Was the USSR socialist?

[Lokomotive293]

Was the USSR socialist? And if it wasn't, what was it?

[Die Rote Fahne]

Was the USSR socialist? And if it wasn't, what was it?

No. Bureaucratic Collectivist/state capitalist.

[thesadmafioso]

Yes, the CCCP was certainly socialist. I would not venture anything beyond that as it was unable to reach the stage of communism due to a lack of international support, but that does not tarnish its history as a socialist state.

When you look at the improvements which the workers of the CCCP experienced for the duration of its existence and the tremendous progress that was allowed to proceed due to the policy enacted and practiced by this union, it is not possible to reasonably deny it the title of socialism.

[Rooster]

No. The proletariat did not own the means of production. The state owning the means of production does not equal socialism.

[Impulse97]

Eh, yeah for like six months to maybe a year on the very outside. 1917-18 ish. After they crushed the CA and implemented 'War Communism' all hopes of Socialism vanished.

And, then there's the great Stalinsky... Started out alright up to about 1923 and the 12th Congress, but then he contradicted some of what he said and did in the past, further degrading the SU's situation. You know what they say, 'power corrupts', and corrupt it did in his case.

Shit. I just godwin'd didn't I? :bored: Oh well, it was bound to come up sooner or later, always does. :rolleyes:

[Ocean Seal]

Was the USSR socialist? And if it wasn't, what was it?
Depends on who you ask. I'd say so, but terminology doesn't really matter. The SU had its up's a down's. The worker's did have control via worker's councils but this was stifled by the party. Was it the evil boogeyman dictatorship of the west where the worker's were slaves? No, but in terms of was it what we dreamed socialism would be? No. In short you're going to hear people say no, and you're going to hear people make excuses about what they were and weren't able to do in terms of worker's control. Now some of these are valid, and some are arguable. Socialism isn't easy to build, that's I can really say.

[Dogs On Acid]

It's funny only Leninists say it was Socialist. Everybody else says no :lol:

[RichardAWilson]

I concur with Red Brother.

[Rss]

Yes, but it ceased being socialist. Even in periods where it was not technically socialist, it was building socialism. But I can assure you that there were downs as well.

[Die Rote Fahne]

No. The proletariat did not own the means of production. The state owning the means of production does not equal socialism.
Unless the worker is truly in control of the state. Which was not the case in the USSR.

[A Marxist Historian]

Eh, yeah for like six months to maybe a year on the very outside. 1917-18 ish. After they crushed the CA and implemented 'War Communism' all hopes of Socialism vanished.

And, then there's the great Stalinsky... Started out alright up to about 1923 and the 12th Congress, but then he contradicted some of what he said and did in the past, further degrading the SU's situation. You know what they say, 'power corrupts', and corrupt it did in his case.

Shit. I just godwin'd didn't I? :bored: Oh well, it was bound to come up sooner or later, always does. :rolleyes:

Were the Bolsheviks trying to create Socialism? Of course. Did they succeed? No. Why? Because you can't build socialism in one country, it's an economic impossibility, especially in one as economically, socially and culturally backward as Tsarist Russia.

Did Lenin and Trotsky understand this? Yes. The whole idea of the Russian Revolution was as a spark for European and world revolution, not the impossibility of creating a socialist utopia in Russia of all unlikely places.

Did Stalin? No. Indeed that is what Stalinism *is,* namely the idea of trying to build socialism in one country. As Stalin was an extremely determined and ruthless individual, he attempted to do it anyway, with the horrible results we are all familiar with.

The Stalinist caricature of socialism was the biggest problem the Left faced -- until the Soviet Union collapsed, after which we have the even *bigger* problem of people thinking that socialism is a nice idea that didn't work, so we have to stick with capitalism.

As for Lord Acton (that's who you mean not Godwin I think?) and his "power corrupts," he had it backwards. It was the *lack of power* of the Russian Bolsheviks to construct socialism in Russia that corrupted them.

-M.H.-

[Born in the USSR]

Certainly,the USSR was socialist.

I've just finished my blog at last ( http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=1405 ) ,there are two new chapters:Were there commodity-money relations in the USSR? and Was the labor force a commodity in the USSR?

Read it.

[False Consciousness]

I personally tend to think of the USSR as an extremely degenerated worker's state, or dictatorship of the proletariat. At least in the beginning of its life, it seems the USSR consisted of a society in which the working class had wrenched control of the state apparatus from the bourgeoisie, but its expression was plagued by a privileged bureaucratic layer. I differentiate this from "socialism," and tend to think that the material conditions at the time, (imperialist intervention, a relatively weak bourgeoisie at the time of revolution, failure to spread revolution, etc.) as factors that deterred the construction of socialism.

However, I consider my knowledge of the history of the Soviet Union pretty limited, especially post-Stalin. I'm very open to hearing the interpretation and analysis of others.

[Impulse97]

Certainly,the USSR was socialist.

No it wasn't. The workers did not control the means of production. The party bureaucracy did. Was it better than Capitalism? Post Stalin I'd say so, but just because it was better does not make it Socialism.

[ArrowLance]

It's funny only Leninists say it was Socialist. Everybody else says no :lol:

It's funny, only non-Leninists gather around to assault another tendency in unison and for pleasure!

While this isn't really true (what I just said above) I was just pointing out what this thread has really become, and really almost all threads in which people even pretend to be interested in the Soviet Union become.

I hope that eventually the community here can have discussions without the big thanks-fest, anti-leninist, substanceless nonsense when it comes to the Soviet question.

It simply isn't enough to say that the workers didn't directly own the means of production. Sometimes the answer to that is not readily available or even materially possible. If the state is truly working in the working class interest, in the interest of the revolution, and moving toward socialism and democracy it is most certainly Communist.

Can someone be called Communist without living in a Communist country? Of course they can, and many here do. But how is that possible if the spirit, goals, actions, and aims are not what make them Communist.

[RichardAWilson]

The U.S.S.R. wasn't a Socialist State (which entails economic democracy and political democracy).

The workingmen didn't own and control the means of production, which were directed and controlled by an appointed State Apparatus - one which enjoyed benefits and privileges that weren't available to the average working man.

Surplus value still existed in the U.S.S.R., as did labor as a resource that was used in industrial and commercial production. Alienation still existed - as alcoholism, depression and suicide were common problems.

State Capitalism might not be the appropriate word to use in describing the U.S.S.R. However: Neither is Scientific (Marxian) Socialism.

Yes, they had wonderful health and educational services. Yes, housing was affordable for everyone willing to work. Nonetheless, that isn't Scientific Socialism.


If I thought for a second that the U.S.S.R. was a Beacon of Communism, my political thinking would never move beyond Social-Democracy.

[Impulse97]

It's funny, only non-Leninists gather around to assault another tendency in unison and for pleasure!

While this isn't really true (what I just said above) I was just pointing out what this thread has really become, and really almost all threads in which people even pretend to be interested in the Soviet Union become.

I hope that eventually the community here can have discussions without the big thanks-fest, anti-leninist, substanceless nonsense when it comes to the Soviet question.

If the average lennist had some theory to back up their claims, it wouldn't end up like this because they'd be able to hold their own in a debate.



It simply isn't enough to say that the workers didn't directly own the means of production.

Yes it is. If the workers do not control the MoP, you don't have socialism. As long as there is exploitation and inequality exists you can't have socialism. As long as wages exist you can't have communism.

If the working class controls the MoP completely and democratically (with any government figures re-callable at any time) you won't have the issues that existed in the fSU or if you do it will only be in the aftermath of the revolution and they should fade away faster and faster each year. Each year in the fSU those things didn't fade away, but grew and expanded until the caps put the icing on the cake when the fSU collapsed.



Sometimes the answer to that is not readily available or even materially possible.

That's a cop out.



If the state is truly working in the working class interest, in the interest of the revolution, and moving toward socialism and democracy it is most certainly Communist.

You can't be moving towards socialism and already have Communism. Not to mention a state working towards socialism (which implies it is not yet socialist) is also communist? Seriously? :rolleyes: Even if what you said was true, then fSU existed for 78 years and still never managed to get to socialism, because it was perpetually 'working towards it' a.k.a bourgeoisie trickery at its best. Managed to fool the whole dang world and nearly plunged us all into WWIII.



Can someone be called Communist without living in a Communist country? Of course they can, and many here do. But how is that possible if the spirit, goals, actions, and aims are not what make them Communist.

Being a 'communist' is different from Communism. Communism is a new economic and social order. A communist is someone trying to further or achieve Communism. This is pretty much just a blatant red-herring. :laugh:

[Commissar Rykov]

No it wasn't. The workers did not control the means of production. The party bureaucracy did. Was it better than Capitalism? Post Stalin I'd say so, but just because it was better does not make it Socialism.

Andropov, Gorbachev and Brezhnev were better than Stalin? Really?:blink:

[Impulse97]

Andropov, Gorbachev and Brezhnev were better than Stalin? Really?:blink:

In certain aspects yes. But none of them would have even had the chance to be the fuckups they where had it not been for Stalin. At least under Lenin and before Stalin consolidated his power there was still a little bit of hope left for a socialist USSR.

[RichardAWilson]

George W. Bush was better than Stalin... 20 Million Dead? Mass Starvation?

Lenin did offer hope. Even though his methods contributed to the rise of Stalinism, his intentions were pure - which is more than can be said for the Paranoid-schizophrenic {Stalin}

[Commissar Rykov]

In certain aspects yes. But none of them would have even had the chance to be the fuckups they where had it not been for Stalin. At least under Lenin and before Stalin consolidated his power there was still a little bit of hope left for a socialist USSR.

So Andropov the Chekist who helped empower the KGB and is considered a hero by Putin is better than Stalin?

Gorbachev the admitted anti-Communist is better than Stalin?

Brezhnev with his complete stagnation of the Soviet Union and his well known drunk driving and empowerment of the Red Army and KGB was better then Stalin?

Err if you say so.:closedeyes:

[Savage]

Certainly,the USSR was socialist.

I've just finished my blog at last ( http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=1405 ) ,there are two new chapters:Were there commodity-money relations in the USSR? and Was the labor force a commodity in the USSR?

Read it.

I recommended this (http://libcom.org/library/paresh-chattopadhyay-marxian-concept-capital-soviet-experience)to you last time, I don't think you read it.

[Binh]

Was the USSR socialist? And if it wasn't, what was it?

Yes and no. It depends on what year you are referring to.

In Oct./Nov. 1917, the answer is unquestionably yes. The working class was the ruling class of the country.

By 1921, I would argue no, Russia was not socialist because the working class largely ceased to exist, and a class that barely exists is not one running the country or making decisions. At that time, the country was ruled by an increasingly dictatorial state-party bureaucracy and the workers' councils (soviets) were no longer instruments workers' democracy. This was largely a result of the economic devastation caused by the Russian civil war -- Russian workers joined the Red Army/state machine, fled to the countryside to scrounge for food, and the ones that remained at their jobs literally collapsed while working for lack of food.

In 1928, the bureaucracy led by Stalin began to rapidly industrialize the country by forcibly extracting surplus from workers and peasants with the inauguration of the first five-year plans. The aim was to build up the country's industrial strength in order to compete militarily with the capitalist west. Tony Cliff called this "bureaucratic state capitalism" and his books on it, especially volume 4 of his Trotsky biography, are worth reading.

Alternate theories about what Russia was are 1) that it was indeed socialist/communist, which is what Stalinists contend and 2) that it was a workers' state, albeit degenerated, which is what Trotsky and his followers contend. I for one find it ironic that Stalinists and Trotskyists agree on a basic level that it was socialist, but that is a different can of worms.

Good question! I hope this thread is useful and gives you some pointers about what to read/research on this issue.

[ArrowLance]

If the average lennist had some theory to back up their claims, it wouldn't end up like this because they'd be able to hold their own in a debate.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. Leninists have plenty of 'theory'. You can read it all over the forum. You might see it even more if more anti-leninists had it.



Yes it is. If the workers do not control the MoP, you don't have socialism. As long as there is exploitation and inequality exists you can't have socialism. As long as wages exist you can't have communism.

Socialism can be done with state control. If you think otherwise you confuse the term. I believe Marxism has room for this state control so long as it is a state for the working class.



If the working class controls the MoP completely and democratically (with any government figures re-callable at any time) you won't have the issues that existed in the fSU or if you do it will only be in the aftermath of the revolution and they should fade away faster and faster each year. Each year in the fSU those things didn't fade away, but grew and expanded until the caps put the icing on the cake when the fSU collapsed.

Complete democratic control would not have eliminated all the troubles of the SU, that idea is ridiculous. I don't understand how you think democracy solves all problems.



That's a cop out.

No U. But really how is it a cop out, how is this not just a cop out. You didn't respond at all, you just believe democracy is the solution to everything I guess.



You can't be moving towards socialism and already have Communism. Not to mention a state working towards socialism (which implies it is not yet socialist) is also communist? Seriously? :rolleyes: Even if what you said was true, then fSU existed for 78 years and still never managed to get to socialism, because it was perpetually 'working towards it' a.k.a bourgeoisie trickery at its best. Managed to fool the whole dang world and nearly plunged us all into WWIII.

I didn't say that the SU had communism, I said it was Communist. Socialism was still being achieved and being furthered, the Communist nation was advancing socialism and democracy, how is that so hard to understand. The Soviet Union achieved greater and more secure lengths of socialism for a long time. You can't just declare yourself to have socialism and not work towards it.

Obviously didn't fool you, wonderful.



Being a 'communist' is different from Communism. Communism is a new economic and social order. A communist is someone trying to further or achieve Communism. This is pretty much just a blatant red-herring. :laugh:

Yes it is. What I am saying is that nation can be Communist in the same way a person can be Communist. You just didn't understand.

[CynicalIdealist]

George W. Bush was better than Stalin... 20 Million Dead? Mass Starvation?

What a valid comparison.

lol

[Born in the USSR]

No it wasn't. The workers did not control the means of production. The party bureaucracy did.

Oh yes,I just know it,the best argument of left anticommies:the workers didn't have a power,the bureaucracy did.

Socialism is a state. And the state includes a bureaucracy for management, distribution, accounting, planning and other things. And for all this bureaucracy needs an authority. And the bureaucracy under socialism is the instrument of the power of workers, whose interests it compliance.

"We are not utopians. We know that an unskilled labourer or a cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration." ( Lenin ).

As we see,antistalinists are just utopians,so they did not understand anything.

[The Idler]

Soviet Russia and Capitalism (http://www.socialiststudies.org.uk/article%20record%20straight.shtml#russia)


Exploitation, with class struggle between wage-labour and capital, was at the heart of the so-called Soviet system. Re-naming the capitalist class as the “state capitalist class” makes no difference to that ugly reality. In fact it would be a step back for the SPGB to deny its own, theoretically sound, historically unique and fact-based analysis: that Soviet Russia was a capitalist country, trading on the world markets, and with a class system which exploited the working class through the wages system.

[Thirsty Crow]

I think that a better question would be whether USSR was a class society, and whether there were structural antagonisms propelling its course of development (and if yes, what they were).

In my opinion, the former SU was indeed a class society. It was based on the structural antagonism between the class of managers and the decision makers - be they higher ranking officials within the structures of the party-state, adjacent organizations (unions), the military and state enterprises' managers and supervisors and the broad layers of the working class. This was not only reflected in income differentials, and consequent consumption and living standard differences, but also in the fact that proletarian democracy, inclusive of every labouring human being and also the disabled and the elderly, didn't exist as a political "superstructure".

Now, we may turn back and redesign the term "socialism" to fit whatever agend we may have, but I'll stick to the oldest conception of the term, which does not stiupulate a separate socio-economic formation, a spearate mode of production, different from both capitalism and communism, which is termed "socialism" in political discourse of the revisionist "revolutionary" organizations. "Socialism" and "communism" are interchangable terms.
So, the answer would have to be "no, USSR wasn't a socialist society".



Socialism is a state. And the state includes a bureaucracy for management, distribution, accounting, planning and other things. And for all this bureaucracy needs an authority. And the bureaucracy under socialism is the instrument of the power of workers, whose interests it compliance.Socialism isn't a "state". That would mean that it refers only to the political superstructure, and not the economic basis of a society.
Also, as it was clear from the class differences in the USSR, the bureaucracy was not an instrument of the working class which is to abolish itself as a class. In fact, the final capitalist restoration is the most clear expression of the inherent tendencies within the managerial and bureaucratic class.



"We are not utopians. We know that an unskilled labourer or a cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration." ( Lenin ).You shoul learn how to quote these little gems of wisdom of yours. Where's the reference?
I'm asking because it makes a whole lot of difference when the quote is placed in context, especially if we remeber that Lenin died in 1924 and that an unskilled labourer or a cook were still reproduced as parts of the working class who were prevented, and consequently unable, to get on with the job of political administration even full six decades after his death.


As we see,antistalinists are just utopians,so they did not understand anything.
It's nice to see that you're bashing the principle of workers' self-emancipation as "utopian" (I'd bet that you don't even know how "utopianism" figures in Marxist writings, especially in relation to "scientific socialism"). In fact, it's great to see recycled bourgeois ideological bullshit, and presented as part of a "revolutionary" discourse.
Seriously, do you consider yourself a Marxist? Maybe you should stick with "Stalinism" in order that any notion of Marxism may be purged from your idiotic ramblings.



Brezhnev with his complete stagnation of the Soviet Union and his well known drunk driving and empowerment of the Red Army and KGB was better then Stalin?

By the way, wasn't the Red Army renamed in the 30s into "Soviet Army", which incidentally occured with the stripping away of grassroots structures of workers' militias?

[Red And Black Sabot]

I would answer no. The USSR was not socialist after the Bolsheviks took power.
The power that workers and pesants won was quickly absorbed if not straight up smashed by the state.
The top down structures, with bureaucrats filling the roll of boss, and the fact that the working class did not make decisions directly nor did they have control over their work makes the USSR a form of State Capitalism.

[manic expression]

Yes, it was socialist. The working class controlled the state through the vanguard party and the state apparatus. Further, capitalist production was eliminated through the centralized economic planning of the worker state.

:cool:

It wasn't ideal, though, and the USSR's flaws ultimately contributed to its fall. However, even though it was flawed it was still socialist, and is therefore an example to uphold and learn from.

[Rooster]

It may have been a state for the workers but it certainly wasn't a place where the means of production were held by the proletariat. Saying that the state owns them, the state is the people, therefore the the people owned their own means of production is absurd. Claiming that sort of statism is socialism means you can't form a real material reason as to why the seemingly socialist society transferred to capitalism without much of a change in the mode of production.

[Thirsty Crow]

It may have been a state for the workers but it certainly wasn't a place where the means of production were held by the proletariat. Saying that the state owns them, the state is the people, therefore the the people owned their own means of production is absurd. Claiming that sort of statism is socialism means you can't form a real material reason as to why the seemingly socialist society transferred to capitalism without much of a change in the mode of production.
Yes, these folks in effect abandon the materialist conception of history when it comes to them trying to figure out what caused capitalist restoration (the working class in control of the state via the vanguard which then comes to act as a major factor in capitalist restoration; it sounds like a farce, in fact).

[Kiev Communard]

Yes, it was socialist. The working class controlled the state through the vanguard party and the state apparatus.

Evidence, please. I am very curious to find out how, for example, the striking workers in Novotscherkassk in 1962, who were shot by the troops and militia merely for asking to lower the prices of basic necessities, controlled the state apparatus which repressed them.

[Thirsty Crow]

Evidence, please. I am very curious to find out how, for example, the striking workers in Novotscherkassk in 1962, who were shot by the troops and militia merely for asking to lower the prices of basic necessities, controlled the state apparatus which repressed them.
This is cirucular logic 101, comrade.
They were saboteurs since the state against which they conducted the strike was in fact their state, the state through which they wielded their power, so in effect they were striking against their own power and political rule. Kinda like a capitalist going on a strike against himself over the meager salary he hands out to himself, got it?

[manic expression]

Evidence, please. I am very curious to find out how, for example, the striking workers in Novotscherkassk in 1962, who were shot by the troops and militia merely for asking to lower the prices of basic necessities, controlled the state apparatus which repressed them.
On the vanguard party. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_of_the_Communist_Party_of_the_USSR)

On the state apparatus, you can see the method of elections in the various Soviet constitutions.

On the strike (http://www.uea.ac.uk/his/webcours/russia/documents/novocherkassk.shtml), it was an unfortunate tragedy to be sure, and the response was unacceptable IMO...but it had turned into a riot. The workers there weren't "merely asking" anything. Further, controlling the state doesn't mean a single city can vote against having a grain shortage when there is one.

[Thirsty Crow]

On the strike (http://www.uea.ac.uk/his/webcours/russia/documents/novocherkassk.shtml), it was an unfortunate tragedy to be sure, and the response was unacceptable IMO...but it had turned into a riot. The workers there weren't "merely asking" anything. Further, controlling the state doesn't mean a single city can vote against having a grain shortage when there is one.
Do you know what is a tragedy? An event or an occurrence in which a person or a group is severly harmed or killed in which no perpetrator can be found. This harks back to the ancient Hellenic theater and its notion of hamartia.

Now, examine this event more closely, even for two or three seconds, and tell me, is it a tragedy or cold blooded murder, state sanctioned murder in fact?

Also, a whole city of labourers should be expected to do whatever the fuck they want when they go without basic prerequisites of life while their bosses are safe and sound.

I cannot even begin to describe how godawfully despicable you are, honestly. I can't help myself, I know that this is teh internet and all, but you're a creep, simply put.

[manic expression]

Do you know what is a tragedy? An event or an occurrence in which a person or a group is severly harmed or killed in which no perpetrator can be found. This harks back to the ancient Hellenic theater and its notion of hamartia.
Oh, OK, good. Then I guess "style" means a writing utensil, since that's the original Greek root of the word. :rolleyes: Just to save you some time since you're obviously allergic to dictionaries and facts, "tragedy" can be used to mean a shocking or sad event.

Thus, it was a tragedy. If you read the link, it clearly shows that the rioters had begun assaulting the troops there, and warning shots had been fired. What happened afterwards was the result of panic. IMO, the live rounds should've been nowhere near the scene and the crowd should have been dispersed with other methods, but it was a tragedy. Simple as.


Now, examine this event more closely, even for two or three seconds, and tell me, is it a tragedy or cold blooded murder, state sanctioned murder in fact?
The crowd was attacking the soldiers and others. Some in the crowd even attempted to grab soldiers' weapons. It wasn't "cold blooded murder" because of this. Like I said, the guns shouldn't have been there in the first place, but that doesn't equal "state sanctioned murder" just because you say so.

If you had examined the facts closely, instead of copy-and-pasting some self-righteous rant, I wouldn't have to explain it to you.


Also, a whole city of labourers should be expected to do whatever the fuck they want when they go without basic prerequisites of life while their bosses are safe and sound.
They weren't going "without basic prerequisites of life". They had production quotas and food prices go up. They could still get food, they just had less money left over afterwards. This is clear from the link I posted (that you didn't read).

What a nice definition of working-class democracy you have. A city can do "whatever the fuck" it wants, regardless of what's best for the workers of every city. Perhaps you think more grain grows when you stomp your feet, but that's not how it works in reality. In reality, when there is a food shortage, steps have to be taken to get through said food shortage. Maybe you should leave the politics to the grown ups if you can't follow along.


I cannot even begin to describe how godawfully despicable you are, honestly. I can't help myself, I know that this is teh internet and all, but you're a creep, simply put.
And I quote: do you know what is a creep? :lol: It's funny that you get personal when someone simply disagrees with you. What a credit you are to the communist movement... :sneaky:

[HarperHater]

Under Lenin, yes but it soon developed into something different.

[Dogs On Acid]

Under Lenin, yes but it soon developed into something different.

No. Look at this: War Communism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_communism).

[HarperHater]

No. Look at this: .

I don't understand your point.

[Dogs On Acid]

I don't understand your point.

Did you read the link I gave you?

[HarperHater]

Did you read the link I gave you?

Yes, I don't understand how that disproves my argument that Lenin's USSR was Socialist. From what I gathered, war communism was the beginning of the abolition of private property and a militant stance against some of what communism's ideology prohibits.

I'm not trying to come off aggressively or anything, I'm simply trying to understand your point so that I can improve my historical thinking concept.

[A Marxist Historian]

Evidence, please. I am very curious to find out how, for example, the striking workers in Novotscherkassk in 1962, who were shot by the troops and militia merely for asking to lower the prices of basic necessities, controlled the state apparatus which repressed them.

A perfectly good question, to which there is a simple answer.

Shortly after Khrushchev did that, he was ousted. The Cuba Missile Crisis was the big reason, but the Novocherkassk huge disaster and embarassment had a lot to do with it too.

The USSR was *ultimately* dependent on the support or at least tolerance of the Soviet working class, just as capitalist governments, even dictatorships that throw troublemaking capitalists in prison, like say that of Putin, are ultimately dependent on the support or at least tolerance of the capitalist class.

When the Donbass coal miners rose up in 1989 and started taking control back, even forming Soviets, that was pretty much it for Gorbachev and the Soviet regime, being as the coal miners had been the hard core of Stalinist support in the working class, going back to Stakhanov and even before.

Unfortunately, lacking any revolutionary leadership the miners movement fell apart, with large parts of it listening to siren songs about how much better things might be under capitalism, spread by literal CIA agents sent there, and the bad example of Solidarity in Poland. When they found out otherwise it was too late.

-M.H.-

[Dogs On Acid]

Yes, I don't understand how that disproves my argument that Lenin's USSR was Socialist. From what I gathered, war communism was the beginning of the abolition of private property and a militant stance against some of what communism's ideology prohibits.

I'm not trying to come off aggressively or anything, I'm simply trying to understand your point so that I can improve my historical thinking concept.


Engels, Socialism : Utopian and Scientific, (Allen and Unwin, 1892 ; pp. 71-2)

“The modern State, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the State of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers – proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head.”

Under War Communism:

All industry was nationalized and strict centralized management was introduced.

State monopoly on foreign trade was introduced.

Discipline for workers was strict, and strikers could be shot.

Obligatory labour duty was imposed onto "non-working classes."

Prodrazvyorstka – requisition of agricultural surpluses from peasants in excess of absolute minimum for centralized distribution among the remaining population. (Requisition? Ha, more like taking at gun-point)

Food and most commodities were rationed and distributed in urban centers in a centralized way.

Private enterprise became illegal.

The state introduced military-style control of railroads.


