Communism and the Soviet Union

[RedArmyFaction]

Comrades,
I've been thinking about something all day. Communism in the Soviet Union never actually happened as the Communist Party never went past the Socialism phase. We all know that under Communism, there is no state. The Communist Party came to power in 1917 and their rule ended in the 1990's. Why didn't the government, that acted on behalf of the prolateriat, ever hand power to the people and abolish the state to actually end up in the Communist phase ? The government had plenty of time to hand power to the workers, so why didn't they ? They had over 50 years to do it. Didn't the government trust the people to run the country themselves ?

[syndicat]

No ruling class ever gives up its power voluntarily. The basic problem was that the program and orientation of the Bolsheviks ended up generating a system run by a new dominating class, of managers, political aparatchiks, top professionals. The central planning elite, top party people, generals, managers of the various main industries etc constituted a technocratic dominating class. Their power wsn't based on private ownership, but the working class was dominated and exploited by them nonetheless.

[Coggeh]

You see after Trotsky was exiled the Soviet union was run by a bureaucratic thermidorian Stalinist regime which never had any idea or grasp of what communism is or what to implement it.Stalinism did however show the mass potential of socialism as a system and how to waste it all at the same time. The goverment never for a minute under Stalin acted on behalf of the proletarian ,they banned strikes , they banned any form of unions also they made concessions to the rich kulaks(bourgeois peasants) and instead of seeking lenins alternative to the kulak problem of collectivizing a certain amount i.e 80-90% and letting the rest be sold Stalin just seemed to let it all slide thus creating already a sovbor class of peasants .

[Janus]

Please use the search function. We've discussed the USSR and this topic specifically countless times.

Last thread on this (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=51385&hl=+USSR++communist)

[Leo]

You see after Trotsky was exiled the Soviet union was run by a bureaucratic thermidorian Stalinist regime which never had any idea or grasp of what communism is or what to implement it.

I hate to ask this but what about before Trotsky was exiled? Was his existence enough to make Russia bureaucracy-free?

[Labor Shall Rule]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30, 2007 09:00 pm
Comrades,
I've been thinking about something all day. Communism in the Soviet Union never actually happened as the Communist Party never went past the Socialism phase. We all know that under Communism, there is no state. The Communist Party came to power in 1917 and their rule ended in the 1990's. Why didn't the government, that acted on behalf of the prolateriat, ever hand power to the people and abolish the state to actually end up in the Communist phase ? The government had plenty of time to hand power to the workers, so why didn't they ? They had over 50 years to do it. Didn't the government trust the people to run the country themselves ?
The Soviets assumed power in the October Revolution, and founded the Soviet Republic through instituting certain decrees on the questions of peace, land redistribution, and worker's control of industry. This did not last forever; seeing that the whole country was soon surrounded by imperialist and internal forces of counterrevolution, a famine was already occuring due to the grain blockade started by the kulaks, and an already weak economy due to the exhaust of the war had added to this complete economic and societal breakdown.

With this, chaos soon descended onto the entire country. In factories controlled by workers, engineers and technicians fled, so a sort of economic instability persisted into the beginning of the Civil War that would never provide a basis for socialism. There was certain layers of the working class; the advanced sections that participated in the actual insurrection, that immediately signed up to enlist in the Red Army, so they instantly became the war-torn victims of the destitution and destruction striking them directly. The famine was also a central cause for the devastation of the revolution, in that many urban workers were unable to feed themselves or their family.

This caused the democratic soviets to collapse due to a lack of communication and cooridination; many delegates found themselves dead or unable to do their duty due to disability or sickness. The railroads were not functioning, so many could not travel from broad areas that they represented to meet at certain locations. With the inability to successfully plan an economy democratically through the ineffective soviets, the People's Commisars took on this role, and though it was necessary, it was supposed to be temporary. Through these conditions, a bureaucratic stratum grew within the formerly revolutionary party and the worker's state, with the bourgeoisie and large-estate landowners quickly regaining their former privileges. There was factions within the Bolshevik Party, such was the Worker's Opposition and the Worker's Group (which broke off from the party), that tried to stop this dangerous current through legal means, but factions were later banned in 1921. This would lead to the frustration of the urban workers, and the culmination of such tension at Kronstadt, which ended when the Bolsheviks finally placed themselves on the side of capital by forcefully dispelling the rebellion and declaring the necessity for capital accumulation, thus substituting the state with the historic role of the bourgeoisie.

