What Would your Socialist State Look Like?

[reviscom1]

The revolution has occurred, you are in government or something like it.

What would the country look like after your first five years in power?

[Rudolf]

Er, my politics can't be reduced to 'the wrong people are in government'. This imaginaryland where im in power will remain capitalist and i shall rule like you'd expect; in the interests of capital

[Alet]

The question assumes that the one "in power" constructs the society. They don't, that's why this is a purely scholastic question, a scenario detached from the real world. Individuals don't make history, masses do, as Althusser argues. Yet, nobody can tell what socialism will look like, not even the "early stages" of socialism - apart from banalities such as "dictatorship of the proletariat", "expropriation of private property owners", etc.

[reviscom1]

Huh?

[reviscom1]

The question assumes that the one "in power" constructs the society. They don't, that's why this is a purely scholastic question, a scenario detached from the real world. Individuals don't make history, masses do, as Althusser argues. Yet, nobody can tell what socialism will look like, not even the "early stages" of socialism - apart from banalities such as "dictatorship of the proletariat", "expropriation of private property owners", etc.

I was just trying to get a handle on the different models of Socialism out there today.

I only phrased it in terms of individuals as a simple route into that.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Well, first of all the question is unclear. Are we talking about socialism, the stateless, classless society that results from the global victory of the revolution, or the proletarian (semi-)state that results from a regional victory for the revolutionary forces in the context of world capitalism? There would be no government in socialism, and the transitional proletarian state can not be called socialist without doing violence to the term.

I don't think we can say nothing about socialism - indeed, if this were the case we would be in deep trouble as our struggle for a rational society would end up as some sort of faith-based enterprise. But it's not clear what you are interested in.

One thing we can definitely say is that socialism will dwarf capitalism when it comes to the scale and organisation of industrial production; it will be a massive industrial machine geared toward producing everything human beings need in abundance. As opposed to the localist illusion about socialism turning the clock back to the time when the circulation of goods could be kept within one small area, the socialist organs of production will make modern multinational corporations seem like small-town amateurs. Likewise, in order to satisfy human need the socialist society will plan, fully and thoroughly, in material terms (as there will be no money or other kind of universal equivalent) as opposed to slapdash "planning" of Stalinist states.

But it's not clear what you're asking.

[Comrade #138672]

What would the country look like after your first five years in power?A futuristic utopia.

So vote for me in the next democratic elections. I will take care of everything.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

"Mom's old-fashioned"? Filthy revisionist.

[Comrade #138672]

"Mom's old-fashioned"? Filthy revisionist.She backed my socialist campaign. Besides, what's wrong with market socialism? :lol:

[The Feral Underclass]

Guys, this isn't Chit-Chat.

It's also against the rules to post pictures outside of the appropriate forum.

[Comrade #138672]

Guys, this isn't Chit-Chat.

It's also against the rules to post pictures outside of the the appropriate forum.I removed the picture.

[Sentinel]

A verbal warning for going offtopic to Comrade #138672.

[Burzhuin]

Individuals don't make history, masses do, as Althusser argues. Yet, nobody can tell what socialism will look like, not even the "early stages" of socialism - apart from banalities such as "dictatorship of the proletariat", "expropriation of private property owners", etc.
I would not discard as "Individuals don't make history..." Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Fidel Castro Rus. Need I say more name?

Such "banalities" as "dictatorship of the proletariat" is a bases condition of Socialist Revolution. However "expropriation of private property owners" should be used to expropriate means of production, but I do not think in first five years you will kick people out of the houses, or take over small businesses such as Car Garages, Dry Cleanings, Shoe repair shops would be smart move.

[Guardia Rossa]

Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Fidel Castro

I wonder what would these people do if the wasn't a long evolution of forms of though that possibilited their theories, or if proletariat was not revolutionary at their times. More then surely, they would remain the nobody most of us are.

[reviscom1]

Well, first of all the question is unclear. Are we talking about socialism, the stateless, classless society that results from the global victory of the revolution, or the proletarian (semi-)state that results from a regional victory for the revolutionary forces in the context of world capitalism? There would be no government in socialism, and the transitional proletarian state can not be called socialist without doing violence to the term.

I don't think we can say nothing about socialism - indeed, if this were the case we would be in deep trouble as our struggle for a rational society would end up as some sort of faith-based enterprise. But it's not clear what you are interested in.

One thing we can definitely say is that socialism will dwarf capitalism when it comes to the scale and organisation of industrial production; it will be a massive industrial machine geared toward producing everything human beings need in abundance. As opposed to the localist illusion about socialism turning the clock back to the time when the circulation of goods could be kept within one small area, the socialist organs of production will make modern multinational corporations seem like small-town amateurs. Likewise, in order to satisfy human need the socialist society will plan, fully and thoroughly, in material terms (as there will be no money or other kind of universal equivalent) as opposed to slapdash "planning" of Stalinist states.

But it's not clear what you're asking.

That's why I specified "5 years later"

It is clear what I'm asking.

A revolution occurs.

Much though you dislike the concept of government and the elevation of individuals you are asked to act as Temporary Convenor of the Revolutionary Commune for a term of Five Years.

At the end of that Five Years, what will the country look like?

[Guardia Rossa]

At the end of that Five Years, what will the country look like?

It will look like wherever the conditions and the people led it to. Not an objective answer, but things never end up like you want them to.

But, if you want to know different theories of how will socialism work after the revolution, ask for theories of how will socialism work after the revolution.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

That's why I specified "5 years later"

It is clear what I'm asking.

A revolution occurs.

Much though you dislike the concept of government and the elevation of individuals you are asked to act as Temporary Convenor of the Revolutionary Commune for a term of Five Years.

At the end of that Five Years, what will the country look like?

That doesn't really answer my question. Are we talking about five years after the workers first rose up in Berlin, left the bourgeois government and parliament hanging on lampposts and started organising themselves for the defence of the revolution, or five years after the last capitalist enclave in Gorno-Badakhshan has been removed and capitalism has been eradicated from the globe? The use of the term "country" strongly suggests the former, but it makes sense to be sure before attempting to answer.

Also, personally I prefer the title "Lord Emperor of the Great Bydo Empire".

[reviscom1]

But, if you want to know different theories of how will socialism work after the revolution, ask for theories of how will socialism work after the revolution.

That's what I did.

For God's sake, you lot are hard work.

[reviscom1]

That doesn't really answer my question. Are we talking about five years after the workers first rose up in Berlin, left the bourgeois government and parliament hanging on lampposts and started organising themselves for the defence of the revolution,



Yes, that.

That's why I sad "the revolution has occurred.....at the end of five years what will the country look like?"

[Blake's Baby]

If after 5 years the revolution has only happened in one country, it will look like a state-capitalist barracks where people's standards of living are constrained, workers' rights don't exist, people are enjoined to suffer for their own good and a paranoid 'red dictatorship' controls most aspects of people's lives.

[reviscom1]

If after 5 years the revolution has only happened in one country, it will look like a state-capitalist barracks where people's standards of living are constrained, workers' rights don't exist, people are enjoined to suffer for their own good and a paranoid 'red dictatorship' controls most aspects of people's lives.

You think that a necessary stage? Inevitable? Desirable? Is that what you would strive towards yourself?

What would the country look like if the revolution had happened in more than one country after that time?

[Guardia Rossa]

Don't care about him that much, the whole world is in the exact same conditions as Russia and this is 1917 forever.

[RedSonRising]

I think we can all assume that the OP is asking what our ideal model of socialism looks like and how we'd like institutions to be setup, assuming we had a large influence on the engineering of a post-revolutionary society or there existed a large constituent of working class people making decisions who shared our preferences. Models are often tied to the politics of the struggle that created the revolution, but we don't know what that looks like yet.