This my friend, is NOT Socialism.

[HarperHater]

But wouldn't you agree that it's a war, and drastic measures needed to be taken in order to secure victory? That Lenin later on changed and created a more socialist oriented state?

[Jose Gracchus]

Depends on who you ask. I'd say so, but terminology doesn't really matter. The SU had its up's a down's. The worker's did have control via worker's councils but this was stifled by the party. Was it the evil boogeyman dictatorship of the west where the worker's were slaves? No, but in terms of was it what we dreamed socialism would be? No. In short you're going to hear people say no, and you're going to hear people make excuses about what they were and weren't able to do in terms of worker's control. Now some of these are valid, and some are arguable. Socialism isn't easy to build, that's I can really say.

A point of fact: the workers' councils or soviets ceased to function by the end of 1918. Workers began simply ignoring them and treating them as rubber stamps (for example absenteeism at meetings or attempts to just approve the party resolutions because they had no ability to participate anymore and just wanted to go home) by 1919-1922. You can find all this documented in Simon Pirani's The Russian Revolution in Retreat 1920-24: Soviet Workers and the New Communist Elite. In 1936 Stalin abolished them even on paper, replacing them with "soviets" which were indistinguishable from bourgeois parliaments or city councils.


Yes, it was socialist. The working class controlled the state through the vanguard party and the state apparatus. Further, capitalist production was eliminated through the centralized economic planning of the worker state.

Not that I expect a real answer, because I am asking you, but how can scientific planning of production for use-values be in place if the state has abolished the statistical organization which measures the caloric subsistence of the workers and peasants? How could 'planning' have any scientific basis when the state could not have any knowledge of how the plan is effecting the direct producers food intake?

[Savage]

Yes, it was socialist. The working class controlled the state through the vanguard party and the state apparatus. Further, capitalist production was eliminated through the centralized economic planning of the worker state.

So you believe that the USSR was a post capitalist society, in which the proletariat and state still existed?

[BlackMarx]

The USSR was not socialist in any shape or form. Lenin bastardized Marx's theory and gave birth to an autocracy that would be a nightmare for humanity for almost a century, let alone set back the socialist cause tremendously. The flawed theory of Democratic Centralism has produced dictatorship, death, and sectarianism whereever its been implemented. Socialism is democracy. No democracy means no socialism. There is nothing democratic about a country being run by a mob that assumes its ability to overthrow governments gives it the right to have a monopoly of power. Dictatorship of the Proletariat in the USSR was really Dictatorship over the Proletariat.

[Dogs On Acid]

But wouldn't you agree that it's a war, and drastic measures needed to be taken in order to secure victory? That Lenin later on changed and created a more socialist oriented state?

Doesn't matter. If there was a war, you can't magically consider a Society Socialist just because of the difficulty it faces. To be considered Socialist there has to be certain rules set in place, such as Democracy and Common Ownership. State monopoly is not Common Ownership. It is State Ownership.

The abolishion of the State has to be achieved as quickly as possible, and in the Soviet Union they failed to do it in 75 years.

And, as you can see from Engels' quote, the state in inherently Capitalist, because is pays workers a wage and functions as the Capitalist class itself. It owns the means of production and exploits the working class, then it reaps the profits.
This is why the Soviet Union is State Capitalist, not Socialist!

Now you can understand that the State is the enemy and must be done away with!

[Born in the USSR]

the final capitalist restoration.

If there was a capitalist restoration in 1991,then there was no capitalism in the USSR before 1991.OK.


Originally Posted by Menocchio http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2176170#post2176170)
bureaucratic class. Hitherto was known only three of the exploiting classes: slave owners in slave society, feudal lords under feudalism, the bourgeoisie under capitalism.If you have invented a new exploiting class (the "bureaucracy"), then invent a new social-economic system ( "bureaucracism"? :D ).

Wow,and silly Marx and Lenin believed that after capitalism will come socialism and communism.Not at all,according to left anticommunists after capitalism comes "bureaucracism"!:tt1:

"Marasmus grew stronger..."


Originally Posted by Menocchio http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2176170#post2176170)
You shoul learn how to quote these little gems of wisdom of yours. Where's the reference? Yes,I can repeat Lenin's words:

"We are not utopians. We know that an unskilled labourer or a cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration." (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/01.htm)

and add this:

"There is no doubt that we constantly regard as workers people who have not had the slightest real experience of large-scale industry. There has been case after case of petty bourgeois, who have become workers by chance and only for a very short time, being classed as workers." (http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/CNM22.html)

and this:

"“And, as a matter of fact, in the era of capitalism, when the masses of the workers are continuously subjected to exploitation and cannot develop their human potentialities, the most characteristic feature of working-class political parties is that they can embrace only a minority of their class. A political party can comprise only a minority of the class, in the same way as the really class-conscious workers in every capitalist society constitute only a minority of all the workers. That is why we must admit that only this class-conscious minority can guide the broad masses of the workers and lead them.” ( At the Second Congress of Comintern )

and this:

"...by the dictatorship of the proletariat we mean, in essence,** the dictatorship of its organised and class-conscious minority." ( At the Second Congress of Comintern )

You are utopians because you believe that all the workers can and, more importantly,want to govern a state.You are utopians because you believe that the working class is homogeneous.It is not.

You are utopians because you are sure that if the worker or a peasant will get an education and become an engineer,a collective farm chairman or a party official, he will betray his class.Hence logically follows a cuckoo idea :the workers should not be educated! - here is the quintessence of the anti-Stalinist idiocy !

[Dogs On Acid]

You are utopians because you are sure that if the worker or a peasant will get an education and become an engineer,a collective farm chairman or a party official, he will betray his class.Hence logically follows a cuckoo idea :the workers should not be educated! - here is the quintessence of the anti-Stalinist idiocy !

Just no.

[RemoveYourChains]

Was the USSR socialist? And if it wasn't, what was it?


I think the argument could be made they were trying to establish socialism.

What is more controversial is whether or not there were theoretical defects (and hence, institutional ones as well) in Leninism which would prevent the socialization of all of Russian life, and prevent the emergence of "pure communism" (the end goal of Marxian socialism.)

While it could be argued that in the early years it would not be so clear, I think history has rendered a verdict on the dispute over vanguardism - it simply doesn't work. It removes public accountability. It creates a new aristocracy (that of the party, instead of that of capital or feudal lords.) While nominally asserting that the "vanguard"/party represents the best, most class-conscious elements of the proletariat (and as such its rule amounts to the rule of the proletariat), the real result is the creation of a new ruling class to dictate to workers.

I'm somewhat sympathetic to the old USSR and derivative revolutions - but in the final analysis, there are concrete reasons (internal to their theoretical foundations) why they ultimately could not deliver.

[Dogs On Acid]

The only reason the Soviet People "accepted" the Party's authority was because they didn't materialisticly know much different. They had just abolished a feudal authoritarian system to be replaced by a collectivist authoritarian system.

Leninism by today's standards would be unacceptable in developed countries. The authority would be rejected, because there would be more "freedom" under bourgeois democracy than under Leninism.

This is why Libertarian Socialism is the future if we really want a stateless society.

[HarperHater]

Doesn't matter. If there was a war, you can't magically consider a Society Socialist just because of the difficulty it faces. To be considered Socialist there has to be certain rules set in place, such as Democracy and Common Ownership. State monopoly is not Common Ownership. It is State Ownership.

The abolishion of the State has to be achieved as quickly as possible, and in the Soviet Union they failed to do it in 75 years.

And, as you can see from Engels' quote, the state in inherently Capitalist, because is pays workers a wage and functions as the Capitalist class itself. It owns the means of production and exploits the working class, then it reaps the profits.
This is why the Soviet Union is State Capitalist, not Socialist!

Now you can understand that the State is the enemy and must be done away with!

Ok, thanks for your insight. I learned a lot.

[Savage]

So you believe that the USSR was a post capitalist society, in which the proletariat and state still existed?

I do actually want a response from you, Manic Expression.


If there was a capitalist restoration in 1991,then there was no capitalism in the USSR before 1991.OK.

What about in 1917? No capitalism then? If not, how could there possibly be a proletarian revolution?


Wow,and silly Marx and Lenin believed that after capitalism will come socialism and communism.Not at all,according to left anticommunists* after capitalism comes "bureaucracism"!:tt1:

I (and most left communists that I know) don't consider the ruling class of the USSR to have been a unique and new 'bureaucratic' class, we consider them to have been the bourgeoisie. Given that you obviously have such an extensive understanding of historical materialism, could you please tell me how it was possible for the USSR to go from capitalism (even though you earlier implied that it was feudalism) to socialism and then back to capitalism?

*best pun ever

[manic expression]

how can scientific planning of production for use-values be in place if the state has abolished the statistical organization which measures the caloric subsistence of the workers and peasants? How could 'planning' have any scientific basis when the state could not have any knowledge of how the plan is effecting the direct producers food intake?
In plain English, if you please.


So you believe that the USSR was a post capitalist society, in which the proletariat and state still existed?
Yes and no. It was "post capitalist" in the sense that capitalism had been abolished within its borders and those of its allies. It was not in the sense that capitalism still existed and a capitalist class still held power in the world.

[Jose Gracchus]

In plain English, if you please.

How can you have a scientifically planned economy, in Marx's sense, built around the producing things for their use-values (not exchange-values), when you cannot measure how the plan effects the subsistence of the immediate producers (workers and peasants)? My understanding is the first thing you would need in an authentic socialist planned economy would be to be able to have precise scientific understanding of the conditions and effects upon the actual human beings in the society.

My apologies for using Marxian terminology.


Yes and no. It was "post capitalist" in the sense that capitalism had been abolished within its borders and those of its allies. It was not in the sense that capitalism still existed and a capitalist class still held power in the world.

Didn't Engels or Marx say pointedly that a mode of production could not be merely "enacted away"?

[Savage]

Yes and no. It was "post capitalist" in the sense that capitalism had been abolished within its borders and those of its allies. It was not in the sense that capitalism still existed and a capitalist class still held power in the world.

So was there a proletariat within the USSR?

[robbo203]

Yes, the CCCP was certainly socialist. I would not venture anything beyond that as it was unable to reach the stage of communism due to a lack of international support, but that does not tarnish its history as a socialist state.

When you look at the improvements which the workers of the CCCP experienced for the duration of its existence and the tremendous progress that was allowed to proceed due to the policy enacted and practiced by this union, it is not possible to reasonably deny it the title of socialism.

This is a nonsensical argument.

How can the alleged improvements that workers supposedly experienced in the Soviet Union in itself signify the existence of socialism? In even the most overtly capitalist states that dont pretend to be anything other than capitalist the living standards of workers have risen significantly in historical terms

Interestingly, Stalin had claimed in 1933 that the material conditions of workers and peasants had steadily improved and cited as evidence for this the fact that money wages had risen by 67percent. What he conveniently omitted to point out, however, was that prices had risen far more sharply with the consequence that that year marked, what Alec Nove has dramatically characterised as the "culmination of the most precipitous peacetime decline in living standards known in recorded history" (Nove A An Economic History of the USSR Allen Lane 1972, p.207) This is what has been falsely dubbed "primitive socialist accumulation" with a vengeance.

The Soviet Union was fundamentally a capitalist state by virtue of the fact it exhibited those features that characterise capitalism - above all generalised wage labour and c ommodity production

[Red_Struggle]

What he conveniently omitted to point out, however, was that prices had risen far more sharply with the consequence that that year marked, what Alec Nove has dramatically characterised as the "culmination of the most precipitous peacetime decline in living standards known in recorded history" (Nove A An Economic History of the USSR Allen Lane 1972, p.207)

So what you're saying is that the USSR intentionally ruined standards of living for its working population? How can you make this claim when all the labor and toil that the workers endured went towards industrialization to lay the economic base of raising the material standard of living, increases in health care, education, cultural centers, etc.? Who do you think was the ultimate benefactor of all this work (wait, I already know the answer seeing as you're an anarchist).

"The Soviets attained under Stalin's rule the first place in the world in regard to tractors, machines, and motor trucks; the second as to electric power. Russia, 20 years ago the least mechanized country, has become the foremost.... In the same decade between 1929 in 1939, in which the production of all other countries barely mounted, while even dropping in some, Soviet production was multiplied by 4. The national income mounted between 1913 in 1938 from 21 to 105 billion rubles. The income of the individual citizen was increased by 370% in the last eight years--with only irrelevant income taxes and reasonable social security contributions imposed upon them--while it dropped almost everywhere else in the world." Ludwig, Emil, Stalin. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam's sons, 1942, p. 129

"The part played by industry in total production, that is to say in relation to agricultural production, was 42 percent in 1913, 48 percent in 1928, and 70 percent in 1932. The part played by the socialist industry in total industry at the end of four years was 99.93%. The national revenue has increased during the four years by 85 percent. At the end of the Plan, it was more than 45 billion rubles. A year later 49 billion (1/2% being capitalist and foreign elements). The amount of the workers' and employees' wages rose from 8 billion to 30 billion rubles." - Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York: The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 194-195

[Jose Gracchus]

How come Stalinists can't cite anything that isn't from their own sects or published prior to 1950? I wouldn't use those sources to wipe my ass.

[manic expression]

How can you have a scientifically planned economy, in Marx's sense, built around the producing things for their use-values (not exchange-values), when you cannot measure how the plan effects the subsistence of the immediate producers (workers and peasants)? My understanding is the first thing you would need in an authentic socialist planned economy would be to be able to have precise scientific understanding of the conditions and effects upon the actual human beings in the society.
The one isn't necessary to the other. This is easy enough to do away with: did Marx call for the building of socialism as soon as was possible in his own lifetime? Yes. Did Marx have this magical device to measure 100% the "subsistence of the immediate producers"? No. Socialism can exist without omniscience.

Anyway, the Soviet system of centralized planning did take into account subsistence. That's why Soviet workers were able to get their necessities even under the most trying circumstances of human history.


My apologies for using Marxian terminology.
I'd rather you apologize for not being a Marxist.


Didn't Engels or Marx say pointedly that a mode of production could not be merely "enacted away"?
It wasn't merely enacted away, it was eliminated through the development of the Soviet socialist economy after the NEP.


So was there a proletariat within the USSR?
An industrial working class? Certainly.

[Dogs On Acid]

An industrial working class? Certainly.

So you admit there were classes then?

[Rss]

So you admit there were classes then?

Classes exist until communism is established. Basics.

[Red_Struggle]

How come Stalinists can't cite anything that isn't from their own sects or published prior to 1950? I wouldn't use those sources to wipe my ass.

Brilliance. Pure brilliance.

[robbo203]

So what you're saying is that the USSR intentionally ruined standards of living for its working population? How can you make this claim when all the labor and toil that the workers endured went towards industrialization to lay the economic base of raising the material standard of living, increases in health care, education, cultural centers, etc.? Who do you think was the ultimate benefactor of all this work (wait, I already know the answer seeing as you're an anarchist).

I dont say it was a matter of conscious malicious intent on the part of the soviet authorities that the living standards of Russian workers plummeted in the 1930s. Rather it was part of the relentless logic of capital accumulation. Capital was of course the ultimate benefactor of this exploitation and, as a by product of that , the state capitalist class - that tiny group of economic parasites called the nomenklatura many of whom became exceedingly wealthy under that most thoroughly capitalist politician, Mr Stalin who had vehement dislike of anything that smacked of economic equality. Ever read Soviet millionaires by Reg Bishop, a sycophantic supporter of the Stalin regime, who actually thought it was great news that state capitalist Russia could boast of its own homegrown millionaires...

[Tifosi]

but it had turned into a riot. The workers there weren't "merely asking" anything.

You going to say this the next time a cop gets hit in the head with a brick in say, Greece? "Stop, you may hurt someone"

Because it just looks a bit weird when a self proclaimed revolutionary communist says that workers are being to forceful - and therefor in the wrong - when trying to get their way. Also, I'm sure you would say the British State are murderers for the amount of people they gunned down on the streets of Belfast when they were out protesting? No?

But don't bother replying, we all know what you'll say about workers controlling the state 'nd shit. Damm, I get a vote in the UK so I control the state. :blink:

[Red_Struggle]

Ever read Soviet millionaires by Reg Bishop, a sycophantic supporter of the Stalin regime, who actually thought it was great news that state capitalist Russia could boast of its own homegrown millionaires...

Yes, I have read exerpts from it. What it comes down to is collective farmers saving up their funds through their own work, which is pretty funny considering the supposed massive wage gap between workers and administrators. These funds did not come from owning a business or from from extracting surplus off of other workers. Besides, the tax brackets for the different strata of income basically eliminates any hostile class antagonisms.

"One should keep in mind, however, that big incomes are still extremely rare. Earning power may vary in the Soviet Union, according to artistic or technical proficiency, but the extremes, as Louis Fisher has pointed out, are very close. No such "spread" is conceivable in the USSR as exists in Britain or America between say, a clerk in a factory and its owner. Among all the 165 million Russians, there are probably not ten men who earn $25,000 per year." - Gunther, John. Inside Europe. New York, London: Harper & Brothers, c1940, p. 567

Furthermore, Stalin was actually quite honest when it came to wage differentiation in the Soviet Union in his interview with Roy Howard: "Yes, you're right, we have not yet built communist society. It is not so easy to build such a society. You are probably aware of the difference between socialist society and communist society. In socialist society certain inequalities in property still exist. But in socialist society there is no longer unemployment, no exploitation, no oppression of nationalities. In socialist society everyone is obliged to work, although he does not in return for his labor receive according to his requirements, but according to the quantity and quality of the work he has performed. That is why wages, and, moreover, unequal, differentiated wages, still exist. Only when we have succeeded in creating a system under which in return for their labor people will receive from society, not according to the quantity and quality of the labor they perform, but according to their requirements, will it be possible to say that we have built communist society."

Even Hoxha (who is supposedly an uber "Stalinist") admitted that socialist construction was not yet completed in the Soviet Union before revisionism spread to the point where it could hijack state power. I know we're on the topic of the USSR here, but why would Albania even attempt to construct the lowest wage gap on the planet if the Party of Labor simply wanted to follow Stalin's "state capitalist" example?

[Impulse97]

@ RS

I see your quote was from 1940. Care to provide some context for the low end wages? $25,000 then is a world away from $25,000 now.

[Jose Gracchus]

The one isn't necessary to the other. This is easy enough to do away with: did Marx call for the building of socialism as soon as was possible in his own lifetime? Yes. Did Marx have this magical device to measure 100% the "subsistence of the immediate producers"? No. Socialism can exist without omniscience.

You're missing the point. I provided you with the figures. The statistical organization existed prior to 1928, and after 1931. Why would you take it off-line during a famine and industrialization, and the implementation of the First Five Year Plan.


Anyway, the Soviet system of centralized planning did take into account subsistence. That's why Soviet workers were able to get their necessities even under the most trying circumstances of human history.

Except that part where living standards plummeted during 1928-1931, a famine cost many lives (despite adequate food being produced). You try digging a canal on 2000 kcal/day.


I'd rather you apologize for not being a Marxist.

Have you ever read Das Kapital?


It wasn't merely enacted away, it was eliminated through the development of the Soviet socialist economy after the NEP.

So you are acknowledging that the USSR under the NEP was a state under the capitalist mode of production?


An industrial working class? Certainly.

How can there be a proletariat if capital (and the capitalist class) has been liquidated?

[Jose Gracchus]

Brilliance. Pure brilliance.

Have you considered that maybe something novel on the topic has been written since 1940? Or that maybe sources dated not 18-months from the initiation of the First Five Year Plan might not be the most accurate and comprehensive?

Why don't you just admit your ideology is based around cherry-picking sources and when undesirable ones are displayed, sticking your fingers in your ears and singing that you can't hear anything?

[Pretty Flaco]

What defines socialism is workers controlling the means of production and the state.

The USSR had class relations similar to capitalism and workers did not control the means of production.

[KC]

So you are acknowledging that the USSR under the NEP was a state under the capitalist mode of production?

Lenin himself even acknowledged that Bolshevik Russia was a capitalist state apparatus headed by the party. There's no such thing as a socialist state anyways. Class struggle continued under Bolshevik rule, albeit in different forms.


"The proletarian state may, without changing its own nature, permit freedom to trade and the development of capitalism only within certain bounds, and only on the condition that the state regulates (supervises, controls, determines the forms and methods of, etc.) private trade and private capitalism. The success of such regulation will depend not only on the state authorities but also, and to a larger extent, on the degree of maturity of the proletariat and of the masses of the working people generally, on their cultural level, etc. But even if this regulation is completely successful, the antagonism of class interests between labour and capital will certainly remain. Consequently, one of the main tasks that will henceforth confront the trade unions is to protect in every way the class interests of the proletariat in its struggle against capital. This task should be openly put in the forefront, and the machinery of the trade unions must be reorganised, changed or supplemented accordingly (conflict commissions, strike funds, mutual aid funds, etc., should be formed, or rather, built up)."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/dec/30.htm

This is why Trotsky's proposal of liquidation of the trade unions was so vehemently fought against by Lenin and why Trotsky's analysis of Bolshevik Russia and the USSR is fundamentally flawed. The capitalist state apparatus with the Bolsheviks at the helm transformed into a state economy. The state never had a "socialized economic base" and therefore the entire idea of a "degenerated workers' state" is stupid (in order for there to be a "degenerated workers' state" there would have had to be a workers' state in the first place).

Now, the idea of "state capitalism" as proposed by many nowadays is completely different than the manner in which Lenin is using the term, and further the manner in which the term is used nowadays just glosses over all of the fundamental developments that characterized the transformation from, in Lenin's term, "state capitalism" to the state economy.

[Jose Gracchus]

Where do we locate, or do we situate, the "state economy," in Marx's critique of political economy, the materialist conception of history, his discussion of revolutionary subjects, and the relations of extant social classes to historical modes of production? Is it a seperate mode of production from that which prevailed throughout the entire world in the 20th c.? What class forces shaped its history as was the case with "all hitherto history"? What property forms characterized it? What classes characterized it?

I do agree with you though that state-cap theorists have not done a very good job historicizing in materialist, class terms, the rise of Stalinism and the formation of the Stalinist economy, and its proliferation, as well as subsequent stagnation, decline, and dissolution (but equally so, its limited extant remnants' survival). The USSR under the NEP was not the same shtick as the USSR from 1928 to the late 1980s (or even 1991).

[Born in the USSR]

Can any one of those who called the Soviet Union a capitalist clearly explain a simple thing:if everything in the economy was determined by the state, if all citizens were employed by state, then where is the place for just a capitalist relations, a necessary condition for the existence of which are a separate, independent producers? How can you extract a capitalist surplus value, if the only buyers in the state are the state's workers? If the owner sells its products only to employees of his concern,how much will he get money? Only as much as he have paid them before,not a penny more.But if it is not possible to get a capitalist surpus value,where is here a possibility of capitalism?

[Savage]

How can there be a proletariat if capital (and the capitalist class) has been liquidated?

I have asked this question many times, hopefully you are luckier in getting a reply.


Can any one of those who called the Soviet Union a capitalist clearly explain a simple thing:if everything in the economy was determined by the state, if all citizens were employed by state, then where is the place for just a capitalist relations, a necessary condition for the existence of which are a separate, independent producers? How can you extract a capitalist surplus value, if the only buyers in the state are the state's workers? If the owner sells its products only to employees of his concern,how much will he get money? Only as much as he have paid them before,not a penny more.But if it is not possible to get a capitalist surpus value,where is here a possibility of capitalism?

I have already recommended this (http://libcom.org/library/paresh-chattopadhyay-marxian-concept-capital-soviet-experience) (even in this thread), but I will do it again, because it is a well composed argument for the USSR as capitalist, taking on all of the questions that you asked, dealing with the juridical mask of the state.

Also, I am under the impression that earlier on you implied that there was no capitalism prior to 1991 in the USSR states, is this what you believe?

[Born in the USSR]

Explain me this in short in your own words.

[KC]

Is it a seperate mode of production from that which prevailed throughout the entire world in the 20th c.?

Yes, it is an entirely different mode of production.


What class forces shaped its history as was the case with "all hitherto history"? What property forms characterized it? What classes characterized it?It is similar to a Bonapartist state in some sense, although a Bonapartist state retains the relations of production previously extant, i.e. Bonapartism isn't a mode of production in itself.

State economy has existed in various periods throughout history, and generally comes into existence when the productive relations themselves, due to specific historical circumstances, lead to a failure in the development of the productive forces.

As far as I know nobody has studied or analyzed this mode of production.

[Dogs On Acid]

Can any one of those who called the Soviet Union a capitalist clearly explain a simple thing:if everything in the economy was determined by the state, if all citizens were employed by state, then where is the place for just a capitalist relations, a necessary condition for the existence of which are a separate, independent producers? How can you extract a capitalist surplus value, if the only buyers in the state are the state's workers? If the owner sells its products only to employees of his concern,how much will he get money? Only as much as he have paid them before,not a penny more.But if it is not possible to get a capitalist surpus value,where is here a possibility of capitalism?

The State acts as the Capitalist, and maintains Capitalist relations in the same principle but a different style. Going against this is going against Engels, just sayin'.

[Born in the USSR]

Is anything can be understood from this explanation?

[manic expression]

So you admit there were classes then?
Yes. Why wouldn't I "admit" it?


You going to say this the next time a cop gets hit in the head with a brick in say, Greece? "Stop, you may hurt someone"
Completely different situations. The Soviet soldiers there didn't represent capitalist oppression of the workers. The USSR soon began getting extra food to the area...the presence of live guns made for the tragedy. That's the issue here.


Damm, I get a vote in the UK so I control the state. :blink:
Capitalist elections are decided by money. Soviet society wasn't determined so.


You're missing the point. I provided you with the figures. The statistical organization existed prior to 1928, and after 1931. Why would you take it off-line during a famine and industrialization, and the implementation of the First Five Year Plan.
No, you didn't provide me with any figures, at least not in this thread.


Except that part where living standards plummeted during 1928-1931, a famine cost many lives (despite adequate food being produced). You try digging a canal on 2000 kcal/day.
That's simply because those years saw the beginning of the end for capitalist production in the USSR. Of course living standards aren't going to remain static when you're doing away with one mode of production and replacing it with a new one...revolution makes for instability. Further, the harvests of those years weren't optimal, and it only became more difficult during the collectivization drive. You are, once again, trying to blame the Soviet Union for struggling for the construction of socialism.


Have you ever read Das Kapital?
Is that a requirement for being a Marxist?


