Where did the USSR go wrong?

[Redhead]

The Bolsheviks goal was Communism, but yet they failed. Where on the path did they fail? Where on the path did every country trying to establish communism fail? How can we prevent this happening again?

[Psycho P and the Freight Train]

And the tendency war begins! I want a good clean fight. Good luck

Anyway here's my opinion.

It failed because the Soviets ceased to function (as in the workers' councils). When they ceased to function, the Bolsheviks naturally evolved into a bureaucratic entity which developed different interests than the general workers because of their privileged relationship to both the means of production and political power in general. Once a bureaucracy forms, it becomes a separate entity and will inevitably devolve into state capitalism which will then give way to "regular" old international capitalism.

[Q]

It failed as soon as it started. It's birth was aborted due to civil war, isolation in a backward society and surrounded by capitalist states which subsequently brought in the fascists to make sure they didn't have a revolution. This gave rise to a counterrevolution within the revolution: Stalinism.

And yes, this is so tendency sensitive, it should have a triggerwarning...

[Five Year Plan]

It failed as soon as it started. It's birth was aborted due to civil war, isolation in a backward society and surrounded by capitalist states which subsequently brought in the fascists to make sure they didn't have a revolution. This gave rise to a counterrevolution within the revolution: Stalinism.

And yes, this is so tendency sensitive, it should have a triggerwarning...

I laughed out loud at that last part. Do you think the Russian Revolution was a genuine proletarian revolution in which the bourgeois state was smashed? And if so, when was the proletarian state it established smashed?

[exeexe]

The Bolsheviks failed when they tried to achieve something which was not communism. Instead of becoming a beacon of light for the rest of workers throughout the world it became an example the capitalists were using.
"Look is this really what you want? This is the result of communism" they said

Only now - a hundred years later can we dream of delearn what the capitalist were telling us about communism

[Lensky]

The Bolsheviks goal was Communism, but yet they failed. Where on the path did they fail? Where on the path did every country trying to establish communism fail? How can we prevent this happening again?

The German Revolution.

[tuwix]

The Bolsheviks goal was Communism, but yet they failed. Where on the path did they fail?

On the very beginning. Lenin tried to alter Marxism and even in theory he's made it impossible to put in practice. He created a Vanguard part that had to be smarter than people but become a ruling a lite of a country. Besides there was nationalization instead of socialization, lack of democracy, censorship, secret political police, etc. Thew Bolsheviks have created a parody of socialism.

Where on the path did every country trying to establish communism fail?

Every country trying to go on path towards communism more or less repeated Leninist errors. Almost every country established a ruling elite in form of vanguard party who in fact owned means of production and never allowed to be owned by workers. It's impossible to build egalitarian society with elitist approach.

How can we prevent this happening again?

Sticking to the strict rules. The means of production must be owned by workers and nobody else.

[RedMaterialist]

The Bolsheviks goal was Communism, but yet they failed. Where on the path did they fail? Where on the path did every country trying to establish communism fail? How can we prevent this happening again?

The Soviet Union was a victim of its own success. Stalin and the Soviet bureaucracy eliminated the entire capitalist and petit-bourgeois classes. By about 1970 the only class left was the working class. And, exactly as Marx, Engels and Lenin predicted, the state collapsed. It simply one day went out of business. Nothing like it has ever happened in history before. The first workers' revolution became the first workers' state which became the first superpower in history to ...... collapse one day.

Even if you think the bureaucracy was a "class" it too collapsed. What could be a better metaphor for the withering away of the bureaucracy than the hapless Gorbachev?

[RedMaterialist]

How can we prevent this happening again?

By remembering that the socialist revolution can ultimately succeed only by being a world revolution. Even if socialism in one state is successful for a few years it will fail because it cannot sustain itself in a world surrounded by hostile capitalism.

However, this doesn't mean we should abandon socialist revolution. Marx predicted that the Paris Commune would fail, but he was still an enthusiastic supporter of it.

[RedMaterialist]

Do you think the Russian Revolution was a genuine proletarian revolution in which the bourgeois state was smashed? And if so, when was the proletarian state it established smashed?

The proletarian state was not smashed. It withered away and died. Unfortunately it was surrounded by capitalism which then took over Russia.

[consuming negativity]

The Soviet Union was a victim of its own success. Stalin and the Soviet bureaucracy eliminated the entire capitalist and petit-bourgeois classes. By about 1970 the only class left was the working class. And, exactly as Marx, Engels and Lenin predicted, the state collapsed. It simply one day went out of business. Nothing like it has ever happened in history before. The first workers' revolution became the first workers' state which became the first superpower in history to ...... collapse one day.

