THE SO-CALLED 'SOCIALIST' COUNTRIES

[Rawthentic]

This is from the Internationalist Communist Current (http://en.internationalism.org/node/610):

By concentrating capital in the hands of the state, state capitalism has created the illusion that private ownership of the means of production has disappeared and that the bourgeoisie has been eliminated. The Stalinist theory of ‘socialism’ in one country, the whole lie of the ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’ countries, or of countries ‘on the road’ to socialism, all have their origins in this mystification.

The changes brought about by the tendency to state capitalism are not to be found on the level of the basic relations of production, but only on the level of the juridical forms of property.

They do not eliminate the private ownership of the means of production, but only the juridical aspect of individual ownership. The means of production remain ‘private’ property as far as the workers are concerned; the workers are deprived of any control over the means of production. The means of production are only ‘collectivised’ for the bureaucracy which owns and manages them in a collective manner.

The state bureaucracy which takes on the specific function of extracting surplus labour from the proletariat and of accumulating national capital constitutes a class. But it is not a new class. The role it plays shows that it is nothing but the same old bourgeoisie in its statified form. Concerning its privileges as a class, what is specific to the state bureaucracy is primarily the fact that it obtains its privileges not through revenues arising out of the individual ownership of capital, but through ‘running costs’, bonuses, and fixed forms of payment given to it according to the function its members fulfil - a form of remuneration which simply has the appearance of ‘wages’ and which is often tens or hundreds of times higher than the wages given to the working class.

The centralisation and planning of capitalist production by the state and its bureaucracy far from being a step towards the elimination of exploitation is simply a way of intensifying exploitation, of making it more effective.

On the economic level, Russia, even during the short time that the proletariat held political power there, has never been able to eliminate capitalism. If state capitalism appeared there so quickly in a highly developed form, it was because the economic disorganisation which resulted from Russia’s defeat in World War I, then the chaos of the Civil War, made Russia’s survival as a national capital within a decadent world system all the more difficult.

The triumph of the counter-revolution in Russia expressed itself as a reorganisation of the national economy which used the most developed forms of state capitalism and cynically presented them as the ‘continuation of October’ and the ‘building of socialism’. The example was followed elsewhere: China, Eastern Europe, Cuba, North Korea, Indo-china, etc. However, there is nothing proletarian or communist in any of these countries. They are countries, where, under the weight of one of the greatest lies in history, the dictatorship of capital rules in its most decadent form. Any defence of these countries, no matter how ‘critical’ or ‘conditional’, is a completely counter-revolutionary activity.

Note

The collapse of the eastern bloc and of the Stalinist regimes has swept away this mystification of the so-called 'socialist' countries which for more than half a century was the spearhead of the most terrible counter-revolution in history. Nevertheless, the 'democratic' bourgeoisie, by unleashing its endless campaigns about the so-called 'failure of communism', is still perpetuating the greatest lie in history : the identification between Stalinism and communism. The parties of the left and extreme left of capital which, even in a critical manner, supported the so-called 'socialist' countries, are now obliged to adapt to the new conditions of the world situation. In order to carry on controlling and mystifying the proletariat, they are trying to make people forget their support for Stalinism, even if it means falsifying their own past.

[Ander]

Although this thread is doomed to become a text war, I found this article to be an excellent one. It is quite a solid argument against the claims of genuine socialism in state capitalist regimes that exist or have existed around the world.

[Rawthentic]

Thanks comrade, and I agree with your statement as well.

If this does become a text war, then close it please.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

really the only arguement this article puts forward was that because there was a state in the socialist countries of the 20th century, they weren't socialist. the bureaucracy held power and control. Well, that's bullshit because the peasantry in the collective land held the power and the ownership and how to run it. The proletariat controlled factories through factory committees or soviets or elected managers. Really no one socialist country was the same so this is a silly arguement.

I reccomend this speech (http://thisiscommunism.org/speech.htm) for anyone who wants to see how this arguement is quite frankly bullshit.

I think we've been over this topic enough times.

[Rawthentic]

The working class slowly but surely lost political and economic control as the result of one man management imposed from above, and this transferred management power from a conscious working class to the petty-bourgeoisie in power. Old sections of the bourgeois state apparatus were reintroduced during over early after the Civil War, and as such it opened the door for the old Tsarist "specialists" who returned to the work they had before the proletarian seizure of power.

Stalin was a petty-bourgeois bureaucrat, and the state, the Communist Party, were the ones that help the real power over the means of production. The isolation of the Russian proletariat caused a return of capitalist class relations, such as wage labor (the exploitation of the proletariat) as well as NEP (which Lenin consciously advised could mean a return to capitalism, as it did obviously) and this opened up old private sectors that began to consolidate the Stalinist counter-revolution.

In 1917 the bourgeoisie was calling for soviets without Bolsheviks...

In 1921-23 they were calling for Bolsheviks without soviets...

Times change. Get the connection?

[Rawthentic]

They do not eliminate the private ownership of the means of production, but only the juridical aspect of individual ownership. The means of production remain ‘private’ property as far as the workers are concerned; the workers are deprived of any control over the means of production. The means of production are only ‘collectivised’ for the bureaucracy which owns and manages them in a collective manner.

The state bureaucracy which takes on the specific function of extracting surplus labour from the proletariat and of accumulating national capital constitutes a class. But it is not a new class. The role it plays shows that it is nothing but the same old bourgeoisie in its statified form.
I'm assuming you skipped that, and just proves my points.

[R_P_A_S]

are we fucking even ever gonna get to socialism? I mean i see either two things...
1. the longer it takes to happen.. the harder it will get as capitalism gets a bigger and harsher strong hold.

2. we all just gonna mawfakin die!!! :wacko:

[which doctor]

Originally posted by Fight-For-Revolutionary-War!@May 23, 2007 09:51 pm
Well, that's bullshit because the peasantry in the collective land held the power and the ownership and how to run it. The proletariat controlled factories through factory committees or soviets or elected managers.
Sources? Right.

[Rawthentic]

He only has the RCP sources. But one must always question whether sources from the RCP can be trusted.

[The Author]

Originally posted by [email protected] May 23, 2007, 06:37 pm
The Stalinist theory of ‘socialism’ in one country, the whole lie of the ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’ countries, or of countries ‘on the road’ to socialism, all have their origins in this mystification.

V.I. Lenin, Our Revolution (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/jan/16.htm)


Infinitely stereotyped, for instance, is the argument they learned by rote during the development of West-European Social-Democracy, namely, that we are not yet ripe for socialism, but as certain "learned" gentleman among them put it, the objective economic premises for socialism do not exist in our country. Does it not occur to any of them to ask: what about the people that found itself in a revolutionary situation such as that created during the first imperialist war? Might it not, influenced by the hopelessness of its situation, fling itself into a struggle that would offer it at least some chance of securing conditions for the further development of civilization that were somewhat unusual?

"The development of the productive forces of Russia has not yet attained the level that makes socialism possible." All the heroes of the Second International, including, of course, Sukhanov, beat the drums about this proposition. They keep harping on this incontrovertible proposition in a thousand different keys, and think that it is decisive criterion of our revolution.

But what if the situation, which drew Russia into the imperialist world war that involved every more or less influential West European country and made her a witness of the eve of the revolutions maturing or partly already begun in the East, gave rise to circumstances that put Russia and her development in a position which enabled us to achieve precisely that combination of a "peasant war" with the working-class movement suggested in 1856 by no less a Marxist than Marx himself as a possible prospect for Prussia?

What if the complete hopelessness of the situation, by stimulating the efforts of the workers and peasants tenfold, offered us the opportunity to create the fundamental requisites of civilization in a different way from that of the West European countries? Has that altered the general line of development of world history? Has that altered the basic relations between the basic classes of all the countries that are being, or have been, drawn into the general course of world history?

If a definite level of culture is required for the building of socialism (although nobody can say just what that definite "level of culture" is, for it differs in every Western European country), why cannot we began by first achieving the prerequisites for that definite level of culture in a revolutionary way, and then, with the aid of the workers' and peasants' government and Soviet system, proceed to overtake the other nations?

January 16, 1923
II

You say that civilization is necessary for the building of socialism. Very good. But why could we not first create such prerequisites of civilization in our country by the expulsion of the landowners and the Russian capitalists, and then start moving toward socialism? Where, in what books, have you read that such variations of the customary historical sequence of events are impermissible or impossible?


V.I. Lenin, Achievements and Difficulties of the Soviet Government (http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/ADSG19.html)


Complete and final victory on a world scale cannot be achieved in Russia alone; it can be achieved only when the proletariat is victorious in at least all the advanced countries, or, at all events, in some of the largest of the advanced countries. Only then shall we be able to say with absolute confidence that the cause of the proletariat has triumphed, that our first objective -- the overthrow of capitalism -- has been achieved.

We have achieved this objective in one country, and this confronts us with a second task. Since Soviet power has been established, since the bourgeoisie has been overthrown in one country, the second task is to wage the struggle on a world scale, on a different plane, the struggle of the proletarian state surrounded by capitalist states.

This situation is an entirely novel and difficult one.

On the other hand, since the rule of the bourgeoisie has been overthrown, the main task is to organise the development of the country.

J.V. Stalin, On the Final Victory of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. (http://www.marx2mao.com/PDFs/StWorks14.pdf)


Can the victory of Socialism in one country be regarded as final if this country is encircled by capitalism, and if it is not fully guaranteed against the danger of intervention and restoration?

Clearly, it cannot.

[Leo]

Well, that's bullshit because the peasantry in the collective land held the power and the ownership and how to run it.

No it didn't.


The proletariat controlled factories through factory committees or soviets or elected managers.

In Russia, factory committees and workers' soviets lost all their power around 1919. They were replaced with 'bourgeois experts'. In all other so-called "socialist" countries, factory committees or workers' soviets did not exist to begin with.

[which doctor]

Originally posted by [email protected] 23, 2007 10:05 pm
are we fucking even ever gonna get to socialism? I mean i see either two things...
1. the longer it takes to happen.. the harder it will get as capitalism gets a bigger and harsher strong hold.
You'd be surprised at how quickly these chains of capitalism can be broken when the proletariat realizes their collective power and desires ;)

[Rawthentic]

You'd be surprised at how quickly these chains of capitalism can be broken when the proletariat realizes their collective power and desires
From all forms of capitalism, be it private or state, the workers had about as much control over society as the ones in the US do today. Besides that epoc of Stalinism as being brutal for the proletariat for reasons I have mentioned.

The solutions were real workers uprisings for real socialism like Marx, Engels, and Lenin outlined, and that occurred in Hungary and East Germany. Khrushchev's "de-Stalinization" was bullshit.

[Tiparith]

I will agree that after 1919 the soviets and coucils had no power and the country became a shining example of top down leadership. However the statement that "there was nothing socialist or communist about it" is wrong. In places like China or Cuba or w/e you have to at least take into consideration that sure there not ruled by the proletariat however the proles get to eat no matter what is happening. Unline tsarist days people weren't dieing of rampant disease or being killed because they couldn't make lease payments. The average prole had more rights then they did under the tsar. As well what it ends up as a couple hundred million people who are all into communism. And if you can properly motivate those workers they will work towards a true socialism and away from state power.

[Rawthentic]

It is true that the standard of living was higher and is higher in Cuba relative to the rest of Latin America, but this does not prove socialism.

[A.J.]

The state bureaucracy which takes on the specific function of extracting surplus labour from the proletariat and of accumulating national capital constitutes a class. But it is not a new class. The role it plays shows that it is nothing but the same old bourgeoisie in its statified form. Concerning its privileges as a class, what is specific to the state bureaucracy is primarily the fact that it obtains its privileges not through revenues arising out of the individual ownership of capital, but through ‘running costs’, bonuses, and fixed forms of payment given to it according to the function its members fulfil - a form of remuneration which simply has the appearance of ‘wages’ and which is often tens or hundreds of times higher than the wages given to the working class.


a) what particular period of Soviet history is this referring to?
before or after 1956?

b) Is there any primary material evidence to support any of these claims?
Seems like a completely worthless piece of writing otherwise.

[The Grey Blur]

By concentrating capital in the hands of the state
Is that possible? The state is simply a tool of the ruling class to moderate class struggle...how can it "concentrate capital in it's hands"?

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

Is that possible? The state is simply a tool of the ruling class to moderate class struggle...how can it "concentrate capital in it's hands"?

I'm not too sure, but isnt it having one central bank which the state controls.

So, you can levy taxes on the bougiousie and redistribute the wealth.

Or i'm probably totally of the wall on this one :lol:

[The Author]

but this does not prove socialism.

The collective ownership of property did. You did not have a few rich billionaires at the top and millions in extreme poverty at the bottom like you do presently, because private property was practically non-existent during the socialist period. It only started to increase from "de-Stalinization" to "Developed Socialism" to "Perestroika,"
and then led to the negation of socialist society and the restoration of capitalism.

But other than the usual recitation of propaganda from the pro-imperialist, Cold Warrior biased point of view, this article you posted proved nothing. It is woefully ignorant of what Marx said about socialism in "Critique of the Gotha Programme," and is woefully ignorant of Lenin's theories on the laws of uneven development and socialism in one country, some articles of which I've already posted. It's not Marxist, it's not Leninist, more like socio-imperialist in tone.

[which doctor]

The collective ownership of property did.
But there was no collective ownership of property. Just because there was less income disparity than in contemporary capitalist states, does not mean there was collective ownership. Workers may have had some sort of say in their workplaces in the early period of the USSR, but this is not to be confused with socialism.


It's not Marxist, it's not Leninist, more like socio-imperialist in tone.
Name one aspect of the article that is imperialist.

[The Author]

But there was no collective ownership of property. Just because there was less income disparity than in contemporary capitalist states, does not mean there was collective ownership. Workers may have had some sort of say in their workplaces in the early period of the USSR, but this is not to be confused with socialism.

The means of production were socially owned, and the profits made from the means of production were divided with deductions going towards the social welfare and improvement of socialist society as a whole, and towards wages and benefits and pensions for the workers in particular. Exactly as Marx envisioned. This is collective ownership of property in practice. Collective ownership which no longer exists. Why do you think there has been a serious population decline in the U.S.S.R., why the standard of living fell dramatically since the collapse? It's because the social character of ownership no longer exists, it's been privatized. Now you have a few oligarchic billionaires at the top, and a vast army of people either in extreme poverty at the bottom or just barely making it by. You did not have this in the days of the U.S.S.R., bureaucracy or no. The relations of production were of a social character. People had benefits, they had cultural institutions and a way to better themselves, opportunities to improve themselves as human beings, and a sense of purpose in society in the struggle towards socialism and communism. Now you have apathy and a lack of hope in the workers, both urban and rural, towards a better life, a better future, and such reactionary garbage as racism and ethnocentrism which for the most part, except in isolated instances, did not exist in the past. Once again, that is because of the social character of the relations of production which existed at that time.


Name one aspect of the article that is imperialist.

"Socio-imperialism" refers to socialism in words, while being imperialist in deeds. Dismissing the U.S.S.R. as state-capitalist degeneration and misleading the working class with disinformation on the nature of the relations of production and the superstructure in correspondence with those relations, and "sugarcoating" such "analysis" with socialist phrases plays favorably into the hands of imperialism.

[which doctor]

"Socio-imperialism" refers to socialism in words, while being imperialist in deeds.
Then I think you oughta take a look at some of the imperialist deeds of your own USSR.

[Rawthentic]

Exactly as Marx envisioned
Dont be ridiculous.

Starting in 1919, the soviets had lost all power, product initially of the restoration of sections of the old tsarist state, one man management that completely castrated worker power, and the NEP that created a huge bureaucracy to manage the now private industries and market forces.

The USSR had a capitalist mode of production.

[The Author]

Then I think you oughta take a look at some of the imperialist deeds of your own USSR.

If you're referring to what happened in Czechoslovakia in 1968, Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s, and the U.S.S.R.'s break-down in relations with China and Albania because of its forceful nature on those countries, and how Cuba was made for all intents and purposes a dependency of the U.S.S.R., Marxist-Leninists like myself recognize the socio-imperialist nature of the U.S.S.R.

When it comes to anti-communist led demonstrations like in Hungary 1956, or Poland under Walesa and "Solidarity" in the 1980s, that's different. That's a case of revisionist mismanagement of the revolution, which led to proletarian discouragement with the revolution, and casting their support behind nationalist and anti-communist elements to overthrow the socialist republics. This is what happened in Eastern Europe in 1989, the U.S.S.R. in 1991, and could happen in China someday in the future if mass discontent swells to the breaking point.



Dont be ridiculous.

"What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another." --K. Marx, "Critique of the Gotha Programme"

I must have quoted this remark numerous times already in my talks with "state-capitalist" advocates. Odd that it never seems to go through to them, dogma is a hard thing to overcome. People never understand the fact that under socialism, some of the problems of capitalism will still exist. Instead, they think that the ultimate communist finale will be in place the day after the revolution. When reality confronts them, however, these utopians, instead of realizing that they had mistaken views on how communism is to be achieved and that Marx was right, go on the anti-communist warpath and try to fabricate stories of "state capitalism" and try to persuade people of this flawed theory. Funny thing is, you don't get a lot of material on what Marx said on the question, and you don't get statistics, either. Just "oh but there was no workers' control," and that's as far as the supposed critique will go. Any time you read something that never scratches the surface and skirts around the issue, is not to be taken seriously. Not by a long shot.

The U.S.S.R. did not have private industry, private enterprise. Private industry only existed in tsarist times, and after the collapse. The relations were of a social character, and what is described above by Marx is exactly what happened in practice for the majority of the U.S.S.R.'s existence as a socialist union. The N.E.P. only existed to help the Soviet Union recover from the civil war, and was abolished once the Union had enough resources to begin socialist construction, they entered the five-year plans. One-man management existed because of the need to construct socialism in the face of imperialist forces threatening to destroy socialism. People think management is harmful for socialism. They forget what Engels said:

"Everywhere combined action, the complication of processes dependent upon each other, displaces independent action by individuals. But whoever mentions combined action speaks of organisation; now, is it possible to have organisation without authority?

Supposing a social revolution dethroned the capitalists, who now exercise their authority over the production and circulation of wealth. Supposing, to adopt entirely the point of view of the anti-authoritarians, that the land and the instruments of labour had become the collective property of the workers who use them. Will authority have disappeared, or will it only have changed its form? Let us see.

Let us take by way if example a cotton spinning mill. The cotton must pass through at least six successive operations before it is reduced to the state of thread, and these operations take place for the most part in different rooms. Furthermore, keeping the machines going requires an engineer to look after the steam engine, mechanics to make the current repairs, and many other labourers whose business it is to transfer the products from one room to another, and so forth. All these workers, men, women and children, are obliged to begin and finish their work at the hours fixed by the authority of the steam, which cares nothing for individual autonomy. The workers must, therefore, first come to an understanding on the hours of work; and these hours, once they are fixed, must be observed by all, without any exception. Thereafter particular questions arise in each room and at every moment concerning the mode of production, distribution of material, etc., which must be settled by decision of a delegate placed at the head of each branch of labour or, if possible, by a majority vote, the will of the single individual will always have to subordinate itself, which means that questions are settled in an authoritarian way. The automatic machinery of the big factory is much more despotic than the small capitalists who employ workers ever have been. At least with regard to the hours of work one may write upon the portals of these factories: Lasciate ogni autonomia, voi che entrate! [Leave, ye that enter in, all autonomy behind!]

If man, by dint of his knowledge and inventive genius, has subdued the forces of nature, the latter avenge themselves upon him by subjecting him, in so far as he employs them, to a veritable despotism independent of all social organisation. Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself, to destroy the power loom in order to return to the spinning wheel.

Let us take another example — the railway. Here too the co-operation of an infinite number of individuals is absolutely necessary, and this co-operation must be practised during precisely fixed hours so that no accidents may happen. Here, too, the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions of the majority of persona interested. In either case there is a very pronounced authority. Moreover, what would happen to the first train dispatched if the authority of the railway employees over the Hon. passengers were abolished?

But the necessity of authority, and of imperious authority at that, will nowhere be found more evident than on board a ship on the high seas. There, in time of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience of all to the will of one." --F. Engels, "On Authority"

The productive relations of the U.S.S.R. were exactly that as Marx and Engels envisioned, and what they had to say was a lot more realistic than a lot of the hot air that I've been reading from "Left-Communists," "Council Communists," "Ultra-Lefts," etc. The "state-capitalist" advocates want us to abandon the concepts of authority and give us these misconstrued ideas about what will happen after the revolution.

[Rawthentic]

I agree with the Marx quote, which is why I believe that there is a need for a state and all that.

But you cannot and will not justify 'socialism' in the Stalinist USSR. The workers did not control the means of production, that is a fact and the crux of the matter. They were controlled by the Party state and managed by the petty-bourgeois 'specialists
product from 1918 and NEP, which Lenin warned would lead to back to capitalism, as it did. The workers had the surplus labor extracted from them through wage slavery and even forced labor. Just because property had changed from private to state arms, it does not change the mode of production or capitalist relations of production.

It is this brutality that led to anti-Stalinist worker's uprisings for real socialism in Hungary and East Germany.

I dont think it is utopian to advocate direct workers control of society, nothing less.

[R_P_A_S]

it fucking just baffles me how some of you fools still live in the past an argue for it...
you guy would probably had been actors in some of the stalin propaganda films. whistling while you work and praising great stalin for your freedom and socialist society eh? :rolleyes: :lol: :P ;)

[The Author]

But you cannot and will not justify 'socialism' in the Stalinist USSR.

Oh? Who are you to tell me what I can and cannot do, what I will or will not do? Disagreement is one thing. Telling me that I should not bother to justify socialism in the USSR is another thing, and this remark coming from someone who completely believes the "millions died" myth. A myth that has been completely debunked. No, I defend what the Soviet peoples did for their country throughout its existence, because of the practical experience which it offers for future working class movements around the world.


The workers did not control the means of production, that is a fact and the crux of the matter.

You haven't proved this to be "fact." Instead I get the statement "workers control was gone by 1919." No statistics, no documentation of this supposed "fact," no analysis of the international situation with the ongoing threat of imperialism, no serious analysis of the political situation. How you do expect me to believe this?


They were controlled by the Party state and managed by the petty-bourgeois 'specialists product from 1918 and NEP, which Lenin warned would lead to back to capitalism, as it did.

"...as often as possible, when there is the slightest opportunity for it, responsible persons should be elected for one-man management in all sections of the economic organism as a whole. There must be voluntary fulfilment of the instructions of this individual leader, there must be a transition from the mixed form of discussions, public meetings, fulfilment -- and at the same time criticism, checking and correction -- to the strict regularity of a machine enterprise. The great majority of the labour communes of Russia, the mass of the workers and peasants, are already approaching this task or have already arrived at it. The Soviet government's task is to undertake the role of interpreting the fundamental change that is now beginning and of giving this necessity legal form." -- V.I. Lenin

"But if there are people who are wavering, lost, in a petty-bourgeois mood, who have been frightened by one-man management, who go into hysterics and refuse to support us, why is this? Is it because there is a Right wing, or because people have got hysterics, particularly the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries? In their case the confusion is complete, no one could sort it out. So to avoid a lot of useless argument we say: get down to the main issue and deal with it in specific terms." -- V.I. Lenin

"Here we are told: "production atmosphere", "industrial democracy" and "role in production". I said, at the very outset, in the December 30 discussion, that that was nothing but words, which the workers did not understand, and that it was all part of the task of production propaganda. We are not renouncing the dictatorship, or one-man management; these remain, I will support them, but I refuse to defend excesses and stupidity. "Production atmosphere" is a funny phrase that will make the workers laugh. Saying it more simply and clearly is all part of production propaganda. But a special institution has been set up for the purpose." -- V.I. Lenin

"Dictatorial powers and one-man management are not contradictory to socialist democracy. This must now be borne in mind, if the decisions adopted by the recent Party Congress and the general tasks that confront us are to be understood. And this is not an answer to questions that have only just arisen; it has its deep roots in the very conditions of the period in which we live. Let anyone who doubts this compare the situation with what it was two years ago, and he will understand that the present phase demands that all attention be devoted to labour discipline, to the labour armies, although two years ago there was no mention of labour armies. Only by comparing the issue as it stands today with the way it stood then, can we draw a proper conclusion, ignoring minor details and singling out what is general and fundamental. The whole attention of the Communist Party and the Soviet government is centred on peaceful economic development, on problems of the dictatorship and of one-man management. Not only the experience we have had in the stubborn civil war of the past two years leads us to such a solution of these problems." -- V.I. Lenin

"As far as getting its representatives elected to parliament is concerned, the British bourgeoisie has worked miracles, and excels all others. Marx and Engels exposed the bourgeoisie over a period of forty years, from 1852 to 1892, and the bourgeoisie acts in the same way in all countries. The fact that throughout the world trade unions have passed from the role of slaves to the role of builders marks a turning-point. We have existed for two years and what do we see? We see today that the working class has suffered most from hunger. In 1918 and 1919 the country's industrial workers received only seven poods of bread each, whereas the peasants of the grain-producing gubernias each had seventeen poods. Under the tsar the peasant used to get sixteen poods of bread at the best, whereas under our rule he gets seventeen poods. There is statistical evidence of this. The proletariat has been hungry for two years but this hunger has shown that the worker is capable of sacrificing not only his craft interests, but even his life. The proletariat was able to stand famine for two years because it had the moral support of all the labouring folk, and it bore these sacrifices for the sake of the victory of the workers' and peasants' government. It is true that the division of workers according to trade continues, and that many of these trades were necessary to the capitalist but are not necessary to us. And we know that the workers in these trades are suffering more severely from hunger than others. And it cannot be otherwise. Capitalism has been smashed, but socialism has not yet been built; and it will take a long time to build. Here we come up against all sorts of misunderstandings, which are not fortuitous, but are the result of the difference in the historical role of the trade unions as an instrument of craft amalgamation under capitalism and the trade unions as an instrument of the class amalgamation of the workers after they have taken over the state power. The workers are prepared to make any sacrifice; they create the discipline which compels people to say and feel, perhaps vaguely, that class interests are higher than craft interests. Workers who are incapable of making such sacrifices we regard as self-seekers, and we drive them out of the proletarian fold.

