Was the USSR more democratic and free than the United States (To any extent)?

[Peachman2000]

I know that the elections in the USSR were questionable, but was there more freedom and security due to them being a relatively egalitarian country?

[RedWorker]

Women and ethnic minorities may have had more freedom and security than their counterparts in other countries... depending on the definitions of these terms.
As for "security", it depends. There was little poverty.

[Antiochus]

Yes and no. There was more freedom of access to basic necessities, off course the USSR was significantly poorer than the U.S. At the same time the USSR was more repressive (internally) than the U.S. It should be noted that the USSR was not socialist and that it wasn't really egalitarian. A Tajik had a much lower standard of living than an ethnic Russian for example; the gap would be comparable to that of Whites and Blacks in the U.S or greater.

A better question would be if the people in the USSR were better than they are now (inside their respective countries).

[Mr. Piccolo]

What is interesting is that Soviet citizens had more power within their workplaces than in the political arena. Because of the Soviet commitment to full employment, it was hard to fire workers. And even if you were removed from a position you were guaranteed another one somewhere. You could actually complain about your boss or make fun of him/her quite openly. In fact, I would say Soviet workers had more power in the workplace than their capitalist counterparts.

In the political arena, freedom was very limited. There were outlets for satire such as the magazine Krokodil. But the masses in the USSR were effectively depoliticized and demobilized. The final collapse of the Soviet Union was the result of a power struggle between elites (where the pro-capitalist faction won) with little input from the populace which supported the maintenance of socialism and the Union.

[tuwix]

I know that the elections in the USSR were questionable, but was there more freedom and security due to them being a relatively egalitarian country?

In the SU there was one greater freedom: there was greater choice in terms of job. Due to lack of an unemployment, a worker had a greater choice of jobs. And this was only greater freedom.

[Loony Le Fist]

What is interesting is that Soviet citizens had more power within their workplaces than in the political arena. Because of the Soviet commitment to full employment, it was hard to fire workers. And even if you were removed from a position you were guaranteed another one somewhere. You could actually complain about your boss or make fun of him/her quite openly. In fact, I would say Soviet workers had more power in the workplace than their capitalist counterparts.

In the political arena, freedom was very limited. There were outlets for satire such as the magazine Krokodil. But the masses in the USSR were effectively depoliticized and demobilized. The final collapse of the Soviet Union was the result of a power struggle between elites (where the pro-capitalist faction won) with little input from the populace which supported the maintenance of socialism and the Union.

Would you say that if the divide between the political and workplace arenas was removed that it might have survived–say if political power was vested in workers themselves.

[Mr. Piccolo]

@ Loony Le Fist

Yes, I think so. The lack of democracy was a severe problem in all of the Marxist-Leninist states. It made it inevitable that pro-capitalist elites would come into existence once the earlier generation of revolutionaries died off.

To put it frankly, the elites in the M-L states had no material reason to continue to support socialism. They could become much wealthier under capitalism. Party elites in the M-L states had certain privileges such as higher salaries and access to better consumer goods but it was nothing like the massive privileges found among capitalist elites.

Most importantly, M-L elites could not pass their status to their children in the form of ownership of private property. They could try to pass their status down through contacts, access to better schools and the like, but the M-L elite was not based on property ownership.

This has changed now that many children of party elites make up much of the capitalist "new rich" in countries such as Russia and China.

[Loony Le Fist]

So one might say that the problem lies in the artificial divide between political and economic life that the state draws.

[Mr. Piccolo]

So one might say that the problem lies in the artificial divide between political and economic life that the state draws.

Right. I still think some form of state will exist under at least early forms of socialism in the event of a successful revolution. But there has to be a way to ensure that "revolutions from above" cannot occur. Having enterprises run by workers with elected managers would help, as would some form of political democracy.

I have critiqued anarchists for their failure to defend their historic gains, compared to the authoritarian M-L states, but they do have a point about the problem of hierarchy.

[G4b3n]

Women had more proportional representation in nearly all realms one can divide society into (workplace, politics, social functions, etc). Women were given autonomy over their own uterus' under Lenin, nearly 50 years ahead of most bourgeois states. Khrushchev refused to attend functions hosted by western leaders when they would not allow women to speak.

In nearly all other areas in regards to workers' control and equality, things were worse than the bourgeois states. An area of their working class called the "Stakhanovites" resembled our labor aristocracy in the west, but differences in living conditions between privileged soviet workers and and the lower strata of the working class was even higher than in some western countries. This comes from a practice called "socialist emulation", and unless you are one to worship everything Lenin, you know clearly that it produced results unfavorable to any workers' state. I find the trotskyite narrative to be a bit exaggerated, but it was a reality of soviet society nonetheless.

Rank and file participation slowly degenerated throughout the history of the SU. But much argument in regards to this subject depends on whether one accepts the principles of democratic centralism as a form of workers' control of the state. Personally, I do not. The arguments are unoriginal and widely known so I don't feel like expounding on them.

[ñángara]

I think Mario Sousa (Swedish communist) tells in his text that there were more inmates in the American jails than in the Stalinist USSR www.eroj.org/comun/Sousa.pdf

[Comrade Jacob]

“It is difficult for me to imagine what “personal liberty” is enjoyed by an unemployed hungry person. True freedom can only be where there is no exploitation and oppression of one person by another; where there is not unemployment, and where a person is not living in fear of losing his job, his home and his bread. Only in such a society personal and any other freedom can exist for real and not on paper.” J. V. STALIN

[G4b3n]

“It is difficult for me to imagine what “personal liberty” is enjoyed by an unemployed hungry person. True freedom can only be where there is no exploitation and oppression of one person by another; where there is not unemployment, and where a person is not living in fear of losing his job, his home and his bread. Only in such a society personal and any other freedom can exist for real and not on paper.” J. V. STALIN

Considering the reality of the rank-and-file worker, who lived in abject poverty while the party showered privilege after privilege (radically increased wages, exclusive access to transport, as well as cultural functions and other things) upon the Stakhanovites, it is difficult to imagine the average SU worker feared losing his/her bread because there was so little of it. Now, your skilled and competitive worker, they had it pretty good, but similar things can be said of bourgeois society. I have met "workers" who's living standards resemble the most despicable of bourgeois, while workers one neighborhood over can't seem to figure out how to keep enough bread on the table.