[syndicat]

There was very little workers' management of industry. The word "kontrol" in Russian is weaker than the English word "control". Lenin's decree on "workers control" only authorized workplace committes to check on management, maybe veto hiring and firing, force companies to open the books. But when the St. Petersburg Regional Soviet of Factory Committees proposed pushing this forward to expropriation of the capitalists and worker management, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were against this. In the fall of 1917, Lenin envisioned a long period when capitalists would still own the means of production and workers' organizations would be used to help the party to control them. This plan was only tossed out with the onset of the civil war in June-July 1918.

Moreover, in Nov 1917, the Bolshevik government set up the Supreme Council of National Economy, appointed from above, to plan the national economy. This was the forerunner of Gosplan, the central planning agency. This would neaturally lead to the appointing of managers from above to manage workers. By the spring of 1918 Trotsky and Lenin were beating the drum for one-man management. At the same time the Bolsheviks decided to disband the workers militia and form a conventional top-down army, and hired 30,000 czarist officers to run it.

The measure that the Bolsheviks used to deal with the economic crisis in early 1918 were not viewed very favorably by the workers, as shown by the fact that in the first soviet elections after Oct. 1917, in the spring of 1918, the Bolsheviks lost in 19 of 22 cities in European Russia. They were in danger of being voted out of office. At that time the Bolsheviks used armed bodies they controlled, like the Cheka, to refuse to recognize the results of the election, often by disanding soviets, and replacing them with Military Revolutionary Committees, or just refusing to leave office, and backed up by armed force. but this meant the party was setting itself up to rule over the working class.

All of these things tend to favor the emergence of a techno-cratic dominating class (of professionals and managers), and these things happened before the civil war.

[Coggeh]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 30, 2007 09:39 pm

You see after Trotsky was exiled the Soviet union was run by a bureaucratic thermidorian Stalinist regime which never had any idea or grasp of what communism is or what to implement it.

I hate to ask this but what about before Trotsky was exiled? Was his existence enough to make Russia bureaucracy-free?
I have my doubts too , I don't have a cult of personality for trotsky as a person hes not my hero or anything its his theory of permanent revolution that made me a trotskyist.

But reading books based of the post October period neither Lenin nor Trotsky show the work of that great utopian society we all dream about at night but both were realists Trotsky was strong theoretically and had a track record of being fully committed to the revolution ...Stalin did not

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by Leo [email protected] 30, 2007 09:39 pm

You see after Trotsky was exiled the Soviet union was run by a bureaucratic thermidorian Stalinist regime which never had any idea or grasp of what communism is or what to implement it.

I hate to ask this but what about before Trotsky was exiled? Was his existence enough to make Russia bureaucracy-free?
That's a very valid question to ask- I think Trotsky's exile was more a symptom of the problem than the source of it.

The SU developed into a state run by competiting factions of bureaucrats, including Trotsky.

I think the ideas proposed by the Workers Opposition could've been an effective counterbalance to correct some of these problems.

[Coggeh]

That's a very valid question to ask- I think Trotsky's exile was more a symptom of the problem than the source of it.

The SU developed into a state run by competiting factions of bureaucrats, including Trotsky.

I think the ideas proposed by the Workers Opposition could've been an effective counterbalance to correct some of these problems.

I wouldn't go so far as to call Trotsky a bureaucrat , at least he had some sense of proper socialism and how to establish it and was committed to doing it .

True they would have, but you have to understand when a nation like the Soviet union in 20's were subject to many threats and even ones that sought to ultimately help them would have been crushed (kronstadt) .Although by the time things calmed down it was too late for any socialist oppisition to do anything so ya .... :unsure:

[Whitten]

The state can only wither away once the Bourgeois have been defeated in a world wide revolution! Does anyone actually think such a revolution happened? no? Then when was the state to wither-away in the USSR?

I reconmend the OP to read Marx's works. Its a simple fact of history that a state must exist so long as classes exist (classes are not limited to within national boarders).