Such was the fundamental question of labour discipline, of one-man management in a general sense, as discussed by the Party Congress." V.I. Lenin

"Our chief slogan is -- let us have more one-man management, let get closer to one-man management, let us have more labour discipline, let us pull ourselves together and work with military determination, staunchness and loyalty, brushing aside all group and craft interests, sacrificing all private interests. We cannot succeed otherwise. But if we carry out this decision of the Party, carry it out to a man among the three million workers, and then among the tens of millions of peasants, who will feel the moral authority and strength of the people who have sacrificed themselves for the victory of socialism, we shall be absolutely and completely invincible." --V. I. Lenin


Lenin did not say anything of the kind, as is demonstrated here in the quotations. Quite the opposite, he grew to be in favor of one-man management after the revolution. Exactly as Engels envisioned.

What you, and the Anarchists, Trots, and other Ultra-Lefts want is to dismember the working class organization of production by having individualism reign supreme in the factory and in society. As Engels said, "Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself, to destroy the power loom in order to return to the spinning wheel." You talk about the "dictatorship of the Party" and "lack of workers' control," when it was well-documented that democracy existed in the first half of the USSR's lifespan and that further democratization was going through up until the 1950s.


The workers had the surplus labor extracted from them through wage slavery

Fabrication. Wage slavery did not exist in the USSR. What existed was exactly what Marx described in "Gotha Programme." You're confusing the existence of wages under socialism with wage-slavery of capitalism. "...communist society...just as it emerges from capitalist society...still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society." Wages still exist under socialism. "Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it." This is a wage in socialism as Marx described it. Wages of course won't exist in communism, a.k.a. communism the second phase. You say you agree with the Marx quote, yet now you're making a statement which comes into disagreement with what Marx said.


even forced labor

Forced labor of the bourgeoisie, kulak landowners, nationalists, terrorists, that sort. Not the working class. Unless you want to believe the garbage penned by Conquest and Solzhenitsyn.


Just because property had changed from private to state arms, it does not change the mode of production or capitalist relations of production.

Private to state ownership in the particular, such as nationalization of railways for instance, of course, does not lead to socialism. Nationalizing all industry and agriculture, and integrating these different parts of economic production and distribution into one whole, does change the mode of production into socialist relations of production. You don't have this integration under capitalism. You have markets, lack of planning, and overproduction.


It is this brutality that led to anti-Stalinist worker's uprisings for real socialism in Hungary and East Germany.

Those uprisings were the result of changes in policy by the new Khrushchevite leadership, and the result of the lack of building the socialist consciousness into the people's democracies of Eastern Europe. Without political consciousness of the situation, when the Khrushchevites committed their errors, the workers wrongly assumed that such actions were the result of communism as a whole, and so they cast themselves with nationalists, western imperialists, even fascists. An interesting report on Hungary by the UN can be found here: http://mek.oszk.hu/01200/01274/01274.pdf


I dont think it is utopian to advocate direct workers control of society, nothing less.

I'm just as much for workers control of society as you are. The problem lies with how you define this "control." I look at the question the way Engels defined it in "On Authority," and to the principles of democratic centralism. The practical, realistic way that workers control will function under socialism.

[Rawthentic]

I'm just as much for workers control of society as you are. The problem lies with how you define this "control." I look at the question the way Engels defined it in "On Authority," and to the principles of democratic centralism. The practical, realistic way that workers control will function under socialism.
Are you? For direct workers control? Against petty-bourgeois 'one-man' management. Just for the record, this was imposed from above, by the Bolshevik Party, not elected by the workers.

As I have stated, and regardless your quote wars, the introduction of one man management took economic management away from the workers, and in to the hands of the newly reconsituted petty-bourgeoisie, as a result of the NEP which opened up new market forces and the huge bureaucracy to administer them. The Bolsheviks, at a crucial standpoint near 1920, had the choice of either training the proletariat in self-management, or bringing in old sections of the Tsarist state, which then meant the return of old Tsarist officials, many in their old positions. They chose the latter. It is not petty-bourgeois to say that the workers should control all aspects of society, and one-man management was the result of the revision of Marxian theory on behalf of the Bolsheviks, refer to my last sentence as to why. Also due to their diminishing of 'social being', and their allowance of petty-bourgeois elements into the Party, instead of proletarians. Marx and Engels were for the complete expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeoisie. Another factor in the loss of proletarian power in Russia was that the Bolsheviks allowed the most class conscious proletarians to volunteer and then die in the civil war.

And I identify with the Engels quote just as much as you do, just that I dont use it as a justification of petty-bourgeois management, but for the authority of democracy and the will of the majority of the workers over the others.

[The Author]

Are you? For direct workers control? Against petty-bourgeois 'one-man' management. Just for the record, this was imposed from above, by the Bolshevik Party, not elected by the workers.

Yes, I am for workers' control. You just don't like the fact that actual workers' control requires authority, and a division of labor and the decisions of the majority binding on the minority. If you didn't have this authority, this democratic centralism, you wouldn't have a long-lasting revolution. Especially in the face of the danger of imperialist encirclement around a socialist country.


regardless your quote wars,

Meaning my "quote wars" fly right in the face of your "theory," and rather than choose to deal with it, you ignore it. Just like you've been ignoring facts and materials presented by others and myself in previous discussions. That's what's so comical about RevLeft, it's fashionable to recite lies over and over again, and those who actually take the time to research and try to bring the discussion to a higher level, are either ignored because their research flies in the face of ultra-leftist dogma, or they are insulted. You have some nerve telling me to get serious in another thread for supposedly only partially reading your post when here you clearly do the same fucking thing.


the introduction of one man management took economic management into an organized character and led to the advancement of living standards and the improvement of the lives of workers as a whole. Cultural advancement proceeded as well in bettering the education and well-being of the workers as well

Quote fixed.


the NEP opened up some market forces to help the USSR recover from the Civil War. Once it had capital, it launched the Five Year Plans and the market reforms were ended. The bureaucracy which was present was a result of the capitalist encirclement against the USSR, and the need to plan on a high level of organization. Those who abused power, and did not subscribe to the interests of the proletariat, were purged accordingly.

Quote fixed.


They chose the latter.

And then they trained the proletariat to replace the Tsarists. Thus, the components of the previous state were liquidated, and replaced by working class elements, creating the conditions for the proletarian dictatorship.


and one-man management was the result of the revision of Marxian theory on behalf of the Bolsheviks, refer to my last sentence as to why.

Meaning Leninism is anti-communism, and that we should subscribe to the Menshevik school of thought. Irregardless of what Marx and Engels said about authority and organization, instead we have to listen to what "communists" tell us about authority and organization. Clever.


Marx and Engels were for the complete expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeoisie.

Which is what was happening in the USSR, but to you capitalism=socialism and somehow we're supposed to believe there were large-scale businesses in the Soviet Union. Next you'll tell me that pigs can fly, and that "ignorance is strength" (can't believe I quoted Orwell, but there it is). Farther and farther from the truth you go.


the Bolsheviks allowed the most class conscious proletarians to volunteer and then die in the civil war.

And you're trying to say this was bad?



And I identify with the Engels quote just as much as you do

You may say so, but dismissing "management" when Engels and Lenin are advocating it shows that in action you don't identify with it.

[Rawthentic]

Meaning my "quote wars" fly right in the face of your "theory," and rather than choose to deal with it, you ignore it.
Simply because they dont disprove anything that I say. Its all about Lenin and "one-man management"which I have dealt with already and a quote from Engels that is irrelevant.


You may say so, but dismissing "management" when Engels and Lenin are advocating it shows that in action you don't identify with it.
Now you are full of shit. Engels never advocated petty-bourgeois "one-man management".



the introduction of one man management took economic management into an organized character and led to the advancement of living standards and the improvement of the lives of workers as a whole. Cultural advancement proceeded as well in bettering the education and well-being of the workers as well
Stole economic power from the workers. Fixed.


the NEP opened up some market forces to help the USSR recover from the Civil War. Once it had capital, it launched the Five Year Plans and the market reforms were ended. The bureaucracy which was present was a result of the capitalist encirclement against the USSR, and the need to plan on a high level of organization. Those who abused power, and did not subscribe to the interests of the proletariat, were purged accordingly.
Bullshit. The results of NEP were never taken back or reversed. Worker communists who opposed the rising counter-revolution were imprisoned and or murdered.


And then they trained the proletariat to replace the Tsarists. Thus, the components of the previous state were liquidated, and replaced by working class elements, creating the conditions for the proletarian dictatorship
And thus you resort to lying. Sections of the old Tsarist state were returned, its no small reason that workers lost power.


Meaning Leninism is anti-communism, and that we should subscribe to the Menshevik school of thought. Irregardless of what Marx and Engels said about authority and organization, instead we have to listen to what "communists" tell us about authority and organization. Clever.
Ignorance. How is it Menshevik to say that the Bolshevik Party revised Marxism and their results became very visible? You do need to get serious.


Which is what was happening in the USSR, but to you capitalism=socialism and somehow we're supposed to believe there were large-scale businesses in the Soviet Union. Next you'll tell me that pigs can fly, and that "ignorance is strength" (can't believe I quoted Orwell, but there it is). Farther and farther from the truth you go.
I equate socialism with direct workers control of society, none of that petty-bourgeois specialist crap, as if we workers are too stupid to "get it" that we need managers to do things for us.



And you're trying to say this was bad
Yes, you moron. When you send your class conscious communist workers to die, it definitely hurts worker self-management in production. Duh.

[Rawthentic]

Since I guess its a quote war...


The Stalinists, in denying that Russia is a capitalist society, insist that the best proof of that is that Russia is not subject to “the law of capitalism: the average rate of profit”. [4]

“The law of capitalism” is not the average rate of profit, but the decline in the rate of profit. The average rate of profit is only the manner in which the surplus value extracted from the workers is divided among the capitalists. [5] It is impossible to jump from that fact to the conclusion that “therefore” Russia is not a capitalist country. It is for this reason that the Stalinist apologists, with great deliberation, perverted “the law of capitalism” from the decline in the rate of profit to the achievement of an average rate of profit. With this revision of Marxism as their theoretic foundation, they proceeded to cite “proof” of Russia’s being a non-capitalist land: Capital does not migrate where it is most profitable, but where the state directs it. Thus, they conclude Russia was able to build up heavy industry, though the greatest profits were obtained from light industry. In other words, what the United States has achieved through the migration of capital to the most profitable enterprises Russia has achieved through planning.

Profit, moreover, does not at all have the same meaning in Russia as it does in classical capitalism. The light industries show greater profit not because of the greater productivity of labor, but because of the state-imposed turn-over tax which gives an entirely fictitious “profit” to that industry. In reality, it is merely the medium through which the state, not the industry, siphons off anything “extra” it gave the worker by means of wages. It could not do the same things through the channel of heavy industry because the workers do not eat its products. That is why this “profit” attracts neither capital nor the individual agents of capital. That is the nub of the question.

Precisely because the words, profit and loss, have assumed a different meaning, the individual agents of capital do not go to the most “profitable” enterprises, even as capital itself does not. For the very same reason that the opposite was characteristic of classic capitalism: The individual agent’s share of surplus value is greater in heavy industry. The salary of the director of a billion dollar trust depends, not on whether the trust shows a profit or not, but basically upon the magnitude of the capital that he manages.

State capitalism brings about a change in the mode of appropriation, as has occurred so often in the life span of capitalism, through its competitive, monopoly and state-monopoly stages. The individual agent of capital has at no time realized directly the surplus value extracted in his particular factory. He has participated in the distribution of national surplus value, to the extent that his individual capital was able to exert pressure on this aggregate capital. This pressure in Russia is exerted, not through competition but state planning. But this struggle or agreement among capitalists, or agents of the state, if you will, is of no concern to the proletariat whose sweat and blood has been congealed into this national surplus value. [6] What is of concern to him is his relationship to the one who performs the “function” of boss.


As in all capitalist lands, so in Russia, money is the means through which prices and wages are equated in the supply and demand for consumption goods, that is to say, the value of the worker is equal to the socially-necessary labor time that is incorporated in the means of subsistence necessary for his existence and the reproduction of his kind. So long as the production of means of consumption is only sufficient to sustain the masses, prices will irresistibly break through legal restrictions until the sum of all prices of consumption goods and the sum of wage payments are equal. Price-fixing in Russia established neither stabilization in prices of goods nor of wages. The abolition of rationing in 1935 brought about so great an increase in prices that the worker who had eked out an existence under the very low rationed prices, could not exist at all under the “single uniform prices”. The state was therefore compelled to grant general increases in wages, so that by the end of the Second Five-Year Plan wages were 96 per cent above that planned.

The erroneous concept that because prices are fixed by the state, they are fixed “not according to the law of value, but according to government decision on ‘planned production’,” [12] fails to take into consideration the economic law that dominates prices. Even a casual examination of any schedule of prices in Russia will show that, giving consideration to deviations resulting from the enormous tax burdens on consumer goods, prices are not fixed capriciously and certainly no according to use-values, but exhibit the same differentials that prevail in “recognizably” capitalist countries, i.e., prices are determined by the law of value. [13]



So far as Lenin was concerned, the dictatorship of the proletariat, since it was a transitional state, could be transitional “either to socialism or to a return backwards to capitalism”, depending upon the historic initiative of the masses and the international situation. Therefore, he held, we must always be aware that (1) internally there was “only one road . . . changes from below; we wanted the workers themselves to draw up, from below, the new principles of economic conditions” [24]; and (2) externally, we must not forget “the Russian and international markets with which we are connected and from which we cannot escape”. All we can do there is gain time while “our foreign comrades are preparing thoroughly for their revolution”.

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by Leo+--> (Leo)In Russia, factory committees and workers' soviets lost all their power around 1919.[/b]

Even earlier. Check out Rod Jones' text (http://www.prole.info/articles/factorycommitteesinrussia.html) on factory committees.


CriticizeEverythingAlways
Wage slavery did not exist in the USSR.

False. The worker recieved a wage: money equivalent in sold labor power. Thus, wage slavery.

Whatever facying you try to work out it will not do.

Now, few remarks: those Lenin quotes are not a proof of anything but - in best regards - Lenin's wishes (or demagogy, whatever one tends to call it). That text on Hungary (Report of the Special Committee of UN) specifically proves a proletarian context of the uprising, its unanimous strength and a working class drive (Thread with selected source excerpts (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=66210)). Oh, and Engels' text On Authority certanly does not prove anything but the fact from which it starts: that workers' control must be absolute and that no separation can be allowed. If this gets left out, so called "practical" side of this text (and the "theory" that's left of it) is useless.

[The Author]

Originally posted by Voz de la Gente Trabajadora+ May 25, 2007, 11:43 pm--> (Voz de la Gente Trabajadora @ May 25, 2007, 11:43 pm)a quote from Engels that is irrelevant. [/b]

One minute you say you identify with what Engels said, the next you say it's irrelevant? What a contradiction! Of course what Engels said pertains to the question of management! But you would have us think otherwise.


Now you are full of shit. Engels never advocated petty-bourgeois "one-man management".

"The workers must, therefore, first come to an understanding on the hours of work; and these hours, once they are fixed, must be observed by all, without any exception. Thereafter particular questions arise in each room and at every moment concerning the mode of production, distribution of material, etc., which must be settled by decision of a delegate placed at the head of each branch of labour or, if possible, by a majority vote, the will of the single individual will always have to subordinate itself, which means that questions are settled in an authoritarian way."

Who's full of shit now?


Stole economic power from the workers. Fixed.

Says you and the authors of thousands of other polemic rags that never do their homework. This is why I once said a long time ago that only print sources are to be consulted, not Internet materials. At least the bourgeois historians have access to statistics and archives and we have something to work with. Not "workers control gone by 1919" without a drop of explanation as to why or the quantitative changes that caused this control to supposedly disappear.


Bullshit. The results of NEP were never taken back or reversed. Worker communists who opposed the rising counter-revolution were imprisoned and or murdered.

Again, says you. You didn't take the fucking time to read the "Stalin crimes" thread and the scores of posts there demonstrating the research conducted by historians in the Soviet archives on how many actually served and died in the gulags, who were sent to the gulags, you don't know the particulars of each case of those imprisoned. All you know is what one polemical article told you about what happened. You haven't demonstrated to me seriously how the USSR was capitalist and that it was a workers' hellhole. If it was such a hellhole, how come thousands showed up at Lenin and Stalin's funerals, how come there's such nostalgia, why did no one except the imperialists show up at Yeltsin's funeral, why are the living standards so low nowadays compared to then, where did those billionaire oligarchs come from? You really expect me to believe the "content" of some poorly written, piece of shit article?


And thus you resort to lying. Sections of the old Tsarist state were returned, its no small reason that workers lost power.

Returned in the late 1910s due to a lack of trained working-class professionals, liquidated in the years ahead and replaced by workers. The destruction of the old state apparatus for a new apparatus, just like Lenin said in "State and Revolution." Where did I lie?


Ignorance. How is it Menshevik to say that the Bolshevik Party revised Marxism and their results became very visible? You do need to get serious.

Because this was how the Mensheviks attacked the Bolsheviks for years. The Bolsheviks went against Marxism, the Bolsheviks abused power, the Bolsheviks were opportunists. You need to expand your reading materials and take a quick trip to a good library and do some history research. Those polemical articles are not going to satisfy your line of thinking.


I equate socialism with direct workers control of society, none of that petty-bourgeois specialist crap, as if we workers are too stupid to "get it" that we need managers to do things for us.

I equate socialism with direct workers control of society, too. The problem of specialists is not "crap," it's the logical conclusion of organization in large-scale production. I quote Engels again, just to demonstrate, "If man, by dint of his knowledge and inventive genius, has subdued the forces of nature, the latter avenge themselves upon him by subjecting him, in so far as he employs them, to a veritable despotism independent of all social organisation. Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself, to destroy the power loom in order to return to the spinning wheel." You want to abolish authority (which you call "management"). It's not that the workers "don't get it," it's that large-scale production and the need to satisfy everybody requires skilled organized coordination of labor and production to satisfy those needs. Otherwise, with anarchy in production, you can't satisfy the needs of the individual when he pursues his creative interests. You'd have chaos instead and resources and time would be wasted due to a lack of coordination. And then you need to take into account that in socialism you're starting out with the byproducts of capitalism, and then you must also factor the threat of imperialism threatening to destroy the socialist framework through war or ideological subversion.


Yes, you moron. When you send your class conscious communist workers to die, it definitely hurts worker self-management in production. Duh.

Wow. So defending a socialist country from imperialist invasion is bad? Damn. You're more of a utopian dreamer than I realized.


DJ-[email protected] May 26, 2007, 05:50 pm
False. The worker recieved a wage: money equivalent in sold labor power. Thus, wage slavery.

Receiving a wage with benefits and opportunities to better oneself is not wage slavery. I repeat, again, what Marx said, "Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it." This is a wage. Working yourself to death on very low pay that is lower in value than the amount of time and labor performed, without any "personal time," or anything from the social welfare to support yourself or guarantee protection of you and your family, only working to satisfy the profit motive of the enterprise and ignore the condition of the worker, is wage slavery.


Now, few remarks: those Lenin quotes are not a proof of anything but - in best regards - Lenin's wishes (or demagogy, whatever one tends to call it).

I quoted them to demonstrate his actual position on one-man management as opposed to what certain "Leninists" on this board say about what he thought of management and bureaucracy.


proves a proletarian context of the uprising

There's a lot of information discussing the involvement of the students and the petit-bourgeois intelligentsia in this uprising, and the need for "creative freedoms and multiparty democracy." This is not a proletarian demand, but that of the individualist petit-bourgeois intellectual. There's also hints of growing ties with the Titoites of Yugoslavia as well. Of course, the UN when writing this report would never give the whole picture of what happened in Hungary, saying that there were no "imperialist interests" when clearly there were. It's also odd that you have characters like Bush (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/06/20060608-2.html) and Putin (http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/03/01/putinhungary.shtml) actually going to Hungary to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the uprising and its "freedom-fighting, democratic nature." Enemies of the working class supporting a supposed "working class" uprising. Odd. But the Anarchists and Trots will have us think that this was a proletarian revolution. No, it was the discontent of the working class against the reforms and problems created by the Khrushchevite led administration in Hungary, that led workers to discourage against communism, and go over to supporting nationalism and fascism and the "democratic" elements.


Oh, and Engels' text On Authority certanly does not prove anything but the fact from which it starts: that workers' control must be absolute and that no separation can be allowed. If this gets left out, so called "practical" side of this text (and the "theory" that's left of it) is useless.

Of course workers' control must be absolute. It must also be centralized with authority and democratic centralism, and Engels takes the time to actually point out examples of this in practice against the "criticisms" of the anti-authoritarians. This is something which "left-communists" fail to recognize. You want autonomy. Engels says, "Leave, ye that enter in, all autonomy behind!" You don't want submission of the minority to the majority, you want total independence in the workplace without organization (clouded as separation and "attack of the party rule."). Engels says, "...the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions of the majority of persona interested...in time of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience of all to the will of one." You expect us to think that the revolution and the passage to communism will be a very simple affair, when it will be a difficult and arduous road. Some of the ultra-lefts have the audacity to tell us that there will be no transition and that we will go straight to communism, ignoring everything Marx and Engels said; yet at the same time labeling themselves "Marxists"!

[Rawthentic]

Its a fact that the workers did not elect "their" managers.

And the thing with Engels, he refers to the submitting of the will to the majority, that is of the majority workers, not petty-bourgeois managers imposed from above.


Because this was how the Mensheviks attacked the Bolsheviks for years. The Bolsheviks went against Marxism, the Bolsheviks abused power, the Bolsheviks were opportunists. You need to expand your reading materials and take a quick trip to a good library and do some history research. Those polemical articles are not going to satisfy your line of thinking.

I'm attacking Stalin's party, not the original Bolsheviks, although they did compromise with Marxian theory with downplaying the importance of social being and allowing members of the petty-bourgeois into the party.


Wow. So defending a socialist country from imperialist invasion is bad? Damn. You're more of a utopian dreamer than I realized.
They should have sent the peasants and the apolitical workers, not the ones who had the ability to strengthen real proletarian power


You expect us to think that the revolution and the passage to communism will be a very simple affair, when it will be a difficult and arduous road. Some of the ultra-lefts have the audacity to tell us that there will be no transition and that we will go straight to communism, ignoring everything Marx and Engels said; yet at the same time labeling themselves "Marxists"!
No I dont. I expect the working class to take political power and seize the means of production as an independent and class conscious class so that it can dominate society. If there is a need for managers, let them be furnished from the working class and elected by it as well. I see the need for a worker's state as much as you do, but I learn from historical experiences, you are stuck in that past. Time for real and solid Marxist theory. Down with petty-bourgeois socialism.

And you didnt respond to the quotes in my last post that prove that Russia was state-capitalist.

