" still implies an inherent rottenness in the structure of the planned economy, rather than in the method of its administration in the Soviet Union. We agree there was still something worth saving while the planned economy existed, and the solution was for workers to repair the cracks in the structure, not assist the oligarchs in tearing it down and selling the rubble to the highest bidder. So it would be more accurate to say the economy was looted and then demolished by bureaucrats rather than risk implying that a workers' state passively "collapsed" on its own. There was a social collapse, of course, the breakdown of productive society in the wake of privatizations, layoffs, and the subsequent disaster. But the landmark political event which enabled the vast majority of privatizations, which most people call the "collapse" of the USSR, was not a spontaneous or popular occurrence as the choice of word implies - it could be more accurately termed a capitulation of the ruling caste to international finance capital.

There was economic collapse. There was indeed an inherent rottenness in the structure, in that the structure was incapable of supporting the required productivity of labor necessary to sustain the population; indeed the structure could not do that in isolation, without integration into the world economy.

Well, the world economy of capitalism wasn't having any of that-- that world economy wanted the fSU productive power destroyed, pushed off the market so that profits from the immediate production aluminum, oil etc. would be "safe at home," or safe until such time as the free marketeers had picked through the detritus of the fSU and bought what it wanted on the cheap.

The other world economy, the world of an integrated socialist economy didn't exist precisely because of the actions the fSU bureaucracy took to protect itself from the risk of a resumed revoluton.

[Robocommie]

And the results of this moment some, with their heads stuck firmly up their own, and Friedman's ass[es], refer to as "joyous"? Besides the monumental collapse in living standards? Besides the forcing of thousands of women into the "Natasha trade"? Well, for one, geniuses, the rapid decline in living standards in Cuba.

For another, the jettisoning of the Freedom Charter by the ANC in South Africa as there was no force capable of offsetting, of offering economic support to counter the demands of the stock, commodities and bond markets.

This a hundred times. In places like Cuba and South Africa and a hundred other places struggling against the legacy of colonialism which was forced to revert to accommodate liberal economic powers in order to get any kind of economic cooperation at all because the Soviet Union was no longer around to provide support for radical left-wing politics.

People who criticize Cuba and Vietnam for its liberalizing policies have to realize how incredibly difficult it can be to develop alone. There's a reason why the European superpowers gobbled up tiny nations in the 19th century. As painful as it is to see the gains of the 20th century rolled back, to be honest, a lot of it is survival tactics.

[Paulappaul]

I voted Yes.

The end of any tyrannical regime is a victory for Socialism - the collapse of the Soviet Union emphasized the fact that there is no alternative to grassroots, worker control. The only defeat Socialism has suffered in relation to the Soviet Union is the product of Leninism in general. Leninists stole power from the working class, indoctrinated many into believing that they represented the only "true" way to Socialism, purged all non-Leninists elements, and contributed to conception of Socialism that made Leninism, Marxism, and Socialism in distinguishable. Its end, as result of the hubris of Leninists, has discredited Socialism in the eyes of many, many people. It may take generations for the scars Leninism has caused to heal. But internally, the Left has (or atleast should have) learned a valuable lesson. Its time to return to Marxism, embrace Libertarian Socialism, make peace with Anarchism, and form a broad working class coalition diametrically opposed to Captialism and Bourgeois Party Politics - whether they be institutional or pseudo-Socialist Vanguard parties.

[Sir Comradical]

I voted Yes.

The end of any tyrannical regime is a victory for Socialism - the collapse of the Soviet Union emphasized the fact that there is no alternative to grassroots, worker control. The only defeat Socialism has suffered in relation to the Soviet Union is the product of Leninism in general. Leninists stole power from the working class, indoctrinated many into believing that they represented the only "true" way to Socialism, purged all non-Leninists elements, and contributed to conception of Socialism that made Leninism, Marxism, and Socialism in distinguishable. Its end, as result of the hubris of Leninists, has discredited Socialism in the eyes of many, many people. It may take generations for the scars Leninism has caused to heal. But internally, the Left has (or atleast should have) learned a valuable lesson. Its time to return to Marxism, embrace Libertarian Socialism, make peace with Anarchism, and form a broad working class coalition diametrically opposed to Captialism and Bourgeois Party Politics - whether they be institutional or pseudo-Socialist Vanguard parties.

You know by cheering the overthrow of the USSR, you're basically supporting the kind of neoliberal shock-treatment that you'd be protesting against if it was being pushed in your country. In relative terms, the tyrannical regime was not the Soviet Union of the late 80's but the capitalist regime that succeeded it. That's unless of course you think Yeltsin's regime represented a move in the direction of "freedom".

[Jose Gracchus]

Yeah, I'd like our "Hell No!" members to explain what the great career track world revolution and the world proletariat was for basically the last human generation of the USSR's existence, because I really don't see it.

We also have to be clear on what we mean by 'collapse'. The fact some increasingly and progressively degenerate political party and its satellites, who were hardly friends of socialism and generally tended to play chess with their various constituencies of managers and bureaucrats, broadly introducing anti-socialist economic measures, taking enormous loans from the West, etc., etc. stumbled and fell on its face, well, I don't see what was so bad about that.

The tragedy was there was no revolutionary and working-class forces that were progressive and operative, still capable of rallying to the cause and construction of socialism. De-historicizing the forces in the Eastern Bloc is hardly Marxist or materialist: there aren't moralistically 'good' and 'bad' guys in this sense. Marx and Engels after all did call for the triumph of one or another superficially bourgeois force because that advanced the overall alignment of the working class. In this case, Europe is finally possibly in an internationalized configuration which, as the CPGB has pointed out, could plausibly be brought over en bloc to socialism and more importantly, sustainably and undegeneratively so.

As for who is to blame, obviously the West and its hysterical and dangerous brinkmanship and unceasing economic warfare was a major component. But the fact is its not like the Left found any realistic way to shore up the old Soviet-style states in a way which realistically they were going to progressively move forward into the 1980s and on. And let's be honest: it hardly helps these were cloistered, dysfunctional societies shorn of political rights and free expression where in essence the party-state was not going to be able to rally popular - much less class - support in any realistic scenario.

As for what it meant for the public, no one should be naive: the victory of the West and pro-capitalist forces in the struggle was a substantial global disaster for the global working class. The USSR and allies offered at least some wiggle room that in some cases gave room for authentic experiments, helping tame the hysterical bourgeois empire. The United States and subordinate bourgeois powers no longer had to pay even basic lip-service to social democratic reformism, which had been and always was a tactical retreat based on the threat of a "good example" on the part of the economic egalitarianism and growth and the simple continued existence of societies with intensively non-capitalist economies. Millions of people died in a mass maldevelopment and essentially looting; ironically, bourgeois historians fail to see the analogies between the 'reasoning' employed to make Stalin and Mao "mass murderers" of those who died from economic causes, while somehow Jeffrey Sachs doesn't qualify (despite the fact the UN described the former Soviet Union's economic contraction "at least twice as bad as the Great Depression in the 30s in the United States") despite leaving a legacy where starvation is rife now within much of the Russian near abroad.

One has to be very clear about what one means. I do not feel bad for most (though of course there were real activists and believers among the great putrid mass) of the assholes who were in CPSU or say PZPR. And, a lot of them do not need our sympathy: they are doing just fine now that they took off their clown masks and got down to being straight-up thugs or bourgeois and can now have the convenience of being able to call on the help of the hysterical empire to extract value from their slaves.

The only real chance the East ever had was if the Left in the West was able to construct some credible alternative, or at least substantially neutralize imperial power by struggle. The failure to produce successful revolutionary struggles out of the 1960s and 1970s in the West was really the death knell of the classic attempts to build socialism.

[human strike]

I voted no. One capitalist state made room for another.

But the capitalist state that replaced it wasn't doing an impression of socialism. I voted yes simply because the Soviet Union was a bigger barrier to socialism than indeed even the United States. I wouldn't ideally describe it as a "victory", the entire history of the Soviet Union was a thoroughly messy affair with few real victories to speak of at all, but its fall allows socialists to now act without hindrance from a superpower bent on preserving the the status quo that claimed to support socialism! It was a reactionary state of the worst degree and we are better off without it. Not only has it liberated our mode of action, it has liberated our mode of thinking.

I'm not an anarchist btw.

[Dire Helix]

That's unless of course you think Yeltsin's regime represented a move in the direction of freedom.

Actually, many Russian anarchists came out strong in support of Yeltsin, what with the latter being a fighter against the "evil state-capitalist regime" and all. Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists(perhaps the biggest organization of this kind back then) participated in the pro-Yeltsin demonstrations in August 1991 and built barricades to protect the White House.

[Sir Comradical]

Actually, many Russian anarchists came out strong in support of Yeltsin, what with the latter being a fighter against the "evil state-capitalist regime" and all. Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists(perhaps the biggest organization of this kind back then) participated in the pro-Yeltsin demonstrations in August 1991 and built barricades to protect the White House.

Jesus Fucking Christ. Anyway I wonder what percentage of those anarchists are homeless now thanks to capitalist restoration? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Spawn of Stalin:


The well known 1991 referendum in which the workers expressed massive support for the existence of a Soviet Union. Yes, by now the state was corrupt as hell, bent on restoring a total market system, but the fact is the workers had something worth saving and they knew it. Wasn't turnout for that vote like 90% or something? And the total yes votes amounted to well over 80%.

But not 'popular' enough to defend when the time was right.

[4 Leaf Clover]

Conclusion , people who voted yes , would be perfectly content if the world was 100% dominated by neo-liberal market. Because everything else was just plain Stalinism. And then , a great plan would start , called "lets wait that revolution simultaneously happens in the planet , lead by invisible revolutionary force"

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

4 Leaf:


Conclusion , people who voted yes , would be perfectly content if the world was 100% dominated by neo-liberal market. Because everything else was just plain Stalinism. And then , a great plan would start , called "lets wait that revolution simultaneously happens in the planet , lead by invisible revolutionary force"

I didn't vote (since the fourth option I suggested wasn't one of the options), so I can't speak for those who voted 'Yes'. But those who agree with me would be happy for the world to be dominated by the working class free from the dead weight of substitutionist parties and tendencies.

[Dire Helix]

Jesus Fucking Christ. Anyway I wonder what percentage of those anarchists are homeless now thanks to capitalist restoration? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

One of the organization`s leaders, Andrei Isayev, is now a very prominent member of United Russia and a loyal putinist, often appears on TV and helps the regime in the spreading of black-hundredist propaganda. Some are still involved with the left. I doubt there are homeless among them.

[chegitz guevara]

Remember that there was no world power around to help Russia into its revolution when it occurred.

Yes, but it occurred when the imperialist powers were too busy slaughtering themselves to effectively repress the Russian Revolution. Had the workers successfully overthrown Tsardom in 1905, and then proceeded to a workers republic, I can imagine an unholy alliance of imperialist states invading and carving up Russia (as happened to the French Revolution), at full strength, rather than in their weakened and distracted state that happened in 1917.

The existing of the USSR gave following revolutions some breathing room and some freedom from fear of imperialist invasion, though not always.

[RadioRaheem84]

I voted yes simply because the Soviet Union was a bigger barrier to socialism than indeed even the United States

At least one of you 'yes' voters admitted it.

Seriously, is it cool for people to starve in order to achieve ideological purity?

[RadioRaheem84]

The existing of the USSR gave following revolutions some breathing room and some freedom from fear of imperialist invasion, though not always.


How is this not obvious to the raging anti-Soviets in here?

Even Chomsky understood that the fSU provided an example that a nation could industrialize without imperialism or help from the West. This revolutionized the way people thought about economic development and spurred the hundreds of national liberation struggles.

Even if the USSR was far from perfect, it became a symbol of what could be done.

Now,since it's downfall, capitalists won't even let us entertain the mere illusion of social democracy, much less socialism!

They think Chavez and Morales are raging Leninists! In a world that has shifted so fucking far to the right, Democratic Socialism or heck even Social Democracy is seen as 'revolutionary'!

No, the fall of the USSR was not a triumph for socialism.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

RadioR:


Seriously, is it cool for people to starve in order to achieve ideological purity?

Re-adjustments of the capitalist system are rarely good for workers. And that was true of the destruction of the state capitalist sytem in the FSU.

But, the bottom line is that the workers of the FSU, and the alleged 'People's Democracies' of E Europe, voted with their feet, and failed to defend these alleged 'workers' states'.

[RadioRaheem84]

Rosa, I think that people were wanting both the cornucopia of consumerism with the protection of the social safety net that the USSR provided; i.e. they wanted reform. I don't think they wanted plunder and shock therapy.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

RadioR:


Even if the USSR was far from perfect, it became a symbol of what could be done.

A symbol of what could be done with a state capitalist regime.

But, as I pointed out above, it certainly wasn't a symbol for those who had to endure it. Otherwise, they'd have defended it.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

RadioR:


Rosa, I think that people were wanting both the cornucopia of consumerism with the protection of the social safety net that the USSR provided; i.e. they wanted reform. I don't they wanted plunder and shock therapy.

Whatever they allegedly 'wanted', they manifestly did not want the FSU to survive, or they'd have defended it.

[RadioRaheem84]

RadioR:



A symbol of what could be done with a state capitalist regime.

But, as I pointed out above, it certainly wasn't a symbol for those who had to endure it. Otherwise, they'd have defended it.

State Capitalism > Neo-Liberal Capitalism

I am sure the people of the fSU thought reform was for the better. I am assuming they were hoping for reform to perfect their system, not destroy it.

[RadioRaheem84]

RadioR:



Whatever they allegedly 'wanted', they manifestly did not want the FSU to survive, or they'd have defended it.

Well, shit, if reform meant to allow for more democracy and freedom into the FSU then I would've been for it too.

I think you're missing the point. People in the FSU were aching for the deficiencies of the USSR to end and more democratic socialist elements to come in. They weren't expecting the USSR to dissolve and take them right back into the third world.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

RadioR:


I am sure the people of the fSU thought reform was for the better. I am assuming they were hoping for reform to perfect their system, not destroy it.

But, if these were 'worker's states', how could they possibly think this?

[chegitz guevara]

As has been shown by countless surveys of the former socialist countries, the people wanted to be rid of the dictatorships, and keep everything else. They wanted what they had + democracy. Unfortunately, there was no organized political force to lead them forward, and so capitalism was re-established, i.e., real capitalism with private property and commodity production, not "state capitalism, i.e., we don't like the political situation so we're going to call it something different because we're too cowardly to defend the real gains made by the workers.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

RadioR:


Well, shit, if reform meant to allow for more democracy and freedom into the FSU then I would've been for it too.

I think you're missing the point. People in the FSU were aching for the deficiencies of the USSR to end and more democratic socialist elements to come in. They weren't expecting the USSR to dissolve and take them right back into the third world.

In fact, you are missing the point, if these were 'workers' states', this could not happen.

[RadioRaheem84]

RadioR:



But, if these were 'worker's states', how could they possibly think this?

Well who said they were? I didn't. The point was when the option appeared to make their nation better, as in adopt reforms to allow for more freedoms and democratic socialism, the people took it, only to be given (thanks to Yeltsin) a big batch of neo-liberalism.

How is it that you keep missing this point?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

CG:


As has been shown by countless surveys of the former socialist countries, the people wanted to be rid of the dictatorships, and keep everything else. They wanted what they had + democracy. Unfortunately, there was no organized political force to lead them forward, and so capitalism was re-established, i.e., real capitalism with private property and commodity production, not "state capitalism, i.e., we don't like the political situation so we're going to call it something different because we're too cowardly to defend the real gains made by the workers.

Then these could not have been 'workers' states' (deformed, degenerated or whatever).

[RadioRaheem84]

Cheglitz said it best, Rosa.

Read and Learn.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

RadioR:


Well who said they were? I didn't.

What were they then, according to you?


The point was when the option appeared to make their nation better, as in adopt reforms to allow for more freedoms and democratic socialism, the people took it, only to be given (thanks to Yeltsin) a big batch of neo-liberalism.

Workers the world over can, temporarily, think this or that of their individual regimes. For Marxists, that does not mean one form of capitalist exploitation is to be preferred over another.

In fact, because of the illusions it created in many (including you), the demise of the FSU was to be welcomed.


How is it that you keep missing this point?

Because your point is unclear.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

RadioR:


Cheglitz said it best, Rosa.

Oh dear.


Read and Learn.

Not from you, it seems. :)

[chegitz guevara]

By the IST's logic, Nazi Germany wasn't real capitalism, because the bourgeoisie did not have political control of the state. Maybe it should be called, state feudalism or state slavery?

In actuality, Nazi Germany was actual state capitalism. Private property and commodity production existed, but control was exercised by the state.

[RadioRaheem84]

What were they then, according to you?


A state capitalist regime that offered it's people of a modicum of decent living standards, yet repressed dissent.

The question should really be; just what is your point?

The point I was making was pretty clear and standard thinking when it comes to the demise of the USSR; people wanted more political freedoms and instead what they got was economic liberalization. They wanted to keep the safety net but demand more political freedoms.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

CG:


By the IST's logic, Nazi Germany wasn't real capitalism, because the bourgeoisie did not have political control of the state. Maybe it should be called, state feudalism or state slavery?

It was, in fact a form of state capitalism.


In actuality, Nazi Germany was actual state capitalism. Private property and commodity production existed, but control was exercised by the state.

There are different degrees of state capitalism.

But, I can see why you find you have to change the subject. The fact that workers did not defend 'their state' completely demolished your theory.

[Wanted Man]

RadioR:



Whatever they allegedly 'wanted', they manifestly did not want the FSU to survive, or they'd have defended it.

Well, I suppose that makes the whole "victory for socialism" point of view okay then, considering that workers are fully class-conscious and always act in their best interests at any given time...

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

RR:


A state capitalist regime that offered it's people of a modicum of decent living standards, yet repressed dissent.

And a regimne that created illusions in your mind.


The question should really be; just what is your point?

That the working class of these regimes voted with their feet.


The point I was making was pretty clear and standard thinking when it comes to the demise of the USSR; people wanted more political freedoms and instead what they got was economic liberalization. They wanted to keep the safety net but demand more political freedoms.

Of course, one should defend any gains made by workers, but not by supporting the regimes that had to make these concessions, but by arguing for an independent working class defence of itself.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

WW:


Well, I suppose that makes the whole "victory for socialism" point of view okay then, considering that workers are fully class-conscious and always act in their best interests at any given time...

If you read my posts, you will see that I did not vote for that option. You should perhaps aim your questions at those who did.

[syndicat]

Seriously, is it cool for people to starve in order to achieve ideological purity?

the question wasn't about whether it was good for the working class, but whether it was good for socialism. this is why the question is unclear. since the soviet union wasn't socialist and had nothing to do with socialism, but tended to lead to confusions about what socialism is, it's disappearance could, in that sense, be regarded as good for socialism even if the effects were not good for the Russian working class, since the bureaucratic mode of production embodied a deal with the working class that was being replaced with an even nastier form of exploitation and class domination.