So you are acknowledging that the USSR under the NEP was a state under the capitalist mode of production?
Lenin acknowledged as much. The whole point of the NEP was a measure of capitalist production allowed under the strict and direct authority of the working class.


How can there be a proletariat if capital (and the capitalist class) has been liquidated?
Capital hadn't been liquidated from the whole of the world. Capitalism was still a threat. Within Soviet borders, however, the proletariat was a liberated proletariat.


I have asked this question many times, hopefully you are luckier in getting a reply.
Feel free to read the thread if you want answers.

[Dogs On Acid]

Is anything can be understood from this explanation?

If you can read English.

[Dogs On Acid]

Yes. Why wouldn't I "admit" it?

I'm sorry, my comment was a mistake in thought. I forgot that it was a transitional stage.

[Tifosi]

Completely different situations. The Soviet soldiers there didn't represent capitalist oppression of the workers. The USSR soon began getting extra food to the area...the presence of live guns made for the tragedy. That's the issue here.

That's not the issue here at all, the issue is your double standards. It's OK for some people to fight oppression in a direct manner but totally unacceptable for others to do so because they lived in a 'workers state'.

Just the fact that the Soviet government felt it nessacery to send in troops to keep some workers in their place shows they where extreamly paranoid creeps scared shitless of the masses.

But I doubt you give a flying fuck or will accept an criticism after looking at your stubborn 'performances' in almost every other thread.


Capitalist elections are decided by money. Soviet society wasn't determined so.

Haha

[Savage]

Feel free to read the thread if you want answers.

So far you have implied that you do not even understand the question, so I'll ask it again. Given that the proletariat exists only in capitalism, how could there have been a proletariat in the USSR?

[A Marxist Historian]

Yes, it is an entirely different mode of production.

It is similar to a Bonapartist state in some sense, although a Bonapartist state retains the relations of production previously extant, i.e. Bonapartism isn't a mode of production in itself.

State economy has existed in various periods throughout history, and generally comes into existence when the productive relations themselves, due to specific historical circumstances, lead to a failure in the development of the productive forces.

As far as I know nobody has studied or analyzed this mode of production.

This is basically the Burnham/Shachtman notion of "bureaucratic collectivism," though perhaps independently developed.

The idea of a "state economy" is a contradiction in terms for a Marxist. State is a political category, class an economic category. It is not at all a contradiction in terms for a non-Marxist.

Indeed, stripped of pseudo-Marxism, what this is is simply the standard bourgeois explanation of the Soviet Union, that it was "totalitarian."

Marxists however believe that economics is what determines society, not politics. Economics is the base, politics part of the superstructure. So there can be no such thing as a "state economy" or a "totalitarian society" or "bureaucratic collectivism."

Or, putting it another way, just what is a state anyway? It is, as Marx and Lenin put it, armed bodies of men to maintain the dominion of one class in society over others.

So any conception of a "state" independent of social classes is about the most anti-Marxist, idealist-bourgeois conception you can come up with. Hegelian in fact.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

If there was a capitalist restoration in 1991,then there was no capitalism in the USSR before 1991.OK.

Capitalism is an economic system. What happened in 1991 was that the Soviet state collapsed. Said state oversaw a society in transition between socialism and capitalism.

Which is exactly the conception of Marx and Lenin. In between socialism and capitalism you have a period of transition, where the governmental form is the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx explains this in the Gotha Program, Lenin in State and Revolution. Which collapsed in 1991.

Why? Because it had gone through a process of bureaucratic degeneration, and a political counterrevolution, with Leninism bloodily replaced by Stalinism.


Hitherto was known only three of the exploiting classes: slave owners in slave society, feudal lords under feudalism, the bourgeoisie under capitalism.If you have invented a new exploiting class (the "bureaucracy"), then invent a new social-economic system ( "bureaucracism"? :D ).

That indeed is what Menocchio has done. The fully fleshed out version of this conception was a right wing deviation and split from Trotskyism generally referred to as "Shachtmanism," characterized by the invention of a new social-economic system Shachtman and his theoretician James Burnham called "bureaucratic collectivism."


Wow,and silly Marx and Lenin believed that after capitalism will come socialism and communism.Not at all,according to left anticommunists after capitalism comes "bureaucracism"!:tt1:

"Marasmus grew stronger..."

Yes,I can repeat Lenin's words:

"We are not utopians. We know that an unskilled labourer or a cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration." (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/01.htm)

and add this:

"There is no doubt that we constantly regard as workers people who have not had the slightest real experience of large-scale industry. There has been case after case of petty bourgeois, who have become workers by chance and only for a very short time, being classed as workers." (http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/CNM22.html)

and this:

"“And, as a matter of fact, in the era of capitalism, when the masses of the workers are continuously subjected to exploitation and cannot develop their human potentialities, the most characteristic feature of working-class political parties is that they can embrace only a minority of their class. A political party can comprise only a minority of the class, in the same way as the really class-conscious workers in every capitalist society constitute only a minority of all the workers. That is why we must admit that only this class-conscious minority can guide the broad masses of the workers and lead them.” ( At the Second Congress of Comintern )

and this:

"...by the dictatorship of the proletariat we mean, in essence,** the dictatorship of its organised and class-conscious minority." ( At the Second Congress of Comintern )

You are utopians because you believe that all the workers can and, more importantly,want to govern a state.You are utopians because you believe that the working class is homogeneous.It is not.

You are utopians because you are sure that if the worker or a peasant will get an education and become an engineer,a collective farm chairman or a party official, he will betray his class.Hence logically follows a cuckoo idea :the workers should not be educated! - here is the quintessence of the anti-Stalinist idiocy !

If a workers gets an education and becomes an engineer, he rises in the social hierarchy and becomes an offiicial.

At that point, whose interests is he defending? The workers out of whose ranks he has risen? Or his fellow former workers who perhaps now have the chance to lord it over the uneducated rank and file?

This is exactly the same as in the West, where a trade union official can be a revolutionary seeking to overthrow capitalism, or a bureaucrat, seeking to maintain his position and compromise with capitalism.

In the Soviet Union, a former steelworker like engineer Brezhnev who rose to the top of the Soviet state preferred Stalin's notions of "socialism in one country" and Khrushchev's notions of "peaceful coexistence" to the revolutionary struggle of the workers against capitalism, which would have undermined his own position.

Stalinism and Social Democracy are really the very same thing, except in two different social contexts.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Lenin himself even acknowledged that Bolshevik Russia was a capitalist state apparatus headed by the party. There's no such thing as a socialist state anyways. Class struggle continued under Bolshevik rule, albeit in different forms.



This is why Trotsky's proposal of liquidation of the trade unions was so vehemently fought against by Lenin and why Trotsky's analysis of Bolshevik Russia and the USSR is fundamentally flawed. The capitalist state apparatus with the Bolsheviks at the helm transformed into a state economy. The state never had a "socialized economic base" and therefore the entire idea of a "degenerated workers' state" is stupid (in order for there to be a "degenerated workers' state" there would have had to be a workers' state in the first place).

Now, the idea of "state capitalism" as proposed by many nowadays is completely different than the manner in which Lenin is using the term, and further the manner in which the term is used nowadays just glosses over all of the fundamental developments that characterized the transformation from, in Lenin's term, "state capitalism" to the state economy.

Ah, a latter day Zinovievist. A rare political animal, worthy for exhibition for curious political tourists.

Zinoviev did not go quite so far as to talk about a full blown "state economy," but who knows what he would have come up with if he had escaped the Soviet Union instead of capitulating to Stalin and being murdered. His followers in Europe, like Albert Treint, were the first leftists to try to use Lenin's conception of "state capitalism" as a way to understand the Soviet Union, claiming of course to be orthodox Leninists resisting Trotskyist revisionism.

Zinoviev of course was the greatest fighter against Trotsky's trade union error (greatly mischaracterized as "liquidating" the unions) in 1921. With Stalin, then his ally, not far behind.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Yes. Why wouldn't I "admit" it?


Completely different situations. The Soviet soldiers there didn't represent capitalist oppression of the workers. The USSR soon began getting extra food to the area...the presence of live guns made for the tragedy. That's the issue here.

You might want to check in with your party leadership on that. In the past at least, the PSL, or at least the WWP, whom I have always had the impression had identical political beliefs to the PSL on questions such as this, have always upheld what Trotsky had to say in the *1930s* about Stalin and Stalinism, disagreeing not with Trotsky but with the ideas of latterday Trotskyists after Trotsky's death. They simply have rarely found it convenient to say so in public, as this would irritate many political allies.

Trotsky's condemnation of the incredible blunder of forced collectivization, which caused mass starvation and the death of millions, was very loud and vocal.

-M.H.-

Capitalist elections are decided by money. Soviet society wasn't determined so.


No, you didn't provide me with any figures, at least not in this thread.


That's simply because those years saw the beginning of the end for capitalist production in the USSR. Of course living standards aren't going to remain static when you're doing away with one mode of production and replacing it with a new one...revolution makes for instability. Further, the harvests of those years weren't optimal, and it only became more difficult during the collectivization drive. You are, once again, trying to blame the Soviet Union for struggling for the construction of socialism.


Is that a requirement for being a Marxist?


Lenin acknowledged as much. The whole point of the NEP was a measure of capitalist production allowed under the strict and direct authority of the working class.


Capital hadn't been liquidated from the whole of the world. Capitalism was still a threat. Within Soviet borders, however, the proletariat was a liberated proletariat.


Feel free to read the thread if you want answers.

[manic expression]

That's not the issue here at all, the issue is your double standards. It's OK for some people to fight oppression in a direct manner but totally unacceptable for others to do so because they lived in a 'workers state'.
"Workers state" is not something to put in quotes, for it was the reality of the thing, and it means that those workers weren't oppressed. The Soviet Union was a society in which the working-class vanguard held power, and so rioting against that was counterproductive.

This is the fact: there was a food shortage, and so measures to compensate for that had to be taken. What was the USSR supposed to do? Pretend there wasn't a food shortage and irresponsibly give everyone the same amount of food anyway?


Just the fact that the Soviet government felt it nessacery to send in troops to keep some workers in their place shows they where extreamly paranoid creeps scared shitless of the masses.
I think it was incredibly stupid as well, and I've said as much multiple times. Live ammunition should have been nowhere near that crowd.


Haha
Which elections in the USSR were determined entirely by capitalist money?


So far you have implied that you do not even understand the question, so I'll ask it again. Given that the proletariat exists only in capitalism, how could there have been a proletariat in the USSR?
The proletariat is the industrial working class, the class doesn't disappear once it's liberated within a certain country.


You might want to check in with your party leadership on that. In the past at least, the PSL, or at least the WWP, whom I have always had the impression had identical political beliefs to the PSL on questions such as this, have always upheld what Trotsky had to say in the *1930s* about Stalin and Stalinism, disagreeing not with Trotsky but with the ideas of latterday Trotskyists after Trotsky's death. They simply have rarely found it convenient to say so in public, as this would irritate many political allies.

Trotsky's condemnation of the incredible blunder of forced collectivization, which caused mass starvation and the death of millions, was very loud and vocal.
Well, yes, the PSL upholds much of what Trotsky wrote about the Soviet Union. However, instead of opposing the USSR like many latterday Trotskyists did, the PSL still supports it. That's a key difference, and IIRC it was basically the raison d'etre for the WWP originally (1956).

[Jose Gracchus]

Manic. you're a liar. I provided you with the evidence about the calorie intakes and the implicit termination of record keeping during the key famine years in the why did the USSR decline thread. You're just playing dumb to play the obedient PSL propagandist, as always, and I'm done w you.

[manic expression]

Manic. you're a liar. I provided you with the evidence about the calorie intakes and the implicit termination of record keeping during the key famine years in the why did the USSR decline thread. You're just playing dumb to play the obedient PSL propagandist, as always, and I'm done w you.
I just looked at each of your posts since you responded to me (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2176822&postcount=47) and I can't find anything of the sort. This is all you gave:


You try digging a canal on 2000 kcal/day.
Which isn't so much of a statistic to give an analysis on.

If there's some citation you gave before I took part in the thread, then by all means post it here.

[Jose Gracchus]

O LOOK: (http://www.revleft.com/vb/reputation.php?p=2172585)

Without further adieu (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1780465&postcount=19):


In fact I've done some digging into my own Wheatcroft papers and found the below chart in The First 35 Years of Soviet Living Standards (my excel reproduction of course). Unfortunately this paper does not extend as far as the Khrushchev years but it does compare the Stalinist reforms with the NEP (and pre-NEP) period. The chart graphs the rise and fall of food consumption in Soviet households through KCals per day and is based on Wheatcroft's investigations (drawing heavily on Soviet nutritional surveys). There is obviously a large chunk of data missing during the famine years as TsSU, which conducted the studies, was abolished in 1929 and not resurrected until 1932 (as TsUNKhU). Its pretty safe to say however that consumption did not increase during these 'missing' years :glare:


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v142/GreaterDCU/Misc/Calories.jpg
KCals consumed per day for Soviet workers and all peasants
(Not visible - peasant value for 1913 is 2913)

Its pretty clear from the above that nutrition in Soviet households improved pretty sharply during the NEP period only to crash down again with the collectivisation programme. Omitting the first period (ie, pre-1933) presents the appearance of continuous growth - only when the entire timeframe is accounted for does it become apparent that post-1933 the regime was only climbing out of a hole of its own making. Comparing 1939 consumption figures to those of 1913 reveals that Soviet workers and peasants were consuming almost 6% and 19% less calories, respectively, in 1939 than they had been before WWI. When we do the comparison to 1927/28 the difference is even more marked - a 23% decline for peasants and a whopping 30% for workers!

I didn't bother including the data stretching to 1953 because its pretty sketchy and contains a lot of blanks. There is however data for that year - 2488 and 2912 for peasants and workers respectively. Doing the same comparison (to 1927/28) shows that workers were 25% less well off (in terms of daily calorie consumption) than at the height of the NEP period and that peasants were 'merely' 19% worse off

So much for rising daily calorie consumption...

[Savage]

The proletariat is the industrial working class, the class doesn't disappear once it's liberated within a certain country.

The proletariat is a class specific only to capitalism, its existence means the continuation of commodity production, of capital. If the proletariat exists then so to does capitalism.

[Tifosi]

"Workers state" is not something to put in quotes, for it was the reality of the thing, and it means that those workers weren't oppressed. The Soviet Union was a society in which the working-class vanguard held power, and so rioting against that was counterproductive.

This is the fact: there was a food shortage, and so measures to compensate for that had to be taken. What was the USSR supposed to do? Pretend there wasn't a food shortage and irresponsibly give everyone the same amount of food anyway?

I'll let somebody else humor you. I can't be arsed.


I think it was incredibly stupid as well, and I've said as much multiple times. Live ammunition should have been nowhere near that crowd.

So why on earth did the 'workers vanguard', controlled by the workers as you keep saying - with no credible evidence may I add - send in troops against their fellow workers? What happened to workers solidarty? Also, and more weirdly why did the workers send troops in against themselves?

This makes no sense manic.

Which elections in the USSR were determined entirely by capitalist money?

Haha!

[A Marxist Historian]

"Workers state" is not something to put in quotes, for it was the reality of the thing, and it means that those workers weren't oppressed. The Soviet Union was a society in which the working-class vanguard held power, and so rioting against that was counterproductive.

This is the fact: there was a food shortage, and so measures to compensate for that had to be taken. What was the USSR supposed to do? Pretend there wasn't a food shortage and irresponsibly give everyone the same amount of food anyway?

Well, yes, Stalin decided to rip food out of the mouths of the peasants, so that they not the workers and the soldiers and the bureaucrats would starve to death. And meanwhile the bureaucrats were subsisting on caviar and champagne while the workers were tightening their belts and literally millions of peasants were starving to death.

In a twisted way, that can be seen as the ultimate proof that the Soviet Union was a workers' state, albeit grossly bureaucratically degenerated. And compared to the alternative of collapse of the Soviet state just as Hitler was coming to power, it can definitely be said to be the lesser evil. Indeed in the situation Stalin had managed to put the Soviet Union in, there really wasn't any other choice.

But saying that the workers "were not oppressed" is ridiculous. Yes, the rank and file workers were oppressed by the Stalinist bureaucracy, just as rank and file workers are oppressed by the bureaucracy in just about every American trade union.

You still have to support the unions vs. the capitalists, including the biggest one of all, the Soviet Union. But let us not sugarcoat the situation.


"I think it was incredibly stupid as well, and I've said as much multiple times. Live ammunition should have been nowhere near that crowd.


Which elections in the USSR were determined entirely by capitalist money?


The proletariat is the industrial working class, the class doesn't disappear once it's liberated within a certain country.


Well, yes, the PSL upholds much of what Trotsky wrote about the Soviet Union. However, instead of opposing the USSR like many latterday Trotskyists did, the PSL still supports it. That's a key difference, and IIRC it was basically the raison d'etre for the WWP originally (1956).

One needed to *defend* the Soviet Union vs. capitalist attack. But when the working class of Hungary rose up in 1956, not for capitalism and the Catholic Church like with Solidarity in Poland thirty years later, but forming workers councils to take back the power from the bureaucrats, if you don't support them you are just another Stalinist too.

Which is what your party is in practice, no matter how much Sam Marcy may have thought of himself as the only true orthodox Trotskyist. And now, half a century after 1956, the practical distinction between your party and other Stalinists is not great.

-M.H.-

[KC]

This is basically the Burnham/Shachtman notion of "bureaucratic collectivism," though perhaps independently developed.No, it's not.



The idea of a "state economy" is a contradiction in terms for a Marxist. State is a political category, class an economic category. It is not at all a contradiction in terms for a non-Marxist.It's short for a state controlled economy.




Indeed, stripped of pseudo-Marxism, what this is is simply the standard bourgeois explanation of the Soviet Union, that it was "totalitarian."Except it's not just an analysis of the Soviet Union, which I have already stated.



Or, putting it another way, just what is a state anyway? It is, as Marx and Lenin put it, armed bodies of men to maintain the dominion of one class in society over others.Except the state is a mediator and therefore has a certain level of independence from different classes to the extent where it could go against the interests of a section of the ruling class or even of the entire ruling class.



Zinoviev of course was the greatest fighter against Trotsky's trade union error (greatly mischaracterized as "liquidating" the unions) in 1921. With Stalin, then his ally, not far behind.Sort of funny, a Trotskyist using Stalinist tactics.

BTW, your idealism is showing:


Well, yes, Stalin decided to rip food out of the mouths of the peasants

[Impulse97]

Which elections in the USSR were determined entirely by capitalist money?

All of them, because the USSR never truly achieved Socialism. It was just a less shitty version of Capitalism with a red flag.



The proletariat is the industrial working class, the class doesn't disappear once it's liberated within a certain country.

Close, but no cigar. Classes don't disappear under socialism, because it is a transition phase, but the proletariat does, because it can only exist with capitalist relations. Savage does a good job of explaining this below.


The proletariat is a class specific only to capitalism, its existence means the continuation of commodity production, of capital. If the proletariat exists then so to does capitalism.


Manic, you gotta look at this as a Marxist would. All your doing is saying something is socialist, because of it's name and above average living standards. That's like a con saying Hitler was a Socialist, because he led the 'National Socialist Party'.

If it calls it self something it must be true. :rolleyes:

[KC]

All of them, because the USSR never truly achieved Socialism. It was just a less shitty version of Capitalism with a red flag.
The argument boils down to "Hey workers got paid a wage, and bureaucrats got rich, so therefore it must be capitalism!" which really makes no sense whatsoever because capitalism isn't solely based on whether or not an upper strata (in this case not a class) exploits a group through the use of wage labor.

This fact is apparently lost on supporters of state-capitalist theory. What none of them seem to get into, though, is that if the USSR was actually capitalist, then how do the laws of Kapital apply to the Soviet economy? They never get into this because even on the most cursory glance, it's quite obvious that the laws that serve as the framework for the development of the capitalist system do not apply to the Soviet economy.

- How is a market price determined in a capitalist society? Compare with the Soviet economy.
- How does capital accumulate in a capitalist society? Compare with the Soviet economy.
- How does a capitalist determine profitable avenues of investment? Compare with the Soviet economy.
- By what mechanism in capitalism does the drive to increase the productive forces occur? Compare with the Soviet economy.
- What is the cause of overproduction crises in a capitalist economy? Compare with the Soviet economy.

We could get further into it. If the USSR was state-capitalist, then what determined prices set? If it was actually state-capitalist, with the Soviet state acting as a single monopoly power, then how does its actions as a single monopoly over the entire economy compare with such a notion under capitalist society? If the goal of the Soviet state was to maximize profit, as is the goal of any firm in a capitalist society, then why did this not occur?

I'm all over the place in this post, I realize that. That's because state-capitalism theory is swiss cheese.

I think this article (http://www.anonym.to/?http://marxists.org/archive/hilferding/1940/statecapitalism.htm) by the genius economist Hilferding sums it up pretty well. Capitalism is by definition a market economy, therefore the USSR wasn't "capitalist".

Classes don't disappear under socialismClasses do disappear because the entire point of a socialist socio-economic system is that it is classless and stateless.

[Binh]

What does the person who started this thread think of the question?

[Jose Gracchus]

Except Hilferding's work is shit (and not just this, but Finanzkapital too, which was basically a riff off popular antisemitic OMG BANKERZ works, and gave us reactionary anti-imperialism). It totally dump Marx's critique of political economy. In Marxism the state is not some hyper-fetishized free agent independent of classes. What class in pre-Soviet Russia had a historical mission to dominate the state and production and for what cause? What was its relationship to the proletariat? What was the basis for its agency in social change in Russia? How is this superstructure emerge from a social-productive base? How and why did this "state economy" transition back into a more conventional, more Western capitalism? Did the workers still have a seperation from the conditions of production? Did the "state economy" obviate the historical mission of the proletariat to overthrow states and classes (as obviously Marx's arguments vis-a-vis the proletariat in capitalism would no longer apply either)?

This is just a jettison of Marxism in favor of some neo-Weberian "ideal types" type of analysis of the state, complete with ahistorical confused comparisons to "precedents" in wholly different historical contexts of class and production (attempts by opportunists to relate the USSR to Ancient Egypt or China, as if any serious non-superficial analogy exists at the level of production and social relations).

[A Marxist Historian]

Except Hilferding's work is shit (and not just this, but Finanzkapital too, which was basically a riff off popular antisemitic OMG BANKERZ works, and gave us reactionary anti-imperialism). It totally dump Marx's critique of political economy. In Marxism the state is not some hyper-fetishized free agent independent of classes. What class in pre-Soviet Russia had a historical mission to dominate the state and production and for what cause? What was its relationship to the proletariat? What was the basis for its agency in social change in Russia? How is this superstructure emerge from a social-productive base? How and why did this "state economy" transition back into a more conventional, more Western capitalism? Did the workers still have a seperation from the conditions of production? Did the "state economy" obviate the historical mission of the proletariat to overthrow states and classes (as obviously Marx's arguments vis-a-vis the proletariat in capitalism would no longer apply either)?

This is just a jettison of Marxism in favor of some neo-Weberian "ideal types" type of analysis of the state, complete with ahistorical confused comparisons to "precedents" in wholly different historical contexts of class and production (attempts by opportunists to relate the USSR to Ancient Egypt or China, as if any serious non-superficial analogy exists at the level of production and social relations).

Hilferding was far too good an economist to accept the idea of the Soviet Union as state capitalism. So instead he went for his own version of bureaucratic collectivism, which, like all such, requires bending, folding, warping and spindling Marxist conceptions of the state, as more or less correctly explained above.

But Finanzkapital is the farthest thing from shit. I've read it twice, gaining new insights each time. A brilliant piece of work, but flawed. Absolutely *nothing* in it *at all* resembling the usual anti-Semitic paranoia about bankers. In fact, most of the book isn't about banking at all. It is precisely Hilferding who first developed the concept of capitalist imperialism as being about capital export to fields of investment where the organic composition of capital is lower. Capitalist investors, not greedy Jewish bankers.

My favorite part in it is his section about the stock market, where he explains its many vital functions for the capitalist system, especially the function of concentrating capital ownership by relieving small stock buyers of their excess funds, putting them into the pockets of the big fish, thereby making capitalism more efficient.

But the *analysis* is profound, and indeed Lenin's Imperialism can't be properly understood unless you read Finanzkapital, which gives you the Marxist economic categories and analysis underlaying it.

So what's the flaw in this brilliant piece of work? As Lenin explained, due to his false conceptions in the theory of money, which *resemble* Marx's but actually invert them.

Sounds minor? Farthest thing from that.

Marx understood that the amount money in circulation was a dependent variable, dependent on the general state of economic circulation. Hilferding liked all of Marx's formulae as to money, but thought the amount of money in circulation is an *independent* variable, which can actually affect the economy.

Consequence being that Hilferding thought that capitalist governments could actually affect the economy in a positive fashion by manipulating the money supply, as long as they followed all Marx's formulae properly.

He attempted to do this as German Finance Minister twice, once in 1923 and once at the height of the Great Depression.

Failed miserably both times, a strong indication that he was wrong.

This analysis by the way is not original to me, but rather I get it from Althusser, of all unlikely people (except for the historical part, which is mine).

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

No, it's not.

It's short for a state controlled economy.

Hm? Show me an economy that isn't state controlled to one degree or another in this day and age. There aren't any.

During serious wars, like WWI and WWII, the economy gets 100% state controlled under capitalism, whether fascist capitalism like in Germany during WWII or democratic like in the USA under FDR during WWII.

Is that then a different mode of production? And does it go back to the old one when the war ends?


Except it's not just an analysis of the Soviet Union, which I have already stated.

Except the state is a mediator and therefore has a certain level of independence from different classes to the extent where it could go against the interests of a section of the ruling class or even of the entire ruling class.

Bureaucratic collectivism was originally not just an analysis of the USSR either. Burnham thought Nazi Germany and the USA under FDR were also headed to bureaucratic collectivism.

Come to think of it, maybe you think along those kind of lines too? That'd actually be consistent with the rest of your posting.

And the state is only a mediator in the sense that every cop is a mediator. Sure, he mediates, but when push comes to shove the guns and nightsticks come out.

Can it go against the interests of a section of a class for the benefit of bigger and more important ones? Sure.

Can it go against the entire ruling class? If it does, it collapses like a pricked balloon, so this happens pretty rarely.