[Left Voice]

It's curious really. I have a good friend here who is Ukrainian and is old enough to have lived through the latter period of Soviet rule. She's not a communist as such, or even particularly ideological - indeed, she benefits a lot from the greater opportunities for wealth and privilege now possible in capitalist Ukraine for the lucky few. Yet, she once told me that she never saw a homeless person until the fall of the Soviet Union, and unemployment simply wasn't a thing - indeed, there was no mechanism to deal with unemployment because you were always entitled to a job of sorts.

It was food for thought for me. I am an anti-authoritarian breed of communism, but I look at my own employment and family situation and would say that security is the most important thing for me with regards to being able to provide for my family. With that in mind, it's no wonder that some people who have not benefitted from the post-Soviet embrace of capitalism look back on the Soviet era of relative security with a certain element of nostalgia.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

What is interesting is that Soviet citizens had more power within their workplaces than in the political arena. Because of the Soviet commitment to full employment, it was hard to fire workers. And even if you were removed from a position you were guaranteed another one somewhere. You could actually complain about your boss or make fun of him/her quite openly. In fact, I would say Soviet workers had more power in the workplace than their capitalist counterparts.

In the political arena, freedom was very limited. There were outlets for satire such as the magazine Krokodil. But the masses in the USSR were effectively depoliticized and demobilized. The final collapse of the Soviet Union was the result of a power struggle between elites (where the pro-capitalist faction won) with little input from the populace which supported the maintenance of socialism and the Union.

Citation needed

[Mr. Piccolo]

Citation needed

Regarding the benefits of full employment in the USSR, David M. Kotz writes:



The socialist features of the system produced a number of secondary outcomes that socialists had always said would characterize socialism. It achieved full employment, avoiding one of the worst flaws of capitalism. Workers had significant rights and powers on the job, partly stemming from the condition of full employment. The constant pressure on enterprise managers to fulfill their output quota, in the context of a full employment economy, placed significant informal power in workers' hands.


Desperate to hold onto their workers, large Soviet enterprises provided all kinds of fringe benefits for workers, from kindergartens to health clinics to subsidized meals to cheap vacation resorts. It was difficult to make the workers work harder or faster than they wished, as Soviet managers often complained. Although workers were not sovereign in the Soviet enterprise, they had enormous job security in this paternalistic institution.

Source: http://people.umass.edu/dmkotz/Soc_and_Cap_Lessons_00.pdf

In that same paper Kotz also discusses the nature of the Soviet elite, what privileges they had and why and how the Soviet and Chinese elites overthrew socialism in their respective countries in favor of capitalism.

Krokodil was a satirical Soviet publican that sometimes lampooned the Soviet bureaucracy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krokodil

Some satirical cartoons:
http://webpage.pace.edu/nreagin/S2004HIS296K/IrinaVinokur/satire_artgallery.htm

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Yeah but he doesn't appear to cite a source for the assertion ether. It doesn't matter, I was specifically referring to the claim that people would be guaranteed a job if they lost one. I've read it was the opposite, getting black listed could be quite easy and would prevent you from finding work. On top of that, this would qualify one as a social parasite and entitle the state to extract labor from you for free in a camp. Anyway back to the bizarre nostalgia in this thread.

[Mr. Piccolo]

Yeah but he doesn't appear to cite a source for the assertion ether. It doesn't matter, I was specifically referring to the claim that people would be guaranteed a job if they lost one. I've read it was the opposite, getting black listed could be quite easy and would prevent you from finding work. On top of that, this would qualify one as a social parasite and entitle the state to extract labor from you for free in a camp. Anyway back to the bizarre nostalgia in this thread.

Are we talking about political dissidents or people being demoted or removed for incompetence? You are correct that political dissidents could be labelled social parasites and punished with hard labor.

I am not trying to argue that the USSR was without poverty or other problems, but generally speaking the policy of full employment gave Soviet workers a kind of freedom that comes with security under a paternalistic system.

Comrade Jacob's Stalin quote above is pretty apt, I think.

[consuming negativity]

Yeah but he doesn't appear to cite a source for the assertion ether. It doesn't matter, I was specifically referring to the claim that people would be guaranteed a job if they lost one. I've read it was the opposite, getting black listed could be quite easy and would prevent you from finding work. On top of that, this would qualify one as a social parasite and entitle the state to extract labor from you for free in a camp. Anyway back to the bizarre nostalgia in this thread.

employment was mandatory so i don't see how this would be possible, not that that makes it wrong

no matter where you are, to some extent, you're going to be reliant on the good will of others, though, so long as there is hierarchy and power relations

[Mr. Piccolo]

employment was mandatory so i don't see how this would be possible, not that that makes it wrong

no matter where you are, to some extent, you're going to be reliant on the good will of others, though, so long as there is hierarchy and power relations

Right, under Soviet law you had to work. Being an able-bodied, adult Soviet citizen and refusing to work was against the law. I do believe that this law was abused when the government went after political dissidents.