[RadioRaheem84]

It would've been better for the reform to have changed the country for the better not the worst. Now Communism/Socialism is associated with not only tyranny but total failure. IT's demise did nothing to better the name of socialism but besmirch it even more.

What would've been best was for the Russian People to have gotten what they wanted in the first place.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

RR:


It would've been better for the reform to have changed the country for the better not the worst.

What's a reformist like you doing on a revolutionary site?

[Hit The North]

Cheglitz said it best, Rosa.

Read and Learn.

Frankly, cheglitz said nothing in that post. Here it is again:

They wanted what they had + democracy. Unfortunately, there was no organized political force to lead them forward, and so capitalism was re-established

It was a workers state but here was no political force capable of democratising it. So where were the organised workers? On the other hand, in this workers state there was a force capable of "re-establishing" capitalism!

So the fSU was a workers state in name only, it seems.

As for the OP, no it wasn't a victory for socialism. How could it be?

[RadioRaheem84]

There was a force to do both but one, Yeltsin and his crew, backed by the West, killed and maimed in order to totally restore capitalism.

Same with the other Blocs. It was a systemic plundering under the guise of democratic reforms.

Yeltsin the "Democrat" vs. Communist "hardliners".

[S.Artesian]

Yeah, I'd like our "Hell No!" members to explain what the great career track world revolution and the world proletariat was for basically the last human generation of the USSR's existence, because I really don't see it.

There was no great career track. I don't dispute the negative role the fSU played for 65 years regarding the proletarian revolution. I don't dispute the way the AFL-CIO in the US has fucked up the class struggle. I don't dispute how the Scargill and the miners' union in the UK put themselves in a no-win position in the struggle against Thatcher.

Still... the de-certification of unions in the US, the declining numbers of unionized workers, is part and parcel of the attack on the working class. It is part of the bourgeoisie's offensive. Similarly, the defeat of Scargill and the miners' union was a defeat for the entire working class. In just that same manner, the destruction of the fSU represents part of the ongoing offensive of the bourgeoisie against workers wages, living standards, and organization as a class.

The enemy of your enemy is not always your friend. The cost for the destruction of the fSU is paid for by the workers at 1000 times the rate the workers would ever have to pay to keep the fSU bureaucracy in power-- if such a thing were possible. Such a thing was not possible, economically or socially. That does not make the price paid any more tolerable, any less a burden on the workers.


We also have to be clear on what we mean by 'collapse'. The fact some increasingly and progressively degenerate political party and its satellites, who were hardly friends of socialism and generally tended to play chess with their various constituencies of managers and bureaucrats, broadly introducing anti-socialist economic measures, taking enormous loans from the West, etc., etc. stumbled and fell on its face, well, I don't see what was so bad about that.

But that's not what the collapse amounts to. The collapse means incredible unemployment, decline in living standards, thousands of women, and girls, being forced into the "Natasha trade." The collapse means the Harvard Russia Project staff lining their own pockets while tuberculosis rates soared. The collapse means the wars against Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan--etc. coming under the influence of NATO.


The tragedy was there was no revolutionary and working-class forces that were progressive and operative, still capable of rallying to the cause and construction of socialism.

Correct. The bureaucracy, the party had seen to that.


Marx and Engels after all did call for the triumph of one or another superficially bourgeois force because that advanced the overall alignment of the working class. No, they called for a directly bourgeois force to triumph over the remaining elements of pre-industrial capitalism-- like the triumph of the North over the plantation South.

Engels had called for the triumph of the US over Mexico in the Mexican-American war. Engels was wrong. Completely wrong.

Engels called for the triumph of Bismarck over Louis Napoleon, but Marx was much more circumspect, and restrained in his pronouncements on behalf of the IWMA. And.. as it turns out Marx was right and Engels was wrong.


In this case, Europe is finally possibly in an internationalized configuration which, as the CPGB has pointed out, could plausibly be brought over en bloc to socialism and more importantly, sustainably and undegeneratively so.

Saying that's so doesn't make it so. It's been 20 years since the collapse of the fSU-- anybody see that internationalized configuration yet? We see lots of national actions. But does anyone think the obstacles to revolution have been lessened? Anybody see class-collaborationist policies, versions of popular fronts, and of social democracy withering and dying?

You might as well be arguing that the collapse of the 2nd Intl in the face of WW1 was "a good thing" in that now a real internationalism could be built free of the "Kautskyist dogma." You'd be missing with that analysis exactly what you're missing in your view of the collapse of the fSU: that the collapse of the 2nd Intl involved a material blow to the body of the working class-- that the force that caused the collapse was strengthened in the collapse. In each case, that force was the international configuration of capitalism.


As for who is to blame, obviously the West and its hysterical and dangerous brinkmanship and unceasing economic warfare was a major component. But the fact is its not like the Left found any realistic way to shore up the old Soviet-style states in a way which realistically they were going to progressively move forward into the 1980s and on. And let's be honest: it hardly helps these were cloistered, dysfunctional societies shorn of political rights and free expression where in essence the party-state was not going to be able to rally popular - much less class - support in any realistic scenario.

As for what it meant for the public, no one should be naive: the victory of the West and pro-capitalist forces in the struggle was a substantial global disaster for the global working class. The USSR and allies offered at least some wiggle room that in some cases gave room for authentic experiments, helping tame the hysterical bourgeois empire. The United States and subordinate bourgeois powers no longer had to pay even basic lip-service to social democratic reformism, which had been and always was a tactical retreat based on the threat of a "good example" on the part of the economic egalitarianism and growth and the simple continued existence of societies with intensively non-capitalist economies. Millions of people died in a mass maldevelopment and essentially looting; ironically, bourgeois historians fail to see the analogies between the 'reasoning' employed to make Stalin and Mao "mass murderers" of those who died from economic causes, while somehow Jeffrey Sachs doesn't qualify (despite the fact the UN described the former Soviet Union's economic contraction "at least twice as bad as the Great Depression in the 30s in the United States") despite leaving a legacy where starvation is rife now within much of the Russian near abroad.

Completely agree. But doesn't this contradict your earlier statement that you don't see what's so bad about the fSU stumbling and falling flat on its face?



The only real chance the East ever had was if the Left in the West was able to construct some credible alternative, or at least substantially neutralize imperial power by struggle. The failure to produce successful revolutionary struggles out of the 1960s and 1970s in the West was really the death knell of the classic attempts to build socialism.

Again completely agree.

[S.Artesian]

the question wasn't about whether it was good for the working class, but whether it was good for socialism. this is why the question is unclear. since the soviet union wasn't socialist and had nothing to do with socialism, but tended to lead to confusions about what socialism is, it's disappearance could, in that sense, be regarded as good for socialism even if the effects were not good for the Russian working class, since the bureaucratic mode of production embodied a deal with the working class that was being replaced with an even nastier form of exploitation and class domination.

Priceless, and precious. It could be good for socialism, but not good for the working class. If there ever was an example of squaring the circle, of the critical critic simply reproducing the double talk of the criticized, in this case Stalinism, the above is it. Who doesn't hear the voice of the bureaucracy behind that neat formulation: good for socialism, but not good for the working class?

Good for socialism but not good for the working class? How does that work? Because things got worse? Holy fuck, I have a great idea, let's make things really worse. If only Operation Barbarossa had succeeded! If only Hitler had won, things would be so bad they'd be good and we'd all be whistling "Happy Days are Here Again" out our assholes.

And who doesn't hear the voice of the bureaucracy behind that? The destruction and disorder and decline in real living standards in the first Five Year Plan? Good for socialism, but not good for the workers because it made things worse.

"What's good for General Motors, is good for the US."

"What's good for socialism, isn't necessarily what's good for the workers."

"In order to save the village, it became necessary to destroy it"
--US Army information officer discussing the destruction of the village of Ben Tre, South Vietnam, 1967.

[chegitz guevara]

There are different degrees of state capitalism.

True, and they all involve private ownership of the means of production and commodity production. The degrees are in the amount of state interference with the capitalists' control of their property.


But, I can see why you find you have to change the subject. The fact that workers did not defend 'their state' completely demolished your theory.I guess the fact that many workers don't want unions and don't fight to defend them means that unions aren't working class organizations.

[syndicat]

I guess the fact that many workers don't want unions and don't fight to defend them means that unions aren't working class organizations.

and unions are working class organizations (rather than organizations of a bureacratic layer) to the degree they control them and use them to fight the employers. the Soviet state was an organization of by and for the bureaucratic class, not the working class.

[Kléber]

and unions are working class organizations (rather than organizations of a bureacratic layer) to the degree they control them and use them to fight the employers. the Soviet state was an organization of by and for the bureaucratic class, not the working class.
The Soviet Union was a working class organization to the degree that it still resisted the profit system and defended the gains of the 1917 revolution. Labor unions that are misled by union bureaucrats are still deformed workers' organizations.

[Kléber]

There was economic collapse. There was indeed an inherent rottenness in the structure, in that the structure was incapable of supporting the required productivity of labor necessary to sustain the population; indeed the structure could not do that in isolation, without integration into the world economy.
The bottom did not fall out until 92- with the privatizations. What most people consider the "collapse" was the political dissolution of the USSR in 91, rather than the concurrent economic disaster. To describe it as collapse implies that the unpopular dictatorship fell apart in the face of popular opposition. In reality something closer to the opposite happened, the Soviet bureaucracy made a calculated decision to capitulate to imperialist capital and loot nearly all of what remained of the public sector, against the interests and wishes of working people.

[S.Artesian]

The bottom did not fall out until 92- with the privatizations. What most people consider the "collapse" was the political dissolution of the USSR in 91, rather than the concurrent economic disaster. To describe it as collapse implies that the unpopular dictatorship fell apart in the face of popular opposition. In reality something closer to the opposite happened, the Soviet bureaucracy made a calculated decision to capitulate to imperialist capital and loot nearly all of what remained of the public sector, against the interests and wishes of working people.


There was economic crumbling on-- did it take the Russian version of the Chicago Boys and the visible hand of Jeffrey Sachs and the Harvard Russia Project to set the place on fire? Yes-- but you need to look at the state of industry and agriculture prior to Yeltsin's ascension.

The original issue was economic collapse vs. political capitulation. The economy was crumbling. The bureaucracy did not act simply out of some sort of collective or individual greed-- carving up the healthy body of the economy.

[Kléber]

The original issue was economic collapse vs. political capitulation. The economy was crumbling. The bureaucracy did not act simply out of some sort of collective or individual greed-- carving up the healthy body of the economy.
But there was an alternative, which could not be realized due to the lack of political organization, for the working class to throw out the bureaucrats, harshly repress profiteers and corrupt officials, and reorganize the state based directly on workers' councils, with freedom for independent unions and workers' parties. A workers' political revolution would clean up and regenerate the ailing Soviet economy, not sell it off to the imperialists or turn it into private enterprises for the new rich apparatchiki-cum-mafiosi.

[Lucretia]

The collapse wasn't a victory for socialism. But one thing's certain: it sure as hell wasn't a loss either.

[Robocommie]

and unions are working class organizations (rather than organizations of a bureacratic layer) to the degree they control them and use them to fight the employers. the Soviet state was an organization of by and for the bureaucratic class, not the working class.

A bureaucratic state that provided free healthcare, education and housing, and contributed to anti-colonial struggles worldwide.

[syndicat]

A bureaucratic state that provided free healthcare, education and housing, and contributed to anti-colonial struggles worldwide. Today 18:14A bureaucratic state that provided free healthcare, education and housing, and contributed to anti-colonial struggles worldwide.

by that standard you must love Swedish capitalism. in each case the benefits that the working class enjoyed were the result of concessions by the bosses.

[chegitz guevara]

by that standard you must love Swedish capitalism. in each case the benefits that the working class enjoyed were the result of concessions by the bosses.

The Swedes have free housing for all? Sweden gave material aid to anti-colonial struggles?

In any event, the reforms in Sweden were only possible because of the victory of the workers in Russia. Now that the USSR is gone, the global bourgeoisie is taking back all those concessions, because there is no alternative anymore. Socialism failed, the workers have to suck it up. The fall of the USSR wasn't merely bad for the workers of the USSR or the global socialist movement. It has been bad, now becoming a disaster, for Western Europe's working which was able to win concessions from their bourgeoisies because of the mere existence of the USSR.

[S.Artesian]

But there was an alternative, which could not be realized due to the lack of political organization, for the working class to throw out the bureaucrats, harshly repress profiteers and corrupt officials, and reorganize the state based directly on workers' councils, with freedom for independent unions and workers' parties. A workers' political revolution would clean up and regenerate the ailing Soviet economy, not sell it off to the imperialists or turn it into private enterprises for the new rich apparatchiki-cum-mafiosi.

Sorry, that was not the alternative. As Marx made clear in his analysis of the failures of the revolutions of the mid 19th century, there is no such thing as a "political revolution" that can fundamentally alter the social conditions of labor.

What you are offering is wishful thinking, not materialist analysis. The alternative that was necessary for the revolutionary transformation of the fSU was the reanimation of the international proletarian revolution, just as it was in 1917, 1919, 1926, 1928 etc.

"Workers' political revolution" is simply an abstraction that reproduces the fundamental source of the deformation and destruction of the Russian Revolution-- that isolation of revolution from the advanced countries.

What is required for any of those good things you suggest-- throwing out corrupt officials etc.-- was the seizure not just of an abstract political power, but seizure of the means of production themselves and their integration into a program of production for need, itself integrated with the workers' direct control of the means of administering, distributing, communicating, the products of this program.

None of that was possible absent the conquering of power in the advanced countries.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

CG:


I guess the fact that many workers don't want unions and don't fight to defend them means that unions aren't working class organizations.

There is no comaprison here. The former 'socialist states' were supposed to be workers' states -- and they can only be that if the working class is in conscious control of them.

The events of the late 1980s and early 1990s showed this not to be the case.

[Jazzhands]

Sorry, that was not the alternative. As Marx made clear in his analysis of the failures of the revolutions of the mid 19th century, there is no such thing as a "political revolution" that can fundamentally alter the social conditions of labor...

...What is required for any of those good things you suggest-- throwing out corrupt officials etc.-- was the seizure not just of an abstract political power, but seizure of the means of production themselves and their integration into a program of production for need, itself integrated with the workers' direct control of the means of administering, distributing, communicating, the products of this program.

When Marx wrote that, he had never really seen an economy under total state control before. When the state controls the economy, taking control of the state means taking control of the economy. The Soviet Union, therefore, was a special case where the social conditions of labor could be changed because these conditions depended on state control of the economy, and therefore could not remain the same if the state loses economic control.

I'm certainly not taking Kleber's side in this argument, because I find his alternative totally unrealistic while the Soviet state with all its secret police and instruments of control existed. Proletarian revolutions have never happened in Soviet-style states because the link to the bourgeoisie and the state is more direct. Because, you know, they're the same guys. This is different from regular capitalist countries because the bourgeoisie has to buy their way into the government to get what they want (or at least that's the way it is in modern times).

Now, on the fundamental issue:

The only kind of "victory for socialism" is a victory for the proletariat. While the Soviet Union was an unsalvageable failure as far as workers' control goes, nobody can dispute the disastrous consequences of its collapse. The birth rate fell sharply, the economy went into the shitter, and all hell generally broke loose because Russia plunged into Western capitalism like a brick in water. No rational person can claim that the present Russian conditions are anything remotely resembling a state of victory for the proletariat.

[Rafiq]

RadioR:



A symbol of what could be done with a state capitalist regime.

But, as I pointed out above, it certainly wasn't a symbol for those who had to endure it. Otherwise, they'd have defended it.

Understanding it was a state capitalist regime, that is much better than normal capitalism, under State Capitalism you get some public benefit, under capitalism you get absolutely nothing.

You can go ask any Russian today, whether he regrets the fall of the Soviet Union.

Even if the people did vote for it's collapse (Doubt it) today they regret it.

[Rafiq]

RadioR:



But, if these were 'worker's states', how could they possibly think this?

They weren't.

They simply wanted more Soviets, (Councils), more democracy in the system, not Neo Liberal Capitalism.

[Rafiq]

By the IST's logic, Nazi Germany wasn't real capitalism, because the bourgeoisie did not have political control of the state. Maybe it should be called, state feudalism or state slavery?

In actuality, Nazi Germany was actual state capitalism. Private property and commodity production existed, but control was exercised by the state.

If I'm correct, the means of production was not run by the state, in fact, Hitler promoted privatization of Industrial sectors of his economy.

[syndicat]

The Soviet Union was a working class organization to the degree that it still resisted the profit system and defended the gains of the 1917 revolution. Labor unions that are misled by union bureaucrats are still deformed workers' organizations.

nonsense. it was a power structure of the bureaucratic class, whose privileges and prestige and control were based on the subordination and exploitation of the working class.

the very fact that it led people...like you apparently...to think it had something to do with workers power was part of the problem.

that said, the transition to capitalism meant a jump into an abyss, and a massive assault on the working class.

promotion of the Soviet Union as somehow a model for socialism was itself highly destructive for the working class everywhere. and the discredit of the Soviet Union in the eyes of the working class led to the discredit of socialism itself.

[robbo203]

Was the collapse of the state capitaliist system in the Soviet Union a victory for socialism? No more than if the system had continued. Essentially, the Soviet Union collapsed because the state capitalists who ran the show decided to switch over to another form of capitalism more congenial to their own interests. In that sense it was almost bound to collapse.

[chegitz guevara]

CG:There is no comaprison here. The former 'socialist states' were supposed to be workers' states -- and they can only be that if the working class is in conscious control of them.

Why do workers states have to be different from every other type of state in history? We have seen, over and over again, that the ruling class can lose control to an alien class, and the state will still act in their class interests. If the USSR wasn't a workers state, Nazi Germany was not a capitalist state.

[Comrade_Stalin]

by that standard you must love Swedish capitalism. in each case the benefits that the working class enjoyed were the result of concessions by the bosses.

Where in Swedish capitalism is the Free education, housing and healthcare. Just because you live in a shack, does not mean you got free housing. Just because a teacher watches you , does not mean you got a free education.

[Comrade_Stalin]

Funny to see the Maoists and Hoxhaists defending a state that Mao and Hoxha considered to be capitalist, fascist, and imperialist, and even helped destroy by their sectarian collusion with US imperialism. The heterodox Stalinists of China and Albania even went so far as to wage armed struggle against the Soviet army and pro-Soviet regimes. I'm wondering, do the Maoists and Hoxhaists believe that their decades-long "anti-revisionist" jihad against the USSR was a giant mistake, or do they uphold the "people's war" against "Soviet fascism" while supporting the Soviet revisionists at the same time? I'm confused.