[ComradeRed]

You haven't proved this to be "fact." Instead I get the statement "workers control was gone by 1919." No statistics, no documentation of this supposed "fact," no analysis of the international situation with the ongoing threat of imperialism, no serious analysis of the political situation. How you do expect me to believe this? It's been done before. (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=65473&view=findpost&p=1292300569)

Just looking over a few statistics here on the composition of the party: in 1923, a mere 29% of the factory directors were in the party. Whereas in 1925 (you know, after that small victory for Stalin), 73.7% of the members of the members of the managing boards of trusts, 81.5% of those on the boards of syndicates, and 95% of the directors of large enterprises were party members(!). (See A.S. Bubnov and others, The All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (Russian), Moscow-Leningrad 1931, page 626)

Wait, it gets better! In 1936 this figure raises to somewhere in between 97.5% to 99.1% of these chaps were in the party, and for the chiefs of trusts this figure is 100% (See USSR, The Land of Socialism (Russian), Moscow 1936, p.94.)

These aren't petit bourgeois positions that I'm telling you about, these are bourgeois positions.


Lenin did not say anything of the kind, as is demonstrated here in the quotations. Quite the opposite, he grew to be in favor of one-man management after the revolution. Exactly as Engels envisioned. Well, gee Engels couldn't have possibly have contradicted himself:
Originally posted by Engels+--> (Engels)If conditions have changed in the case of war between nations, this is no less true in the case of the class struggle. The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of masses lacking consciousness is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in on it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are fighting for, body and soul.[/b] --emphasis added

Introduction to Karl Marx's The Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1895/03/06.htm) by Frederick Engels (1895)


Engels on The Party and Revolution
The Blanquists [in the Paris Commune] fared no better. Brought up in the school of conspiracy, and held together by the strict discipline which went with it, they started out from the viewpoint that a relatively small number of resolute, well-organized men would be able, at a given favorable moment, not only to seize the helm of state, but also by energetic and relentless action, to keep power until they succeeded in drawing the mass of the people into the revolution and ranging them round the small band of leaders. This conception involved, above all, the strictest dictatorship and centralization of all power in the hands of the new revolutionary government. --emphasis added

On the 20th Anniversary of the Paris Commune (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm) by Engels (1891).

Huh it appears like Engels was misrepresented.


Fabrication. Wage slavery did not exist in the USSR. What existed was exactly what Marx described in "Gotha Programme." You're confusing the existence of wages under socialism with wage-slavery of capitalism. "...communist society...just as it emerges from capitalist society...still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society." Wages still exist under socialism. "Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it." This is a wage in socialism as Marx described it. Wages of course won't exist in communism, a.k.a. communism the second phase. You say you agree with the Marx quote, yet now you're making a statement which comes into disagreement with what Marx said. You genuinely believe that wages accurately gauged the value created by labor? That is why a minister gets over 12 times the amount a factory worker gets, right? (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=64235&hl=wage) :lol:

Your delusional if you think what happened in the USSR was legitimately what Marx described.


Private to state ownership in the particular, such as nationalization of railways for instance, of course, does not lead to socialism. Nationalizing all industry and agriculture, and integrating these different parts of economic production and distribution into one whole, does change the mode of production into socialist relations of production. You don't have this integration under capitalism. You have markets, lack of planning, and overproduction. Yeah, I completely agree...when the state is run by the party which is composed of people in positions that would be considered bourgeois in a capitalist mode of production, and it retains control to the means of production.

But that apparently is completely different than capitalism because, although the party composed of people in bourgeois positions retain control of the state and economy, it's a "worker's state". In no way does this resemble capitalism, where the people in bourgeois positions retain control of the state and economy, and red flags are no where.

It's really not the class composition of the society, or the class relations of society, that determines the mode of production...it's the red flag density!

When a state composed of bourgeoisie nationalizes the economy, you've effectively shifted the bourgeois class...not abolished it. There's a fundamental difference that you seem to miss.


I'm just as much for workers control of society as you are. Somehow I doubt it.


The problem lies with how you define this "control." Well, when I say "Workers' control" I mean the workers have control!

As opposed to some bourgeoisie having control in the name of the workers.


You just don't like the fact that actual workers' control requires authority, and a division of labor and the decisions of the majority binding on the minority. In other words "Workers' control", like "Democratic Centralism", has neither the workers controlling anything nor any proletarian democracy.

Yes, that surely must be socialism!

Trading one set of bourgeois scum for another, what a workers' paradise.


And then they trained the proletariat to replace the Tsarists. :lol: :lol: :lol: Like monkey helpers!



Meaning Leninism is anti-communism, and that we should subscribe to the Menshevik school of thought. Why is it that every Leninist thinks this is 1917 Russia?

The Mensheviks have gone the way of the dodo. These are different times, there is no need to keep thinking to yourself "This is exactly like 1917 Russia! With the mensheviks and bolsheviks and..."

It's an obsession parallel to a nerd at a Star Trek Convention.


Irregardless of what Marx and Engels said about authority and organization, instead we have to listen to what "communists" tell us about authority and organization. Well, you don't seem to be paying attention to what they said about a "vanguard party" leading the masses to a workers' paradise...instead you quote Engels from one slim essay and assert that's their final opinion on the subject.

Marx and Engels criticized the "vanguard party" concept, but Leninists dismiss it as being criticism of a "premature, anarchist vanguard party" but the criticism holds for the USSR too.

Weaseling your way out by saying "Oh yeah, they're talking about the Blanquist vanguard...but not the real workers' vanguard party" is simply an invalid argument.

(And by the way, "irregardless" isn't a word, you're confusing "regardless" and "irrelevant".)


Which is what was happening in the USSR, but to you capitalism=socialism and somehow we're supposed to believe there were large-scale businesses in the Soviet Union. Considering that Russia was feudal before the civil war, this would be an incredible task to do: expropriate elements of society that don't even exist! Remarkable!


One minute you say you identify with what Engels said, the next you say it's irrelevant? What a contradiction! Of course what Engels said pertains to the question of management! But you would have us think otherwise. Oh the irony...

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by ComradeRed+May 27, 2007 03:53 am--> (ComradeRed @ May 27, 2007 03:53 am)
Engels
If conditions have changed in the case of war between nations, this is no less true in the case of the class struggle. The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of masses lacking consciousness is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in on it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are fighting for, body and soul. --emphasis added [/b]
^^^ ComradeRed, I'd like to point out one small but fundamental error in your quote of Engels, within his very words:

"...masses LACKING consciousness.."

It's a little complicated right now (being so late at night) to synthesize Luxemburg's stuff on spontaneity and organization with Lenin's stuff on political consciousness to justify a more wholistic "theory" (in the political-science sense, not in the science-science sense that you're so intimate with ;) ) of the vanguard party.

That's why, even while Lenin is to most Marxists what Hillel is to religious Jews, in both cases did minority views prevail in certain matters, and in both cases were their words not "final," with more history and commentary needed (hence my mentioning of Sweezy, though even in my agreement of him he, like everyone else, isn't the final word, either).

[It's good that you mentioned Star Trek, though. ;) :D ]

[Rawthentic]

Wow ComradeRed, I wish I had your insight and clarity. Thanks for proving my points.

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by Hammer+May 26, 2007 08:20 pm--> (Hammer @ May 26, 2007 08:20 pm)
Originally posted by [email protected] 27, 2007 03:53 am

Engels
If conditions have changed in the case of war between nations, this is no less true in the case of the class struggle. The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of masses lacking consciousness is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in on it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are fighting for, body and soul. --emphasis added
^^^ ComradeRed, I'd like to point out one small but fundamental error in your quote of Engels, within his very words:

"...masses LACKING consciousness.."[/b]
I'd like to point out a little part of the quote that you seemed to have overlooked too:

"Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in on it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are fighting for, body and soul."

There is a reason why the emancipation of the working class is the work of the workers themselves...not "professional revolutionaries" ;)

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ You didn't address my point. :(

On a side note, I've finally started to read these two ICC webpages in detail:

Have we become "Leninists"? - part 1 (http://en.internationalism.org/ir/96/leninists)
Have we become "Leninists"? - part 2 (http://en.internationalism.org/ir/97/leninists2)

Instead of merely having a quick "pre-lecture" read-through before posting the links to them in my international vanguard party thread :)

Having read the two links in detail, there is deeper meaning to what I said regarding Engels' words "masses LACKING consciousness" than mere polemic that pervades Lenin's two key works on political consciousness and related party organization (respectively), What Is To Be Done? and One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.

Which also addresses my alleged "overlooking": CONTEXT :)

The context of his day indeed revolved around the German Social-Democratic notion of the "mass party."

My opinion of Engels' ideas: very good while Marx was alive, not as great afterwards :(

[The Author]

Originally posted by [email protected] May 26, 2007, 11:53 pm
Just looking over a few statistics here on the composition of the party: in 1923, a mere 29% of the factory directors were in the party. Whereas in 1925 (you know, after that small victory for Stalin), 73.7% of the members of the members of the managing boards of trusts, 81.5% of those on the boards of syndicates, and 95% of the directors of large enterprises were party members(!). (See A.S. Bubnov and others, The All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (Russian), Moscow-Leningrad 1931, page 626)

All you've demonstrated is how many factory directors belonged to the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Belonging to the Communist Party is not evidence of a lack of workers' control. Unless you're one of those "party dictatorship vs. proletarian dictatorship" believers...the types that try to imagine some sort of schism which exists between party and the working class, even if the majority of the membership of the party were from the working class and the bourgeois, tsarist elements from the previous society were purged.


These aren't petit bourgeois positions that I'm telling you about, these are bourgeois positions.

It's sad, seeing revisionists borrowing Marxist phrases and using them for the entirely wrong context. You haven't proven to me how these are "bourgeois positions."


If conditions have changed in the case of war between nations, this is no less true in the case of the class struggle. The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of masses lacking consciousness is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in on it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are fighting for, body and soul.

This concerns seizing political power before and during the revolution, not economic management after the revolution. For the record, Lenin said the same thing.


"Blanquism," wrote Lenin, "is a theory that repudiates the class struggle. Blanquism expects that mankind will be emancipated from wage slavery, not by the class struggle of the proletariat, but through a conspiracy hatched by a small minority of intellectuals" (see V. I. Lenin, "The Congress Summed Up", Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. X, p. 360).

We don't believe in the operation of the proletarian dictatorship by a minority of individuals. You've misrepresented us, buddy. Pointing out how to seize political power and how to maintain power, does not deal with the issue of management and running the socialist society under the new relations of production, questions answered in "Gotha Programme" and "On Authority." Materials you've obviously ignored.


You genuinely believe that wages accurately gauged the value created by labor? That is why a minister gets over 12 times the amount a factory worker gets, right? :lol:

"To each according to his ability, to each according to his work." The principle of socialist work as opposed to the communist "To each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

"...one worker is married, another not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labour, and hence an equal share in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right instead of being equal would have to be unequal. "

And you call yourself a Marxist!


Your delusional if you think what happened in the USSR was legitimately what Marx described.

No, I'm not delusional. It was legitimately what Marx described. Problem is that there are too many "Marxists" out there who don't see that, who don't take the time to seriously analyze and critically think about what Marx said and what happened in history.



Yeah, I completely agree...when the state is run by the party which is composed of people in positions that would be considered bourgeois in a capitalist mode of production, and it retains control to the means of production.

But that apparently is completely different than capitalism because, although the party composed of people in bourgeois positions retain control of the state and economy, it's a "worker's state". In no way does this resemble capitalism, where the people in bourgeois positions retain control of the state and economy, and red flags are no where.

It's really not the class composition of the society, or the class relations of society, that determines the mode of production...it's the red flag density!

When a state composed of bourgeoisie nationalizes the economy, you've effectively shifted the bourgeois class...not abolished it. There's a fundamental difference that you seem to miss.

Wow, so you lack reading comprehension too...Gee, seems to be an epidemic around here lately when it comes to talks about political economy...In a sense, twisting some of my words a little bit, you've repeated the gist of what I said. Only, you tried to sound funny and clever. Still haven't demonstrated to me how the U.S.S.R. was capitalist, or how one-man management is "bourgeois" and goes against what Engels said in "On Authority," or what Marx said in "Gotha Programme." Just beating around the bush, and no more.


Somehow I doubt it.

Now you think you know my political position as if we were acquainted personally with each other for the past twenty years. I suppose you'll tell me you can read my mind, too?


Well, when I say "Workers' control" I mean the workers have control!

As opposed to some bourgeoisie having control in the name of the workers.

I totally agree.

Your use of the "bourgeois" label applied in the context of the U.S.S.R. I find laughable, however. Also that apparently the conception of political economy as envisioned by "state-capitalist" advocates like yourself deviates completely from the Marxist conception.


In other words "Workers' control", like "Democratic Centralism", has neither the workers controlling anything nor any proletarian democracy.

Yes, that surely must be socialism!

Trading one set of bourgeois scum for another, what a workers' paradise.

More confirmation that "ultra-lefts," "council communists," "Orthodox Marxists," (insert new fancy label-of-the-day here) "leftists" advocate an ideology completely contradictory to what Marxism advocates. I mean, it's too hilarious reading this coming from you when you look at one of my earlier posts demonstrating that Engels advocated democratic centralism and authoritarianism against autonomism.

Contradiction at its best.


Why is it that every Leninist thinks this is 1917 Russia?

I don't believe in historical parallels either. That's just you imagining my political spectrum again.


The Mensheviks have gone the way of the dodo. These are different times, there is no need to keep thinking to yourself "This is exactly like 1917 Russia! With the mensheviks and bolsheviks and..."

They are different times of course, instead of Mensheviks we have the countless scores of Anarchist groups, the never-ending tale of the Trots and their splits, and the "Autonomous Marxist-Council Communist-Ultra Left-Whateverists" stuck in limbo between the bourgeois intelligentsia and anti-communist propagandists.


Well, you don't seem to be paying attention to what they said about a "vanguard party" leading the masses to a workers' paradise...

You mean, you're confusing what they said about political organization and seizure of power in terms of the masses and vanguard as opposed to seizing power in a coup without mass support. You're one of those "Marxists" who try to create a non-existent wedge with their statements and the practices of the socialist states throughout most of the twentieth century which involved mass leadership and mass action. You expect me to believe that a division always existed between the vanguard and the masses, and yet you've never seriously demonstrated how...

Like Marx said, "The difference between a working class without an International, and a working class with an International, becomes most evident if we look back to the period of 1848. Years were required for the working class itself to recognise the Insurrection of June, 1848, as the work of its own vanguard. The Paris Commune was at once acclaimed by the universal proletariat."


the criticism holds for the USSR too.

No it doesn't. Only in your opinion does the criticism hold for the USSR. Big difference.


Weaseling your way out by saying "Oh yeah, they're talking about the Blanquist vanguard...but not the real workers' vanguard party" is simply an invalid argument.

I'm the one who's weaseling out? Strange how fast you pulled out the "Blanquist" card... It's "invalid" only in your head, another example of refusing to be confronted with facts. "We'll bury our heads in the sand!"


(And by the way, "irregardless" isn't a word, you're confusing "regardless" and "irrelevant".)

So, not only have you been preaching on the soapbox, you're now my English teacher, too...This just gets more hilarious by the minute.


Considering that Russia was feudal before the civil war, this would be an incredible task to do: expropriate elements of society that don't even exist! Remarkable!

And I suppose the development of capitalism in Russia (http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/DCR99tc.html) is a figment of my imagination, then!

Tell me who's "weaseling out" now?


Oh the irony...

Yes, the irony...how you've been doing the same...strange...

[The Author]

If there is a need for managers, let them be furnished from the working class and elected by it as well. I see the need for a worker's state as much as you do, but I learn from historical experiences, you are stuck in that past. Time for real and solid Marxist theory. Down with petty-bourgeois socialism.

So after all that was said and done, you believe in the need for managers?

This is why I avoid "circle" debates...

For the record, I believe and learn from historical experience, too and the use of real and solid Marxist theory. What I'm dead set against and a serious skeptic of is the trash and phony "Marxism" proposed by so many different branches of leftism who think they know who Marx was and what Marxism is and its theoretical and practical aspects.

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by [email protected] 27, 2007 01:47 am
Receiving a wage with benefits and opportunities to better oneself is not wage slavery. I repeat, again, what Marx said, "Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it." This is a wage.

:lol: No comment here. Come on people, and see for yourself the frigitity of Stalinism.


Enemies of the working class supporting a supposed "working class" uprising. Odd. But the Anarchists and Trots will have us think that this was a proletarian revolution. No, it was the discontent of the working class against the reforms and problems created by the Khrushchevite led administration in Hungary, that led workers to discourage against communism, and go over to supporting nationalism and fascism and the "democratic" elements.

Oh, I get it - it all seems clear now: it was not a working class uprising, what Trots and anarchist-fascists got us to think, but it was a working class uprising for fascism.

Everyone may question the lengths 1956 might have taken us, but you dare to question the context which is clear as polished cristal. Of course. What else could you do? Now...

I dare you to find one single shread of historical evidence that would prove your statements! I've gone over hundreds and hundreds of pages of sources on the uprising and not one serious thing could prove anything you claim here.


Of course workers' control must be absolute. It must also be centralized with authority and democratic centralism, and Engels takes the time to actually point out examples of this in practice against the "criticisms" of the anti-authoritarians.

Simple words taken out of context (like "centralization" or "absolute") mean nothing by themselves.


Engels says, "Leave, ye that enter in, all autonomy behind!"

It was Dante, you fucking idiot. :lol:

[Rawthentic]

What I'm dead set against and a serious skeptic of is the trash and phony "Marxism" proposed by so many different branches of leftism who think they know who Marx was and what Marxism is and its theoretical and practical aspects.
Tell me about it....


It's sad, seeing revisionists borrowing Marxist phrases and using them for the entirely wrong context. You haven't proven to me how these are "bourgeois positions."
Managing the means of production while not being a proletarian and being imposed from above is petty-bourgeois. Just like capitalism.

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by CriticizeEverythingAlways+May 26, 2007 11:12 pm--> (CriticizeEverythingAlways @ May 26, 2007 11:12 pm)
Originally posted by [email protected] May 26, 2007, 11:53 pm
Just looking over a few statistics here on the composition of the party: in 1923, a mere 29% of the factory directors were in the party. Whereas in 1925 (you know, after that small victory for Stalin), 73.7% of the members of the members of the managing boards of trusts, 81.5% of those on the boards of syndicates, and 95% of the directors of large enterprises were party members(!). (See A.S. Bubnov and others, The All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (Russian), Moscow-Leningrad 1931, page 626)

All you've demonstrated is how many factory directors belonged to the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Belonging to the Communist Party is not evidence of a lack of workers' control.[/b] Oh yes, because factory managers, directors of large enterprises, etc. are not bourgeois positions.

They are so self-evidently proletarian positions that no reasoning needs to be given...like what you've done here.

Perhaps, but overwhelmingly not. Contrary to your wishes, the composition of the Communist Party was overwhelmingly people in bourgeois positions.


Unless you're one of those "party dictatorship vs. proletarian dictatorship" believers...
Good thing you don't know your Lenin:

Lenin
when we are reproached with having established a dictatorship of one party...we say, 'Yes, it is a dictatorship of one party! This is what we stand for and we shall not shift from that position... --emphasis added

Speech At The First All-Russia Congress Of Workers In Education and Socialist Culture (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/aug/05.htm)


...the types that try to imagine some sort of schism which exists between party and the working class, even if the majority of the membership of the party were from the working class and the bourgeois, tsarist elements from the previous society were purged. You are part right, the majority of the party was bourgeois and the worker element was purged.

It's irrelevant that they got rid of the "tsarist elements from the previous society", that's what capitalism does! It gets rid of the feudal elements "from the previous society"!


It's sad, seeing revisionists borrowing Marxist phrases and using them for the entirely wrong context. You haven't proven to me how these are "bourgeois positions." It's more sad seeing a sap incapable of critically thinking, especially when his username is "CriticizeEverythingAlways".

Apparently you do not understand what is a bourgeois position in society anymore; directors of large enterprises are suddenly proletarian positions, and so forth. A "brilliant" defense of the USSR.

I'm sorry that you are apparently too thick to realize that a fellow in charge of running a large enterprise (we call them "CEOs" in capitalist societies) are bourgeoisie.



If conditions have changed in the case of war between nations, this is no less true in the case of the class struggle. The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of masses lacking consciousness is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in on it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are fighting for, body and soul.

This concerns seizing political power before and during the revolution, not economic management after the revolution. For the record, Lenin said the same thing.


"Blanquism," wrote Lenin, "is a theory that repudiates the class struggle. Blanquism expects that mankind will be emancipated from wage slavery, not by the class struggle of the proletariat, but through a conspiracy hatched by a small minority of intellectuals" (see V. I. Lenin, "The Congress Summed Up", Collected Works, 4th Russ. ed., Vol. X, p. 360). Does anyone else see the irony in Lenin, who openly espoused the idea of a "vanguard party" leading the way for class struggle, condemning the very same idea?

Lenin, from this passage, is of course correct. Using a "vanguard party" to "lead the masses" to their "emancipation" is a reactionary idea that essentially makes the workers sheep.

It's just a pity that "connecting the dots" is an impossible task for Leninists to do.

Of course, Lenin changed his tune in 1917 completely. Here, this passage from 1905 to 1906 era, when Lenin didn't have a chance at overthrowing the Tsarist government, he espoused class struggle.

In 1917, when he was a "contender", his tune changed completely to espouse this idea of a "small minority conspiracy"...anything to get him in power!


We don't believe in the operation of the proletarian dictatorship by a minority of individuals. You've misrepresented us, buddy. You obviously don't understand what happened in the USSR, "buddy".


Pointing out how to seize political power and how to maintain power, does not deal with the issue of management and running the socialist society under the new relations of production, questions answered in "Gotha Programme" and "On Authority." Materials you've obviously ignored. Oh yes, I missed the part in the "Gotha Programme" where Marx said "...and let those in bourgeois positions run the show after the revolution..." or in "On Authority" where Engels said "...blindly follow the vanguard party after the revolution...". :lol:

Perhaps we should listen to Marx and Engels and worry about post-revolutionary society after the revolution...but I doubt that will satisfy your demands.

But blindly guessing "What exactly will happen after the revolution" is utopian nonsense (what's worse is trying to justify what you're doing after the revolution as "Well, Marx and Engels said it in xxx in 1847...it's toward the back, you wouldn't have read it...").

What I can say with certainty is that if you traded one set of bosses for another, the revolution didn't abolish class society. If you actually look at the factual history of the USSR (as opposed to the history your party leader has told you), there was a rather obvious divide between the workers and the party...you just so happen to reject the fact that CEOs are bourgeois and so forth, so it turns out by such reasoning the party was "proletarian".

Well, as proletarian as Bill Gates or Mr. Buffet is (that is, nonexistent).

Here's a rather "radical" idea: let the workers, not some "vanguard party", run the show during and after the revolution! Why that's downright logical, workers running a workers' state and a workers' revolution!


"To each according to his ability, to each according to his work." The principle of socialist work as opposed to the communist "To each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

"...one worker is married, another not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labour, and hence an equal share in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right instead of being equal would have to be unequal. "

And you call yourself a Marxist! In other words you're an idiot who can only justify the wage gap by claiming that ministers and bourgeois positions have more work.

Hey, guess what! You just justified capitalism, shit wit!


No, I'm not delusional. It was legitimately what Marx described. Problem is that there are too many "Marxists" out there who don't see that, who don't take the time to seriously analyze and critically think about what Marx said and what happened in history. Oh yes, Critical Thinking, that is the evil element which makes the USSR not socialist and "distortion" of facts by merely presenting them! :rolleyes:

Look at your username, hypocrite!

:lol: "No I'm not delusional" you might want to think twice about that.


Still haven&#39;t demonstrated to me how the U.S.S.R. was capitalist, or how one-man management is "bourgeois" and goes against what Engels said in "On Authority," or what Marx said in "Gotha Programme." Just beating around the bush, and no more. Oh yes, silly me, Marx and Engels both agreed that absolutely nothing should change after the revolution...I&#39;m glad that your incompetency could point that out <_<


Now you think you know my political position as if we were acquainted personally with each other for the past twenty years. I suppose you&#39;ll tell me you can read my mind, too? Yeah, that&#39;s right gramps, I can read your mind too because I&#39;ve got the voodoo of dialectics. Oooh-boogy-boogy.


I totally agree. And yet you contradict yourself.


