USSR a failure or success?

[Laughingasylum]

Hey comrades.
I just want to know what you're views are on this topic, I'm sure it's already been asked.
Was the USSR a failure or success?
It was in many ways a success and many good things were achieved, but then again it did collapse, and it failed to achieve Communism. I only ask this after having a debate for over 3 hours with a bunch of 'Marxist Leninists' who had a poor idea of what they were talking about and were anti dialectics. So I came here where most people have a far better understanding.

Thanks comrades.

[tuwix]

In what would it be success? :)
They didn't even try to introduce a socialism. They nationalized means of production instead of socializing them. Even being a state capitalism was too big effort for them to survive a century...

[Sinister Intents]

Emma Goldman - There Is No Communism In Russia. (http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/63/227.html) I posted this in a different thread and feel it pertains to this one

[TheCommunistManifestor]

Communism doesn't work unless all resources are under the same country. Being as the USSR did not own all the resources in the world, it couldn't have a true communist state and had to trade with the west. They didn't understand this and closed off their trade with the world resulting in shortages of resources not prevalent in the nation. Once Gobachev came into power he opened the floodgates of free trade a little too fast and screwed it all up. Btw it is 2am and i will not stand accountable to any of my ramblings. :lol:

[Tim Cornelis]

The Marxist-Leninist or Stalinist will argue that the Soviet Union, at least up until 1953, was an immense success. It achieved rapid industrialisation at a rate unprecedented and unparalleled in history and provided free health care, education, and other such social services to its citizens. Unemployment, poverty, and homelessness were successfully combated.

Anyone else will say that industrialisation was impressive but happened at an immense human cost, that sustained economic growth could not exist as a result of central planning, which had a built-in innovation de-incentive: implementing innovation disrupted the production process and risked not reaching the enterprise's quotas. Without continual revolutionising of the methods of production capital accumulation halted, stagnated, and eventually shrank as a result of the inherent deficiencies of centrally planning capital. Economic growth (capital accumulation) could be sustained only initially by mobilising the massive amounts of resource in the USSR, natural resources and labour. Once this was completed, there was insufficient implementation of innovative methods (as explained) and these resources started wielding lower rates of return. The USSR produced low quality goods, low consumer satisfaction, and social-democracy in the West achieved the same social goals (free or affordable healthcare, education) as the USSR but with civil liberties. Overall, the USSR was a failure.

[Dodo]

To add to what Tim Cornelis said, central planning model of the USSR became a tool adopted by a lot of "developing" countries as a means to succesfully industrialize under different circumstances. Some claimed to be socialists, some nationalist-populists. It had indeed been succesful for many countries lacking significantly behind for quick industrializtion, however as mentioned above, it could not compete with constantly changing nature of capitalism and became obsolete on the long-run leading to un-competitiveness, very high inflation, inefficient bureucratic mechanisms, authoritarian tendencies, corrupt industrial giants which haunted these countries even after they stopped central planning.

Was USSR a failure then? It depends on the deepening of the question. It was a failure in achieving socialism due to countless reasons people debate here. It was a success in turning a war-torn, destroyed, invaded, largely feudal agricultural Russia into a super-power in the bourgeouis-sense in a short time. It was a failure again on the long-run as free-competitive capitalism out-manouvered it, further entrenching Russia and other independent countries in a multitude of problems even after they were done with the "model".

[reb]

It paved the way to successfully complete the bourgeois revolutions in the old Russian Empire and Eastern Europe. Stalinists call this capitalist development "building socialism" for ideological reasons having to resort to revision of marxian logical conclusions.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

A bit out of nowhere, but


a bunch of 'Marxist Leninists' who had a poor idea of what they were talking about and were anti dialectics.I want to know where I can find these fabled creatures. I have only seen M-L's be terribly dull and always harp on about dialectic this and dialectic that, typically as a catch-all mumbo-jumbo philosophy phrase, so I must say I am very interested in seeing an anti-dialectics M-L.

[RedMaterialist]

Success:

1. first successful workers' revolution.
2. first successful workers' state.
3. defeated western capitalist aggression in the Russian Civil War.
4. rapid industrialization and defeated western capitalist aggression in WWII.
5. a backward, mostly peasant, state became a world superpower threatening world capitalism.
6. assisted socialist revolutions in Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Algeria, Venezuela (and other Latin American countries) and Angola.

Failed:

1. was unable to achieve worker control over means of production and distribution except through huge bureaucracy and the destruction of the petit-bourgeois business class.
2. was unable to eradicate famine without the destruction of the petit-bourgoise kulak farming class.
3. failed to maintain class hegemony except through military force, in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, most of Eastern Europe, Afghanistan. Also sought to impose theoretical hegemony in Spain and over western intellectuals by imposing the Moscow "line."

Under Gorbachev it became clear that the bureaucracy had rotted away. And in 1989, for the first time in history, a world empire simply collapsed.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

A little bit better than Tsarist Russia and Putinzinia. More or less still pretty shitty doe.



1. was unable to achieve worker control over means of production and distribution except through huge bureaucracy and the destruction of the petit-bourgeois business class.
.

Due to the alienation of political authority via representative democracy no different than what occurs in modern, neo-liberal states today such as the US. In light of this, objectively, how can any of the 'positive' things you listed possibly be true? Just curious.

[Don't Swallow The Cap]

I feel like the wrong question is being asked here. What we should be asking is was the revolution a success, to which we all know the answer.
That being said, in the later days of the ussr it seems the enjoyed all of the "successes" of a standard cappie state. Until the collapse of course.

[IBleedRed]

The USSR was ultimately a failure, but remember that it was the first major revolution of its kind in history, and it was isolated and attacked endlessly for the whole duration of its existence.

The French revolution was, in retrospect, a failure, since Napoleon Bonaparte, and later the Bourbons, came to dominate the fledgling French republic. However, we see that it was still a remarkable development that paved the way for future anti-royal movements.

That's how I see the USSR: simply a first step on the road to successful revolution. We have much to learn from the USSR, including many things that we ought not to do.

[RedMaterialist]

A little bit better than Tsarist Russia and Putinzinia. More or less still pretty shitty doe.



Due to the alienation of political authority via representative democracy no different than what occurs in modern, neo-liberal states today such as the US. In light of this, objectively, how can any of the 'positive' things you listed possibly be true? Just curious.

objectively, didn't all those things happen?

[Laughingasylum]

Thanks for the replies. This was what I was trying to argue but o'well.
One thing the guys kept saying was 'Marx was wrong and Lenin advanced the theory.'
Which was kinda silly since they kept saying we were anti Marxist.
You're replies were great, I should take these as notes so to refer to them when later debates arise. :):):)

[E-Shock Executioner]

Obviously, there were a complete failure.

Try reading Emma goldmans 'my disslusionment in Russia'

The workers had asboutlu no control start to finish. :mad:

[Marxaveli]

It achieved small successes, but in the big scheme of things, it was clearly a failure.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

It's too soon to say.

In all seriousness, I think what is learned, and not learned, from the Soviet experience by the international communist movement is worthwhile criteria. If the next worker's revolution ends 70-years later in the restoration of crass bourgeois dictatorship, then I'd say it's a failure.

[G4b3n]

The majority of the regime's success doesn't exist externally of rhetoric. They had some pretty neat art I suppose.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

objectively, didn't all those things happen?

Aside from maybe 3 or 4, no, absolutely not. Just because you place 'worker' or 'people' in front of something does not make it so.

"Told you fuckers."-Zombie Bakunin.

[RedMaterialist]

Aside from maybe 3 or 4, no, absolutely not. Just because you place 'worker' or 'people' in front of something does not make it so.

"Told you fuckers."-Zombie Bakunin.

How can you say the 1917 October revolution was not a successful workers' revolution? Maybe the workers' state was betrayed or later degenerated, but it definitely was a successful start.

[Bostana]

Ummmm taking a shot in the dark but I'm guessing it was a fail

[Prometeo liberado]

To call it a failure is to propose that capitalism is a success. We are mere victims of the triumphant side. We really only study their reaganesque, Big Brotherish version of history that has us seeing only the "crimes" and "failures" of the past while the left is to frightened or lazy to rise to the occasion and do better this time around. Failure or success? Who cares, if we had the same chance today would we do better? Na, we would just give it away.