In fact that's pretty much what happened to the Soviet Union. The Soviet working class had finally had it with its Soviet state by 1991, root and branch in all its layers. So that was it. Pffffft. After the 1989 revolt of the Donbass miners, it was just a matter of time.


Sort of funny, a Trotskyist using Stalinist tactics.

BTW, your idealism is showing:

Eh? I think millions of people starving to death sounds like material reality in my book. Or do you mean idealist in the other sense, i.e. when we are young and foolish we think millions of people dying is a bad thing but when we grow old and get sensible we understand it's the American Way or something like that?

The other line was downright mysterious. What were you getting at? If you were thinking Zinoviev was a Trotskyist, well, you need to go read some good books and learn something.

-M.H.-

[Jose Gracchus]

I think Lenin's theory of imperialism is shit, and natlib is obviously reactionary by now in light of history. I think Luxembourg was right.

I'm also unaware that the working class was the ruling class in the USSR and the state actually 'collapsed' in 1991.

Though I do agree with you the war economy is the disproof against any 'state economy' as an isolated mode of production in itself. That's preposterous in Marxism.

[A Marxist Historian]

All of them, because the USSR never truly achieved Socialism. It was just a less shitty version of Capitalism with a red flag.

Close, but no cigar. Classes don't disappear under socialism, because it is a transition phase, but the proletariat does, because it can only exist with capitalist relations. Savage does a good job of explaining this below.

Now, that's a good one. Let's follow the implications.

What are the two fundamental classes of capitalist society, the ones still around after all the others disappear through the process of social evolution?

The proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

Therefore, according to Impulse97, under socialism *everybody* is a member of the only remaining social class, the capitalist class.

Definitely a new and original conception of socialism.

-M.H.-


Manic, you gotta look at this as a Marxist would. All your doing is saying something is socialist, because of it's name and above average living standards. That's like a con saying Hitler was a Socialist, because he led the 'National Socialist Party'.

If it calls it self something it must be true. :rolleyes:

[manic expression]

O LOOK: (http://www.revleft.com/vb/reputation.php?p=2172585)

Without further adieu (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1780465&postcount=19):
And you are lying if you say that I haven't already addressed that. Such a decline was natural due to the elimination of capitalist production and the collectivization of the countryside. These struggles were incredibly sharp and were always going to cause problems for Soviet society.


The proletariat is a class specific only to capitalism, its existence means the continuation of commodity production, of capital. If the proletariat exists then so to does capitalism.
The proletariat is a class specific to modern industry.


All of them, because the USSR never truly achieved Socialism. It was just a less shitty version of Capitalism with a red flag.
Of course, you'll never show anything to support this because it's an impossible argument. Soviet elections, of course, had nothing to do with money, they had everything to do with the CP's position which was a consequence of the Civil War.

But if you think the USSR was capitalist with a red flag, perhaps you could kindly point us to the capitalists of that country who owned stocks and bonds, who directly employed workers, who owned private property. Let me know when you find them. Many have tried and failed before you.


Close, but no cigar. Classes don't disappear under socialism, because it is a transition phase, but the proletariat does, because it can only exist with capitalist relations. Savage does a good job of explaining this below.
So if classes don't disappear but the proletariat does, then what classes are there in socialism? Capitalists and ex-proletarians?


Manic, you gotta look at this as a Marxist would. All your doing is saying something is socialist, because of it's name and above average living standards. That's like a con saying Hitler was a Socialist, because he led the 'National Socialist Party'.

If it calls it self something it must be true. :rolleyes:
Then we should look at whether or not people owned private enterprises in the USSR (they didn't), employed workers directly (they didn't), could legally trade on the foreign market (they couldn't) and so on and so forth. You're saying it's capitalist because you don't approve of its policies. Well, I'm fine with disagreeing with the Soviet Union, as I do that myself, but we shouldn't let such a bias color our analysis of the foundation. If it was capitalist, then it should be exceedingly easy for you to post an example of a Soviet business-owning, stock-speculating, worker-employing capitalist.


So why on earth did the 'workers vanguard', controlled by the workers as you keep saying - with no credible evidence may I add - send in troops against their fellow workers? What happened to workers solidarty? Also, and more weirdly why did the workers send troops in against themselves?

This makes no sense manic.
I've said again and again that it was a total error, and a tragic one at that. However, is it your contention that vanguards never make mistakes? They never mess up, even in split-second decisions in which available information is incomplete and even contradictory? THAT makes no sense.

What is more likely is that members of the vanguard were faced with a spontaneous demonstration due to difficulties in production and the resulting measures (you know, I've asked many times for the best alternative course of action and I haven't gotten one), and underestimated the severity of the situation. They then sent soldiers to observe and contain it, not anticipating an escalation. A riot then began, the soldiers were attacked, and the soldiers were then forced to defend themselves the best they could in the heat of the moment. The key mistake was a lack of non-lethal crowd control methods, as well as the failure to adequately explain the measures in order to quell misled anger.

According to you, the vanguard should be able to read everyone's mind and tell the future and never make a mistake...but that's not reality. Reality is something you learn from when things go wrong.

[Thirsty Crow]

The proletariat is a class specific to modern industry.

Hey, what do we have here? A good illustration of your lack of understanding of what constitutes the specificity of capitalism as a mode of production.

In other words, no, the prolateriat is not only a class specific to modern industry, but rather to capitalism, which depends on labourers dispossession (free wage labour, with only their labour power to sell), as a whole. There is no capitalism without the global proletariat, and as much as you'd like to wiggle your way out of the mess you got yourself into by arguing that it is not so, it is in fact, at least if you accept the core of Marxism.

And do you accept it? I mean, you're basically rejecting it by arguing against the notion mentioned above.

[manic expression]

There is no capitalism without the global proletariat,
And there is no socialism without the global proletariat. Funny how that works.


And do you accept it? I mean, you're basically rejecting it by arguing against the notion mentioned above.
It's easy to argue so when you take things out of context. Watch this:

the prolateriat is not only a class

What do you mean it's not a class? How anti-Marxist! :rolleyes:

[Impulse97]

Now, that's a good one. Let's follow the implications.

What are the two fundamental classes of capitalist society, the ones still around after all the others disappear through the process of social evolution?

The proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

Therefore, according to Impulse97, under socialism *everybody* is a member of the only remaining social class, the capitalist class.

Definitely a new and original conception of socialism.

-M.H.-


That's not my point and frankly, I think your putting words in my mouth.

And, don't patronize me, I know how the classes get folded down into the final two. I'm new to socialism, not an idiot.

Looking back on my last post it seems I didn't write as clearly as I had intended and that I made a mistake, one that seems obvious now.

[Kiev Communard]

The proletariat is a class specific to modern industry.

Yet the status of the working class as the proletariat is predicated not upon its participation in the production process per se, but on its dispossession and alienation from the means of production. If the industrial and other workers become real collective owners of their means of production, they will no longer be the proletarians (i.e. the dispossessed). Therefore there would be no proletariat under socialism (even the "market" one). And that is why neither modern China, nor defunct USSR is or was "socialist" to any degree, as the means of production in those nations were clearly not controlled by associated worker-owners.

[manic expression]

Yet the status of the working class as the proletariat is predicated not upon its participation in the production process per se, but on its dispossession and alienation from the means of production.
So after the revolution there won't be any farmers either, I take it, since the status of the peasantry is predicated upon its dispossession and alienation from the means of production. Quite an interesting concept.

Look, call them "ex-proletarians" if it makes your socks roll up and down. Whichever way you slice it, however, the proletariat in the USSR was a liberated proletariat that had conquered state power. The label you prefer is really none of my concern.

[A Marxist Historian]

I think Lenin's theory of imperialism is shit, and natlib is obviously reactionary by now in light of history. I think Luxembourg was right.

I'm also unaware that the working class was the ruling class in the USSR and the state actually 'collapsed' in 1991.

Though I do agree with you the war economy is the disproof against any 'state economy' as an isolated mode of production in itself. That's preposterous in Marxism.

Rosa Luxemburg's theory of imperialism was a damn good analysis of imperialism as an economic system -- when Marx was alive, before capitalism had reached what Lenin called its "highest stage." History and society are not static, they change over time. As an economic description of capitalist imperialism for the last century or so, Luxemburg's analysis is pathetically inaccurate and glaringly obviously so. Had she lived longer, I suspect she'd have been the first to recognize that.

The Soviet state most certainly collapsed in 1991. Dissolved legally and formally. Ceased to exist. No matter how much you stare at a map of the world for the USSR these days, you won't find it.

The working class in the Soviet Union had pretty much the same relationship to the Soviet state as the bourgeoisie had to Louis Bonaparte's setup in France, which Marx wrote so often about.

Capitalists under Louis Bonaparte lived in fear of that knock at the door if they got out of line. He guillotined or imprisoned quite a few of them. But they nonetheless saw it as their state, as it served their interests.

But when he failed miserably in the war with Bismarck, Bonapartism, that towering brutal edifice, evaporated like tissue paper.

Once the Soviet state finally lost all support in the Soviet working class, the same thing happened to it with almost equal lightning speed.

What's "natlib"? You mean the right of national self-determination? Opposing that is pretty insane. If Basques in Spain or Quebecois in Canada or whoever want to go independent, why on earth should Marxists oppose that?

Rosa's idea was that Polish and Ukrainian independence should be opposed to maintain the revolutionary integrity of the Tsarist Empire. Surely what happened after WWI proves just how wrong that was. Should the Bolsheviks have refused to let Finland and Poland get their independence, no matter how much Finns and Poles wanted it?

I think a good case can be made that Polish independence was a bad idea, considering what happened to Poland in the rest of the twentieth century. Better it should have become the sixteenth Soviet republic, if nothing else that would have made things much harder for Hitler with respect to the Blitzkrieg and the Holocaust.

But I think the Poles needed to have the right to figure that out for themselves, or not. The right of self determination in other words. And they claimed that right. The Soviet attempt to conquer Poland on Luxemburgist principles in 1920 was a disastrous failure.

And Ukraine. Luxemburg thought Ukrainian independence was just a pipe dream of a few isolated intellectuals that nobody in Ukraine was actually interested in. She didn't even think Ukrainian was a real language, just a peasant dialect of Russian. Was she right about that? I don't think so!

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

That's not my point and frankly, I think your putting words in my mouth.

And, don't patronize me, I know how the classes get folded down into the final two. I'm new to socialism, not an idiot.

Looking back on my last post it seems I didn't write as clearly as I had intended and that I made a mistake, one that seems obvious now.

OK, clarify then. And be thankful to me for helping you clarify your thinking.

-M.H.-

[Impulse97]

OK, clarify then. And be thankful to me for helping you clarify your thinking.

-M.H.-

That's a tad conceited dontcha think?

Honestly, I can't. Alright, you caught me, :rolleyes:, I wasn't totally sure of my position on that particular point. Should have done more research first. :o

[A Marxist Historian]

That's a tad conceited dontcha think?

Honestly, I can't. Alright, you caught me, :rolleyes:, I wasn't totally sure of my position on that particular point. Should have done more research first. :o

This is the "learning" section after all, this is where people are supposed to make mistakes like this, so don't feel bad.

If I sounded a bit professorly there, well, there's reasons for that, but let's not go there.

-M.H.-

[Savage]

And there is no socialism without the global proletariat. Funny how that works.

How does the proletariat exist after capitalism if the existence of the proletariat necessarily means the continuation of wage labour, commodity production, the extraction of surplus value? If capital is abolished, then we no longer have any classes, the proletariat abolishes its own class character in the process of revolution, it no longer is the proletariat... If you believe that the proletariat exists in socialism then you are implying that socialism is a society still based on value relations, consisting of all the things that define capitalism in Marx.

[A Marxist Historian]

How does the proletariat exist after capitalism if the existence of the proletariat necessarily means the continuation of wage labour, commodity production, the extraction of surplus value? If capital is abolished, then we no longer have any classes, the proletariat abolishes its own class character in the process of revolution, it no longer is the proletariat... If you believe that the proletariat exists in socialism then you are implying that socialism is a society still based on value relations, consisting of all the things that define capitalism in Marx.

The Trotskyist conception is, of course, that the Soviet Union was not socialist for the simple reason that one cannot build socialism in one country, and that the USSR was a *transitional* society in between socialism and capitalism, in which wage labor, classes and commodity production still exist, but were in the process of giving way to higher forms of social organization.

Or rather that was where things were headed *initially,* when it was a healthy workers' state. After bureaucratic degeneration and Stalinist political counterrevolution took place, things started heading in the other direction, a process not completed until 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed and capitalism was restored.

Apparently the PSL has abandoned this conception, or at least manic expression has.

-M.H.-

[manic expression]

How does the proletariat exist after capitalism if the existence of the proletariat necessarily means the continuation of wage labour, commodity production, the extraction of surplus value? If capital is abolished, then we no longer have any classes, the proletariat abolishes its own class character in the process of revolution, it no longer is the proletariat... If you believe that the proletariat exists in socialism then you are implying that socialism is a society still based on value relations, consisting of all the things that define capitalism in Marx.
The existence of the proletariat as the working class of modern industry is not intertwined with the continuation of wage labor, commodity production and so on.

If capital is abolished, then we still have classes, because socialism is about the former working class establishing itself as the new ruling class. The former ruling class, then, is stripped of state power.

What you're saying is the same as claiming that after the revolution, there can't be any farmers, because the peasantry in capitalism is alienated from the means of production and exploited. So what are we to do with no farmers? Where will the food come from? As soon as someone starts to work in agriculture, they're reestablished capitalism by the mere virtue of laboring in a method that was done in capitalism. Great concept.

[Savage]

The existence of the proletariat as the working class of modern industry is not intertwined with the continuation of wage labor, commodity production and so on.

There are no classes after capitalism, the communist task is one of abolishing classes, the proletariats' self abolition as a class. The proletariat is the wage labouring class, in the process of abolishing value relations and commodity production, they loose their character as a class.


If capital is abolished, then we still have classes, because socialism is about the former working class establishing itself as the new ruling class. The former ruling class, then, is stripped of state power.Capital is not abolished once the dictatorship of the proletariat is established, it means that the working class has seized power and is in a position to abolish the current social relation and thus establish socialist society, the period of transition is not instantaneous.


What you're saying is the same as claiming that after the revolution, there can't be any farmers, because the peasantry in capitalism is alienated from the means of production and exploited. So what are we to do with no farmers? Where will the food come from? As soon as someone starts to work in agriculture, they're reestablished capitalism by the mere virtue of laboring in a method that was done in capitalism. Great concept.There is no peasanty after capitalism, there are no classes of any kind. Agricultural tasks, just along with all other tasks of production are still carried out, but through an association of free producers, not by classes.

[Thirsty Crow]

It's easy to argue so when you take things out of context. Watch this:

the prolateriat is not only a class

What do you mean it's not a class? How anti-Marxist! :rolleyes:
You didn't even take the statement out of context properly since in no way can this isolated part be taken to mean that the proletariat is not a class you dumbass ("the proletariat is not only a class, but also..."; you're getting really sloppy y'know)

But what about the context of your statement? You were responding to a user claiming that the proletariat is a class specific to capitalism with "the proletariat is a class specific to modern industry". This can connote several things:

1) that you're opposing the claim by insisting that the proletariat, as a class, is formed only through the workings of the modern industrial complex

2) that modern industry is a primary factor in the formation of the proletariat as a class

The second interpretation would represent leniency towards your nonsense on my behalf. But still, the level of technological development and the specific labouring tasks and structure of the workday does not determine the character of the class of wage labourers in capitalism, at least not according to Marxists.
Yet again, how do you reconcile your views with what Marxists' (not vulgar technologists) had to say with regard to the specificity of wage labour in capitalism?

[KC]

If the ussr had no classes then how can you explain its self destruction?

[manic expression]

There are no classes after capitalism, the communist task is one of abolishing classes, the proletariats' self abolition as a class. The proletariat is the wage labouring class, in the process of abolishing value relations and commodity production, they loose their character as a class.
Sorry, but you're making stuff up and presenting it as fact.

There ARE classes after capitalism. Do you think capitalists disappear into thin air after they're overthrown, especially when capitalism is still in place outside of the borders of the worker state? Of course not. Capitalists attempt to reestablish themselves in power, and this must be fought.


Capital is not abolished once the dictatorship of the proletariat is established, it means that the working class has seized power and is in a position to abolish the current social relation and thus establish socialist society, the period of transition is not instantaneous.
Great, but capitalism was abolished in the USSR. That doesn't mean that it's a classless society, it means it's the early phases of communism (aka socialism).


There is no peasanty after capitalism, there are no classes of any kind. Agricultural tasks, just along with all other tasks of production are still carried out, but through an association of free producers, not by classes.
Aha, so there are still farmers who farm and all that jazz...but you just don't call them peasants in order to feel morally pure. Same goes for proletarians, apparently.

In that case, feel free to make yourself sleep at night by calling Soviet workers "ex-proletarians" or whatever insipid, unnecessary label strikes your fancy. I'll keep to what makes sense: namely, that proletarians are the workers of modern industrial society, and that they don't disappear as soon as capitalism is abolished in one area of the world.


You didn't even take the statement out of context properly since in no way can this isolated part be taken to mean that the proletariat is not a class you dumbass ("the proletariat is not only a class, but also..."; you're getting really sloppy y'know)Hmm...

the proletariat is not a class

Nailed it! ;)


But what about the context of your statement?
The context of the statement was that the proletariat is the working class of modern industrial society, and that the abolition of capitalism does not mean proletarians can no longer exist. So long as there remains a capitalist class, the thesis and antithesis still exist and class society remains as well.

[Thirsty Crow]

The context of the statement was that the proletariat is the working class of modern industrial society, and that the abolition of capitalism does not mean proletarians can no longer exist. So long as there remains a capitalist class, the thesis and antithesis still exist and class society remains as well.
The abolition of global capitalism definitely means that proletarians cease to exist as proletarians, as a class antagonistic to capital.
Now, supposedly in USSR, at least in 1936, the capitalist class was no longer there. The proletariat was emancipated, and a society of antagonistic classes was a matter of the past.
Make up your mind, was USSR a classless (in the sense of "antagonistic classes") society or not? If the proletariat had been reproduced as a class, then the answer is clear enough since for there to be a proletariat, there also must be an antagonistic class.

What's so hard for you to grasp here? This is basic Marxist class analysis. And if you think that in a post-capitalist society there are classes, then you'd have to show two things:

1) how are these classes formed within the process of social production, what are their interrelations

2) you could also try to show that Marxist class analysis which specifically "targets" material production as a site of social organization into opposing classes is faulty and irrelevant when it comes to Soviet society.

Also, this:



There ARE classes after capitalism. Do you think capitalists disappear into thin air after they're overthrown, especially when capitalism is still in place outside of the borders of the worker state? Of course not. Capitalists attempt to reestablish themselves in power, and this must be fought.

After the capitalist class is expropriated, they do dissapear into thin air, at least when it comes to them occupying a class position, when they do funciton as a social class in the Marxist sense of the term. The fact that former proprietors of productive potential (value-productive) would probably act against the interests of workers who expropriated them has no bearing whatsoever on the fact that they do not represent a social class.

And yet again, how is it that you reject that Marxist notion of class (which you obviously do since you argue that the dispossessed capitalists are a class)?

[manic expression]

The abolition of global capitalism definitely means that proletarians cease to exist as proletarians, as a class antagonistic to capital.
You said it yourself. GLOBAL CAPITALISM. Not part of it, not 1/3 of it.


Now, supposedly in USSR, at least in 1936, the capitalist class was no longer there. The proletariat was emancipated, and a society of antagonistic classes was a matter of the past.
Make up your mind, was USSR a classless (in the sense of "antagonistic classes") society or not? If the proletariat had been reproduced as a class, then the answer is clear enough since for there to be a proletariat, there also must be an antagonistic class.
I've never claimed the USSR was a classless society.


What's so hard for you to grasp here? This is basic Marxist class analysis. And if you think that in a post-capitalist society there are classes, then you'd have to show two things:

1) how are these classes formed within the process of social production, what are their interrelations

2) you could also try to show that Marxist class analysis which specifically "targets" material production as a site of social organization into opposing classes is faulty and irrelevant when it comes to Soviet society.
1.) The workers form the ruling class, the proletariat and the peasantry together. Capitalists can only exist in marginal, illegal and limited ways, owing to their part in criminal activities (such as the black market). Further, capitalists get support from in-power capitalists abroad, which means they're being supported through the exploitation of the workers.

2.) Marxist class analysis confirms that the USSR was not capitalist, so I'm not sure what you're even trying to get at.


After the capitalist class is expropriated, they do dissapear into thin air, at least when it comes to them occupying a class position, when they do funciton as a social class in the Marxist sense of the term. The fact that former proprietors of productive potential (value-productive) would probably act against the interests of workers who expropriated them has no bearing whatsoever on the fact that they do not represent a social class.

And yet again, how is it that you reject that Marxist notion of class (which you obviously do since you argue that the dispossessed capitalists are a class)?
Oh, OK. So French royalty and nobility ceased to exist by 1783. Spanish royalty ceased to exist in 1931. Good thing no one had to worry about them ever again! :rolleyes:

[Savage]

Sorry, but you're making stuff up and presenting it as fact.These are the basics of communism.


There ARE classes after capitalism. Do you think capitalists disappear into thin air after they're overthrown, especially when capitalism is still in place outside of the borders of the worker state? Of course not. Capitalists attempt to reestablish themselves in power, and this must be fought.

Marxian analysis shows us that class is determined by a group’s role in reproducing social relations. The proletariat is the working class of capitalism, they are the propertyless wage labouring class; the product of their labour is capital. To say that the USSR contained a proletariat is to say that the social relation that we call capital remained there. If the USSR was socialist, then it had no proletariat, nor any other class.


Great, but capitalism was abolished in the USSR. That doesn't mean that it's a classless society, it means it's the early phases of communism (aka socialism).Earlier you told me not to make stuff up and state it as a fact. What you have said here isn't an argument, you are just saying that capitalism was abolished in the USSR without providing me with any evidence as to how the proletariat exists outside of value producing society.



Aha, so there are still farmers who farm and all that jazz...but you just don't call them peasants in order to feel morally pure. Same goes for proletarians, apparently.There are no classes in socialism...Have you really never heard of the concept of classlessness? The peasantry is a class, the proletariat is a class, in socialist society farming and industrial tasks obviously need to be conducted, but without the capitalist division of labour or classes. From the Manifesto...

''When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.''


In that case, feel free to make yourself sleep at night by calling Soviet workers "ex-proletarians" or whatever insipid, unnecessary label strikes your fancy. I'll keep to what makes sense: namely, that proletarians are the workers of modern industrial society, and that they don't disappear as soon as capitalism is abolished in one area of the world.I have never called the proletariat of the Soviet Union ''ex-proletarians'', they were the proletariat, here is the definition of the proletariat,

''The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor – hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition.''

[Jose Gracchus]

So after the revolution there won't be any farmers either, I take it, since the status of the peasantry is predicated upon its dispossession and alienation from the means of production. Quite an interesting concept.

This statement, in its utterly clueless hubristic stupidity, cannot be improved upon. I merely quote it in admiration of its perfection.

:rolleyes:

...uh yeah, because that's the definition of the proletariat, and by definition that is not what the peasantry is. Everyday you produce more proof you're not a Marxist, just a bourgeois populist.

[A Marxist Historian]

Yet the status of the working class as the proletariat is predicated not upon its participation in the production process per se, but on its dispossession and alienation from the means of production. If the industrial and other workers become real collective owners of their means of production, they will no longer be the proletarians (i.e. the dispossessed). Therefore there would be no proletariat under socialism (even the "market" one). And that is why neither modern China, nor defunct USSR is or was "socialist" to any degree, as the means of production in those nations were clearly not controlled by associated worker-owners.

No, they weren't controlled by the workers. But neither are modern corporations controlled by the stock owners, either. They are controlled by management, which is sometimes fairly democratic and responds to the wishes of the stockholders, but often disregards them altogether--at least until some Warren Buffett or other comes along and does a hostile takeover.

What ultimately matters is not control but *ownership,* whether in America or the USSR. Who owned the means of production in the USSR? Certainly not the bureaucracy! Any time a bureaucrat got fired or purged, he suddenly discovered he owned nothing but the shirt on his back, and sometimes not even that. The bureaucracy had no property rights in the means of production whatsoever.

Which they got very tired of, so they got rid of the USSR under Yeltsin's leadership and the smart ones grabbed what they could, while the others went to the dogs.

Who owned the means of production in the old Soviet Union? The nation as a whole when you get right down to it. In the early years, the workers not the peasants, but by Khrushchev's days the class distinction between workers and peasants on collective farms had mostly disappeared, they were no longer second class citizens.

-M.H.-

[Jose Gracchus]

@TMH:

ML garbage with some Trotsky juice on top. To make some hand-waving for the juridical property in the USSR is to try as hard as possible to reduce Marxism to a web of abstract legalistic distinctions, and not immediate social realities and relations on the ground, throughout the complex of social production and reproduction. For what aim? Well justify every line regurgitated by the Spartacist League, no doubt while screaming hysterics at someone's meeting, and squealing about defending the USSR from itself in 1989.

ALSO, with regard to manic:


And you are lying if you say that I haven't already addressed that. Such a decline was natural due to the elimination of capitalist production and the collectivization of the countryside. These struggles were incredibly sharp and were always going to cause problems for Soviet society.

Is that the argument I was making here with this piece of information as support? Hm.....

First (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2179666&postcount=91):


Manic. you're a liar. I provided you with the evidence about the calorie intakes and the implicit termination of record keeping during the key famine years in the why did the USSR decline thread. You're just playing dumb to play the obedient PSL propagandist, as always, and I'm done w you.

Manic is continuously dishonest, so I will further flesh out my actual claims he replied to with this misdirection about the cause of the declines, when in actuality my question was how can you have a planned economy when you are not measuring the use-values that allow the basis material subsistence of the proletariat and poor peasantry?:

I originally said this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2176603&postcount=46):



Not that I expect a real answer, because I am asking you, but how can scientific planning of production for use-values be in place if the state has abolished the statistical organization which measures the caloric subsistence of the workers and peasants? How could 'planning' have any scientific basis when the state could not have any knowledge of how the plan is effecting the direct producers food intake?

Manic replies with this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2177935&postcount=62)(emphasis mine):


The one isn't necessary to the other. This is easy enough to do away with: did Marx call for the building of socialism as soon as was possible in his own lifetime? Yes. Did Marx have this magical device to measure 100% the "subsistence of the immediate producers"? No. Socialism can exist without omniscience.