Your use of the "bourgeois" label applied in the context of the U.S.S.R. I find laughable, however. Also that apparently the conception of political economy as envisioned by "state-capitalist" advocates like yourself deviates completely from the Marxist conception. I&#39;m glad you can&#39;t think critically and have to resort to "Ah, but you are no true follower of Marx&#33; Only true followers blindly believe the U&#036;&#036;R was socialist&#33;&#33;1+1=11&#33;&#33;&#33;" It really makes your argument more convincing.

No, what makes it really convincing is the lack of facts and figures, justifying exploitation as "To each according to his need", and showing a complete ignorance as to what is a bourgeois position or isn&#39;t one.


More confirmation that "ultra-lefts," "council communists," "Orthodox Marxists," (insert new fancy label-of-the-day here) "leftists" advocate an ideology completely contradictory to what Marxism advocates. I mean, it&#39;s too hilarious reading this coming from you when you look at one of my earlier posts demonstrating that Engels advocated democratic centralism and authoritarianism against autonomism. And Engels couldn&#39;t have possibly have been wrong because, just as religions require faith to adhere to canonical writings, Marxists too require blind faith to adhere to the writings of Engels :lol:

Brilliant&#33; I love your absolute failure as a critical thinker, given your username.


Contradiction at its best. Yes, critical thinking is for heathens :lol:


I don&#39;t believe in historical parallels either. That&#39;s just you imagining my political spectrum again. No, but bringing up Menshevism is an anachronism...and calling people "Mensheviks" is just absurd.

If you haven&#39;t done it so far, it will be done; it always is done in the course of the conversation of state capitalism (or else, in the eloquent words of Zampano, you may attempt to beat his label of "Plankohvist petit bourgeois pseudo intellectual" or some nonsense like that :lol:).


They are different times of course, instead of Mensheviks we have the countless scores of Anarchist groups, the never-ending tale of the Trots and their splits, and the "Autonomous Marxist-Council Communist-Ultra Left-Whateverists" stuck in limbo between the bourgeois intelligentsia and anti-communist propagandists. And the term obviously is a blanket for both these groups today :rolleyes:


You mean, you&#39;re confusing what they said about political organization and seizure of power in terms of the masses and vanguard as opposed to seizing power in a coup without mass support. I&#39;d hate to break it to you, but the 1917 October "revolution" was a coup.


You&#39;re one of those "Marxists" who try to create a non-existent wedge with their statements and the practices of the socialist states throughout most of the twentieth century which involved mass leadership and mass action. This doesn&#39;t syntactically make sense, but I&#39;ll try to respond despite this.

The "practices" of the "socialist" states of the twentieth century have demonstrated themselves to be bourgeois practices under the guise of leftist-sounding rhetoric.

You seem to gleefully ignore what exactly constitutes a bourgeois position or a prole position and "naturally" declare that "everyone" in the USSR was a "prole"...which is a laughably absurd statement demonstrating complete ignorance on the composition of soviet class society.


You expect me to believe that a division always existed between the vanguard and the masses, and yet you&#39;ve never seriously demonstrated how... This has been covered before in greater detail elsewhere, but feel free to ignore the links to the other threads.

A serious problem is that the party members were allowed to go to "closed markets" where foreign goods and superior domestic goods were sold for cheaper (3 to 16 times cheaper&#33;) than inferior goods at the "open" markets where non-party members went.

Another is that the wage disparity between a party member and non-party member. This actually stems from the fact that party members had bourgeois positions.

The list goes on and on, but regardless of how many instances I list you&#39;ll always reject them as "not dividing but unifying the two" or some nonsense like that.


Like Marx said, "The difference between a working class without an International, and a working class with an International, becomes most evident if we look back to the period of 1848. Years were required for the working class itself to recognise the Insurrection of June, 1848, as the work of its own vanguard. The Paris Commune was at once acclaimed by the universal proletariat." The international was nothing like a "vanguard party". If you had actually read the history of the International, rather than blindly believe "what Lenin said...", you&#39;d realize that the International worked as a coalition of localized organizations...rather than a monolithic, nonlocal organization.


No it doesn&#39;t. Only in your opinion does the criticism hold for the USSR. Big difference. This is an invalid argument, you haven&#39;t provided facts or figures proving otherwise.

Instead you have asserted blind faith and "No True Scotsman" fallacies...both, by the way (just for your future reference), are invalid arguments.


I&#39;m the one who&#39;s weaseling out? Strange how fast you pulled out the "Blanquist" card... It&#39;s "invalid" only in your head, another example of refusing to be confronted with facts. "We&#39;ll bury our heads in the sand&#33;" Let&#39;s assess your argument that Leninism isn&#39;t anything like Blanquism.

P1) Leninism isn&#39;t anything like Blanquism because Lenin criticized the Blanquists.
C) Leninism therefore cannot be anything like Blanquism ever.

That&#39;s an invalid argument. It demonstrates your poor attempt at critical reasoning...no wonder you oppose it so, you can&#39;t do it&#33;


And I suppose the development of capitalism in Russia (http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/DCR99tc.html) is a figment of my imagination, then&#33;

Tell me who&#39;s "weaseling out" now? You are still, the "development of capitalism" in Russia predominantly happened due to foreign investment in the Western fringes of Russia.

The domestic development of capitalism "died out" because of the stranglehold on the economy that the feudal remnant had. The Tsar tried increasing the tariffs (to absurdly huge amounts&#33;), and all that happened was that he killed the economy.

The system that Russia had in the early 1900s (until 1917) was "late feudalism" or, possibly in some regions, "pre-capitalism".

The class composition really didn&#39;t change all that much compared to other "pre-capitalist" societies.

For example in 1917, 80% of the population was peasantry...coincidentally, in 1789 France 80% of the population was peasantry too. It&#39;s common for pre-bourgeois societies to have such a large peasantry component of society.

And yet this was the grounds for a "proletarian revolution"? :lol: I think you&#39;re missing something completely here.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Again, you&#39;re missing the CONTEXT with that Lenin quote (and you didn&#39;t address my post above regarding more context and two webpages). :(

Lenin below is NOT talking about the DOTP at all&#33; He is rather talking about having one party in charge rather than some mumbo-jumbo "united front" with other socialist parties:


Originally posted by Lenin+--> (Lenin)When we are reproached with having established a dictatorship of one party and, as you have heard, a united socialist front is proposed, we say, "Yes, it is a dictatorship of one party&#33; This is what we stand for and we shall not shift from that position because it is the party that has won, in the course of decades, the position of vanguard of the entire factory and industrial proletariat. This party had won that position even before the revolution of 1905. It is the party that was at the head of the workers in 1905 and which since then—even at the time of the reaction after 1905 when the working-class movement was rehabilitated with such difficulty under the Stolypin Duma—merged with the working class and it alone could lead that class to a profound, fundamental change in the old society." When a united socialist front is proposed to us we say that it is the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties that propose it, and that they have wavered in favour of the bourgeoisie throughout the revolution. We have had a double experience—the Kerensky period when the Socialist-Revolutionaries formed a coalition government that was helped by the Entente, that is, by the world bourgeoisie, the imperialists of France, America and Britain. What did that result in? Was there that gradual transition to socialism they had promised? No, there was collapse, the absolute rule of the imperialists, the rule of the bourgeoisie and the complete bankruptcy of all sorts of illusions about class conciliation.

If that experience is not enough, take Siberia. There we saw the same thing happen again. In Siberia the government was against the Bolsheviks. At the beginning the entire bourgeoisie who had fled from Soviet power came to the help of the Czechoslovak uprising and the uprising of time Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. They were helped by the entire bourgeoisie and the capitalists of the most powerful countries of Europe and America; their aid was not merely ideological but financial and military aid as well. And what was the result? What came of this rule that was allegedly the rule of the Constituent Assembly, that allegedly democratic government of Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks? It led to the Kolchak gamble. Why did it lead to the collapse that we have witnessed? Because here we saw the effect of the basic truth, which the so-called socialists from the camp of our opponents do not want to understand, that there can be only one of two possible powers in capitalist society, either the power of the capitalists or the power of the proletariat, no matter whether that society is developing, is firmly on its feet, or is declining. Every middle-of-the-road power is a dream, and every attempt to set up something in between leads only to people, even if they are absolutely sincere, shifting to one side or the other. Only the power of the proletariat, only the rule of the workers can ally to itself the majority of those who work, because the peasant masses, although they constitute a mass of working people, are nevertheless to a certain extent the owners of their small properties, of their own grain. And that is the struggle that has unfolded before our eyes, the struggle which shows how the proletariat, in the course of lengthy political trials, during the changes in governments that we see in various places on the outskirts of Russia, is sweeping away everything that serves exploitation; it shows how the proletariat is breaking its own road and is becoming more and more the genuine, absolute leader of the masses of working people in suppressing and eliminating the resistance of capital.

Those who say that the Bolsheviks violate freedom and who propose the formation of a united socialist front, that is, an alliance with those who vacillated, and twice in the history of the Russian revolution went over to the side of the bourgeoisie—these people are very fond of accusing us of resorting to terror. They say that the Bolsheviks have introduced a system of terror in administration, and if Russia is to be saved, the Bolsheviks must renounce it. This reminds me of a witty French bourgeois who, in his bourgeois manner, said with reference to the abolition of the death penalty, "Let the murderers be the first to abolish the death penalty." I recall this when people say, "Let the Bolsheviks renounce the terror." Let the Russian capitalists and their allies, America, France and Britain, that is, those who first imposed terror on Soviet Russia, let them renounce it&#33; They are the imperialists who attacked us and are still attacking its with all their military might, which is a thousand times greater than ours. Is it not terror for all the Entente countries, all the imperialists of Britain, France and America, to keep in their capitals servitors of international capital—whether their names are Sazonov or Maklakov—who have organised tens and hundreds of thousands of the dissatisfied, ruined, hum’iliated and indignant representatives of capital and the bourgeoisie? You must have heard about the plots among the military, you must have read about the latest plot in Krasnaya Gorka, which nearly led to the loss of Petrograd; what was this but a manifestation of terror on the part of the bourgeoisie of the whole world, which will commit any violence, crime and atrocity in order to reinstate the exploiters in Russia and stamp out the flames of the socialist revolution, which is now threatening even their own countries? There is the source of terror, that is where the responsibility lies&#33; That is why we are sure that those who preach renunciation of terror in Russia are nothing but conscious, or unwitting, tools and agents of the imperialist terrorists, who are trying to crush Russia with their blockades and aid to Denikin and Kolchak. But their cause is a hopeless one.[/b]


You
The international was nothing like a "vanguard party". If you had actually read the history of the International, rather than blindly believe "what Lenin said...", you&#39;d realize that the International worked as a coalition of localized organizations...rather than a monolithic, nonlocal organization.

Please read my post on the two webpages above. :(

[The Author]

So, besides the interesting, colorful "commentary" of the Ultra-Left Kiddies, I still haven&#39;t gotten any decent information on how the USSR was supposedly capitalist. Only a long-winded lecture on a few individuals&#39; imagined conception of Marxism...

[Rawthentic]

Looks like thats the best you got.

And personalistic attacks are debater&#39;s tricks to hide their political bankruptness and/or the reality that they lost an argument.

The Russian bourgeoisie, with the help of its petty-bourgeois managers, extracted surplus value from wage slavery that was the used to create more capital.

ComradeRed proves it:


You seem to gleefully ignore what exactly constitutes a bourgeois position or a prole position and "naturally" declare that "everyone" in the USSR was a "prole"...which is a laughably absurd statement demonstrating complete ignorance on the composition of soviet class society.

And thats just a small part, but you of course ignore it oh might critic&#33;

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by Hammer+May 26, 2007 09:52 pm--> (Hammer &#064; May 26, 2007 09:52 pm)Have we become "Leninists"? - part 1 (http://en.internationalism.org/ir/96/leninists)
Have we become "Leninists"? - part 2 (http://en.internationalism.org/ir/97/leninists2)[/b] I&#39;m rather uninterested in reading the international current claiming not to be Leninist, sorry.

Do you have an excerpt that you&#39;d like to bring to my attention?


Having read the two links in detail, there is deeper meaning to what I said regarding Engels&#39; words "masses LACKING consciousness" than mere polemic that pervades Lenin&#39;s two key works on political consciousness and related party organization (respectively), What Is To Be Done? and One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. Your focusing on the wrong part of the quote <_<

Unless you agree with Lenin and think that socialism is merely state capitalism...in which case, this "socialism" is not a revolutionary society.

Just a few tidbits with Lenin on socialism, here&#39;s a few quotes:

Originally posted by Lenin+--> (Lenin)When a big enterprise assumes gigantic proportions, and, on the basis of an exact computation of mass data, organises according to plan the supply of raw materials to the extent of two-thirds, or three fourths, of all that is necessary for tens of millions of people; when raw materials are transported in a systematic and organised manner to the most suitable places of production, sometimes situated hundreds of thousands of miles from each other; when a single centre directs all the consecutive stages of processing the materials right up to the manufacture of numerous varieties of finished articles; when the products are distributed according to a single plan among tens of millions of customers.

....then it becomes evident that we have socialisation of production, and not mere &#39;interlocking&#39;; that private economic and private property relations constitute a shell which no longer fits its contents, a shell which must inevitably decay if its removal is artificially delayed, a shell which may remain in a state of decay for a fairly long period ...but which will inevitably be removed.[/b] Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch10.htm) By Lenin, Chapter 10.

That, in a nutshell, is Lenin on socialism.


[email protected]
Capitalism has created an accounting apparatus in the shape of the banks, syndicates, postal service, consumers&#39; societies, and office employees unions. Without the big banks socialism would be impossible.

[...]A single state bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus. This will be country-wide book-keeping, country-wide accounting of the production and distribution of goods, this will be, so to speak, something in the nature of the skeleton of socialist society. Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? (http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/01.htm) By Lenin.

The basic approach to socialism, according to Lenin, is to simply have these big banks (which, empirically, constitute a negligible percent of the economy as I&#39;ve pointed out in a previous thread), then "socialize" it.

In other words, socialism is planned capitalism with the capitalists surgically removed...as though this would really change the material conditions of society.

Is there still exploitation of the working class? Yeah. Is there still reinvestment of surplus value into the expansion of capital? Yeah.

But it&#39;s somehow completely different from capitalism, because there are red flags everywhere and the adjective "People&#39;s" is added to everything.

Simply laying hold to ready-made apparatuses of the capitalist society doesn&#39;t work, as Marx and Engels correctly identified in the example of the Paris commune.


CriticizeEverythingAlways
So, besides the interesting, colorful "commentary" of the Ultra-Left Kiddies, I still haven&#39;t gotten any decent information on how the USSR was supposedly capitalist. I have provided more than enough evidence; the fact that you refuse to accept it is another matter entirely.

Perhaps its your senility gramps. But I can&#39;t really help you when you purposely ignore an argument and data provided...worse you didn&#39;t even provide any counter-evidence, just "No, you&#39;re wrong you ultra-left kiddie&#33;" Needless to say, that&#39;s an invalid argument.


Only a long-winded lecture on a few individuals&#39; imagined conception of Marxism... No true scotsman fallacy.

How ironic is it that you&#39;re user name is "CriticizeEverythingAlways" and yet you demand more blind faith than a Catholic priest.

[The Author]

Looks like thats the best you got.

No, usually I take the time to write more detailed posts when the debate is constructive. When you have to read garbage, there&#39;s no need to respond in detail, or even respond at all.


And personalistic attacks are debater&#39;s tricks to hide their political bankruptness and/or the reality that they lost an argument.

I know. Look at some of these golden examples:


Originally posted by DJ&#045;TC+--> (DJ&#045;TC)you fucking idiot. [/b]


ComradeRed
sap

too thick

shit wit

As the formula goes: the louder they are, the more they talk out of their ass...


The Russian bourgeoisie, with the help of its petty-bourgeois managers, extracted surplus value from wage slavery that was the used to create more capital.

You and the Ultra-Left Kiddies haven&#39;t seriously demonstrated how the USSR and the socialist countries were run by the bourgeoisie, how managers in the USSR and socialist countries are bourgeois, how there was wage-slavery in these countries. Just more polemics and another platform for yet another "Anarchist vs. Leninist" debate. That&#39;s really all that this has been boiling down to in the end.

[Rawthentic]

Yes, we have proven the existence of wage slavery you Stalin-kiddie. Or how about Tankie?

And you ignore most of ComradeRed&#39;s arguments. I want to see you seriously refute his arguments before anything else. Don&#39;t try to vacillate by even responding to this post.

Just face it, you lost.

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by [email protected] 27, 2007 06:08 pm

Looks like thats the best you got.

No, usually I take the time to write more detailed posts when the debate is constructive. When you have to read garbage, there&#39;s no need to respond in detail, or even respond at all. That&#39;s a good excuse :lol:

You don&#39;t seem to understand what a valid argument is (as I&#39;ve gone point by point to demonstrate), how can you be in any position to denounce my criticisms as invalid arguments?


The Russian bourgeoisie, with the help of its petty-bourgeois managers, extracted surplus value from wage slavery that was the used to create more capital. You and the Ultra-Left Kiddies haven&#39;t seriously demonstrated how the USSR and the socialist countries were run by the bourgeoisie, No, I have:

Just looking over a few statistics here on the composition of the party: in 1923, a mere 29% of the factory directors were in the party. Whereas in 1925 (you know, after that small victory for Stalin), 73.7% of the members of the members of the managing boards of trusts, 81.5% of those on the boards of syndicates, and 95% of the directors of large enterprises were party members(&#33;). (See A.S. Bubnov and others, The All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (Russian), Moscow-Leningrad 1931, page 626)

You can provide data proving otherwise, which you refuse to do. I wonder why <_<


...how managers in the USSR and socialist countries are bourgeois, So they magically become proletarian in the USSR but are bourgeois in a capitalist society? Yeah, that&#39;s a logically consistent argument :rolleyes:


...how there was wage-slavery in these countries. You seriously believe there wasn&#39;t wage slavery?

If you didn&#39;t work, you didn&#39;t get money and you couldn&#39;t afford food. One didn&#39;t have a choice as to whether one works or not...one was coerced into doing it, just like how one is coerced to do it in capitalism for survival.

Of course this doesn&#39;t equate to wage-slavery...being coerced to work for a wage in order to survive is obviously not wage slavery.


Just more polemics and another platform for yet another "Anarchist vs. Leninist" debate. That&#39;s really all that this has been boiling down to in the end. Yeah, that&#39;s a brilliant argument. Really.

[Rawthentic]

Yeah, that&#39;s a brilliant argument. Really.
Besides being stupid. Not one anarchist has posted here. I am not an "ultra-leftist."

[The Author]

I have provided more than enough evidence

No, you&#39;ve provided your skewered interpretation of what happened. Interpretation is not "evidence."


Perhaps its your senility gramps.

Yep, keep on preaching... I wonder if this is the method of communication you use in public when you argue with someone who doesn&#39;t agree with your views.


But I can&#39;t really help you when you purposely ignore an argument and data provided...worse you didn&#39;t even provide any counter-evidence, just "No, you&#39;re wrong you ultra-left kiddie&#33;" Needless to say, that&#39;s an invalid argument.

Your argument wasn&#39;t an argument, just a long-winded rant about your warped understanding of Leninism. Your evidence (in which you had the balls to use a historical parallel, after accusing me of using a parallel&#33; And you call me a "hypocrite," you bullshit-artist&#33;) was not "counter-evidence" to my argument that capitalism was developing in Russia, in response to your earlier statement that Russia was feudal and that elements of capitalism didn&#39;t even exist&#33;

I mean, when you bullshit people, make up your mind on what you want to say and how you want to say it&#33; Don&#39;t keep changing your story&#33;

And for the record, for you and the historically challenged, the bourgeois class existed in Russia around 1917, and it existed in France around 1789. Get your facts straight.

[Rawthentic]

Now you&#39;re just a robot. We keep refuting your pro-capitalism and you keep coming back with the same shit.


Yep, keep on preaching... I wonder if this is the method of communication you use in public when you argue with someone who doesn&#39;t agree with your views.
I do this with self-described "Marxists." What an argument, clever.


I mean, when you bullshit people, make up your mind on what you want to say and how you want to say it&#33; Don&#39;t keep changing your story&#33;
We&#39;ve both stayed consistent, you ignore like 95% of our posts for your rants that show that you have nothing better to say.

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by Voz de la Gente Trabajadora+May 27, 2007 06:31 pm--> (Voz de la Gente Trabajadora @ May 27, 2007 06:31 pm)
Yeah, that&#39;s a brilliant argument. Really.
Besides being stupid. Not one anarchist has posted here. I am not an "ultra-leftist." [/b]
"Ultra-Left" and "Anarchist" are "curse words" used by the Leninists, such is life.

So according to our resident Stalin kiddie, you and I are anarcho-ultra-leftists. Whatever.


CriticizeEverythingAlways
No, you&#39;ve provided your skewered interpretation of what happened. Interpretation is not "evidence." I&#39;m glad you didn&#39;t read my posts.

I provided statistics and figures but you can keep on ignoring them, it hasn&#39;t stopped you so far. It&#39;s a brilliant debate tactic of yours, really.

Perhaps you could back up your argument with statistics and figures, like I&#39;ve been suggesting for the past several posts. Your refusal to do so seems to hint at something, what oh what could it possibly be? :huh:

[The Author]

You don&#39;t seem to understand what a valid argument is (as I&#39;ve gone point by point to demonstrate), how can you be in any position to denounce my criticisms as invalid arguments?

You haven&#39;t gone "point by point," you&#39;ve given me a long-winded lecture on Leninism. Big difference. If you call your response "criticism," then I&#39;m the King of England...


Just looking over a few statistics here on the composition of the party: in 1923, a mere 29% of the factory directors were in the party. Whereas in 1925 (you know, after that small victory for Stalin), 73.7% of the members of the members of the managing boards of trusts, 81.5% of those on the boards of syndicates, and 95% of the directors of large enterprises were party members(&#33;). (See A.S. Bubnov and others, The All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (Russian), Moscow-Leningrad 1931, page 626)

Which, again, demonstrates how many factory directors were in the party. It doesn&#39;t tell me how many members of the party were working class, or the ratio between workers and other class elements in the party. Only how many factory directors became party members.

You still haven&#39;t proven to me how they were "bourgeois," or how there was wage-slavery, or how the USSR was capitalist&#33;


So they magically become proletarian in the USSR but are bourgeois in a capitalist society? Yeah, that&#39;s a logically consistent argument

Explain to me how they were "bourgeois" in the USSR, when the property relations were socialized? Do you even have any idea what relations of production are?


You seriously believe there wasn&#39;t wage slavery?

If you didn&#39;t work, you didn&#39;t get money and you couldn&#39;t afford food. One didn&#39;t have a choice as to whether one works or not...one was coerced into doing it, just like how one is coerced to do it in capitalism for survival.

Of course this doesn&#39;t equate to wage-slavery...being coerced to work for a wage in order to survive is obviously not wage slavery.

"He who does not work, does not eat." Workers who do not participate in the construction of socialism, do not benefit from socialism. What? You expect everything to be available the day after the revolution? What chapter of "Marx" have you been reading?

So you believe in the "coercion" bullshit, too. Not surprised, another classic example of brainwashing by the bourgeois media at its best. I suppose you&#39;ll tell me millions died under "forced collectivization" too, right?

Work performed and money and benefits received for time and labor performed is a wage. It becomes wage-slavery when you work for more than you receive.


Yeah, that&#39;s a brilliant argument. Really.

As if you have done so well. Get a grip.

[The Author]

"Ultra-Left" and "Anarchist" are "curse words" used by the Leninists, such is life.

So according to our resident Stalin kiddie, you and I are anarcho-ultra-leftists. Whatever.

Don&#39;t try to confuse me with those posers who are Third Positionists in hiding who think Stalin was some "great Russian nationalist, anti-Semitic icon, who moved mountains" and never took the time to read what he wrote or what other Marxists wrote. I know it&#39;s a trend around here to start dismissing Marxists as "cult worshippers" when you have nothing better to say.

[Rawthentic]

Workers who do not participate in the construction of socialism, do not benefit from socialism. What? You expect everything to be available the day after the revolution? What chapter of "Marx" have you been reading?
Your argument is that nothing improves after the revolution, and then go on to justify it with the Critique of the Gotha Programme as if we would let that fly. I expect the workers to be in direct control with the democratic will of the majority of workers, as Engels meant in this On Authority essay.

You once again never provide statistical proof for your arguments, as ComradeRed has repeatedly said. He wonders why, I know why.