Even if you think the bureaucracy was a "class" it too collapsed. What could be a better metaphor for the withering away of the bureaucracy than the hapless Gorbachev?

It didn't collapse at all. Especially not as communists would have predicted it. The USSR was dismantled from the top by a ruling class which stood to gain from a transition into full blown capitalism and an accompanying decline in workers rights. The referendum on the continuation of the Union that was overwhelmingly in favor of keeping it only shows how divorced from the population the bureaucracy was. Not even the most ardent Stalinists would claim that the Soviet Union collapsed into full blown communism, especially not after Khrushchev and the rest assassinated him and started de-Stalinization.

[Five Year Plan]

The proletarian state was not smashed. It withered away and died. Unfortunately it was surrounded by capitalism which then took over Russia.

I appreciate your feedback, but I was asking Q. Please carry on.

[Црвена]

State = hierarchy. There was no sign of the state "withering away," in the USSR, if anything it became more omnipresent. This is because any kind of state perpetuates class antagonisms and the state needed to be smashed immediately, not left for power-hungry psychopaths to hijack and turn into a dictatorship of themselves, rather than of the proletariat.

[Q]

I laughed out loud at that last part. Do you think the Russian Revolution was a genuine proletarian revolution in which the bourgeois state was smashed? And if so, when was the proletarian state it established smashed?

Yes, the Russian revolution was obviously genuinely proletarian in nature. It was also however very limited from the outset. Besides the problems I pointed to in my previous post, there was also the limitation that the workers council model couldn't take over the running of society as an alternative state, which was the hope of the Bolsheviks to resolve the 'authority problem'. It wasn't a solution and therefore the Bolsheviks had to step in almost immediately and merge state functions into them. This then had the toll of a political degeneration as conditions worsened and the Bolsheviks had to enforce their rule in increasingly worse ways as time went on under the conditions I pointed to in my previous post.

So, from 'revolution to counterrevolution' is a spectrum of developments, with the counterrevolutionary developments starting in early 1918 when the Bolsheviks annuled soviet elections or completely dissolved them where they couldn't get a majority (which was in many places) up to the 'Stalin constitution' of 1936 which consolidated the facts on the ground or maybe even stronger expressed in the mass executions of the old generation of Bolsheviks around the same time.

Whether or not capitalism took over from that point, as RedMaterialist contends, is another discussion. I don't think it did until the law of value could properly work again in the 1990's. In my opinion there is no need to position this as an 'either-or' (as if it could have either been socialism or been capitalism). In fact, I think this is a fallacy.

State = hierarchy.

This kind of over-simplification isn't helpful. Is any hierarchy therefore a state? This is obvious nonsense.

This is because any kind of state perpetuates class antagonisms and the state needed to be smashed immediately, not left for power-hungry psychopaths to hijack and turn into a dictatorship of themselves, rather than of the proletariat.

You're turning things on their head: The state is a result of class antagonisms. Communists do want to overthrow the capitalist state as to undermine the consolidated power of the bourgeoisie (or actually, capital in a more general sense) and replace it with a proletarian "state" which, although only a semi-state at best, is still an expression of the hegemony of the proletariat. The reason for this is simple: Class society will not end overnight, as although the 'big' bourgeoisie might disappear (which is only a very tiny group anyway) as they're expropriated, the 'petit' bourgeoisie and other middle strata (like lawyers, accountants, managers, etc) which control very specific monopolies on knowledge and skills will only be able to be absorbed into the proletariat proper on a part by part basis. The very fact therefore that the proletariat needs to ensure its continued hegemony as a class is by very definition a state-like function.

[Tim Cornelis]

The proletarian state was not smashed. It withered away and died. Unfortunately it was surrounded by capitalism which then took over Russia.

You still believe this utter nonsense? It did not wither away as there was a disempowered, dispossessed working class ruled over by another class. It did not wither away, it disintegrated quickly. This reveals an utter ignorance of 1) the events and chronology of the collapse (not withering) of the USSR and Eastern bloc 2) the nature of a workers' state and what it entails to wither away. It's wrong for so many reasons it's hard to understand why someone -- with emphasis on the 'one' since there is actually only one person who does -- chooses to believe this. Maybe that person likes the notion of having invented an alternative hypothesis for why the USSR is gone now and clings unto it for that sole reason.