[reb]

To call it a failure is to propose that capitalism is a success. We are mere victims of the triumphant side. We really only study their reaganesque, Big Brotherish version of history that has us seeing only the "crimes" and "failures" of the past while the left is to frightened or lazy to rise to the occasion and do better this time around. Failure or success? Who cares, if we had the same chance today would we do better? Na, we would just give it away.

I'm a little confused by this gibberish. Are you saying that we shouldn't study why the soviet union collapsed and what it was, and just look at captialism? Or are you saying that we shouldn't look at Stalin and just direct our ideas to idealistic notions of revisionism? Because if it's the second, and I think it is (hard to tell really), then it's a bit hypocritical to them complain about capitalists presenting a big brother version of history. At lest, I think this is what you are saying. Could you write it again in a more coherent form?

[reb]

It's too soon to say.

In all seriousness, I think what is learned, and not learned, from the Soviet experience by the international communist movement is worthwhile criteria. If the next worker's revolution ends 70-years later in the restoration of crass bourgeois dictatorship, then I'd say it's a failure.

Wow, really? You need to have all of this history gone through again just for you to see how wrong your ideology is?

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

How can you say the 1917 October revolution was not a successful workers' revolution? Maybe the workers' state was betrayed or later degenerated, but it definitely was a successful start.

Because it wasn't? "Successful start"? What's that even mean, really? Even if it was a proletarian revolution it obviously wasn't successful and no, this isn't a situation were you get a trophy for "trying." That's not feeding anyone. The question was pretty straight forward, was it or was it not successful? The answer here being a resounding no.

I was told a phrase once I think is applicable here, "you can want in one hand and piss in the other and tell me which hand fills first."

"Marx, how ya like me now?"-Zombie Bakunin.

[RedMaterialist]

Because it wasn't? "Successful start"? What's that even mean, really? Even if it was a proletarian revolution it obviously wasn't successful and no, this isn't a situation were you get a trophy for "trying." That's not feeding anyone. The question was pretty straight forward, was it or was it not successful? The answer here being a resounding no.

I was told a phrase once I think is applicable here, "you can want in one hand and piss in the other and tell me which hand fills first."

"Marx, how ya like me now?"-Zombie Bakunin.

The Russian Revolution successfully overthrew the czarist government; won the Russian Civil War; ended, temporarily, as admitted even by the anti-Stalinists, bourgeois control of the economy.

What is a successful start? It's like when you fly from Shanghai to San Francisco, and everything is ok except when your flight crashes during landing. Or if a football team wins its first 10 games, loses the last six and doesn't even get to the playoffs.

"want in one hand and piss in the other" ? Well, don't piss in your own hand.

[RedMaterialist]

To call it a failure is to propose that capitalism is a success. We are mere victims of the triumphant side. We really only study their reaganesque, Big Brotherish version of history that has us seeing only the "crimes" and "failures" of the past while the left is to frightened or lazy to rise to the occasion and do better this time around. Failure or success? Who cares, if we had the same chance today would we do better? Na, we would just give it away.

Well, capitalism is certainly a success, as Marx noted in the Communist Manifesto. However, your description of the history of the Soviet Union as reaganesque is quite accurate. It might be better to say that the current historical analysis of the Soviet Union is bourgeois history.

"...just give it away." I'm not aware that the anti-Stalinists ever said he just gave away the Soviet Union. They typically say that the bureaucracy, led by that mighty and formidable bureaucrat, Gorbachev, failed because freedom, democracy, the people, workers, nylons, vodka... or something.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

The Russian Revolution successfully overthrew the czarist government; won the Russian Civil War; ended, temporarily, as admitted even by the anti-Stalinists, bourgeois control of the economy.


Did workers seize control? No, did workers continue to have direct political, social or economic control? No, was the Soviet economy from 1917 to 1991 anything but capitalist? No, soooooooo? Considering the numerous antiziganist policies under the Soviets you're not going to hear anything positive from me really. The Russian revolution did end the era of the Tsar, yes, however the American revolution also ended King George's reign and British tea stamps. Killing the royal family does not a "successful proletarian revolution," make.


What is a successful start?

No, successful start to what? What does this mean and how is this meaningful?

[Prometeo liberado]

Stalin has nothing to do with this. Our obsessive need to rely on western conceptions and interpretations of their cold war enemy blinds us to certain truths. Furthermore if the current crop of lefties took control with our current deranged mindset the bourgeois need not worry because we haven't learned. Thus we wouldn't lose it, we'd just give it away.

[Skyhilist]

Anyone else will say that industrialisation was impressive but happened at an immense human cost,

Don't forget environmental cost too. The rapid industrialization of the USSR and the way that it was accomplished was an ecological nightmare.

[RedMaterialist]

Did workers seize control?

At the beginning, they absolutely did.


Killing the royal family does not a "successful proletarian revolution," make.


It's a good start.

[RedMaterialist]

Stalin has nothing to do with this.

Stalin had nothing to do with the success or failure of the Soviet Union? Hitler and Trotsky might take issue with that.

[RedMaterialist]

Don't forget environmental cost too. The rapid industrialization of the USSR and the way that it was accomplished was an ecological nightmare.

The rapid industrialization of England was an ecological nightmare. The rapid globalization of capital is rapidly destroying the planet.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

The rapid industrialization of England was an ecological nightmare. The rapid globalization of capital is rapidly destroying the planet.

Point being?


At the beginning, they absolutely did.


How? In what capacity? There was no class collaboration? The SRs weren't openly advocating class colloboration?


It's a good start.

I know I might get shit for this but imma say it anyway, royal or not, the idea of taking children out to the middle of a forest and putting a bullet in the back of their head, doesn't really sit to well with me.

I know, fuck me right?

[RedMaterialist]

I know I might get shit for this but imma say it anyway, royal or not, the idea of taking children out to the middle of a forest and putting a bullet in the back of their head, doesn't really sit to well with me.

I know, fuck me right?

Very humane sentiment. But you need to see it in context. Suppose the Czar had starved not only your children but all of the children of your village; that the Czar believed that deliberate starvation was a commendable and necessary political tactic. Suppose the Czar and his cronies (you might call them crony capitalists) made a nice profit off of the child sex slave trade (that's like where your kid gets fucked.)

And the Czar was highly enthusiastic about sending millions of your fellow countrymen into another meatgrinder war.

And this had been going on for a few hundred years. And then you found out that the Czar's government intended to keep this system going by placing one or more of the Czar's family on the throne?

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Very humane sentiment. But you need to see it in context. Suppose the Czar had starved not only your children but all of the children of your village; that the Czar believed that deliberate starvation was a commendable and necessary political tactic. Suppose the Czar and his cronies (you might call them crony capitalists) made a nice profit off of the child sex slave trade (that's like where your kid gets fucked.)

And the Czar was highly enthusiastic about sending millions of your fellow countrymen into another meatgrinder war.

And this had been going on for a few hundred years. And then you found out that the Czar's government intended to keep this system going by placing one or more of the Czar's family on the throne?

I am well aware of how shitty the Tsar was, idc about him or his wife, I'm just saying the kids even though I totally understand the history and supposed reasoning behind it. I'm just saying personally, it just doesn't jive with me and I think it should be remembered and taken into consideration when we're talking about the execution of royals. Sure, they were prolly spoiled brats but this aside I'm just saying, kind of fucked.

[Yuppie Grinder]

i don't really care about them killing those kids, pretty necessary in my mind
they did it with good reason, so the monarchy could never be revived

[Rafiq]

We should never celebrate the murder of children, nay, we should oppose it all together. Therefore we should recognize their execution as a necessary evil, a tragedy almost. It is one of the many necessary sacrifices made to protect the revolution.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

We should never celebrate the murder of children, nay, we should oppose it all together. Therefore we should recognize their execution as a necessary evil, a tragedy almost. It is one of the many necessary sacrifices made to protect the revolution.

This is what I was saying. Sure, fuck the Tsar and Tsarina, but the kids? No, plus the boy was like way sickly or something too. It's sad and unfortunate.

[RedMaterialist]

This is what I was saying. Sure, fuck the Tsar and Tsarina, but the kids? No, plus the boy was like way sickly or something too. It's sad and unfortunate.