We may both have voted "no," but come on, that's just about the worst reason why the existence of the USSR was a good thing. Stalin was beloved by Western imperialists for reactionary reasons, not progressive ones - because he axed Comintern and executed the old Bolsheviks, not because he still called himself a Communist and a Bolshevik. You might as well say it was great that the Nazis had a pro-Soviet line from 1939-41.

I'm confused too as the USSR lead the de-Stalining of the world after his dead. What would you have done. I think much of the same. Call people who supported Stalin a cult, and left everthing up to each factory to do on ther own.

[Weezer]

This poll shouldn't have been started. All it starts is a sectarian circle-jerk.

I want anyone who voted 'yes' to go to Russia and take note of the population decline, massive crime, rise of neo-fascism, the alcoholism and drug use, and all the homeless people that were never there during the USSR, no matter how degenerated it was.

Anybody who voted yes I hope has reconsidered their opinion.

http://media.eyeblast.org/newsbusters/static/2009/10/NewsweekRussia-full-2009-10-12.jpg

[Revolutionair]

At least one of you 'yes' voters admitted it.

Seriously, is it cool for people to starve in order to achieve ideological purity?

Or maybe he meant that socialism is supposed to be worker control, instead of capitalist control. (with the capitalist being the state)
So he doesn't agree with Russia today, but the USSR was even worse in terms of authoritarianism.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

CG:


Why do workers states have to be different from every other type of state in history?

Are you joking?


We have seen, over and over again, that the ruling class can lose control to an alien class, and the state will still act in their class interests.

Indeed, and that is why the fSU was State Capitalist, and the working class did not fight to defend it.


If the USSR wasn't a workers state, Nazi Germany was not a capitalist state.

That does not follow, or, if it does, you negelected to show why.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LB:


I want anyone who voted 'yes' to go to Russia and take note of the population decline, massive crime, rise of neo-fascism, the alcoholism and drug use, and all the homeless people that were never there during the USSR, no matter how degenerated it was.

On that basis, given the massive decline in living standards (and life expectancy, etc.) that occurred between 1918 and 1921 in the fSU, it can't have been a workers' state.

On the other hand, and on the same basis, if we look at the massive decline in similar stats for Argentina recently, it must have been a workers' state, say, in the 1980s.:lol:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Chapaev:


Understanding it was a state capitalist regime, that is much better than normal capitalism, under State Capitalism you get some public benefit, under capitalism you get absolutely nothing.

You can go ask any Russian today, whether he regrets the fall of the Soviet Union.

Even if the people did vote for it's collapse (Doubt it) today they regret it.

That argument will get you defending one set of bosses against another.


They weren't.

They simply wanted more Soviets, (Councils), more democracy in the system, not Neo Liberal Capitalism.

Eh?:confused:

[S.Artesian]

Why do workers states have to be different from every other type of state in history? We have seen, over and over again, that the ruling class can lose control to an alien class, and the state will still act in their class interests. If the USSR wasn't a workers state, Nazi Germany was not a capitalist state.


Let me point out, before this thread too starts chasing the tail of another distortion by Rosa Lichtenstein-- that the issue is NOT if the fSU was a workers' state, or state capitalist.

The issue is if the collapse of the fSU was a victory for socialism.

We might, for example, ask... was Allende's overthrow by Pinochet a victory for socialism.... in that it "proved" the unviability of the popular front?

The answer of course, to anyone but the sickest of idiots, is that the overthrow of Allende was NO victory for socialism, since the workers didn't do the overthrowing and were the real target of the coup.

And just as clearly, the overthrow of Allende by Pinochet will do, and has done, nothing to discredit "popular fronts" as only a victory of the working class, not its defeat, only a victory that builds its confidence to organize as a class-for-itself against a popular front can accomplish that discreditation.

So I would suggest we all ignore the well-known troll's attempts to divert the discussion into a framework that suits here particular ideological need which is of course to substitute her ideology for any practical, concrete answer to the question originally asked.

Short version: Do as I have and put her on you IGNORE LIST.

[ComandanteVerdin]

The collapse of the Soviet Union was a major setback for Communism and Socialism in general. The Union was far from perfect but it could of changed over time. It's unfortunate that Russians today are going through severe economic setbacks, Russia is a nation in decline.

[Who?]

I don't think anyone can argue that the collapse of the fSU was a victory for socialism. In addition the facts that LevBronstein posted earlier the fall of the USSR also lead to some major problems for the international communist movement as a whole, for example the Communist Party of Canada had trouble fielding candidates after the fall of the USSR because they no longer had Soviet funding. We also saw the rise of globalization and the complete global dominance of the American empire leading to the exploitation of the working class around the globe. Let's get real here for a second, please.

[Rafiq]

Chapaev:



That argument will get you defending one set of bosses against another.





I'm not defending any bosses.

I'm just stating the fact that it wasn't a victory for Socialism.

Why? Well, tell me what reply you receive when telling people you are a Communist.

[Comrade_Stalin]

This poll shouldn't have been started. All it starts is a sectarian circle-jerk.

I want anyone who voted 'yes' to go to Russia and take note of the population decline, massive crime, rise of neo-fascism, the alcoholism and drug use, and all the homeless people that were never there during the USSR, no matter how degenerated it was.

Anybody who voted yes I hope has reconsidered their opinion.

http://media.eyeblast.org/newsbusters/static/2009/10/NewsweekRussia-full-2009-10-12.jpg

When is "then" and "Now" in this poll? WHat are the date for our information?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

SA:


Let me point out, before this thread too starts chasing the tail of another distortion by Rosa Lichtenstein-- that the issue is NOT if the fSU was a workers' state, or state capitalist.

1. So, despite your many threats to do so, you are still not ignoring me!:lol:


Do as I have and put her on you IGNORE LIST.

Perhaps this is another of your 'dialectical contradictions'?

2. As if the class nature of the fSU has nothing to do with this!:lol::lol:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Chapayev:


I'm not defending any bosses.

I'm just stating the fact that it wasn't a victory for Socialism.

Why? Well, tell me what reply you receive when telling people you are a Communist.

1. I actually said this:


That argument will get you defending one set of bosses against another.

Notice the future tense of the main verb.

2. I do not claim to be a 'communist'.

[Unclebananahead]

LB:



On that basis, given the massive decline in living standards (and life expectancy, etc.) that occurred between 1918 and 1921 in the fSU, it can't have been a workers' state.

On the other hand, and on the same basis, if we look at the massive decline in similar stats for Argentina recently, it must have been a workers' state, say, in the 1980s.:lol:

Wasn't the fSU undergoing a rather severe civil war during this time? Wouldn't that tend to explain the decline in living standards? In 91-93, the 'Russian Republic,' or whatever it called itself had no such major catastrophic event to point to, other than the destruction of the USSR and the privatization of the economy.

[robbo203]

Fortunately, the type of people who would--and did--vote 'Yes' on this poll are so irrelevant to workers and oppressed nationalities that they will have no serious involvement in a revolutionary movement. Forget their bizarre historical lines and their carte blanche embrace of imperialist propaganda; these folks have never done an hour of meaningful political organizing in their lives. The internet bibliography of online screeds written by several 'Yes' voters alone both demonstrates and verifies this assumption as fact.

The fall of the Soviet Union was the largest blow against workers and oppressed nationalities in the 20th century.

Personally speaking I abstained. It was neither a victory nor a defeat for socialism. Socialism simply did not figure in the picture. But the suggestion here that that it was "the largest blow against the workers" in the 20th century is utter tosh. People who make these sorts of claims have no understanding of what socialism is about or of the fundamentally anti-working class nature of the state capitalist regime that was the Soviet Union. Essentially it was change in the form of capitalism initiated by the ruling state capitalist class and in the interests of this class

[Unclebananahead]

@ Killer Enigma:
I tend to hope that such conclusions are wrong, but regrettably I suspect that you might be correct on this point. All revolutionary struggles pay for all their gains in the high price of blood. But for the 'pure socialist' types, they seem to like every single revolutionary struggle except for those that succeed and seize state power. That isn't to say that the resultant post-revolutionary were without fault. Errors were committed to be sure.

In the particular case of the USSR, Stalin and his associates used the isolation of the Soviet Union to place his own bureaucratic strata firmly in the commanding heights of Soviet society, and in the process establishing a rather brutal autocracy which proceeded to physically eliminate 17 out of the original 20-something central committee of the Communist party as spies, saboteurs and such. Stalin's 'socialism' killed a lot of socialists, as well outlawing the unauthorized leaving of the country.

Stalin's brutal excesses notwithstanding, the Soviet Union's economy still did things differently from the capitalist world, and managed to industrialize within a generation. This turned out to be absolutely essential to its very survival when the Nazi war machine invaded in June of 1941. The Soviet Union not only pushed the Germans out of Soviet territory, but took the fight all the way to Berlin, where they planted the Soviet flag on the top of the Reichstag. The USSR, through its planned economy, survived civil war, the global economic depression, and WWII to emerge a world super power.

Stalin was a brutal, bloodthirsty, paranoid tyrant to be sure, but in spite of this, the Soviet Union survived the amazing trials it was subjected to, and went on to launch the space age in 1957. We who wish to build socialism should recognize the accomplishments of the Soviet Union, as well as other states which came into power as a result of revolutionary worker's struggles, while being honest about their defects.

To say that all post-revolutionary societies brought into power by successful worker's struggles were complete and and total failures, and made no gains whatsoever is like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

[Property Is Robbery]

The anarchists' justification for voting yes on this is going to be golden.
I'm an Anarchist and I voted no

[Kléber]

Sorry, that was not the alternative. As Marx made clear in his analysis of the failures of the revolutions of the mid 19th century, there is no such thing as a "political revolution" that can fundamentally alter the social conditions of labor.
...
"Workers' political revolution" is simply an abstraction that reproduces the fundamental source of the deformation and destruction of the Russian Revolution-- that isolation of revolution from the advanced countries.
Of course a workers' political revolution would not alter the basic structure of the economy, which was public ownership - there were hardly any genuine capitalists to expropriate until the mass wave of privatizations began in 1992 following the Soviet capitulation. The only economic changes resulting from a workers' political revolution would be an end to market "reforms" and harsh repression of the privileges of bureaucrats and officials. Seizure of the political power effectively meant seizure of the means of production from the bureaucrat oligarchy, because of the hegemony of the state sector in the Soviet economy, as Jazzhands noted.


What you are offering is wishful thinking, not materialist analysis. The alternative that was necessary for the revolutionary transformation of the fSU was the reanimation of the international proletarian revolution, just as it was in 1917, 1919, 1926, 1928 etc. There were also reanimations of international revolution that were stomped out by the Soviet bureaucracy which make clear the necessity of defending proletarian internationalism against the counter-revolutionary nationalistic aspirations of the bureaucratic caste, in any and all countries. If the Soviet workers' own state officials were holding back the international revolution which is in their class interest, then a political revolution to throw out the home-grown traitors was definitely in order.

Correct me if wrong but are you saying there was absolutely no alternative for Soviet workers than A) languish under crumbling bureaucratic despotism or B) be absolutely dispossessed by gangster-oligarchs, depending on the whims of the ruling caste? It was right to sit back and let the Stalinists restore capitalism? The Soviet Union may be close to 20 years dead, but there is the question of Cuba and the DPRK. Do we just say: the Cuban and North Korean workers are fucked, any attempt to formulate a revolutionary program for those countries is "wishful thinking?"

When the working class took power in the October 1917 revolution, there was hardly any industry, the economy had been wrecked by imperialist conflict and occupation, and it still had to suffer another five years of war and blockade. Yet the tiny Soviet proletariat made do and reforged the economy with unprecedented speed, in spite of being held back in its progressive development by centrists like Stalin and rightists like Bukharin. The Soviet economy in 1991 may have been falling apart but it was a hundred times more powerful than what the proletariat had taken over upon the birth of Soviet power, and the working class had increased demographically from a minority to a majority. A well-organized revolutionary party would have a good opportunity to seize power during the political and economic crises accompanying capitalist restoration in a Stalinist country.


What is required for any of those good things you suggest-- throwing out corrupt officials etc.-- was the seizure not just of an abstract political power, but seizure of the means of production themselves and their integration into a program of production for need, itself integrated with the workers' direct control of the means of administering, distributing, communicating, the products of this program.

None of that was possible absent the conquering of power in the advanced countries.The USSR was such an advanced country by the time its elite moved to restore capitalism. The Soviet bureaucracy had developed Soviet industry at the expense of the Soviet periphery from the post-WWII transfer of industrial equipment from Eastern Europe (as war reparations), and the influx of resources, however limited, from friendly regimes around the world over the subsequent decades. In any case, 1917 proved that it is a mistake to focus only on the traditional imperialist countries as beacons of revolution, because super-profits mitigate the bourgeois expropriation of surplus value in imperialist metropoles; it's the proletarians of the oppressed nations who are most exploited and therefore most disposed toward revolution. Of course, the problem 100 years ago was that there were few proletarians in those oppressed countries, so any states they set up were necessarily isolated and prone to degeneration. Over the last few decades, capital solved that problem for us by shifting industrial production to the oppressed countries in pursuit of lower wages, thus sowing the seeds of its own destruction by locating the industrial proletariat and colonial super-exploitation in the same countries. Today we should fight for revolution anywhere, from the US to China to Somalia, as a step toward revolution everywhere.

[KurtFF8]

Essentially it was change in the form of capitalism initiated by the ruling state capitalist class and in the interests of this class

I just don't understand the "state capitalism" argument about the USSR. Perhaps if you're using a non-Marxist definition of the term "Capitalism" that isn't about the specific characteristics of the productive process/mode of production to define capitalism, then the term could make sense in another sense. But it seems that if we apply the Marxist analysis (which to me is the most in depth and helpful for trying to replace capitalism) then it is quite difficult to point to the USSR at any point really and call it "capitalist."

I've yet to see a compelling argument for this stance (and as usual I will recommend van der Linden's indictment of these theories at the end of Western Marxism and the Soviet Union as a reference.

[Kléber]

I'm confused too as the USSR lead the de-Stalining of the world after his dead. What would you have done. I think much of the same.
Let's take a brief refresher course on the historical Maoist/Hoxhaist stance on the USSR. Hoxhaists and Maoists considered the USSR to be a fascist, capitalist, imperialist power, and they waged armed conflicts against the Soviet army.

"Revisionism is the idea and action which leads the turning of a country from Socialism back to capitalism, the turning of a Communist party into a Fascist party." - Enver Hoxha


Call people who supported Stalin a cult, and left everthing up to each factory to do on ther own.Trotskyists do not support market "reforms." We do not consider industrialization to be comparable to "a muzhik buying a gramophone instead of a cow." The Left Opposition was the first and foremost advocate of industrialization in the Soviet Union and all real Trotskyists have opposed the restoration of capitalism in deformed workers' states.

Khrushchev was a Stalinist lackey who oversaw the purges of tens of thousands of people before he came out against the personality cult. His denunciation of Stalin was a mere bureaucratic formality, to calm popular anger over the memory of the state executions of hundreds of thousands of good Soviet citizens. It's similar to how today the US government apologizes for genocide against Native Americans, even though the US bourgeoisie continues to exploit and marginalize their communities. Khrushchev's thaw was also made possible by the fact that Stalin's clique had stabilized the political situation by murdering nearly all dissenters. Stalin had actually done the same thing as Khrushchev by using Yezhov as a scapegoat for the purges after wiping out his main enemies.

You also seem to harbor some false illusions about the history of the USSR and the nature of revisionism. Khrushchev did not free factory managers from the control of the state, in fact his administration was unlike that of Stalin or Brezhnev in that the wages of specialists and officials were decreased rather than increased. The signs of the revisionist apocalypse which you Stalinists go on about, were in fact all present under your beloved Stalin. Factory managers were permitted initiative and given bonuses under Stalin. Millionaires and a quasi-bourgeois luxury economy appeared under Stalin. The maximum salary limit (partmaximum) was abolished under Stalin. Economic experimentation similar to the Kosygin reforms was tried under Stalin in the "Neo-NEP" of 1934-36 which was put on hold for the coming war. A secret alliance was signed with Nazis under Stalin. The Communist International was closed down under Stalin. He/she who blames everything on Khrushchev is a historical illiterate, religious fanatic, sarcastic troll or some combination thereof.

[Cane Nero]

Fortunately, the type of people who would--and did--vote 'Yes' on this poll are so irrelevant to workers and oppressed nationalities that they will have no serious involvement in a revolutionary movement. Forget their bizarre historical lines and their carte blanche embrace of imperialist propaganda; these folks have never done an hour of meaningful political organizing in their lives. The internet bibliography of online screeds written by several 'Yes' voters alone both demonstrates and verifies this assumption as fact.



Do you think the majority of workers were involved in political organizations?

No, yet they are the key to the revolution, and many workers may be more revolutionary than me or you, my friend.

[Delenda Carthago]

I want to know who the motherfucker who voted yes is.

Anyway, the Soviet collapse is the biggest setback so far.
Me.Soviet Union stopped being socialist since 56. Socialfascism is what it was and it was destroying with its influence the rest of the socialist movements.Even your favorite KKE was a half ass revisionist party with nothing radical at all back then.

So its a big win that it got demolished.Now we can start over without their shadows over us.

[Unclebananahead]

@Unclebananahead:

If you have some time, I think you'd get a lot out of UCLA Professor of History J. Arch Getty's book, Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938 (http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Great-Purges-Reconsidered-Post-Soviet/dp/0521335701). Getty is neither a Marxist-Leninist nor sympathetic to Josef Stalin, but he objectively examines the role of Stalin in the purges of the CPSU and finds most of the claims by Western propagandists--and a startling number of leftists--wanting. Among providing a thorough narrative of the era and many other findings, Getty's book proves that Stalin actually had less control of the CPSU and the Soviet Union than both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher had over the Republicans/United States and the Conservative Party/UK, respectively. Check it out if you get a chance.

That said, I agree with you. There's a reason Lenin called left-communism "an infantile disorder," and you hit the nail on the head by pointing out that these people support nearly every revolutionary movement except for those that ever came to power. I agree with Mao Zedong, who said "Practice is the criterion of truth." A successful revolution is not a perfect one, and when you start actually talking about what a successful revolution would look like to a left-communist, you realize that their inability to talk in anything but abstractions comes from the fact that their "successful revolution" is just that: an abstraction.

Okay, so I took a look at that link to the book you suggested on Amazon, and finding myself intrigued, I ordered a copy. I paid a bit more than I would've liked (my preferred price for reading materials being $0 -- hence my preference for reading things online). But that's besides the point. I'm interested -- genuinely interested in what Mr. Getty (or was it Dr. Getty?) has to say (err, write) about the 'Stalin years' of the USSR. You wrote that Stalin had control only in a loose sense of the word, and that this is fleshed out in the book. We shall see.

Just out of curiosity, would you say that a Trotskyist would despise this book? I ask that purely out of curiosity, as I've found myself having Trotskyist or at least some strong pro-Trotsky leanings. But in all honesty, I'm trying to keep an open mind about tendencies and sects within Leninist Marxism. I'm pretty sure I'm not an 'anti-revisionist,' Maoist (Mao's relationship with Nixon and Kissinger helped make the decision a little easier), or Hoxhaist though, hahaha.

