Why do you think the Soviet Union was not Communist?

[RGacky3]

YOU are defining a "real" union based upon how unions function in a capitalist environment. It has to be based upon how it would function in a socialist community.

A real union, is a union that is controlled by the workers by definition.

To prevent other such threats to the revolution...

Your an idiot. THEY were the threat to the revolution by consolidating power, by the time they did, they had destroyed the revolution.

Thats like saying to prevent threats to democracy we are going to set up a dictatorship.

The workplace is controlled by the consumers of the product which is produced. Their demands, and not the opininions of the workers, is what controls how goods and service are produced and distributed.

What is consumer is controlled by the consumers, and obviously thats what decides what is to be produced, however, the internal workings of a workplace should be a democracy, rather than a dictatorship.

[mel]

What is consumer is controlled by the consumers, and obviously thats what decides what is to be produced, however, the internal workings of a workplace should be a democracy, rather than a dictatorship.

That sounds like syndicalism.

[RGacky3]

Quote:
Originally Posted by RGacky3
What is consumer is controlled by the consumers, and obviously thats what decides what is to be produced, however, the internal workings of a workplace should be a democracy, rather than a dictatorship.
That sounds like syndicalism.

Yes sir.

[Green Dragon]

[QUOTE]

A real union, is a union that is controlled by the workers by definition.

Which is meaningless. What does it do? What is its function?

Your an idiot. THEY were the threat to the revolution by consolidating power, by the time they did, they had destroyed the revolution.

What do you think the function of a labor union is, in a socialist community?

What is consumer is controlled by the consumers, and obviously thats what decides what is to be produced, however, the internal workings of a workplace should be a democracy, rather than a dictatorship.

The community needs 100 items of X. The workers can deocratcally decide to produce 100 items of X, or they can decide to produce some other amount. The former means the workers do not control; the latter would be a ridiculous.

[mel]

The community needs 100 items of X. The workers can deocratcally decide to produce 100 items of X, or they can decide to produce some other amount. The former means the workers do not control; the latter would be a ridiculous decision.

The community needs 100 items of X by Friday. The workers can democratically decide what hours to work on which days of the week, and who will do what tasks, in order to ensure that the community gets 100 items of X by Friday in whichever way best suits the workers.

The workers can have control over the internal operations of the workplace and still produce exactly what the community needs.

[RGacky3]

Which is meaningless. What does it do? What is its function?

What do you think the function of a labor union is, in a socialist community?

Make collective desicions about the workplace, in a Capitalist society that means making the desicions and trying to get the Capitalist to accept it.

In a state socialist society its to make the state accept it, in a true socialist society its just to make the desicion and do it.

The community needs 100 items of X. The workers can deocratcally decide to produce 100 items of X, or they can decide to produce some other amount. The former means the workers do not control; the latter would be a ridiculous.

Why would anyone produce something no one needs is the real question.

[Green Dragon]

The workers can have control over the internal operations of the workplace and still produce exactly what the community needs.

[/QUOTE]

Their "control" is simply responding to what somebody else wants.

They are not deciding what to do. The community is.

[Green Dragon]

[QUOTE]

Make collective desicions about the workplace, in a Capitalist society that means making the desicions and trying to get the Capitalist to accept it.

In a state socialist society its to make the state accept it, in a true socialist society its just to make the desicion and do it.

In the capitalist community, the power is indeed diffused.

In the state socialist community (as you describe), the power is more concentrated.

In the "true" socialist society, the power is concentrated even more so.

[mel]

Their "control" is simply responding to what somebody else wants.