Today it would be an act of insanity to kill the kids. Historically there are examples of entire families being killed off to maintain control of a throne. One I can think of is the War of the Roses. If Hitler had had a kid probably the same thing would have happened.

[FSL]

If it is nationalized, it belongs to the state; that is, the government has control of it and may dispose of it according to its wishes and views. But when a thing is socialized, every individual has free access to it and use it without interference from anyone.

In Russia there is no socialization either of land or of production and distribution. Everything is nationalized; it belongs to the government
So according to Emma Goldman, for an economy to be "communist" each person should be allowed to use a factory or a field or a house in any way they -the individual- liked.

If people vote on what to do then the poor individual is "coerced" and that's no communism.
It's unbelievable how close anarchists and libertarians are.



True Communism—economic equality as between man and man and between communities—requires the best and most efficient planning by each community, based upon its local requirements and possibilies. The basis of such planning must be the complete freedom of each community to produce according to its needs and to dispose of its products according to its judgment: to change its surplus with other similarly independent communities without let or hindrance by any external authority.
And the same reasoning here, just in a slightly bigger scale.

So each community -how big?- should produce whatever it wanted and then trade with the other communities?
And why is that? Why should the plan be drawn only on the basis of a small community?
I guess because anything bigger than that and the "individual" would suffocate.
Kinda like how an anarchist network that spans thoughout a country is the exception and most of them consist only the dozen people of the locality because to make that work on a big scale we might even have to elect representatives and the individual could only gasp at such a terrifying prospect.


Quite funnily, having plans drawn up by the seperate states and not on the federal level was one of Krushchev's reforms.
I remember people wondering how on earth did reforms go through in socialist states, when it's very obvious that the ones doing the most "wondering" are the ones most likely to support reforms such as this one. See, winning against centuries of capitalist ideology and millenia of exploitative culture isn't an easy task.



The _sovkhozi_ are government farms on which the peasant works as a hired man, just as the man in the factory. This is known as “industrialization” of agriculture, “transforming the peasant into a proletarian.” In the _kolkhoz_ the land only nominally belongs to the villaoe. Actually it is owned by the government. The latter can at any moment—and often does—commandeer the _kolkhoz_ members for work in other parts of the country or exile whole villages for disobedience. The _kolkhozi_ are worked collectively, but the government control of them amounts to expropriation. It taxes them at its own will; it sets whatever price it chooses to pay for grain and other products, and neither the individual peasant nor the village Soviet has any say in the matter. Under the mask of numerous levies and compulsory government loans, it appropriates the products of the _kolkhoii_, and for some actual or pretended offenses punishes them by taking away all their grain.

Also extremely funny, this reminds me of a discussion about commodity production that we had in the latest north korea thread.
Goldman defends the individual farmer who sees his produce confiscated instead of ... well instead of it being sold in the market, that's the only other option available, isn't it?
She even rejects taxation and would certainly earn the applause from a myriad ron paul fans, if they knew about her.


But she shouldn't have been so pessimistic. In the coming years, the kolkhoz would be given ownership over their means of production, would be forgiven their debts and would even be allowed to expand their activities in other sectors, like construction. Another step that brought the Soviet Union that much closer to communism in the second half of the 20th century!




The Soviet Union was an unparalled success. Simply, all someone needs to do to see that is consider how downhill the world has gone in a measly 20 years. The whole world seems scary and hopeless and by attacking the first and best example of a workers' state we aren't steering it in a better direction. If people understand things aren't really working out today and are seeking out alternatives in nationalism or apathy, we should be pointing to the alternative we know is possible and attainable.


Was the Soviet Union an absolute success? No, of course it wasn't. And the why it wasn't is demonstrated above. It wasn't because the policies started resembling more and more what a libertarian (or an anarchist, they're pretty similar as we saw) would propose. We need to know where these ideas are found, we need to identify the social forces that can easily succumb to these ideas (people in the not-socialized sectors, people in management positions, people with high expertise etc) and we need to make sure we can do things even better. We need to be the first ones to point out the actual things that were bad with socialism, not just mimick what everyone else might be saying. Not just nod in agreement, not go in a position where we are the "guilty" and we "need to apologize".

Capitalism is a thousand times worse, people have just been trained to ignore homeless people when they see them on the streets. Every social problem in capitalism "isn't really that bad", every imperfection in socialism is magnified.
The fact that capitalism can choose to not use 10% or 20% or 30% of the country's labor force and machinery is bad luck. If we find one person in a socialist country in a low-productivity position, we've identified its major flaw.


Was the Soviet Union successful? Yes it was, because it gave an invaluable amount of info on the dos and don'ts of socialism. It became the rallying point for all the world's workers, every country had millions of communists, a strong movement, powerful unions, you could only be optimistic.
How succesful was it? Not as succesful as our next effort.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

What metric are we using to judge "success" or "failure"?

By the metric laid out by a revolutionary, internationalist communist, it was a failure because there is still Capitalism. The goal was to liberate the international working class from Capitalism and break down nation-states. That goal was put on hold indefinitely in the 20s and has obviously not been attained. The USSR's failure simply left the working class to try to rebuild what the Russian workers built in the late 10s and early 20s.

By the watered-down Statist metric laid out by the State-socialist socialists, it was also a failure. The goal was to create a strong, powerful state which could centrally plan its economy while not collapsing and while expanding its international influence despite opposition from the "Evil" capitalists. The fall of the USSR, the coming of Capitalism to Russia, and the creation of a mini-Tzar in Putin shows that the goal was not achieved.


To call it a failure is to propose that capitalism is a success. We are mere victims of the triumphant side. We really only study their reaganesque, Big Brotherish version of history that has us seeing only the "crimes" and "failures" of the past while the left is to frightened or lazy to rise to the occasion and do better this time around. Failure or success? Who cares, if we had the same chance today would we do better? Na, we would just give it away.

Capitalism is the most successful social order in history. It was designed to perpetuate the ruling class and expand their wealth while disempowering labor, even convincing the laborers to love their chains. It has done that incredibly well, and far more efficiently than feudalism, despotism, various forms of military tribalism and so on. The point shouldn't be to show that Capitalism doesn't work, but to show that it doesn't fulfill the needs of the working class. Capitalism works perfectly for the interests of the ruling class, up until the point that it collapses in a revolutionary wave. Just as feudalism worked up until the point where feudal lords lost their lands to bankers for whom they had debts, or lost their heads to middle class businessmen who were sick of the feudal political monopoly.


We should never celebrate the murder of children, nay, we should oppose it all together. Therefore we should recognize their execution as a necessary evil, a tragedy almost. It is one of the many necessary sacrifices made to protect the revolution.

I love it when you let your moral side out. I agree (except for the part that killing the kids was a "necessary evil" - it's a debatable point that the Romanovs would have taken power back if the children weren't killed - although I think one can, to a point, place the blame on the monarchists for using the royal family and their "divine right" to rally the forces of reaction). I find it an interesting critique of "Communism" that a couple of children were shot considering the countless children forced into servitude or shot by conquering colonialist armies. It's like Communism is culpable for every war crime committed by someone with the Red banner, while Capitalism isn't culpable for the countless crimes committed by those who believe in market exchange forces.


So according to Emma Goldman, for an economy to be "communist" each person should be allowed to use a factory or a field or a house in any way they -the induvidual- liked.

If people vote on what to do then the poor individual is "coerced" and that's no communism.
It's unbelievable how close anarchists and libertarians are.

Well, anarchists claimed to be "libertarian" well before the weird anarcho-capitalists did.

Complain about Emma's theory, sure, but I don't think it's any more "Communist" to say that some weird, alienated Stalinist bureaucrat can determine how the factory is used than either "free individuals" or workers as democratic bodies.


Also extremely funny, this reminds me of a discussion about commodity production that we had in the latest north korea thread.
Goldman defends the individual farmer who sees his produce confiscated instead of ... well instead of it being sold in the market, that's the only other option available, isn't it?
She even rejects taxation and would certainly earn the applause from a myriad ron paul fans, if they knew about her.If socialism can only be realized by some copper with a red star instead of a brass badge taking the product of labor by force, I'd rather just have Capitalism. The goal is to realize a society where neither exchange NOR state force NOR feudal taxation are necessary to distribute goods. That's socialism. The other three are just free market capitalism, despotism (or state capitalism or whatever you want to call it) or feudalism, respectively.



