the Soviet Union

Dictatorship or Worker's State?

Discuss.

Wow, what a trollish thread.

I hope it gets trashed real soon, because there are about a millions discussions about this.

HAHAHAHAHA, dictatorship of course.

according to anti-revisionist, stalin was on a good path until krutchev demolish all his effort to build the new socialist man:laugh:.

Wasnt sure; Kwisatz Haderach and mykittyhasaboner have both hinted that it worked in acheiving it's goals. I'm not much of a historian so I'm trying to hear both sides on the Left.

Oh yeah, it's like all the 70 years of Soviet Union were pretty much the same, weren't they? I'll admit I'm not a fan of Soviet Union but come on, that's just idiotic simplist shit. And it's not like you're going to achieve something by making a 1 000 000th "LOL WAS THE SU A WORKERS' PARADISE OR A FASCIST HELLHOLE" thread, as we see those pretty much on weekly basis. If you want to have some good discussions, actually give, yeah, you, some good, intellectual points of view.

Or even.. well, anything. But do I see anything?

Well in honour of the struggle I will give a polite answer to this, and hope the poster learns even a little.

Ive heard the oft quoted line that "to blame Marx for Stalin is like trying to blame Jesus for Cliff Richard"

The soviet union was not a workers paridise (however millions of russians old and young still want communism back), but then again what chance did they have.

Revolution in a largly uneducated and undeveloped country, followed by a WW2 that devastated there youth, followed by a cold war and arms race with a much richer adversary.
Imperialists yapping at there heels at every turn.

If they had made Russia into everything Marx could dream it would have been a miracle.
But even with all this against them they still grew after world war2 to the worlds second largest economy, put the first man into space aswell as most everything else except moon landings, made mia, were Americas only real rival in most things, and accomplished lots of other things.

But in the face of an arms race with a richer and numerically superior enemy it caused a crunch, nearly 2 million fit workers lost in the name of this race at any one time.

The USSR was not perfect by any means, and at times truely evil but the west has had evil moments too.
A thing as small and innocent on the surface as the common agricultural policy has caused misery and deprivation to millions.

Not to mention all the regimes installed or backed by the west, that have caused the deaths of millions, and my god the wars.

The USSR was not perfect but nobody else was either.

The best way to look at the USSR is as a text book of lessons, I am not going to list these here ive the typing speed of a worm with a blindfold and its a huge subject.

We are not it has to be said going to re-create a world wide soviet union type deal.

The new workers revolution will bring true democracy and true dignity to the lives of all, in roads are being made world wide now at steady pace.
It will all come in quick order when it happen, east, west, north and south.

If a child having to die every six seconds needlessly is the true price of capitalism and it is, the USSR never ever got near that level of misery, and the new workers revolution will end it.

The stateless state.

The issue here as I understand it is that Russia at the time of the Revolution didn't have much of a proletariat. It' had millions of peasents, but they are not quite the same thing--they have different needs and wants and don't fit into the Marxist scheme so easily.

Actually that seems to be a problem with most Communist revolutions, they seem to happen in undeveloped countries like Russia and China and not developed countries like Germany of France.

I guess too that "take over" Revolutions like when the SU took over East Germany didn't work well because it wasn't something that came from the people themselves--though what I'm saying leads one to think that Communist might be nationalistic--which isn't the case.

There are, but in History, not in OI. We could use a thread like this specifically for OIers.

Now, to answer the OP:

Opinions on the Soviet Union are far too polarized. It seems everyone either loves it or hates it. My view is more balanced. I think the USSR was, on the whole, good - but I wouldn't call it a socialist society or a workers' state, and I do not ignore the fact that it had many flaws. I think we can learn from the Soviet Union's successes, while avoiding its mistakes.

Also, as Gleb pointed out, the Soviet society, government and economy were not the same throughout the entire history of the USSR. Saying "the Soviet Union killed lots of innocent people" is like saying "the United States had slavery." It's technically true, but only for a certain part of the country's history.

Its a workers state in the sense that America is a democracy. Was it a dictatorship? Yes, not nearly as much as the US would like to portray it as, especailly after Stalin.

The question is akin to "Is America a democracy or A capitalist ptutocracy," well its both, it can be said to have elements of the former, but is mainly the latter. Soooo, all in all, dumb question.

Uh, I don't get what your saying here. Are you seriously trying to compare the US political system with the Soviet Union's? That's pretty funny. The Soviet Union was a worker's state because the state was created by a worker's revolution where the means of production were seized and the capitalist class expropriated. It's really as simple as that.

All states are dictatorships, dictatorships of classes.

Again, why are you even bothering comparing the two? It makes little sense.
Well on the surface, your absolutely right.

Except the overwhelming majority of small and medium peasants were more than willing to form an alliance with the proletariat in order to take their land back from the land lords and kulaks. It was difficult to satisfy both classes early on in the worker's republic, but after rapid industrialization the proletariat had the means to improve their living standards, and agricultural industry had developed which made collective peasant farms much more productive. The goal essentially, was to abolish the distinction between the two altogether (the abolition of the difference between town and country) and great advances were made in this respect, but they only got so far.