[Well Red]

Diello wrote:
"I'd like to see one of the people who voted "Yes" defend their position. Not that I feel they have an obligation to do so, but I am interested to hear what they have to say."

Well, Diello, I am one of the people in the minority who did just that, and here's why: Firstly, The Soviet Union failed, and failed spectacularly, in its half-arsed attempt to overthrow capitalism, thereby tarring real socialism, DEMOCRATIC socialism with an image that will probably take another century to recover from, if then.
Secondly, by definition, the USSR et al was actually an integral part of the capitalist system, known as 'state capitalism'. This is because the USSR and all other allegedly communist nations at no time removed the three key constituant components from their societies that would have differentiated them from the capitalist paradigm. These, simplistically, are as follows:
a). The use of money b). The existance of a ruling elite class, and c). State control of the system (in the interest of the ruling elite).
The abolition of money, the state and the ruling elite are the cornerstone to the construction of a true socialist society.
The key to why I believe that the demise of 'communism' was a good thing is however, due to the fact that to even believe that capitalism can be overthrown solely in certain areas of this planet and not in others means that you do not fully understand the concept of socialism in the first place.

Let me explain my points more fully.

If we believe that there are only two classes in society, the proletariat and the bourgeiosie, then why do some of us accept and defer to the very structure of the capitalist class, and accept the division of this planet into nation states?
Nation states are simply a way of dividing the working class into 'managable' entities, some of whom have more freedom than others, but whom are still at the whim and control of individual nation states and the capitalists that 'own' those nations. The vast majority of workers are not permitted to up and leave one area and move to another, without it being declared 'illegal'. Capital however has no restrictions on free movement.

Why are there restrictions on labour, and yet there is none on capital?

The only way that socialism will come about is when the workers realise that, we the majority, will be the ones making the decisions ON A GLOBAL scale, and not on the basis of which nation state you are owned by. Until we realise this, we will never truly be free. Until we continue to believe in the capitalists lie that we are British or Chinees or Russian, we will never take the jump to socialist enlightenment.
The capitalist is delighted that we still accept capitalism's dictates as to which nation we 'belong to' Whilst we still think like that and act on their constrained illusionary principals, of course we will merely attempt to organize along national lines.

Next point: Socialism cannot be imposed upon an unwilling people. The only way it can be achieved is via the democratic process, by an educated, willing majority of people who actively seek the overthrow of the crumbling and unworkable system that is capitalism.

Education is the key.

Many here understand the issues and how to proceed, and a Soviet style vanguardist approach, where we excite, then cajole, then restrict, then order, then imprison and then execute people who never understood let alone even agreed with us will never work.

THAT was the Soviet Union.

It was actually doomed to failure from the inception, and the Socialist Party of Great Britain/ World Socialist Movement (SPGB/WSM) has been saying that since the very start of the whole sorry Frankenstinian experiment.

Next point as to why I know that the demise of the USSR et al was a good thing for the socialist movement is to do with money.

The USSR never abolished money, as would occur in a global socialist system. In a true socialist system, there would be no need for money. People would continue to produce goods and services, as today, with the educated and pro-democratic global population realising that we would only need take what we needed to live a healthy and happy communal existance.
Detractors of this vision say that there will be scarcity of goods and that Humans are inately greedy; that the abolishment of money will lead to apocalyptic anarchy (using a populist notion of the meaning of the word). However, I and thousands of socialists like me say that this is simple scare-mongering, as there will not be as much scarcity as today due to major reorganisation of the way things are produced, what is produced and crucially where it is produced.
For instance I would say that in the current capitalist system, health, education, clean water, housing and most food stuffs are pretty well scarce in sub-saharan Africa, Haiti, N. Korea etc. as well as in many parts of the so-called first world as well!
Under a socialist system, society would make obsolete a whole raft of 'jobs': All the armies for instance... all the arms manufacturers, bankers and insurance companies for instance. Plus we would not have any unemployed people starving to death around the globe. They would be planting crops, building bridges etc etc. In place of poverty we would transform society, quite rapidly into a society of plenty.

But I digress somewhat.

To recap, and in a nutshell then, these are the reasons that I say that the fall of the Soviet State-Capitalist empire has been a good thing. It is only a shame that it didn't happen a lot sooner, or that it ever happened in the first place.

Yours for (true) Socialism;

Well Red.

[S.Artesian]

Of course a workers' political revolution would not alter the basic structure of the economy, which was public ownership - there were hardly any genuine capitalists to expropriate until the mass wave of privatizations began in 1992 following the Soviet capitulation. The only economic changes resulting from a workers' political revolution would be an end to market "reforms" and harsh repression of the privileges of bureaucrats and officials. Seizure of the political power effectively meant seizure of the means of production from the bureaucrat oligarchy, because of the hegemony of the state sector in the Soviet economy, as Jazzhands noted.

And what do you base this on, comrade, other than Trotsky's analysis of some 75 years ago?

Seizure of "political power" in the fSU meant fundamental reorganization of the economy, not as state property, but as social property. This is more than a superficial distinction. The difference is between abolishing the bureaucracy as a bureaucracy-- as the intermediation between the producers and production, and simply replacing the "bad" bureaucrats of the fSU, of "Stalin," with the "good," more accountable, more internationalist bureaucrats, of "Trotsky."

I'd have much more respect for your sort of position if it actually discussed or analyzed a single concrete element in the economy, and the economic relations, rather than simply say "oh, the property form is state property, ergo only a political revolution is needed."


There were also reanimations of international revolution that were stomped out by the Soviet bureaucracy which make clear the necessity of defending proletarian internationalism against the counter-revolutionary nationalistic aspirations of the bureaucratic caste, in any and all countries. If the Soviet workers' own state officials were holding back the international revolution which is in their class interest, then a political revolution to throw out the home-grown traitors was definitely in order.


If the bureaucracy were a class, then as a class it has a unique, specific, and necessary relation to the economy, to the social relations of production, and to the property form that crystallizes that social relation. If the bureaucracy were a class, expressing its own unique class interest, we better revisit all of Marx and find out how such a class developed within capitalist relations without out anyone detecting it prior to 1917.


Correct me if wrong but are you saying there was absolutely no alternative for Soviet workers than A) languish under crumbling bureaucratic despotism or B) be absolutely dispossessed by gangster-oligarchs, depending on the whims of the ruling caste? It was right to sit back and let the Stalinists restore capitalism?

You are wrong; you are corrected. I am not saying that, no more than the theory of permanent revolution condemns the proletariat in less capitalist-developed countries to not doing anything until, unless, without the proletariat in more capitalist-developed countries. I am saying, as uneven and combined development makes clear, without that completion in advanced countries, the revolution in the less advanced capitalist countries will not be able to resolve the contradiction of uneven and combined development and the result will be... what it has been, what it was in Poland with Solidarity, what it is in the fSU.


The Soviet Union may be close to 20 years dead, but there is the question of Cuba and the DPRK. Do we just say: the Cuban and North Korean workers are fucked, any attempt to formulate a revolutionary program for those countries is "wishful thinking?"


Of course not. What we say and do has to be realistic-- and that realism is that all efforts must include development, support, etc. of expanding the revolution outside national borders, and that can only be done by empowering the most radical of workers' democracy where the revolution takes power.


When the working class took power in the October 1917 revolution, there was hardly any industry, the economy had been wrecked by imperialist conflict and occupation, and it still had to suffer another five years of war and blockade. Yet the tiny Soviet proletariat made do and reforged the economy with unprecedented speed, in spite of being held back in its progressive development by centrists like Stalin and rightists like Bukharin.


Jesus, spare us all this confusion of dates, periods, and actual accomplishments. Because

1. when the workers took power in 1917, there certainly was industry, much more industry than in 1919, 21, or even 26.

2. In 1917, the economy was not wrecked with occupation by foreign troops-- the territory under German occupations was not economically critical.

3. No, the tiny proletariat did not reforge the economy with unprecedented speed. Look at the numbers, see when they meet and exceed levels of output, and productivity of 1914.



The USSR was such an advanced country by the time its elite moved to restore capitalism. The Soviet bureaucracy had developed Soviet industry at the expense of the Soviet periphery from the post-WWII transfer of industrial equipment from Eastern Europe (as war reparations), and the influx of resources, however limited, from friendly regimes around the world over the subsequent decades.

Sermons are not reality. The fSU was and was NOT such an advanced economy. It's productivity in agriculture in particular remained far below that of advanced capitalist economies. It's productivity in manufacturing output was also below that of advanced economies. If the the bureaucracy was able to create an advanced country in the fSU, then kiss your theory of permanent revolution good-bye. More importantly, kiss reality good-bye, as it is simply astounding to believe that the fSU achieved this advanced level after the devastation of WW2.

This does not mean that the fSU did not accomplish many advanced things-- it did, not the least of which is the degree to which it was able to recover from WW2.

That's exactly what uneven and combined development means, but uneven and combined development also means that the antagonisms are not just "techical matters," but also matters of social relations of production, with the resolution of that antagonism in relations being, again, dependent on revolution in the more advanced capitalist countries.




In any case, 1917 proved that it is a mistake to focus only on the traditional imperialist countries as beacons of revolution, because super-profits mitigate the bourgeois expropriation of surplus value in imperialist metropoles; it's the proletarians of the oppressed nations who are most exploited and therefore most disposed toward revolution.

More religious cant, this time from the bible of....MN Roy, I guess. Go back, or go forward, and show us where there are super rates of profits in the less developed counties, and how that is used to lessen the exploitation of workers in advanced countries. The rate of exploitation of workers in the advanced countries, the level of value reproduced and expanded per unit of input is greater in the advanced countries than in the less advanced countries.

And I'm sure all those workers in Germany, France, etc etc both then and now appreciate knowing just how much more the workers of-- what countries?-- are disposed toward revolution than they are. Can you give me some examples? Like are the workers in Brazil more inclined toward revolution than the workers in... Ireland? UK? Greece? France? Spain? Portugal?

Let's not mistake the immediate or historical circumstances in the US and Australia for the circumstances once and future for all advanced countries.



Of course, the problem 100 years ago was that there were few proletarians in those oppressed countries, so any states they set up were necessarily isolated and prone to degeneration. Over the last few decades, capital solved that problem for us by shifting industrial production to the oppressed countries in pursuit of lower wages, thus sowing the seeds of its own destruction by locating the industrial proletariat and colonial super-exploitation in the same countries. Today we should fight for revolution anywhere, from the US to China to Somalia, as a step toward revolution everywhere.

I don't mean to be a prick, but in the immortal words of the Four Tops, "I Can't Help Myself." Do you place your hand over your heart when you recite that pledge of allegiance? Don't you think it's a big smug, not to mention pointless, to pound the table about fighting for revolution anywhere and everywhere when nobody has suggested anything else?

After all, it's not like you are Moses bringing down god's tablets to a bunch of blaspheming heretics who are dancing around a golden calf. Or is it... to you?

[Tavarisch_Mike]

The Swedes have free housing for all? Sweden gave material aid to anti-colonial struggles?

In any event, the reforms in Sweden were only possible because of the victory of the workers in Russia. Now that the USSR is gone, the global bourgeoisie is taking back all those concessions, because there is no alternative anymore. Socialism failed, the workers have to suck it up. The fall of the USSR wasn't merely bad for the workers of the USSR or the global socialist movement. It has been bad, now becoming a disaster, for Western Europe's working which was able to win concessions from their bourgeoisies because of the mere existence of the USSR.

OMG! THIS!

The swedish labour movement didnt start to do some Big progress until the year of ...1917! Then the situation was really crapy and wen the news of the russian revolution arrived the people here also revolted, which lead to the first reforms of improvement for the working class in Sweden. The whole existence of the USSR did scare the shit out of the borgeousie and that made it possible for radical class struggle and social reforms to happen. After the fall of the wall and the later on collapse of the eastern bloc, the wellfare system in many western countrys started to be cuted down, labour market became more insecure and unemployment rised. This is something thats ignorred in the west, that many (if not all) of our losess is entirerly conected with the collapse of the USSR, not to menthion the increasing of economical crises since then.

I just came home frome my first visit to Cuba, things there are are right now pretty bad. However Evrybody that was old enough to have lived during the existence of the Soviet Union did say that evrything then was good, no one complained over that periode. The period of 1991-1994 is knowned to be the harschest time for the cubans, where they hade to endure food shortages, closed industries and the stop of new products (which still is going on). Much of this could also be said about the DPRK, not to menthion the situation in the former eastern bloc.

Today we are seing a rise for socialism in Latin America and South East Asia, France and Greece. This is something very good and will hopefully increasy and spred, however generally the strengh of the labour movement and the situation for the global proletariat has marginalized very hard and for the majority of the world the situation does not seem to change so much for the better, the neoliberal crussade is almoust unchallanged. With all this i cant see how the collaapse of the Soviet Union have been any kind of succes for socialism, rather it really is the greatest catastrophy in the history and have showed that the slogan 'Socialism eu Barbarie' are the only choices.

[pierrotlefou]

I very hesitantly voted yes but I reject the notion that voting yes means that you support American Imperialism or Capitalism. I agree that a state is important and useful to achieve socialism but neither the US or the USSR is/was doing anything but destroying socialism especially at the time of the collapse of the USSR(i do however think Lenin knew exactly what he was doing and that was when they were doing something positive for socialism). I do think though that now that we have shed ourselves of a demonized old machine we can create the movement that is necessary in bringing real democracy to oppressed and working class people. Maybe US Imperialism should have ended first but either way, both need(ed) to go if we want to achieve socialism. If someone would like to show me to an essay or say something intelligent in response instead of just calling me stupid(this is common on almost every forum ever) it would be greatly appreciated.

[robbo203]

robbo203:

Have you ever done any meaningful political organizing worth mentioning?

Define "meaningful political organising" and Ill tell you. I certainly can't say Ive ever been involved in some trendy lefty, opportunist, half baked reformist political organising but I have been involved in plenty of revolutuionary socialist political activity. Why do you ask?

[robbo203]

Diello wrote:
"I'd like to see one of the people who voted "Yes" defend their position. Not that I feel they have an obligation to do so, but I am interested to hear what they have to say."

Well, Diello, I am one of the people in the minority who did just that, and here's why: Firstly, The Soviet Union failed, and failed spectacularly, in its half-arsed attempt to overthrow capitalism, thereby tarring real socialism, DEMOCRATIC socialism with an image that will probably take another century to recover from, if then.
Secondly, by definition, the USSR et al was actually an integral part of the capitalist system, known as 'state capitalism'. This is because the USSR and all other allegedly communist nations at no time removed the three key constituant components from their societies that would have differentiated them from the capitalist paradigm. These, simplistically, are as follows:
a). The use of money b). The existance of a ruling elite class, and c). State control of the system (in the interest of the ruling elite).
The abolition of money, the state and the ruling elite are the cornerstone to the construction of a true socialist society.
The key to why I believe that the demise of 'communism' was a good thing is however, due to the fact that to even believe that capitalism can be overthrown solely in certain areas of this planet and not in others means that you do not fully understand the concept of socialism in the first place.

Let me explain my points more fully.

If we believe that there are only two classes in society, the proletariat and the bourgeiosie, then why do some of us accept and defer to the very structure of the capitalist class, and accept the division of this planet into nation states?
Nation states are simply a way of dividing the working class into 'managable' entities, some of whom have more freedom than others, but whom are still at the whim and control of individual nation states and the capitalists that 'own' those nations. The vast majority of workers are not permitted to up and leave one area and move to another, without it being declared 'illegal'. Capital however has no restrictions on free movement.

Why are there restrictions on labour, and yet there is none on capital?

The only way that socialism will come about is when the workers realise that, we the majority, will be the ones making the decisions ON A GLOBAL scale, and not on the basis of which nation state you are owned by. Until we realise this, we will never truly be free. Until we continue to believe in the capitalists lie that we are British or Chinees or Russian, we will never take the jump to socialist enlightenment.
The capitalist is delighted that we still accept capitalism's dictates as to which nation we 'belong to' Whilst we still think like that and act on their constrained illusionary principals, of course we will merely attempt to organize along national lines.

Next point: Socialism cannot be imposed upon an unwilling people. The only way it can be achieved is via the democratic process, by an educated, willing majority of people who actively seek the overthrow of the crumbling and unworkable system that is capitalism.

Education is the key.

Many here understand the issues and how to proceed, and a Soviet style vanguardist approach, where we excite, then cajole, then restrict, then order, then imprison and then execute people who never understood let alone even agreed with us will never work.

THAT was the Soviet Union.

It was actually doomed to failure from the inception, and the Socialist Party of Great Britain/ World Socialist Movement (SPGB/WSM) has been saying that since the very start of the whole sorry Frankenstinian experiment.

Next point as to why I know that the demise of the USSR et al was a good thing for the socialist movement is to do with money.

The USSR never abolished money, as would occur in a global socialist system. In a true socialist system, there would be no need for money. People would continue to produce goods and services, as today, with the educated and pro-democratic global population realising that we would only need take what we needed to live a healthy and happy communal existance.
Detractors of this vision say that there will be scarcity of goods and that Humans are inately greedy; that the abolishment of money will lead to apocalyptic anarchy (using a populist notion of the meaning of the word). However, I and thousands of socialists like me say that this is simple scare-mongering, as there will not be as much scarcity as today due to major reorganisation of the way things are produced, what is produced and crucially where it is produced.
For instance I would say that in the current capitalist system, health, education, clean water, housing and most food stuffs are pretty well scarce in sub-saharan Africa, Haiti, N. Korea etc. as well as in many parts of the so-called first world as well!
Under a socialist system, society would make obsolete a whole raft of 'jobs': All the armies for instance... all the arms manufacturers, bankers and insurance companies for instance. Plus we would not have any unemployed people starving to death around the globe. They would be planting crops, building bridges etc etc. In place of poverty we would transform society, quite rapidly into a society of plenty.

But I digress somewhat.

To recap, and in a nutshell then, these are the reasons that I say that the fall of the Soviet State-Capitalist empire has been a good thing. It is only a shame that it didn't happen a lot sooner, or that it ever happened in the first place.

Yours for (true) Socialism;

Well Red.

Its good to hear a genuine socialist perspective on the matter for a change as opposed to the depressingly misinformed guff from the usual suspects who think the Soviet Union was the best thing since sliced bread. It was not. It was a thoroughly repugnant anti-working class regime which no socialist would touch with a bargepole. I shed no teares for its passing - it dragged the good name of socialism through the mud for decades - but I don't consider what they have got now is any better

My only slight quibble with your peice, Well Red, is that I think you might have slightly misunderstood what the poll was for . It wasnt really about "Was the fall of the Soviet Union a good thing?" but rather "was the collapse of the Soviet Union a victory for socialism". I think it is possible to vote "no" - although I abstained - and regard the Soviet Union as a state capitalist regime completely undeserving of support

[Sendo]

How many people of you arguing against the USSR are familiar with the "No true Scotsman" fallacy? Because most people know it, if not by name. We have a better chance arguing the USSR was a net good for reasons X or Y (like that the human rights record of the USSR wasn't bad considering there were no lynchings) or saying people like Robert Conquest are poor historians.