The Soviet Union was an unparalled success. Simply, all someone needs to do to see that is consider how downhill the world has gone in a measly 20 years. The whole world seems scary and hopeless and by attacking the first and best example of a workers' state we aren't steering it in a better direction. If people understand things aren't really working out today and are seeking out alternatives in nationalism or apathy, we should be pointing to the alternative we know is possible and attainable.OK well where is it today? Yeah, the people who built the Titanic were successful in building a really big ship as much as the leaders of the USSR were successful in building "socialism". These two constructions had similar end results (except less people died when the Titanic sunk)

[FSL]

Complain about Emma's theory, sure, but I don't think it's any more "Communist" to say that some weird, alienated Stalinist bureaucrat can determine how the factory is used than either "free individuals" or workers as democratic bodies.
And why shouldn't he get to decide? He is after all an individual. Are you denying his divine right to do as he pleases with social property, you authoritarian jerk?

But no, I think that the plan should be drawn up and ratified not by unelected bureaucrats and certainly not by random individuals but by elected bodies representing the common will. As I'm sure was the case in the soviet union for as long as the plan was relevant.



If socialism can only be realized by some copper with a red star instead of a brass badge taking the product of labor by force, I'd rather just have Capitalism. The goal is to realize a society where neither exchange NOR state force NOR feudal taxation are necessary to distribute goods. That's socialism. The other three are just free market capitalism, despotism (or state capitalism or whatever you want to call it) or feudalism, respectively.
You did actually just defend someone protesting the fact that collective farms were taxed. You did do that. Ok.
So I guess in your mind we should wait for a revolution until every single one is already a wage laborer. There shouldn't then have to be things like collective farms, just socialized farms, previously the property of capitalists who were using laborers themselves.

It is only a matter of decades, maybe centuries in some countries, but I'm sure we can all wait. And I'm sure the Soviet Union should have waited as well instead of doing something that inhuman like taxing people. Taxes. I can barely remain seated typing that word, such is the terror it brings to my heart.




OK well where is it today? Yeah, the people who built the Titanic were successful in building a really big ship as much as the leaders of the USSR were successful in building "socialism". These two constructions had similar end results (except less people died when the Titanic sunk)
It trusted the ideas of Goldman and other people like her at the helm.

Yes, the result was exactly the same as with the titanic. But for us who are able to understand that the problem isn't in building really big ships but in looking out for the freaking iceberg that might sink them, the soviet union -and the titanic- were of great help.

[robbo203]

RedMaterialist: How can you say the 1917 October revolution was not a successful workers' revolution? Maybe the workers' state was betrayed or later degenerated, but it definitely was a successful start.



This is absurd. You dont define a revolution by the class character pf its participants; you define it by its historical outcome. Show me a bourgeois revolution anywhere in which the bourgeosie where numerically the driving force behind it. The idea that the 1917 October revolution was a "successful workers' revolution" is bunkum. Its the laziest, most superficial. kind of pop history.

The Boslshevik revolution was from start to finish a capitalist revolution albeit clothed in the rhetoric of socialist emancipation. It cleared away the precapitalist elements that impeded the full development of capitalism in the guise of state capitalism and resulted in a society in which the workers were completely alienated from the means of production and politically utterly disempowered.

Marx's comments on the French Revolution could equally apply to the Bolshevik revolution:


If the proletariat destroys the political rule of the bourgeosie, that will only be a temporary victory, only an element in the service of the bourgeois revolution itself, as in 1794, so long as in the course of history, in its movement, the material conditions are not yet created which make necessary the abolition of the bourgeois mode of production and thus the definitive overthrow of bourgeois political rule ("Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality", 1847 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/10/31.htm).


As a final thought - the vast majority of workers in Western representative "democracies" vote for political parties that are unequivocally capitalist and adminster societies that are unquestionably capitalist. Does the mere fact that the workers put these parties in power make these states, "workers states". Is Obama, then, the leader of the world's most powerful "workers state"?

According to the dodgy logic of those who want us to believe that the 1917 October revolution was a "successful workers' revolution", yes , it probably does

[FSL]

I'd like to know if someone talking about "utterly disempowered people" in the soviet union has the slighest idea of world history and the situation in the 50s or even later on.
Because these "utterly disempowered people" not only inspired millions to become equally "disempowered" but scared the hell out of every capitalist in the planet.

I'm wondering if you can comprehend how different the world was when France and Italy had communist support in the millions, many countries had revolutionary movements and the US needed to persecute communists.
Who was responsible for that huge upsurge in the workers' movement? Stalin himself because he was such a huge stud?

No, it was those disempowered people.

[robbo203]

I'd like to know if someone talking about "utterly disempowered people" in the soviet union has the slighest idea of world history and the situation in the 50s or even later on.
Because these "utterly disempowered people" not only inspired millions to become equally "disempowered" but scared the hell out of every capitalist in the planet.

I'm wondering if you can comprehend how different the world was when France and Italy had communist support in the millions, many countries had revolutionary movements and the US needed to persecute communists.
Who was responsible for that huge upsurge in the workers' movement? Stalin himself because he was such a huge stud?

No, it was those disempowered people.

You jesting or what?

How does this sleight of hand on your part disprove the simple point that in the Soviet Union, power was massively concentrated and centralised in the hands of a tiny elite - the state capitalist class (aka Red Bourgeosie). Workers did not get a look in when it came to all the important
decisions in society. Their powerlessness was mirrored in the fact that the Soviet Union was a grotesquely unequal society comparable in its degree of inequality with certain western capitalist states like the UK or Canada. (see for example, Peter Wiles, “Recent Data on Soviet Income Distribution,” Economic Aspects of Life in the USSR , 1975, p. 120) The red bourgeosie with their own exclusive retail outlets and distribution networks, their numerous perks, their multiple so called salaries, lived lives utterly remote and removed from that experienced by ordinary Russian workers.


As for your so called mass communist parties inspiring others to emancipate and empower themselves, you surely got to be kidding. What became of these mass parties in France , Italy and elsewhere for which you profess such a touching and naive enthusiasm? They all ended up all too predictably as no more than dull-as-dishwater social democratic reformist parties cynically competing for votes along with the rest, with perhaps a few trendy slogans tacked onto their capitalist manifestos for good effect. Even so they have become mere shrivelled husks of their former selves. Hardly an example to hold up of a succesful organisation, is it now?

The questionable assumption behind your argument is that the workers would not have been so militant had it not been for these so called communist parties. I would have said the opposite was true and that the so called communist parties parasitically latched upon the workers struggles to cynically enlarge their own power base

There is good quote from L. J. Macfarlane, on the antics of the British Communist Party, in this regard:

The workers had to learn through their own experiences that capitalism could not provide them with a tolerable standard of living. Communists needed to campaign around the day-to-day issues and demands of the workers and, through their leadership and example, gain the workers' confidence. The Communist Party refused to see any contradiction in urging the workers to press for concessions which could not, according to their analysis, ever be granted. This was a parallel contradiction to that involved in calling on them to vote for a Labour government which would betray them. In practice, of course, it was impossible to call on workers to come out on strike in order to learn through defeat the folly of purely industrial action. The Communist Party, therefore, formulated demands based on the expectations of those involved and insisted that those demands could be realized if only they campaigned hard enough for them.

Failure to achieve the aims set in any particular industrial dispute was usually ascribed to the treachery of the official union leaders, the ruthless cunning of the employers or the intervention of the capitalist government, rather than to the underlying economic condition of the industry concerned. (, L..J. Macfarlane, The British Communist Party: Its Origin and Development Until 1929, MacGibbon and Kee, 1966)

The fact that the US "needed to persecute communists" - the same might be said of the USSR - proves nothing. The enemy of an enemy is not necessarily a friend.

[RedMaterialist]

Show me a bourgeois revolution anywhere in which the bourgeosie where numerically the driving force behind it.

American revolution.


Marx's comments on the French Revolution could equally apply to the Bolshevik revolution:

If the proletariat destroys the political rule of the bourgeosie, that will only be a temporary victory,


Which is what I said; the Russian Revolution was a temporary victory, a temporary success.


only an element in the service of the bourgeois revolution itself, as in 1794, so long as in the course of history, in its movement, the material conditions are not yet created which make necessary the abolition of the bourgeois mode of production

The Soviets abolished the private ownership of the means of production and replaced it with state ownership. They tried to do it, however, in one state, and ultimately it was unsuccessful in a global capitalist system.