Anyway, the Soviet system of centralized planning did take into account subsistence. That's why Soviet workers were able to get their necessities even under the most trying circumstances of human history.

Which of course was a worthy of lulz (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2179676&postcount=93).

And (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2178750&postcount=81):


No, you didn't provide me with any figures, at least not in this thread.

I provide the data (which I had already given him), and how does he reply? Again:


And you are lying if you say that I haven't already addressed that. Such a decline was natural due to the elimination of capitalist production and the collectivization of the countryside. These struggles were incredibly sharp and were always going to cause problems for Soviet society.

That's called being a lying sack of shit. When in doubt, this is how manic expression ALWAYS replies to an argument, he tries to change the goalposts, play dumb (though perhaps is in fact, an imbecile), and then hope by answering a totally different question no one will ever notice.

[manic expression]

These are the basics of communism.
The basic of communism is that one class overthrows another. That doesn't mean Class A and Class B disappear immediately.

Like I said, you're making stuff up and presenting it as something other than images dancing in your head.


Marxian analysis shows us that class is determined by a group’s role in reproducing social relations. The proletariat is the working class of capitalism, they are the propertyless wage labouring class; the product of their labour is capital. To say that the USSR contained a proletariat is to say that the social relation that we call capital remained there. If the USSR was socialist, then it had no proletariat, nor any other class.
And when this class overthrows the capitalist class in one country, they continue as a class because the conditions of classless society have not yet been met.


Earlier you told me not to make stuff up and state it as a fact. What you have said here isn't an argument, you are just saying that capitalism was abolished in the USSR without providing me with any evidence as to how the proletariat exists outside of value producing society.
The proletariat exists as the new ruling class...that is its new role in socialist society. Basic stuff here.


There are no classes in socialism
Yes, there are. Socialism is not a classless society. Since you can't even read what you posted:

If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

THE NEW RULING CLASS

I wonder...if there is a ruling class, then there must be classes, right? Funny how your own citation proves you to be completely incorrect.


I have never called the proletariat of the Soviet Union ''ex-proletarians'', they were the proletariat, here is the definition of the proletariat,
Except the capitalist mode of production was abolished in law and in practice. No one employed workers directly, no one owned the means of production privately, no one made capitalist profit (unless we're talking about the marginal black market and such). There was no market for large-scale labor.

Once you deal with these facts, perhaps you'll be able to confront the reality of things.

[manic expression]

Is that the argument I was making here with this piece of information as support? Hm.....

First (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2179666&postcount=91):
I addressed that claim. "The famine years" have already been explained to you.


Manic is continuously dishonest, so I will further flesh out my actual claims he replied to with this misdirection about the cause of the declines, when in actuality my question was how can you have a planned economy when you are not measuring the use-values that allow the basis material subsistence of the proletariat and poor peasantry?:

I originally said this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2176603&postcount=46):

Manic replies with this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2177935&postcount=62)(emphasis mine)::laugh: Again, you're failing to actually make a point. Are you saying that the way the Soviet Union measured stuff means it couldn't be socialist? Are you saying that the way the USSR counted calories makes it capitalist?


Which of course was a worthy of lulz (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2179676&postcount=93).Already responded to it. Sorry, keep trying.


That's called being a lying sack of shit. When in doubt, this is how manic expression ALWAYS replies to an argument, he tries to change the goalposts, play dumb (though perhaps is in fact, an imbecile), and then hope by answering a totally different question no one will ever notice.:lol: Ultra-lefts are always mad when they keep getting refuted. Nothing new here. The Inform Candidate posts something, I address and explain it, and then he starts complaining that I didn't do it the way he wanted me to. You mentioned statistics very vaguely and expected me to respond to it the first time...then when you finally come around to posting them, I tell you precisely what I told you before, that your statistics prove nothing and that your analysis idiotically ignores the context of the period.

But yeah, I'm the dishonest one. :laugh: Keep calling me names like the childish hack you are...it shows how utterly disinterested you are in actual discussion.

[manic expression]

This statement, in its utterly clueless hubristic stupidity, cannot be improved upon. I merely quote it in admiration of its perfection.
If you understood the discussion at hand instead of foolishly wandering into it without giving it a second thought, you'd see that I'm using the same ultra-left anti-socialist "logic" used by your buddy Savage. The statement I put out exposes how absurd the ultra-left line is.

You don't recognize it, because you can't bring yourself to see your anti-socialist BS be shown fro what it is.


...uh yeah, because that's the definition of the proletariat, and by definition that is not what the peasantry is. Everyday you produce more proof you're not a Marxist, just a bourgeois populist.
Both working classes, both oppressed in capitalism and both then liberated in revolution.

Riddle me the difference...or continue to act like a hack.

[Thirsty Crow]

Both working classes, both oppressed in capitalism and both then liberated in revolution.

Riddle me the difference...or continue to act like a hack.
The peasantry as a term in Marxist class analysis does not refer to a group of people exploited at the point of production, integrated into the process of production as a class inherently antagonistic to capital, since the term signifies proprietors of agricultural productive facilities and means of production (antagonistic with respect to rural working class if they do employ labour).

You really know little, do you?

[PolskiLenin]

This is a very common question.

The U.S.S.R., by the time it was established as the U.S.S.R., was not socialist. It was quite simply a bureaucratic dictatorship.

One can easily just state what it was, but understanding why is what is key to building your political knowledge.

When Soviet Russia was established in 1917, it was a truly socialist/communist Marxist state in the transitional phase: the dictatorship of the proletariat. During this phase, the means of production and the economy were put under democratic management by workers' councils called Soviets. The revolutionary vanguard party had successfully led the proletariat to victory against the bourgeois Provisional Government, and had put the workers in control, but not it was time to eliminate the bourgeoisie. Peasants and workers seized factories, land, railways, and expropriated the capitalists without compensation, and by 1920, it was proven by Soviet records, surveys, and the Commassariat of Food that public, worker managed, communist production was able to produce three times more food for ten times less the cost.

It seemed right off the bat that everything was going perfectly, because it was - the bourgeoisie were being eliminated, the workers were in control, the Red Army was established....and then came the counter revolution.

Anti-Bolshevik forces rallied into the White Army and launched war against the new Soviet government. The U.S. and various other nations contributed hundreds of thousands of troops to the White cause, and it looked as if the extremely fragile and vulnerable workers' state would be destroyed.

The Russian Civil War would be an extremely bitter, bloody conflict that would ravage the nation. Millions were killed in the chaos of the fighting, but the communists eventually claimed victory, but at a devastating price...

Desperate times called for desperate measures, and when the workers and soldiers were starving, food was confiscated from the ever growing number of wealthy peasants. these petty bourgeois peasants were, like Lenin predicted, swinging more and more into being bourgeois, and during the chaos of the civil war, they were able to infect the Soviet system. This policy of War Communism propped up the system just long enough to win the war, and Trotsky said that "We won the war, but at the price that we ruined this country"

Lenin warned of the growing bureaucracy that would ruin the socialist state, but the conditions of Russia's extremely backwards and vulnerable situation were perfect for the rich peasants, the Kulaks, to secure political sway under the leader, Josef Stalin.

In conclusion, Russia was a true Marxist state, and while it was it was the most successful and powerful nation in the world! It produced more, had more freedom, and defeated armies from the strongest nations on Earth. It just so happened that out of one in a million chances, the conditions just happened to be PERFECT for what happened to happen. there wasn't a methodological error in the communist system, it was quite simply that due to Russia's extremely unique peculiar backwards situation, desperate measures gave rise to a new threat that would destroy an unprepared, already busy and stressed Russia. Lenin's methods weren't wrong, it was the backwardness of the situation combined with chaos that led to pure chance that would do the trick.

Stalin's rise to power with his bureaucratic machine mark the end of the truly Marxist Russia.

[manic expression]

The peasantry as a term in Marxist class analysis does not refer to a group of people exploited at the point of production, integrated into the process of production as a class inherently antagonistic to capital, since the term signifies proprietors of agricultural productive facilities and means of production (antagonistic with respect to rural working class if they do employ labour).
Nope, you missed the point. The argument about the "proletariat" not being able to exist without capitalism is not that the proletariat is "inherently antagonistic to capital", it's that the proletariat's very existence depends entirely on the presence of capital...or just as importantly, that the proletariat cannot exist without the exploitation of capitalist society.

So...if we take that ultra-left logic and apply it to the peasantry...which is a class that is exploited just as the proletariat, which is a class that is oppressed by capital just as the proletariat...then it should logically follow that no one will be farming after the revolution, because the peasantry should simply disappear. Now, this isn't my argument, it's just Savage's ultra-leftism applied. And it's obviously absurd (as our good friend The Inform Candidate was so kind to inadvertently admit).

The fact is clear: working-class revolution brings A NEW RULING CLASS. Classes do not disappear. The proletariat does not disappear until the conditions necessary for classless society are achieved. That's what we call socialism. That's what the USSR was.

And that's what anti-socialists can't bring themselves to admit.

[Jose Gracchus]

http://www.windsofchange.net/Black%20Knight%20-%20Med.JPG

Yeah, whatever you say, Manic. Whatever makes you feel better.

[Jose Gracchus]

If you understood the discussion at hand instead of foolishly wandering into it without giving it a second thought, you'd see that I'm using the same ultra-left anti-socialist "logic" used by your buddy Savage. The statement I put out exposes how absurd the ultra-left line is.

You don't recognize it, because you can't bring yourself to see your anti-socialist BS be shown fro what it is.


Both working classes, both oppressed in capitalism and both then liberated in revolution.

Riddle me the difference...or continue to act like a hack.

The point is, fuckmook, you asserted that the USSR did measure subsistence, and I proved they in fact did not for the years 1929-1932. You're just a lying sack of shit.

[Kiev Communard]

No, they weren't controlled by the workers. But neither are modern corporations controlled by the stock owners, either. They are controlled by management, which is sometimes fairly democratic and responds to the wishes of the stockholders, but often disregards them altogether--at least until some Warren Buffett or other comes along and does a hostile takeover.

The difference was that the workers did not control the management either directly (through elections, recall, workers' councils, etc.) or indirectly (through the ability to establish new enterprises independent of the ones run by old bureaucracy). This is a core difference between the situation with shareholders.


What ultimately matters is not control but *ownership,* whether in America or the USSR. Who owned the means of production in the USSR? Certainly not the bureaucracy! Any time a bureaucrat got fired or purged, he suddenly discovered he owned nothing but the shirt on his back, and sometimes not even that. The bureaucracy had no property rights in the means of production whatsoever.

Yes, as they individuals, they lacked it (just as the ruling classes in the so-called "Asiatic" countries under their own variants of feudalism/tributarism), as the class though they had it. In fact, the ruling classes of the Mamluk state or medieval Siam were officially regarded as merely the slaves of their respective monarchs, qualitatively no different in their juridical standing from the real slaves/dependent peasants. Therefore someone might just as claim that there was no ruling class in these societies, as its individual members did not have complete and full property on the land but were merely part of an overall centralized corporation of the governing nobles, whose members were really owning private property only through directly participating in their class's organization, and lost it as they ceased this participation.

In fact, some French Marxist historians of the 1960s (such as Godellier) disputed the very existence of private property and ruling classes in the "Asiatic" societies using the same argument as Trotskyists do regarding Soviet "bureaucracy" (more precisely, bureaucratic capitalists), namely, the absence of individual private property (which is just one of the forms of private property) - which eventually caused them to abandon historical materialism at all.

In case of capitalism, as Marx correctly says, it is the social total capital, not the individual capitals, which are just the fragments of the latter, that represents a totality of the ruling class under capitalism, and if it is centralized in the hands of one entity, with the "community as the universal capitalist", this "crude communism" is nothing but a state-capitalism, the highest possible state of development of capital, where "both sides of the relationship are raised to an imagined universality – labour as the category in which every person is placed, and capital as the acknowledged universality and power of the community" (Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844). (Of course, Marx refers there to the utopian varieties of state-socialism such as that of Weitling's, but this critique applies as well to the "orthodox Marxist" (read: Kautskyan) varieties of state-socialism, of which the Bolshevism is merely the most radical form). The alienation and class struggle, of course, still remain there, as the "imagined universality" of the "community" (read: State-corporation) exists outside the real control of the associated producers, who are really subjugated to the accumulation of capital, and to the orders of the agents of this accumulation - bureaucratic capitalists, who are officially regarded as "just other workers".

That is why not a political, but a social revolution is needed to overthrow state-capitalist regime, however, "egalitarian" it might be in rhetoric (after all, the bulk of surplus value was appropriated by the bureaucratic capitalists not in the form of "official" money but in foreign cash and in the form of the so-called "privileges". Of course, you would not agree with me, but that is another story.

[Savage]

Like I said, you're making stuff up and presenting it as something other than images dancing in your head.

Once again, this is not an argument, and is unneeded in a civilized debate. Also, I have seen that you have attacked my posts in responses to other users, I would appreciate it if you stopped doing this so that neither of us have to double post. I know that this is the learning forum and that you are a high school student, but nonetheless you should refrain from producing trollish responses and act sensibly as you have largely managed to do in this thread.



The proletariat exists as the new ruling class...that is its new role in socialist society. Basic stuff here.


Yes, there are. Socialism is not a classless society. Since you can't even read what you posted:

If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

THE NEW RULING CLASS

I wonder...if there is a ruling class, then there must be classes, right? Funny how your own citation proves you to be completely incorrect.You are confusing the DOTP for socialism. The DOTP precedes socialism. In reference to future societies, M+E never made any distinction between socialist and communist society, this distinction was one that arose from the 2nd International and was popularized by Leninism. However, even if you do make a distinction between socialism and communism, you cannot refer to the proletariat existing in either stage because the existence of the proletariat means that the social relation of capital is still being reproduced.

The quote ''it makes itself the ruling class'' is a reference to the DOTP (which of course can only exist in a society where capital has not yet been abolished), which if you read the rest of that quote, ''sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally'' is referring to the abolition of value relations, which results in the abolition of the proletariat (as well as all other classes), this being a socialist/communist society.

Earlier in the thread your argument has implied that you do not believe a classless society to be a possibility, which you mind clarifying your position?

On an unrelated topic, I have noticed that the Mao and Pinochet (http://www.revleft.com/vb/mao-and-pinochet-t158303/index.html) thread on revleft has been devoid of any argument from a Maoist/Maoist sympathizer, perhaps you are needed there?

[Thirsty Crow]

So...if we take that ultra-left logic and apply it to the peasantry...which is a class that is exploited just as the proletariat, which is a class that is oppressed by capital just as the proletariat...then it should logically follow that no one will be farming after the revolution, because the peasantry should simply disappear. Now, this isn't my argument, it's just Savage's ultra-leftism applied. And it's obviously absurd (as our good friend The Inform Candidate was so kind to inadvertently admit).

The fact is clear: working-class revolution brings A NEW RULING CLASS. Classes do not disappear. The proletariat does not disappear until the conditions necessary for classless society are achieved. That's what we call socialism. That's what the USSR was.

And that's what anti-socialists can't bring themselves to admit.
Manic, you seem very, very confused. Should I remind you that Stalin proclaimed that a classless society has been achieved, constructed by 1936? Albeit, he states that there are no antagonistic classes, only non-antagonistic ones.

From the "On the Draft Constitution of the USSR":


Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new Constitution of the U.S.S.R. proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the state (the dictatorship) is in the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by, and beneficial to, the working people. http://marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/11/25.htm


Do you agree with this? It basically opposes your wiggling around and claiming that there had been a "latent" bourgeoisie.

Also, the peasantry is not exploited. At least not in the Marxist sense of the term "exploitation", and especially not if they employ labour. Why didn't you respond to my correcting your mistakes? Do you contend that the term "peasantry" applies to rural labourers? Because, it does not. It most commonly refers to small rural land proprietors.

Also, you gravely distort the "logic" behind the dissapearance of classes, which is not an ultra-left, anti-socialist logic (it really shows you're a high school student, if I may say so, with your hysterical denouncing of "reactionaries" and immature posturing), but Marxism 101. When capital is abolished, there is no social basis for the proletariat to be reproduced as the proletariat, and therefore theproletariat ceases to exist as a class, and what does remain we can name "freely associated producers". The point is that "proletariat" and "working class" refer, as terms in class analysis, to capitalism, from which their social existence as proletarians as workers, is inseparable. By the same logic, there wouldn't be no more peasants, but freely associated rural labour with the agricultural means of production held in common and used to produce useful goods, and not value.

And "socialism" is not what we call a period of transition. Show me where Marx used "socialism" and "dictatorship of the proletariat" interchangably and I'll concede to your point, and if you're unable to do so, I'll just keep on claimning that you're a revisionist.

[Rss]

Marxian analysis shows us that class is determined by a group’s role in reproducing social relations. The proletariat is the working class of capitalism, they are the propertyless wage labouring class; the product of their labour is capital. To say that the USSR contained a proletariat is to say that the social relation that we call capital remained there. If the USSR was socialist, then it had no proletariat, nor any other class.

There aren't enough faces on the planet to palm this. I'd understand if this was from a mouth of non-class conscious person, but here, what the hell.

[manic expression]

Yeah, whatever you say, Manic. Whatever makes you feel better.
Yep, more complaining from you, still no argumentation. Typical.


The point is, fuckmook, you asserted that the USSR did measure subsistence, and I proved they in fact did not for the years 1929-1932. You're just a lying sack of shit.
:lol: I don't hold the USSR to have been socialist during those years.

Again, one sentence destroys multiple pages of your ultra-left nonsense.


Manic, you seem very, very confused. Should I remind you that Stalin proclaimed that a classless society has been achieved, constructed by 1936?
I disagree with Stalin on that point. I think history has demonstrated that there was a capitalist class or at the very least agents of the capitalist class in the USSR at some point between 1936 and 1991.


Also, the peasantry is not exploited. At least not in the Marxist sense of the term "exploitation", and especially not if they employ labour. Why didn't you respond to my correcting your mistakes? Do you contend that the term "peasantry" applies to rural labourers? Because, it does not. It most commonly refers to small rural land proprietors.
In what dimension are poor peasants not exploited? Exploitation isn't a modern invention, it goes back some time, and that definitely applies to the peasantry.

Do you contend that share-croppers aren't counted among the peasantry?


Also, you gravely distort the "logic" behind the dissapearance of classes, which is not an ultra-left, anti-socialist logic (it really shows you're a high school student, if I may say so, with your hysterical denouncing of "reactionaries" and immature posturing), but Marxism 101. When capital is abolished, there is no social basis for the proletariat to be reproduced as the proletariat, and therefore theproletariat ceases to exist as a class, and what does remain we can name "freely associated producers".
Marxism 101 is that the workers establish themselves as the new ruling class. That means that classes don't disappear, but that one class overthrows another. The conditions for classless society are not reached only when capital is outlawed in one or two countries...that's the point here. Due to this, bringing up "freely associated producers" is entirely irrelevant IMO. "Freely associated producers" would have been crushed by the forces of capitalism in 10 minutes; a state was yet needed.

PS if I'm a high-school student for simply applying logic of disappearing classes and explaining how I feel it's flawed...then what do we call someone who uses the word "fuckmook"?


And "socialism" is not what we call a period of transition. Show me where Marx used "socialism" and "dictatorship of the proletariat" interchangably and I'll concede to your point, and if you're unable to do so, I'll just keep on claimning that you're a revisionist.
Socialism and the DOTP aren't the same thing. I haven't claimed as much. That's why I don't think the USSR in 1918 or 1925 was socialist. It wasn't until the 1930's, after collectivization and industrialization, that such an argument was reasonable.


Once again, this is not an argument, and is unneeded in a civilized debate. Also, I have seen that you have attacked my posts in responses to other users, I would appreciate it if you stopped doing this so that neither of us have to double post. I know that this is the learning forum and that you are a high school student, but nonetheless you should refrain from producing trollish responses and act sensibly as you have largely managed to do in this thread.
Arguments oftentimes become heated. They can become very heated when multiple posters misrepresent (at times on purpose) another poster's points. You haven't done so, but others have and it affects all discussions...I'll try to stop this from happening in the future. Perhaps you can understand this, as I understand your own view.


You are confusing the DOTP for socialism. The DOTP precedes socialism.
Precisely. That's why we can say that the DOTP existed after 1917, but we can't say that socialism did until the capitalist mode of production had been eliminated in the 1930's. In fact, before that point, NEP was essentially a capitalist economy run under the control of the proletariat. That's why the Soviet economic shift in the 1930's, marked out most clearly with the industrialization campaigns and the process of collectivization, are so important.


The quote ''it makes itself the ruling class'' is a reference to the DOTP (which of course can only exist in a society where capital has not yet been abolished), which if you read the rest of that quote, ''sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally'' is referring to the abolition of value relations, which results in the abolition of the proletariat (as well as all other classes), this being a socialist/communist society.
Yes and no. The old conditions of production can be swept away, but not the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms. This is surely the case when we have the elimination of capitalist production through the state power of the workers in one area of the world, while the majority of the world retains capitalist society in full. In short, the capitalist class still existed, and thus the proletarian state needed to exist as well. Thus, classless society was simply impossible but socialism was.


Earlier in the thread your argument has implied that you do not believe a classless society to be a possibility, which you mind clarifying your position?
No, I was not trying to say that at all. I was trying to say that the USSR had not the possibility to be classless because most of the world saw an empowered capitalist class. If the entire world was under the DOTP or socialism, then that's another story, but the proletariat remains a class until the threats against it are eliminated.


On an unrelated topic, I have noticed that the Mao and Pinochet (http://www.revleft.com/vb/mao-and-pinochet-t158303/index.html) thread on revleft has been devoid of any argument from a Maoist/Maoist sympathizer, perhaps you are needed there?
This is one of those times where I couldn't disagree with Mao more. The recognition of Pinochet was a grave and unacceptable error on his part, one that I will never understand or forgive. That and other disagreements aside, I still uphold his contributions to Marxism and the struggle of the workers. Thanks for the heads-up though. :thumbup1:

[Savage]

There aren't enough faces on the planet to palm this. I'd understand if this was from a mouth of non-class conscious person, but here, what the hell.

This is a not a response. If you object to the hypothesis that I proposed, please use a Marxian analysis to prove to me how the proletariats' role in society is not that of reproducing the social relation of capital, and how socialism, as a society that exists after the abolition of the production of values can possibly contain a class who's role is to reproduce the very thing that is said to have been abolished.

[Savage]

Arguments oftentimes become heated. They can become very heated when multiple posters misrepresent (at times on purpose) another poster's points. You haven't done so, but others have and it affects all discussions...I'll try to stop this from happening in the future. Perhaps you can understand this, as I understand your own view.Thank you for understanding and conducting your discussion with me in a non-hostile manner.


Precisely. That's why we can say that the DOTP existed after 1917, but we can't say that socialism did until the capitalist mode of production had been eliminated in the 1930's. In fact, before that point, NEP was essentially a capitalist economy run under the control of the proletariat. That's why the Soviet economic shift in the 1930's, marked out most clearly with the industrialization campaigns and the process of collectivization, are so important.

Yes and no. The old conditions of production can be swept away, but not the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms. This is surely the case when we have the elimination of capitalist production through the state power of the workers in one area of the world, while the majority of the world retains capitalist society in full. In short, the capitalist class still existed, and thus the proletarian state needed to exist as well. Thus, classless society was simply impossible but socialism was.

No, I was not trying to say that at all. I was trying to say that the USSR had not the possibility to be classless because most of the world saw an empowered capitalist class. If the entire world was under the DOTP or socialism, then that's another story, but the proletariat remains a class until the threats against it are eliminated.Given that capital had been abolished in one area of the world alone (I would dispute that this is possible, but that is a discussion that has been had many times before and does not need to be repeated here), it is true that this society would have to defend itself against reaction, but given the implication of this hypothetical (that capitalism no longer existed in this society) then I would say that this society was classless.

I think we're probably going to end up going in circles here, but if you have any further points to add I would be happy to respond.


This is one of those times where I couldn't disagree with Mao more. The recognition of Pinochet was a grave and unacceptable error on his part, one that I will never understand or forgive. That and other disagreements aside, I still uphold his contributions to Marxism and the struggle of the workers. Thanks for the heads-up though. :thumbup1:I assume that Maoists most hold the same position as you on this but as I had never heard a Maoist or Maoist sympathizer on the topic I was interested, thanks.

[Rss]

This is a not a response. If you object to the hypothesis that I proposed, please use a Marxian analysis to prove to me how the proletariats' role in society is not that of reproducing the social relation of capital, and how socialism, as a society that exists after the abolition of the production of values can possibly contain a class who's role is to reproduce the very thing that is said to have been abolished.

The problem is that you equate socialism with communism. Let me clear this out; After socialist revolution dictatorship of proletariat is established, liquidation of bourgeois as a class is started and construction of socialism starts. Proletariat as a class doesn't magically disappear overnight, just as bourgeois doesn't. Disappearance of classes is gradual process, which eventually leads to communist society.

Manic expression wraps it up rather well, this is rather useless post.

[Savage]

The problem is that you equate socialism with communism. Let me clear this out; After socialist revolution dictatorship of proletariat is established, liquidation of bourgeois as a class is started and construction of socialism starts. Proletariat as a class doesn't magically disappear overnight, just as bourgeois doesn't. Disappearance of classes is gradual process, which eventually leads to communist society.

Manic expression wraps it up rather well, this is rather useless post.

To repeat myself, both Karl Marx and Friederich Engels, when speaking of socialism in the context of defining a society, equated socialism with communism, both are societies where capital has been abolished. The distinction between socialism and communism is something that only arose in the 2nd international and was popularized by Lenin and his theory.

Now answer my question, given that capital has been abolished in socialism, how can a class exists if this class only exists in the context of a value producing society?

[manic expression]

Given that capital had been abolished in one area of the world alone (I would dispute that this is possible, but that is a discussion that has been had many times before and does not need to be repeated here), it is true that this society would have to defend itself against reaction, but given the implication of this hypothetical (that capitalism no longer existed in this society) then I would say that this society was classless.
OK. The only reason I don't agree is that there is a possibility of a black market (in which people could even be hired to work on the side, and then their illegal employer would make money off of their labor). That, coupled with the possible existence of bourgeois agents funded by the bourgeoisie abroad, makes it difficult for me to call the society fully "classless".