Avoiding the topic due to "no true Scotsman" makes us look intellectually weak or cowardly. And joining the side of the right in deriding the USSR due to "no true Scotsman" wins us no credibility at best, and makes fools of us at worst. The line of "I'm a socialist but I hate Stalinism" may win recruits among disillusioned UK and US liberals, but I don't think it helps the struggle. I used to think along these lines and it never helped. People never said "I'll seriously consider your data on the benefits of socialized medicine and not write you off as a radical lunatic Chicken Little because you have proven your good sense to me by hating Stalin with as much vitriol as Reagan." No, many just turned off their brains when they heard socialism or when they deduced I was discussing socialism would tell me about American exceptionalism or go into witch-hunt mode.

I hope you anti-USSR people have a substantial reason for hating the USSR. Because arguing your points because you feel icky about Stalin and you want to distance yourself from him is foolish in the light of certain facts when you start doing your own research. You might discover that Cuba was able to manage an urban gardening program which has helped to make Cuba the only country with a sustainable economy (source:Nature Journal). It's hard to uphold the whole "Cuba/post-Lenin USSR/PRC were never socialist" line after a while.

[Sendo]

Diello wrote:
"I'd like to see one of the people who voted "Yes" defend their position. Not that I feel they have an obligation to do so, but I am interested to hear what they have to say."

Well, Diello, I am one of the people in the minority who did just that, and here's why: Firstly, The Soviet Union failed, and failed spectacularly, in its half-arsed attempt to overthrow capitalism, thereby tarring real socialism, DEMOCRATIC socialism with an image that will probably take another century to recover from, if then.
Secondly, by definition, the USSR et al was actually an integral part of the capitalist system, known as 'state capitalism'. This is because the USSR and all other allegedly communist nations at no time removed the three key constituant components from their societies that would have differentiated them from the capitalist paradigm. These, simplistically, are as follows:
a). The use of money b). The existance of a ruling elite class, and c). State control of the system (in the interest of the ruling elite).

a) the abolition of money is only possible under communism, a state-less system. not possible when the rest of the world is capitalist. You're confusing communism with the socialist stage. Socialism is the transition away from capitalism. I suggest reading Mao's works on the topic. If you understand what capitalism is, then you can see that New Democracy and socialism represent important differences. And using your own intelligence you might be able to make a chart of differences between revisionism and capitalism. There are qualitative differences that came after the break-up.

b)Party members did form something of an elite, yes. Doesn't invalidate everything else. This is like saying that because your father always held door open for women he was in no way an anti-chauvinist progressive.

c) State control is just using scary terms for collective control. It's collective control from a central authority and not a local commune. It was not run in the interests of the ruling elite. It didn't produce Lamborghinis for the "ruling class." There was also no inheritable "ruling class." A ruling class is not formed by meritocracy, as incompetent people do not rise within the CP-SU or the CP-China. Ruling classes self-perpetuate with social connections and family inheritance. None of Stalin's high school buddies or cousins became premier.

[4 Leaf Clover]

But those who agree with me would be happy for the world to be dominated by the working class free from the dead weight of substitutionist parties and tendencies.

and so would 100% of users of this forum. But that's not the point of question. Point is rejecting everything that isn't 100% morally pure and innocent , is plain Idealism , and doesn't have to do anything with Marxism. These are old politics that we dropped. We wouldn't represent more then a sad joke and our political movement would be completely impotent and fragile if we rejected and neglected our potential allies. Our goal is not to make a terrorist organization , but revolutionary movement

[Well Red]

By your own logic then, Hitler was also a staunch socialist, simply because he said he was and his party had the word socialist in it.
Actions speak louder than words (or slogans)
Hitler was no socialist due to him not acting like one. Stalin's USSR was not socialist for the reasons mentioned in my previous post.
Being a socialist isn't merely a self-defined state of mind, it is adhering to the principles of socialism.
How do you define socialism?

[Rafiq]

Chapayev:



1. I actually said this:



Notice the future tense of the main verb.

2. I do not claim to be a 'communist'.

That's surprising.

I thought most of the Revlefters were Communists, or at least were trying to achieve Communism.

Can I ask why?

[Well Red]

a) the abolition of money is only possible under communism, a state-less system. not possible when the rest of the world is capitalist. You're confusing communism with the socialist stage. Socialism is the transition away from capitalism. I suggest reading Mao's works on the topic. If you understand what capitalism is, then you can see that New Democracy and socialism represent important differences. And using your own intelligence you might be able to make a chart of differences between revisionism and capitalism. There are qualitative differences that came after the break-up.

b)Party members did form something of an elite, yes. Doesn't invalidate everything else. This is like saying that because your father always held door open for women he was in no way an anti-chauvinist progressive.

c) State control is just using scary terms for collective control. It's collective control from a central authority and not a local commune. It was not run in the interests of the ruling elite. It didn't produce Lamborghinis for the "ruling class." There was also no inheritable "ruling class." A ruling class is not formed by meritocracy, as incompetent people do not rise within the CP-SU or the CP-China. Ruling classes self-perpetuate with social connections and family inheritance. None of Stalin's high school buddies or cousins became premier.

Regarding point a).-I am not interested in stages. Stages will not help to get us to what you call communism. As mentioned in my first post, you still think in the way that the capitalists want you to think. You are happy to think of the world as a collection of nation states instead of thinking like a socialist i.e. that there are only workers and owners, and that when the transition occurs it will be globally. Not by nation state. Therefore there will be no 'socialist transition era', capitalism as a whole will in all probability simply evolve into a socialist/communist era.

b). Yes, but my father didn't start a revolution declaring that men should no longer hold open doors for women. Stalin sought to overthrow capitalism and then simply instituted a bastardized version of it.

c). The state is the mechanism for oppressing the workers. You know, like organizing Gulags and deciding which dacha's the ruling elite were assigned in the plummiest resorts.
Yeah, that sort of thing never happened in Stalin's USSR.

[Dimentio]

No.

It was a blow for socialist movements world-wide, not because the Soviet Union was socialistic or even a humanitarian society (it wasn't) but because it destroyed the one major ideological competitor to the western world and demoralised social movements world-wide, both ideologically and in terms of resources.

[Dimentio]

It was a catastrophic defeat, from which it has taken the world revolutionary anti-capitalist movement nearly a generation to recover, regardless of whether you're Stalinist, Maoist, or Trot.

They have only recovered partially and regionally, like in Latin America and South Asia.

[S.Artesian]

Its good to hear a genuine socialist perspective on the matter for a change as opposed to the depressingly misinformed guff from the usual suspects who think the Soviet Union was the best thing since sliced bread. It was not. It was a thoroughly repugnant anti-working class regime which no socialist would touch with a bargepole. I shed no teares for its passing - it dragged the good name of socialism through the mud for decades - but I don't consider what they have got now is any better

My only slight quibble with your peice, Well Red, is that I think you might have slightly misunderstood what the poll was for . It wasnt really about "Was the fall of the Soviet Union a good thing?" but rather "was the collapse of the Soviet Union a victory for socialism". I think it is possible to vote "no" - although I abstained - and regard the Soviet Union as a state capitalist regime completely undeserving of support

My only slight quibble is that nobody here to my recollection has called the fSU socialist. I don't know about the others, but I don't think it was socialist, and I don't think it's collapse was a "victory" for socialism.

Take a look around, comrades, tell me where the program for socialism has advanced because of the collapse of the fSU. Where exactly is the "victory"?

Is it solely in your heads, where you think that "ah... the field has been cleared. Now we don't have to deal with trying to distinguish the USSR from real socialism"? If so, that's the only place it is because that thinking is just pure idealism-- actually its worse than idealism it's infantile magical thinking. "I think it's so, therefore it is so."

There has been nothing "victorious" in this collapse for socialism, as only the conscious movement of the proletariat as a class-for-itself is amounts to a victory for socialism. For there to be a plus, a positive influence on that possibility, those influences must strengthen the self-confidence, the independence, of the working class; those influences have to strengthen its resistance to demands of the bourgeoisie and of capital for increased exploitation.

So do we see that anywhere after the collapse of the USSR? Do you see that positive influence on the proletariat of Hungary, the Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, El Salvador, Bolivia?

Sure you can think in your head that there was a victory for socialism. But an outside observer would point out that the head doing that think is stuck firmly up its own ass.

[Dimentio]

To some extent, the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem did represent a sort of victory for Monotheism, since it allowed the Christian cult to be spread across the Empire.

[S.Artesian]

To some extent, the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem did represent a sort of victory for Monotheism, since it allowed the Christian cult to be spread across the Empire.

And how has that worked out for humanity? Good, you think?

[robbo203]

My only slight quibble is that nobody here to my recollection has called the fSU socialist. I don't know about the others, but I don't think it was socialist, and I don't think it's collapse was a "victory" for socialism.

Take a look around, comrades, tell me where the program for socialism has advanced because of the collapse of the fSU. Where exactly is the "victory"?

Is it solely in your heads, where you think that "ah... the field has been cleared. Now we don't have to deal with trying to distinguish the USSR from real socialism"? If so, that's the only place it is because that thinking is just pure idealism-- actually its worse than idealism it's infantile magical thinking. "I think it's so, therefore it is so."

There has been nothing "victorious" in this collapse for socialism, as only the conscious movement of the proletariat as a class-for-itself is amounts to a victory for socialism. For there to be a plus, a positive influence on that possibility, those influences must strengthen the self-confidence, the independence, of the working class; those influences have to strengthen its resistance to demands of the bourgeoisie and of capital for increased exploitation.

So do we see that anywhere after the collapse of the USSR? Do you see that positive influence on the proletariat of Hungary, the Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, El Salvador, Bolivia?

Sure you can think in your head that there was a victory for socialism. But an outside observer would point out that the head doing that think is stuck firmly up its own ass.

If you had actually bothered to read what I said you will have seen that i did not consider the collapse of the Soviet union was a victory for socialism any more than it was a defeat for socialism. That is precisely why I abstained on the poll. I am certainly not going to pretend to shed tears for the the passing of this state capitalist regime which was rotten and antiworking class to the core but I dont think what suceeded it can be regarded as a step forward for the working class. One form of capitalism was merely replaced by another

[tbasherizer]

I made a judgement too quickly and voted "Yes" on this poll. I didn't do it because of a knee-jerk Trostkyist/Hoxhaist/Maoist dogma, but because the Soviet Union itself wasn't an example of socialism, but was being pushed by both its own propagandists and those of the US as being one. This sullies the name of socialism, makes preconceived notions about what Marxism is, and promotes the western status quo (in the west at least). What I didn't take into account, however, was that the Soviet Union's immense power counterbalanced the US' power in the global arena, making room for more paths more or less independent from the official Soviet line. Examples include Cuba's prosperity with Soviet help, Soviet support for Vietnam, America's reluctance to go into any major kind of hot war because of the possibility of Soviet intervention.
I'd change my vote to undecided, seeing as the Soviet Union certainly had some interesting developments that could be adapted, along with ideas, in a future workers' state, and certainly, Lenin, if not perfectly workerist in orientation, was a bold figure I'm sure many of us can hold some respect for.

[William Howe]

In a sense, yes, and in a sense, no.

Yes, because on the whole, the society prospered a bit more under the new system than the last years of the crumbling old.

No, because now, Russia's society is even-worse off than the Soviet Union was under its mock-socialist beaurocracy. The Soviet Union was only communist until the 1920s, when Stalin took over, after which it became a jumbled nightmare of capitalism, totalitarianism, socialism, and bearocraticism.

[S.Artesian]

If you had actually bothered to read what I said you will have seen that i did not consider the collapse of the Soviet union was a victory for socialism any more than it was a defeat for socialism. That is precisely why I abstained on the poll. I am certainly not going to pretend to shed tears for the the passing of this state capitalist regime which was rotten and antiworking class to the core but I dont think what suceeded it can be regarded as a step forward for the working class. One form of capitalism was merely replaced by another


If you weren't such a super-sensitive and narcissitic character you would realize that I said the only disagreement I had with you was the fact that you were reacting to characterization of the fSU as socialist. The fact that I used the plural "Take a look around comrades...." might have given you a clue... that is if you actually read what was written.

The rest of it was for all those other deep thinkers who think there's something good in Friedmaniacs liquidationist free market storm-troopers destroying the living standards of pretty much a whole country.

But now that we're at it, I think there's more to this than "one form of capitalism replaced another" just as I think there's more to Pinochet's overthrow of Allende in spite of the fact that that most definitely was one form of capitalism overthrowing another. And the "more" to it is the fact that Allende was destined to be overthrown. The only issue was who was going to do it, the Chilean workers, or the military in the service of international and domestic capitalism.

We got the answer to that one, and we saw what was done to the workers-- and not just of Chile, but to the entire Southern cone of Latin America.

Doesn't mean we defend Allende. On the contrary, we undercut Allende by organizing and mobilizing independently to defeat Pinochet at the very time Allende is on the radio telling the workers to "stay home" and "trust democracy."

So... call the fSU anything you like, but its collapse and destruction was a blow to the workers and has much more significance than some sort of intra-class squabble.

[robbo203]

If you weren't such a super-sensitive and narcissitic character you would realize that I said the only disagreement I had with you was the fact that you were reacting to characterization of the fSU as socialist. The fact that I used the plural "Take a look around comrades...." might have given you a clue... that is if you actually read what was written..

Given that your comments followed my quote which you posted I might be forgiven for think they were addressed to me.

I take it that , since you say your only disagrement with me was that i was reacting to the "characterization of the fSU as socialist", that you consider the FSU to have been "socialist". In which case we have an almighty disagreement on our hands



The rest of it was for all those other deep thinkers who think there's something good in Friedmaniacs liquidationist free market storm-troopers destroying the living standards of pretty much a whole country.

But now that we're at it, I think there's more to this than "one form of capitalism replaced another" just as I think there's more to Pinochet's overthrow of Allende in spite of the fact that that most definitely was one form of capitalism overthrowing another. And the "more" to it is the fact that Allende was destined to be overthrown. The only issue was who was going to do it, the Chilean workers, or the military in the service of international and domestic capitalism.
.

There is always more to anything than what first meets the eye but essentially the collapse of the Soviet Union was indeed just one form of capitalism being replaced by another and incidentally at the behest of the state capitalist ruling class itself that made this all possible in its "revolution from above"




So... call the fSU anything you like, but its collapse and destruction was a blow to the workers and has much more significance than some sort of intra-class squabble.

If it was a blow to the workers, as you put it, that means, according to you, the Soviet Union was worth keeping. Nice to know that this antiworking class regime could have counted on your support. For my part Im dammed if I will shed any tears over the passing of this state capitalist dictatorship and I find it truly astonishing that its passing should evoke such conservative nostalgia by so called "socialists" for a regime that, after all, utterly sullied the good name of socialism

[IronEastBloc]

Anyone who thinks that fall of the USSR was a good thing is either a) a child who just discovered trotskyism, or b) a kid who is either anarchist or trot (or some unholy combination of both) and is still in college, surrounded by ideas of pacificist and liberal outlooks (both as far removed from reality as can be).

the fall of the USSR has been a defeat for Socialism. but socialism can't die, as long as the conditions making communism necessary are still in play.

[MilkmanofHumanKindness]

What did the Soviet Union represent? To what degree did workers have a say in the running of the workplace? To what extent was it Democratic? What were living conditions like?

I find myself saying that largely, the Soviet Union represented a bureaucratic form of central planning. The workers did not have a degree of control in running of the workplace. It was not very democratic.

But then again, it's not like Oligarchy and gangster capitalism Russia is undergoing now is that much of an improvement.

Because of this I answered, No. The fall of the Soviet Union no matter how bad it was, wasn't a victory for socialism as workers were simply put under the heels of a new class.

At best it was a "neutral" switch, at worst it was a horrific leap backwards.

[S.Artesian]

Given that your comments followed my quote which you posted I might be forgiven for think they were addressed to me.

I take it that , since you say your only disagrement with me was that i was reacting to the "characterization of the fSU as socialist", that you consider the FSU to have been "socialist". In which case we have an almighty disagreement on our hands

You really don't pay attention do you? I said that I took exception because you were basing your reaction on the characterization of the fSU as socialist. I said neither I nor nobody that I can recall in this discussion called it socialist.



There is always more to anything than what first meets the eye but essentially the collapse of the Soviet Union was indeed just one form of capitalism being replaced by another and incidentally at the behest of the state capitalist ruling class itself that made this all possible in its "revolution from above"

Essentially it was an assault on the living standards and organization of the workers just like other assaults in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Indonesia, China, etc etc etc.



If it was a blow to the workers, as you put it, that means, according to you, the Soviet Union was worth keeping. Nice to know that this antiworking class regime could have counted on your support. For my part Im dammed if I will shed any tears over the passing of this state capitalist dictatorship and I find it truly astonishing that its passing should evoke such conservative nostalgia by so called "socialists" for a regime that, after all, utterly sullied the good name of socialism

Nice bit of sophistry at work. I already explained that by drawing on the example of Allende and Pinochet. You want to huff and puff and stick your chest out, and stick your thumb in and cry "what a good boy am I" by posing as real, firmly committed friend of the working class by "shedding no tears for the passing of the "state capitalist" dictatorship? Well, good little boy, nobody's asking you to shed tears for that. Just recognize what the impact was on workers, and workers around the world.

I'm not nostalgic for a thing, least of all poseurs talking about how they don't shed any tears for something as "sullied" as the fSU, when nobody's asking for tears, just material analysis of the class struggle-- of which you have no conception.

Run along and play with your plum now, Jack.

[IndependentCitizen]

Just because of its dictatorship like government, it didn't mean the workers couldn't make it better through mass organisation. It was a defeat, because the capitalist elite continue to use it as propaganda as to how Socialism fails.

[Paulappaul]

Frankly the Capitalist elite were using the working Soviet Union as a means of propaganda. At least the Soviet Union won't claim anymore lives for Socialism, which really does more to disenfranchise the movement then anything. Plus it's great for the Capitalist press. When the Soviet Union fell it became solid for socialists that State Capitalism isn't a means to Communism.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

Frankly the Capitalist elite were using the working Soviet Union as a means of propaganda. At least the Soviet Union won't claim anymore lives for Socialism, which really does more to disenfranchise the movement then anything. Plus it's great for the Capitalist press. When the Soviet Union fell it became solid for socialists that State Capitalism isn't a means to Communism.

You really wish that this was true, doesnt you?