I've wanted to make a thread like this for a while, as I've never had any strong tendency but was always shifting in preferences regarding a post-capitalist society.

My principal concerns are 1. how to avoid an oppressive bureaucracy, 2. how to best (or most safely?) tackle the transition from a market economy to a planned one, and 3. how to design the most democratic and functional organs of decision-making on different scales.

If I had to articulate the designs I think work best, I would nationalize major industries directly related to basic needs ("commanding heights" style I guess), centralizing what was easily managed on a national scale, and municipalizing local production and services for other things (food production, transport, etc.). Then I'd start converting small to medium scale businesses into co-ops, and create a federation of co-ops which joins co-ops of the same industry together as a sort of guild. As basic needs are provided for naturally by the state, competition between them becomes cooperation, and it might be possible that it is the market which "whithers away". I've seen this process operate to a limited extent within Argentina, of course in the context of existing capitalism, but it's an idea worth experimenting with.

Abolishing money and the market straight away would seem to some more of a committed tactic to ending capitalism so that it might never return, but the immediate institution of labor vouchers and fast-paced integration of firms to a national plan would be wrought with logistical disasters, and any kind of unexpected economic hiccup (or series of hiccups) that dramatically disrupts access to needed goods would only strengthen counter-revolutionary arguments.

I'm not married to these ideas, but my focus is empirical, looking at as many successful models and experiments of the past and currently we can so we might avoid crucial errors. They are born from a Marxist framework, but I try to never pigeonhole myself on a purely theoretical basis (consciously or subconsciously). The models which influenced my ideas the most, at least lately, have been Cuba (a state which has been able to provide for the basic needs of all it's citizens through a planning structure despite a crippling embargo), Anarchist Spain (which was able to democratize production without relying on a centralized state), and the Indian state of Kerala (which has the highest human development index and relies on a community planning model).

[Blake's Baby]

You think that a necessary stage? Inevitable? Desirable? Is that what you would strive towards yourself?

What would the country look like if the revolution had happened in more than one country after that time?

How many questions do you want to put in one post?

Is it a necessary stage of what? Is it a necessary stage of the failure of the revolution, no. It could be possible that the communists and a large chunk of the working class is massacred, and 'order is restored in Berlin' as Rosa put it 97 years ago.

Is it inevitable? Well, I think your original question is somewhat ambiguous, but if I read it right, then yes it is inevitable. A revolution confined to a single country that wants to be a 'red bastion' will inevitably be at war with the rest of the world for the 5 years you are asking about, in which situation it's pretty-much inevitable that a political-military caste will arise (probably from the 'red bureaucracy') in order to prosecute the world war. In the course of this, something like Trotsky's militarisation of labour is pretty much bound to occur, because there really isn't an alternative, as socialism in one country is not possible; a statised 'national' socialism (really a brutal form of state-capitalism) is the only likely result.

Desirable? Who in their right mind would desire such a thing?

Is that what I would strive towards? Obviously, I come a 'revolutionary leftist' forum because what I want is the failure of the revolution. I mean, seriously, are you high? This isn't the learning forum. Presumably you have some idea what you're talking about, what you're asking. Why on earth would anyone want the revolution to fail?




So, on to the only question that you pose that even makes any kind of sense (though not much) 'what would the country look like if the revolution had happened in more than one country after that time?'

You do know that communism is a classless stateless society without money or borders don't you?

If there are 'countries' then we haven't reached a communist society. So, if there are still countries, the world civil war is still going on. It would probably still be a bit of a brutal state-capitalist hell-hole, but there would be at least the possibility that the success of the world revolution would allow for something better in the future.

You do know that the notion you can have socialism in one country is the reason that the right says 'every experiment with socialism has produced a basket-case country', don't you? They're half right. Every leftist coup has produced a basket-case country. Doesn't disprove 'socialism', but it does disprove 'socialism in one country'.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

It would look like this. http://hellogiggles.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/17/candyland-board-candy-land-35166496-600-457.jpg

[reviscom1]

How many questions do you want to put in one post?

Is it a necessary stage of what? Is it a necessary stage of the failure of the revolution, no. It could be possible that the communists and a large chunk of the working class is massacred, and 'order is restored in Berlin' as Rosa put it 97 years ago.

Is it inevitable? Well, I think your original question is somewhat ambiguous, but if I read it right, then yes it is inevitable. A revolution confined to a single country that wants to be a 'red bastion' will inevitably be at war with the rest of the world for the 5 years you are asking about, in which situation it's pretty-much inevitable that a political-military caste will arise (probably from the 'red bureaucracy') in order to prosecute the world war. In the course of this, something like Trotsky's militarisation of labour is pretty much bound to occur, because there really isn't an alternative, as socialism in one country is not possible; a statised 'national' socialism (really a brutal form of state-capitalism) is the only likely result.

Desirable? Who in their right mind would desire such a thing?

Is that what I would strive towards? Obviously, I come a 'revolutionary leftist' forum because what I want is the failure of the revolution. I mean, seriously, are you high? This isn't the learning forum. Presumably you have some idea what you're talking about, what you're asking. Why on earth would anyone want the revolution to fail?




So, on to the only question that you pose that even makes any kind of sense (though not much) 'what would the country look like if the revolution had happened in more than one country after that time?'

You do know that communism is a classless stateless society without money or borders don't you?

If there are 'countries' then we haven't reached a communist society. So, if there are still countries, the world civil war is still going on. It would probably still be a bit of a brutal state-capitalist hell-hole, but there would be at least the possibility that the success of the world revolution would allow for something better in the future.

You do know that the notion you can have socialism in one country is the reason that the right says 'every experiment with socialism has produced a basket-case country', don't you? They're half right. Every leftist coup has produced a basket-case country. Doesn't disprove 'socialism', but it does disprove 'socialism in one country'.

Oh for goodness' sake!

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU WERE IN POWER?????!!!!!!

And please don't give me a dictionary definition of the word "power"

Are you trying to give me a migraine or something?

[Emmett Till]

Oh for goodness' sake!

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU WERE IN POWER?????!!!!!!

And please don't give me a dictionary definition of the word "power"

Are you trying to give me a migraine or something?

Depends on the circumstances. Our only example is the USSR, so at first glance we might find ourselves doing similar things to what the Bolsheviks were up to in 1922.

So what did Lenin want to do then? Continue rebuilding from the rubble, misery and starvation left over from the civil war, continue with concessions to capitalism to help that along, restrict factionalism and opposition parties seeing them as creating the danger of collapse of workers rule and restoration of capitalism, emphasize spreading the revolution, and fire Stalin as general secretary of the party.

In better circumstances, better things could be done. A few years later Trotsky and the rest of the Left Opposition (Lenin from his deathbed had failed to get rid of Stalin, Trotsky unfortunately had not seen the importance) wanted to restore internal party democracy and end the ban on factions, industrialize Russia, start planning for voluntary collectivization of agriculture, and broaden internal democracy in the unions and the soviets.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1927/opposition/

But that's Russia in the 1920s, and presumably things would be different meaning different things if workers seize the power now. Exactly how different depends on circumstances.

Not necessarily better however. Given the immense technological developments in methods of killing huge numbers of people and destroying the landscape that have been developed, conceivably the ruins on the rubble of allout civil war could be in worse shape than Russia in 1922.

OTOH, that's where we're all headed anyway if the workers do not take the power away from the capitalists. Workers revolution at least gives the human race a chance to survive.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Yes, that.

That's why I sad "the revolution has occurred.....at the end of five years what will the country look like?"