I think we're probably going to end up going in circles here, but if you have any further points to add I would be happy to respond.
Just to get your perspective...do you think the DOTP and socialist society will differ based on local differences and circumstances? Also, do you think it's possible for a society to have wages but not wage-labor?


I assume that Maoists most hold the same position as you on this but as I had never heard a Maoist or Maoist sympathizer on the topic I was interested, thanks.
No problem...it's a shame we lost so many Maoist voices here.

[Kiev Communard]

The problem is that you equate socialism with communism. Let me clear this out; After socialist revolution dictatorship of proletariat is established, liquidation of bourgeois as a class is started and construction of socialism starts. Proletariat as a class doesn't magically disappear overnight, just as bourgeois doesn't. Disappearance of classes is gradual process, which eventually leads to communist society.

The problem is that you and manic expression, following Leninist confusion, equate socialism with the transitional period, and more so, equate the transitional period with state-capitalist monopoly and one-Party state, which is dead-end. Marx and Engels generally used terms "socialism" or "communism" interchangeably, and in their later years they most certainly used "socialism" more often than "communism" to describe the future classless society. It is actually Kautsky who claimed that under socialism there would still be state and wage labour, not Marx.

For all his political faults (i.e. advocating parliamentary methods of political struggle and believing in the possibility of "peaceful revolution" in the "bourgeois democracies), Marx was no fool to claim that under socialism the proletariat (i.e. the dispossessed wage labourers who have to sell their labour power for the living) shall exist, for, logically speaking, if wage labour exists in a given society, then capital (and capitalists) exist too.

[manic expression]

For all his political faults (i.e. advocating parliamentary methods of political struggle and believing in the possibility of "peaceful revolution" in the "bourgeois democracies), Marx was no fool to claim that under socialism the proletariat (i.e. the dispossessed wage labourers who have to sell their labour power for the living) shall exist, for, logically speaking, if wage labour exists in a given society, then capital (and capitalists) exist too.
Just to jump in here, this is the meat of the question. I feel it is self-evident that the economic relationship between the proletariat and the means of production change as soon as the proletariat takes power. This is in the political sphere, as the capitalist mode of production may yet persist after this point. From this, I feel it is quite clear that when (or if, if you like) the capitalist mode of production is eliminated in one country and replaced by a system alien to capitalism (centralized planning of the economy, no market for labor power, a state monopoly on foreign trade, etc.), then this relationship shifts entirely. However, capitalism has not been destroyed worldwide, and classes still exist. What are we to call this new ruling class, then? I call them proletarians, liberated proletarians, the ruled who became the rulers.

[Savage]

Just to get your perspective...do you think the DOTP and socialist society will differ based on local differences and circumstances?Differ in what way? I think that the forms in which the working class assumes political power in the future could very will vary based on local differences and circumstances, but their tasks will not differ if that's what you mean.


Also, do you think it's possible for a society to have wages but not wage-labor?Well I think this relates to the topic of distribution in socialist society (which I am not theoretically strong on). Labour power in a socialist society is no longer commodified but this doesn't give us a certain type of distribution set in stone.

[Jose Gracchus]

Yep, more complaining from you, still no argumentation. Typical.

:lol: I don't hold the USSR to have been socialist during those years.

Again, one sentence destroys multiple pages of your ultra-left nonsense.

I argued with you for pages (in your own words), so needless to say you're being retarded.

So the USSR wasn't socialist during 1929-1932? Yet I suppose you think post-Gomulka Poland, Kadarite Hungary, Titoist Yugoslavia, and modern Cuba are 'socialist'? Why not? You're suddenly becoming a Hoxhaist when it suits your purposes and claiming that "socialism" (this ephemeral moral quality that changes conveniently as it suits your purposes) is only the mature Stalinist economy? So what about market socialism? If market socialism and private rural economies (i.e., 1929 in Russia) are not "socialist," then what are the above examples of states? I know for a fact both you and your silly party claim that they are, or have before.

Why don't you give an operative definition of socialism, and explain to us why we should prefer it to alternative definitions?


I disagree with Stalin on that point. I think history has demonstrated that there was a capitalist class or at the very least agents of the capitalist class in the USSR at some point between 1936 and 1991.

Agents of a phantom class, indeed. How Marxian of you. Can you locate them for us?


Do you contend that share-croppers aren't counted among the peasantry?

Sharecroppers are not peasants.


PS if I'm a high-school student for simply applying logic of disappearing classes and explaining how I feel it's flawed...then what do we call someone who uses the word "fuckmook"?

Awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YXpdkNAF4M


Socialism and the DOTP aren't the same thing. I haven't claimed as much. That's why I don't think the USSR in 1918 or 1925 was socialist. It wasn't until the 1930's, after collectivization and industrialization, that such an argument was reasonable.

So you think that only the USSR and Albania were socialist? Maybe Czechoslovakia and North Korea? None of the other ML states completed the collectivization and industrialization that the USSR underwent from the late 1920s to the 1930s. You don't know anything about your own historical lines, which is really sad.

[manic expression]

I argued with you for pages (in your own words), so needless to say you're being retarded.
If you call the argument that I'm "retarded" actual argument, then I guess so. By any other standard, you're incapable of it.


So the USSR wasn't socialist during 1929-1932? Yet I suppose you think post-Gomulka Poland, Kadarite Hungary, Titoist Yugoslavia, and modern Cuba are 'socialist'? Why not? You're suddenly becoming a Hoxhaist when it suits your purposes and claiming that "socialism" (this ephemeral moral quality that changes conveniently as it suits your purposes) is only the mature Stalinist economy? So what about market socialism? If market socialism and private rural economies (i.e., 1929 in Russia) are not "socialist," then what are the above examples of states? I know for a fact both you and your silly party claim that they are, or have before.
Hardly a valid comparison. "Market socialism" isn't precisely the same as what was happening in the NEP. Lenin openly called the NEP was "state capitalism", distinguishing it from capitalism in that it was a controlled introduction of capitalist production under the direct control of the DOTP. Have you shown that your myriad of comparisons fall under this category? No, you haven't, you've simply regurgitated a few anti-socialist pieces of rhetoric and expected it to form an argument.

Which it isn't. I'll wait until you present one.


Why don't you give an operative definition of socialism, and explain to us why we should prefer it to alternative definitions?
My definition of socialism is the early stages of communism. Your "alternative definition" is that as soon as capitalist production is eliminated in one country, everyone should forget about class struggle because you say it shouldn't exist. Too bad reality disagrees.


Agents of a phantom class, indeed. How Marxian of you. Can you locate them for us?
Try looking somewhere around Wall Street. I'm sure you'll find a few.

But then again, you'd probably fail at that.


Sharecroppers are not peasants.
Easy to say stuff, harder to prove it. Anyway, read something honestly for once in your life:

In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

Translation: exploitation wasn't invented with capitalism. Pre-capitalist working classes were also exploited.


Awesome.
Oh, now you're back to 3rd-grade remarks. I thought you had progressed a bit.


So you think that only the USSR and Albania were socialist? Maybe Czechoslovakia and North Korea? None of the other ML states completed the collectivization and industrialization that the USSR underwent from the late 1920s to the 1930s. You don't know anything about your own historical lines, which is really sad.
Collectivization and industrialization signaled the beginning of capitalist relations not merely because they were as they were but because they eliminated capitalist production and replaced it with socialist production. In other words, read this:

Differ in what way? I think that the forms in which the working class assumes political power in the future could very will vary based on local differences and circumstances, but their tasks will not differ if that's what you mean.

You know, the post you thanked and then contradicted in a matter of minutes. :lol: A job well done, that.

[Thirsty Crow]

I disagree with Stalin on that point. I think history has demonstrated that there was a capitalist class or at the very least agents of the capitalist class in the USSR at some point between 1936 and 1991.Two things:

1) once in a lifetime, I'm forced to agree with Stalin with respect to the specific problem at hand. "Agents" of the capitalist class and latent capitalist class operating in black markets are definitely not a valid argument in favour of class formation in the Marxist sense. Remember, classes are not formed in the moment of exchange, but rather production as it is production that functions as the determining factor, at least with respect to the Marxist class analysis of historical class societies*. You should be able to show why exactly is this focus unwarranted when it comes to USSR. And just to be clear, there are aspects to the USSR upon which one might argue in favour of the thesis on the existence of capital (in my opinion, The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience is the most valuable of state capitalist theories), but you seem to disregard that.

2) it's very ironic that you speak of capitalist agents when it turned out that the party-state apparatus was a breeding ground for these acitvities. In other words, it's very strange that you claim that this same apparatus was a tool of working class power when it was an important factor in capitalist restructuring in early 90s.



In what dimension are poor peasants not exploited? Exploitation isn't a modern invention, it goes back some time, and that definitely applies to the peasantry. They are not exploited at the point of production since they do not perform surplus labour out of which surplus value is derived. They might be poor, and they might be a dominated group in society, but to say that they are exploited when they do not enter the wage labour-capital relation as waged labour, they are not exploited.
The point is to recognize specific social mechanisms by which one group of people are different in their exploitation and subordination/domination from another group. In this sense, the peasantry is different from the proletariat with respect to their function within the process of production.

* one way to look at bourgeois stratification theories which are, imo, inferior to Marxist class analysis is their focus on the second "moment", that of distribution of the produce, which then translates into class stratification according to income. Here the Marxist focus upon production is most clearly visible as the discerning factor, and any shift away from it should be meticulously argued and explained, what you failed to do with your own insistence on the "moment" of exchange (black markets).

[manic expression]

1) once in a lifetime, I'm forced to agree with Stalin with respect to the specific problem at hand. "Agents" of the capitalist class and latent capitalist class operating in black markets are definitely not a valid argument in favour of class formation in the Marxist sense. Remember, classes are not formed in the moment of exchange, but rather production as it is production that functions as the determining factor, at least with respect to the Marxist class analysis of historical class societies*. You should be able to show why exactly is this focus unwarranted when it comes to USSR. And just to be clear, there are aspects to the USSR upon which one might argue in favour of the thesis on the existence of capital (in my opinion, The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience is the most valuable of state capitalist theories), but you seem to disregard that.
But can we actually say that a society has no antagonistic classes if there are such influences going on?


2) it's very ironic that you speak of capitalist agents when it turned out that the party-state apparatus was a breeding ground for these acitvities. In other words, it's very strange that you claim that this same apparatus was a tool of working class power when it was an important factor in capitalist restructuring in early 90s.
Well, I think that developed later on, and gradually so. The party was indeed a tool of working-class power...which is why it was such an important factor in capitalist restoration. When the party stopped functioning as a vanguard party, very few, if any, voices were left in defense of socialism.


They are not exploited at the point of production since they do not perform surplus labour out of which surplus value is derived. They might be poor, and they might be a dominated group in society, but to say that they are exploited when they do not enter the wage labour-capital relation as waged labour, they are not exploited.
So serfs weren't exploited in feudal society?


The point is to recognize specific social mechanisms by which one group of people are different in their exploitation and subordination/domination from another group. In this sense, the peasantry is different from the proletariat with respect to their function within the process of production.
Yes, most definitely, but exploitation was not something that was invented along with capitalist society, it has been part of almost every class society in history.


* one way to look at bourgeois stratification theories which are, imo, inferior to Marxist class analysis is their focus on the second "moment", that of distribution of the produce, which then translates into class stratification according to income. Here the Marxist focus upon production is most clearly visible as the discerning factor, and any shift away from it should be meticulously argued and explained, what you failed to do with your own insistence on the "moment" of exchange (black markets).
But black markets weren't just a moment of exchange, they were a constant presence that allowed a certain group of people to bring more wealth to themselves.

[Thirsty Crow]

But can we actually say that a society has no antagonistic classes if there are such influences going on?My opinion is that Stalin was absolutely wrong and that at that point there were antagonistic classes, but probably you wouldn't agree with my identification of these classes.
But the point is, "such influences" and such phenomena you're refering to are most definitely not indicative of class formation in the Marxist sense.



Well, I think that developed later on, and gradually so. The party was indeed a tool of working-class power...which is why it was such an important factor in capitalist restoration. When the party stopped functioning as a vanguard party, very few, if any, voices were left in defense of socialism.I take this to be indicative of you being unable to account for capitalist restructuring in the 90s without abandoning the materialist conception of history.

The result is that the party was not a tool of working class power, but a monopoly on power since no other power basis remained intact for the working class to defend their interests. The party stopped funtioning as the vanuguard of the militant, revolutionary working class the minute it established itself as the only site, along other institutions of the party-state network, of the decision making power.



So serfs weren't exploited in feudal society?Serfs were most definitely exploited in feudalism, but not in the same way proletarians are in capitalism and not in the same way the peasantry is dominated in capitalism (I still contend that peasants are not technically exploited, but rather dominated, in capitalism).



Yes, most definitely, but exploitation was not something that was invented along with capitalist society, it has been part of almost every class society in history.That's true, though it seems to me that you're missing the point that the historical conditions of exploitation change. An example would be serfs who were liberated from personal bondage and opression by the nobility and became individual producers. Rural labourers also fit into this picture inasmuch as their conditions of exploitation are not the same as those of serfs in feudalism.



But black markets weren't just a moment of exchange, they were a constant presence that allowed a certain group of people to bring more wealth to themselves.I'm not using the word "moment" in its temporal sense, as in "Just a moment, I'll be there...".
I'm referring to the four "moments" of production, distribution, exchange and consumption.

[manic expression]

My opinion is that Stalin was absolutely wrong and that at that point there were antagonistic classes, but probably you wouldn't agree with my identification of these classes.
But the point is, "such influences" and such phenomena you're refering to are most definitely not indicative of class formation in the Marxist sense.
What of class interests? We can point to "dissidents" who had the backing of the bourgeoisie abroad. Do they not represent the interests and actions of a bourgeoisie?

The last portion you wrote was about the black market, so I'll leave that point aside for now.


I take this to be indicative of you being unable to account for capitalist restructuring in the 90s without abandoning the materialist conception of history.

The result is that the party was not a tool of working class power, but a monopoly on power since no other power basis remained intact for the working class to defend their interests. The party stopped funtioning as the vanuguard of the militant, revolutionary working class the minute it established itself as the only site, along other institutions of the party-state network, of the decision making power.It's not an abandoning of materialism to say that the party stopped functioning as the working-class vanguard. In fact, it's definitely no less of an "abandoning" than your formulation, that it stopped being the vanguard as soon as it won control of society. It is perfectly reasonable for a socialist society to be run by one vanguard party...it's not ideal, and it's not as I would have it, but it's not the contradiction of some order as you would have us believe.

The party did have a monopoly on power, but it was the vanguard. It represented the interests of the workers, as it was a working-class party. What happened is that it became extremely formal in its position in society, it lost ideological sharpness, it divorced itself from the wider masses (again, too formal in its position...it was leading the class without involving the class enough), it failed to properly fight the propaganda war against imperialism, it started to blame its own failures on socialism and not on its own mistakes. This led to the mid-80's, when pro-capitalists had been able to get into positions of power and silence those in favor of socialism. What happened next was principally a result of those political developments. That's how I see it, briefly (I could write a lot more on this but the above are collectively a primary factor IMO).


Serfs were most definitely exploited in feudalism, but not in the same way proletarians are in capitalism and not in the same way the peasantry is dominated in capitalism (I still contend that peasants are not technically exploited, but rather dominated, in capitalism).So what changed?


That's true, though it seems to me that you're missing the point that the historical conditions of exploitation change. An example would be serfs who were liberated from personal bondage and opression by the nobility and became individual producers. Rural labourers also fit into this picture inasmuch as their conditions of exploitation are not the same as those of serfs in feudalism. Right. The serfs were liberated from personal bondage, but in many regions they already owned land and worked it themselves. In Western Europe, feudalism dictated that serfs work a certain number of days of the week for their lord...the rest of the time they were free to work their own fields. Common land was also open to their use. Even in Russia, serfs technically owned the land...but their souls belonged to the local nobles or the crown. The abolition of serfdom, in many cases, only switched the gravity of these obligations from the individual noble to the market.


I'm not using the word "moment" in its temporal sense, as in "Just a moment, I'll be there...".
I'm referring to the four "moments" of production, distribution, exchange and consumption.Yes, but if we put them together than it's quite a different picture.

[Thirsty Crow]

What of class interests? We can point to "dissidents" who had the backing of the bourgeoisie abroad. Do they not represent the interests and actions of a bourgeoisie? What of it? Do you really wish to argue that interests devoid of social basis in the function performed in production can account for class formation? Class interests are based in the organization of social production, not in abstract interests (abstract in the sense of detachment from a position in production which offers a social basis for it).


It's not an abandoning of materialism to say that the party stopped functioning as the working-class vanguard. In fact, it's definitely no less of an "abandoning" than your formulation, that it stopped being the vanguard as soon as it won control of society. It is perfectly reasonable for a socialist society to be run by one vanguard party...it's not ideal, and it's not as I would have it, but it's not the contradiction of some order as you would have us believe.In my opinion, it is not reasonable to assume that working class power may take the form of a dictatorship of the party-state precisely because of the historical outcome which indicates that the most broad working class was disempowered at the advantage of what I'd call the bureaucratic ruling class which then played a major role in capitalist restructuring.


The party did have a monopoly on power, but it was the vanguard. It represented the interests of the workers, as it was a working-class party. What happened is that it became extremely formal in its position in society, it lost ideological sharpness, it divorced itself from the wider masses (again, too formal in its position...it was leading the class without involving the class enough), it failed to properly fight the propaganda war against imperialism, it started to blame its own failures on socialism and not on its own mistakes. This led to the mid-80's, when pro-capitalists had been able to get into positions of power and silence those in favor of socialism. What happened next was principally a result of those political developments. That's how I see it, briefly (I could write a lot more on this but the above are collectively a primary factor IMO).Yes, the party was the workers' vanguard, and once the task of conquering political power was achieved, it did everything possible to cement the social relations based on such notions and social processes rooted in the social division of labour. The exclusion of the broad layers of the working class from participation in the decision making process, at the point of production and at the point of the political process, was cemented and transformed into the basis of a structural antagonism plaguing Soviet society, as evident in the existence of class struggle (no doubt, you would call it "sabotage"). The monopoly remained.

Also, it is the bourgeois parties that represent specific interests, and I do hold the conviction that the working class is the first class in history which does not need representation of sorts, taken in its strict sense and excluding delegate bodies which are IMO functional within the context of direct working class power.

You should ask yourself how was it possible that a stratum of the working class was not "involving the class enough" if it were not true that the process of the formation of the new ruling class over the prolatariat hadn't begun.

And how the hell could have pro-capitalists get into the party that is the working class party, representing the interests of the liberated proletariat, where did the chain of misfortunate mistakes begin?


So what changed?You said it yourself. What changed was that the once bonded peasants became proprietors fully, in the sense of ownership over the land, the lack of surplus labour performed for an exploiting class. The gravity of obligation towards the market is no different qualitatively for a middle peasant employing wage labour and a small capitalist. Compare this social existence to that of the wage slave and you'll find your answer.
Of course, it should be noted that, historically, many of the peasants were proletarianized and transformed into cannon fodder for capitalist industry.



Yes, but if we put them together than it's quite a different picture.
Of course, these moments can only be separated for analytical purposes, but the main point is that Marxism places primary focus upon production, which is the determining instance. Therefore, if you were to argue that class formation can take place on fringes of the relations of exchange (black markets), you'd have to present quite a lot of evidence and provide a firm theoretical framework which would explain why is it that Marxism needs to be "corrected" in this way, at least when it comes to the issue of USSR.

[Jose Gracchus]

If you call the argument that I'm "retarded" actual argument, then I guess so. By any other standard, you're incapable of it.

Derp derp.


IHardly a valid comparison. "Market socialism" isn't precisely the same as what was happening in the NEP. Lenin openly called the NEP was "state capitalism", distinguishing it from capitalism in that it was a controlled introduction of capitalist production under the direct control of the DOTP. Have you shown that your myriad of comparisons fall under this category? No, you haven't, you've simply regurgitated a few anti-socialist pieces of rhetoric and expected it to form an argument.

No, I know the PSL line (and yours, by extension) is that these "really existing socialist" states deserve defense. I am trying to get you to commit to some kind of actual position on which states are and are not socialist, and which features they must necessarily possess to be considered so.

This is really just another misdirection on your part where you asserted the Soviet government did measure and care about workers' subsistence, and I proved they did not, and you have attempted to make the issue over whether technically the USSR was socialist or not in 1931. When was it? What year exactly? Why? And why did the USSR abolish the statistical organ which tracked the direct producers' subsistence, if it was really an institution of their power?


IMy definition of socialism is the early stages of communism. Your "alternative definition" is that as soon as capitalist production is eliminated in one country, everyone should forget about class struggle because you say it shouldn't exist. Too bad reality disagrees.

a.) In Marx + Engels, no classes exist in communism, either "lower" or "higher", so you're wrong.

b.) Why is the USSR socialist in 1939 but not 1931, allowing you to weasel out of earlier statements, purportedly? Do you actually use any such consistent standard, in practice applying it to other 'actually existing' "socialisms"?


ITry looking somewhere around Wall Street. I'm sure you'll find a few.

But then again, you'd probably fail at that.

IN THE USSR YOU DISHONEST FUCK. You know exactly what statement of yours I was quoting. You said that a capitalist class or its agents existed in the USSR. Now show them.


IEasy to say stuff, harder to prove it. Anyway, read something honestly for once in your life:

In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

Translation: exploitation wasn't invented with capitalism. Pre-capitalist working classes were also exploited.

A position I never asserted, liar. How does this prove sharecroppers are peasants?


IOh, now you're back to 3rd-grade remarks. I thought you had progressed a bit.

Derp derp derp


ICollectivization and industrialization signaled the beginning of capitalist relations not merely because they were as they were but because they eliminated capitalist production and replaced it with socialist production. In other words, read this:

So Poland was a capitalist or state capitalist state? Yes or no?

[Impulse97]

Manic, give it up. tIC has torn your arguments apart time and time again. It's pathetic to watch you use the same arguments over and over that somehow never seem to stand up under even mild scrutiny.

[manic expression]

What of it? Do you really wish to argue that interests devoid of social basis in the function performed in production can account for class formation? Class interests are based in the organization of social production, not in abstract interests (abstract in the sense of detachment from a position in production which offers a social basis for it).
Yes, and the organization of social production was the capitalism outside of the USSR. This isn't abstract but a clear influence and threat of capitalism against the Soviet Union.


In my opinion, it is not reasonable to assume that working class power may take the form of a dictatorship of the party-state precisely because of the historical outcome which indicates that the most broad working class was disempowered at the advantage of what I'd call the bureaucratic ruling class which then played a major role in capitalist restructuring.
Have you forgotten every rational thing you've said so far? A bureaucracy isn't a class...bureaucracies represent class interests.

Plus, this is an anarchistic argument...that "power" is bad because it "corrupts". This is nonsense because states reflect the classes that bring them into existence.


Yes, the party was the workers' vanguard, and once the task of conquering political power was achieved, it did everything possible to cement the social relations based on such notions and social processes rooted in the social division of labour. The exclusion of the broad layers of the working class from participation in the decision making process, at the point of production and at the point of the political process, was cemented and transformed into the basis of a structural antagonism plaguing Soviet society, as evident in the existence of class struggle (no doubt, you would call it "sabotage"). The monopoly remained.
"The monopoly" was a political shortcoming, not anything more than that. You're trying to say that since there was a monopoly by the vanguard party, it couldn't be socialist. This is ridiculous because political monopoly has nothing to do with social relations in the Marxist sense. You're extrapolating an economic conclusion from a half-baked political one.

Also, the working class wasn't excluded per se, it simply wasn't a political system that was based on wide-scale participation. There's a big difference, and you're trying to conflate them.


Also, it is the bourgeois parties that represent specific interests, and I do hold the conviction that the working class is the first class in history which does not need representation of sorts, taken in its strict sense and excluding delegate bodies which are IMO functional within the context of direct working class power.
I admire your conviction, but it has been debunked by history. You can't have everyone vote on anything...so representation will be necessary on one level or another. Sure, the USSR could have been more direct in its elections, but this isn't the measure of a socialist society. Like Savage so eloquently pointed out, local differences and circumstances will always lend to different forms of political organization on the part of the working class...that's why your criticisms (but not conclusions) might well be applied to the USSR but not Cuba, owing to exactly this.


You should ask yourself how was it possible that a stratum of the working class was not "involving the class enough" if it were not true that the process of the formation of the new ruling class over the prolatariat hadn't begun.
No. Not every bourgeois is involved in matters of state, and in fact many are quite adverse to it. You can't have every single member of the ruling class be part of the decision-making process with full enthusiasm. Some workers will be apolitical, apathetic and the like. That's just how people are. However, I think the Soviet Union could have done a much better job involving greater numbers of the working class in political activity...but again, this is a political shortcoming and not anything more than that. Once again we see that you're all too eager to confuse political formation for something that it isn't.


And how the hell could have pro-capitalists get into the party that is the working class party, representing the interests of the liberated proletariat, where did the chain of misfortunate mistakes begin?
Careerists, agents, etc.

Apparently you think that there's some sort of method where everyone has the "right" intentions and wishes in socialist society. That's not the case, especially with the influence of foreign capitalists that I noted (and you disregarded).


You said it yourself. What changed was that the once bonded peasants became proprietors fully, in the sense of ownership over the land, the lack of surplus labour performed for an exploiting class. The gravity of obligation towards the market is no different qualitatively for a middle peasant employing wage labour and a small capitalist. Compare this social existence to that of the wage slave and you'll find your answer.
Wrong. Like I noted, peasants had already been owning their own land for quite some time...the only thing that changed is that their new lord wasn't the local noble but the market. As capitalism developed, peasants would lose land to larger landowners and be forced to work more and more for them. Exploitation.


Of course, these moments can only be separated for analytical purposes, but the main point is that Marxism places primary focus upon production, which is the determining instance. Therefore, if you were to argue that class formation can take place on fringes of the relations of exchange (black markets), you'd have to present quite a lot of evidence and provide a firm theoretical framework which would explain why is it that Marxism needs to be "corrected" in this way, at least when it comes to the issue of USSR.
It doesn't need to be corrected, just applied correctly. If someone is a moonshiner, they produce, distribute, participate in exchange. The consumption then happens after this. The "moments" are all there...so why are you saying it can't be applied?

[manic expression]

Derp derp.
The best comment you've made all thread! :lol:


No, I know the PSL line (and yours, by extension) is that these "really existing socialist" states deserve defense. I am trying to get you to commit to some kind of actual position on which states are and are not socialist, and which features they must necessarily possess to be considered so.I've already outlined that. I did so in my very first post here. I'll refer you to that.