[4 Leaf Clover]

By your own logic then, Hitler was also a staunch socialist, simply because he said he was and his party had the word socialist in it.
Actions speak louder than words (or slogans)
Hitler was no socialist due to him not acting like one. Stalin's USSR was not socialist for the reasons mentioned in my previous post.
Being a socialist isn't merely a self-defined state of mind, it is adhering to the principles of socialism.
How do you define socialism?
I define socialism through marxism. Hitler had nothing to do with it. Stalin did

[Milk Sheikh]

People who voted yes must be ashamed of themselves. Whether or not we like it, socialism and Soviet Union are synonymous, so a defeat for the latter was pretty damning for socialism. People point to this event and gloat, "Look, we told you all along that socialism was impracticable, bla bla."

Second, oppressed nations were greatly helped by SU; it put the oppressive western nations in check, unlike China which prostitutes herself to the west all too often. At least, SU took a bold stand against the west and defended the oppressed nations at all times.

Third, SU was at least a step toward socialism. Was it perfect? Nope, but that's how we learn. We make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, try to do better next time, and so forth. Rome wasn't built in a day. Are people here so naive as to think that socialism would be flawless and without struggle from day one? It's a long, continuing, and perhaps also a painful process where leaders as well as followers are going to make a lot of mistakes along the way. That's how societies evolve - by making mistakes and learning from them.

The problem, as I can see, is not SU. The problem is the idealistic view that most people have, an idealism bordering on self-righteousness! People expect a socialist nation to glow with perfection right from day one - how is that realistic? Socialists do not have a magic wand in their hands; SU did the best it could. If SU raises again, it will do better because the past has been a good lesson. This is the attitude we must have - a rational attitude considering all political and economic factors rather than a moralistic one where we evaluate everything in terms of good and bad, right and wrong.

In this context, it's easy to see that SU was possibly the greatest (socialist) experiment in human history and will continue to inspire many more nations in the future. If one argues that it failed eventually, I'd say that failures are part of life; slavery was around for a much longer duration than concepts like freedom and human rights. Does that mean slavery is right? Likewise, Soviet socialism may not have lasted longer, but it doesn't make it undesirable. Time and failure are not the issue; principles are.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

Also its kind of important to point out that the SU was attacked entirerly frome 1917-1991, which lead to its collapse not beacause of the old saying "Socialism doesnt work" and that in a rapport frome CIA 1984 they wasnt expecting the SU to collapse.

[robbo203]

People who voted yes must be ashamed of themselves. Whether or not we like it, socialism and Soviet Union are synonymous, so a defeat for the latter was pretty damning for socialism. People point to this event and gloat, "Look, we told you all along that socialism was impracticable, bla bla.".

If anyone needs to feel "ashamed" it is gullible individuals like you who by associating socialism with a thoroughly anti-working class state capitalist regime have helped to drag the good name of socialism through the mud

[RadioRaheem84]

If anyone needs to feel "ashamed" it is gullible individuals like you who by associating socialism with a thoroughly anti-working class state capitalist regime have helped to drag the good name of socialism through the mud


I think capitalists did a better job of that by distorting the realities of the USSR and the historical record.

Before I became a Communist, I thought Soviet Russia was a poor backwards place suffering under the brute of a Stalinist and in need of serious capitalist freedom. Little did I know that Russians were living fairly well, more so than they are now.

[robbo203]

I think capitalists did a better job of that by distorting the realities of the USSR and the historical record.

Before I became a Communist, I thought Soviet Russia was a poor backwards place suffering under the brute of a Stalinist and in need of serious capitalist freedom. Little did I know that Russians were living fairly well, more so than they are now.

The "capitalists" as you put it had a mutual interest with the state capitalists who ran the show in the Soviet Union in perpetuating the myth that the Soviet Union was in some sense "socialist" and that the global geopolitical reality was one in which a so called socialist bloc confronted a capitalist bloc. It is revolutionary socialists who almost alone have been tirelessy combating this myth for decades. Now it seems the best that protagonists of this myth can up with in its support is that life un the Soviet Union might have been a little bit better than is presented in the West. If it was, so what? How does that in any sense make the Soviet Union "socialist"

[RadioRaheem84]

The "capitalists" as you put it had a mutual interest with the state capitalists who ran the show in the Soviet Union in perpetuating the myth that the Soviet Union was in some sense "socialist" and that the global geopolitical reality was one in which a so called socialist bloc confronted a capitalist bloc. It is revolutionary socialists who almost alone have been tirelessy combating this myth for decades. Now it seems the best that protagonists of this myth can up with in its support is that life un the Soviet Union might have been a little bit better than is presented in the West. If it was, so what? How does that in any sense make the Soviet Union "socialist"

A little bit better? Try a whole lot. Try an entirely alternative system that did not rely on imperialism, neo-colonialism and a total wage exploitation where the spread was 10000 to 1 vs. the USSR's 5 to 1.

Try a system in which people were given the basics to live and full employment.

Try advances that came in such a short period of time. An advance that scared the bourgeois around the world because it lead to other peripheral nations figuring out that development was possible without the center.

What was needed in the USSR was more democratic struggles against the bureaucrats. Not it's total dissolve to give socialism a better name.

Seriously, you sound like the people that mock others for liking the fact that communist kids were fed.

The USSR was closer to socialism than the USA and a fight to make it more so was needed, not to dissolve it.

[Paulappaul]

You really wish that this was true, doesnt you?

I really wish you posted better than a twat.

[S.Artesian]

I really wish you posted better than a twat.

That's fucking funny. I was going to say the same thing about you.

[Triple A]

Even tough the Soivet Union was an example at start it ended in an authoritarian state, and I am an anarchist.
And I read in this forum that in socialism the workers own the factories and that did not happen in soviet union.

[robbo203]

A little bit better? Try a whole lot. Try an entirely alternative system that did not rely on imperialism, neo-colonialism and a total wage exploitation where the spread was 10000 to 1 vs. the USSR's 5 to 1. .

Actually, the unequal distribution of wealth was far greater than you imagine and this partly because you ignore 1) payments in kind and 2) multiple salaries. Roy Medvedev (Khrushchev: The Years in Power ,Columbia University Press. 1976, 540) has argued that the actual ratio between low and high earners in the Soviet Union was more like 1:100. Other sources put levels of inequality in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe as more or less comparable to that of Western europe (see for example http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/eps70.pdf )

I have no idea of what your figure of 10000 to 1 relates. Could you perhaps cite some source that backs this up

Of course the Soviet Union was imperialist. I cite its occupation of the Baltic states during world war two as but one example




Try a system in which people were given the basics to live and full employment. .

Yes, in the West they call it "job creation" schemes - a convenient way to massage the unemployment figures. Its nonsense to suggest that the Soviet Union had full employment. What they had was a reserve army of effectively unemployed but kept on the payroll at a minimum wage for all sorts of reasons which I went into in detail in a previous post



Try advances that came in such a short period of time. An advance that scared the bourgeois around the world because it lead to other peripheral nations figuring out that development was possible without the center..

Yes, the early industrialisation of the Soviet Union was rapid based chiefly on heavy industry. But it came at a horrendous cost to Russian workers. With the diversification of the economy, growth slowed significantly and it was already becoming obvious that the cumbersome state capitalist "command economy" model was becoming more and more unwieldy, inefficient and uncompetitve. If state capiltalism has not collapsed , if the state capitalist class - or red bourgeosie - had not decided enough was enough, it is a moot point whether the living standards of Russian workers would have plummeted (as they have done anyway) but possibly to an even greater extent. The trend was certainly moving in that direction



What was needed in the USSR was more democratic struggles against the bureaucrats. Not it's total dissolve to give socialism a better name.

Seriously, you sound like the people that mock others for liking the fact that communist kids were fed.

The USSR was closer to socialism than the USA and a fight to make it more so was needed, not to dissolve it .

Socialism has got nothing to do with state ownership at all The USSR was not one jot socialist. The misassociation of socialism with the Soviet Union has unquestionably done huge damage to the socialist cause. and is still doing so as evidenced by individuals such as yourself who think socialism has something to do with what went on in the Soviet Union

[Paulappaul]

That's fucking funny. I was going to say the same thing about you.

Fortunately my comment contained content where as Tavarisch Mike was just being a shithead.

[S.Artesian]

Fortunately my comment contained content where as Tavarisch Mike was just being a shithead.

That's even funnier. I was going to say exactly the same thing about my comment and you being a shithead.

[RadioRaheem84]

Actually, the unequal distribution of wealth was far greater than you imagine and this partly because you ignore 1) payments in kind and 2) multiple salaries. Roy Medvedev (Khrushchev: The Years in Power ,Columbia University Press. 1976, 540) has argued that the actual ratio between low and high earners in the Soviet Union was more like 1:100. Other sources put levels of inequality in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe as more or less comparable to that of Western europe (see for example http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/eps70.pdf )

I have no idea of what your figure of 10000 to 1 relates. Could you perhaps cite some source that backs this up

Of course the Soviet Union was imperialist. I cite its occupation of the Baltic states during world war two as but one example




Yes, in the West they call it "job creation" schemes - a convenient way to massage the unemployment figures. Its nonsense to suggest that the Soviet Union had full employment. What they had was a reserve army of effectively unemployed but kept on the payroll at a minimum wage for all sorts of reasons which I went into in detail in a previous post



Yes, the early industrialisation of the Soviet Union was rapid based chiefly on heavy industry. But it came at a horrendous cost to Russian workers. With the diversification of the economy, growth slowed significantly and it was already becoming obvious that the cumbersome state capitalist "command economy" model was becoming more and more unwieldy, inefficient and uncompetitve. If state capiltalism has not collapsed , if the state capitalist class - or red bourgeosie - had not decided enough was enough, it is a moot point whether the living standards of Russian workers would have plummeted (as they have done anyway) but possibly to an even greater extent. The trend was certainly moving in that direction



Socialism has got nothing to do with state ownership at all The USSR was not one jot socialist. The misassociation of socialism with the Soviet Union has unquestionably done huge damage to the socialist cause. and is still doing so as evidenced by individuals such as yourself who think socialism has something to do with what went on in the Soviet Union

Wow. Those numbers are fascinating and I thank you for them. For a second there I was thinking that maybe the situation of the workers was worse off than in the West but it was actually quite comparable and in some cases like the UK, even better.

For a second there I was thinking that maybe you were right that a nation cannot reach attainable standards to the West without resorting to sucking the global south dry.

But then again you're wrong. This doesn't make the USSR any more socialist (never argued the case) but that making sure that people are for the most part fed and housed is not a boon to socialism.

It wasn't like they were dragging it's name through the mud economically but dragging it through the mud politically, i.e. the repression and lack of free speech.

The way it helped revolutionary movements and the way it offered a deterrent to US global hegemony, no these things do not matter but just that the great name of socialism and ideological purity be preserved.

I won't change the historical record just so you can look like a real rebel in front of liberals.

[RadioRaheem84]

Most of the detractors exhibit a lack of understanding the material reality the USSR faced and the inner deficiencies that made it less than perfect socialism or in some cases 'state capitalist'.

That basic human needs were more than met under 'state capitalism' is a less of a boon to socialism than the inefficiencies in it's democratic structure and likewise it's bureaucracy.

For the Left Coms and Anarchists that defend Chomsky's assertions that there is a marked difference between Republicans and Democrats when voting in a bourgeois election, somehow aren't as sympathetic to the idea of a marked difference between the 'state-capitalist' of the USSR vs. capitalist Russia today or the difference between capitalism in the West (with it's imperial ambitions) and the USSR (thanks to Robbo's numbers) back then.

There was a difference and that difference was marginally better for the working class, and it did not besmirch the name of socialism because of it.

[syndicat]

For the Left Coms and Anarchists that defend Chomsky's assertions that there is a marked difference between Republicans and Democrats when voting in a bourgeois election, somehow aren't as sympathetic to the idea of a marked difference between the 'state-capitalist' of the USSR vs. capitalist Russia today or the difference between capitalism in the West (with it's imperial ambitions) and the USSR (thanks to Robbo's numbers) back then.

There was a difference and that difference was marginally better for the working class, and it did not besmirch the name of socialism because of it.

first, it's a strawman fallacy since there are other viewpoints than those you lay out as the only alternatives. second, to critique the old USSR as not socialist but a system of oppression based on domination and exploitation of workers, it is not necessary to deny the differences between the even more vicious capitalist arrangement now existing in Russia. third, the viewpoint you express here is, as I see it, a complete abandonment of what socialism is fundamentally about. it's fundamentally a movement for the self-emanciipation of the working class. if the Soviet Union was...as it was...a system of class oppression and exploitation, then it would have needed to be overthrown by the working class through a revolution to actually achieve socialism. fourth, the issue of working class emancipation isn't about "perfection"...that's another of your strawman fallacies. fifth, enhancements even within capitalism derive from movements from below by the working class itself. this is how the various welfare states at the end of World War 2 came into existence. these institutionalized concessions wrung out of the capitalist elites of the advanced countries through a period of profound struggles, revolution, workplace seizures, general strikes, civil wars, etc.

that said, the question is poorly phrased and I could not answer it either "yes" or "no". it's also not even clear what point the questioner is getting at.

[RadioRaheem84]

Look I know that fundamentally socialism is not about better liver standards or a secure welfare state, but the otherwise abandonment of a social hierarchic system in the economic as well as the political sphere.

The USSR did none, so it was essentially not real socialism.

But at the same time, it wasn't a boon to socialism because of the relatively better living standards it gave it's citizens, born not just out of class struggle but revolution from the onset, but because of the inefficiencies in it's democracy and other things due to massive bureaucracy (most of it which can be traced to it's material historical development).

[The Author]

Was the collapse of the Soviet Union a victory for Socialism?

:lol: :rolleyes:

[chegitz guevara]

Anyone who thinks that fall of the USSR was a good thing is either a) a child who just discovered trotskyism, or b) a kid who is either anarchist or trot (or some unholy combination of both) and is still in college, surrounded by ideas of pacificist and liberal outlooks (both as far removed from reality as can be).

the fall of the USSR has been a defeat for Socialism. but socialism can't die, as long as the conditions making communism necessary are still in play.

Only someone who is more interested in being sectarian than in learning would make such a stupid comment. With the exception of the quasi-Trotskyist IST, no Trotskyist I ever met considered the fall of the USSR a good thing. Trotskyism is defined by its support for the USSR, but it's opposition to the government.

[chegitz guevara]

Also its kind of important to point out that the SU was attacked entirerly frome 1917-1991, which lead to its collapse not beacause of the old saying "Socialism doesnt work" and that in a rapport frome CIA 1984 they wasnt expecting the SU to collapse.

The capitalists were always expecting the USSR to collapse. A report from the CIA stating that it was going to happen is not evidence that the CIA was making it happen. It was merely an observation.

Of course, we have plenty of evidence that the CIA and other western efforts were making it happen, but a report observing what is going on is not proof of anything.

[Cheung Mo]

A victory for socialism would have been millions of Mujahideen fighters in mass graves and Reagan and Carter hanging themselves in despair. :D

[RadioRaheem84]

Trotskyism is defined by its support for the USSR, but it's opposition to the government.
Really? I like this very much.

Actually a great position to have.

[S.Artesian]

Look, the question the OP asked is simply: were the prospects for socialism improved by the collapse, or the decay, or the liquidation of the USSR.

The answer is just as simple: No.

The collapse did not in any way advance the organization of the working class as that revolutionary force, that class-for-itself. It did not in any way weaken the power of the bourgeoisie, that class-already-for-itself.

More than that the physical destruction of the fSU's economy, the resulting drastic decline in living standards, the fragmentation of the proletarian organizations in the fSU-- yeah the unions--, the resulting stimulus given to racism, fascism, etc. represents a defeat, a large step backwards.

[Cheung Mo]

Look, the question the OP asked is simply: were the prospects for socialism improved by the collapse, or the decay, or the liquidation of the USSR.

The answer is just as simple: No.

The collapse did not in any way advance the organization of the working class as that revolutionary force, that class-for-itself. It did not in any way weaken the power of the bourgeoisie, that class-already-for-itself.

More than that the physical destruction of the fSU's economy, the resulting drastic decline in living standards, the fragmentation of the proletarian organizations in the fSU-- yeah the unions--, the resulting stimulus given to racism, fascism, etc. represents a defeat, a large step backwards.

Even if you were to describe the Soviet Union using terms like "bureaucratic dictatorship" or "proletarian bonpartism" (and those arguments have merit), it must have been doing a few things right that those countries are doing damn wrong today. One only has to compare the quality of life numbers, the HDI, and the gini coefficient between then and now to realise that. Moreover, if socialism or whatever they had east of the Iron Curtain was so bad, why was life so much better in *throws dart at map* Soviet Kazakhstan than in nearby Pakistan or Afghanistan? Why are there so many social problems in former East Germany that people there never even knew existed 25 years ago?

[NGNM85]

I don't see this poll proves anything, besides the fact that the majority, can, in fact, be horribly wrong.

[Paulappaul]

The collapse did not in any way advance the organization of the working class as that revolutionary force, that class-for-itself.

It's existence did nothing but tear the revolutionary movement apart and convert any proletarian uprising into an uprising of it's own, the most clear example being from Spain where they domesticated the revolution to the struggle of winning the war and the establishment of a parliamentary democracy, under a centralized government along with Right Wing Socialists and Liberals .

Furthermore the tactics of the Third International dictated by Moscow were Anti - Marxist insofar as they failed to understand the material conditions beyond their own borders. It created division, not unity within the Communist movement.

The collapse of the very thing which turned away the Proletariat from Communism is a victory. It did more to degenerate the movement for Socialism to Authoritarianism then the National Socialist Party in Germany.

Finnally the collapse of the Soviet Union put the last nail in legacy of Leninism and its extensions as the ideology of the working class. It means the revival of True Marxism i.e. the ideology of the working class.


More than that the physical destruction of the fSU's economy, the resulting drastic decline in living standards, the fragmentation of the proletarian organizations in the fSU-- yeah the unions--, the resulting stimulus given to racism, fascism, etc. represents a defeat, a large step backwards.

In America there was a period of economic prosperity brought upon by Regulated Capitalism which paralleled the rise of a strong Civil Rights movement. This period came to an end with the rise of the Neo-Liberal style Capitalism which crushed the labor movement and ripped the civil rights movement of its radicalism. Oh not to mention ruining Social Services.

Neo Liberalistic Capitalism was a step backwards in terms of the Working Class and Social equality. But the system of Regulated Capitalism was never right in the first place either. For one it gave the Working class the illusion that things can be reconciled by Political Reforms to Capital. It's the same dog with a different leash, it's both Capitalism and therefor it's still exploitative. We shouldn't be supporting either because one is better then the other, they are both wrong and neither represent the society we want.

[S.Artesian]

WTF are you talking about? Nothing you say has anything to do with the OP question.