[Leo]

But reading books based of the post October period neither Lenin nor Trotsky show the work of that great utopian society we all dream about at night but both were realists Trotsky was strong theoretically and had a track record of being fully committed to the revolution ...Stalin did not

Well, this doesn't change that Stalin and Trotsky were merely two men. History is not made up by individuals, it is made up by classes, as we all know.

The historical fact is that the bureaucratic class started rising in Russia as early as 1918 caused by the fact that the revolution was "trapped" and thus could not expand. The problems faced by the revolution was caused by the rising bureaucracy and the suppression of Kronstadt was a manifestation of this situation, and it caused the great figures of the October Revolution themselves crossing the class line, although in some cases (like Lenin's) they were devastated about what had happened. The historical fact is that Lenin and Trotsky actually started to fight against the bureaucratic leadership in 1923. We can't say that all were well up until the point Trotsky left - the rise of Stalin was not merely a change in administration, as Trotsky thought it was; the rise of Stalin was the manifestation of the new class rule in Russia, the rule of the bureaucratic bourgeois class. It wasn't about what the man believed in, it was about what he represented, it was about the counter-revolution going on.


I think the ideas proposed by the Workers Opposition could've been an effective counterbalance to correct some of these problems.

Workers Opposition was actually an extremely bureaucratic movement, seeking to install the bureaucratic leadership of the trade-unions to the leading positions of the party and the state. Almost all of them made peace with the Stalinist regime later on, I think some of them were killed during the great purges but I know for sure that Kollontai actually survived. Trotsky, however, went in all the way - I think he was a more sincere revolutionary than the leaders of the Workers Opposition.

The most solid opposition to the degeneration of the Russian Revolution came from the Workers' Group of Gabriel Myasnikov.


its his theory of permanent revolution that made me a trotskyist.

This is a little off-topic but I don't find the theory of permanent revolution impressive. It has a brilliant, impressive name, yes, but other than that I think it is quite empty. I actually read the pamphlet and it was quite boring, consisting of Trotsky praising himself rather than putting forward a ground breaking theory. As for it's first appearance in Parvus and Trotsky's work before 1917, it was more of a tactical lesson of the 1905 revolution, trying to say that "the revolution is not over, it is going on". At this point it is not really harmful - not necessary or unique but not harmful either. Although later on this theory led Trotskyists justifying their support to "democratic-bourgeois" movements or national liberation movements in the name of support for permanent revolution.

[syndicat]

I think a new class system was already implicit when the Bolsheviks set up Vesenkha, with authority to craft a plan for the whole society, but peopled by people appointed from above. That was in Nov 1917. That same month the Regional Soviet of Factory Committees of the St. Petersburg area proposed a national congress of factory committees to develop a national economic plan, from the bottom up. that was blocked by the Bolsheviks.

i sort of agree with Leo's assessment of the Workers' Opposition. in debate at the party congress Shlyapnikov said he wasn't challenging the whole hierarchy of professionals and managers set up over workers by 1920, but merely the election of the top management boards for industries by the union members, and the invoking of a producers congress, of union members, to control national planning. They didn't challenge, however, the lack of direct management in the workplaces by the workers. the trade union cadres of the party were taking advantage of the huge dissatisfiction in the Russian working class at the end of the civil war -- due to all the unfulfilled promises and sacrifices of the civil war -- to enhance their own power.

there were other groups in opposition to consolidation of the bureaucracy at that time, such as Alexander Bogdanov's Workers Truth group (originally a marxist-syndicalist tendency expelled from the Bolshevik party in 1909). and the Russian anarcho-syndicalist confederation.

[Leo]

I remember reading rather negative things about Bogdanov's group, I know for a fact that Myasnikov and the Worker's Group in general tried its best to prevent people from confusing or associating them with Bogdanov's group.

There was another opposition group called Group for Democratic Centralism. I don't remember reading anything about the anarcho-syndicalists in particular, but I know that some anarchists did take a proletarian stance towards the events, although some, like Kropotkin did not.

On Worker's Opposition, I think they volunteered for going to suppressing the Kronstadt revolt joyfully (and even Lenin himself was emotionally devastated about the way events were turning out) and at this point the Worker's Opposition was officially banned at this point!