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by CriticizeEverythingAlways+May 27, 2007 06:46 pm--> (CriticizeEverythingAlways &#064; May 27, 2007 06:46 pm)
You don&#39;t seem to understand what a valid argument is (as I&#39;ve gone point by point to demonstrate), how can you be in any position to denounce my criticisms as invalid arguments?

You haven&#39;t gone "point by point," you&#39;ve given me a long-winded lecture on Leninism. Big difference. [/b]
Again, thanks for not reading my posts.


If you call your response "criticism," then I&#39;m the King of England...


Just looking over a few statistics here on the composition of the party: in 1923, a mere 29% of the factory directors were in the party. Whereas in 1925 (you know, after that small victory for Stalin), 73.7% of the members of the members of the managing boards of trusts, 81.5% of those on the boards of syndicates, and 95% of the directors of large enterprises were party members(&#33;). (See A.S. Bubnov and others, The All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (Russian), Moscow-Leningrad 1931, page 626)

Which, again, demonstrates how many factory directors were in the party. It doesn&#39;t tell me how many members of the party were working class, or the ratio between workers and other class elements in the party. Only how many factory directors became party members.

You still haven&#39;t proven to me how they were "bourgeois," or how there was wage-slavery, or how the USSR was capitalist&#33; Well, let&#39;s look a little later in time. In 1937 managerial personnel numbered 1,751,000 (USSR, The Land of Socialism, Moscow 1936, p.148). At least nine tenths were in the party (and this is low balling the estimate), or more precisely 1,575,900 were in the party.

There is no exact figure available for 1937, but the figures for 1934 and 1939 were 2,807,000 and 2,477,000. So taking the average of these two (which is 2,642,000 members), there are 1,066,100 non-factory manager party members.

Mind you this is only the factory managers, I&#39;m not even including those on the board of syndicates or directors of large enterprises or any other traditionally bourgeois position.



So they magically become proletarian in the USSR but are bourgeois in a capitalist society? Yeah, that&#39;s a logically consistent argument

Explain to me how they were "bourgeois" in the USSR, when the property relations were socialized? Do you even have any idea what relations of production are? Oh right, because the means of production were "socialized" that magically does away with class.

Again, thanks for not reading my posts, it allows me to repeat myself <_<


Originally posted by ComradeRed+May 27, 2007 05:56 pm--> (ComradeRed &#064; May 27, 2007 05:56 pm)Just a few tidbits with Lenin on socialism, here&#39;s a few quotes:

[email protected]
When a big enterprise assumes gigantic proportions, and, on the basis of an exact computation of mass data, organises according to plan the supply of raw materials to the extent of two-thirds, or three fourths, of all that is necessary for tens of millions of people; when raw materials are transported in a systematic and organised manner to the most suitable places of production, sometimes situated hundreds of thousands of miles from each other; when a single centre directs all the consecutive stages of processing the materials right up to the manufacture of numerous varieties of finished articles; when the products are distributed according to a single plan among tens of millions of customers.

....then it becomes evident that we have socialisation of production, and not mere &#39;interlocking&#39;; that private economic and private property relations constitute a shell which no longer fits its contents, a shell which must inevitably decay if its removal is artificially delayed, a shell which may remain in a state of decay for a fairly long period ...but which will inevitably be removed. Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch10.htm) By Lenin, Chapter 10.

That, in a nutshell, is Lenin on socialism.


Lenin
Capitalism has created an accounting apparatus in the shape of the banks, syndicates, postal service, consumers&#39; societies, and office employees unions. Without the big banks socialism would be impossible.

[...]A single state bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus. This will be country-wide book-keeping, country-wide accounting of the production and distribution of goods, this will be, so to speak, something in the nature of the skeleton of socialist society. Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? (http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/01.htm) By Lenin.

The basic approach to socialism, according to Lenin, is to simply have these big banks (which, empirically, constitute a negligible percent of the economy as I&#39;ve pointed out in a previous thread), then "socialize" it.

In other words, socialism is planned capitalism with the capitalists surgically removed...as though this would really change the material conditions of society.

Is there still exploitation of the working class? Yeah. Is there still reinvestment of surplus value into the expansion of capital? Yeah.

But it&#39;s somehow completely different from capitalism, because there are red flags everywhere and the adjective "People&#39;s" is added to everything.

Simply laying hold to ready-made apparatuses of the capitalist society doesn&#39;t work, as Marx and Engels correctly identified in the example of the Paris commune.[/b] I hope that you can&#39;t miss this.



You seriously believe there wasn&#39;t wage slavery?

If you didn&#39;t work, you didn&#39;t get money and you couldn&#39;t afford food. One didn&#39;t have a choice as to whether one works or not...one was coerced into doing it, just like how one is coerced to do it in capitalism for survival.

Of course this doesn&#39;t equate to wage-slavery...being coerced to work for a wage in order to survive is obviously not wage slavery.

"He who does not work, does not eat." Workers who do not participate in the construction of socialism, do not benefit from socialism. What? You expect everything to be available the day after the revolution? What chapter of "Marx" have you been reading? Yes, Marx said absolutely nothing about wage-slavery in the capitalist mode of production.

And it would be just crazy to use common sense to apply this to the USSR, because they said they were socialist so that magically makes it so.

No statistics, facts, or figures are necessary to prove that the USSR was socialist, but they are necessary to disprove what has yet to be proven. Oh snap, that&#39;s a logical fallacy: shifting the burden of proof&#33;

You are like a wizard at invalid arguments CEA.


So you believe in the "coercion" bullshit, too. Not surprised, another classic example of brainwashing by the bourgeois media at its best. I suppose you&#39;ll tell me millions died under "forced collectivization" too, right? And here is yet another example of an invalid argument. (Apparently I haven&#39;t been stating "Ah this is an invalid argument" all along according to you.)

No, your right, there was no coercion. The Soviet union ran on rainbows and fairy dust, just so long as you clap your hands and believe :lol:

As for your non-sequitur assertion about the millions killed, etc. That&#39;s putting words in my mouth, also an invalid debating technique (seeing as you are "so concerned" about "proper debating techniques" I thought you should know that you haven&#39;t presented a valid argument yet).


Work performed and money and benefits received for time and labor performed is a wage. It becomes wage-slavery when you work for more than you receive. When you work for more than you receive, yes, that is wage slavery. The difference is surplus value, etc.

Suppose there wasn&#39;t wage slavery and thus no surplus value. How did the Soviet Union conduct the expansion of capital then?



Yeah, that&#39;s a brilliant argument. Really.

As if you have done so well. Get a grip. You haven&#39;t even read my posts except for the parts where I insult you for your incapability to read my posts&#33; How could you know how well I have done so far?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by ComradeRed+May 28, 2007 01:56 am--> (ComradeRed @ May 28, 2007 01:56 am)
Originally posted by Hammer+May 26, 2007 09:52 pm--> (Hammer &#064; May 26, 2007 09:52 pm)Have we become "Leninists"? - part 1 (http://en.internationalism.org/ir/96/leninists)
Have we become "Leninists"? - part 2 (http://en.internationalism.org/ir/97/leninists2)[/b] I&#39;m rather uninterested in reading the international current claiming not to be Leninist, sorry.

Do you have an excerpt that you&#39;d like to bring to my attention? [/b]
Very well:


Originally posted by ICC
And they give an idea of Lenin’s rejection of his initial idea, itself largely the result of “overstating the case” for polemical reasons.

“The real education of the masses can never be separated from an independent political struggle, and above all from the revolutionary struggle of the masses themselves. Only action educates the exploited class, action alone allows it to measure its strength, broaden its horizon, increase its capacities, enlighten its intelligence and temper its will.” This is a far cry from Kautsky.

...

For Martov, things were clear: “The more widespread the appellation of Party member, the better. We can only be glad if every striker, every demonstrator, taking responsibility for his actions, can declare himself a member of the Party”.

Martov’s position tends to dissolve the revolutionary organisation into the class. It comes back to the same “economism” which he had previously fought against, alongside Lenin. His argument in favour of his proposed Statute boils down to liquidating the very idea of a vanguard, unified Party, centralised and disciplined around a precise political programme, and a rigorous collective will to action. It also opens the door to opportunist policies of unprincipled “recruitment” of militants, which puts the Party’s long term development in hock to immediate results. It is Lenin who is correct:

“On the contrary, the stronger our organisations of real social-democrats, the less will be the hesitation and instability within the Party, and the wider, more varied, richer and more fruitful will be the Party’s influence on the elements of the working class around it, and led by it. It is impossible to confuse the Party, the vanguard of the working class, with the class as a whole.”

The extreme danger of Martov’s opportunist position on the organisation, recruitment, and membership of the Party very quickly appeared in the Congress with the intervention of Axelrod: “It is possible to be a sincere and devoted member of the social-democratic party, and yet be completely inapt for the organisation of a rigorously centralised combat.”

Now:


[email protected]
Unless you agree with Lenin and think that socialism is merely state capitalism...in which case, this "socialism" is not a revolutionary society.

I don&#39;t want to go into a Lenin quote-fest around here, but sufficed to say that the majority of his works elaborate on your blatant misperception (http://home.flash.net/~comvoice/14cStateCapitalism.html) (link). In fact, it was he and pre-renegade Kautsky who suggested the idea of a protracted DOTP evolving into socialism:

"But what does the word &#39;transition&#39; mean? Does it not mean, as applied to an economy, that the present system contains elements, particles, fragments of both capitalism and socialism? Everyone will admit that it does." (http://home.flash.net/~comvoice/14cStateCapitalism.html)


Lenin (posted by you)
....then it becomes evident that we have socialisation of production, and not mere &#39;interlocking&#39;; that private economic and private property relations constitute a shell which no longer fits its contents, a shell which must inevitably decay if its removal is artificially delayed, a shell which may remain in a state of decay for a fairly long period ...but which will inevitably be removed.

Was there any implication at all in the context or even in this brief quote that what Lenin meant here was "evident that we have COMPLETE socialisation in production"? <_<

Socialization means more than nationalization, means more than capital centralization of nationalized enterprises, and still means more than proper accounting after said capital centralization. Oh, I see you&#39;ve quoted what I quoted from an anarchist site awhile back. ;)

[Labor Shall Rule]

Originally posted by ComradeRed+May 28, 2007 01:56 am--> (ComradeRed @ May 28, 2007 01:56 am)
Originally posted by Hammer+May 26, 2007 09:52 pm--> (Hammer &#064; May 26, 2007 09:52 pm)Have we become "Leninists"? - part 1 (http://en.internationalism.org/ir/96/leninists)
Have we become "Leninists"? - part 2 (http://en.internationalism.org/ir/97/leninists2)[/b] I&#39;m rather uninterested in reading the international current claiming not to be Leninist, sorry.

Do you have an excerpt that you&#39;d like to bring to my attention?


Having read the two links in detail, there is deeper meaning to what I said regarding Engels&#39; words "masses LACKING consciousness" than mere polemic that pervades Lenin&#39;s two key works on political consciousness and related party organization (respectively), What Is To Be Done? and One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. Your focusing on the wrong part of the quote <_<

Unless you agree with Lenin and think that socialism is merely state capitalism...in which case, this "socialism" is not a revolutionary society.

Just a few tidbits with Lenin on socialism, here&#39;s a few quotes:

Originally posted by Lenin
When a big enterprise assumes gigantic proportions, and, on the basis of an exact computation of mass data, organises according to plan the supply of raw materials to the extent of two-thirds, or three fourths, of all that is necessary for tens of millions of people; when raw materials are transported in a systematic and organised manner to the most suitable places of production, sometimes situated hundreds of thousands of miles from each other; when a single centre directs all the consecutive stages of processing the materials right up to the manufacture of numerous varieties of finished articles; when the products are distributed according to a single plan among tens of millions of customers.

....then it becomes evident that we have socialisation of production, and not mere &#39;interlocking&#39;; that private economic and private property relations constitute a shell which no longer fits its contents, a shell which must inevitably decay if its removal is artificially delayed, a shell which may remain in a state of decay for a fairly long period ...but which will inevitably be removed. Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch10.htm) By Lenin, Chapter 10.

That, in a nutshell, is Lenin on socialism.


[email protected]
Capitalism has created an accounting apparatus in the shape of the banks, syndicates, postal service, consumers&#39; societies, and office employees unions. Without the big banks socialism would be impossible.

[...]A single state bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus. This will be country-wide book-keeping, country-wide accounting of the production and distribution of goods, this will be, so to speak, something in the nature of the skeleton of socialist society. Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? (http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/01.htm) By Lenin.

The basic approach to socialism, according to Lenin, is to simply have these big banks (which, empirically, constitute a negligible percent of the economy as I&#39;ve pointed out in a previous thread), then "socialize" it.

In other words, socialism is planned capitalism with the capitalists surgically removed...as though this would really change the material conditions of society.

Is there still exploitation of the working class? Yeah. Is there still reinvestment of surplus value into the expansion of capital? Yeah.

But it&#39;s somehow completely different from capitalism, because there are red flags everywhere and the adjective "People&#39;s" is added to everything.

Simply laying hold to ready-made apparatuses of the capitalist society doesn&#39;t work, as Marx and Engels correctly identified in the example of the Paris commune.


CriticizeEverythingAlways
So, besides the interesting, colorful "commentary" of the Ultra-Left Kiddies, I still haven&#39;t gotten any decent information on how the USSR was supposedly capitalist. I have provided more than enough evidence; the fact that you refuse to accept it is another matter entirely.

Perhaps its your senility gramps. But I can&#39;t really help you when you purposely ignore an argument and data provided...worse you didn&#39;t even provide any counter-evidence, just "No, you&#39;re wrong you ultra-left kiddie&#33;" Needless to say, that&#39;s an invalid argument.


Only a long-winded lecture on a few individuals&#39; imagined conception of Marxism... No true scotsman fallacy.

How ironic is it that you&#39;re user name is "CriticizeEverythingAlways" and yet you demand more blind faith than a Catholic priest. [/b]

That, in a nutshell, is Lenin on socialism.

Lenin is describing the socialization of production and finance under capitalism in that quote. If this means he identified "state capitalism with socialism", so then did Marx&#33; Lenin&#39;s entire argument is that the development of the productive forces under capitalism push up against the "shell" of private property relations. This quote, for better lack of a proper explanation, has nothing to do with state capitalism. Your argument, is that merely pointing out the fact of concentration and socialization of the productive forces under capitalism constitutes some identification of socialism with state capitalism? If socialism is not attained through these processes as they occur under capitalism, then through what is it attained? Backwards economic movement, back to isolated, small-scale production? I think that Lenin was looking for a way foward in the materially deprived and weakened enclave of Russia.


In other words, socialism is planned capitalism with the capitalists surgically removed...as though this would really change the material conditions of society. Is there still exploitation of the working class? Yeah. Is there still reinvestment of surplus value into the expansion of capital? Yeah.

You are making the mistake of equating what Lenin saw as a necessary stage that Russia, given its extreme economic backwardness, had to necessarily pass through on its way to socialism, with the actual goal of reaching socialism. If socialism is to be built on the basis of reality, and not utopian fairy-tales, then all of these "capitalistic" developments are necessary. What you convienently and selectively leave out are the repeated instances, almost always tied directly to quotes such as these that you have presented in these posts, is that all of these capitalistic institutions and processes are to be subordinated to the conscious control of the worker&#39;s state. You also abstract the necessary component of the international revolution, which in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, which you quote Lenin, says is indespensible for the development of socialism in the Soviet Union. What they were doing was seeking to, first of all, stabilize the economy, which the civil war had devestated (anarchists act as if everything occurs in a vacuum and as if all problems are somehow directly and solely related to the leaders of society - economic laws are meaningless), and second of all, to begin the necessary work of raising the material level of the USSR - a process, once again, that relied as much upon the international revolution as it did any internal policies. The banks would do this function.

I noticed the wage differentials page; I don&#39;t think we can consider income as a factual analysis of class relations within the Soviet Union, which basically renders that list pointless. I think we can notice the difference in wealth between the laborers and the technicians, but this is not a specific feature of capitalism. A position of dependence held by the bureaucratic strata is not automatic proof of a labor market. What exactly is meant by "sell labor-power" in the context of the Soviet Union? It&#39;s not as if competing bureaucrats were out looking to get the highest rate of return from the cheapest labor - meaning, there was no real "labor market". Wages, like everything else in the Soviet Union, were decided by economic planners. Thus they had not a shell of their capitalistic functions. Likewise under socialism, wages will certainly be regulated by our social preferences as long as they exist&#33; Again, what does it mean to be a capitalist? Does it mean to simply have power? Does it mean to simply have control? All these analyses do is reduce "capitalism" and "capitalist" to a swear word, to a catch-all term to describe any sort of exploitation or domination. This is a false way of viewing capitalism, and every other social and historical formation. Marx did not arbitarily impose the features specific to capitalism onto every other epoch - why should you? Poking around today, I found Marx&#39;s famous letter to Kuglemann where he discusses the law of value. He makes a very important observation:


Marx wrote:
"The point of bourgeois society is precisely that, a priori, no conscious social regulation of production takes place. What is reasonable and necessary by nature asserts itself only as a blindly operating average."

If this is the "point" of bourgeois society, then in what way was the USSR, a society characterized by widescale economic planning based upon state ownership of the productive forces, a bourgeois society, a "capitalist" society? The Soviet Unon was obviously not an embodiement of a socialist society, it was a very loose situation, considering that there was different classes struggling to either retain, regain, or seize control over what was up for the grabs. The "bourgeois class" in Russia was destroyed and stripped of its power not once, but twice - if we count the liquidation of the kulaks under Stalin. But yes, as statistics of the composition of the party clearly attribute, there was different class forces involved in this situation. Though those &#39;technicians&#39; may have had power over the workers, they did have the same functions of the bourgeoisie, thus attributing the tremendous complexity of this situation. But were those &#39;technicians&#39; capitalists?

It is obvious that the Soviet Union had degraded itself to a point of capitalism, it&#39;s social and economic relations had positioned the Communist Party into a embryonic shell of unbridled capitalist production. It became the irreversible enclave of opportunists; the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie had penetrated it throughout the ongoing period of non-stop attacks from both internal and external enemies. I don&#39;t think that anyone is ignoring that this experiment degenerated, but it is ultimately a question of when. I think that the swift privatizations and the eventual &#39;fall of communism&#39; resembled the ushering in of capitalist production. I don&#39;t think that reductionism would be appropriate; many sum up the ills of the revolution to the &#39;putsch&#39; of the Bolsheviks. Briefly, the Bolsheviks at one time did stand for workers power. The vast majority of Pravda, for a good part of 1917, was based on worker letters; this is why we formed a factory committee; this is why we struck; this is how we marched the boss out of the door; this is the song we sang. They would print several thousand copies of that and distribute them to workers, and it became obvious that they were promoting worker&#39;s power. The Bolsheviks did win the elections in the Soviet, and it was through the military command of the Soviet that the actual October Revolution was executed. As events were going, there was literally a showdown commencing between the Constituent Assembly and the Soviet. Kerensky had ordered the arrest of the military command of the Soviet. One could easily make the case that October was a pre-emptive strike in defense of Soviet Power versus the Constituent Assembly.

[The Author]

Originally posted by [email protected] May 28, 2007, 11:40 p.m.
Again, thanks for not reading my posts.

I won&#39;t take the time to read another hot-air debate on "Anarchism vs. Leninism." Like that hasn&#39;t been done to death ten thousand times already on this forum. You&#39;re just wasting your time trying to point out to me how you think "Leninist" ideology works.


Well, let&#39;s look a little later in time. In 1937 managerial personnel numbered 1,751,000 (USSR, The Land of Socialism, Moscow 1936, p.148). At least nine tenths were in the party (and this is low balling the estimate), or more precisely 1,575,900 were in the party.

There is no exact figure available for 1937, but the figures for 1934 and 1939 were 2,807,000 and 2,477,000. So taking the average of these two (which is 2,642,000 members), there are 1,066,100 non-factory manager party members.

Mind you this is only the factory managers, I&#39;m not even including those on the board of syndicates or directors of large enterprises or any other traditionally bourgeois position.

So, you&#39;re giving me another statistic on how many managers were in the Communist Party. Still doesn&#39;t explain to me how many Communist Party members were workers, or the ratio between workers and managers and peasants in the Party, or the relationship between the Party and Soviets and if there was a proletarian content or no. Still doesn&#39;t explain to me how managers were supposedly "bourgeois," either.


Oh right, because the means of production were "socialized" that magically does away with class.

Again, thanks for not reading my posts, it allows me to repeat myself

Our resident English teacher once again demonstrates his lack of reading comprehension. Nowhere did I say that the socialization of the relations of production does away with class. The socialization of the relations of production is one of the preconditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. All you&#39;ve told me is that managers under socialism are "bourgeois" without really explaining how they are bourgeois. Using labels liberally is one thing. Confusing the conditions of base and superstructure under socialism is another.


I hope that you can&#39;t miss this.

Apparently you were asleep during that lesson on "Marx 101" that the productive forces are already socially organized, and that it&#39;s the relations of production which must change and assume a social character. And that Lenin said the same thing about altering the apparatus in "State and Revolution." Again, your flimsy attempt to drive a wedge between Marx and Lenin will not work.


Yes, Marx said absolutely nothing about wage-slavery in the capitalist mode of production.

And it would be just crazy to use common sense to apply this to the USSR, because they said they were socialist so that magically makes it so.

No statistics, facts, or figures are necessary to prove that the USSR was socialist, but they are necessary to disprove what has yet to be proven. Oh snap, that&#39;s a logical fallacy: shifting the burden of proof&#33;

You are like a wizard at invalid arguments CEA.

More beating around the bush from our "ComradeRed" (or should I say, "ComradeWhite")?

You, and the other "state-capitalist" advocates are the ones who didn&#39;t give any statistics, facts, or figures on how there was wage-slavery in the USSR, proof of coercion, proof of "bourgeois" managers, and how there was no "workers control." It was a "state-capitalist" advocate who initiated this discussion in the first place. The burden of proof rests on you. But instead of getting statistics, I get yet another poorly written polemical article which somehow proves the socialist countries were not socialist, only because some writer said so.

It&#39;s funny that you&#39;ve been describing yourself perfectly when it comes to being a "wizard at invalid arguments" (sic).


No, your right, there was no coercion. The Soviet union ran on rainbows and fairy dust, just so long as you clap your hands and believe

Oh, so just because you say there was "coercion," I have to believe you. Yeah, I&#39;m convinced... :lol: :rolleyes:

You accuse me of putting words into your mouth, and here you do the same, putting words into my mouth as if I said the USSR was "utopia."

Like I said before, the louder they are, the more they talk out of their ass. You tell me I&#39;m not "critically thinking," filled with "invalid arguments," and "putting words into your mouth," and here you are acting the opposite of what you say.


Suppose there wasn&#39;t wage slavery and thus no surplus value. How did the Soviet Union conduct the expansion of capital then?

Another demonstration of your lack of Marxist knowledge on how the expansion of capital is conducted under socialism. Once again:

"What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another."

But to you, and the other ultra-leftist clowns, this is proof-positive of "state capitalism." :lol:

When it&#39;s all said and done, none of you can reconcile your views with "Gotha Programme" and "On Authority." Instead you just ignore it and go on preaching, "state-capitalism." Between the Anarchists, Council Communists, Cliffite-Trotskyites, it&#39;s the bankruptcy of ultra-leftist theory masked as "Marxism."

[Rawthentic]

You, and the other "state-capitalist" advocates are the ones who didn&#39;t give any statistics, facts, or figures on how there was wage-slavery in the USSR, proof of coercion, proof of "bourgeois" managers, and how there was no "workers control.
Worker&#39;s control is eliminated when petty-bourgeois managers, like specialists and functionaries, are placed to oversee production, and are not even elected by the workers themselves. This transfers power from a conscious working class to a constituted petty-bourgeoisie.

And you use that quote from Marx wrongly. It implies all the things it says while the working class is in power, both politically and economically. Surplus labor as a result of wage slavery was used for capital expansion that was then used for the same reasons. The capitalist law of value, the defining law of capitalism, predominated under capitalist Russia. And dont pull out the Marx quote again, because it now seems that you equate socialism with capitalism and that all capitalist elements under Stalinist Russia are ok due to it.

But I do disagree with ComradeRed in pitting Marx against Lenin.