This is really just another misdirection on your part where you asserted the Soviet government did measure and care about workers' subsistence,As a part of socialist society, which the USSR wasn't during the period you pointed out. Again, your "arguments" get thrown out the window by single sentences.


a.) In Marx + Engels, no classes exist in communism, either "lower" or "higher", so you're wrong.Ah, and what about outside of the borders of established working-class power?


b.) Why is the USSR socialist in 1939 but not 1931, allowing you to weasel out of earlier statements, purportedly? Do you actually use any such consistent standard, in practice applying it to other 'actually existing' "socialisms"?Because the processes of collectivization and industrialization.


IN THE USSR YOU DISHONEST FUCK. You know exactly what statement of yours I was quoting. You said that a capitalist class or its agents existed in the USSR. Now show them.:lol: Ultra-lefts are mad. Maybe you should spend more energy reading my posts than acting like an angry 5-year old.

But yeah (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Sakharov)
Capitalist agents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walesa)
Were definitely around (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solzhenitsyn)
Too bad you're too thick to see them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeltsin)


A position I never asserted, liar. How does this prove sharecroppers are peasants?Of course it's a position you asserted. When you said that peasants aren't exploited, you failed to add that peasants were indeed exploited. I simply applied the logic you provided...it's not my fault you sound admittedly like someone who doesn't know what they're talking about.

Are you saying sharecroppers aren't small farmers? Speak plainly, for the first time.


Derp derp derpAgain, the best you can come up with. :lol:


So Poland was a capitalist or state capitalist state? Yes or no?Ah, the famed ultra-left knack for specifics. :laugh: What period are you referring to?


Manic, give it up. tIC has torn your arguments apart time and time again. It's pathetic to watch you use the same arguments over and over that somehow never seem to stand up under even mild scrutiny.
:laugh: "Derp derp derp", in your book, is a great argument. Makes sense. :laugh:

Thanks for your incredible contribution to the thread. We're all so much better for it.

[A Marxist Historian]

@TMH:

ML garbage with some Trotsky juice on top. To make some hand-waving for the juridical property in the USSR is to try as hard as possible to reduce Marxism to a web of abstract legalistic distinctions, and not immediate social realities and relations on the ground, throughout the complex of social production and reproduction. For what aim? Well justify every line regurgitated by the Spartacist League, no doubt while screaming hysterics at someone's meeting, and squealing about defending the USSR from itself in 1989.

Sectarian flaming combined with sonorous and almost meaningless abstractions, as TIC can't really answer.

Immediate social realities on the ground?

Well, how about that in the Soviet Union under Brezhnev, auto workers and coal miners got paid better than doctors and lawyers? And rent, health care and education were free, in fact when you were in school you'd get a stipend?

And that when the Soviet Union collapsed, wages dropped by half, the public health system collapsed, free education Went Away, and the average *life span* of ex-Soviet men dropped by ten years?

Sounds to me like a pretty big change in those "immediate social relations"!


ALSO, with regard to manic:



Is that the argument I was making here with this piece of information as support? Hm.....

First (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2179666&postcount=91):



Manic is continuously dishonest, so I will further flesh out my actual claims he replied to with this misdirection about the cause of the declines, when in actuality my question was how can you have a planned economy when you are not measuring the use-values that allow the basis material subsistence of the proletariat and poor peasantry?:

Well, you can't. But they did. I'm forgetting the term they used for it right now, but in fact the Soviet planners *did* do accounting for production plans in the Five Year Plans on a material not a money basis.

And not just for screws, as in the famous joke of the factory meeting its screw quota by producing millions of tiny screws one year when the quota was by number and one giant screw the next year when the quota was by weight.

The collective farms, formally speaking, were *not* in the state sector, but rather on paper were privately owned collectively by the peasants who participated in them, and could in theory do what they pleased with the food produced after they paid the often exceedingly high taxes.

The result of this seemingly meaningless formality was that, no, the planners could not put right there in the plan how much food would be produced each year.

In practice the excess food produced was simply sold to the state. But, since these were collective not state farms, the only food amount that could be plugged right into the plan was the level of taxation.

Stalin always regarded going for state farms instead of kolkhozes as an ultra-left Trotskyite deviation that would alienate the peasantry. (For those who find that hilarious, I remind you that denial is not a river in Egypt.)


I originally said this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2176603&postcount=46):



Manic replies with this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2177935&postcount=62)(emphasis mine):



Which of course was a worthy of lulz (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2179676&postcount=93).

And (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2178750&postcount=81):



I provide the data (which I had already given him), and how does he reply? Again:



That's called being a lying sack of shit. When in doubt, this is how manic expression ALWAYS replies to an argument, he tries to change the goalposts, play dumb (though perhaps is in fact, an imbecile), and then hope by answering a totally different question no one will ever notice.

Flaming instead of argument, vs. manic as well as vs. me.

-M.H.-

[Thirsty Crow]

Yes, and the organization of social production was the capitalism outside of the USSR. This isn't abstract but a clear influence and threat of capitalism against the Soviet Union.How many times do I have to repeat it?
A "clear influence" and "threat" are not what propels class formation in Marxist analysis of its historical manifestations.



Have you forgotten every rational thing you've said so far? A bureaucracy isn't a class...bureaucracies represent class interests.A bureacracy indeed can become a class in the Marxist sense of the word, and I for one think that this is a vital "correction" or addition to Marxist class analysis, derived from the historical experience of the USSR.


Plus, this is an anarchistic argument...that "power" is bad because it "corrupts". This is nonsense because states reflect the classes that bring them into existence.Oh now you're making things up.
If I meant to say that power corrupts one's moral sense, I'd say so. But I didn't mean to say that, and I sure as hell don't think this line of reasoning is a useful one. It's idealist drivel, in fact.

But, I stand by my point that the broad working class was disempowered, a fact which enabled capitalist restoration in historical conditions unfavourable for continued social development along the lines established by then. In other words, my opinion is that the ruling class of USSR found itself in a historical situation in which their interests as a ruling class fell into the restorationist camp.



"The monopoly" was a political shortcoming, not anything more than that. You're trying to say that since there was a monopoly by the vanguard party, it couldn't be socialist. This is ridiculous because political monopoly has nothing to do with social relations in the Marxist sense. You're extrapolating an economic conclusion from a half-baked political one.It's true that I'm focused here on the political character of the Soviet state, and I think I've shown how that state retained aspects of the capitalist state. Also, while I agree that the relations of production predominantly determine social relations, I'd still maintain that the political character of a society also has bearing upon its social relations. More precisely, the exercise of power in a society also determines social relations (thus social relations can be thought of as "overdetermined").

Also, I can freely admit that I still haven't reached a decision by which I'd decide for myself is it meaningful to say that the USSR was state capitalist. There are good arguments, and there are bad ones, also there were. differences with respect to organization of social production in capitalist countries and USSR. As far as I'm concerned, we could call USSR a historically novel type of class society.

What I do know is that in Marxist discourse, "socialism" is not taken to mean a social formation in which there still is wage labour, generalized commodity production (albeit its conditions being modified by political intervention) and political domination (the state)


Also, the working class wasn't excluded per se, it simply wasn't a political system that was based on wide-scale participation. There's a big difference, and you're trying to conflate them.Oh really, is there a difference? Well, I'll just have to take your word on it since you didn't demonstrate the difference.

My opinion is that every political system which is based on a participation of a specific group of people, with formally determined points of entry and means to achieve so, is in fact a system built to exclude others. If a society does not base its political system on wide-scale participation, it bases it on a form of exclusion.



I admire your conviction, but it has been debunked by history. You can't have everyone vote on anything...so representation will be necessary on one level or another. Sure, the USSR could have been more direct in its elections, but this isn't the measure of a socialist society. Like Savage so eloquently pointed out, local differences and circumstances will always lend to different forms of political organization on the part of the working class...that's why your criticisms (but not conclusions) might well be applied to the USSR but not Cuba, owing to exactly this.Recycled bourgeois ideological bullshit. And why is it exactly that I can't have every interested labourer voting on issues that will influence her life directly?
Also, how is it that history has debunked my political position since it was specifically the "representative" political system of former USSR, among numerous other factors, which enabled the dissolution of the world's first workers' state?
And it's not a matter of elections. I don't see why are you so obssessed with this basically bourgeois form of governance. What I'm arguing for is the direct participation, through debate, of the working class in exercising political power, and this participation cannot take up indirect forms.



No. Not every bourgeois is involved in matters of state, and in fact many are quite adverse to it. You can't have every single member of the ruling class be part of the decision-making process with full enthusiasm. Some workers will be apolitical, apathetic and the like. That's just how people are. However, I think the Soviet Union could have done a much better job involving greater numbers of the working class in political activity...but again, this is a political shortcoming and not anything more than that. Once again we see that you're all too eager to confuse political formation for something that it isn't.Again, you're missing the point. It's not only important to have as wide as possible a base of workers' which engage directly in political decisions, but it's also important, as a prerequisite for the former, to create institutions of direct political rule, namely functional workers' and territorial councils.
Also, you're dishonestly downplaying the "political shortcoming" since it was demonstrated to you that the disempowered working class means a passive working class. Connect the dots.



Careerists, agents, etc.

Apparently you think that there's some sort of method where everyone has the "right" intentions and wishes in socialist society. That's not the case, especially with the influence of foreign capitalists that I noted (and you disregarded).You're making stuff up again.
No, I don't rely on people's right wishes and intentions, but rather on the political structure and what does it entail and enable.
Again, this "political shortcoming" effectively enabled such phenomena. The exclusion of workers', and especially their alieanation from the rest of global proletariat by means of the doctrine of peaceful coexistence, meant that these forms of political action could take prominence.



Wrong. Like I noted, peasants had already been owning their own land for quite some time...the only thing that changed is that their new lord wasn't the local noble but the market. As capitalism developed, peasants would lose land to larger landowners and be forced to work more and more for them. Exploitation.Making stuff up.

It's irrelevant whether peasants effectively owned land in feudalism, since they were obliged to perform surplus labour. This was exploitation, and there's also the exploitation in the manifestation of peasants proletarianization and their entry into the wage labour-capital relation, whether it was rural labour or industrial labour it is irrelevant. But if peasants are not forced to perform surplus labour, if they employ wage labour, they are not exploited, or rather, then their social existence is not predicated upon their function in the relations of production identified as the exploited class. The term can apply to rural proprietors who are not forced to work for large landowners, and thus their social conditions are different from that of wage labour.



It doesn't need to be corrected, just applied correctly. If someone is a moonshiner, they produce, distribute, participate in exchange. The consumption then happens after this. The "moments" are all there...so why are you saying it can't be applied?If someone is a moonshiner in which specific organization of social production?
Honestly, I don't get what your driving at here.
My proposition is simple: relations of production, not that of distribution or exchange, are the determining factor here and influence the character of every other moment. Your idea that classes can be formed outside production, merely in relations of exchange (black market), contradicts the basic Marxist analytical postulate, and that's why I'm asking if you think that this postulate, the primacy of production, needs to be corrected in an analysis of the Soviet Union.

[A Marxist Historian]

This is a very common question.

The U.S.S.R., by the time it was established as the U.S.S.R., was not socialist. It was quite simply a bureaucratic dictatorship.

One can easily just state what it was, but understanding why is what is key to building your political knowledge.

When Soviet Russia was established in 1917, it was a truly socialist/communist Marxist state in the transitional phase: the dictatorship of the proletariat. During this phase, the means of production and the economy were put under democratic management by workers' councils called Soviets. The revolutionary vanguard party had successfully led the proletariat to victory against the bourgeois Provisional Government, and had put the workers in control, but not it was time to eliminate the bourgeoisie. Peasants and workers seized factories, land, railways, and expropriated the capitalists without compensation, and by 1920, it was proven by Soviet records, surveys, and the Commassariat of Food that public, worker managed, communist production was able to produce three times more food for ten times less the cost.

It seemed right off the bat that everything was going perfectly, because it was - the bourgeoisie were being eliminated, the workers were in control, the Red Army was established....and then came the counter revolution.

Anti-Bolshevik forces rallied into the White Army and launched war against the new Soviet government. The U.S. and various other nations contributed hundreds of thousands of troops to the White cause, and it looked as if the extremely fragile and vulnerable workers' state would be destroyed.

The Russian Civil War would be an extremely bitter, bloody conflict that would ravage the nation. Millions were killed in the chaos of the fighting, but the communists eventually claimed victory, but at a devastating price...

Desperate times called for desperate measures, and when the workers and soldiers were starving, food was confiscated from the ever growing number of wealthy peasants. these petty bourgeois peasants were, like Lenin predicted, swinging more and more into being bourgeois, and during the chaos of the civil war, they were able to infect the Soviet system. This policy of War Communism propped up the system just long enough to win the war, and Trotsky said that "We won the war, but at the price that we ruined this country"

Lenin warned of the growing bureaucracy that would ruin the socialist state, but the conditions of Russia's extremely backwards and vulnerable situation were perfect for the rich peasants, the Kulaks, to secure political sway under the leader, Josef Stalin.

In conclusion, Russia was a true Marxist state, and while it was it was the most successful and powerful nation in the world! It produced more, had more freedom, and defeated armies from the strongest nations on Earth. It just so happened that out of one in a million chances, the conditions just happened to be PERFECT for what happened to happen. there wasn't a methodological error in the communist system, it was quite simply that due to Russia's extremely unique peculiar backwards situation, desperate measures gave rise to a new threat that would destroy an unprepared, already busy and stressed Russia. Lenin's methods weren't wrong, it was the backwardness of the situation combined with chaos that led to pure chance that would do the trick.

Stalin's rise to power with his bureaucratic machine mark the end of the truly Marxist Russia.

The belief of PolskiLenin that Stalin was a representative of, of all things, the Kulaks, hardly requires refutation.

Back in the 1930s, when few western Marxists had much understanding of what was going on in the Soviet Union, and it was widely believed that accounts of the Great Famine were just lying anti-Communist propaganda, this idea actually was quite common among communist dissidents trying to make sense out of the strange developments in the Soviet Union.

Now of course is another matter.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Quoted from TIC I think:

"The point is, fuckmook, you asserted that the USSR did measure subsistence, and I proved they in fact did not for the years 1929-1932. You're just a lying sack of shit."

The official party line circa 1929-32 was that collectivization was going swimmingly, and that food was abundant in the socialist paradise.

Any attention to the *actual* amount of food being produced would pop this bubble, so the only place you could find honest and accurate accounts of the actual state of food production was in top-secret reports from the GPU to Stalin.

Which Stalin disregarded, as he knew that Yagoda the GPU head was sympathetic to Bukharin, so he assumed that Yagoda was making the situation sound much worse than it really was.

The result was catastrophe. A drastic and much too late change in policy in spring 1932 exactly, which E. H. Carr and other historians refer to as a "neo-NEP." But millions starved to death anyway.

The policy change finally took hold and rectified the situation by 1934. Things abruptly got much better, and Stalin's grip on the party, which at one point looked like it would collapse, fortified.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Just to jump in here, this is the meat of the question. I feel it is self-evident that the economic relationship between the proletariat and the means of production change as soon as the proletariat takes power. This is in the political sphere, as the capitalist mode of production may yet persist after this point. From this, I feel it is quite clear that when (or if, if you like) the capitalist mode of production is eliminated in one country and replaced by a system alien to capitalism (centralized planning of the economy, no market for labor power, a state monopoly on foreign trade, etc.), then this relationship shifts entirely. However, capitalism has not been destroyed worldwide, and classes still exist. What are we to call this new ruling class, then? I call them proletarians, liberated proletarians, the ruled who became the rulers.

This is idealist. That the proletariat takes power *does not* mean that the economic relationship between the proletariat and the means of production change.

What it *does* mean is that, with power in its hands, the proletariat *can* change the economic relationships if it wants to.

Lenin in fact saw the immediate socialization of the Russian economy as premature, and resisted this initially, despite very considerable pressure in this direction from spontaneous working class desires.

However, the necessities of the Civil War, plus working class pressure at the base, *forced* the socialization of all industry in the cities, and you had "war communism," which turned out to have all the problems that Lenin feared, and had to be reversed in 1921 to avoid catastrophe.

Meanwhile of course in the countryside, where 90% of the population of the Russian Empire lived, you had thoroughly capitalist economic relations the whole time.

The moral of this story is the one you keep forgetting, namely that you can't build socialism in one country, and especially one as economically, socially and culturally backward as Russia in 1917.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

The difference was that the workers did not control the management either directly (through elections, recall, workers' councils, etc.) or indirectly (through the ability to establish new enterprises independent of the ones run by old bureaucracy). This is a core difference between the situation with shareholders.

Shareholders in fact often have little or no input into corporations. Indeed this is formalized, in that not all shares are "voting" shares. The situation varies greatly among corporations, and corporations in which the individual shareholders has about as much control over his corporation as the individual worker had over the Soviet Union are if anything the norm.

As for "indirect control," that is exactly what Soviet workers had, in that the Soviet regime was ultimately dependent on the support or at least toleration of the Soviet working class. Which, one way or another, the Soviet regime always had up until 1989.

In Eastern Europe, where the regimes were much more imposed from outside than products of a domestic revolution, the regimes were always highly unstable. At critical moments dependent on an outside army, the Soviet army, for their very existence. As early as 1956, the Hungarian Stalinist regime completely collapsed, with large parts of the ruling elite at every level right up to the top *going over to the working class*!

I can assure you that this is not something one can imagine ever happening in a capitalist state..


Yes, as they individuals, they lacked it (just as the ruling classes in the so-called "Asiatic" countries under their own variants of feudalism/tributarism), as the class though they had it. In fact, the ruling classes of the Mamluk state or medieval Siam were officially regarded as merely the slaves of their respective monarchs, qualitatively no different in their juridical standing from the real slaves/dependent peasants. Therefore someone might just as claim that there was no ruling class in these societies, as its individual members did not have complete and full property on the land but were merely part of an overall centralized corporation of the governing nobles, whose members were really owning private property only through directly participating in their class's organization, and lost it as they ceased this participation.

In fact, some French Marxist historians of the 1960s (such as Godellier) disputed the very existence of private property and ruling classes in the "Asiatic" societies using the same argument as Trotskyists do regarding Soviet "bureaucracy" (more precisely, bureaucratic capitalists), namely, the absence of individual private property (which is just one of the forms of private property) - which eventually caused them to abandon historical materialism at all.

The difference is that Stalin did not legally own anything, any more than any other bureaucrat did. In legal theory, in the Ottoman Empire you could argue that ultimately the Sublime Porte owned everything and everybody. In practice this was very far from the case, simply because this was an impossibility, so law did indeed differ greatly from social reality. In practice, private property in land and everything else did exist, something not at all the case in the Soviet Union.

Indeed the Mamlukes I think it was (I may have the correct term confused here), whose legal status was as slaves, were at times the most powerful people in the Ottoman Empire, and would sometimes murder the Porte and replace him with one they preferred if he was disobedient to their wishes.

By the way, the usual Soviet "Marxist/Leninist" characterization of the Ottoman Empire and other varied precapitalist regimes as "feudalist" is just as erroneous as Marx's throwing them all together in one basket as an alleged "Asiatic mode of production." Perry Anderson analyses this very cogently in his "Lineages of the Absolute State."


In case of capitalism, as Marx correctly says, it is the social total capital, not the individual capitals, which are just the fragments of the latter, that represents a totality of the ruling class under capitalism, and if it is centralized in the hands of one entity, with the "community as the universal capitalist", this "crude communism" is nothing but a state-capitalism, the highest possible state of development of capital, where "both sides of the relationship are raised to an imagined universality – labour as the category in which every person is placed, and capital as the acknowledged universality and power of the community" (Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844). (Of course, Marx refers there to the utopian varieties of state-socialism such as that of Weitling's, but this critique applies as well to the "orthodox Marxist" (read: Kautskyan) varieties of state-socialism, of which the Bolshevism is merely the most radical form). The alienation and class struggle, of course, still remain there, as the "imagined universality" of the "community" (read: State-corporation) exists outside the real control of the associated producers, who are really subjugated to the accumulation of capital, and to the orders of the agents of this accumulation - bureaucratic capitalists, who are officially regarded as "just other workers".

That is why not a political, but a social revolution is needed to overthrow state-capitalist regime, however, "egalitarian" it might be in rhetoric (after all, the bulk of surplus value was appropriated by the bureaucratic capitalists not in the form of "official" money but in foreign cash and in the form of the so-called "privileges". Of course, you would not agree with me, but that is another story.

The 1844 manuscripts are a very early work, and never really intended for publication. Marx was simply working out his thoughts on paper. Sort of like Revleft postings actually, except on a much higher level of course.

In much later works by Marx and Engels, it is explained that yes indeed, such "state capitalism" would be all the tendencies of capitalism taken to the final logical extreme, but would be impossible for that very reason.

And if it were ever to somehow come into existence, it would collapse immediately either into a socialist order or perhaps utter chaos, as none of the laws of the workings of capitalism that Marx developed, all of which function on the basis of competitition and the multiplicity of capital, would apply to it anymore.

By your account, the bulk of surplus value was appropriated by the "bureaucratic capitalists" in the form of foreign cash and other privileges. Now, there was a lot of corruption to be sure, but this is rather absurd. The bulk of surplus value?

This was simply bureaucratic corruption, not different from bureaucratic corruption in any other social system, from the time of Hammurabi down to the famously corrupt U.S. occupation regime in Iraq, which made Brezhnev's people look like ascetic monks.

Or China now, where Hu Jin-Tao's "campaign against corruption" is the top issue on the official national agenda at the moment.

What you describe was not the Soviet system, but rather a flaw in the Soviet system, which doubtless had Stalin turning over in his grave, as our "Marxist Leninists" here on Revleft like to argue.

Though in fact the bureaucracy had a much *higher* share of the national income under Stalin than after the Khrushchev reforms with their egalitarian populist emphasis.

-M.H.-

[manic expression]

A Marxist Historian, I agree on everything except the last line. The capitalist mode of production that persisted in the Soviet Union was later eliminated during the campaigns of the 30's...that's when the DOTP entered into socialism. You might see it differently, but I'm not saying that the 1920's USSR was socialist.

Also, what I was saying before is that as the political dynamics change, so does the position of the workers. Political revolution then leads to economic revolution, basically.


How many times do I have to repeat it?
A "clear influence" and "threat" are not what propels class formation in Marxist analysis of its historical manifestations.
But this is the point of capitalist agents...the black market, which I feel could be considered to have constituted a petty-bourgeoisie, is another point entirely. IF the capitalist class abroad had agents and supporters within the Soviet Union, then we cannot seriously consider the society to be without the presence of class struggle. It is primarily a political issue.


A bureacracy indeed can become a class in the Marxist sense of the word, and I for one think that this is a vital "correction" or addition to Marxist class analysis, derived from the historical experience of the USSR.You say "correction", others might say "revision". States and bureaucracies reflect the class interests which give rise to them...not the other way around.


Oh now you're making things up.
If I meant to say that power corrupts one's moral sense, I'd say so. But I didn't mean to say that, and I sure as hell don't think this line of reasoning is a useful one. It's idealist drivel, in fact.Then what are you saying? That the bureaucracy was a class onto itself because it decided stuff? Because it pushed around papers more than the average Boris? I'm not saying you're pushing the moral angle, but I haven't seen another angle to justify your argument.


But, I stand by my point that the broad working class was disempowered, a fact which enabled capitalist restoration in historical conditions unfavourable for continued social development along the lines established by then. In other words, my opinion is that the ruling class of USSR found itself in a historical situation in which their interests as a ruling class fell into the restorationist camp.Disempowered isn't the right term IMO. Workers weren't always involved in political matters, and that was a big problem of course, but that's not the same as disempowered. Disempowered would imply that they had no power, which was incorrect...the SEP, for instance, held a membership of around 23% of the working population in the early 80's. Workers were definitely involved and part of the system of decision-making since there were working-class parties in power...but the workers as a whole were not, at least not enough.

The interesting thing is Soviet bureaucrats didn't always fare so well in the restoration. It's simply incorrect to say they had a vested interest in it...if anything, they had a vested interest in not allowing capitalism to be established. Whatever the case, the bureaucracy showed itself to be largely an observer to what was going on...most of the impetus for restoration came from the party leadership (not really the bureaucracy) and from reactionaries outside of the party. Those two poles combined, along with a capitalist propaganda wave and the silencing of pro-socialist voices, to make for the fall.


It's true that I'm focused here on the political character of the Soviet state, and I think I've shown how that state retained aspects of the capitalist state. Also, while I agree that the relations of production predominantly determine social relations, I'd still maintain that the political character of a society also has bearing upon its social relations. More precisely, the exercise of power in a society also determines social relations (thus social relations can be thought of as "overdetermined").

Also, I can freely admit that I still haven't reached a decision by which I'd decide for myself is it meaningful to say that the USSR was state capitalist. There are good arguments, and there are bad ones, also there were. differences with respect to organization of social production in capitalist countries and USSR. As far as I'm concerned, we could call USSR a historically novel type of class society.

What I do know is that in Marxist discourse, "socialism" is not taken to mean a social formation in which there still is wage labour, generalized commodity production (albeit its conditions being modified by political intervention) and political domination (the state)Understood. I don't disagree too much, actually, except for the last part. I view the USSR has being without wage-labor and generalized commodity production. Political domination, in my view, is going to be with us until we achieve the conditions of fully classless society.


Oh really, is there a difference? Well, I'll just have to take your word on it since you didn't demonstrate the difference.

My opinion is that every political system which is based on a participation of a specific group of people, with formally determined points of entry and means to achieve so, is in fact a system built to exclude others. If a society does not base its political system on wide-scale participation, it bases it on a form of exclusion.Indeed. Here's the difference in my calculation: workers were not actively excluded from participation, but the Soviet system gradually arched towards relying on whomever was in the party first and foremost. Party membership was oftentimes a prerequisite for any political activity of any sort, and that wasn't what the vanguard is supposed to be. This is what I meant by the formalization of the party's position...something that translated, over time, to a lack of sufficient working-class participation.

That cannot be seen as the same as exclusion. Exclusion is when working-class voices are pushed away entirely from the political sphere. Exclusion is when money determines politics. None of those things happened in the Soviet Union, but a formalization did.

Perhaps it sounds like I'm splitting hairs here, but I do think it's an important distinction.


