Thoughts on the stage of Socialism

[Heathen Communist]

It seems to me that the revolutions in Russia, China, Korea, Cuba, etc. all had the same flaw- the establishment of the socialist stage was flawed.
It appears that a major problem in their attempts at socialism is that the voice of the people, and therefore the workers, was repressed.

Opposition parties, freedom of speech, press, and assembly; none of these things were allowed by these states. I feel that for the revolution to be successful, these things must be allowed. Only then can we move toward Communism.

What are your thoughts?

[ar734]

It seems to me that the revolutions in Russia, China, Korea, Cuba, etc. all had the same flaw- the establishment of the socialist stage was flawed.
It appears that a major problem in their attempts at socialism is that the voice of the people, and therefore the workers, was repressed.

Opposition parties, freedom of speech, press, and assembly; none of these things were allowed by these states. I feel that for the revolution to be successful, these things must be allowed. Only then can we move toward Communism.

What are your thoughts?

Well, a "dictatorship of the proletariat" is a dictatorship. To me, one problem is that this dictatorship became a dictatorship of the bureaucracy. Although this may have been inevitable since all modern economies are based on corporate, monopolistic bureaucracies.

The question then is how efficient is the bureaucracy. Very inefficient in the case of the Soviet Union, N. Korea and Cuba; increasingly more efficient in the case of China.

[Heathen Communist]

However, China has definitely strayed away from Socialism altogether; they invest in other countries, the ultimate mark of the bourgeoisie.

[red cat]

However, China has definitely strayed away from Socialism altogether; they invest in other countries, the ultimate mark of the bourgeoisie.

China of today is comparable to Soviet social imperialism. They haven't shed their socialist veil yet because subjective conditions are mush more developed in China than what they used to be in the revisionist USSR. There can be a rebellion within the lower ranks of the CPC itself if China openly declares the end of socialism.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

There is nothing remotely Socialist about China. Any nation which doesn't provide free healthcare for its poor =/= Socialist.

Don't really think that we should be so obsessed by opposition parties, opposition press and so on. That would probably just decay back towards bourgeois social, political and economic relations.

What we want is to get to a critical point whereby the working class, as a collective, is class conscious and more importantly, politically conscious - i.e., it doesn't need to be led by some righteous vanguard, but the working class can, in a democratic way, grab power for itself and rule through non-dictatorial means - many Socialist parties working together, workers' political/economic councils, worker self-management and so on.

[agnixie]

I'll be the annoying anarchist, but the thread in all those cases seems to be mostly, well... These socialist states, when the question between "raison d'etat" and socialism was raised, when the conflict happened, have tended to keep the state part and ditch the socialism.

The state as an entity has this bad habit of involving self-preserving hierarchies from the simple fact of being states.

[robbo203]

It should be born in mind that before Lenin, "socialism" was not considered to be some separate stage from "communism" but just an alternative term for describing the moneyless wageless stateless society which revolutionaries sought to establish

[MBJC]

The voice of the people should be the action of the revolution. I think where revolution has strayed from this theory is that the revolutionaries are afraid that what the people say is not necessarily what they want. That or they feared a strong opposition.

[Heathen Communist]

Here's an idea:
If a revolution takes place and a Communist Party takes over, would it not be reasonable to allow other parties to participate in local and regional politics, while still having Communists dominate the overall state?

[ckaihatsu]

Here's an idea:
If a revolution takes place and a Communist Party takes over, would it not be reasonable to allow other parties to participate in local and regional politics, while still having Communists dominate the overall state?


I think this formulation is something of a misnomer -- if a revolution took place the rule of the bourgeoisie would be usurped and all power would be with the workers' soviets -- there would be no more careerist-type (personifying / commodifying) politics anymore.

Just consider that even today we have had, for decades now, the means of mass communication to enable familiarization with the political matters of the day and to facilitate political participation down to the individual level. So it's not for lack of news, or interpersonal communications that the existing system continues to be elitist in the interests of capital.

A soviets-based politics would be the workers' own self-liberating action of using the world's assets and resources on an equitable basis since there would no longer be any landlord to service with a scheduled / time-based ongoing series of payments derived from obligatory labor expended.

In this post-capitalist environment liberated laborers could simply discuss and decide on how *best* to use their collective assets and resources to relieve the most-pressing social needs, with varying shades of opinion around matters of *implementation* for the same. There wouldn't be any diversions into *externalized*, propertied interests away from the workers' own direct human interests.

A "Communist Party" -- *if* it even existed -- would be an anachronism since its class foe would have already been defeated. With the class division superseded, politics would no longer have a diametrically opposed propertied interest in opposition to it.