[Labor Shall Rule]

Bump. I want ComradeRed to respond to my posts.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Socialism Is Much Better Than Capitalism and Communism Will Be a Far Better World (http://thisiscommunism.org/speech.htm)

The Soviet Experiment: Part 4 & 5

By Raymond Lotta

Revolution #28, December 26, 2005, posted at revcom.us

From 1917 until the early 1950s, the Soviet Union was either fighting wars, preparing for wars, or dealing with the aftermath of war. No other modern state has endured this kind of perpetual ordeal. And this profoundly conditioned the development of the revolution, the policy choices made by its leadership, and the struggles in society and the struggles within the Party leadership.

It would be nice to be able to build a new society in ideal conditions. But the oppressed and their revolutionary leadership do not get to choose the larger circumstances in which they find themselves. Russia was a backward country. It was only a generation out of serfdom. The Russian Revolution was a mass phenomenon, and it drew support from the peasants. But the fact remained: an urban-based revolution had taken place in a peasant country. The revolution was confronted with the need to win the peasants and extend the revolution to the countryside. It faced backward social movements in society. This was not a polite PTA meeting. This was a society wracked by war; it was a society on a road of transformation where no one had gone before.

By 1918, reactionary political and military forces were mounting a counterrevolution to restore the old order. Seventeen countries, including the United States, which landed troops in Siberia, put together an army of intervention to aid the counterrevolution. The Bolsheviks took over a war economy on the verge of collapse and led the masses to defend and advance the revolution. The revolution achieved victory in the civil war. But this came at great cost--war casualties, disease, and economic dislocation.

The new proletarian state was fighting for its life. A social revolution was fighting for its life.

The anti-communist histories slander the Bolshevik Revolution and the communist project as a primal obsession with power. The codeword is "totalitarianism." Communists, we are told, seek to establish total control over a docile population. But lets look at what this new class power was actually used for.

Emancipating Women

The dictatorship of the proletariat was used to overcome the oppression of women. In 1918, a new marriage law turned marriage into a civil ceremony. In the old society, marriage had to be sanctioned by the church. Divorce was made easy to secure. Men were legally stripped of their authority over wives and children. Adultery was dropped as a criminal offense. Women now received equal pay in jobs. Maternity hospital care was provided free. And in 1920, the Soviet Union became the first country in modern Europe to make abortion legal. In the newspapers and schools there was lively debate about sex roles, marriage, and family. Science fiction novels imagined new social relations.

Old oppressive and patriarchal customs were criticized and challenged. In the new republics of Central Asia, women were encouraged and able to cast off the veil that had been forced on them for generations. Rather than being held down by family, church, and the state, women were now empowered to fight for their emancipation. Think about the significance of all this when we look at the state of the world today. No society up to that point had ever tried to transform its gender system so completely.

Overcoming the Oppression of Minority Peoples

This new proletarian power was used to overcome the oppression of minority peoples. The Bolshevik revolution created the worlds first multinational state based on equality of nationalities. The new socialist state recognized the right of self-determination for the former oppressed nations of the old Tsarist empire. In a 1917 decree, all minority nationalities were granted the right to instruction in native languages in all schools and universities.

The determination to address problems was real, as were the measures taken. For instance, many minority nationalities with non-written languages were supplied with alphabets. The Soviet state devoted considerable resources to the mass production of books, journals, newspapers, movies, folk music ensembles, and museums in the minority regions. The nationalities policy called for indigenous leadership in the new national territories--not outside Russian administrators. And party leaders and government, school, and enterprise administrators were trained from among the oppressed nationalities. The Russians had long been the dominant and oppressor nationality. Now Russian territory was being assigned to non-Russian republics; now Russians were asked to learn non-Russian languages. The persecution of the Jews was ended. This spirit of combating national oppression permeated the early Soviet Union. It was one of the defining features of the new society and state.

The new Soviet state launched national educational and health campaigns. No country in the period between World War 1 and World War 2 matched the Soviet Unions increase in the ratio of doctors to population. The literacy rate rose from 30 percent to over 80 percent in 1939.

At the time, where else in the world were things like this happening? Nowhere. But we know what the situation was in the United States. Segregation was the law of the land. Jim Crow was in full effect. When Paul Robeson, the great African-American actor, singer, and radical, first visited the Soviet Union, he was deeply impressed by the revolutions efforts to overcome racial and national prejudice. Ethnic minorities weren&#39;t being lynched in the Soviet Union as Black people were right then in the U.S. South. The U.S. and the Soviet Union were two different worlds.

After Lenin died in 1924, Joseph Stalin assumed leadership of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. The social revolution that I have been describing (see Revolution 28) was inseparable from his leadership. The question had been posed in the mid-1920s. Could you build socialism in the Soviet Union? Could you do this in a society that was economically and culturally backward? Could you do it when the Soviet Union stood alone as a proletarian state and there was no certainty that revolutions would take place in other countries?

Stalin stepped forward and fought for the view that the Soviet Union could and must take the socialist road in these circumstances. Otherwise, the Soviet Union would not be able to survive. It would not be able to aid revolution elsewhere. With this orientation, Stalin led the complex and acute struggles to socialize the ownership of industry and to collectivize agriculture.

What was the economic situation in the Soviet Union in the mid-1920s? Farming as it was conducted could not reliably feed the population. Industry was limited and could not furnish the factories and machines needed to modernize the economy. Russia had been a society where intellectuals were a tiny segment of the population, where only a narrow slice of the population had higher technical and liberal arts education. And, always, there was the looming threat of imperialist attack. These were the real economic and social contradictions faced by real human beings trying to remake society and the world.

And what was the rest of the world like in the 1920s? There was feudalism in most of the world’s countryside. And capitalism was flooding the globe in cruel and unplanned ways.

But now in the Soviet Union, in this one piece of liberated territory, a new proletarian movement had come to power and was going to plan an economy to serve the people. This was outrageous: nobody before had ever said the phrase a socialist "five-year plan."

Planning an Economy

A socialist revolution creates a new kind of economy. The means of production are no longer the private property of a minority of society. They are placed under society&#39;s collective control as expressed through the proletarian state. Economic resources are no longer employed to maximize profit. Rather, they are utilized to meet the fundamental needs and interests of the masses and to serve the world revolution. Social production is no longer carried out without prior plan or social purpose but is now shaped according to consciously adopted aims and coordinated as a whole.

The First Five-Year Plan in the Soviet Union was launched in 1928. It focused on iron and steel. Massive new industrial complexes were built from scratch. Tractor plants had a very high priority. Tractors were needed in the countryside. And tractor plants could, in the event of war, be converted to produce tanks. Machine tool production was rapidly expanded so the economy would not have to depend on imports.

The slogan of the First Five-Year Plan was "we are building a new world." Millions of workers and peasants were fired with this spirit. In factories and villages, people discussed the plan: the difference it would make for their lives--and for the people of the world--that such an economy was being built. They deliberated on what they wanted, what they could make, and what they needed in order to make it.

Local plans were drawn up and submitted to the central planning agencies, to be meshed with the national plan and sent back down to the localities. At factory conferences, people talked about how to reorganize the production process. People volunteered to help build railroads in wilderness areas. They voluntarily worked long shifts. At steel mills, they sang revolutionary songs on the way to work. Never before in history had there been such a mobilization of people to consciously achieve planned economic and social aims.

And let’s ask again: what was happening in the rest of the world? The world capitalist economy was languishing in the Depression of the early 1930s--with levels of unemployment reaching 20 and 50 percent. But the Soviet Union had ended mass unemployment. In fact, there were labor shortages in the Soviet Union…with so much work to be done in building the new society. Industry grew by 20 percent a year, and the Soviet share of total global industrial output rose from less than 2 percent in 1921 to 10 percent in 1939.

Collectivizing Agriculture

In 1929, the Communist Party launched a great drive to collectivize agriculture. The anticommunist story line is that this was another case of "Stalinist totalitarianism." Stalin, we are told, wanted to consolidate total power--and to do so, he had to crush and starve peasants.

But this is a gross distortion. The reality is that collectivization was a response to the economic and social contradictions in the countryside and to the pressing needs of the revolution. And the real hidden story is that collectivization ignited a genuine mass upheaval of peasants who had been locked into poverty and enslaving social relations.

Let’s look more closely at what collectivization was a response to.

There was a serious problem of whether food could be reliably supplied to the cities, especially with industrialization taking off and the urban population growing rapidly. Also, a major economic and social problem was growing in the countryside. After the Revolution, land was redistributed to peasants. But rich peasants, called kulaks, had been gaining strength in a rural economy marked by small private agriculture. The kulaks had larger land holdings. They owned flourmills. They controlled much of the grain market. They were moneylenders. This was leading to intensifying social and class polarization in the countryside.

There was a real danger of agriculture going back to the conditions that existed before World War 1. And these kulaks were not just innocent proprietors. They had gangs to enforce their rule. They organized against the regime. They rallied other social forces in the countryside.

The response of the revolutionary leadership to this was collectivization. Land and farm implements were turned into collective property. Between 1930 and 1933, 14 million small inefficient peasant holdings were combined into 200,000 collectively owned large farms. The state provided tractors and machinery to these new farms. And the farms were providing grain to the state. This was the basic exchange relation that was established.

Collectivization touched off different social responses. It was welcomed by large numbers of poor peasants. Other sections of peasants didn’t want to go along with it. Collectivization involved coercion against many of these peasants. But collectivization was a huge social movement. Dedicated worker-volunteers from the cities went to the front lines of the struggle against the kulaks. These workers took leading roles in administering new farms.

Farm hands and poor peasants in many areas rose to seize land. Where before they had been cowed and intimidated by the kulaks--now they had the state behind them to take on the kulak gangs. Women, whose lives had been determined by oppressive tradition and patriarchal obligation, became tractor drivers. Traveling libraries were sent to teams in the agricultural fields. In some regions, farms had their own drama circles. Religion, superstition, and mind-numbing tradition were challenged. People lifted their heads and became tuned in to what was happening in society overall. They discussed the national plans and national developments.

The kulaks resisted with a vengeance. The story told by the opponents of socialism is always one-sided. The kulaks were simply "victimized," they say. But this is a lie. The kulaks killed communists, organized raids against the new collectives, sabotaged harvests, and unleashed gangs that raped women. The kulaks were eventually defeated, many were arrested, many were deported, and many were killed.

But this was not because of a "Stalinist bloodlust." This was a battle over the future of the countryside. There was a battle over whether industrialization and social transformation could go forward or would be blocked and capitalism restored in the countryside. This was intense class struggle--and state power hung in the balance.

Collectivization is an important part of building a socialist economy. But Mao had serious criticisms of how Stalin approached this. Mao pointed out that collectivization under Stalin took place before the peasants themselves had gained experience in cooperating with each other in working the fields and using tools and it wasn’t based on a firm political and ideological foundation of peasants acting consciously to achieve collective social ownership. Another criticism Mao had was that the state took too much grain from the countryside. This damaged relations between the urban and rural areas. Mao had other criticisms, and Maoist China went about collectivization very differently--and I’ll talk about that later.

But the collectivization drive in the Soviet Union was part of a bold and visionary and pioneering attempt to find a way out and forward from the old system of small private agriculture. It gave hope to the poor in the countryside. And without collectivization, the Soviet Union would not have been able to defeat the Nazis.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Well, let&#39;s look a little later in time. In 1937 managerial personnel numbered 1,751,000 (USSR, The Land of Socialism, Moscow 1936, p.148). At least nine tenths were in the party (and this is low balling the estimate), or more precisely 1,575,900 were in the party.

There is no exact figure available for 1937, but the figures for 1934 and 1939 were 2,807,000 and 2,477,000. So taking the average of these two (which is 2,642,000 members), there are 1,066,100 non-factory manager party members.

Mind you this is only the factory managers, I&#39;m not even including those on the board of syndicates or directors of large enterprises or any other traditionally bourgeois position.

who gives a fuck?? production was socialized. The wrokers weren&#39;t being exploited, everything was owned by the workers. From the factory to the fields to the universal healthcare, education, and housing systems.

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by ApologizeEverythingAlways+May 28, 2007 09:50 am--> (ApologizeEverythingAlways &#064; May 28, 2007 09:50 am)
Originally posted by [email protected] May 28, 2007, 11:40 p.m.
Again, thanks for not reading my posts.

I won&#39;t take the time to read another hot-air debate on "Anarchism vs. Leninism." Like that hasn&#39;t been done to death ten thousand times already on this forum. You&#39;re just wasting your time trying to point out to me how you think "Leninist" ideology works.[/b]
In other words, you don&#39;t want to debate me and just claim to win the debate.

And who says Stalin Kiddies are intellectually bankrupt? :lol:


So, you&#39;re giving me another statistic on how many managers were in the Communist Party. I&#39;m glad you can reiterate what I just said :)


Still doesn&#39;t explain to me how many Communist Party members were workers, or the ratio between workers and managers and peasants in the Party, or the relationship between the Party and Soviets and if there was a proletarian content or no. Still doesn&#39;t explain to me how managers were supposedly "bourgeois," either. Since it is so easy to apparently demonstrate these relations were socialist, go ahead and prove them statistically.

You haven&#39;t done it in the course of several posts, so I suspect there is a reason for this.

But I have demonstrated that the majority of the Communist Party were managers (60% of the party were managers).

Even supposing the other 40% were workers entirely, the petit bourgeois position has the majority vote.

That&#39;s using basic math to come to a point.


Our resident English teacher once again demonstrates his lack of reading comprehension. Nowhere did I say that the socialization of the relations of production does away with class. It was the logical implication of your post.

Perhaps you should take Logic 101 as well as English 101.


The socialization of the relations of production is one of the preconditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. All you&#39;ve told me is that managers under socialism are "bourgeois" without really explaining how they are bourgeois. Using labels liberally is one thing. Confusing the conditions of base and superstructure under socialism is another. This is entirely rhetoric.

Managers magically become proletarian under socialism? Proof? Where&#39;s your reasoning behind this?

They still have the same relation to labor and the means of production, they logically have the same class status.

You deny this but supply no counter to it. Show me your proof.


Apparently you were asleep during that lesson on "Marx 101" that the productive forces are already socially organized, and that it&#39;s the relations of production which must change and assume a social character. And that Lenin said the same thing about altering the apparatus in "State and Revolution." Again, your flimsy attempt to drive a wedge between Marx and Lenin will not work. Apparently you completely missed the point, oh dear.


You, and the other "state-capitalist" advocates are the ones who didn&#39;t give any statistics, facts, or figures on how there was wage-slavery in the USSR, proof of coercion, proof of "bourgeois" managers, and how there was no "workers control." It was a "state-capitalist" advocate who initiated this discussion in the first place. The burden of proof rests on you. But instead of getting statistics, I get yet another poorly written polemical article which somehow proves the socialist countries were not socialist, only because some writer said so.

It&#39;s funny that you&#39;ve been describing yourself perfectly when it comes to being a "wizard at invalid arguments" (sic). In other words, you cannot even prove the USSR was socialist.

Apparently you&#39;re too thick to realize that 60% of the Communist party in 1937 were factory managers, which is a petit bourgeois position (apparently I have to prove that factory managers are petit bourgeois because you do not even know what class a factory manager is; your ignorance of identifying classes is not my problem).

Now, 60% is the majority of the party. Supposing even the other 40% were workers, they would be outvoted.

And yet this is supposed to be a "socialist country"?

Worse, your argument is "Well, it&#39;s so overwhelmingly obvious that I don&#39;t need to give proof" is invalid. You need to give proof that it was socialist, that&#39;s basic logic mate.


Oh, so just because you say there was "coercion," I have to believe you. Yeah, I&#39;m convinced...

You accuse me of putting words into your mouth, and here you do the same, putting words into my mouth as if I said the USSR was "utopia." No, your exact words was that it was "socialism".

You haven&#39;t proven it, demonstrated it, or done anything but baselessly asserted it.

I demand a proof and you laugh at me as if it were the most absurd thing in the world. If it were so easy, prove it. It shouldn&#39;t take any time at all.

Go ahead and explain how 60% of the party being petit bourgeois is a socialist country, I would love to see a Leninist pull this one off.

As for "coercion", no matter how many figures I give you, you&#39;re too blinded by faith to actually give a reasonable response.


Like I said before, the louder they are, the more they talk out of their ass. You tell me I&#39;m not "critically thinking," filled with "invalid arguments," and "putting words into your mouth," and here you are acting the opposite of what you say. The ironic thing is that you&#39;re still presenting invalid argument, not critically thinking, and now putting words into my mouth.


Another demonstration of your lack of Marxist knowledge on how the expansion of capital is conducted under socialism. Hey genius, the expansion of capital occurs under capitalism according to basic Marxist theory.


Once again:

"What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another."

But to you, and the other ultra-leftist clowns, this is proof-positive of "state capitalism." :lol: You have no clue what Marx is talking about.

"After the deductions"...like paying labor for it&#39;s contribution to the product, etc.

NOT "after expanding capital...".

But feel free to mangle this quote with your poor reasoning skills...it hasn&#39;t stopped you with any other Marx and Engels quote thus far.


When it&#39;s all said and done, none of you can reconcile your views with "Gotha Programme" and "On Authority." Instead you just ignore it and go on preaching, "state-capitalism." Between the Anarchists, Council Communists, Cliffite-Trotskyites, it&#39;s the bankruptcy of ultra-leftist theory masked as "Marxism." Being a Marxist, contrary to your views, is not like being a Catholic: it doesn&#39;t depend on how much faith we blindly have in the largest amount of scripture from Marx and Engels.

It&#39;s sad that you&#39;re little more than a glorified Catholic priest.

Red Dali

RedDali
Bump. I want ComradeRed to respond to my posts. Yeah, sorry, I have to get a paper published in the next two months or it&#39;ll be my ass.

Hence why I sporadically came on over the weekend ;)


Lenin is describing the socialization of production and finance under capitalism in that quote. If this means he identified "state capitalism with socialism", so then did Marx&#33; Not necessarily, Lenin made quite a few departures from Marx using "dialectical logic" (the most famous of which is the "vanguard party" departure)...Lenin having one stance does not necessitate that Marx had the same stance.


Your argument, is that merely pointing out the fact of concentration and socialization of the productive forces under capitalism constitutes some identification of socialism with state capitalism? My argument is that by switching one set of bosses for another, you have effectively changed nothing...even if the new bosses have red flags and call everything "The People&#39;s <blank>".

By surgically removing the bourgeoisie and petit bourgeoisie and putting in their place party members, you still have capitalism. Some people (Floyce White springs to mind) call this socialism.

It is nonetheless wage slavery...albeit with gold chains called "The People&#39;s Chains".


If socialism is not attained through these processes as they occur under capitalism, then through what is it attained? Backwards economic movement, back to isolated, small-scale production? I think that Lenin was looking for a way foward in the materially deprived and weakened enclave of Russia. First, correct me if I&#39;m wrong, but the accumulation of capital is still supposed to occur under socialism? :huh:

Second, it is no surprise that Lenin "was looking for a way forward" in a late feudal nation. No one, I think, is contesting that.

What&#39;s being contested is whether what followed was socialism or glorified capitalism.

Given the composition of the communist party, the composition of Russian society in 1917, and what followed, it seems to hint at the latter. I would be delighted to see a Leninist try to prove the former statistically...but all of them simply laugh at the proposition that they have to prove what they assert.


You are making the mistake of equating what Lenin saw as a necessary stage that Russia, given its extreme economic backwardness, had to necessarily pass through on its way to socialism, with the actual goal of reaching socialism. If socialism is to be built on the basis of reality, and not utopian fairy-tales, then all of these "capitalistic" developments are necessary. The problem is, despite all the trumpets announcing that "The state capitalism phase is over, the socialist phase has begun", nothing effectively changed.

Actually, looking at the composition of the party in 1937, with 60% of the party being factory managers, it appears that it became rather capitalist.

I&#39;m not saying that there was any other way to avoid this for Russia to become socialist. Tsarist Russia was, in the 1900s, still rather feudal. It would have been impossible for Russia to have become socialist.

And looking at the class composition of the party, it appears that it was little more than glorified capitalism.

I&#39;m not saying this is a bad thing, I&#39;m simply calling a spade a spade.


You also abstract the necessary component of the international revolution, which in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, which you quote Lenin, says is indespensible for the development of socialism in the Soviet Union. What they were doing was seeking to, first of all, stabilize the economy, which the civil war had devestated (anarchists act as if everything occurs in a vacuum and as if all problems are somehow directly and solely related to the leaders of society - economic laws are meaningless), and second of all, to begin the necessary work of raising the material level of the USSR - a process, once again, that relied as much upon the international revolution as it did any internal policies. The banks would do this function. Again, what Lenin did I am not criticizing as "right" or "wrong".

He did what was necessary, due to his material circumstances.

That just happened to be state capitalism. I&#39;m not saying that&#39;s "just" or "unjust"...only that it happened.

(As for Lenin on the banks, he turned out to be wrong and vastly over estimated their role in imperialism. It turns out that in the U&#036; over the past 15 years, e.g., the banks total investment in capital haven&#39;t even reached 5% of the total U&#036; foreign investment in capital&#33;)


I noticed the wage differentials page; I don&#39;t think we can consider income as a factual analysis of class relations within the Soviet Union, which basically renders that list pointless. Oh? Given a snapshot of the wage distribution, it indicates the payment for the various labor that each job gives.

That&#39;s the wage differential by definition so I don&#39;t see much contest in that ;)

But seeing that there isn&#39;t much change compared to a capitalist society tells us that capitalism does return "to each according to his abilities"...in other words, no wage slavery under capitalism.

Which means the vulgar Neoclassical economists were right all along&#33; :o But that&#39;s tangential :D

I seriously doubt that capitalism "accidentally" got wage distributions "right", and the USSR&#39;s wage distributions "coincidentally" were just similar to capitalist ones.

Wage after all is supposed to be the value of labor...but under socialism (in theory) it&#39;s supposed to be the value of the contribution of labor. Do you seriously suggest that a Minister contributes more labor than a factory worker?


What exactly is meant by "sell labor-power" in the context of the Soviet Union? It&#39;s not as if competing bureaucrats were out looking to get the highest rate of return from the cheapest labor - meaning, there was no real "labor market". There is no real "labor market" in monopoly capitalism either...so therefore monopoly capitalism doesn&#39;t exist, right?


What you convienently and selectively leave out are the repeated instances, almost always tied directly to quotes such as these that you have presented in these posts, is that all of these capitalistic institutions and processes are to be subordinated to the conscious control of the worker&#39;s state.
And...

Wages, like everything else in the Soviet Union, were decided by economic planners. Actually, an interesting tidbit of information, the U&#036; corporate paradigm actually was inspired by planned economies...and planned economies were inspired by U&#036; proto-corporations (like the Ford paradigm).

And if you think about it, a corporation is effectively a tiny planned economy. There is an army of economists and planners, etc.

So would that make corporations not capitalist?

If we merged all the corporations together, called the economists "The People&#39;s Economists", and made the leaders on the corporate hierarchy party members, we automagically get socialism? Really?&#33; It&#39;s just that simple?

The class relations have not changed one iota by doing this, and that&#39;s exactly my point.

Fight-For-Revolutionary-War&#33;

Obviously you are a powerful thinker by your skills of linking to premade arguments.

I won&#39;t waste my time on the article you so kindly copy/paste-ed...however your remark is rather naive:

who gives a fuck?? Well considering that the majority of the party (yeah, 60% is the majority) was factory managers, that&#39;s kind of a big deal with democratic votes. <_<

production was socialized. The wrokers[sic] weren&#39;t being exploited, everything was owned by the workers. From the factory to the fields to the universal healthcare, education, and housing systems. Oh, well, if you say so, that&#39;s evidence enough for me :lol:

Seriously, would you care to back up your assertions with some evidence?

[OneBrickOneVoice]

oh yes and comrade red is not posting any links at all? Its a powerful piece on what the situation the USSR was really in and why it took some of the measures it took. But I forgot you guys don&#39;t agree with materialist dialectics so it doesn&#39;t matter.

And if the factory managers were elected which everything indictates they were, then these managers would just be working class leaders. They weren&#39;t exploiting the masses because the masses owned everything as clearly recorded in the constitution of the USSR and um.. well all common knowledge including bourgeios sources.

[Rawthentic]

They weren&#39;t exploiting the masses because the masses owned everything as clearly recorded in the constitution of the USSR and um.. well all common knowledge including bourgeios sources.
And we&#39;re all "created equal" because the Declaration of Independence says so? :lol:
Also, where the fuck to "bourgeois sources" say that the "masses" held power? The "managers" and "specialists" were imposed from above, not elected by the working class, so don&#39;t lie. They acted the same as petty-bourgeois managers act under conventional capitalist workplaces, and that is to keep an eye on the workers to make sure that they don&#39;t slack off. They were subject to wage-slavery and had surplus labor extracted from them for capital expansion.