As a final thought - the vast majority of workers in Western representative "democracies" vote for political parties

Workers voting in a bourgeois political state is not the same thing as workers revolting and destroying a political state, which is what the Russian workers did.

[RedMaterialist]

You jesting or what?

How does this sleight of hand on your part disprove the simple point that in the Soviet Union, power was massively concentrated and centralised in the hands of a tiny elite - the state capitalist class (aka Red Bourgeosie).

This is the same tired argument that Lenin and Stalin were capitalists, that they were the Henry Fords, JP Morgans, Rockefellers of Russia. This inability to distinguish a capitalist from a socialist must be some kind of historical disorder, the inability of the early socialist to separate appearance from reality.

You might as well maintain that Marx was a petit-bourgeois parasite because he used Engels' money to pay the rent.

The massive concentration and centralization of power in a modern state is what a dictatorship looks like, the fundamental cause of which is the massive concentration and centralization of modern capitalist economic power in gigantic corporations. In the Soviet Union the corporation was owned by the Communist Party, not by private capitalists.

[Rafiq]

I love it when you let your moral side out. I agree (except for the part that killing the kids was a "necessary evil" - it's a debatable point that the Romanovs would have taken power back if the children weren't killed - although I think one can, to a point, place the blame on the monarchists for using the royal family and their "divine right" to rally the forces of reaction). I find it an interesting critique of "Communism" that a couple of children were shot considering the countless children forced into servitude or shot by conquering colonialist armies. It's like Communism is culpable for every war crime committed by someone with the Red banner, while Capitalism isn't culpable for the countless crimes committed by those who believe in market exchange forces.


It was a necessary evil in the sense that it was avoidable only in hindsight. It was a decision made in panic, under the impression of an impending rescue of the royal family. It was one of the many casualties of the revolution. Had the reactionaries got hold of the children, it would be, as Sverdlov put it, a symbol for the counterrevolutionaries to rally around. There is a certain truth to Robespierre's logic, that the king must die so that the republic can live. But there is a fundamental logic inherent to Communism, and that is that the sins of the father are not passed down to the son, that we can all become rootless. It's why (and not really out of moral reasons) I detest the punishment of family members during the Stalinist purges. While the King and his wife should have faced execution in the name of the revolution, the children should have been raised by the state, like any other of those millions of orphans. Of course, the Tsar and his family had been placed under arrest for quite some time at that point, it's clear that their execution was not a plan in the long term, else they would have simply been killed beforehand.

[robbo203]

American revolution.




Really? A majority of the participants in the "American revolution" were capitalists? You sure you havent confused a serious historical study with some entertaining light fiction for your book at bedtime?




Which is what I said; the Russian Revolution was a temporary victory, a temporary success.


A temporary victory for what? At the end of the day it is the historical outcome of a revolution that decisively determines its character. The Russian Revolution unequivocally established state capitalism as the basis of the new social order. Ergo the Rusisan revolution was unequivocally a capitalist revolution form start to finish whatever romantic nonsense you may maintain to the contrary





The Soviets abolished the private ownership of the means of production and replaced it with state ownership. They tried to do it, however, in one state, and ultimately it was unsuccessful in a global capitalist system.


State ownership IS a form of private ownership, Under state ownership the workers are excluded or alienated from the means of production, meaning some other class must logically exercise ownership of these means. De facto ownership effectively resided in the tiny class that ultimately controlled the means of production via its control of the state machine. Ultimate control is the same thing as ownership. If you own something you ultimately control and if you ultimately control it you own it. QED.



Workers voting in a bourgeois political state is not the same thing as workers revolting and destroying a political state, which is what the Russian workers did.

Even if your fairy tale about the Russian workers destroying the political state were true it would not invalidate the basic point I made - that if Russia was a so- called workers state then so too must every other capitalist state be a "workers state" since it is only due to acquiesence and support of the working class - the overwhelming majority - that such a state even exists

[robbo203]

This is the same tired argument that Lenin and Stalin were capitalists, that they were the Henry Fords, JP Morgans, Rockefellers of Russia. This inability to distinguish a capitalist from a socialist must be some kind of historical disorder, the inability of the early socialist to separate appearance from reality.

You might as well maintain that Marx was a petit-bourgeois parasite because he used Engels' money to pay the rent.

The massive concentration and centralization of power in a modern state is what a dictatorship looks like, the fundamental cause of which is the massive concentration and centralization of modern capitalist economic power in gigantic corporations. In the Soviet Union the corporation was owned by the Communist Party, not by private capitalists.


More garbled nonsense...

Firstly you engage in category confusion when you contrast a socialist with a capitalist. A socialist is an individual who holds socialist political views. A capitalist is an individual who employs wage labour and derives surplus value from the commodities produced by such wage labour. It is entirely possible for an individual to be both a capitalist anmd a socialist. Frederick Engels was one such an individual, for instance. I'm not particularly concerned with the socio-economic status of Karl Marx. He may well have been a petit bourgeois parasite who leeched off Engels and shagged his maid but that is irrelevant. What counts is the ideas he propounded - some of which were sound, others of which were grossly mistaken

Secondly you totally misunderstand the narture of capitalism if you think it hinges on the existence of so called "private capitalists". De jure legal ownrership of capital by private individuals is merely one historically contingent form of capitalism which can take many other forms.


In fact, far from me putting forward a "tired old argument" this is exactly what you are doing. It was an argument that incidentally, was long ago demolished by Marx and Engels, taking of old arguments

There is a nice quote from a talk by Andrew Kliman which Ive posted here before which says it all:


Of course, Marx called for the abolition of private property. But what makes property private, in his view, is not individual ownership, but the separation of the direct producers, workers, from the property they produce. Thus, in the German Ideology, he and Frederick Engels noted that “ancient communal and State ownership … is still accompanied by slavery,” and they referred to the communal ownership of slaves as “communal private property” (emphasis added).

In volume 2 of Capital, Marx wrote, “The social capital is equal to the sum of the individual capitals (including … state capital, in so far as governments employ productive wage-labour in mines, railways, etc. and function as industrial capitalists.” Similarly, in his notes on Adolph Wagner’s critique of Capital, Marx wrote that “[w]here the state itself is a capitalist producer, as in the exploitation of mines, forests, etc., its product is a ‘commodity’ and hence possesses the specific character of every other commodity.”

Most importantly, in volume 1 of Capital, he implicitly addressed the issue of what would happen if the state’s role as capitalist producer expanded to such a point that it completely crowded out other capitalists. He argued that the tendency toward monopoly, the process of centralization of capitals, “would reach its extreme limit … n a given society … only when the entire social capital was united in the hands of either a single capitalist or a single capitalist company.” As Raya Dunayevskaya noted, Marx’s text implies that such a society “would remain capitalist[;] … this extreme development would in no way change the law of motion of that society.”

http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative...ves-to-capital

Kliman also refers to Engel's comment as follows


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 the 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 relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. (Socialism: Utopian and Scientific - my emphasis)

Where pray are the "private capitalists" here yet as Engels makes abundantly clear capitalism still exists!


Ironically you yourself half touch upon, half concede, the class nature of soviet state capitalism when you say In the Soviet Union the corporation was owned by the Communist Party, not by private capitalists. Membership of the pseudo Communist Party was in fact confined to a tiny self-selecting self-perpetuating, section of the population meaning that even by your own reckoning, the vast majority of the population were excluded from ownership of the means of production! Their relationship to the means of production was no different than had those means been entirely owned by "private capitalists"

[Skyhilist]

The rapid industrialization of England was an ecological nightmare. The rapid globalization of capital is rapidly destroying the planet.

Other places causes environmental damage doesn't absolve the USSR from responsibility for causing environmental damage themselves.

[RedMaterialist]

Really? A majority of the participants in the "American revolution" were capitalists? You sure you havent confused a serious historical study with some entertaining light fiction for your book at bedtime?

Americans were mostly small property owners, artisans, small manufacturers, small farmers, in other words, classic petit-bourgeois. The southern slave-owners, especially the bigger ones, were probably more aligned with Great Britain and the monarchy.