Recycled bourgeois ideological bullshit. And why is it exactly that I can't have every interested labourer voting on issues that will influence her life directly?Because when a fascist horde comes across the border thirsting for blood and genocide, you don't vote on who's going to sit in the tank and who's going to man the anti-aircraft gun. You need leadership, and strong leadership at that.


Also, how is it that history has debunked my political position since it was specifically the "representative" political system of former USSR, among numerous other factors, which enabled the dissolution of the world's first workers' state?You can't conflate one representative proletarian state with all of them. The Soviet political process was one specific method of determining representation within the worker state...that doesn't mean it's set in stone. There were problems within the system of proletarian democratic representation, but the problem wasn't proletarian representation itself.


And it's not a matter of elections. I don't see why are you so obssessed with this basically bourgeois form of governance. What I'm arguing for is the direct participation, through debate, of the working class in exercising political power, and this participation cannot take up indirect forms.I feel Cuba does have "direct participation, through debate, of the working class in exercising political power". That is, in many ways, the most optimal form of proletarian government we've seen applied for a sustained period of time (unlike the Paris Commune, for instance) in the history of our movement.

Just because the Soviet Union didn't reach this standard, which is a high standard, doesn't mean it wasn't a worker state. It was just one that suffered from political shortcomings, shortcomings that contributed to its undoing. We cannot ignore, as well, that these realities were not always by choice: the singular role of the party was a circumstance of the Civil War and the resulting period...it wasn't fixed after that point but that was certainly its locus.


Again, you're missing the point. It's not only important to have as wide as possible a base of workers' which engage directly in political decisions, but it's also important, as a prerequisite for the former, to create institutions of direct political rule, namely functional workers' and territorial councils.Yes, it very much is. This was a flaw in the Soviet form of proletarian government. However, if that isn't met, we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater.


Also, you're dishonestly downplaying the "political shortcoming" since it was demonstrated to you that the disempowered working class means a passive working class. Connect the dots.I don't disagree. I just don't think it's very helpful to play Monday Morning Quarterback. The Soviet Union had many successes but also suffered from issues we can learn from...that's precisely why it's such a positive and important example for the workers of the world. Damning the whole thing because of a few shortcomings (and yes, that's what they were) isn't what we need to be doing.


You're making stuff up again.
No, I don't rely on people's right wishes and intentions, but rather on the political structure and what does it entail and enable.
Again, this "political shortcoming" effectively enabled such phenomena. The exclusion of workers', and especially their alieanation from the rest of global proletariat by means of the doctrine of peaceful coexistence, meant that these forms of political action could take prominence.If we don't rely on a standardization of wishes and intentions, then we have to account for the possibility that some will not be completely in support of the existing order, and that some will even try to actively destroy it. Some will want to be rich after helping to restore capitalism (Yeltsin). Some will want attention and praise from the imperialist media (Walesa). Some will be idiots (Gorbachev). It's just how things work.

In recognition of that...a measure of strength in the state is necessary. The Soviet Union answered this tough question one way, Cuba has in another. We should learn from both because both were/are proletarian forms of society.

Also, I'm not big on peaceful coexistence, but it wasn't what you're making it out to be. From what I've seen, it was more of "let's avoid all-out war with one another because it won't end well...working-class revolution in the capitalist world will bring about worldwide socialism". Not the most unreasonable thing to say, I think.


Making stuff up.

It's irrelevant whether peasants effectively owned land in feudalism, since they were obliged to perform surplus labour. This was exploitation, and there's also the exploitation in the manifestation of peasants proletarianization and their entry into the wage labour-capital relation, whether it was rural labour or industrial labour it is irrelevant. But if peasants are not forced to perform surplus labour, if they employ wage labour, they are not exploited, or rather, then their social existence is not predicated upon their function in the relations of production identified as the exploited class. The term can apply to rural proprietors who are not forced to work for large landowners, and thus their social conditions are different from that of wage labour.Yes, but wouldn't you say that many peasants are forced to perform surplus labor?


If someone is a moonshiner in which specific organization of social production?
Honestly, I don't get what your driving at here.
My proposition is simple: relations of production, not that of distribution or exchange, are the determining factor here and influence the character of every other moment. Your idea that classes can be formed outside production, merely in relations of exchange (black market), contradicts the basic Marxist analytical postulate, and that's why I'm asking if you think that this postulate, the primacy of production, needs to be corrected in an analysis of the Soviet Union.OK, I see your explanation. To connect it to what I was saying: A moonshiner can turn their house into a factory. A moonshiner can pay other people to labor in their facility for a wage. This changes one's relationship to the means of production. It's not just exchange...that's what I was driving at.

[Jose Gracchus]

I've already outlined that. I did so in my very first post here. I'll refer you to that.


Yes, it was socialist. The working class controlled the state through the vanguard party and the state apparatus. Further, capitalist production was eliminated through the centralized economic planning of the worker state.

This? The first Five Year Plan began in 1928 and ended in 1933. GOSPLAN was founded in 1921, and began keeping indicative economic plans in 1925.


As a part of socialist society, which the USSR wasn't during the period you pointed out. Again, your "arguments" get thrown out the window by single sentences.

I think you're dishonest, so I want exact years. This is a meaningless distinction to avoid the obvious fact that the Soviet state was deliberately impoverishing the workers and peasants in order to afford massive imports of Western machinery and expertise to fuel the industrialization. What exactly do you think would be the reasonable cause for deciding to simply, stop measuring caloric intakes during a famine?

Why is measuring caloric intakes of the direct producers in a regime supposedly representing them something to only be done once socialism is 'declared'? Though you still refuse to give any objective criteria by which this claim of yours could be tested throughout the Eastern Bloc.


Ah, and what about outside of the borders of established working-class power?

You said, flat-out, that the proletariat exists in the USSR, ipso facto it is not classless, ipso facto it is not the lower phase of the communist mode of production.


Because the processes of collectivization and industrialization.

Which were began in 1928. In many of PSL's "socialist" states, it was never completed.


:lol: Ultra-lefts are mad. Maybe you should spend more energy reading my posts than acting like an angry 5-year old.

Your posts have no honest content.



But yeah (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Sakharov)
Capitalist agents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walesa)
Were definitely around (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solzhenitsyn)
Too bad you're too thick to see them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeltsin)

So a paltry collection of individual dissidents and opportunists-turned-liberals personal ideological convictions count as a capitalist class, and brought down a social formation backed by workers power? What was their material basis in the USSR? How did just a few "dudes with bad ideas" take down a workers' state? How did they overturn workers' power and no workers fought back at all during the decline?


Of course it's a position you asserted. When you said that peasants aren't exploited, you failed to add that peasants were indeed exploited. I simply applied the logic you provided...it's not my fault you sound admittedly like someone who doesn't know what they're talking about.

I never said that peasants aren't exploited. I think you're getting confused I will say surplus value is not acquired from them in the manner of proletarians.


Are you saying sharecroppers aren't small farmers? Speak plainly, for the first time.

Do you think the U.S. was characterized with 'peasant' agriculture throughout its existence until the 1940s? Smallholders aren't peasants, or the Stolypin reforms aimed at breaking of the peasant mirs and trying to convert a rich section of the peasantry (kulaks) toward something like American-style homesteaders would have no meaning.

Sharecroppers were much closer to proletarians with a 'mask' of subsistence land-rents. If you prefer, they were subjugated small farmers. But peasants are a strata of farmers which emerge out of the old serf class, are characterized by pre-capitalist relations with a landlord, and usually a communal system of some sort. They are not just any dudes with small farms.


Ah, the famed ultra-left knack for specifics. :laugh: What period are you referring to?

Post-1956.

[manic expression]

This? The first Five Year Plan began in 1928 and ended in 1933. GOSPLAN was founded in 1921, and began keeping indicative economic plans in 1925.
That doesn't mean it was socialist by 1933.


I think you're dishonest, so I want exact years.
By 1938.


Why is measuring caloric intakes of the direct producers in a regime supposedly representing them something to only be done once socialism is 'declared'? Though you still refuse to give any objective criteria by which this claim of yours could be tested throughout the Eastern Bloc.
Your specified period is beside the point. You might as well say that Soviet policy in 1925 was non-socialist...you're trying to contradict something I'm not arguing.


You said, flat-out, that the proletariat exists in the USSR, ipso facto it is not classless, ipso facto it is not the lower phase of the communist mode of production.
Well, because there is a capitalist class still in power throughout the world. This is, of course, a global thing, to make revolution. If the threat of the capitalist class still exists, a society is not free from class struggle. However, a society can still progress to the lower phase through replacing capitalist production with socialist production.


Which were began in 1928. In many of PSL's "socialist" states, it was never completed.
Initiated in 1928, sure. This, however, is not the same thing as eliminating capitalist production, just as "completing" industrialization is not necessarily the cause but a specific symptom of this. The question isn't how many factories were built, the question is whether or not capitalist production was eliminated and replaced. Again, every revolution is unique, and so the economic course taken by the workers after such a revolution will also be unique.


Your posts have no honest content.
And I quote:

Derp derp.

:rolleyes:


So a paltry collection of individual dissidents and opportunists-turned-liberals personal ideological convictions count as a capitalist class, and brought down a social formation backed by workers power? What was their material basis in the USSR? How did just a few "dudes with bad ideas" take down a workers' state? How did they overturn workers' power and no workers fought back at all during the decline?
Workers did fight back, but their vanguard party was either lethargic or passively helping the voices of reaction. That made resistance to reaction quite complicated.


I never said that peasants aren't exploited.
Good.


Do you think the U.S. was characterized with 'peasant' agriculture throughout its existence until the 1940s? Smallholders aren't peasants, or the Stolypin reforms aimed at breaking of the peasant mirs and trying to convert a rich section of the peasantry (kulaks) toward something like American-style homesteaders would have no meaning.

Sharecroppers were much closer to proletarians with a 'mask' of subsistence land-rents. If you prefer, they were subjugated small farmers. But peasants are a strata of farmers which emerge out of the old serf class, are characterized by pre-capitalist relations with a landlord, and usually a communal system of some sort. They are not just any dudes with small farms.
The pre-capitalist relations with a landlord were largely abolished by the 19th Century. In France, for instance, the nobility retained feudal-era privileges over peasants, but these were done away with quite quickly by the Revolution.

At any rate, subjugated small farmers is quite a reasonable characterization, I think.


Post-1956.
Was production in post-1956 predominately capitalist? No, it wasn't. So yes, there's little reason to say it wasn't socialist.

[Thirsty Crow]

But this is the point of capitalist agents...the black market, which I feel could be considered to have constituted a petty-bourgeoisie, is another point entirely. IF the capitalist class abroad had agents and supporters within the Soviet Union, then we cannot seriously consider the society to be without the presence of class struggle. It is primarily a political issue.If it's primarily a political issue, how come you argue that classes did exist? How come you argue in favour of a "latent bourgeoisie" since we all know that class formation tends to tie in directly with the structure and organization of production.


You say "correction", others might say "revision". States and bureaucracies reflect the class interests which give rise to them...not the other way around.Well, I'd like to point out that those very same people argue that "socialism" still has wage labour, commodity production and the state, so forgive me for not giving a flying fuck if I'd be considered a "revisionist".
Also, it seems that your interpretation of "base-superstructure" analogy is rigidly mechanistic.

Then what are you saying? That the bureaucracy was a class onto itself because it decided stuff? Because it pushed around papers more than the average Boris? I'm not saying you're pushing the moral angle, but I haven't seen another angle to justify your argument.I'm saying what you quoted below. Please stop hacking my posts into bits and jumping to wrong conclusions.


Disempowered isn't the right term IMO. Workers weren't always involved in political matters, and that was a big problem of course, but that's not the same as disempowered. Disempowered would imply that they had no power, which was incorrect...the SEP, for instance, held a membership of around 23% of the working population in the early 80's. Workers were definitely involved and part of the system of decision-making since there were working-class parties in power...but the workers as a whole were not, at least not enough.Right, "shit" isn't the right word, but "crap" is. Pardon my language.
You keep on conflating the rule of supposedly working class parties with workers' political power. That's a cardinal error and it seems that you're too stubborn to realize it.


The interesting thing is Soviet bureaucrats didn't always fare so well in the restoration. It's simply incorrect to say they had a vested interest in it...if anything, they had a vested interest in not allowing capitalism to be established. Whatever the case, the bureaucracy showed itself to be largely an observer to what was going on...most of the impetus for restoration came from the party leadership (not really the bureaucracy) and from reactionaries outside of the party. Those two poles combined, along with a capitalist propaganda wave and the silencing of pro-socialist voices, to make for the fall.Yeah, as if I said that all the aparatchiks fared well, and most of the time. Also, the party leadership is part of the bureaucracy, so your point is actually moot.
As for outside factors, I'd reiterate the basic point: if it were in workers' interest and if workers' excercised direct social and political power, it would be short of impossible to restore capitalism, if not by military intervention.


Understood. I don't disagree too much, actually, except for the last part. I view the USSR has being without wage-labor and generalized commodity production. Political domination, in my view, is going to be with us until we achieve the conditions of fully classless society.Only if the whole of the working class somehow decides to abandon the project of direct political rule in favour of historically bankrupt political practices of party-state dictatorship.


Indeed. Here's the difference in my calculation: workers were not actively excluded from participation, but the Soviet system gradually arched towards relying on whomever was in the party first and foremost. Party membership was oftentimes a prerequisite for any political activity of any sort, and that wasn't what the vanguard is supposed to be. This is what I meant by the formalization of the party's position...something that translated, over time, to a lack of sufficient working-class participation.Yes, okay, but I'm afraid that you're wiggling your way out here since you're basically driving this discussion into pointless semantic waters where we could argue about the meaning of "active exclusion" until no concrete point remains in sight.


That cannot be seen as the same as exclusion. Exclusion is when working-class voices are pushed away entirely from the political sphere. Exclusion is when money determines politics. None of those things happened in the Soviet Union, but a formalization did.See above.



Because when a fascist horde comes across the border thirsting for blood and genocide, you don't vote on who's going to sit in the tank and who's going to man the anti-aircraft gun. You need leadership, and strong leadership at that.This is a gross misrepresentation of the possibilities for a democratic workers' armed organizations. I don't think there's anything to say but, once again, recycled bourgeois ideological bullshit.
Also, I hope that you're not implying that during most of its existence the USSR found itself in the situation of "fascist hordes at the gates".


You can't conflate one representative proletarian state with all of them. The Soviet political process was one specific method of determining representation within the worker state...that doesn't mean it's set in stone. There were problems within the system of proletarian democratic representation, but the problem wasn't proletarian representation itself.We're repeating ourselves. This system of "proletarian representation" functioned as a mechanism for the empowerment not of the whole of the working class, but another section of society, those who occupied positions of authority. That's my opinion.


I feel Cuba does have "direct participation, through debate, of the working class in exercising political power". That is, in many ways, the most optimal form of proletarian government we've seen applied for a sustained period of time (unlike the Paris Commune, for instance) in the history of our movement.Let's stay on topic.

I'll respond to other points later.

[Kiev Communard]

Shareholders in fact often have little or no input into corporations. Indeed this is formalized, in that not all shares are "voting" shares. The situation varies greatly among corporations, and corporations in which the individual shareholders has about as much control over his corporation as the individual worker had over the Soviet Union are if anything the norm.

But they have direct or indirect collective control over management - which was lacking in the vast majority of the so-called "socialist" regimes (even in Yugoslavia with its workers' councils).


As for "indirect control," that is exactly what Soviet workers had, in that the Soviet regime was ultimately dependent on the support or at least toleration of the Soviet working class. Which, one way or another, the Soviet regime always had up until 1989.

The same can be said about every capitalist state/ruling class, or about every other ruling class in history as well, as the U.S. capitalism is, for instance, dependent "on the support or at least toleration of the American working class"


In Eastern Europe, where the regimes were much more imposed from outside than products of a domestic revolution, the regimes were always highly unstable. At critical moments dependent on an outside army, the Soviet army, for their very existence. As early as 1956, the Hungarian Stalinist regime completely collapsed, with large parts of the ruling elite at every level right up to the top *going over to the working class*!

I don't think Imre Nagy and other "went over to the working class", as they were clearly the "centrist" part of the 1956 movement (i.e. Hungarian bureaucratic capitalists who wished to trade their system for that of Yugoslavian type and make a tactical alliance/truce with the West). The only revolutionary part of the 1956 movement were the workers' councils (while former anti-Semitic fascists that made use of the situation constituted its reactionary part).


I can assure you that this is not something one can imagine ever happening in a capitalist state..

Why not. After all, it was Count Karoly, a bourgeois liberal, who voluntarily surrendered power to Hungarian CP in 1919.


The difference is that Stalin did not legally own anything, any more than any other bureaucrat did. In legal theory, in the Ottoman Empire you could argue that ultimately the Sublime Porte owned everything and everybody. In practice this was very far from the case, simply because this was an impossibility, so law did indeed differ greatly from social reality. In practice, private property in land and everything else did exist, something not at all the case in the Soviet Union.

Well, at least you acknowledge the opportunity that the "law might differ greatly from social reality", as it was the case in the Soviet Union as well.


Indeed the Mamlukes I think it was (I may have the correct term confused here), whose legal status was as slaves, were at times the most powerful people in the Ottoman Empire, and would sometimes murder the Porte and replace him with one they preferred if he was disobedient to their wishes.

Nope, that was Janissaries, the slave soldiers of the Sultan (the Porte was merely a term for Grand Vizier's office, i.e. "the Cabinet"). But, yes, the Mamlukes of Egypt were formally owned by the state and yet in fact owned the landed property, and the state itself, alone, without any other independent landowners.


By the way, the usual Soviet "Marxist/Leninist" characterization of the Ottoman Empire and other varied precapitalist regimes as "feudalist" is just as erroneous as Marx's throwing them all together in one basket as an alleged "Asiatic mode of production." Perry Anderson analyses this very cogently in his "Lineages of the Absolute State."

I have read Perry Anderson's book and found it somewhat wanting, as he really abuses the term "social formation" there. As to the Soviet historians' concept of "feudalism", it differs rather strongly from the one held by academic historians in the West (both Marxist and non-Marxist), so that it might take a long time to explain to you here. Basically the Soviet historians used the term "feudalism" to cover all class societies that some Western neo-Marxists (such as Samir Amin) call "tributary" ones. For instance:


In 1400, the tributary mode of production was dominant in the rest of the world. Here the laborer has access to the means of production with the obligation of tribute to a lord or a ruling elite, the owner of the land ("Asiatic mode of production" and “"feudal mode of production").

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Anthro/Anth234/wolf.htm



So the Soviet historians did not believe that mere existence of state ownership on the means of production warrants the characterization of this form of the same mode of production as distinct from its main form. The same applies with respect to Soviet bureaucratic capitalism as well (even though they could not make such an explicit conclusion as they were cowed by the censorship).


The 1844 manuscripts are a very early work, and never really intended for publication. Marx was simply working out his thoughts on paper. Sort of like Revleft postings actually, except on a much higher level of course.

In much later works by Marx and Engels, it is explained that yes indeed, such "state capitalism" would be all the tendencies of capitalism taken to the final logical extreme, but would be impossible for that very reason.

And if it were ever to somehow come into existence, it would collapse immediately either into a socialist order or perhaps utter chaos, as none of the laws of the workings of capitalism that Marx developed, all of which function on the basis of competitition and the multiplicity of capital, would apply to it anymore.

Yes, that is why Soviet system was able to function only due to the managed competition of different capitals that were really not too perfectly integrated (as evidenced by the fact that no single Five-Year plan was completely fulfilled). And eventually it indeed "collapsed into utter chaos" after the 1980s. And no, Marx specifically viewed capital as a totality, speaking about "single total capital", so your "multiplicity of capital" bears no resemblance to his own thoughts on the matter.


By your account, the bulk of surplus value was appropriated by the "bureaucratic capitalists" in the form of foreign cash and other privileges. Now, there was a lot of corruption to be sure, but this is rather absurd. The bulk of surplus value?

This was simply bureaucratic corruption, not different from bureaucratic corruption in any other social system, from the time of Hammurabi down to the famously corrupt U.S. occupation regime in Iraq, which made Brezhnev's people look like ascetic monks.

Once again, the juridical form of the appropriation of the surplus is secondary to its economic essence, and your own notion that "law might differ greatly from social reality" applies here as well. In fact, even in classical capitalist countries the so-called "corruption" is the form of distribution of the surplus value within the capitalist class, as bureaucratic capitalists controlling the economic regulation facilities of the capitalist state are able to charge it as a sort of interest rate for their services to the financial/industrial capitalists.

[A Marxist Historian]

A Marxist Historian, I agree on everything except the last line. The capitalist mode of production that persisted in the Soviet Union was later eliminated during the campaigns of the 30's...that's when the DOTP entered into socialism. You might see it differently, but I'm not saying that the 1920's USSR was socialist.

Manic, have you ever read Trotsky's book on the Soviet Union, Revolution Betrayed? Is that no longer on your party's approved book list? Trotsky's opinion was very different.

The collective farm sector, still where most of the people lived, was still capitalist, though thoroughly subordinated to the proletarian state, whose deformations were *particularly* glaring in the countryside. Nor did this ever change, right down to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

And more importantly, USSR "socialism" was preserved by the foreign trade monopoly, as it could not possibly stand up to economic competition with western capitalism. Therefore it was highly artificial and fragile.

Moreover, in the last decades of the Soviet Union, the capitalist black market economy was continually rising in weight.

In short, you can't build socialism in one country, and describing the Soviet Union in the 1930s as socialist was absurd.

Even Molotov recognized this, he says in his memoirs that this is the one little theoretical point on which Stalin was off and he, Molotov, had a better understanding.

-M.H.-


Also, what I was saying before is that as the political dynamics change, so does the position of the workers. Political revolution then leads to economic revolution, basically.


But this is the point of capitalist agents...the black market, which I feel could be considered to have constituted a petty-bourgeoisie, is another point entirely. IF the capitalist class abroad had agents and supporters within the Soviet Union, then we cannot seriously consider the society to be without the presence of class struggle. It is primarily a political issue.

You say "correction", others might say "revision". States and bureaucracies reflect the class interests which give rise to them...not the other way around.

Then what are you saying? That the bureaucracy was a class onto itself because it decided stuff? Because it pushed around papers more than the average Boris? I'm not saying you're pushing the moral angle, but I haven't seen another angle to justify your argument.

Disempowered isn't the right term IMO. Workers weren't always involved in political matters, and that was a big problem of course, but that's not the same as disempowered. Disempowered would imply that they had no power, which was incorrect...the SEP, for instance, held a membership of around 23% of the working population in the early 80's. Workers were definitely involved and part of the system of decision-making since there were working-class parties in power...but the workers as a whole were not, at least not enough.

The interesting thing is Soviet bureaucrats didn't always fare so well in the restoration. It's simply incorrect to say they had a vested interest in it...if anything, they had a vested interest in not allowing capitalism to be established. Whatever the case, the bureaucracy showed itself to be largely an observer to what was going on...most of the impetus for restoration came from the party leadership (not really the bureaucracy) and from reactionaries outside of the party. Those two poles combined, along with a capitalist propaganda wave and the silencing of pro-socialist voices, to make for the fall.

Understood. I don't disagree too much, actually, except for the last part. I view the USSR has being without wage-labor and generalized commodity production. Political domination, in my view, is going to be with us until we achieve the conditions of fully classless society.

Indeed. Here's the difference in my calculation: workers were not actively excluded from participation, but the Soviet system gradually arched towards relying on whomever was in the party first and foremost. Party membership was oftentimes a prerequisite for any political activity of any sort, and that wasn't what the vanguard is supposed to be. This is what I meant by the formalization of the party's position...something that translated, over time, to a lack of sufficient working-class participation.

That cannot be seen as the same as exclusion. Exclusion is when working-class voices are pushed away entirely from the political sphere. Exclusion is when money determines politics. None of those things happened in the Soviet Union, but a formalization did.

Perhaps it sounds like I'm splitting hairs here, but I do think it's an important distinction.

Because when a fascist horde comes across the border thirsting for blood and genocide, you don't vote on who's going to sit in the tank and who's going to man the anti-aircraft gun. You need leadership, and strong leadership at that.

You can't conflate one representative proletarian state with all of them. The Soviet political process was one specific method of determining representation within the worker state...that doesn't mean it's set in stone. There were problems within the system of proletarian democratic representation, but the problem wasn't proletarian representation itself.

I feel Cuba does have "direct participation, through debate, of the working class in exercising political power". That is, in many ways, the most optimal form of proletarian government we've seen applied for a sustained period of time (unlike the Paris Commune, for instance) in the history of our movement.

Just because the Soviet Union didn't reach this standard, which is a high standard, doesn't mean it wasn't a worker state. It was just one that suffered from political shortcomings, shortcomings that contributed to its undoing. We cannot ignore, as well, that these realities were not always by choice: the singular role of the party was a circumstance of the Civil War and the resulting period...it wasn't fixed after that point but that was certainly its locus.

Yes, it very much is. This was a flaw in the Soviet form of proletarian government. However, if that isn't met, we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I don't disagree. I just don't think it's very helpful to play Monday Morning Quarterback. The Soviet Union had many successes but also suffered from issues we can learn from...that's precisely why it's such a positive and important example for the workers of the world. Damning the whole thing because of a few shortcomings (and yes, that's what they were) isn't what we need to be doing.

If we don't rely on a standardization of wishes and intentions, then we have to account for the possibility that some will not be completely in support of the existing order, and that some will even try to actively destroy it. Some will want to be rich after helping to restore capitalism (Yeltsin). Some will want attention and praise from the imperialist media (Walesa). Some will be idiots (Gorbachev). It's just how things work.

In recognition of that...a measure of strength in the state is necessary. The Soviet Union answered this tough question one way, Cuba has in another. We should learn from both because both were/are proletarian forms of society.

Also, I'm not big on peaceful coexistence, but it wasn't what you're making it out to be. From what I've seen, it was more of "let's avoid all-out war with one another because it won't end well...working-class revolution in the capitalist world will bring about worldwide socialism". Not the most unreasonable thing to say, I think.

Yes, but wouldn't you say that many peasants are forced to perform surplus labor?

OK, I see your explanation. To connect it to what I was saying: A moonshiner can turn their house into a factory. A moonshiner can pay other people to labor in their facility for a wage. This changes one's relationship to the means of production. It's not just exchange...that's what I was driving at.