Ah, but you also asked what our "socialist" state would look like. And, splitting hairs over whether the state is "ours" in any way aside, a state can not be socialist. Socialism, for us, is the classless society where the means of production are controlled by the entire society and employed according to a scientific plan to satisfy human need. The state, an excrescence of class society, has long since withered away in this scenario.

And I don't think you can get a good grasp on what socialists wants by asking about the transitional period between the revolution breaking out in one or more regions of the globe and the world victory of socialism. This is the period of civil war and two contradictory regulators of productive activity existing side-to-side. It is necessary for socialism to replace capitalism, but it is not itself socialism, it's not the sort of society we want (only a truly disturbed person would want to live in the middle of a civil war). A lot of its features will be unpleasant, some extremely so.

I also agree with Blake's Baby here; if in five years the revolution has remained isolated, we're in deep shit. Now we're not pointing this out to be pricks and complicate matters, but because people sometimes have this strange vision of a mostly peaceful and prolonged transitional period, or even make the transitional period their goal and socialism some sort of distant dream.

But, alright: how will the transitional period be? In a very real sense it's impossible to answer the question on this level of generality, because the proletariat needs to address the specific features of each region of the world. Surely no one would think that the agriculture in the US will at first be run exactly the same as agriculture in backward Croatia or Tajikistan. Nonetheless we can say some things with certainty.

The proletariat, in the transitional period, would be the ruling class, the last ruling class and the last revolutionary class in human history. It would carry its dictatorship over other classes and strata, as all classes have, via the state - a proletarian state. Only, with the state in the hands of the dispossessed labourers struggling to abolish themselves as a class, instead of a minority of exploiters, it would be a qualitatively different kind of state - Lenin calls this a semi-state.

What would this semi-state concern itself with? First and foremost it would fight to preserve and extend the revolution. A state, after all, is ultimately a machine for cracking heads. We want the heads to be cracked to be those of counter-revolutionaries. This would not be like bourgeois "justice"; it will be, in a manner, like bourgeois war. In Russia, it was said that the CheKa doesn't judge; the CheKa strikes. Depending on the region of the world and the concrete situation the proletarian state finds itself in, this violence will be more or less severe. Obviously we want as little violence as possible, but sometimes a bold and clean cut is preferable to an insecure and halting one. Ideally, this violence will be carried out by the proletarian militia; the proletariat organised as one armed body. In Russian and other languages, militsiya has come to mean "police", but our militia would not be a police force but the internal army of the republic of labour.

This is of course in an ideal situation. But the thing is, there are no ideal civil wars. The revolutionary area might need things like the Red Army, conscription, even an officer corps whose social origins are mostly alien to the proletariat to drag a peasant army into battle.

Next, the semi-state needs to secure the physical reproduction of the existing proletariat; for that reason it will provide necessary goods and services to the proletariat. Why, it will even feed the former bourgeoisie, provided of course they fulfill the labour obligations it will impose on them as a way of breaking them as a class. Earlier, we have had need for some kind of commissariat of war; now we can add a commissariat of welfare.

Finally, the semi-state, more as a reflection of its claim to represent the entire society in the revolutionary region, must organise the economy. Here, ideally, we want to have as much as possible the same arrangement as in socialism: production units under the control of society (here represented by the semi-state), which means they will be expropriated from the bourgeoisie (and from the bourgeois state, which will have been smashed in the revolution), and run according to a scientific plan to fulfill human need. Ideally, we would want the law of planning to be the only regulator of economic activity.

But this is impossible. The revolutionary area will have to import goods to feed, clothe etc. its citizens and to keep its industries running. And it will have to export goods to obtain currency to allow it to import another day. So alongside the law of planning there will exist the incompatible law of value. The economy of the transitional semi-state is an impossible compromise, and certainly can't last long. To absorb the shock of participating in the world market, there will be around the statified and planned core of the transitional economy the protective shell of the state monopoly on foreign trade.

But the law of value will also create petty capitalist producers, and perhaps it will be imprudent to immediately expropriate all of them. In that case we will need to set the credit and price policy (prices would still exist at this stage, as the law of value would still operate; contrast this to socialism where neither prices, value or markets would exist) to ruin them completely, to rid ourselves of all "third persons" except the bourgeoisie, here hopefully only the bourgeoisie outside the proletarian state, and the proletariat.

The statified core of the economy will probably be run much as it was in Russia in Military Communism, albeit with a true planning organ and not the slapdash Soviet of Labour and Defence. The day-to-day management of the production units will be done by managers appointed and overseen by certain large-scale organisations succeeding the corporations and trusts of capitalist society, under the ultimate supervision of a central proletarian organ (much like the Supreme Soviet of the People's Economy). Production targets and prices will be decided by the central organs themselves on recommendation of technical planning bodies. Workers will most likely want to form their own supervisory bodies. That is good. It would even be good if these were substantially independent of the semi-state albeit integrated in its workings.

Now, this might sound grim - and it is, as I said, it corresponds to the period of civil war. Yet this semi-state will also be the freest state in human history, surpassed only by the stateless socialist society that it must lead to or degenerate. There will be no laws against consensual sexual behaviour or things like abortion, the power of the religious organisations will have been crushed, the aristocratic officer corps and the army it leads hopefully abolished.

How is the power of the proletariat to be organised? Again, I don't know in abstract. We expect the institutions of workers' power to be collegial and to be working institutions instead of talk-shops that rely on other organs to carry their decisions out. But what they will be, we can't say in general. In Russia they were soviets. In other cases, workers' councils. Who knows what organs of proletarian state power history will bear out?

Finally, I don't think these will really be democratic in the sense in which we use the word today. Not that the masses will not participate in the working of the state; they have to, otherwise the proletarian state will not accomplish anything. But instead of seeking 50%+1 votes on the principle of "one man, one vote", I would expect the transitional society, like socialism after it, to seek consensus, even to guide the formation of that consensus toward a progressive and harmonious resolution of social conflicts, to be "organic" in the sense that it recognises each individual worker's specific circumstances and that part of the aggregate knowledge of the human species they bring to the discussion, and so on.

[Blake's Baby]

Oh for goodness' sake!

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU WERE IN POWER?????!!!!!!

And please don't give me a dictionary definition of the word "power"

Are you trying to give me a migraine or something?

I'm trying to get you to formulate your question in a reasonable way.

How do you think revolutions happen? What do you think the process of the working class overthrowing capitalism will be?

[Sewer Socialist]

I'm trying to get you to formulate your question in a reasonable way.

How do you think revolutions happen? What do you think the process of the working class overthrowing capitalism will be?

Obviously, everyone writes what their socialist state will look like on a piece of paper, then we vote on what the best one is, and then the winning author is the communist autarch.

[reviscom1]

Like this:

http://revolutioniscoming.moonfruit.com/all-articles/4590662738/Countdown-to-Revolution/10262125

http://revolutioniscoming.moonfruit.com/all-articles/4590662738/Social-Democracy/10343544

[Emmett Till]

...
Next, the semi-state needs to secure the physical reproduction of the existing proletariat; for that reason it will provide necessary goods and services to the proletariat. Why, it will even feed the former bourgeoisie, provided of course they fulfill the labour obligations it will impose on them as a way of breaking them as a class. Earlier, we have had need for some kind of commissariat of war; now we can add a commissariat of welfare.

We want to abolish classes, not by punishing the members of the former ruling classes for their social heritage, but by abolishing class privileges, as soon as possible. Many members of the former bourgeoisie would be not just coupon clippers but have useful skills that are not necessarily ubiquitous among workers. In the USSR engineers, professors and even bankers and such willing to work for the proletarian state, and even in backward Tsarist Russia many were, necessarily were not merely confined to bread rations but even allowed to retain certain social privileges in the transitional period. And necessarily so.


