Yugoslavia under Tito vs USSR under Stalin vs USSR under Khrushchev?

[Red Eagle]

I hear many contradictions among people here about all these states, some say Stalin's collectivisation was awful and others saying it was great. Other times people will say Tito economy was great but then say he created a capitalist class, was a revisionist imperialist etc. And last but not least Khrushchev is largely seen as a revisionist here.
How did each of their economies work? And which one of them were revisionist and why?

[STALINwasntSTALLIN]

I hear many contradictions among people here about all these states, some say Stalin's collectivisation was awful and others saying it was great. Other times people will say Tito economy was great but then say he created a capitalist class, was a revisionist imperialist etc. And last but not least Khrushchev is largely seen as a revisionist here.
How did each of their economies work? And which one of them were revisionist and why?

Stalin's economy was the economy started by Lenin which in turn was based on the teachings of Marx thus making it a purely Marxist economy. However, the right opportunist Tito sold his country out to the Western capitalist imperialist powers. Furthermore, Khrushchev deviated from Stalin's line and thus destroyed the Marxist economy. The only truly Marxist country after that was Hoxha's Albania.

[Atsumari]

People seem to give Lenin and Stalin way too much credit for the industrialization of the Soviet Union. Before World War II, France was giving lots of aid to help Russia industrialize. If the Whites would have won, they would have claimed credit for building a strong industrial Russia.

[Tim Cornelis]

Stalinism proves again what a terribly idealist ideology it is. Where to even begin?

Marx didn't develop any normative "teachings" for socialism, he developed a method of social analysis. To speak of a "purely Marxist economy" is to be blunt, ridiculous. Not only that, but a social analysis using the Marxist method would clearly reveal that the USSR was not socialism, or in the first phase of communism to use Marx's term. So in so far we can speak of "Marx's teachings" (ugh) the USSR's experience certainly did not conform to it. A socialist economy would be based on immediately social labour and therefore the social character of labour wouldn't need to be asserted through exchange, and therefore goods wouldn't assume a commodity-form -- which of course it did in the USSR, and which was freely admitted by Stalin himself. According to Marx, but far more importantly, according to the Marxist method, socialism (to borrow Lenin's term for the first phase of communism) would be based on freely associated labour and ownership of the means of production by society. Producers wouldn't be separated from the means of production, whereas in the USSR they neither owned nor controlled them, and certainly didn't have any political power that one would expect to exist in a workers' state.

Moreover, it is implied that the reconstruction of the Soviet economy was enabled by Marxist ideas -- an assault on Marxism itself to suggest so much. And to add insult to injury, it is implied that Lenin did it -- the Great Man Theory of History.

The necessary corollary of Marxism is that socialism means a society based on associated labour, social ownership, a stateless society, without countries, and without value-production. To see a self-proclaimed Marxist use the term "true Marxist country" to describe Albania physically hurts. There's more things wrong with that than there's words in it. 'True' already is an indication of idealism, 'Marxist' there can't be a Marxist country as it's a method of social analysis, the indication being that it was a socialist country but according to Marxism these concepts are mutually exclusive, and there wasn't any socialism of course in a society based on wage-labour and commodity production.

To quote Engels:

"From the moment when society enters into possession of the means of production and uses them in direct association for production, the labour of each individual, however varied its specifically useful character may be, becomes at the start and directly social labour. The quantity of social labour contained in a product need not then be established in a roundabout way; daily experience shows in a direct way how much of it is required on the average. Society can simply calculate how many hours of labour are contained in a steam-engine, a bushel of wheat of the last harvest, or a hundred square yards of cloth of a certain quality. It could therefore never occur to it still to express the quantities of labour put into the products, quantities which it will then know directly and in their absolute amounts, in a third product, in a measure which, besides, is only relative, fluctuating, inadequate, though formerly unavoidable for lack of a better one, rather than express them in their natural, adequate and absolute measure, time. Just as little as it would occur to chemical science still to express atomic weight in a roundabout way, relatively, by means of the hydrogen atom, if it were able to express them absolutely, in their adequate measure, namely in actual weights, in billionths or quadrillionths of a gramme. Hence, on the assumptions we made above, society will not assign values to products. It will not express the simple fact that the hundred square yards of cloth have required for their production, say, a thousand hours of labour in the oblique and meaningless way, stating that they have the value of a thousand hours of labour. It is true that even then it will still be necessary for society to know how much labour each article of consumption requires for its production. It will have to arrange its plan of production in accordance with its means of production, which include, in particular, its labour-powers. The useful effects of the various articles of consumption, compared with one another and with the quantities of labour required for their production, will in the end determine the plan. People will be able to manage everything very simply, without the intervention of much-vaunted “value”." (Anti-Dühring, Distribution).

To blame Tito, Kruchev, or whoever, and their naughty ideas for the failure of socialism is outright preposterous from a Marxist perspective. Material conditions determine modes of production, not naughty or nice ideas, possessed by one leader no less. Marxism is materialist remember, if you've ever heard of that term at all.

To answer your question: revisionism, as used (abused?) by Stalinists is a meaningless phrase that isn't relevant at all to the question of the character of the character of 'socialist' economies. Tito's Yugoslavia permitted for a more competitive market to exchange commodities on, whereas Kruchev's Soviet Union had a more monopolised market to exchange commodities on. Both were as capitalist as the next, and as capitalist as the West.

[Red Eagle]

So Yugoslavia and the USSR were capitalist and blaming it on revisionism and ideals is wrong because Marxism requires material analysis. So which states economic policy was best for transitioning into socialism? Or were they doomed to fail from the start? And how would socialism be successfully achieved?

[tuwix]

I hear many contradictions among people here about all these states, some say Stalin's collectivisation was awful and others saying it was great. Other times people will say Tito economy was great but then say he created a capitalist class, was a revisionist imperialist etc. And last but not least Khrushchev is largely seen as a revisionist here.
How did each of their economies work? And which one of them were revisionist and why?

None of them was great and their economies had disadvantages. However, the Yugoslavian economy was more efficient and Yugoslavia had higher standard of living that soviet ones.

In ideological terms, it seems that Tito's have made conclusions of Lenin and Stalin mistakes and made an economic model slightly better based on some anarchistic principles. But it wasn't enough. It was still a state capitalism with bureaucratic elite from the 'unequivocal' party. Decentralized cooperatives were governed by bureaucratic nominated by the party. So the return of classic capitalism was inevitable. And it happened.

[Tim Cornelis]

So Yugoslavia and the USSR were capitalist and blaming it on revisionism and ideals is wrong because Marxism requires material analysis. So which states economic policy was best for transitioning into socialism? Or were they doomed to fail from the start? And how would socialism be successfully achieved?

A state's policies can't really in and of itself transition to socialism — socialism cannot be willed into existence (voluntarism). It may be able to create the preconditions for socialism, but a social revolution is necessary. A social revolution means the transformation of all social aspects of life, but must fundamentally the social relationships of production need to transform from wage-labour to freely and directly associated labour.

[Diirez]

I only like this quote by Tito: "Stalin: stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle... If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second."