As soon as the revolution succeeded the petit-bourgeois did what? They immediately produced the classic bourgeois constitution, protecting property (including ownership of slaves) rights as the fundamental civil right, and before that, in the Declaration of Independence, assuring humanity that bourgeois equality and freedom would be protected by the new government.

The American revolution was a bourgeois revolution, a petit-bourgeois revolution.



A temporary victory for what? At the end of the day it is the historical outcome of a revolution that decisively determines its character.

That would mean the American revolution was a globalized, financial, monopolist bourgeois revolution. A revolution is like any other historical, social phenomenom, it has an origin, a development and an end. Human society began as a tribal society and now is an industrialized, bourgeois dominated world society. Why would you expect the Russian revolution to remain static and permanent?



The Russian Revolution unequivocally established state capitalism as the basis of the new social order. Ergo the Rusisan revolution was unequivocally a capitalist revolution form start to finish whatever romantic nonsense you may maintain to the contrary


The Russian revolution overthrew the czarist govt and drove the big capitalist class out of Russia, then defended the Soviet Union against western powers in the civil war. After 1922 you may argue that the Soviet Union became capitalist, but, between 1917-1922 the Soviet Union was a revolutionary, workers' state.



State ownership IS a form of private ownership,

The state is not a private person. You might as well say that a corporation is a private person.


Even if your fairy tale about the Russian workers destroying the political state were true it would not invalidate the basic point I made - that if Russia was a so- called workers state then so too must every other capitalist state be a "workers state" since it is only due to acquiesence and support of the working class - the overwhelming majority - that such a state even exists

The Czar and the White Army did not think it was a fairy tale. A capitalist state is not a workers' state because the workers do not acquiesce and support the capitalist state.

[RedMaterialist]

More garbled nonsense...

Firstly you engage in category confusion when you contrast a socialist with a capitalist. A socialist is an individual who holds socialist political views.

You're the one who says that Lenin and Stalin were capitalists. Stalin was an individual who held socialist views.


A capitalist is an individual who employs wage labour and derives surplus value from the commodities produced by such wage labour. It is entirely possible for an individual to be both a capitalist anmd a socialist.

So, Stalin is now the Frederic Engels of the Soviet Union? The Soviet Union was not an individual who employed wage labor and derived surplus value from it. The Soviet Union was a state organized by the Communist Party to plan and administer the economy; it was also organized with the specific purpose of destroying the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois, and kulak classes.



Of course, Marx called for the abolition of private property.

Of course he did. And that is what the Soviet Union did.


Thus, in the German Ideology, he and Frederick Engels noted that “ancient communal and State ownership … is still accompanied by slavery,” and they referred to the communal ownership of slaves as “communal private property” (emphasis added).

The German Ideology goes on "For this reason the whole structure of society based on this communal ownership, and with it the power of the people, decays in the same measure as, in particular, immovable private property evolves."

It is private property which decays the old communal and ancient "state."


In volume 2 of Capital, Marx wrote, “The social capital is equal to the sum of the individual capitals (including … state capital, in so far as governments employ productive wage-labour in mines, railways, etc. and function as industrial capitalists.” Similarly, in his notes on Adolph Wagner’s critique of Capital, Marx wrote that “[w]here the state itself is a capitalist producer, as in the exploitation of mines, forests, etc., its product is a ‘commodity’ and hence possesses the specific character of every other commodity.”


You're confusing Marx's description of the capitalist state with his and Engels' description of the state under communism or developing under socialism:

"5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan."



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 important part of this quote in this context is [I]"of the capitalists."


Where pray are the "private capitalists" here yet as Engels makes abundantly clear capitalism still exists!

They own the state as private capitalists. In the United States the private capitalists own one of the most important parts of the state: the Federal Reserve. If, on the other hand, the Socialist Party of the United States owned the Federal Reserve and operated it on behalf of the working class, then there would be state ownership or control of the means of production by socialists.



Membership of the pseudo Communist Party was in fact confined to a tiny self-selecting self-perpetuating, section of the population meaning that even by your own reckoning, the vast majority of the population were excluded from ownership of the means of production!

There was one class EXCLUDED from the party: the capitalist class.

[RedWaves]

Just compare how fucked up Russia is today to those old glory days of the USSR and then ask the question again. I think most people in Russia would rather have the old CCCP instead of the Federation today.

[Sinister Intents]

Just compare how fucked up Russia is today to those old glory days of the USSR and then ask the question again. I think most people in Russia would rather have the old CCCP instead of the Federation today.

Pretty sure I've heard of this nostalgia for old state capitalist Russia and other state capitalist dictatorships before. Like this for Hungary: 72% of Hungarians say that it was better living under communism than now (http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/hungary-better-off-under-communism/)

[RedMaterialist]

If the Soviet Union was a capitalist state,

1. Was it the first such state, what were the other such states?

[Sinister Intents]

If the Soviet Union was a capitalist state,

1. Was it the first such state, what were the other such states?

Are you denying its capitalism?

Emma Goldman - There is no communism in Russia.


The first requirement of Communism is the socialization of the land and of the machinery of production and distribution. Socialized land and machinery belong to the people, to be settled upon and used by individuals or groups according to their needs. In Russia land and machinery are not socialized but _nationalized_. The term is a misnomer, of course. In fact, it is entirely devoid of content. In reality there is no such thing as national wealth. A nation is too abstract a term to “own” anything. Ownership may be by an individual, or by a group of individuals; in any case by some quantitatively defined reality. When a certain thing does not belong to an individual or group, it is either nationalized or socialized. If it is nationalized, it belongs to the state; that is, the government has control of it and may dispose of it according to its wishes and views. But when a thing is socialized, every individual has free access to it and use it without interference from anyone.
In Russia there is no socialization either of land or of production and distribution. Everything is nationalized; it belongs to the government, exactly as does the post-office in America or the railroad in Germany and other European countries. There is nothing of Communism about it.
No more Communistic than the land and means of production is any other phase of the Soviet economic structure. All sources of existence are owned by the central government; foreign trade is its absolute monopoly; the printing presses belong to the state, and every book and paper issued is a government publication. In short, the entire country and everything in it is the property of the state, as in ancient days it used to be the property of the crown. The few things not yet nationalized, as some old ramshackle houses in Moscow, for instance, or some dingy little stores with a pitiful stock of cosmetics, exist on sufferance only, with the government having the undisputed right to confiscate them at any moment by simple decree.
Such a condition of affairs may be called state capitalism, but it would be fantastic to consider it in any sense Communistic.

[RedMaterialist]

Are you denying its capitalism?

Emma Goldman - There is no communism in Russia.


What are other capitalist states?

[Sinister Intents]

What are other capitalist states?

China, Cuba, The United States, Canada, Russia, Mexico, Somalia, Libya, Saudi Arabia, pretty much the whole damn world is capitalist, comrade. Capitalism is globalized. You can't have socialism in one country, and socialism must also be a globalized system.

[RedMaterialist]

China, Cuba, The United States, Canada, Russia, Mexico, Somalia, Libya, Saudi Arabia, pretty much the whole damn world is capitalist, comrade. Capitalism is globalized. You can't have socialism in one country, and socialism must also be a globalized system.

So, the Soviet Union was a capitalist state, and the U.S. is a capitalist state?

[Sinister Intents]

So, the Soviet Union was a capitalist state, and the U.S. is a capitalist state?

That is exactly what I'm saying, why the fuck do you care?

[RedMaterialist]

And in the Soviet Union the state owned everything? Who owns the United States?

[Sinister Intents]

And in the Soviet Union the state owned everything? Who owns the United States?

Bringing this up again:
Emma Goldman - There is no communism in Russia.