....
But the law of value will also create petty capitalist producers, and perhaps it will be imprudent to immediately expropriate all of them. In that case we will need to set the credit and price policy (prices would still exist at this stage, as the law of value would still operate; contrast this to socialism where neither prices, value or markets would exist) to ruin them completely, to rid ourselves of all "third persons" except the bourgeoisie, here hopefully only the bourgeoisie outside the proletarian state, and the proletariat....

I think immediately expropriating all of them, or even many of them, would probably be highly unwise.

We won't want to "ruin" them, but rather prevent through tax policy etc. small proprietors evolving into dangerous NEPmen and kulaks rich enough to subvert proletarian state authorities or use economic muscle against the proletarian state. We would seek to get the small proprietors combine into state-regulated production cooperatives as a step towards voluntary socialization.


...
How is the power of the proletariat to be organised? Again, I don't know in abstract. We expect the institutions of workers' power to be collegial and to be working institutions instead of talk-shops that rely on other organs to carry their decisions out. But what they will be, we can't say in general. In Russia they were soviets. In other cases, workers' councils. Who knows what organs of proletarian state power history will bear out?

Finally, I don't think these will really be democratic in the sense in which we use the word today. Not that the masses will not participate in the working of the state; they have to, otherwise the proletarian state will not accomplish anything. But instead of seeking 50%+1 votes on the principle of "one man, one vote", I would expect the transitional society, like socialism after it, to seek consensus, even to guide the formation of that consensus toward a progressive and harmonious resolution of social conflicts, to be "organic" in the sense that it recognises each individual worker's specific circumstances and that part of the aggregate knowledge of the human species they bring to the discussion, and so on.

Here my disagreements are more than ones of emphasis. The idea of Soviet democracy as opposed to bourgeois is that it is, to use the old New Left phrase, "participatory," with delegates instantly recallable and the masses involved to the maximum degree possible in the state.

And yes, forget about "consensus," that was the New Left delusion resurrected by Occupy. The main characteristic will be decision making through debate, polemic, and yes votes, where the position with 50%+1 of the votes is followed until reversed. Not referenda, but after nationwide debate at all levels, with a final vote in the Supreme Soviet.

I even expect, once counterrevolution is sufficiently crushed to make this safe, to see a multiparty system. The Bolsheviks did not suppress the opposition parties because they believed in a one party system, quite the contrary. They suppressed the opposition parties because they all, in one fashion or another, wanted to go back to capitalism, and being that the Revolution was isolated in a single country, the risk that workers could "democratically" support such parties was objective.

Actually, all multi-party systems rely on the parties being ultimately loyal to the rule of the ruling class. America did not adopt a multi-party system until it became clear that both the Federalists and Jefferson's "Democratic-Republicans" were basically loyal to the state that came out of the American Revolution, just like the Whigs and Tories in 18th century England were fundamentlly loyal to the post 1689 "Glorious Revolution" parliamentary rule. Before then, England was in a state of on and off civil war for decades, and the Federalists did their best to suppress Jefferson's party.

Similarly, a multiparty proletarian democracy could only allow counterrevolutionary parties, and any party not socialist at least would have to be counterrevolutionary almost by definition, the same degree of suspicious partial toleration that "bourgeois democracies" give to Communist parties, and only when they are not dangerous to the rule of the dominant class. Just like in America or Europe now.

But there is ample room for debate and disagreement sufficient to form different parties under workers rule. Hell, the disagreements between my speculations and yours on economics might be strong enough to justify different factions or even different parties.

My longtime speculation about what a logical two party system for the World Soviet would be, when we get to that point, would be one party wanting to more strongly emphasize rapid economic development to equalize living standards vs. a party wanting more to emphasize dealing with global warming, preventing ecological collapse, etc.

[reviscom1]

My own view on the question of post revolutionary capitalist parties is that for the revolution to happen, Capitalism would have to be so discredited that any Capitalist parties would be a total irrelevance anyway, kind of like the Flat Earth Society.

Also, I am not sure that in the modern world it is terribly useful to make a distinction between "workers" and "professionals", only "employees" and "employers" (am writing an article on that at the moment)

[Emmett Till]

My own view on the question of post revolutionary capitalist parties is that for the revolution to happen, Capitalism would have to be so discredited that any Capitalist parties would be a total irrelevance anyway, kind of like the Flat Earth Society.

Also, I am not sure that in the modern world it is terribly useful to make a distinction between "workers" and "professionals", only "employees" and "employers" (am writing an article on that at the moment)

The distinction is indeed terribly useful. Professionals .... tend to think of themselves as professionals and not workers. True of the ones I know. Some are being proletarianised, like high school teachers and even "frequent flyer" adjunct professors.

But doctors, lawyers, engineers, Silicon Valley computer geeks etc. are not workers, don't think of themselves as workers, and may or may not side with the workers when they rise up. In fact, they usually won't.

As for the revolution only happening if capitalism gets so discredited that nobody would like it, will never happen as such until way after successful revolutions.

Instead as capitalist crisis advances, it's not that people discover that capitalism stinks and socialism is the answer, rather you get polarization, with some people going left and others going right. The rise of socialism goes hand in hand with, on the other side, the rise of fascism and other extreme right movements.

In fact, that's exactly what is happening now, at least the rise in right wing movements like fascism. Greece is sorta the "vanguard," with the Golden Dawn on one side and leftward motion on the other. Though SYRIZA and most of the Greek left have done everything they can to make sure that fascism will win out, matters are far from settled.

[reviscom1]

The distinction is indeed terribly useful. Professionals .... tend to think of themselves as professionals and not workers. True of the ones I know. Some are being proletarianised, like high school teachers and even "frequent flyer" adjunct professors.

But doctors, lawyers, engineers, Silicon Valley computer geeks etc. are not workers, don't think of themselves as workers, and may or may not side with the workers when they rise up. In fact, they usually won't.



But workers see themselves as professionals also. There is less of a divide between those 2 groups than there used to be in Marx's day.

Plus, workers are less exploited, more transient, work in smaller workplaces, are more easily able to move into management and are required to have a broader set of skills.

They are not oppressed and exploited victims like what they used to be. Nor are they looked down upon so much by the other classes. It seems to me that these and other factors are too much ignored by the Marxist left, who still talk about "Workers" as if they have exactly the same characterisitics that they did in the 1880s.

It is not factory workers rising up that will destroy capitalism, but everyone rising up in reaction to societal and economic breakdown caused by Capitalism's inefficiencies and contradictions.

That breakdown, by the way, is also the thing that will irrevocably discredit capitalism, not the actions of revolutionaries or Marxist Political Parties.

It may (just) be that a siginificant section of the population will respond by going right, not left, but if so it will be a statist, populist right not the capitalist right.

[blake 3:17]

One thing we can definitely say is that socialism will dwarf capitalism when it comes to the scale and organisation of industrial production; it will be a massive industrial machine geared toward producing everything human beings need in abundance. As opposed to the localist illusion about socialism turning the clock back to the time when the circulation of goods could be kept within one small area, the socialist organs of production will make modern multinational corporations seem like small-town amateurs. Likewise, in order to satisfy human need the socialist society will plan, fully and thoroughly, in material terms (as there will be no money or other kind of universal equivalent) as opposed to slapdash "planning" of Stalinist states.

So socialism will be a giant industrial machine spewing out commodities that perfectly suit human need in a planned way, but one that isn't slapdash. It will be based on some perfect knowledge of the Whole, not backwaters where people might actually know what they're doing.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

We want to abolish classes, not by punishing the members of the former ruling classes for their social heritage, but by abolishing class privileges, as soon as possible. Many members of the former bourgeoisie would be not just coupon clippers but have useful skills that are not necessarily ubiquitous among workers. In the USSR engineers, professors and even bankers and such willing to work for the proletarian state, and even in backward Tsarist Russia many were, necessarily were not merely confined to bread rations but even allowed to retain certain social privileges in the transitional period. And necessarily so.