Only if you completely ignore the rest of my post in which I describe the type of control which is actually important for workers to have (not what to produce, or in what quantity, but how to produce it, which hours to work to produce it, and who should be responsible for which aspects of producing it). These types of decisions are important because they directly influence worker autonomy: the power of a worker to decide where they are and what they are doing and why at any given moment. If a person has a job producing something, in any given week they will have to produce it, that is what they agree to when they choose that work. However, there should be no directives from the top down about which days they have to come in, how many hours they have to work, or when to work them. This is something that can be decided by the workers as a whole. If everyone needs to be there at the same time to get it done, they decide when to do it. If each individual can work on parts separately without effecting other peoples ability to get their work done (if it is sufficiently modularized without inter-dependencies on other constituent parts, the types of tasks which can be parallellized) then they should be able to decide which hours to come in and when in order to best get their portion done by the time which it needs to be done.

[MikeSC]

My point is that as long as you think Socialism is a possibility, or a goal or it can happen someday I have no problem. I think there is a very good chance myself that it will happen. But once you say that it CAN'T fail that it is inevitable and certain it stops becoming economics and it becomes religion as much as the second comming of Jesus.

I do agree about the Soviet Union also. I think the Revolutionaries had the best intentions, but too many problems along the way crashed the program. And while I think Lenin might very well have been the right man to carry out a Communist system I think the moment Stalin too over--any chance of the SU evolving into Communism was dead.

Stalin was a Tsar by other means. What followed him was just 40 years of slow painful death of a dream.

Yeah, I agree with you there. Every one of us here probably has at least a slightly different vision of what socialism will be like, but we're all completely certain that it will come to pass and last for ever and ever!

[Green Dragon]

Only if you completely ignore the rest of my post in which I describe the type of control which is actually important for workers to have (not what to produce, or in what quantity, but how to produce it, which hours to work to produce it, and who should be responsible for which aspects of producing it). These types of decisions are important because they directly influence worker autonomy: the power of a worker to decide where they are and what they are doing and why at any given moment. If a person has a job producing something, in any given week they will have to produce it, that is what they agree to when they choose that work. However, there should be no directives from the top down about which days they have to come in, how many hours they have to work, or when to work them. This is something that can be decided by the workers as a whole. If everyone needs to be there at the same time to get it done, they decide when to do it. If each individual can work on parts separately without effecting other peoples ability to get their work done (if it is sufficiently modularized without inter-dependencies on other constituent parts, the types of tasks which can be parallellized) then they should be able to decide which hours to come in and when in order to best get their portion done by the time which it needs to be done.

Ok. It does not matter what the workers produce, just how they produce it.

The community needs 100 units if Item X. You wish to say it is up to the workers to decide how those items will be produced.

I say hogwash. You are saying the workers can produce those items at their convenience. Wrong. It is produced at the convenience of the consumers.

[mel]

Ok. It does not matter what the workers produce, just how they produce it.

The community needs 100 units if Item X. You wish to say it is up to the workers to decide how those items will be produced.

I say hogwash. You are saying the workers can produce those items at their convenience. Wrong. It is produced at the convenience of the consumers.

I am saying that if the community needs 100 units of item X in a given time frame (say one week) and producing 100 units of item X takes a total of 100 hours of work from all 5 employees of a given workplace (20 hours per worker), that said workers can decide, depending on the type of work and whether or not it can be modularized, if one worker will come in each day to produce said item, if all 5 workers will come in for 4 hours every day, and which four hours will come in, if all 5 workers will come in for only two days and work 10 hours, if 3 workers will come in and work their hours the first three days and the last two workers will come in and work their hours the last two, who will be responsible for which tasks relating to the production of item X, etc. etc. etc. There is a great amount of freedom possible with democratic worker control of the internal operation of their specific workplace, even if the input and output of the workplace is set.

The workplace takes, as input, materials and a request for 100 items of product X, the workplace outputs 100 items of product X. For every step in-between the input and output, the workers should have absolute direct democratic control.

[RGacky3]

Their "control" is simply responding to what somebody else wants.

They are not deciding what to do. The community is.

If you go to a party, you call the host and ask him what the party needs, and you bring it, are you being controlled?

the reason people produce is for other people to use.

In the capitalist community, the power is indeed diffused.

