Left Commumnist USSR

[28350]

So I've been really swayed (not completely) by some of the left communist posters on here as of late (eg. Zanthorus, Devrim, etc.), particularly in the critique of the soviet union as preserving the capitalist mode of of production. My question is basically this: what should have been done to bring about a socialist mode of production, or, why wasn't one brought about?

[Broletariat]

You can't really voluntarily "make" a revolution happen. You can try and speed it along, but it doesn't work according to proper tactics and such, if the working class as a whole generally wanted socialism, you can be sure they will have it.

I'm not very keen on the question though so that's about as much as I can offer.

[Savage]

Well there is no unanimous position on the Russian Revolution, but it is generally considered to have degenerated throughout 1918 due to material conditions (such as isolation, counter-revolution etc), this leading to the asphyxiation of soviet power and the birth of the USSR as a fundamentally anti-working class regime. The role that the Bolsheviks played in the degeneration of the soviets is debated, some groups would hold an Anarchist position, others would argue that the degeneration of the revolution was not the fault of the Bolsheviks, and their eventual command of the Soviet state was unavoidable, but of course, also not socialist.

As for how the socialist mode of production could have been brought about in the USSR, there is no answer regarding economic policy, the only way would have been international, worldwide revolution.

(You can disregard this comment as soon as one of the aforementioned Left Communists give you a better answer)

[28350]

You can't really voluntarily "make" a revolution happen. You can try and speed it along, but it doesn't work according to proper tactics and such, if the working class as a whole generally wanted socialism, you can be sure they will have it.

I'm not very keen on the question though so that's about as much as I can offer.

I'm not asking how revolutionaries as individual actors can go about inducing a revolution, i'm asking what would a revolutionary working class-for-itself do to bring about socialism? what actual economic relations would be erected to replace commodity production?


Well there is no unanimous position on the Russian Revolution, but it is generally considered to have degenerated throughout 1918 due to material conditions (such as isolation, counter-revolution etc), this leading to the asphyxiation of soviet power and the birth of the USSR as a fundamentally anti-working class regime. The role that the Bolsheviks played in the degeneration of the soviets is debated, some groups would hold an Anarchist position, others would argue that the degeneration of the revolution was not the fault of the Bolsheviks, and their eventual command of the Soviet state was unavoidable, but of course, also not socialist.
So that's basically why the russian revolution supposedly failed, but I'm asking what would be done if it had succeeded to end capitalism.


As for how the socialist mode of production could have been brought about in the USSR, there is no answer regarding economic policy, the only way would have been international, worldwide revolution.
Okay, given a global proletarian revolution, how would the economic relations be changed to eliminate commodity production?

[Broletariat]

I'm not asking how revolutionaries as individual actors can go about inducing a revolution, i'm asking what would a revolutionary working class-for-itself do to bring about socialism? what actual economic relations would be erected to replace commodity production?

The working class would abolish private ownership of the means of production in favor of collective ownership, the individual branches of production would be related through an international communist party which would act more like a platform and less like an actual party (at least, after the revolution). The party would be used to unify the fragmented worker's councils in order to co-ordinate production and stuff.

[28350]

The working class would abolish private ownership of the means of production in favor of collective ownership, the individual branches of production would be related through an international communist party which would act more like a platform and less like an actual party (at least, after the revolution). The party would be used to unify the fragmented worker's councils in order to co-ordinate production and stuff.

How is that different from what happened in Russia?

[Broletariat]

How is that different from what happened in Russia?

Honestly, I can't answer this question. My knowledge of history is trash, but I'll hazard a guess.

Russia prolly had like worker run capitalism transitioning to communism, but then they got isolated so it regressed further.

[Savage]

I'm not asking how revolutionaries as individual actors can go about inducing a revolution, i'm asking what would a revolutionary working class-for-itself do to bring about socialism? what actual economic relations would be erected to replace commodity production?



So that's basically why the russian revolution supposedly failed, but I'm asking what would be done if it had succeeded to end capitalism.



Okay, given a global proletarian revolution, how would the economic relations be changed to eliminate commodity production?


How is that different from what happened in Russia?