Sure, but my point was not that the classless society will be attained by starving the (former) bourgeoisie. That would be a monstrously stupid approach. Rather, the point is that the former bourgeoisie need to be integrated into the new society, and whatever remains of their social power and cohesion and their ability to form counterrevolutionary plots needs to be destroyed. A universal labour obligation would do that. Of course, the proletarian state, depending on the extent to which the revolutionary party has been able to draw to itself members of the intelligentsia (in the sixties, for example, the various propaganda groups had many excellent economists - even Mandel, the centrist for all seasons, could write well on economics when he wasn't trying to explain away the many failures of his outfit), will have need for bourgeois intelligenty (that is, those members of the intelligentsia who currently enjoy the material perquisites of capitalist society) and sometimes even outright members of the bourgeoisie, to act as engineers, managers, executives etc. These people will obviously have fulfilled their labour obligation.


I think immediately expropriating all of them, or even many of them, would probably be highly unwise.

That surely depends on what region of the world we're talking about. It would be suicide in India, for example. In Italy, where the agricultural sector is dominated by fairly efficient capitalist enterprise, it would be easy to expropriate these large holdings and turn them into state farms, and to expropriate what remains of the perpetually declining Italian small agricultural producer.


We won't want to "ruin" them, but rather prevent through tax policy etc. small proprietors evolving into dangerous NEPmen and kulaks rich enough to subvert proletarian state authorities or use economic muscle against the proletarian state. We would seek to get the small proprietors combine into state-regulated production cooperatives as a step towards voluntary socialization.

But the danger posed by kulaks and similar groups is not the only problem when it comes to petty commodity production, including petty agricultural production. Such petty production is an indicator of economic backwardness; a "pure" capitalism would have already eradicated it in favour of large combines and trusts, but ours is not a "pure" capitalism of the sort discussed in Capital but capitalism that has to rely on pre-capitalist atavisms, both to increase profits and to shore itself up against capital. Therefore the development of the productive forces requires the petty proprietor to go. We could do him in administratively, or through tax, loan etc. policies.


Here my disagreements are more than ones of emphasis. The idea of Soviet democracy as opposed to bourgeois is that it is, to use the old New Left phrase, "participatory," with delegates instantly recallable and the masses involved to the maximum degree possible in the state.

And yes, forget about "consensus," that was the New Left delusion resurrected by Occupy. The main characteristic will be decision making through debate, polemic, and yes votes, where the position with 50%+1 of the votes is followed until reversed. Not referenda, but after nationwide debate at all levels, with a final vote in the Supreme Soviet.

I even expect, once counterrevolution is sufficiently crushed to make this safe, to see a multiparty system. The Bolsheviks did not suppress the opposition parties because they believed in a one party system, quite the contrary. They suppressed the opposition parties because they all, in one fashion or another, wanted to go back to capitalism, and being that the Revolution was isolated in a single country, the risk that workers could "democratically" support such parties was objective.

Actually, all multi-party systems rely on the parties being ultimately loyal to the rule of the ruling class. America did not adopt a multi-party system until it became clear that both the Federalists and Jefferson's "Democratic-Republicans" were basically loyal to the state that came out of the American Revolution, just like the Whigs and Tories in 18th century England were fundamentlly loyal to the post 1689 "Glorious Revolution" parliamentary rule. Before then, England was in a state of on and off civil war for decades, and the Federalists did their best to suppress Jefferson's party.

Similarly, a multiparty proletarian democracy could only allow counterrevolutionary parties, and any party not socialist at least would have to be counterrevolutionary almost by definition, the same degree of suspicious partial toleration that "bourgeois democracies" give to Communist parties, and only when they are not dangerous to the rule of the dominant class. Just like in America or Europe now.

But there is ample room for debate and disagreement sufficient to form different parties under workers rule. Hell, the disagreements between my speculations and yours on economics might be strong enough to justify different factions or even different parties.

My longtime speculation about what a logical two party system for the World Soviet would be, when we get to that point, would be one party wanting to more strongly emphasize rapid economic development to equalize living standards vs. a party wanting more to emphasize dealing with global warming, preventing ecological collapse, etc.

Ah, but I'm not talking about the Occupy model of "consensus", which can ultimately be traced to the Quakers (much like Richard Nixon, I am given to understand), and where 39 999 people can vote for one option and have it blocked by one person. Of course some are going to disagree with whatever course of action is chosen. But 50%+1 does not, I think, provide a solid basis for going forward. Majorities are fickle things - one day you have it, the other day you've lost it. And it still means a large segment of the population disagrees with the decided-upon policy. That is far from optimal. I think we should aim for the sort of "broad consensus" that one sees in science - i.e. it's not that you won't find people, even bona fide scientists, that question Darwinian evolution or whatever, but there is still a consensus on these issues - they have such support that any opposition is marginal and inconsequential. This consensus is something that needs to be built, and that is an active process. Sure, this means decisions will take longer to reach, but once they're made, we have a firm basis on which to proceed. This is particularly important in socialism, where no one can force an individual to do something they do not agree with (and a 50%+1 vote leaves us with something like 50%-1 people displeased).

The party in the usual sense (i.e. not the political organ of the proletariat leading it in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism) is a creature of bourgeois society, I would say. I would no more expect to see a Socialist-Communist People's Party and a Communist-Socialist Popular Party in socialism or the transitional period than I would expect to see old feudal "parties" (Burgundian party, Woodwilles etc.) in capitalism. Nonetheless, I imagine people will still organise around certain platforms. Only it will probably all be more fluid. I might organise with the Rally Against Decency around some issues and with the Drunk Drivers Against Mothers on others.


So socialism will be a giant industrial machine spewing out commodities that perfectly suit human need in a planned way, but one that isn't slapdash. It will be based on some perfect knowledge of the Whole, not backwaters where people might actually know what they're doing.

Well, yes, it will be an industrial machine, the largest this planet has seen as of yet. Only it won't produce - or "spew out" - commodities, as the goods it produces will be freely available to all and will not be sold on the market. Indeed there will be no market. It doesn't require "perfect knowledge" but things we can do today - things like monitoring consumption, population patterns, using numeric models and so on. People in backwaters can't "know what they're doing" in the sense of predicting future need because they don't have the entire information. Unless you live in an area where people consume everything they produce locally and don't have access to goods originating outside "their" locale, in which case, good grief, life must be tough in Trudeau's Canada.

[Emmett Till]

Sure, but my point was not that the classless society will be attained by starving the (former) bourgeoisie. That would be a monstrously stupid approach. Rather, the point is that the former bourgeoisie need to be integrated into the new society, and whatever remains of their social power and cohesion and their ability to form counterrevolutionary plots needs to be destroyed. A universal labour obligation would do that. Of course, the proletarian state, depending on the extent to which the revolutionary party has been able to draw to itself members of the intelligentsia (in the sixties, for example, the various propaganda groups had many excellent economists - even Mandel, the centrist for all seasons, could write well on economics when he wasn't trying to explain away the many failures of his outfit), will have need for bourgeois intelligenty (that is, those members of the intelligentsia who currently enjoy the material perquisites of capitalist society) and sometimes even outright members of the bourgeoisie, to act as engineers, managers, executives etc. These people will obviously have fulfilled their labour obligation.

OK, that works. Certainly there needs to be a universal labor obligation for those in good health and of working age.




That surely depends on what region of the world we're talking about. It would be suicide in India, for example. In Italy, where the agricultural sector is dominated by fairly efficient capitalist enterprise, it would be easy to expropriate these large holdings and turn them into state farms, and to expropriate what remains of the perpetually declining Italian small agricultural producer.