Come on.

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by Fight&#045;For&#045;Revolutionary&#045;War&#33;@May 29, 2007 04:57 pm
oh yes and comrade red is not posting any links at all?Oh yes, links to threads where this has all ready been discussed is comparable to spamming Leninist propaganda :lol:


Its a powerful piece on what the situation the USSR was really in and why it took some of the measures it took. It&#39;s propaganda from a Western Maoist, self-proclaimed economist that appears to be an RCP-er.

As, er, "brilliant" as it is, it speaks volumes that you can&#39;t present either your own argument or even a few statistics.

It&#39;s actually kind of comical that Leninists tend to reject statistics as coming from "bourgeois sources" and yet present bourgeois professors as valid testimonies.


But I forgot you guys don&#39;t agree with materialist dialectics so it doesn&#39;t matter.Sorry that we reject metaphysical superstition. Perhaps if you do some voodoo you can change that :lol:


And if the factory managers were elected which everything indictates they were, then these managers would just be working class leaders. Oh, how I have forgotten that workers voting on who gets to oppress them makes a system socialist&#33; :o

Hey hey, guess what&#33; With such logic, capitalism is socialist&#33;

The logic that justifies the USSR as a "socialist" (or more often, "just") society can justify the U&#036; as a "socialist" society too.


They weren&#39;t exploiting the masses because the masses owned everything as clearly recorded in the constitution of the USSR and um.. well all common knowledge including bourgeios sources. Oh yeah, everyone knows that the USSR was really a classless society that lived on rainbows and candy canes :lol:

Could you stop shirking and present some sources? If it were so easy, why do you not even present a source? Not even a single one&#33;

[OneBrickOneVoice]

um no they didn&#39;t because you say it doesn&#39;t make it true. And how were they not elected. Wages are part of socialism, to be a wage slavery was non-exsistant in the Soviet Union because socialized production made work something that you did not to survive but to bring forward a much better world, to collectively become wealthier, but not something that at any moment could have you living on the streets starving. Because all property was public there was no private profit to make thus they weren&#39;t exploited, they were liberated. One man management is obviously not desirable but it does have its bonuses and considering the material conditions (which you should since you&#39;re a self-proclaimed marxist) you would understand why it was implemented and learned from and then in Maoist China, corrected.

[Rawthentic]

Because all property was public there was no private profit to make thus they weren&#39;t exploited, they were liberated.
It was state property, in the hands of the state-bourgeoisie. This is a stupid comment.


And how were they not elected. Wages are part of socialism, to be a wage slavery was non-exsistant in the Soviet Union because socialized production made work something that you did not to survive but to bring forward a much better world,
Because the Bolshevik Party imposed them, not the workers? Again, your logic fails. As ComradeRed said similarly, does it matter whether or not we elect our exploiters under capitalism? Does it change the mode of production? Nope, neither does wishful thinking.

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by Fight&#045;For&#045;Revolutionary&#045;War&#33;@May 29, 2007 05:34 pm
um no they didn&#39;t because you say it doesn&#39;t make it true.You do see the irony here? That your entire arguments are &#39;because I say so...&#39; and yet you criticize me for it (just thought I&#39;d point it out in excruciating detail so you wouldn&#39;t miss it like you missed some points of mine).


And how were they not elected. I have no clue what you are talking about, probably the invalidity of my analogy of the USSR&#39;s "worker elected" managers to a bourgeois democracy.


Wages are part of socialism, to be a wage slavery was non-exsistant in the Soviet Union because socialized production made work something that you did not to survive but to bring forward a much better world, to collectively become wealthier, but not something that at any moment could have you living on the streets starving. Well, if you say there wasn&#39;t any famines, shortages, etc. That the trains ran on time, and magic pixies made everything better for Russians, then who am I to question you? :lol:

Seriously, your argument here is entirely rhetorical without one iota of empiricism...obviously a scientific argument.

Could you possibly cite a single source? Present some statistical data that the USSR is socialist? Anything besides unsubstantiated assertions&#33;


Because all property was public there was no private profit to make thus they weren&#39;t exploited, they were liberated. Well your word is good enough for me.

On second thought, no. You seem to totally avoid the glaringly obvious fact that expansion of capital presupposes the existence of surplus value.

One of the most famous defenses of Stalinism is that it expanded capital at a world record rate. That is true...but it logically entails that surplus value exists (or existed).

From the existence of surplus value, there exists exploitation.


One man management is obviously not desirable but it does have its bonuses and considering the material conditions (which you should since you&#39;re a self-proclaimed marxist) you would understand why it was implemented and learned from and then in Maoist China, corrected. Allow me to repeat myself for the Nth time: I am not criticizing the USSR as being "just" or "unjust", I&#39;m simply calling a spade a spade.

The USSR wasn&#39;t socialist, I&#39;m not saying that&#39;s "good" or "bad". That&#39;s not debatable anyways, whether something is "good" or "bad".

All I am saying is from statistical data and basic logic, it appears the USSR was state capitalist. This was "determined" by the material circumstances that Lenin inc. were in back in the teens and &#39;20s.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Am I stuck in the middle ground between ComradeRed and everyone else here?

To clarify on my stance on the USSR, let me go back to my Time Points:


Time Point A: Pre-monopoly capitalism (free markets)
Time Point B: Monopoly capitalism (but no Big Business merging with the state yet - THIS IS WHERE WE ARE TODAY)
Time Point C: REACTIONARY stamocap (where monopoly-capital Big Business merges with the State) and, where fully-developed capitalism is in decline, this becomes economic fascism

[EDIT: The Bolshevik revolution and the period they were trying to bring about were only revolutionary-democratic in nature: the revolutionary-democratic Red October and the subsequent period of PRIMITIVE stamocap. As per this link (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=65638), even the development of nationalized industrial farming can be considered to be "revolutionary-democratic." The time between this period and the proper socialist revolution is more compressed than that between Time Points A and B, and thankfully skipping Time Point C altogether. Because of this, it is possible that the socialist revolution could overthrow the very same "Party" that brought about primitive stamocap. All of this is contrasted with REVOLUTIONARY stamocap as below.]

Time Point D: Socialist revolution

Time Point E: REVOLUTIONARY stamocap (this CANNOT be achieved without revolution) / DOTP

Time Point F: Socialism and beyond



"But what does the word &#39;transition&#39; mean? Does it not mean, as applied to an economy, that the present system contains elements, particles, fragments of both capitalism and socialism? Everyone will admit that it does." (http://home.flash.net/~comvoice/14cStateCapitalism.html)

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29, 2007 06:49 pm
Am I stuck in the middle ground between ComradeRed and everyone else here?
Yeah, it looks like you&#39;re on your own.

Such is life :lol:

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ But no comments on the bolded text, from a Lenin who wasn&#39;t in his usually polemical mood? :mellow: Sigh. :(

[Rawthentic]

I don&#39;t know Hammer. I disagree with CR wedging Marx and Lenin when many of his writings were basically more practical translations of them. But I do agree with his arguments on state capitalism and its role in Stalinist Russia.


But no comments on the bolded text, from a Lenin who wasn&#39;t in his usually polemical mood? mellow.gif Sigh. sad.gif


The Bolshevik revolution and the period they were trying to bring about were only revolutionary-democratic in nature: the revolutionary-democratic Red October and the subsequent period of PRIMITIVE stamocap. As per this link, even the development of nationalized industrial farming can be considered to be "revolutionary-democratic." The time between this period and the proper socialist revolution is more compressed than that between Time Points A and B, and thankfully skipping Time Point C altogether. Because of this, it is possible that the socialist revolution could overthrow the very same "Party" that brought about primitive stamocap. All of this is contrasted with REVOLUTIONARY stamocap as below.]
I don&#39;t what to say on this, my theoretical background is not as deep as is yours or CR&#39;s. By I do agree, given material conditions, that revolutionary stamocap might be necessary as a bridge to socialism and complete worker&#39;s control.

This is a crucial aspect of the article you linked:


Thus the fact of extensive nationalization does not in itself show that a regime is socialist. In the case of the revisionist regimes, it only helps establish their state capitalist character. As well, outright capitalist regimes may carry out a certain amount of nationalization, and this does not create a socialist but a state capitalist sector of the economy. A workers&#39; regime on the path towards socialism will also undertake nationalization, which in this case functions as a step towards the social control of production. The nationalized industry will be run by workers&#39; institutions and representatives, but moreover, it will be more and more run by the masses of workers (and not only by replacing the former top executives of nationalized industry with revolutionary representatives), and a separate managerial class will fade away. This is part of the transitional process, by which the working class, after seizing power in a socialist revolution, transforms the economy in the direction of socialism. The raises the question: Does the existence of a nationalized state sector in this transitional economy, but this time under workers&#39; control both in the sense that the ruling party is truly a party of the working class and in that the masses take over more and more of the administration of the state sector, mean that the transitional system can be characterized overall as state capitalism, but a "state capitalism under the workers&#39; rule" or "state capitalism under the dictatorship of the proletariat"?

[The Author]

Originally posted by Mr. White the "Preacher" and "Teacher"+--> (Mr. White the "Preacher" and "Teacher")Since it is so easy to apparently demonstrate these relations were socialist, go ahead and prove them statistically.

You haven&#39;t done it in the course of several posts, so I suspect there is a reason for this.

But I have demonstrated that the majority of the Communist Party were managers (60% of the party were managers).

Even supposing the other 40% were workers entirely, the petit bourgeois position has the majority vote.

That&#39;s using basic math to come to a point.[/b]

What? You haven&#39;t demonstrated that the majority of the Communist Party were managers&#33;

You&#39;ve demonstrated how many managers belonged to the Communist Party&#33;

And you haven&#39;t given a figure for how many people belonged to the Communist Party in 1937, but an estimate, a guess. No, you need to give exact figures here. I mean, you haven&#39;t factored in the question of the purges and how many right-deviationist, left-deviationist, and opportunist elements were removed from the Party.

You haven&#39;t given out how many workers belonged to the trade unions, how many participated in the elections of 1936. I mean, I&#39;m supposed to be sold on this as an example of "state capitalism"?


You have no clue what Marx is talking about.


Marx
Let us take first of all the words "proceeds of labour" in the sense of the product of labour; then the co-operative proceeds of labour are the total social product.

From this must now be deducted:

First, cover for replacement of the means of production used up.

Secondly, additional portion for expansion of production.

Thirdly, reserve or insurance funds against accidents, dislocations caused by natural calamities, etc.

These deductions from the "undiminished proceeds of labour" are an economic necessity and their magnitude is to be determined according to available means and forces, and partly by computation of probabilities, but they are in no way calculable by equity.

There remains the other part of the total product, intended to serve as means of consumption.

Before this is divided among individuals, there has to be deducted again, from it:

First, the general costs of administration not directly belonging to production.

This part will, from the outset, be very considerably restricted in comparison with present-day society and it diminishes in proportion as the new society develops.

Secondly, that which is intended for the common satisfac tion of needs, such as schools, health services, etc.

From the outset this part grows considerably in comparison with present-day society and it grows in proportion as the new society develops.

Thirdly, funds for those unable to work, etc., in short, for what is included under so-called official poor relief today.

Only now do we come to the "distribution" which the programme, under Lassallean influence, alone has in view in its narrow fashion, namely, to that part of the means of consumption which is divided among the individual producers of the co-operative society.

The "undiminished proceeds of labour" have already surreptitiously become converted into the "diminished" proceeds, although what is withheld from the producer in his capacity as a private individual benefits him directly or indirectly in his capacity as a member of society.

Just as the phrase of the "undiminished proceeds of labour" has disappeared, so now does the phrase "the proceeds of labour" disappear altogether.

Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labour employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as an objective quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labour no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of the total labour. The phrase "proceeds of labour," objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning.

Who doesn&#39;t have a clue, Mr. Bullshit-Artist?

Still no evidence how the USSR was capitalist, how there was a bourgeoisie, how there was "coercion" except the commentary from the oblivious Ultra-Lefties saying so. :lol:

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by CriticizeEverythingAlways+May 30, 2007 11:31 am--> (CriticizeEverythingAlways &#064; May 30, 2007 11:31 am)What? You haven&#39;t demonstrated that the majority of the Communist Party were managers&#33;

You&#39;ve demonstrated how many managers belonged to the Communist Party&#33; [/b]

Originally posted by [email protected] 27, 2007 07:40 pm

If you call your response "criticism," then I&#39;m the King of England...


Just looking over a few statistics here on the composition of the party: in 1923, a mere 29% of the factory directors were in the party. Whereas in 1925 (you know, after that small victory for Stalin), 73.7% of the members of the members of the managing boards of trusts, 81.5% of those on the boards of syndicates, and 95% of the directors of large enterprises were party members(&#33;). (See A.S. Bubnov and others, The All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (Russian), Moscow-Leningrad 1931, page 626)

Which, again, demonstrates how many factory directors were in the party. It doesn&#39;t tell me how many members of the party were working class, or the ratio between workers and other class elements in the party. Only how many factory directors became party members.

You still haven&#39;t proven to me how they were "bourgeois," or how there was wage-slavery, or how the USSR was capitalist&#33; Well, let&#39;s look a little later in time. In 1937 managerial personnel numbered 1,751,000 (USSR, The Land of Socialism, Moscow 1936, p.148). At least nine tenths were in the party (and this is low balling the estimate), or more precisely 1,575,900 were in the party.

There is no exact figure available for 1937, but the figures for 1934 and 1939 were 2,807,000 and 2,477,000. So taking the average of these two (which is 2,642,000 members), there are 1,066,100 non-factory manager party members.

Mind you this is only the factory managers, I&#39;m not even including those on the board of syndicates or directors of large enterprises or any other traditionally bourgeois position. Now, 1575900/2642000 = 59.6479939% and 59.65% > 50%, thus the managers were the majority of the party.

Perhaps you dispute that nine tenths of the managers were in the party? Considering that the percent of factory managers in the party increased with respect to time, nine tenths would be a "low ball" estimate.

Feel free to bring up statistics that demonstrate otherwise, I&#39;ve been asking for it since the beginning.


And you haven&#39;t given a figure for how many people belonged to the Communist Party in 1937, but an estimate, a guess. No, you need to give exact figures here. I mean, you haven&#39;t factored in the question of the purges and how many right-deviationist, left-deviationist, and opportunist elements were removed from the Party. Let&#39;s suppose that there were exactly 2807000 people in the party, that the number of people purged and left is equal to the number of people who entered the party.

That means that 1575900/2807000 = 56.1417884% > 50% the majority of the party is still the managers.

The reason why no figure was given is because there is no exact figure for the number of party members in 1937...or at least one that exists that is available to me. If you can find one, all well and good, but you&#39;re being irrational to assert that there could have been a surge in the party for one year and then it diminishes the following years.


You haven&#39;t given out how many workers belonged to the trade unions, how many participated in the elections of 1936. I mean, I&#39;m supposed to be sold on this as an example of "state capitalism"? Funny you should mention that, I happen to have a few statistics here on the unions.

Just from the early years there was anti-Union sentiment from the USSR.

In 1922, 192,000 workers went on strike in state-owned enterprises; in 1923, there was 165,000; in 1924, 43,000; in 1925, 34,000; in 1926, 32,900; in 1927, 20,100; in the first half of 1928, 8,900. Do you see a tendency here?

In 1922 the number of workers involved in labour conflicts was three and a half million, and in 1923, 1,592,800. It shrunk by 55%. (See Wage Labour in Russia, Moscow 1924, p.160; and Trade Unions in USSR 1926-1928, Moscow 1928, p.358)

Hell, in 1934 collective agreements stopped happening (see G.N. Aleksandrov (ed.) Soviet Labour Law, Moscow 1949, p.166).

In September 1929, the Party Central Committee resolved that the workers’ committees "may not intervene directly in the running of the plant or endeavour in any way to replace plant administration; they shall by all means help to secure one-man management, increase production, plant development, and, thereby, improvement of the material conditions of the working class" (See All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in Resolutions and Decisions of the Congresses, Conferences and Plenums of the Central Committee Moscow 1941, 6th ed. Vol.II, p.811).

Perhaps you would like to say "Ah but the workers really have control, honest&#33;"

The state economist L. M. Kaganovich said: "The foreman is the authoritative leader of the shop, the factory director is the authoritative leader of the factory, and each has all the rights, duties, and responsibilities that accompany these positions." (See Socialism Victorious, London 1934, p.137)

This is supposed to be socialism? The workers are subordinate to managers, unions cannot demonstrate, all of this is part of the glorious "workers&#39; state"?&#33;



You have no clue what Marx is talking about.
[...]
Who doesn&#39;t have a clue, Mr. Bullshit-Artist?

Still no evidence how the USSR was capitalist, how there was a bourgeoisie, how there was "coercion" except the commentary from the oblivious Ultra-Lefties saying so. :lol: Huh, you seem to have selectively quoted and edited Marx&#39;s writing. Perhaps I should hold you by the hand and walk you through the quote from Marxists.org&#39;s archives:
Marx
What is "a fair distribution"?

Do not the bourgeois assert that the present-day distribution is "fair"? And is it not, in fact, the only "fair" distribution on the basis of the present-day mode of production? Are economic relations regulated by legal conceptions, or do not, on the contrary, legal relations arise out of economic ones? Have not also the socialist sectarians the most varied notions about "fair" distribution?

To understand what is implied in this connection by the phrase "fair distribution", we must take the first paragraph and this one together. The latter presupposes a society wherein the instruments of labor are common property and the total labor is co-operatively regulated, and from the first paragraph we learn that "the proceeds of labor belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society."

"To all members of society"? To those who do not work as well? What remains then of the "undiminished" proceeds of labor? Only to those members of society who work? What remains then of the "equal right" of all members of society?

But "all members of society" and "equal right" are obviously mere phrases. The kernel consists in this, that in this communist society every worker must receive the "undiminished" Lassallean "proceeds of labor".

Let us take, first of all, the words "proceeds of labor" in the sense of the product of labor; then the co-operative proceeds of labor are the total social product.

From this must now be deducted: First, cover for replacement of the means of production used up. Second, additional portion for expansion of production. Third, reserve or insurance funds to provide against accidents, dislocations caused by natural calamities, etc.

These deductions from the "undiminished" proceeds of labor are an economic necessity, and their magnitude is to be determined according to available means and forces, and partly by computation of probabilities, but they are in no way calculable by equity. Critique of the Gotha Programme (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm) by Karl Marx (1875).

Marx is criticizing the Lassalleans&#39; programme by essentially saying "Huh, let&#39;s assume this were so, let&#39;s see what happens."

By your quote taken out of context, it would appear that Marx were supporting such a theory rather than criticizing it.

Marx is simply following the proposition to its logical conclusions, not suggesting "This is what&#39;s going to happen from day 1..."&#33;

Actually, if you had bothered to understood this passage, you would understand that Marx opposed what happened in the USSR...but like with all quotes you give, you are free to mangle this however you&#39;d like.

Perhaps you should get a clue prior to talking about "bullshit artistry" :lol:

[The Author]

Feel free to bring up statistics that demonstrate otherwise, I&#39;ve been asking for it since the beginning.

And I&#39;ve been asking for how managers were "bourgeois" under the Soviet Union, how there was "coercion," lack of "workers control," on a number of occasions already. Someone advocating "state capitalism" brought this up with no data, and I still have not seen data proving that the USSR was state-capitalist. Only someone beating around the idea into everyone&#39;s heads that the USSR was "state-capitalist." No one has demonstrated how the USSR was state capitalist, but went label-crazy instead.


In 1922, 192,000 workers went on strike in state-owned enterprises; in 1923, there was 165,000; in 1924, 43,000; in 1925, 34,000; in 1926, 32,900; in 1927, 20,100; in the first half of 1928, 8,900. Do you see a tendency here?

Yes. The needs of the workers were slowly being met, everyone was collectively rallying together to construct socialism, and all of this in the face of the threat of foreign imperialism and the rise of fascism. Strategically, once the party program is laid out, the political consciousness of the workers is raised towards the need to construct socialism (especially in the face of imperialist danger), and the path towards socialism and communism is laid out, and more of their basic needs are met in the workplace, strikes become less common.

Still haven&#39;t demonstrated to me how there was a lack of "workers&#39; control" in the Soviets, or how the trade unions lacked proletarian consciousness, or how managers were "bourgeois," or (once again) how the USSR was "state capitalist." Where was the "wage-slavery" to exploit the workers at the expense of a few billionaire oligarchs (something common today due to the nature of the private property relations, but non-existent back then?)? Why did the social welfare and the living standards improve dramatically on all levels of life? Why did issues such as racism and nationalism for the most part disappear during this time? After all, if there was capitalism, surely there would have been severe cases of racist and nationalist riots at the workplace, and crime skyrocketing all over the streets- especially at night?


Huh, you seem to have selectively quoted and edited Marx&#39;s writing.

Uh, no. Both the Marxists.org and Marx2Mao editions of "Gotha Programme" say exactly what I quoted above on how deductions are made from capital in the enterprises towards the social welfare net, and the rest going as wages paid in exact labor time and work performed to the workers.

It&#39;s become apparent to me that you and the others have not once proven to me seriously how the USSR was "state-capitalist." Neither you, nor any other of the "state-capitalist" advocates. The theory of state-capitalism is absolutely bankrupt, and flawed. It was advocated long before the October Revolution, and has been advocated long after the collapse. Yet it has no solid foundation in fact. None whatsoever.


Since we&#39;re on the subject of supposed state-capitalism on the USSR, there&#39;s an interesting remark by Stalin made in his report to the Fourteenth Congress (http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/FC25.html#p4s7) of the C.P.S.U. (B), with indirect reference made to "Gotha Programme" on where funds from enterprises go to social welfare, and to wages for workers :


1. The National Economy as a Whole

But, before passing to the figures, permit me to set out several general propositions which define our work in the building of a socialist economy (I intend to start with our economy).
The first proposition. We are working and building in the circumstances of capitalist encirclement. That means that our economy and work of construction will develop in the contradiction, in conflicts, between our system of economy and the capitalist system of economy. We cannot possibly avoid this contradiction. It is the framework within which the struggle between the two systems, the socialist and the capitalist systems, must proceed. It means, furthermore, that our economy must be built not only amidst its opposition to the capitalist economy outside our country, but also amidst the opposition between the different elements within it, the opposition between the socialist elements and the capitalist elements.
Hence the conclusion: we must build our economy in such a way as to prevent our country from becoming an appendage of the world capitalist system, to prevent it from being drawn into the general system of capitalist development as a subsidiary enterprise of this system, so that our economy develops not as a subsidiary enterprise of world capitalism, but as an independent economic unit, based mainly on the home market, based on the bond between our industry and peasant economy in our country.
There are two general lines: one takes as its starting point that our country must for a long time yet remain


page 306

an agrarian country, must export agricultural produce and import equipment, that we must adopt this standpoint and develop along this line in the future. In essence, this line demands that we should wind up our industry. It found expression recently in Shanin&#39;s theses (perhaps some of you have read them in Ekonomicheskaya Zhizn [56]). To follow this line would mean that our country would never be able, or almost never be able, to become really industrialised; that instead of being an economically independent unit based on the home market, our country would, objectively, have to become an appendage of the general capitalist system. That line means the abandonment of our construction tasks.
That is not our line.
There is another general line, which takes as its starting point that we must exert all efforts to make our country an economically self-reliant, independent country based on the home market; a country that will serve as a centre of attraction for all other countries that little by little drop out of capitalism and enter the channel of socialist economy. That line demands the utmost expansion of our industry, but proportionate to and in conformity with the resources at our command. It emphatically rejects the policy of converting our country into an appendage of the world capitalist system. That is our line of construction, the line followed by the Party and which it will continue to follow in the future. That line is imperative as long as the capitalist encirclement exists.
Things will be different when the revolution is victorious in Germany or France, or in both countries together, when the building of socialism begins there on a higher technical basis. We shall then pass from...

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30, 2007 02:06 pm
And I&#39;ve been asking for how managers were "bourgeois" under the Soviet Union, how there was "coercion," lack of "workers control," on a number of occasions already. Would you like to demonstrate how the managers didn&#39;t form a separate class from the workers?

Evidence has all ready been presented that the managers did not submit to workers councils...and you suggest that the managers are "proletarian"?

Let me guess, they are workers so they do not need to submit to workers councils, right? :lol:

Oh, this is "workers&#39; control"? The workers having no control over the managers is "workers&#39; control"?

Either you are continuing your tradition of not reading my posts or you have a funny definition of "workers&#39; control".