[Pravda Soyuz]

I voted yes. Why would you support a nation that was so cruel to its people. Socialism is the future, but the USSR was not ready. They went from feudal to socialism, hmmm... they might have forgotten something...
Anyway, the people are more important than ideology, and they were NOT happy, Russia today is capitalist, and hence imperfect, but atleast the general quality of life has been increased. The USSR was like a cake that was pulled from the oven too early, and it gives a bad name to socialism/communism/leftists.

[Pravda Soyuz]

When true socialism is brought about, it will look nothing like the Soviet Union!

[Pravda Soyuz]

Socialism is a way to improve the peoples life, not a reason to oppress them, plus USSR was an imperialistic nation!

[S.Artesian]

Socialism is a way to improve the peoples life, not a reason to oppress them, plus USSR was an imperialistic nation!

None of which is the issue.

The issue is which class was strengthened by the fall of the fSU-- the bourgeoisie or the proletariat?

Those who think that the triumph of Hobbesian/Friedmaniac liquidationist dis-accumulation, the destruction of living standards, wages, benefits etc represents a victory for socialism need to point to concrete manifestations of that victory. So far none have been identified.

Those who think there was a victory for socialism base their claim on the fact that the fSU was an obstacle to successful proletarian revolution; that it worked to contain revolutionary struggles; that it sought accommodation with international capitalism; that it practiced a form of imperialism-- and that the failure of the fSU finally frees socialists from the burden of having to explain the failure of socialism.

All of which reminds me more than just a bit of the old KPD, eagerly promoting the notion of the SPD as "social fascists," deluding itself and its supporters by screaming "Nach Hitler, Uns!"

Didn't work out that way, did it? Isn't going to work out that way this time either. The road gets longer and harder the stronger the bourgeoisie get. And they got much stronger with the destruction of the fSU.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

"Was the collapse of the Soviet Union a victory for Socialism?"

All the yes-voters arguments have, until now, just being some sort of wishful thinking. Because in the reality nothing good have commed out of the collapse all that talk about "now we can show what communism really means" havnt happend, so do answer anything other then 'No' isnt realistic.

[Crimson Commissar]

The collapse of the USSR has basically allowed capitalism to completely take over the world. The USSR might not have been perfect, but at least it was socialist. If the USSR was still here today, we'd have a much better chance of ending capitalism's tyranny over the west.

[Kiev Communard]

The fall of the Soviet Union was a major drawback for socialist ideas worldwide, for, even though the USSR never managed to achieve socialist society for real, it was widely identified with it, so that after its failure the socialist movements (including anti-USSR ones) have been greatly weakened.

[robbo203]

The fall of the Soviet Union was a major drawback for socialist ideas worldwide, for, even though the USSR never managed to achieve socialist society for real, it was widely identified with it, so that after its failure the socialist movements (including anti-USSR ones) have been greatly weakened.

How can the failure of something that by your own admission was not socialist be construed as failure of socialism? People who take this line of argument are playing into the hands of the capitalist media who gloat over the fact that what failed was "socialism". The correct response of a socialist should be to say, no, it was not socialism that failed and we never supported what the media said has failed in the first place

[Kiev Communard]

How can the failure of something that by your own admission was not socialist be construed as failure of socialism? People who take this line of argument are playing into the hands of the capitalist media who gloat over the fact that what failed was "socialism". The correct response of a socialist should be to say, no, it was not socialism that failed and we never supported what the media said has failed in the first place

I have merely pointed out the fact that the nature of USSR breakdown (not to the forces of councilist revolution, but to the the most savage reaction) led to the waning of support of the idea of socialism, in all of its forms, as the failure of Anarchist and Left Communist groups to draw support among the previously pro-Soviet workers shows, nothing more.

[Delenda Carthago]

"Was the collapse of the Soviet Union a victory for Socialism?"

All the yes-voters arguments have, until now, just being some sort of wishful thinking. Because in the reality nothing good have commed out of the collapse all that talk about "now we can show what communism really means" havnt happend, so do answer anything other then 'No' isnt realistic.
Thats what you think. Cause I know many places that even though its been only 20 years since the collapse of USSR, people have a different perspective about it.If you havent been able to make it happen, thats your problem.

[Delenda Carthago]

Only someone who is more interested in being sectarian than in learning would make such a stupid comment. With the exception of the quasi-Trotskyist IST, not Trotskyist I ever met consider the fall of the USSR a good thing. Trotskyism is defined by its support for the USSR, but it's opposition to the government.
Actually, the most passionate enemys of the USSR from a point on, are the stalinists, who, espesially in Greece, blame USSR for the death of Nikos Zahariadis, KKE stalinist charismatic leader. I find it so fuckin funny to see children from western countries to defend something they have no clear image about...

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

It's amazing that, despite every single indicator of living standards for ordinary people in the former USSR going down post-1991, and little improvement in the way of democracy, people still think that somehow, the continued existence of the USSR would be a worse option.

It is true that Gorbachev set the USSR on the Capitalist path from as early as 1986. Perhaps, in terms of material analysis then, it was inevitable that the USSR would cease to exist sooner rather than later.

However, the fact is that even under the flawed leaderships that led to the degeneration of the revolution, from Stalin to Kruschev to Brezhnev, the USSR had much a positive impact on the world.

I'd not return to it today. I'm not a Marxist-Leninist. Indeed, it could be argued that the USSR was guilty of many heinous crimes, at home and abroad. So, whilst it falls short of my exacting ideological standards, it cannot be denied that it was a vast, vast improvement on Tsarism and indeed anything that the Capitalist-imperialist powers had to offer.

Regardless of the political shortcomings of the Marxist-Leninist leadership of the USSR, what else other than a revolutionary nation could industrialise so quickly, leading to one of the quickest rises in living standards ever seen, on a large scale.

I don't really understand the points raised by people such as Rosa. Seemingly, because teh USSR was flawed in certain ways, that makes it somehow worse than the abysmal state of events that followed under Yeltsin and co. I simply do not understand such logic. Seemingly to me, these people need to get out from behind their computers and see the poverty and misery that Capitalism really causes across the world, not just in factboxes and in economic indicators.

Flawed Marxism-Leninism > Capitalism, and we should all recognise this, even if we are not Marxist-Leninists.

[Paulappaul]

WTF are you talking about? Nothing you say has anything to do with the OP question.

Hmm.. wow I dunno maybe it has something to with the Third International, The Soviet Union, Leninism, all of which guess what, HAVE THINGS to do with Soviet Union.

And the allegory of pre Soviet Union and Post Soviet Union Russia with two polar opposite era's of America, yeah I was hoping that I didn't have to break it done for. Here's the summary though: we shouldn't be supporting things which are antithetical to what we want, despite if one is better then the other it's still wrong.

[S.Artesian]

Hmm.. wow I dunno maybe it has something to with the Third International, The Soviet Union, Leninism, all of which guess what, HAVE THINGS to do with Soviet Union.

And the allegory of pre Soviet Union and Post Soviet Union Russia with two polar opposite era's of America, yeah I was hoping that I didn't have to break it done for. Here's the summary though: we shouldn't be supporting things which are antithetical to what we want, despite if one is better then the other it's still wrong.

Again WTF? Nothing you said has anything to do with the OP.

[S.Artesian]

How can the failure of something that by your own admission was not socialist be construed as failure of socialism? People who take this line of argument are playing into the hands of the capitalist media who gloat over the fact that what failed was "socialism". The correct response of a socialist should be to say, no, it was not socialism that failed and we never supported what the media said has failed in the first place

Because of the physical destruction of the proletariat; just as Pinochet's capitalist overthrow of Allende's popular unity capitalism was a defeat for the proletariat.

The correct response is those things are victory for the bourgeoisie, a victory paid for in the blood of the working class.

[Well Red]

If the Soviet Union had actually been a socialist paradigm, I would have had to say that its demise was indeed a huge defeat for socialism.
However, as the SU was in fact an example of state capitalism, and, by definition, was in no way socialist, then it indeed was a victory of sorts for true socialism.
However, the achievements of the SU should not be totally disregarded, as what they actually did was to transform the largest existing feudal society into a modern capitalist state, albeit at the expense of the millions who died to achieve that transformation.
The so-called collapse of the SU was, in reality, nothing more than the admission that they were never socialist in the first place.
I find it quite interesting that 21 percent of the Revleft forum seems to agree with the belief that the collapse of the SU was indeed a victory for socialism.

[S.Artesian]

One more time: The question is: Was the collapse of the fSU a victory for socialism?

The answer is no. It could not and cannot be, as it represented a gigantic step backward for the living standards and class organization of the proletariat.

It was, as every bourgeois twit can tell you, a huge victory for capitalism.

It was, as every worker in the ex-fSU experiences to this day, a huge defeat for the proletariat.... unless of course you consider increased tuberculosis, poverty, forced prostitution, assaults on persons, victories... in which case you are on the wrong side of the class line and should apply for a fellowship from the University of Chicago School of Death Squad Economics.

[LiberationFrequency]

I don't see the Soviet Union as perfect, but calling the collapse of it a victory for socialism is ridiculous.

[Paulappaul]

The answer is no. It could not and cannot be, as it represented a gigantic step backward for the living standards and class organization of the proletariat.

Just like Neo-liberal Capitalism marked a huge step backward in terms of a standard of living in contrast to Regulated Capitalism. It doesn't defeat the aspect that both are still antithetical to what we want.

[S.Artesian]

Just like Neo-liberal Capitalism marked a huge step backward in terms of a standard of living in contrast to Regulated Capitalism. It doesn't defeat the aspect that both are still antithetical to what we want.

So the answer to the question is no it is not a victory for socialism.

[Jazzratt]

Was it instigated by socialist forces? Did it further the socialist movement in Russia and the other constituent states? Of course it didn't. How then could it be "a victory for socialism?"

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

Was it instigated by socialist forces? Did it further the socialist movement in Russia and the other constituent states? Of course it didn't. How then could it be "a victory for socialism?"
Well we know that the working class weren't content with the USSR as an all powerful state, and they eventually backed some kind of change in system. As well as this, let us remember that the working class are the ultimate 'socialist force', so in a sense you could say that the collapse of the USSR was supported by 'socialist forces' and possibly instigated by them, if even partly.

Whether that is true or not, what is certainly true is that the USSR's history alone was enough to put a blockade in front of any further development in the socialist movement in those states. Any Russian (or old Soviet state citizen) I've spoken to regarding the USSR is generally not fond of it, aside from a few who's grandparents were fond of Stalin during war time. The general consensus though, is that 'socialism' is bad and it didn't work for Russia. Perhaps what Stalin's personality cult lead people to believe was some kind of system worth upholding in the eyes of workers, but in my eyes, that is no different to people in Britain upholding Churchill's reign in Britain in 'winning the war' and protecting our nation, whilst aiding a sense of false consciousness that leads us to believe that a nation is of importance to the working class.

Do people really think, that if the USSR continued on without some kind of genuine working class revolution in that region, that socialism would prevail further throughout the world in the current day? The analyses here don't seem particularly objective, but rather speak from anti-imperialist line which in this case are not working-class lines, but state-orientated lines. The state made all of the decisions, not the supposedly liberated working class, so why can anyone uphold it as socialism? Perhaps 'anti-imperialist' as the way that Iran is, but why should be tarnish the principles of socialism with such a bad example of the principles laid out by revolutionaries in the 18th century?


The USSR had nothing to do with the liberation of the working class, why do so many see its' demise as a 'defeat for socialism'? Are we not forgetting our first and foremost principles here; the liberation of the working class? What were workers (the minority) in Russia liberated from? The Tsar, only to be met with a new regime of oppression.

[Enragé]

i wouldnt say victory, but it was a necessity for the possibility of any genuine revolutionary attempt that the false dichotomy of 'communism' vs capitalism (false because the 'communism' was merely another form of capitalism) to be destroyed.

So, i voted yes because that was closest.

[Vanguard1917]

It's become clear that the defeat of the Soviet Union represented a virtual death knell for socialist politics, but not because there was anything very positive or socialist about the Soviet Union. It did so because so much of the international left was dominated by the politics of Stalinism and social democracy, both of which looked, to varying degrees, to the State Socialist model of the USSR as the alternative. Under such circumstances, its collapse resulted in disarray.

[Jazzratt]

Well we know that the working class weren't content with the USSR as an all powerful state, and they eventually backed some kind of change in system. As well as this, let us remember that the working class are the ultimate 'socialist force', so in a sense you could say that the collapse of the USSR was supported by 'socialist forces' and possibly instigated by them, if even partly. Funny kind of socialist forces that take a state capitalist system and turn it into a free market oligarchy.


Whether that is true or not, what is certainly true is that the USSR's history alone was enough to put a blockade in front of any further development in the socialist movement in those states. Any Russian (or old Soviet state citizen) I've spoken to regarding the USSR is generally not fond of it, aside from a few who's grandparents were fond of Stalin during war time. The general consensus though, is that 'socialism' is bad and it didn't work for Russia. Perhaps what Stalin's personality cult lead people to believe was some kind of system worth upholding in the eyes of workers, but in my eyes, that is no different to people in Britain upholding Churchill's reign in Britain in 'winning the war' and protecting our nation, whilst aiding a sense of false consciousness that leads us to believe that a nation is of importance to the working class. I'm not really sure that the existence of the USSR and its history alone put any sort of blockade on any further development of the movement. Surely if it did we would have seen some progress a few decades after its collapse? I think the USSR should have been opposed but there's no point in counting its fall as a victory when it quite obviously changed very little. I don't argue at all for upholding it or Stalin so I'm really confused as to why you're bringing that up.


Do people really think, that if the USSR continued on without some kind of genuine working class revolution in that region, that socialism would prevail further throughout the world in the current day? No. Of course I fucking don't and furthermore I'd like you to point me to where in my statement I said anything from which you could draw the frankly inane inference that I did. Surely the implication of asking whether the fall of the USSR was instigated by socialist forces is that it is something that was opposed by those forces?


The analyses here don't seem particularly objective, but rather speak from anti-imperialist line which in this case are not working-class lines, but state-orientated lines. The state made all of the decisions, not the supposedly liberated working class, so why can anyone uphold it as socialism? Perhaps 'anti-imperialist' as the way that Iran is, but why should be tarnish the principles of socialism with such a bad example of the principles laid out by revolutionaries in the 18th century? What on earth are you babbling about? I never, at all, upheld the USSR as a socialist regime. The point I was trying to make is you can't call something a "victory for socialism" when it manifestly had nothing to do with socialist politics. It's like saying that if an American backed South Korea overthrew the north that's a victory for socialism. It's just bollocks.

The collapse of the soviet union would have been a victory for socialism if a revolutionary working class had overthrown the ruling classes. That isn't what happened. What happened was that the USSR's model of, what we may as well admit is basically, capitalism lost out to "the West"'s. That's all.


The USSR had nothing to do with the liberation of the working class, why do so many see its' demise as a 'defeat for socialism'? Are you on drugs or just fucking stupid? How does saying that it collapsed wasn't a victory immediately mean it must be a defeat? Have you ever attempted to develop a nuanced point of view in your life? You should give it a shot.


Are we not forgetting our first and foremost principles here; the liberation of the working class? What were workers (the minority) in Russia liberated from? The Tsar, only to be met with a new regime of oppression. I'd say that's something you've forgotten too. You talk as if after the fall of the USSR the workers were suddenly, magically, no longer oppressed or exploited. That isn't the case. I'm arguing with your own goddamn logic you prize tit, just taking it one step further.

[S.Artesian]

I'd say that's something you've forgotten too. You talk as if after the fall of the USSR the workers were suddenly, magically, no longer oppressed or exploited. That isn't the case. I'm arguing with your own goddamn logic you prize tit, just taking it one step further.

Don't hold back. It's not good to hold these things inside. You have to learn to speak frankly.

I'm so happy to find someone who makes me look restrained, dispassionate.

"You prize tit"? That's just pure, raw genius.

[Optiow]

I believe that the Soviet Union had great flaws, and committed some unforgivable acts. However, while the Soviet Union was in existence they challenged Western imperialism, and funded many socialist groups fighting against colonialism and dictatorships, and when the USSR fell, so did the funding and aid to many socialist countries and socialist organizations.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the USA is now the worlds superpower, and they dominate world politics to a degree no other nation on earth can do. Therefore, I conclude that it was a set back and defeat for socialism. While I am not an expert on the subject, I feel that the USSR had much potential under Gorbachev (if I am wrong about this point, please say so - I have not researched it thoroughly).

[KurtFF8]

I feel that the USSR had much potential under Gorbachev (if I am wrong about this point, please say so - I have not researched it thoroughly).Most folks here will point to the fact that Gorbachev's main goal was to dismantle Socialism. His reforms helped restore private property and exploitation and lead directly to the crisis that resulted in the fall of the USSR (although it can just be blamed on him, that would not be a historical materialist analysis of course).

I don't see how anyone would see the USSR's fall as a "victory for socialism" though. I'm surprised that even 20% of folks (at the time of this posting) have voted "Yes." There's no doubt that the fall of the USSR lead to the spread of neo-Liberal "shock therapy" capitalism to Eastern Europe that has devastated the working classes of those countries, and they have yet to recover (there was perhaps some indication that they were on that path until this financial crisis hit a global scale).

I would imagine that the majority of the revolutionary Left would recognize how big of a problem the fall of the USSR was, and this extends past the "revLeft." I remember reading some of this article (maybe it was in Time or some random magazine) where they tried to "examine why" this generation (and the generation from 1989 on) didn't celebrate the fall of the Berlin wall like it celebrates 1968, punk, etc. I think the answer is clear: it was a reactionary move from the West to encourage it, and wrecked havoc on the East. So young progressives tend to not go around praising that event or holding it to high esteem even if they're very opposed to the wall and what it stood for.

[MarxSchmarx]

I'm not really sure the demise of the USSR had as much of an impact for the left either way.

Of course as regards the former USSR, its allies, and Albania and Yugoslavia, sure it created a real power vaccuum that the left has largely been unable to fill and where capitalism now reins, but arguably "progress towards socialism" had basically stalled and stagnated by the mid 80s (if not much earlier) as enormous military budgets, repression and corruption began eating away at that project.

Certainly it had some effect outside of "the second world", but virtually all of the organized left in for example the global north was either moribund or had renounced the USSR pretty unequivocally by the mid-70s. China was well on its way to restoring capitalism, and for many groups in places like Latin America and South Asia Soviet material aid turned out to be less crucial than was imagined. In fact some of them (like in India) simply and largely carried on. Moreover, in Africa and in places like Peru, by the time the USSR collapsed, the much wealthier American-backed dictatorships had largely defeated or at least neutralized all but a few of the Soviet-backed groups, which had seen their credibility erode as conflicts raged on. So I think we are kidding ourselves if we think that the bureaucrats in the Kremlin would be our knights in shining armor during this stage of the movement.

Hence while the USSR throughout various times in its history was no doubt instrumental in breathing life into otherwise lost causes (as well as brutally repressing otherwise promising leftist alternatives), by at least the withdrawal of Afghanistan it was clearly beat by the Americans in proxy wars and no longer in any serious position to make much of a difference.