Inefficient small holdings in places like Italy do need to be consolidated into larger and more efficient ones with better technology, but cooperativization as a transitional stage is a much much better idea than simple expropriation, as who would run them? Bringing in urban outsiders to run seized land could be Zimbabwe all over again, even if it is workers rather than black capitalists running things into the ground.

Even Stalin understood that, the collective farms were not state farms but cooperatives, in theory though not in practice run by the peasants not state officials. Formally at any rate.



But the danger posed by kulaks and similar groups is not the only problem when it comes to petty commodity production, including petty agricultural production. Such petty production is an indicator of economic backwardness; a "pure" capitalism would have already eradicated it in favour of large combines and trusts, but ours is not a "pure" capitalism of the sort discussed in Capital but capitalism that has to rely on pre-capitalist atavisms, both to increase profits and to shore itself up against capital. Therefore the development of the productive forces requires the petty proprietor to go. We could do him in administratively, or through tax, loan etc. policies.

Large units in farming are not always ideal. To be precise, they work better for wheat and other grains, where tractors and harvesters can cover huge areas efficiently, but not well at all for fruits and vegetables, which are after all healthier, and hopefully you'll have more of that and less grain production when the workers are in charge than under capitalism.

In California, the most advanced and efficient food producer in the world, much land in fact has been run by capitalist cooperatives of small farmers, like Diamond Walnut, which was finally legally converted from a member-owned cooperative into a corporation in 2005.

Sunkist, the largest and most efficient and technologically advanced fruit growing outfit on earth, still has the cooperative structure, and prides itself on being a "non-profit cooperative." The structure curiously enough formally has something in common with Soviet collective farms, though the reality was certainly different, to say the least.

https://www.sunkist.com/about-us/?doing_wp_cron=1450835896.9095818996429443359375

In fact, California farming was and is absolutely famous for its mistreatment of the actual farmworkers. "Grapes of Wrath," you know? Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the grape boycott?

How was this avoided in the USSR? By the law forbidding farmers from hiring farmworkers on a permanent basis, which was abolished in 1925 under Bukharin's influence and then restored under Stalin's a few years later.

If the small Italian growers are forbidden from hiring farmworkers, then surely they would be willing to join cooperatives voluntarily, provided proper state support is provided, and those cooperatives could go over fairly smoothly to full blown collective "state farms," something that never fully ever happened in the USSR. No need for expropriation whatsoever, unlike in California.




Ah, but I'm not talking about the Occupy model of "consensus", which can ultimately be traced to the Quakers (much like Richard Nixon, I am given to understand), and where 39 999 people can vote for one option and have it blocked by one person. Of course some are going to disagree with whatever course of action is chosen. But 50%+1 does not, I think, provide a solid basis for going forward. Majorities are fickle things - one day you have it, the other day you've lost it. And it still means a large segment of the population disagrees with the decided-upon policy. That is far from optimal. I think we should aim for the sort of "broad consensus" that one sees in science - i.e. it's not that you won't find people, even bona fide scientists, that question Darwinian evolution or whatever, but there is still a consensus on these issues - they have such support that any opposition is marginal and inconsequential. This consensus is something that needs to be built, and that is an active process. Sure, this means decisions will take longer to reach, but once they're made, we have a firm basis on which to proceed. This is particularly important in socialism, where no one can force an individual to do something they do not agree with (and a 50%+1 vote leaves us with something like 50%-1 people displeased).

Well, this would be possible when we have a fullblown socialist society and the state no longer exists, so there would be no Soviets and no votes. But a workers state is a "bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie," and will need to use the best capitalist method, i.e. democracy and majority votes.

Otherwise, instead of the absurd Occupy model of never being able to do anything until anyone agrees, you get the only slightly less absurd situation of never being able to do anything until you get the vast majority agreeing. This would paralyze society almost as much.

Yes indeed, this means frequent policy changes as narrow majorities flickers back and forth. This is a good thing not a bad, as it is only through practice that one really finds out what is right and what is wrong. Praxis makes perfect you know.

Nixon by the way was a lousy Quaker, thoroughly repudiated during his Presidency by the Quakers, the most anti-war major religious sect in America.


The party in the usual sense (i.e. not the political organ of the proletariat leading it in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism) is a creature of bourgeois society, I would say. I would no more expect to see a Socialist-Communist People's Party and a Communist-Socialist Popular Party in socialism or the transitional period than I would expect to see old feudal "parties" (Burgundian party, Woodwilles etc.) in capitalism. Nonetheless, I imagine people will still organise around certain platforms. Only it will probably all be more fluid. I might organise with the Rally Against Decency around some issues and with the Drunk Drivers Against Mothers on others....



Parties are how a class conscious class expresses itself. Feudalism had no political parties, only cliques and factions, as a politically unified feudal class as such never existed. For a good model of how feudalism actually worked, watch the Godfather movies, or Game of Thrones. The first and only unified political expression of feudalism was the absolute monarchs like Louis XIV, in some ways a transitional stage to capitalism, who created a unified feudal political entity by subordinating all feudal lords to themselves personally, killing considerable numbers of them in the process.

A working class with no political party is merely a class in itself, not a class for itself. So as long as the working class exists, it will have at least one party, or it will not be a class for itself. Conceivably one could have a single party with multiple internal factions, but that only works if the party is not structured in democratic centralist terms, and the different factions have freedom to campaign for their ideas in front of the working class and run against each other in Soviet elections. In which case they are really different parties.

As for me, I am a charter member of the male auxiliary of DAM, Mothers Against Dyslexia.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

OK, that works. Certainly there needs to be a universal labor obligation for those in good health and of working age.

Yes, obviously I didn't mean to suggest that old age pensioners or the ill would be forced to dig ditches. That might earn us the admiration of those who yearn for a tough, manly "Jacobin revolution", but it would also earn us the hatred of workers who are revolted with the way present society treats the old, the ill and the disabled - which should hopefully be most of our comrades.

Generally, if the circumstances permit the proletarian state will be generous to those it defeats - except, I imagine, to social-democrats, pogromists and depending on the area religious authorities.


Inefficient small holdings in places like Italy do need to be consolidated into larger and more efficient ones with better technology, but cooperativization as a transitional stage is a much much better idea than simple expropriation, as who would run them? Bringing in urban outsiders to run seized land could be Zimbabwe all over again, even if it is workers rather than black capitalists running things into the ground.

But here I would object that you already answered this, yourself - we would bring in successful managers and executives from capitalist agribusiness. I imagine many of the Parmalat (this was the first company I thought of, which might have to do with me currently drinking one of their awful canned coffee drinks to stay awake) managers and executives know how to run large-scale farming, when they're not committing financial fraud, and we would probably annex some of these small holdings to surrounding large-scale operations, and group others together and send managers from Parmalat and similar companies to oversee them, just as the Bolsheviks did with the glavky and tsentry.


Even Stalin understood that, the collective farms were not state farms but cooperatives, in theory though not in practice run by the peasants not state officials. Formally at any rate.

Yes, but the kolkhozes were always a bit strange and problematic. As I recall it, sovkhozes had much larger productivity, and eventually of course the distinction was all but erased, with the kolkhozes becoming sovkhozes in all but name.


Large units in farming are not always ideal. To be precise, they work better for wheat and other grains, where tractors and harvesters can cover huge areas efficiently, but not well at all for fruits and vegetables, which are after all healthier, and hopefully you'll have more of that and less grain production when the workers are in charge than under capitalism.

In California, the most advanced and efficient food producer in the world, much land in fact has been run by capitalist cooperatives of small farmers, like Diamond Walnut, which was finally legally converted from a member-owned cooperative into a corporation in 2005.