I think the following two links will give you a straight forward answer to these questions:
http://en.internationalism.org/ir/1_problems_mc.htm
http://en.internationalism.org/node/2733

[csquared]

Well there is no unanimous position on the Russian Revolution, but it is generally considered to have degenerated throughout 1918 due to material conditions (such as isolation, counter-revolution etc), this leading to the asphyxiation of soviet power and the birth of the USSR as a fundamentally anti-working class regime. The role that the Bolsheviks played in the degeneration of the soviets is debated, some groups would hold an Anarchist position, others would argue that the degeneration of the revolution was not the fault of the Bolsheviks, and their eventual command of the Soviet state was unavoidable, but of course, also not socialist.

As for how the socialist mode of production could have been brought about in the USSR, there is no answer regarding economic policy, the only way would have been international, worldwide revolution.

(You can disregard this comment as soon as one of the aforementioned Left Communists give you a better answer)

So Trotsky was right, and Stalin was wrong?

[Savage]

So Trotsky was right, and Stalin was wrong?
Well in that respect, yes, but Left Communists don't agree at all with Trotsky's analysis of the USSR, and completely reject 'Trotskyism' as a modern current.


Trotsky’s position on the USSR is among his most serious mistakes. While he attacked Stalinism, he always considered, and defended, the USSR as the “socialist fatherland”, and at the least as a “degenerated workers’ state”. But despite their dramatic consequences, all these political errors did not make Trotsky an enemy of the working class, as his “heirs” became after his death. In the light of events at the beginning of the war, Trotsky was even able to admit the possibility that he would have to revise his political judgement, in particular as far as the USSR was concerned.
In one of his last pieces, dated 25th September 1939 and entitled The USSR in the war, he wrote:
“We do not change our orientation. But suppose that Hitler turns his weapons to the East and invades the territories occupied by the Red Army (...) The Bolshevik-Leninists will combat Hitler, weapons in hand, but at the same time they will undertake a revolutionary propaganda against Stalin in order to prepare his overthrow at the next stage...”.
He certainly defended his analysis of the nature of the USSR, but he tied its fate to the outcome of the trials it would undergo in the test of World War II. In the same article, he says that if Stalinism were to emerge victorious and strengthened by the war (something he did not envisage happening), then it would be necessary to revise his judgement of the USSR and even of the general political situation:
“If however we consider that the present war will provoke, not the revolution but the decline of the proletariat, then there is only one possible outcome to the alternative: the further decomposition of monopolist capital, its fusion with the state and the replacement of democracy, where it still survives, by a totalitarian regime. In these conditions, the proletariat’s inability to seize the leadership of society could lead to the development of a new exploiting class emerging from the Bonapartist and fascist bourgeoisies. In all likelihood this would be a regime of decadence, and would signify the twilight of civilisation.
We would reach a similar result should the proletariat of the advanced capitalist countries take power and prove unable to hold on to it, abandoning it, as in the USSR, in the hands of a privileged bureaucracy. We would then be forced to recognise that the new decline into bureaucracy was due, not to one country’s backwardness and capitalist environment, but to the proletariat’s organic inability to become a ruling class. We would then have to establish retrospectively that in its fundamental traits today’s USSR is the precursor of a new regime of exploitation on an international scale.
We have strayed a long way from the terminological controversy on the definition of the Soviet state. But our critics should not protest: only by basing ourselves on the necessary historical perspective can we formulate a correct judgement on such a question as the replacement of one social regime by another. Taken to its conclusion, the historical alternative appears thus: either the Stalinist regime is an awful setback in the process of the transformation of bourgeois society into a socialist society, or else the Stalinist regime is the first step towards a new society of exploitation. If the second forecast proved correct, then of course the bureaucracy would become a new exploiting class. However dire this second perspective may appear, should the world proletariat indeed prove itself unable to carry out the mission entrusted to it by the course of historical development, then we would be forced to recognise that the socialist programme, based on the internal contradictions of capitalist society, has finally turned out to be a Utopia. It goes without saying that we would need a new “minimum programme” to defend the interests of the slaves of the totalitarian bureaucratic society” (our emphasis).
If we leave aside the perspective he develops here, which reveals a discouragement, not to say a profound demoralisation where he seems to lose all confidence in the working class and its ability to assume historically its revolutionary perspective, it is clear that here Trotsky is beginning to call into question his positions on the “socialist” nature of the USSR and the “working of the USSR and the “working class” character of the bureaucracy.