Indeed, for the left in the global north and throughout much of the developing world, I think we have to accept the fact that the fall of the USSR was much much more a whimper than a bang.

[KurtFF8]

I'm not really sure the demise of the USSR had as much of an impact for the left either way.

It depends, if you only count the Left as anarchists, then perhaps you're correct. But many working class parties (Marxist-Leninists AND Trotskyist parties) took major hits in the West after the collapse of the USSR.

This isn't a universal truth of course, mainly a Western phenomenon (although many groups in Latin America and Africa that relied mainly on the USSR for support also took major hits).

Although many see a "return to Marx" happening now

[bricolage]

It depends, if you only count the Left as anarchists, then perhaps you're correct. But many working class parties (Marxist-Leninists AND Trotskyist parties) took major hits in the West after the collapse of the USSR.
In regards to 'the West' and using the example of the UK I'd have to disagree with you here. I'm not saying that by the time the USSR collapsed the various leftist parties weren't weak but that it wasn't this that caused the weakness. The CPGB had been falling apart in on itself since Soviet troops rolled into Hungary and the various other M-L and/or Trot groups that had sprung up, while the rode the mass class militancy of the 1970s/early 1980s became dramatically weakened when this militancy was defeated by the Thatcherite reaction. Obviously this could be said for other 'libertarian' groups too but you didn't mention them. The point being it wasn't necessarily the collapse of the USSR that led to the decline in party membership but the decline in national class struggle - itself a reflection of declining worldwide class struggle.

[KurtFF8]

Well of course many other factors were involved (e.g. Neoliberalism in the West), but to say that Leftist parties didn't suffer from the collapse ignores the late 80s/early 90s when most of these parties took major hits around the exact same time of the collapse

[bricolage]

Well of course many other factors were involved (e.g. Neoliberalism in the West), but to say that Leftist parties didn't suffer from the collapse ignores the late 80s/early 90s when most of these parties took major hits around the exact same time of the collapse
Well I can only really talk about the UK but I think it is more coincidence than causation. It wasn't so much neoliberalism that caused the demise in party membership but that the only reason neoliberalism could be brought in was on the back of the defeat of mass working class struggle. When such struggle is stronger parties that claim to speak for it will be stronger too, when it is weaker they will be weaker too. What we are looking at then is a global relationship of class forces, materialised in specific national circumstances not the collapse of a certain state.

[MarxSchmarx]

I'm not really sure the demise of the USSR had as much of an impact for the left either way. It depends, if you only count the Left as anarchists, then perhaps you're correct. But many working class parties (Marxist-Leninists AND Trotskyist parties) took major hits in the West after the collapse of the USSR.


Well, with respect to the Trotskyist parties, they were already practically irrelevant by the time the USSR colapsed. I don't think their condition has improved or really worsened at all.

As regards the "Marxist-Leninist" parties, if you mean the various groups called "Communist parties" in the global north, many of the most powerful of them (PCI, French and Japanese parties) had already done about all they could to distance themselves from the USSR and faced serious demographic, financial and electoral problems well ahead of the USSR's dismemberment. Outside of that it's really a case-by-case thing, but I on balance you'd be hard pressed to find a communist party anywhere that had electoral momentum on its side until the Berlin wall fell.

[Kléber]

Seizure of "political power" in the fSU meant fundamental reorganization of the economy, not as state property, but as social property.
Here you contradict yourself. First you implied that workers' resistance to restoration was hopeless and bureaucratic totalitarianism was invincible. Now you seem to be advocating for socialism in one country when as you note the Soviet economy had not even achieved the same productivity of labor as capitalism. Is social property preferable to state property? Of course. Was the principal contradiction in 1991 between social property and state property? No it was not. It was between state property and privatization. The bureaucracy capitulated to imperialism and took the latter course, and the real collapse of living standards, employment rates and productivity followed.


The difference is between abolishing the bureaucracy as a bureaucracy-- as the intermediation between the producers and production, and simply replacing the "bad" bureaucrats of the fSU, of "Stalin," with the "good," more accountable, more internationalist bureaucrats, of "Trotsky." The Trotskyist program is for political revolution, not palace revolution. That means tearing down the whole bureaucratic state apparatus and building up a new one based on the workers' councils, with free elections, protection of independent parties and trade unions, a harsh repression of the privileges and salaries of state officials, and a reversal of market "reforms." Workers' democracy is the best way to keep the working class in power, we learned that from the mistakes made by Bolsheviks which facilitated Stalinism.


I'd have much more respect for your sort of position if it actually discussed or analyzed a single concrete element in the economy, and the economic relations, rather than simply say "oh, the property form is state property, ergo only a political revolution is needed."An economic revolution would indeed be necessary to advance the mode of production from state capitalism to socialism. But I think we both agree, that was impossible for the workers to accomplish in 1991 any more than they had been able to build socialism in one country in the 20's and 30's. Only a world revolution could enable the demilitarization and egalitarian globalization that are prerequisites for real socialism. But the world revolution is not some kind of spontaneous process that will automatically happen in the most advanced countries when they reach a certain level of development. The class struggle requires an international political struggle for the seizure of power. And if we agree that a revolution establishing workers' power in any country is a good thing (even if a world revolution is required to complete that isolated victory and enable the socialist transformation), why can't we also agree that the workers should fight to preserve an isolated revolution whose "leaders" are capitulating to imperialism?


If the bureaucracy were a class, then as a class it has a unique, specific, and necessary relation to the economy, to the social relations of production, and to the property form that crystallizes that social relation. If the bureaucracy were a class, expressing its own unique class interest, we better revisit all of Marx and find out how such a class developed within capitalist relations without out anyone detecting it prior to 1917.I never said the bureaucracy was a class. It was a caste of officials whose leading members enjoyed bourgeois lifestyles without having private property over the means of production. Only at the end of the USSR did the top echelons auction the means of production to themselves and become a class of capitalists.


You are wrong; you are corrected. I am not saying that, no more than the theory of permanent revolution condemns the proletariat in less capitalist-developed countries to not doing anything until, unless, without the proletariat in more capitalist-developed countries. I am saying, as uneven and combined development makes clear, without that completion in advanced countries, the revolution in the less advanced capitalist countries will not be able to resolve the contradiction of uneven and combined development and the result will be... what it has been, what it was in Poland with Solidarity, what it is in the fSU.Now you are guilty of empiricism, you assume that any proletarian resistance to Stalinism is hopeless because past examples of worker militancy in Stalinist countries were either brutally crushed or misdirected against the proletariat's own social position by rightist demagogues.


Of course not. What we say and do has to be realistic-- and that realism is that all efforts must include development, support, etc. of expanding the revolution outside national borders, and that can only be done by empowering the most radical of workers' democracy where the revolution takes power. "Be realistic?" That's your way of admitting that you believe there is nothing the workers of Cuba can do but sit back and let their "leaders" restore capitalism and allow the island to be re-enslaved by tourist mafia capital? Plekhanov wanted Russian workers to "be realistic" in 1917. Why not fight for workers' democracy in a country where the revolution took power but is being rolled back by its own "leaders?"


Jesus, spare us all this confusion of dates, periods, and actual accomplishments. Because

1. when the workers took power in 1917, there certainly was industry, much more industry than in 1919, 21, or even 26.

2. In 1917, the economy was not wrecked with occupation by foreign troops-- the territory under German occupations was not economically critical.

3. No, the tiny proletariat did not reforge the economy with unprecedented speed. Look at the numbers, see when they meet and exceed levels of output, and productivity of 1914.You're the one who is throwing around dates and periods to avoid my point: the Russian workers had much more power at their disposal in 1991 than in 1917. You seem to be saying that the Russian proletariat had no hope to oppose privatizations, unemployment, and capitalist exploitation that came with the Soviet capitulation, because their economy was "collapsing" so any hope of standing up to the world imperialist order alone was doomed. Well some national-socialist autarky was never the point. The 1917 revolution was meant to be the opening shot in an international revolution. The working class, relying only on the forces of a backward peasant country, managed to resist world capitalism and imperialism in spite of the setbacks and destruction of foreign invasions, in spite of treachery at the highest levels. The superpower that the Soviet Union became was not as strong as the imperialist countries but to pretend it never reached the level that Russia had been in 1914 is absolutely ridiculous. It remains that the "leaders" Gorbachev and co. who capitulated to imperialism were traitors, they stabbed the proletariat in the back.


Sermons are not reality. The fSU was and was NOT such an advanced economy. It's productivity in agriculture in particular remained far below that of advanced capitalist economies. It's productivity in manufacturing output was also below that of advanced economies. If the the bureaucracy was able to create an advanced country in the fSU, then kiss your theory of permanent revolution good-bye.That doesn't contradict the theory of permanent revolution because a political revolution was still necessary to throw off the bureaucracy that had arisen due to the contradictions of an immature proletarian dictatorship. Besides, the USSR probably could have matched the productivity of capitalist powers if it hadn't been forced to spend so much on defense. All I am saying is that the Russian workers, had they gotten organized, could and should have opposed restoration, and the workers in Cuba and North Korea should do the same thing, they should fight for international revolution and workers' democracy, against their capitulationist bureaucracies and their capitalist "reforms." Maybe I didn't phrase myself ideally but I still don't see what you take issue with here.


More importantly, kiss reality good-bye, as it is simply astounding to believe that the fSU achieved this advanced level after the devastation of WW2.

This does not mean that the fSU did not accomplish many advanced things-- it did, not the least of which is the degree to which it was able to recover from WW2. Make up your mind.


That's exactly what uneven and combined development means, but uneven and combined development also means that the antagonisms are not just "techical matters," but also matters of social relations of production, with the resolution of that antagonism in relations being, again, dependent on revolution in the more advanced capitalist countries. I agree with you that the Russian revolution failed because of its internal and international contradictions, and the Soviet Union failed to build an alternative trading network and a more productive alternative to capitalism. But the Soviet bureaucracy still capitulated before they took things to the breaking point.


More religious cant, this time from the bible of....MN Roy, I guess. Go back, or go forward, and show us where there are super rates of profits in the less developed counties, and how that is used to lessen the exploitation of workers in advanced countries. The rate of exploitation of workers in the advanced countries, the level of value reproduced and expanded per unit of input is greater in the advanced countries than in the less advanced countries.
And I'm sure all those workers in Germany, France, etc etc both then and now appreciate knowing just how much more the workers of-- what countries?-- are disposed toward revolution than they are. Can you give me some examples? Like are the workers in Brazil more inclined toward revolution than the workers in... Ireland? UK? Greece? France? Spain? Portugal?And yet, the first workers' revolution to seize power in an entire country was in Russia, a semi-feudal agrarian nation whose industrial economy and political life were dominated by foreign imperialist capital. You are the dogmatic religious one if you insist that the revolution will happen in the most advanced country simply because, what, Marx said the proletarian revolution would start in Germany 150 years ago? Things may have changed since Lenin and Trotsky wrote (namely, industrial production has largely shifted from the imperialist countries to the neocolonial world) but they were right to adapt a decades-old Marxism to the era of imperialism.


Let's not mistake the immediate or historical circumstances in the US and Australia for the circumstances once and future for all advanced countries. I didn't say revolution is impossible in an imperialist country, I was trying to say we should remain open to all possibilities and have a revolutionary perspective for the working class in every country, but I guess you couldn't help to use a strawman in your hurry to make some stupid joke. The focus on the handful of imperialist countries is still ridiculous. The revolution has to be absolutely international because of the dispersal and interconnectedness of the productive economy.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

[QUOTE=Jazzratt;1962977] I'm not really sure that the existence of the USSR and its history alone put any sort of blockade on any further development of the movement. Surely if it did we would have seen some progress a few decades after its collapse? I think the USSR should have been opposed but there's no point in counting its fall as a victory when it quite obviously changed very little. I don't argue at all for upholding it or Stalin so I'm really confused as to why you're bringing that up.

What progress? That depends on how you define progress, but I look around the world and see capitalism thriving, therefore I would disagree that any progress has been made in terms of working class liberation. Also, my post was not entirely directed at you. I just used your post as a basis as a platform for a few points I wanted to make, so read the post as an attack on the general argument that the collapse of the USSR was a bad thing rather than taking it as a post aimed at your own outlook on the situation.

What on earth are you babbling about? I never, at all, upheld the USSR as a socialist regime. The point I was trying to make is you can't call something a "victory for socialism" when it manifestly had nothing to do with socialist politics. It's like saying that if an American backed South Korea overthrew the north that's a victory for socialism. It's just bollocks.

Again, the post was not directly aimed at you, I just used something you said in aid of a generalized polemic. And you're right in saying that it had nothing to do with socialism, but the fact is that the USSR was used as an example by our enemies, and sometimes our 'comrades', for what socialism should look like. For that reason, it was partly a victory for the principles of socialism when the shitty regime fell, as it removed that burden that was upheld by so many and used so freely by our enemies as a reason why workers shouldn't listen to us.

The collapse of the soviet union would have been a victory for socialism if a revolutionary working class had overthrown the ruling classes. That isn't what happened. What happened was that the USSR's model of, what we may as well admit is basically, capitalism lost out to "the West"'s. That's all.

I see what you mean, but in terms of objective reality, the workers were fucked before and after the USSR fell. The only victory here is an ideological victory, in terms that the burden to our movement ceased to exist, and there was no gloomy, oppressive superpower over to the east, calling itself socialist and putting off workers etc.


I'd say that's something you've forgotten too. You talk as if after the fall of the USSR the workers were suddenly, magically, no longer oppressed or exploited. That isn't the case. I'm arguing with your own goddamn logic you prize tit, just taking it one step further.[

I had never once said that. The difference here is between the reality of workers, which has stayed consistently shitty, during and after the USSR and the ideological battle between capitalism and socialism. Capitalism has generally won the minds of workers, not because it is better, but because workers have been conditioned that way, through ideological state apparatus, and the existence of the USSR played a huge role in that. Now that the burden does not exist, there is no realistic shit storm of a state for our enemies to point to every time workers stand up and demand something different. The collapse of the dusty old USSR is a good thing in terms of ideological battles, the prospect for workers in those old countries is pretty much indifferent (they still have a shit time).

Anyway, the point is that I was not actually attacking you as I have no idea of what your views are, and naturally I don't care, but your post led me to a general rant against those who see the collapse of the USSR as some great loss to the socialist cause. Perhaps I should've made that clear, but oh well.

/QUOTE]

[Witan]

The collapse of the USSR has basically allowed capitalism to completely take over the world. The USSR might not have been perfect, but at least it was socialist. If the USSR was still here today, we'd have a much better chance of ending capitalism's tyranny over the west.

I never thought of it that way. But it is true that, since the USSR fell, capitalists have basically used that as an excuse to claim victory.

Kind of like supporters of the ancien regime using the French Revolution as proof that democracy can't work and absolute monarchy is the way to go.

[Impulse97]

Trotskyism is defined by its support for the USSR, but it's opposition to the government.


I voted yes. If the above statement was an option I would have picked it.

I voted yes for this very reason. While it as a state was better than Capitalism, the government was massively flawed. Had it been less athoritarian and burecratic then I would have voted no.

On another note, I do support the fact that they supported revolutions all around the world. It was effective too, got the Empire out of Vietnam (two really lol).:hammersickle::che::hammersickle:

[KurtFF8]

I voted yes for this very reason. While it as a state was better than Capitalism, the government was massively flawed. Had it been less athoritarian and burecratic then I would have voted no.

How does this equate to that state's collapse being a victory for socialism though?

[chegitz guevara]

I voted yes. If the above statement was an option I would have picked it.

I voted yes for this very reason. While it as a state was better than Capitalism, the government was massively flawed. Had it been less athoritarian and burecratic then I would have voted no.

On another note, I do support the fact that they supported revolutions all around the world. It was effective too, got the Empire out of Vietnam (two really lol).:hammersickle::che::hammersickle:

As Kurt, points out, comrade, the questions was whether or not the fall of the USSR was a victory fo socialism. The only way someone can answer in the affirmative is if they thought the USSR was holding socialist revolution back (which in many cases it was, let's be honest) while ignoring the absolutely devastating effect it has had on workers around the world.

The fall of the fSU was a staggering blow to socialism. As long as the capitalists need workers, there will be socialism, but we were knocked on our ass for a generation ... at least. We'll see soon if we've recovered or not.

[Impulse97]

@Che

Yet I fail to see how a degenerated workers state with a dictator was good for socialism. It didn't show the world how good it can be. All it showed the world was a restrictive, authoritarian, non democratic nation that wen flat broke while the US went into a economic boom.

We need to get a real socialist state to show the world that we can overcome the chains and bonds of capitalism. One with free speech, a democratic electorate and equality for all it's citizens.:hammersickle::che::hammersickle:

[chegitz guevara]

No, that's not hat it showed the world. What it showed the world was that socialism was a failure, because, to the world the fSU represented socialism, no matter what you think. That's an objective fact. With the fall of the USSR, socialist movements around the world either collapsed outright or shrank. In the Western social democracies, workers rights and benefits came under attack for the last twenty years. In the fSU states, workers rights and benefits disappeared. Life spans shrank. Women became commodities.

And around the world, no one was left to stand up to the United States. The world is fortunate in that the U.S. chose a particularly bad leader, who ran the U.S. aground on the reefs of Iraq and Afghanistan, but the U.S. really should have been able to command the world for another two generations.

The fall of the fSU was an unbelievable defeat, which is not in any way mitigated because some people believe it wasn't truly socialist.

[S.Artesian]

So let's see if I got this right: Yeltsin-- hero of socialism. Natasha trade-- a step forward for the emancipation of women. Destruction of productive assets in the service of the market-- transitional requirement for a real revolution. Tuberculosis, aids, soaring mortality rates?-- good for public health.

Did I miss any critical elements making up the "victory for socialism"?

Or in the immortal words of 3rd officer Ripley: "Did IQs drop drastically while I was away?"

[RadioRaheem84]

I just returned from drinking with a Russian friend of mine who lusts for the riches of the oligarchs. He told me about how when I come to Russia, he will show me around and warn me of the places not to tread. He said Russia is an uber-corrupt gangster land full of mind blowing scams unlike I have ever seen. Playing on my American sentimentality he said that I would feel bad for the young people there who lack a future but warned to not be swindled in by their weary faces, for they will stab you in a heart beat in order to make ends meet.

When I asked what life was like under the USSR for he lived under the regime for five years before it collapsed (mind you the Gorbachev days), he said that it was good, no crime and people lived well. The 90s were absolute hell and he champions Putin for bringing some stability but for the most part Russia todays is but merely a shadow of it's former self.

The USSR was nothing to champion, but to say that somehow it's defeat was something of a victory for socialism is to spit in the eyes of workers. Change was meant for the better, not the worse. The dissolution of the USSR was a serious blow to socialism.....end of story.