Sunkist, the largest and most efficient and technologically advanced fruit growing outfit on earth, still has the cooperative structure, and prides itself on being a "non-profit cooperative." The structure curiously enough formally has something in common with Soviet collective farms, though the reality was certainly different, to say the least.

https://www.sunkist.com/about-us/?doing_wp_cron=1450835896.9095818996429443359375

In fact, California farming was and is absolutely famous for its mistreatment of the actual farmworkers. "Grapes of Wrath," you know? Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the grape boycott?

How was this avoided in the USSR? By the law forbidding farmers from hiring farmworkers on a permanent basis, which was abolished in 1925 under Bukharin's influence and then restored under Stalin's a few years later.

If the small Italian growers are forbidden from hiring farmworkers, then surely they would be willing to join cooperatives voluntarily, provided proper state support is provided, and those cooperatives could go over fairly smoothly to full blown collective "state farms," something that never fully ever happened in the USSR. No need for expropriation whatsoever, unlike in California.

Alright, so there's a lot to unpack here, and I'm probably going to miss some things but it's midnight, and my stomach is ruined from having watched the news. It's not just grains (which are surely a dietary staple in most regions of the world) that have very visible economies of scale, but also most industrial crops, many vegetables (potatoes for example) and so on. When it comes to fruit, first of all the apparent lack of economies of scale is a result of insufficient mechanisation of the process - in most fruits and nuts. Not so when it comes to e.g. hazelnuts. But we certainly can't expect that oranges will continue to be picked by hand forever. The process could probably be mechanised now, but we're at the point when further mechanisation is unfavourable to capitalists.

Second, there are still economies of scale, even if they're not immediately apparent, most having to do with concentration of labour and resources. In the transitional period, even if cultivation is going on in remote plots of land (as is generally the case e.g. in Croatia when it comes to olive production) we will still probably want to group these plots as one production unit administratively, and to use the same machinery etc.

I imagine the survival of small-plot cultivation in the US has more to do with state subsidies. Generally, in the EU as well as in the US, the bourgeois state has been fighting a losing battle to preserve petty agricultural production.


Well, this would be possible when we have a fullblown socialist society and the state no longer exists, so there would be no Soviets and no votes. But a workers state is a "bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie," and will need to use the best capitalist method, i.e. democracy and majority votes.

Oh, but I think voting will still happen in the socialist society - if nothing else we need to see if the workers are OK with the general social plan for the coming period, because they're going to be the ones carrying it out. I don't think the "bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie" is the most fortunate formulation. Lenin got carries away a bit. It's a "bourgeois state" only to the extent that it has rationing. Otherwise in State and the Revolution Lenin acknowledges that the semi-state of dispossessed working masses can't be compared to the state of a minority of exploiters.


Otherwise, instead of the absurd Occupy model of never being able to do anything until anyone agrees, you get the only slightly less absurd situation of never being able to do anything until you get the vast majority agreeing. This would paralyze society almost as much.

I don't really think this is the case; the chance of everyone agreeing are close to nil, but I think it's possible for a broad consensus to form. And as I said, this needs to be an active process; at each step there needs to be mutual discussion and negotiation of sorts, we won't simply vote until we get some arbitrary number of votes for the winning option.

Some times, of course, quick action will be required. Then we will look for a simple majority or appoint an organ with dictatorial power.


Yes indeed, this means frequent policy changes as narrow majorities flickers back and forth. This is a good thing not a bad, as it is only through practice that one really finds out what is right and what is wrong. Praxis makes perfect you know.

Ah, yes, but it's always better to learn from other people's mistakes than make your own. And having the policy change constantly is problematic - e.g. if the targets for iron change every week then we don't have a plan, since the factory can't be sure it won't be asked to produce more or to halt production entirely the next time targets change.

Another thing I wanted to point out - democracy only takes workers as abstract individuals. One man, one vote. It does not take into account the different circumstances of each individual, that each worker brings to the discussion a perspective from a different place, and a varying portion of the aggregate technical and scientific knowledge of the human species. In the discussion about the manufacture of high-purity germanium detectors, the scientists, the workers in the manufacturing plants who will make them, and so on - their voice should surely count for more than it does under the complete leveling enforced by abstract democracy.


Nixon by the way was a lousy Quaker, thoroughly repudiated during his Presidency by the Quakers, the most anti-war major religious sect in America.

I know. I simply find his Quaker origins mildly humorous. I wonder what a future historian might think about Quakers, between Nixon and the oats.


Parties are how a class conscious class expresses itself. Feudalism had no political parties, only cliques and factions, as a politically unified feudal class as such never existed. For a good model of how feudalism actually worked, watch the Godfather movies, or Game of Thrones. The first and only unified political expression of feudalism was the absolute monarchs like Louis XIV, in some ways a transitional stage to capitalism, who created a unified feudal political entity by subordinating all feudal lords to themselves personally, killing considerable numbers of them in the process.

I'm not disputing that - I talked about feudal "parties", in inverted commas, because the term was often used for powerful feudal factions, such as the Burgundian and the Armagnac parties.


A working class with no political party is merely a class in itself, not a class for itself. So as long as the working class exists, it will have at least one party, or it will not be a class for itself. Conceivably one could have a single party with multiple internal factions, but that only works if the party is not structured in democratic centralist terms, and the different factions have freedom to campaign for their ideas in front of the working class and run against each other in Soviet elections. In which case they are really different parties.

As for me, I am a charter member of the male auxiliary of DAM, Mothers Against Dyslexia.

But I don't think we can equate bourgeois parties and the party of the proletariat. The latter is the single expression of the political unity and struggle of the working class. The former represent various factions of the bourgeoisie and serve as vehicles for modern bourgeois clientelism. The working class will have one party - even though others might exist alongside it, history shows the proletariat becomes organised through one party. All genuine expressions of proletarian activity will flow into that party.

Later, when the historic task of the party is completed, one can have as much parties and political platforms, expressing the divergent viewpoints and interests that will exist in the transitional society and socialism, as one pleases.

[Emmett Till]

A lot to talk about, a few pieces at a time.


Yes, obviously I didn't mean to suggest that old age pensioners or the ill would be forced to dig ditches. That might earn us the admiration of those who yearn for a tough, manly "Jacobin revolution", but it would also earn us the hatred of workers who are revolted with the way present society treats the old, the ill and the disabled - which should hopefully be most of our comrades.

Generally, if the circumstances permit the proletarian state will be generous to those it defeats - except, I imagine, to social-democrats, pogromists and depending on the area religious authorities....

Agreed, except for social democrats, i.e. most posters to Revleft for example. In fact, the Bolsheviks made huge use of cooperative ex-Mensheviks for absolutely everything. Most social democrats go with the capitalist order because they think that's the only practical way to go, the "politics of the possible." So when the workers actually seize power, they naturally tend to go with the flow. Quite a few turned into quite unpleasant Stalinists, but many were much more interested in applying their genuine talents to the workers cause in various unpolitical fashions.

Granted, few Revleft users have as much talent as your average Menshevik. But no, most of them do not belong in gulags.;)


....
I imagine the survival of small-plot cultivation in the US has more to do with state subsidies. Generally, in the EU as well as in the US, the bourgeois state has been fighting a losing battle to preserve petty agricultural production....

Interestingly, that is quite wrong. Due to peculiarities in American law left over from FDR's New Deal, FDR depended heavily on the then still significant farm vote, grains get heavy subsidies due to Populist mobilization on behalf of the traditional small wheat farmer on the Great Plains, whereas fruits and vegetables, with a high level of capital concentration despite often using the cooperative form, and not victims of the infamous Dust Bowl, get none. In the '30s nobody liked those cooperative minded ex-Populist California fruit growers, especially not the Okies.