The ones in Germany, Hungary, France, Spain, and Finland all failed. What you mean to say is, the only successful communist revolutions happened in countries like Russia and China.

You say "take over", I say "liberate from fascism". Mind you that the majority of people welcomed the Red Army as liberators, and many actually participated with them in partisan activity; in some cases, eastern European revolutions were done with little help from the Red Army (Yugoslavia, Albania).

and the Soviet Union was a dictatorship of party members and it's leaders right?

No, because party members and leaders aren't socio-economic classes.

so who was the dictatorial class in Soviet Russia, if not the bureaucrats and members of the inner circle of the state apparatus?

The the former exploited proletariat and peasantry formed the basis of the ruling class in the Soviet Union. I'm really tired of lame the same old lame analysis over and over again, that some how "the bureaucrats and the inner-circles of the state ruled the Soviet Union". If this were the case, then what was the point of having Soviets? Nationalizing all the means of production through state or collective ownership? Why didn't the evil burecrats live from, and profit directly from the (non-existant) exploitation of labor? Your attempts (as well as many other's) to paint the Soviet state as a capitalist bueracracy isoltaed from the rule and control of the people is really pointless and tiring, and frankly I'm not going to discuss this since there's really no point in trying to prove anything, because it falls on deaf and stubborn ears (well, eyes).

I was comparing them in the sense that they called themselves something which could be tecnically applicable bu in reality the power layed elsewhere.

The United States calls it self a democracy, of the people, and it does have electios, but in reality the power lays in the Capitalist class, as you said.

The USSR called it self a workers state, and it did have soviets, but in reality the power lay in the Communist party elite.

That was my comparison.

Well, they had a different realationship to the means of production than your average worker in the USSR did, so yes they are a seperate socio-economic class.

Same reason the US has elections.

They did it through the state because they controlled the state.

They did, through the state. Power is power, be it from private capital or state capital.

It was'nt isolated from the control of the people at all, but niether is the Unied States, however, the people were NOT the main desicion making force, they were really just a factor for the real desicion makers, the same way in the United States the people are just a factor.

Don't worry about him, he's just "fetishizing" (as the Marxists apparantly call it) the importance of class:tt2:

Well how do you answer for the Bolsheviks repeated suppression of worker movements? specifically the crushing of the Kronstadt rebellion, the ignoring of the Workers Opposition, and Lenin's refusal to hand control of the workplace over to the workers themselves.

also, how do you answer for Lenin's refusal to listen to the left communists argument against participation in parliament? considering they were coming from a genuine Marxist perspective.

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So the issue would seem to be that Communist revolutions were most successful in regions where theoretically they should not, and the least successful in regions where they theoretically ought.

Perhaps the issue is the theory, and not its application.


Actually, another example where the "theory" does not match up with its application.
Nor should it be surprising. The French revolution was also highly nationalist. It is not surprising that socialists have long rallied around the nationalist standard in pursuit of their goal (and Mr. Marx was no exception).

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Originally Posted by mykittyhasaboner

The the former exploited proletariat and peasantry formed the basis of the ruling class in the Soviet Union. ).

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[FONT=Times New Roman]If they were truly the former exploited proletariat that means they are no longer the proletariat because the proletariat by definition is the exploited class in society. And who was this "former exploited proletariat" ruling over, pray? The capitalist class? Well if the capitalist class exist that means they exist by virtue of exploiting the proleytariat. You are argument is so full of holes you could drive a soviet tank through it with consummate ease.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Times New Roman]Maybe your are tired of hearing the argument because you intuitively recongise you dont have any kind of adequate answer to it. The Soviets were not democratic and the state ownership is just de facto collective ownership by the class that controls the state.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Times New Roman]You say there was no exploitation in the USSR and imply the bureaucrats were just fellow workers . Bollocks. According to Roy Medvedev (Khrushchev: The Years in Power ,Columbia University Press. 1976[/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman], 540), taking into account not only their inflated "salaries" but also the many privileges and perks enjoyed by the Soviet elite (who even had access to retails outlets stocking western goods and other facilities from which the general public was physically excluded) the ratio was more like 1:100. Yes , thats 1:100! Some amongst this elite became very wealthy in their own right and a much quoted source in this regard is a pamphlet published in 1945 by the Russia Today Society (London) called "Soviet Millionaires", written by Reg Bishop, a supporter of the Soviet regime, that proudly boasted of the existence of rouble millionaires there as an indicator of economic success[/FONT]
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[FONT=Times New Roman]So how do you explain away such facts in your glorious egalitarian state capitalist utopia., eh?[/FONT]
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[FONT=Times New Roman]Incidentally perhaps you would care to substantiate your claim that the Russian workers were not exploited to produce the surplus value to fuel the USSR's programme of rampant capital accumulation and industrialisation , in the light of this little gem by Lenin[/FONT]
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[FONT=Times New Roman]Get down to business all of you! You will have capitalists beside you, including foreign capitalists, concessionaires and leaseholders. They will squeeze profits out of you amounting to hundreds per cent; they will enrich themselves, operating alongside of you. Let them, Meanwhile you will learn from them the business of running an economy, and only when you do that will you be able to build up a communist republic. (Collected Works, Vol. 33 page 72) [/FONT]
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