[Brotto Rühle]

The Russian proletariat were dealt a shit hand by the material conditions of the time. They were never able to consolidate class rules, a dotp. Filling in the void, the Bolsheviks as a party divorced from the class, and not as "the party", took the reigns of a bourgeois state. Born of that was state capitalism.

[Црвена]

This kind of over-simplification isn't helpful. Is any hierarchy therefore a state? This is obvious nonsense.

No, but states are inherently hierarchical institutions. They are the way that the minority controls the majority, and unless the revolution gets rid of the state as well as private property, the bourgeoisie will simply be substituted for an equally oppressive ruling class under a different name.

You're turning things on their head: The state is a result of class antagonisms. Communists do want to overthrow the capitalist state as to undermine the consolidated power of the bourgeoisie (or actually, capital in a more general sense) and replace it with a proletarian "state" which, although only a semi-state at best, is still an expression of the hegemony of the proletariat. The reason for this is simple: Class society will not end overnight, as although the 'big' bourgeoisie might disappear (which is only a very tiny group anyway) as they're expropriated, the 'petit' bourgeoisie and other middle strata (like lawyers, accountants, managers, etc) which control very specific monopolies on knowledge and skills will only be able to be absorbed into the proletariat proper on a part by part basis. The very fact therefore that the proletariat needs to ensure its continued hegemony as a class is by very definition a state-like function.

Class antagonisms will exist for as long as there is a state. By making the proletariat the ruling class, it loses its proletarian nature and divides are created within it. There will be those who stay loyal to the revolution and those who realise that they like being the ruling class and try to create a new hierarchy with themselves at the top. The latter group will drown out the voices of the former and quite possibly form a Stalin-esque dictatorship over the proletariat in which all the oppression still exists, but pretends to exist "for the people." You can't assume that people who were once oppressed will be fair once instated as the ruling class simply because, in a past world, they were oppressed. As for undermining the bourgeoisie, workers' militias are perfectly capable of suppressing counter-revolutions and if they fought for communism in the first place, they will fight to protect it. Although class society won't end overnight, we mustn't preserve it by keeping the state and by doing this make it easier for people who like hierarchy to rise to the top.

[RedMaterialist]

You still believe this utter nonsense? It did not wither away as there was a disempowered, dispossessed working class ruled over by another class. It did not wither away, it disintegrated quickly. This reveals an utter ignorance of 1) the events and chronology of the collapse (not withering) of the USSR and Eastern bloc 2) the nature of a workers' state and what it entails to wither away. It's wrong for so many reasons it's hard to understand why someone -- with emphasis on the 'one' since there is actually only one person who does -- chooses to believe this. Maybe that person likes the notion of having invented an alternative hypothesis for why the USSR is gone now and clings unto it for that sole reason.

Wither away, disintegrated quickly...what is the difference? Sometimes a tree appears to be solid, then it collapses from within.

[RedMaterialist]

It didn't collapse at all. Especially not as communists would have predicted it. The USSR was dismantled from the top by a ruling class which stood to gain from a transition into full blown capitalism and an accompanying decline in workers rights. The referendum on the continuation of the Union that was overwhelmingly in favor of keeping it only shows how divorced from the population the bureaucracy was. Not even the most ardent Stalinists would claim that the Soviet Union collapsed into full blown communism, especially not after Khrushchev and the rest assassinated him and started de-Stalinization.

1. If there is one thing almost everybody agrees on, it's that the Soviet Union "collapsed" and collapsed suddenly.

2. Dismantled from the top? Why would the ruling class do that if they were already in control of the state and the workers?

3. You can't have a referendum on the existence of a state. It is the materialist development of class domination. Full blown communism was not created because immediately after the collapse world capital poured in and converted most state property into private property. Jeffery Sachs was the agent of the capitalists for this theft.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

It collapsed in the sense that the ideology that had kept it afloat had collapsed and the state had lost any kind of legitimacy in the eyes of the people it ruled. A collapsed state looks like Somalia, the USSR clearly was dismantled in part by its ruling class but also with the help of NATO and the US in particular. If the status quo could have been maintained longer, then it would have been, but the party had run out of time needed to move. A collapse would not have seen the state owned economy quickly and cleanly packaged off for the old party bureaucrats, it would have been chaos in the streets and protracted civil war for years if not decades.

actually fuck this I'm not having this discussion again. You're wrong, everyone agrees that you're wrong, everyone please stop responding to redmaterialist.