That is why Americans have such huge problems with obesity and diabetes, which is now spreading worldwide as the American diet universalizes. Frankly, the last thing we want is for former Monsanto executives to be the agricultural planners. I'm sure we could find some use for them, overseeing GMO reseearch probably, but you'd want to keep them far far away from the fields. Their ingenuity in turning every conceivable byproduct of government subsidized maize into something to screw up the human diet with is brilliant in its own way but socially counterproductive.

Fruit and vegetable production (but not potatoes, never grown in California) is in fact highly mechanized, though mechanizing the actual picking of fruit would basically require very sophisticated robots to avoid destroying them in the process. Smaller units are often more efficient if you can't simply run a tractor over the fields.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Agreed, except for social democrats, i.e. most posters to Revleft for example. In fact, the Bolsheviks made huge use of cooperative ex-Mensheviks for absolutely everything. Most social democrats go with the capitalist order because they think that's the only practical way to go, the "politics of the possible." So when the workers actually seize power, they naturally tend to go with the flow. Quite a few turned into quite unpleasant Stalinists, but many were much more interested in applying their genuine talents to the workers cause in various unpolitical fashions.

Ah, but imagine what would have happened if the Bolsheviks had beheaded the Mensheviks and Esers from the start - if they had taken the Dans, Tseretelis, Chernovs, Zhordanias and so on and "helped them get down from the bridge" as Mayakovsky says of the admirals at Helsingfors. No KomUch, no Tchaikovsky government, no Union for the Salvation of Russia, no Trans-Caspian Soviet, no Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan, no... no Whites! A few generals, perhaps, but generals without a soul to back them. The social-democrats are always the vanguard of the counter-revolution, because the development of the revolutionary situation will have reduced any other forces to sheer irrelevance.

Most posters on RevLeft aren't members of any political organisation, although, my nonexistent god, I wouldn't turn my back on them, there are enough nutters here to rival me.

I'll reply to the rest later, unless this headache really does do me in, in which case to reply would be simply unmaterialist.

[blake 3:17]

I started going on a tangent over agriculture because that where it was going, and I'm getting real interested in anti-market anti-statist agriculture but should probably leave that alone for now.

To get back to the OP's question, I do think some of state is necessary in most of the "modern" world and in it I'd like to ecologically sustainable, democratic and universal housing, employment, healthcare, education, and childcare. The abolition of victimless crimes should should happen immediately. There should be an opening up of the media. Generous funding for art, sports, music, dance, science, journalism, film, literature.

I believe in trade union rights and a multi party representative democracy.

Full inclusion for people with people with disabilities.

A disarmed police force, abolition of the death penalty and all punitive forms of what prison system might exist.

High priorities on public transit, libraries, decent groceries/kitchens, parks, and sports facilities.

[LeninsDenim]

First post here:

Workers elect a "totalitarian democracy" which completely controls the economy, media, internet etc, and citizens swear loyalty to the state and the greater good of society. In the process, the government becomes omnipotent and the most powerful government in human history. In this way, the workers have complete control via representation and if they are not represented, elections or a revolt happen.

Money is replaced with labour vouchers, however, a doctor still gets about 2 times the "labour power" of a janitor so there is still incentive to become a doctor. However, the labour vouchers cover pretty much everything like: houses/apartment (if in city), food, healthcare, education, location relevant clothing etc. Other stuff like fire, police and healthcare is free, without labour. The idea is that work for the state and people are exchanged for the work of the state and people. Work is basically made mandatory.

Giant industrialization takes place, in order to create hyperabundence and communism. The private sector is completely dead. Businesses are merged under the state, even small businesses are raided of capital which is placed under government, and therefore, worker control. There are basically a dozen or so names of these state companies, like Standard Shopping, Standard Transport, Standard Energy etc. A citizen would show a labour voucher to get the stuff he/she needed.

Focus is placed on clean industry and the service sector diminishes in an attempt to create a hyperabundance. The state assigns scientists to work on greener and better factories, as well as aid progress in terms of biology, space etc. GDP grows massively like it did under Stalin. The workers benefit from this, instead of capitalists. Thats pretty much it.

[PikSmeet]

Hopefully nothing like N. Korea, Cuba, USSR, E. Germany, Vietnam, et all.
All those filthy anti-working class countries run by thieving, murderous scum!
It would be one where the workers are in control and make decisions. Of course it would be classless, moneyless & stateless. But I can't say what it would look like, it would be for those that make the revolution to decide.

[Abdullah Tshabal]

I took part in a roleplay in a Steam group where people played as their own custom nations and dictated their own policies, economies, internal affairs as well as diplomatic relations with other nations AKA players. I played as South Africa which has become socialist and the entirety of the roleplay took place starting in the 2070s and went well into the 2150s (Over three-quarters of a century overdue for socialism in *THIS* corner of the world, aintit?). I had turned ZA into a nation which invested heavily into infrastructure, renewable energy, fusion power, space exploration and colonization of both our moon and Mars, etc. Desalination, large-scale vertical farming and solar farming sustained the population's water and food needs and it even became an exporter of such goods. Using vertical farms, huge metropolises and megacities were producing their own food year-round without remaining dependant on imports.

If I was in power of a state that became socialist in say, present time, I would rather love to have it turn out as what I described above. But in the present day, it is 2016, not 2076, there's no vertical farms, no nanomedicine, no fusion power or any of this fancy gleaming technological goodness. But as a start, within my first "five-year plan" I would invest a large amount of manpower and resources into building up and upgrading infrastructure, bolstering medical and educational facilities, nationalize several large industries (Such as mining, agriculture, energy and water production), take good consideration into desalination assuming that the state that I held power in has an ocean coastline and just like in my futuristic country roleplay, I would also emphasize much more efficient means of agriculture, such as hydroponics which could be set up in just about anywhere. It also provides use to abandoned high-rise factories and gutted warehouses you may see as a result of urban decay. This itself could free up land to use for livestock and/or reduce ecological damage to make new farmland. And the idea of vertical and hydroponic farming has been technologically feasible for decades now. Oh, and the healthcare plus education would also be state-run. Conscription would also be mandatory for the sake of national defense and civil service (Think FDR's Civil Conservation Corps and much of the New Deal).

In summary, during my hypothetical "1st Five Year Plan", I would seek to nationalize crucial industries and really boost the infrastructure and services, which in turn also creates a strong labor force. I would also make plans to "future-proof" crucial facilities to prepare for disaster such as a drought.

[PikSmeet]

In summary, during my hypothetical "1st Five Year Plan", I would seek to nationalize crucial industries and really boost the infrastructure and services, which in turn also creates a strong labor force. I would also make plans to "future-proof" crucial facilities to prepare for disaster such as a drought.

Gee, why hasn't this been tried before? ;)
Whatdya mean it has and was a total disaster?
Nationalisation is not socialism, it's not even social democracy as industries are nationalised to prop up & strenghten capitalism.

[Heretek]

Socialist? State? Nonexistent!

[GLF]

All racism would be destroyed. People who identify along racial lines would be sent to mental institutions for deprogramming. Propaganda would be deployed by the State to dissuade people of all racialism, religiosity, and right-wing thinking.

All Fascists, Third Positionists, Strasserists, and social demo****s would be weeded out and imprisoned.

The death penalty would be abolished. The State would be run by a committee of communists representing the working classes until a transition to communism could be completed (which would take more than 5 years).

All capital would be seized by the State and all property would be redistributed equally without consideration.

But these are very delicate matters that cannot just be up and done. It would require minds greater than mine.

[Red Red Chile]

lol. You want a 5 year plan?