The first requirement of Communism is the socialization of the land and of the machinery of production and distribution. Socialized land and machinery belong to the people, to be settled upon and used by individuals or groups according to their needs. In Russia land and machinery are not socialized but _nationalized_. The term is a misnomer, of course. In fact, it is entirely devoid of content. In reality there is no such thing as national wealth. A nation is too abstract a term to “own” anything. Ownership may be by an individual, or by a group of individuals; in any case by some quantitatively defined reality. When a certain thing does not belong to an individual or group, it is either nationalized or socialized. If it is nationalized, it belongs to the state; that is, the government has control of it and may dispose of it according to its wishes and views. But when a thing is socialized, every individual has free access to it and use it without interference from anyone.
In Russia there is no socialization either of land or of production and distribution. Everything is nationalized; it belongs to the government, exactly as does the post-office in America or the railroad in Germany and other European countries. There is nothing of Communism about it.
No more Communistic than the land and means of production is any other phase of the Soviet economic structure. All sources of existence are owned by the central government; foreign trade is its absolute monopoly; the printing presses belong to the state, and every book and paper issued is a government publication. In short, the entire country and everything in it is the property of the state, as in ancient days it used to be the property of the crown. The few things not yet nationalized, as some old ramshackle houses in Moscow, for instance, or some dingy little stores with a pitiful stock of cosmetics, exist on sufferance only, with the government having the undisputed right to confiscate them at any moment by simple decree.
Such a condition of affairs may be called state capitalism, but it would be fantastic to consider it in any sense Communistic.

The capitalists own the USA essentially, the capitalists own the means of production such as machines and factories, they own the natural resources, the mines and other such things for those resources, they own major capital that the majority, that being the proletariat, do not. I don't understand what you're getting at with your daft questions.

[RedMaterialist]

Bringing this up again:
Emma Goldman - There is no communism in Russia.

The capitalists own the USA essentially, the capitalists own the means of production such as machines and factories, they own the natural resources, the mines and other such things for those resources, they own major capital that the majority, that being the proletariat, do not. I don't understand what you're getting at with your daft questions.

The capitalists in the U.S. own the means of production. In the Soviet Union the state owned the means of production. Therefore, the Soviet state was a capitalist? Isn't that what you're saying?

The capitalists in the US own the means of production, therefore they own the state. The Soviet state owns the means of production, therefore it owns itself.

Capitalists own the U.S. state. Who owned the Soviet state?

[Sinister Intents]

The capitalists in the U.S. own the means of production. In the Soviet Union the state owned the means of production. Therefore, the Soviet state was a capitalist? Isn't that what you're saying?

Indeed I'm saying they're capitalist, exactly as stated in what Goldman said, that they're state capitalist. Did you read what I posted there?

[RedMaterialist]

Indeed I'm saying they're capitalist, exactly as stated in what Goldman said, that they're state capitalist. Did you read what I posted there?

Well, strictly speaking, the Soviet state was a capitalist, it was the only capitalist in the Soviet Union, and now it no longer exists. The Soviet State Capitalist went bankrupt, and even though it owned everything in Russia it couldn't pay its bills. The Soviet State Capitalist died.

[Sinister Intents]

Well, strictly speaking, the Soviet state was a capitalist, it was the only capitalist in the Soviet Union, and now it no longer exists. The Soviet State Capitalist went bankrupt, and even though it owned everything in Russia it couldn't pay its bills. The Soviet State Capitalist died.

Alright, I got that. It transferred from capitalism to capitalism essentially, All states will die, and capitalism will eventually die, hopefully this will lead to global socialism with the death of states and capitalism.

[RedMaterialist]

Alright, I got that. It transferred from capitalism to capitalism essentially, All states will die, and capitalism will eventually die, hopefully this will lead to global socialism with the death of states and capitalism.

No, I was saying that it is absurd to claim that the Soviet Union was capitalist.

Eventually and hopefully? I doubt it. The real capitalists are not going to give up without a fight.

[Sinister Intents]

No, I was saying that it is absurd to claim that the Soviet Union was capitalist.

Eventually and hopefully? I doubt it. The real capitalists are not going to give up without a fight.

Calling the failure that is the USSR a state capitalist nation is not absurd. It was thoroughly capitalist. Indeed, I don't see a way around revolution being violent, we'll hang them with the rope they sell us.

[Future]

Any institution that takes the power away from the working class is a bourgeois institution. The USSR and the US practiced different versions of the same thing - bourgeois dictatorship.

[RedMaterialist]

Any institution that takes the power away from the working class is a bourgeois institution. The USSR and the US practiced different versions of the same thing - bourgeois dictatorship.

Stalin may have been a dictator, but he wasn't bourgeois. In fact he spent most of his life murdering as many bourgeois, petit-bourgeois and kulaks he could. He (or rather the Soviet bureaucracy) also killed and imprisoned many people suspected of being bourgeois or their supporters (Trotsky being the best example.) The basic goal of a dictatorship of the proletariat is to exterminate the capitalist class, as peacefully as possible. Stalin succeeded pretty well. By 1935 nobody in the Soviet Union would admit to being any kind of bourgeois, petit or otherwise. There was a black market in the counterfeiting of birth records, family history, work history, residential history, etc. for proving that one had no connection with the bourgeois past.

[Sinister Intents]

Stalin may have been a dictator, but he wasn't bourgeois. In fact he spent most of his life murdering as many bourgeois, petit-bourgeois and kulaks he could. He (or rather the Soviet bureaucracy) also killed and imprisoned many people suspected of being bourgeois or their supporters (Trotsky being the best example.) The basic goal of a dictatorship of the proletariat is to exterminate the capitalist class, as peacefully as possible. Stalin succeeded pretty well. By 1935 nobody in the Soviet Union would admit to being any kind of bourgeois, petit or otherwise. There was a black market in the counterfeiting of birth records, family history, work history, residential history, etc. for proving that one had no connection with the bourgeois past.

Stalinist.... defending Stalin and the USSR.....
You disturb me

[The Jay]

This has likely been said in this thread but it doesn't exist anymore. I would say that means it failed.

[RedMaterialist]

Stalinist.... defending Stalin and the USSR.....
You disturb me

I'm not defending Stalin. I'm saying he wasn't a capitalist. You would rather Hitler not have been disturbed in his bunker?

[The Jay]

I'm not defending Stalin. I'm saying he wasn't a capitalist. You would rather Hitler not have been disturbed in his bunker?

I'm sensing an 'if you're not with us you are against us' type bullshit here. Do you also support the USA because Al Quaeda is bad? How about the democrats vs the republicans? You're using that same logic there bud.

[RedMaterialist]

This has likely been said in this thread but it doesn't exist anymore. I would say that means it failed.

The question is why it failed. According to the capitalist state theorists, the Soviet Union was one of the most powerful capitalist states in the world, yet it simply collapsed one day. How is this possible? Even after 1929 no capitalist state collapsed, not the U.S, Great Britain, Canada, France, Japan. In Germany the Weimar state was overthrown by the Nazis. Only in 1989 did the second largest capitalist economy (the Soviet Union, according to the capitalist state theorists) suddenly collapse.

[RedMaterialist]

I'm sensing an 'if you're not with us you are against us' type bullshit here.

Why do you suppose that only applies to one side? The capitalists will always use that kind of liberal thinking against the revolution. It's the same tactic they use when the left is accused of "starting a class war." If you're not with the proletariat class then you are against them.


Do you also support the USA because Al Quaeda is bad? How about the democrats vs the republicans? You're using that same logic there bud.

"Al Quaeda is bad." You need to analyze the so-called War on Terror in class terms.

What logic is that? You destroy your enemy? I guarantee you that the capitalists will be using that logic. We all hope that it won't come to an actual war, but if it does, we better not unilaterally cede to the bourgeoisie the right to destroy their enemies.

[The Jay]

Why do you suppose that only applies to one side? The capitalists will always use that kind of liberal thinking against the revolution. It's the same tactic they use when the left is accused of "starting a class war." If you're not with the proletariat class then you are against them.

Did you not just imply that being against the USSR was akin to allowing the Nazis to conquer the world? There is a difference when you yourself are a party in the conflict compared to being an observer. When you are in the conflict it is possible to say that if you don't kill or incapacitate the enemy then all is lost. It is another thing entirely to look at two sides which you are not a part of to say the things you are. Now, if you are identifying yourself as a part of what was the USSR or at least share its ideology then that would make sense. If you do not, like I do not, then I can say that I don't need to support either side.

When you bring up class war you are shifting the subject to - in my case - an outside party. Since I am referring to my own needs and desires I can say that I am for the effort.


"Al Quaeda is bad." You need to analyze the so-called War on Terror in class terms. I could but we are talking about an organization, not the individuals or causes of their anger. If you wanted me to explain the why of al quaeda then I certainly would need to add in class analysis. That said, I don't need to do so to say that they're not good on account of their own actions.