In the state socialist community (as you describe), the power is more concentrated.

In the "true" socialist society, the power is concentrated even more so.

Are you talking about unions here or what?

[MikeSC]

I say hogwash. You are saying the workers can produce those items at their convenience. Wrong. It is produced at the convenience of the consumers.

In an egalitarian society, every worker would be as much of a consumer as every other worker. It'd be up to the worker-consumers to decide, democratically, whether increased goods are worth increased working hours- or whether it's worth it to decrease working hours considering it would mean decreased goods.

[Green Dragon]

[QUOTE]

If you go to a party, you call the host and ask him what the party needs, and you bring it, are you being controlled?

No. But its an inorrect analogy.

the reason people produce is for other people to use.

Yep. And what those people want is what controls, not what the workers want.

[Green Dragon]

In an egalitarian society, every worker would be as much of a consumer as every other worker. It'd be up to the worker-consumers to decide, democratically, whether increased goods are worth increased working hours- or whether it's worth it to decrease working hours considering it would mean decreased goods.

This is simply not true. A person who does not consume steak is simply not as much of a consumer of steak as the person who does.

[Green Dragon]

I am saying that if the community needs 100 units of item X in a given time frame (say one week) and producing 100 units of item X takes a total of 100 hours of work from all 5 employees of a given workplace (20 hours per worker), that said workers can decide, depending on the type of work and whether or not it can be modularized, if one worker will come in each day to produce said item, if all 5 workers will come in for 4 hours every day, and which four hours will come in, if all 5 workers will come in for only two days and work 10 hours, if 3 workers will come in and work their hours the first three days and the last two workers will come in and work their hours the last two, who will be responsible for which tasks relating to the production of item X, etc. etc. etc. There is a great amount of freedom possible with democratic worker control of the internal operation of their specific workplace, even if the input and output of the workplace is set.

The workplace takes, as input, materials and a request for 100 items of product X, the workplace outputs 100 items of product X. For every step in-between the input and output, the workers should have absolute direct democratic control.

In order for that to be true, the workers must have have absolute control over their input (what they receive) and output (what they produce).
But none of that can be true, since they cannot dictate to their suppliers what to ship to them, not can they, or should they, dictate to their consumers what it is they (those workers) will produce.

[Tower of Bebel]

The Soviet Union even produced or created a bureaucracy for which communism wasn't even a goal. In general, the peasant majority from that country formed the basis for a highly centralized and coercive statepower (needed to extract any surplus it would need) which had interests that run contrary to the principles of communism.

[Nwoye]

lol at the tags for this thread.

anyway, here's why they weren't communists:

While the revolution in Germany is slow in "coming forth," our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it. Our task is to do this even more thoroughly than Peter [the Great] hastened the copying of Western culture by barbarian Russia, and he did not hesitate to use barbarous methods in fighting against barbarism.

that's from Vladimir Lenin.

[Blake's Baby]

It wasn't communist, because Lenin wrote some stuff down about Peter the Great?

It wasn't communist because communism cannot be established in one place while capitalism exists in the rest of the world. Communism must be worldwide and cannot even be built until capitalism has been defeated worldwide (and even then there will a period of transition to communism, it won't just spring fully formed...)

So, the Soviet Union wasn't communist because the Social Democrats in Germany uses proto-fascist militias to murder the German workers, Communists and Anarchists, thus preventing the revolution spreading; because the bourgeoisies of France, Britain and America seperated their workers from the German and Russian workers, preventing effective working class action against the capitalist class spreading world wide in a short time; because those same bourgeois used the most vicious methods against strikes and mutinies in France, Britain, Canada and the US; because the bourgeoisie's war (and the betrayal of the fake 'socialists' who acted as recruiting sergeants for their own ruling classes) had shattered the confidence of the international working class; and for a hundred other reasons which boil down to:

the world revolution failed to topple capitalism everywhere and without that there was no possibility of implementing communism.