Someone advocating "state capitalism" brought this up with no data, and I still have not seen data proving that the USSR was state-capitalist. Data has been presented, the fact that you do not accept it is irrelevant.

The fact that the workers weren&#39;t even the majority of the party starting in the mid to late 1930s is "obviously" not evidence that the USSR was state capitalist.

The fact that managers were beyond control of workers councils "obviously" is not evidence that the managers were untouchables.

Since you appear to not accept this, nor have you read my post fully (which is evident due to the fact that several of your points were all ready countered in my post), I&#39;ll continue to cite quotes for you.

"Each plant has a leader – the plant manager – endowed with the full power of decision, hence fully responsible for everything." (E.L. Granovski and B.L. Markus (eds.) The Economics of Socialist Industry, Moscow 1940, p.579) That&#39;s "workers&#39; control" for you&#33;

Or "one-man control implies strict demarcation between the administration on the one hand and Party and trade-union organisations on the other. This strict demarcation must be applied on all levels of industrial management. Current operations in fulfilment of the Plan are the task of the administration. The chief of a workshop, the manager of the plant, the head of the Glavk, a board of industry or branch of industry, has full powers, each within his field, and the Party and trade-union organisations may not interfere with their orders." (E.L. Granovski and B.L. Markus (eds.) The Economics of Socialist Industry , Moscow 1940, p.563)

All power to the...factory managers&#33;

Ordzhonikidze, then Commissar of Heavy Industry, said "...as directors, administrative heads and foremen, you must personally occupy yourselves with wages in all their concrete detail and not leave to anyone this most important matter. Wages are the most powerful weapon in your hands." --emphasis added (G.K. Ordzhonikidze, Selection of Articles and Speeches, 1911-1937, Moscow 1939, p.359)



In 1922, 192,000 workers went on strike in state-owned enterprises; in 1923, there was 165,000; in 1924, 43,000; in 1925, 34,000; in 1926, 32,900; in 1927, 20,100; in the first half of 1928, 8,900. Do you see a tendency here?

Yes. The needs of the workers were slowly being met, everyone was collectively rallying together to construct socialism, and all of this in the face of the threat of foreign imperialism and the rise of fascism. Strategically, once the party program is laid out, the political consciousness of the workers is raised towards the need to construct socialism (especially in the face of imperialist danger), and the path towards socialism and communism is laid out, and more of their basic needs are met in the workplace, strikes become less common. :lol: Right, they were just so satisfied with their working conditions they decided not to protest.

This would be true if we ignore history entirely...for example V.P. Miliutin the party leader suggested "not to permit strikes in state enterprises" (Eleventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Stenographic Report. Held in Moscow, March-April 1922, Moscow 1936, p.275). Were things just "so great" that the workers couldn&#39;t tell the state how crappy things were for the workers?

Huzzah workers&#39; control&#33; :rolleyes:


Still haven&#39;t demonstrated to me how there was a lack of "workers&#39; control" in the Soviets, or how the trade unions lacked proletarian consciousness, or how managers were "bourgeois," or (once again) how the USSR was "state capitalist." No, this has been demonstrated. The fact that you don&#39;t even read my posts is sign enough that you aren&#39;t looking that hard (or at all) for it.


Where was the "wage-slavery" to exploit the workers at the expense of a few billionaire oligarchs (something common today due to the nature of the private property relations, but non-existent back then?)? You have yet to prove that the expansion of capital is supposed to occur under socialism, or that surplus value is supposed to exist under socialism, or that de facto exploitation is supposed to occur under socialism.

You took a passage of Marx out of context, as I pointed out it turns out Marx was actually criticizing the concept you propose.


Why did the social welfare and the living standards improve dramatically on all levels of life? This is characteristic of any system that replaces an antiquated one. The "standards of living" for people under feudalism were much better than they were under the asiatic mode of production.

Further, it&#39;s not even an argument that the USSR was socialist...otherwise one could argue that Nazi Germany was "socialist" because "the social welfare and the living standards improved dramatically on all levels of life". The same could be argued for capitalism.

So congratulations you&#39;ve just justified Nazism and Capitalism.


Why did issues such as racism and nationalism for the most part disappear during this time? Right, "Mother Russia" had no nationalism at all :lol:


After all, if there was capitalism, surely there would have been severe cases of racist and nationalist riots at the workplace, and crime skyrocketing all over the streets- especially at night? This makes no logical sense...if a society is capitalist, then there will be racist and nationalist riots at the workplace. It does not follow.

Nor does the proposition that crime will magically sky rocket for no reason, "especially at night".



Huh, you seem to have selectively quoted and edited Marx&#39;s writing.

Uh, no. Both the Marxists.org and Marx2Mao editions of "Gotha Programme" say exactly what I quoted above on how deductions are made from capital in the enterprises towards the social welfare net, and the rest going as wages paid in exact labor time and work performed to the workers. I&#39;m glad that your reading comprehension is impaired, it didn&#39;t stop you from completely ignoring the part Marx wrote before your quoted section.

It was a Lassallean proposition that Marx was following to its logical conclusions as a criticism.

Of course you completely ignore this and jump to the conclusion "Marx suggested it&#33;" which is asinine.

Why does this not surprise me in the least that you did not understand the passage one bit?


It&#39;s become apparent to me that have not once proven to me seriously how the USSR was "state-capitalist." Neither you, nor any other of the "state-capitalist" advocates. How could you know? You haven&#39;t even read my posts.

Besides if it were so self-evident that the USSR were socialist, it wouldn&#39;t be hard to prove it statistically. Gee I wonder why the lack of proof? Only baseless assertions and ignoring points.

And who says the Stalin Kiddies are intellectually bankrupt? :lol:

[The Author]

Wages are the most powerful weapon in your hands."

Workers need the material and moral incentive under socialism. "...communist society...just as it emerges from capitalist society...still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society." Is it that hard to miss?


Or "one-man control implies strict demarcation between the administration on the one hand and Party and trade-union organisations on the other. This strict demarcation must be applied on all levels of industrial management. Current operations in fulfilment of the Plan are the task of the administration. The chief of a workshop, the manager of the plant, the head of the Glavk, a board of industry or branch of industry, has full powers, each within his field, and the Party and trade-union organisations may not interfere with their orders." (E.L. Granovski and B.L. Markus (eds.) The Economics of Socialist Industry , Moscow 1940, p.563)

Right at a time when Germany was rearming, when you had other imperialist powers thirsting for war and building up their arsenals, and the Civil War still fresh on the minds of Soviet citizens.

Let&#39;s try not to leave out pieces of the puzzle.


Further, it&#39;s not even an argument that the USSR was socialist...otherwise one could argue that Nazi Germany was "socialist" because "the social welfare and the living standards improved dramatically on all levels of life". The same could be argued for capitalism.

So congratulations you&#39;ve just justified Nazism and Capitalism.

Except that you left out that millions of non-Germans perished under Nazi Germany. This didn&#39;t happen in the Soviet Union.

What a sloppy analogy. Proof positive that, running out of other "criticisms," the fash-attack was the last of your trump cards.


This would be true if we ignore history entirely...for example V.P. Miliutin the party leader suggested "not to permit strikes in state enterprises" (Eleventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Stenographic Report. Held in Moscow, March-April 1922, Moscow 1936, p.275). Were things just "so great" that the workers couldn&#39;t tell the state how crappy things were for the workers?

Huzzah workers&#39; control&#33;

Still doesn&#39;t prove to me the lack of workers&#39; control (elections in Soviets, practical applications of constitutional rights, etc.?). It does prove the nature of the concern of the rate of the construction of socialism in regards to the danger of the capitalist encirclement, however.



You took a passage of Marx out of context, as I pointed out it turns out Marx was actually criticizing the concept you propose.

You think I took a passage of Marx out of context, and you think you pointed out an opposite conclusion. Big difference.

When you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, Marx is pointing out what is most likely to happen under socialism in terms of the productive forces and wages and the diversion of funds towards social welfare. You can&#39;t avoid it.


Right, "Mother Russia" had no nationalism at all

What part of "for the most part" did you not understand?

I don&#39;t deny the turnover of Ukrainian and Chechnyan nationalists over to Nazism during the war due to the material conditions. But the Soviet Union sure as hell practiced nothing of nationalism compared to what&#39;s practiced today in the current republics in terms of nationalism and chauvinism at all.


This makes no logical sense...if a society is capitalist, then there will be racist and nationalist riots at the workplace. It does not follow.

Nor does the proposition that crime will magically sky rocket for no reason, "especially at night".

It doesn&#39;t make logical sense?&#33;

Ever heard of surplus labor force? Workers competing against each other for cheaper wages, for jobs? It&#39;s under these material conditions that nationalism and racism find their footing? You don&#39;t have a surplus labor force in the USSR (because there was no unemployment), you don&#39;t have workers competing for cheaper wages and jobs, because as the principle goes, "to each according to his ability, to each according to his work" and so whatever a worker produces, he receives his compensation in the exact value as a wage.


I&#39;m glad that your reading comprehension is impaired

So you&#39;re an English teacher, a preacher on the soapbox, and now a parrot...echoing my words and criticisms of your earlier behavior. Funny. You seem to have a habit of twisting what I say.


It was a Lassallean proposition that Marx was following to its logical conclusions as a criticism.

Yes, and what Marx followed up with in response to what Lassalle advocated is what I have been referring to all along. I have been referring to Marx&#39;s criticism and his theoretical hypothesis of what would happen under socialism and communism. That&#39;s what I have been emphasizing.


Besides if it were so self-evident that the USSR were socialist, it wouldn&#39;t be hard to prove it statistically. Gee I wonder why the lack of proof? Only baseless assertions and ignoring points.

There&#39;s proof, most of which you&#39;ve been using, and statistics and material given in that Stalin piece I quoted (and you missed...). Problem is how you interpret the data based on the philosophy. Your philosophy is not Marxist, it vaguely defines what is state-capitalism, what is the mode of production, the classes that exist under that mode, and the content behind the classes. Example: Managers =/= bourgeoisie. But you would have us believe so.


And who says the Stalin Kiddies are intellectually bankrupt?

Back to childish cult denunciations again, are you now?

[ComradeRed]

Originally posted by CriticizeEverythingAlways+May 30, 2007 03:32 pm--> (CriticizeEverythingAlways &#064; May 30, 2007 03:32 pm)
Wages are the most powerful weapon in your hands."

Workers need the material and moral incentive under socialism. "...communist society...just as it emerges from capitalist society...still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society." Is it that hard to miss?[/b]
I must have missed the part about managers shepherding the workers like they did under capitalism.

Or is that what Marx meant: absolutely nothing changes, just the color of the flags?

That clearly must be what he means. And "workers&#39; control" obviously means "manager control" and so on and so forth :rolleyes:



Or "one-man control implies strict demarcation between the administration on the one hand and Party and trade-union organisations on the other. This strict demarcation must be applied on all levels of industrial management. Current operations in fulfilment of the Plan are the task of the administration. The chief of a workshop, the manager of the plant, the head of the Glavk, a board of industry or branch of industry, has full powers, each within his field, and the Party and trade-union organisations may not interfere with their orders." (E.L. Granovski and B.L. Markus (eds.) The Economics of Socialist Industry , Moscow 1940, p.563)

Right at a time when Germany was rearming, when you had other imperialist powers thirsting for war and building up their arsenals, and the Civil War still fresh on the minds of Soviet citizens.

Let&#39;s try not to leave out pieces of the puzzle. Remember the non-aggression pact (the "Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact")? Remember that Operation Barbarossa began in the summer of 1941 not 1940?

Remember how the Soviets were caught with their pants down and how the Germans advanced quite quickly?

Let&#39;s try not to leave out pieces of the puzzle.



Further, it&#39;s not even an argument that the USSR was socialist...otherwise one could argue that Nazi Germany was "socialist" because "the social welfare and the living standards improved dramatically on all levels of life". The same could be argued for capitalism.

So congratulations you&#39;ve just justified Nazism and Capitalism.

Except that you left out that millions of non-Germans perished under Nazi Germany. This didn&#39;t happen in the Soviet Union. Oh right, no one died "under" the USSR. I forgot it was candy land.

That&#39;s really a naive defense though because it doesn&#39;t change the fact that you still justified Nazism. The fact that millions died is irrelevant.

Arguing "Ah yes the standards of living improved...therefore it&#39;s good&#33;" is a terrible argument that bourgeois apologists give all the time (just talk to a libertarian for 10 minutes).

It can be used to justify any system: slavery, Nazism, Stalinism, Capitalism, etc.

The German of 1935 was living much better off than the German of 1920, do you deny this? The standards of living improved...therefore by your reasoning, Nazism is a good system.

The American slave of 1850 was living much better off than the slave of 1650...the standards of living also increased. Therefore slavery is a good system by your line of logic.

The worker is much better off nowadays than s/he was three hundred years ago...therefore capitalism is a good system using your own reasoning.

What&#39;s really bad about your argument is that by virtue of the increased standards of living, these systems are magically socialist...not just "justified"&#33;


What a sloppy analogy. Proof positive that, running out of other "criticisms," the fash-attack was the last of your trump cards. No, it&#39;s just the logical conclusion of your argument.

It&#39;s the logical conclusion of the Libertarian&#39;s argument too...something to bear in mind if you ever have to deal with them.



This would be true if we ignore history entirely...for example V.P. Miliutin the party leader suggested "not to permit strikes in state enterprises" (Eleventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Stenographic Report. Held in Moscow, March-April 1922, Moscow 1936, p.275). Were things just "so great" that the workers couldn&#39;t tell the state how crappy things were for the workers?

Huzzah workers&#39; control&#33;

Still doesn&#39;t prove to me the lack of workers&#39; control (elections in Soviets, practical applications of constitutional rights, etc.?). It does prove the nature of the concern of the rate of the construction of socialism in regards to the danger of the capitalist encirclement, however. Yes, I agree, hindering the ability for the workers to take effective action absolutely in no way hinders the workers&#39; control.

If anything, it gives them more control by giving them less power.

Now you seriously expect me to believe that the workers had control when they were not given the right to strike?

Things were just getting so great for the workers that they decided to make it illegal to strike?

Taking away the ability to strike is a rather grave thing to do. The workers cannot demand better working conditions or shorter hours, except through what a written form?

Even then there is no guarantee that anything would be done.



You took a passage of Marx out of context, as I pointed out it turns out Marx was actually criticizing the concept you propose.

You think I took a passage of Marx out of context, and you think you pointed out an opposite conclusion. Big difference. Sorry mate, you took the quote out of context. If you had bothered to read the entire text you would understand.

But you didn&#39;t so you won&#39;t.


When you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, Marx is pointing out what is most likely to happen under socialism in terms of the productive forces and wages and the diversion of funds towards social welfare. You can&#39;t avoid it. Your completely ignoring the context that Marx is speaking from. He&#39;s following the Lassellean programme to its logical conclusion.

You seem to be avoiding the fact that this wasn&#39;t what Marx proposed for socialism but a criticism of the Lassellean programme&#33;

It hasn&#39;t stopped you so far :rolleyes:



Right, "Mother Russia" had no nationalism at all

What part of "for the most part" did you not understand?

I don&#39;t deny the turnover of Ukrainian and Chechnyan nationalists over to Nazism during the war due to the material conditions. But the Soviet Union sure as hell practiced nothing of nationalism compared to what&#39;s practiced today in the current republics in terms of nationalism and chauvinism at all. Well your word is good enough for me <_<

Would you care, by any chance, to back up your assertion that the republics are more nationalistic now than under the Soviet yoke with proof? And I&#39;d prefer real proof not: "Oh well it&#39;s common knowledge..." or anecdotal evidence.



This makes no logical sense...if a society is capitalist, then there will be racist and nationalist riots at the workplace. It does not follow.

Nor does the proposition that crime will magically sky rocket for no reason, "especially at night".

It doesn&#39;t make logical sense?&#33;

Ever heard of surplus labor force? Workers competing against each other for cheaper wages, for jobs? It&#39;s under these material conditions that nationalism and racism find their footing? Yes, and in a society with the capitalist mode of production with a low unemployment logically has none of these conditions.

True, the USSR "officially" abolished unemployment in 1930...and 3 years later there are more idle workers in the factory than ever.

Heck people were fighting to get into the cities...but by the time of the famous show trials, the tendency had reversed.

The 1939 Soviet census revealed that 67.2 per cent of the total population was rural, and that of the 114.6 million rural dwellers 78.6 millions were peasants.

The "industrial reserve army" essentially "retreated" to the rural badlands of Russia.

So why is it that none of these conditions were exhibited in the city? Oh yes, because the unemployed people were the red necks of the USSR.

Or we could ignore reality and consider the USSR to be without unemployment :lol:

You don&#39;t have a surplus labor force in the USSR (because there was no unemployment), you don&#39;t have workers competing for cheaper wages and jobs, because as the principle goes, "to each according to his ability, to each according to his work" and so whatever a worker produces, he receives his compensation in the exact value as a wage. So long as you clap your hands and believe...

Seriously, would you provide proof of this "the worker receives his compensation exactly", etc.?

This is yet another unsubstantiated assertion (rather a list of them), and unless it can be substantiated it will be disregarded as little more than propaganda.



It was a Lassallean proposition that Marx was following to its logical conclusions as a criticism.

Yes, and what Marx followed up with in response to what Lassalle advocated is what I have been referring to all along. I have been referring to Marx&#39;s criticism and his theoretical hypothesis of what would happen under socialism and communism. That&#39;s what I have been emphasizing. You don&#39;t seem to understand Marx wasn&#39;t proposing a hypothesis, he was following the Lassallean hypothesis to its logical conclusion.

There is a big difference.

You need to re-read that section of the Critique of the Gotha Programme slowly and carefully.

You think you understand it, but you clearly don&#39;t:

Marx

3. "The emancipation of labor demands the promotion of the instruments of labor to the common property of society and the co-operative regulation of the total labor, with a fair distribution of the proceeds of labor."Promotion of the instruments of labor to the common property" ought obviously to read their "conversion into the common property"; but this is only passing.

What are the "proceeds of labor"? The product of labor, or its value? And in the latter case, is it the total value of the product, or only that part of the value which labor has newly added to the value of the means of production consumed?

"Proceeds of labor" is a loose notion which Lassalle has put in the place of definite economic conceptions.

What is "a fair distribution"?

Do not the bourgeois assert that the present-day distribution is "fair"? And is it not, in fact, the only "fair" distribution on the basis of the present-day mode of production? Are economic relations regulated by legal conceptions, or do not, on the contrary, legal relations arise out of economic ones? Have not also the socialist sectarians the most varied notions about "fair" distribution?

To understand what is implied in this connection by the phrase "fair distribution", we must take the first paragraph and this one together. The latter presupposes a society wherein the instruments of labor are common property and the total labor is co-operatively regulated, and from the first paragraph we learn that "the proceeds of labor belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society."

"To all members of society"? To those who do not work as well? What remains then of the "undiminished" proceeds of labor? Only to those members of society who work? What remains then of the "equal right" of all members of society?

But "all members of society" and "equal right" are obviously mere phrases. The kernel consists in this, that in this communist society every worker must receive the "undiminished" Lassallean "proceeds of labor".

Let us take, first of all, the words "proceeds of labor" in the sense of the product of labor; then the co-operative proceeds of labor are the total social product. --emphasis added.

Marx is clearly analysing the Lassallean proposition, not making one up as he goes along.

Or can you not see it when it is presented to you so bluntly? The "proceeds of labor" is a concept that is key to the Lassallean hypothesis, the various "deductions" are taken which affects the "proceeds of labor", etc.

You should at least try and read it rather than pretend to.



Besides if it were so self-evident that the USSR were socialist, it wouldn&#39;t be hard to prove it statistically. Gee I wonder why the lack of proof? Only baseless assertions and ignoring points.

There&#39;s proof, most of which you&#39;ve been using, and statistics and material given in that Stalin piece I quoted (and you missed...). I didn&#39;t miss it, it didn&#39;t prove anything worth rebutting.

Any idiot can quote someone, that&#39;s a trivial task to do. I want a proof.

You seem to avoid this and either claim to have done it or quote someone. Neither claiming to have done it nor quoting someone equates to doing a proof.


Problem is how you interpret the data based on the philosophy. Your philosophy is not Marxist, it vaguely defines what is state-capitalism, what is the mode of production, the classes that exist under that mode, and the content behind the classes. Example: Managers =/= bourgeoisie. But you would have us believe so. Oh, you are right, dear me. The managers are obviously proletarian. So much so that a proof is not necessary to prove it. They somehow magically create surplus value, don&#39;t supervise the production of commodities, and don&#39;t behave like petit bourgeois chaps under capitalism. <_<

Yes, you have asserted it over and over again. You have asserted that I&#39;m "Not a true marxist" despite this being a fallacious argument. You have asserted that the managers are proletarian despite not having proven it one bit.

What I would like is proof&#33;

Which you so kindly ignore. It shouldn&#39;t be that hard if it is true. Hell you ignore a great host of empirical data, how hard could it be to give a hand-wavy proof?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Originally posted by Voz de la Gente [email protected] 30, 2007 03:23 am
I don&#39;t know Hammer. I disagree with CR wedging Marx and Lenin when many of his writings were basically more practical translations of them. But I do agree with his arguments on state capitalism and its role in Stalinist Russia.


But no comments on the bolded text, from a Lenin who wasn&#39;t in his usually polemical mood? mellow.gif Sigh. sad.gif


The Bolshevik revolution and the period they were trying to bring about were only revolutionary-democratic in nature: the revolutionary-democratic Red October and the subsequent period of PRIMITIVE stamocap. As per this link, even the development of nationalized industrial farming can be considered to be "revolutionary-democratic." The time between this period and the proper socialist revolution is more compressed than that between Time Points A and B, and thankfully skipping Time Point C altogether. Because of this, it is possible that the socialist revolution could overthrow the very same "Party" that brought about primitive stamocap. All of this is contrasted with REVOLUTIONARY stamocap as below.]
I don&#39;t what to say on this, my theoretical background is not as deep as is yours or CR&#39;s. By I do agree, given material conditions, that revolutionary stamocap might be necessary as a bridge to socialism and complete worker&#39;s control.

This is a crucial aspect of the article you linked:


Thus the fact of extensive nationalization does not in itself show that a regime is socialist. In the case of the revisionist regimes, it only helps establish their state capitalist character. As well, outright capitalist regimes may carry out a certain amount of nationalization, and this does not create a socialist but a state capitalist sector of the economy. A workers&#39; regime on the path towards socialism will also undertake nationalization, which in this case functions as a step towards the social control of production. The nationalized industry will be run by workers&#39; institutions and representatives, but moreover, it will be more and more run by the masses of workers (and not only by replacing the former top executives of nationalized industry with revolutionary representatives), and a separate managerial class will fade away. This is part of the transitional process, by which the working class, after seizing power in a socialist revolution, transforms the economy in the direction of socialism. The raises the question: Does the existence of a nationalized state sector in this transitional economy, but this time under workers&#39; control both in the sense that the ruling party is truly a party of the working class and in that the masses take over more and more of the administration of the state sector, mean that the transitional system can be characterized overall as state capitalism, but a "state capitalism under the workers&#39; rule" or "state capitalism under the dictatorship of the proletariat"?
^^^ I&#39;m not questioning CR&#39;s stuff about state capitalism (yes, CAPITALISM) and its VARIOUS forms in the Soviet Union, from Lenin&#39;s form to Stalin&#39;s form and afterwards.

In many ways, hasta, Lenin was far ahead of his time. While he envisioned revolutionary stamocap (Time Point E) as the functional economy of the DOTP, he stumbled upon a more primitive version of this (hence "primitive stamocap") as the means to proceed to the proper socialist revolution (Time Point D) and the DOTP (again Time Point E).

You can&#39;t skip historical stages, but you can shorten their duration by accelerating their development. Lenin&#39;s primitive stamocap, without the various bureaucratic "complications" that came afterwards as a result of isolation, was a brilliant attempt at accelerating the development free-market capitalism and monopoly capitalism, and would have been successful with a proper socialist revolution in Germany. :(

[Hence the role of the Russian "midwife" - to induce Germany into revolution and then afterwards aid Russia&#39;s efforts at accelerating its nonetheless CAPITALIST development.]

Once more, to conclude this post, do NOT confuse Lenin&#39;s primitive stamocap with the revolutionary stamocap he envisioned for developed capitalist countries.



P.S. - My "theoretical background" isn&#39;t that deep, either. It&#39;s based more on common sense and business studies in a bourgeois environment.