What logic is that? You destroy your enemy? I guarantee you that the capitalists will be using that logic. We all hope that it won't come to an actual war, but if it does, we better not unilaterally cede to the bourgeoisie the right to destroy their enemies.I addressed this above.

[robbo203]

Americans were mostly small property owners, artisans, small manufacturers, small farmers, in other words, classic petit-bourgeois. The southern slave-owners, especially the bigger ones, were probably more aligned with Great Britain and the monarchy.

As soon as the revolution succeeded the petit-bourgeois did what? They immediately produced the classic bourgeois constitution, protecting property (including ownership of slaves) rights as the fundamental civil right, and before that, in the Declaration of Independence, assuring humanity that bourgeois equality and freedom would be protected by the new government.

The American revolution was a bourgeois revolution, a petit-bourgeois revolution.

Another sleight of hand. My original question was "Show me a bourgeois revolution anywhere in which the bourgeosie where numerically the driving force behind it. to which you responded the "American revolution". Now it transpires it was not the bourgeoisie but the petit bourgeoisie. according to you, who were numerically the driving force. In case you were not aware there is a world of a difference between the bourgeoisie and the petit bourgeosie




That would mean the American revolution was a globalized, financial, monopolist bourgeois revolution. A revolution is like any other historical, social phenomenom, it has an origin, a development and an end. Human society began as a tribal society and now is an industrialized, bourgeois dominated world society. Why would you expect the Russian revolution to remain static and permanent?


Im not quite sure what your point is here. The Russian revolution consolidated capitalist relations of production in Russia and the generalisation of wage labour. Ergo , the Russian revolution was a capitalist revolution. Of course society is not a static as the demise of state capitalism with the fall of the Soviet Union demonstrated. Hopefully in time we may look forward to a genuine socialist revolution in Russia and everywhere else but to date that has not been on the cards anywhere




The Russian revolution overthrew the czarist govt and drove the big capitalist class out of Russia, then defended the Soviet Union against western powers in the civil war. After 1922 you may argue that the Soviet Union became capitalist, but, between 1917-1922 the Soviet Union was a revolutionary, workers' state.

No it wasnt. It was an emerging capitalist state which long before 1922 was well into the process of crushing the very class that had inadvertently aided the Bolshevik bourgeois revolution - the working class





The state is not a private person. You might as well say that a corporation is a private person.

This is a silly argument which demonstrates that you dont understand the point being made. Of course the state is not a private person but in no way does that negate the fact that state property is a form of private property. What is the difference in your relation to state property vis a vis privatised property (for want of a better word)? As a consumer you have to purchase a ticket in order to make use of a state owned railway just as you would have to with a so called private railway. The very fact that you have to means it its not yours to make use of but someone else's - i.e. the state. In other words state property is private as far as you are concerned. Similarly the position of workers employed by a state company is substantively no different from that of workers in a private corporation

Talking of corporations yes, is is quite true that a corporation is not a private person either. But in saying that you have simply shot yourself in the foot. The corporation is collectively owned by those who hold equity in it. This could amount to many thousands of individuals. But you wouldnt deny that corporate property is private property, would you now? In other words property does not have to be owned by a single private individual in order to be deemed private property. It is private in relation to those who are excluded from it and those who are not excluded from it can be many and in the Soviet Union this comprised a whole class - the apparatchiks of state capitalist class. They did not own the means of prpduction as private individuals anymore than the stockholders of a modern western corporation own identifable discrete parts of the means of prpduction. They owned it collectively as a class to the exclusion of the Russian working class






The Czar and the White Army did not think it was a fairy tale. A capitalist state is not a workers' state because the workers do not acquiesce and support the capitalist state.

What? Why then do you think that overwhemlingly the workers vote for capitalist political parties when it comes to election times? If you imagine for one moment that at the present time , the working class everywhere does not acquiesce in or support capitalism (and for which reason capitalism continues) then frankly you are quite deluded.

[robbo203]

You're the one who says that Lenin and Stalin were capitalists. Stalin was an individual who held socialist views.



The nomenklatura in the Soviet Union had the same basic functional relationship of the means of production as western capitalists - that is to say they monopolised these measn of production to the exclusion of the working class. It is your relation to the means of production that determines your class position, not your particular lifestyle or your political beliefs. The Soviet capitalist class ultimately controlled the means of production via their stranglehold on the state and therefore collectively owned those means of prpduction - as a class and not as private individuals - in de facto terms





So, Stalin is now the Frederic Engels of the Soviet Union? The Soviet Union was not an individual who employed wage labor and derived surplus value from it. The Soviet Union was a state organized by the Communist Party to plan and administer the economy; it was also organized with the specific purpose of destroying the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois, and kulak classes.




No you still dont get it . You are trying to transpose a historically contingent form of capitalism in the shape of 19th century Victorian capitalism in England and since this doesnt seem to fit very well with the set up in the Soviet Union this allows you to declare that it can't have been capitalism there after all. To repeat the point that has already been made - capitalism comes in many shapes and sizes

Of course the Soviet union was not an individual who employed wage labour but how many individuals do you konw who as individuals emply wage labour? The modern corporation is not owned by a single individual but by many thousands of stock holders. Are you seriously trying to suggest therefore that we no longer have capitalism? Your way of thinking about capitalism frankly belongs to the early 19th century or even earlier. Get up to date!




Of course he did. And that is what the Soviet Union did.



The Soviet Union did not abolish private property but entrenched and extended it in the form of state property. To repeat - state property is a form of private property



The German Ideology goes on "For this reason the whole structure of society based on this communal ownership, and with it the power of the people, decays in the same measure as, in particular, immovable private property evolves."

It is private property which decays the old communal and ancient "state."


No you are missing the point yet again . It is the ownership of slaves that is being talked about which is what lies behind the paradoxical reference to
"communal private property". The point is to refute the claim that private property necessarily has to erntail ownership by private individuals. There can also be private property that is collectively held by a subset of the population, for instance




You're confusing Marx's description of the capitalist state with his and Engels' description of the state under communism or developing under socialism:

"5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan."


But nowhere is there any suggestion by Marx and Engels that these refroms
mentioned in the Communist Manifesto and later more or less repudiated or downplayed by them (see the 1972 preface) are applicable to a communist/socialist society (terms which Marx and Engels regarded as essentially synonyms). It was very clear that they were talking about what was still a capitalist society in which the workers has just come to power. I fundamentally disagree with this approach of theirs altogether but no one can hoinestly claim that they were referring here to a socialist or communist society. For one thing such a society would be a stateless society which rules out completely the very iodea of state ownership. State ownership would cease altogether under socialism along with all other forms of private property





The important part of this quote in this context is "of the capitalists."


But according to you there is only private property when there is ownership by individuals, not collectivities. Here you are admitting that many indivuduvuals in the form of the capitalists can collectively own something that takes the form of state property. You have just demolished your own argument in the process!



They own the state as private capitalists. In the United States the private capitalists own one of the most important parts of the state: the Federal Reserve. If, on the other hand, the Socialist Party of the United States owned the Federal Reserve and operated it on behalf of the working class, then there would be state ownership or control of the means of production by socialists.


Once again youve destroyed your own original oargument. You have admitted that capitalists can exert ownership on a collective class basis




There was one class EXCLUDED from the party: the capitalist class.

Er no. The capitalist class was reconstituted on a new basis in the guise of the nomenklatura or apapratchiks. What was "excluded" was the old pre-revolutionary capitalist class but the shoes they vacated were more than comfortably filled by the new rising state capitalist class whose functional realtionship to the means of prpduction was no differnet to that of the old capitalist class. Of course, as new kids on the block, they wouldnt admit to being a new capitalist class and as accomplished politicans had every reason to dissemble and pretend to represent the interests of the workers. This is the sort of thing that politicans do after all and only the gullible and the exceedingly naive fall for such tosh.

As old Charlie Marx once said , you dont judge people by what they say are but by what they do. The emergence of a grotesquely unequal society that brutally exploited the Russian working class speaks volumes and far more eloquently than the lies pedddled by a bunch of self serving soviet politicians

[Ritzy Cat]

It "succeeded" industrially, economically, and technologically.

It "failed" humanely, socially, internationally, and from a Marxist perspective, attempting to introduce communism.