[Rooster]

Socialism is communism. The two terms are pretty interchangable. Some people try to say that they're different stages to prop up their justifcations of certain states. There is a difference between a proletariat dictatorship though and socialism.

[Tim Finnegan]

Here's an idea:
If a revolution takes place and a Communist Party takes over, would it not be reasonable to allow other parties to participate in local and regional politics, while still having Communists dominate the overall state?
Why does one party have to "dominate" at all? If there's a genuine mass movement of the working class, then the relevant political organisations- whatever form they take- should hold political hegemony as a matter of course, it should not be contrived. The only exceptions could in situations of a proletarian minority, as in revolutionary Russia, which I really doubt is what is being discussed here. If you add to that Ckaihatsu's comments on the obsolescence of political parties (or at least of the sort existing under capitalism) in a stable communist society, then the whole idea of party rule becomes not merely unnecessary to communism, but seemingly indicative of a failure to attain communism in the first place.


Socialism is communism. The two terms are pretty interchangable. Some people try to say that they're different stages to prop up their justifcations of certain states.
Well, just to be picky, I'd say that "socialism" is distinct in that it could also refer to a mode of production which still came under the general heading of "generalised commodity production", e.g. some form of market socialism, but, yeah, you're otherwise spot on.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Comrade, this demarchist is in a minority position when stating personal advocacy for a genuine one-party system (http://www.revleft.com/vb/one-party-vs-t144336/index.html?p=1914513) that combines yet separates the constitutionally entrenched but politicized ruling worker-class party-movement (Article 126) with multiple tendencies but no factionalism, on the one hand, from the not-so-politicized state "party" (Moshe Lewin's "no-party state") with all the rhetoric of cadres taking administrative instructions and such. Such a ruling worker-class party would combine the alternative culture and politicized nature of the pre-war SPD and inter-war USPD with the nomenclature and job-slot emphasis of the CPSU.

[∞]

I believe the best technique would be local soviets. However, instead of a collective entity of all workers adhering to the CC, each particular industry has it's own union. Each of the "Soviets" would be local and a state would be democratic (with some kind of constitution to never let any law violate the natural rights of another) state under the hands of the general public. The purpose of this government is to take part in foreign affairs and mobilize the army. Sort of like a compromise between Anarchism and Marxism.

Its all theoretical though...

[Jose Gracchus]

Comrade, this demarchist is in a minority position when stating personal advocacy for a genuine one-party system (http://www.revleft.com/vb/one-party-vs-t144336/index.html?p=1914513) that combines yet separates the constitutionally entrenched but politicized ruling worker-class party with multiple tendencies but no factionalism, on the one hand, from the not-so-politicized state "party" (Moshe Lewin's "no-party state") with all the talk of cadres taking orders and such. Such a ruling worker-class party would combine the alternative culture and politicized nature of the SPD with the nomenclature and job-slot emphasis of the CPSU.

Sounds like a blender full of the dregs of the creations of the partyist fraction of the communist movement.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I don't see alternative culture (except for our discussion part about one-man management) or politicization as "dregs." Nor do I see nomenclatures or job slots in and of themselves as "dregs."

[I don't see non-institutional workers councils, certainly those that would require mandatory financial and similar support, as "dregs," either.]

[cb9's_unity]

It's hard to draw a comparison for post-revolutionary politics in the country's you have listed and the 'first world' nations most posters here live in. Marx recognized that the early socialist state (as has been stated already, Marx didn't have the clear cut stages of socialism that Lenin did) would bear the mark of its predecessor capitalist society. I would imagine that in America some form of parliamentary politics, borrowing liberal values such as freedom to speech, organization, religion etc,... would characterize the time immediately following the revolution (keep in mind that immediate could mean anything from months to decades, I have not idea right now). From there a more radical form of political organization would take place, merging more grassroots workers organizations into the political structure. Eventually totally new forms of political/economic organization will arise to conform to the completely new form of society.

The country's you mentioned had nothing but conservative political conditions and, more importantly, didn't have the same simplicity in class structure that the current U.S has. Those 'socialist' states still had plenty of class antagonisms after the CP had taken power. That situation, and the problems that come from it, simply wouldn't exist in many modern nations. I'm not saying the revolutions there were doomed to failure, as I'm more in line with Luxemburg on revolution in under developed nations. However I'm prone to think that the chance of failure is much smaller in developed nations once a working class party has gained the reigns of political power. The problem is how to get there.

[Die Neue Zeit]

What strategy, if any, did Luxemburg have on revolution in underdeveloped nations? In really underdeveloped nations?