No.1477580[Last 50 Posts]
>New book analyzes Soviet collapse
>By the time the Soviet Union was officially dissolved in 1991, analysts and politicians declared the breakup as the death knell of communism, but a new book by two Economics professors questions whether a true communist class structure ever existed in the USSR.
>In "Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR," professors Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff, both specialists in Marxian economics, apply their previously developed class theory to analyze the creation, evolution and demise of the Soviet Union.
>Their conclusion, sure to rile critics on both the left and the right, is that the 20th century's great ideological schism actually pitted the private capitalism of the West against the "state capitalism" of the USSR. "The struggle between communism and capitalism never happened," says Wolff. "The Soviets didn't establish communism. They thought about it, but never did it."
>Under a true communist system, says Resnick, the workers would control all aspects of production and decide how any surpluses are used. But in the wake of the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks imposed a layer of state managers to operate industry in the name of the people. That system, which Resnick and Wolff call "state capitalism," actually ceded decisions about the use of profits to government officials.
>If communism ever existed within the USSR, says Resnick, it was during a brief period following the revolution when the Bolsheviks redistributed land to the peasants, who formed farming collectives. Working at the local level, farmers reached consensus on how their surplus products would be used.
>But as Wolff notes, those collective decisions didn't fit into the plans of the Soviet leaders and their state capitalism. By the mid-1930s, the Soviet state was having such a hard time getting enough food to feed the workers that Josef Stalin "decided that whole revolution was at risk because of the farmers," says Wolff. In response, the Soviet leader abolished the collectives in favor of "state farms run like factories."
>Resnick and Wolff contend that state capitalism was originally seen by the Bolsheviks as a necessary step in the evolution towards a communist state. But after Lenin's death in 1923, says Wolff, Stalin short-circuited those plans by simply declaring the Soviet Union a communist-socialist state.
>According to Wolff, it was a politically expedient solution intended to assuage the masses who had already suffered through the poverty of the czarist system and the bloodshed of World War I and the post-revolution civil war that brought US, British, French and Japanese troops onto Russian soil. Faced with the responsibilities of governing and preserving their power, the Soviet leaders found it easier simply to declare the revolution a success.
>"They couldn't fight 12 battles at once," says Wolff. "They had to choose between their own focus on government and the exigencies of the moment. … It was a way to say all the sacrifices have paid off."
>Stalin's declaration eased pressure on the Soviets to move a fully communistic system, according to Wolff. "He hammered home the point by killing anyone who disagreed."
>The decision to embrace state capitalism, say Resnick and Wolff, helped sustain the Soviet state for several decades by providing funding for public services, ranging from health care to education to housing. For the once poor nation, says Wolff, the change was "a remarkable phenomenon."
>By the 1980s, however, the state capi-talist industries and farms were incapable of generating enough surplus to sustain industrial capital accumulation, maintain the USSR's superpower status, meet the consumer demands of the population and pay for the bloated Communist party apparatus and bureaucracy. Something had to give, and soon the Soviet leaders began to introduce more elements of private capitalism. Ultimately, that also loosened the political monopoly held by the Communist Party. Soon, the Soviet republics began going their own way.
>For Resnick and Wolff, the Soviet experiment raises many questions about the nature and future of communism as an economic system. In fact, they devote an entire section of their book to defining communism and socialism, whose philosophical origins go much farther back than Karl Marx. As part of their decade-long research, says Resnick, the two economists delved into "the vast literature on utopian" thought. The utopian literature was long on lofty ideals of working together for the common good, but devoted little attention to how workers should receive the immediate profits of their labor.
>Similarly, says Resnick, early Christian writings espoused notions of sharing and meeting the needs of all members of society, but the professors found no evidence that communism has been tried on a national scale.
>Now, with the collapse of the USSR, says Wolff, it is time "to drastically rethink the whole idea of communism."
>"What it means to be socialist is up for grabs," he says. "Marxism is up for grabs."
>"We can't concede the end of communism," says Resnick. "Communism hasn't been tried on a society-wide basis. It's a boastful notion that communism has been vanquished."
>In fact, says Resnick, the years ahead may produce a new form of communism - a system based on ownership of private property, stock markets and political freedom, but allowing workers to decide how the profits of their work are allocated.
>"If we allow communism to be defined as people getting the profits, it opens up all different possibilities," says Resnick. "I think it could work."
>"There's already a concrete example of communism working in the U.S," notes Wolff, citing the work practices of some technology workers in, of all places, Silicon Valley. "People like you and me in San Jose have been doing it for 35 years."
>According to Wolff, disaffected engineers who left large companies to form their own software firms are following the communist model. "Nobody's the boss," he says.
>"Monday through Thursday, they work on their projects and Fridays, they have all-day meetings on how to use the profits for the company."
>If communism can be redefined, says Wolff, "In the future, when folks get upset with a private system, they may have an alternative. … A society that wanted to give people a choice could spend a few years for people to see if the communist enterprise works for them. It could be used as a social experiment."
>A book-signing party with Steve Resnick and Rick Wolff is being held Wednesday, Oct. 16, from 5:15-7 p.m. at Atticus Books, 8 Main St. in Amherst. "Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR" is published by Routledgehttps://www.umass.edu/pubaffs/chronicle/archives/02/10-11/economics.html No.1477582
>>1477580MLs will somehow try to deny this
No.1477585
MLs respect wolff tho right?
No.1477587
"Market socialism"
No.1477588
>whether a true communist class structure ever existed in the USSR.
not even the soviets claimed this, wolff puts an assumption on them that they would have denied, because tis a retarded question.
No.1477590
The Bolsheviks said they hadn't achieve communism and were doing some capitalism to develop the economy. This sounds like it's aimed at people who get their history from Hollywood.
No.1477593
This is the other professor mentioned in article
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Resnick
>Stephen Alvin Resnick (/ˈrɛznɪk/; October 24, 1938 – January 2, 2013) was an American Marxist economist.[2] He was well known for his work (much of it written together with Richard D. Wolff) on Marxian economics, economic methodology, and class analysis. His work, along with that of Wolff, is especially associated with a post-Althusserian perspective on political economy.[3] No.1477599
lol is Wolff a Cliffite?
>writing a book to say "hey guise did u know that communism [the movement] and a communist society are NOT THE SAME"
please tell me it's just pretending to be dumb to trick normalfags into learning
No.1477601
>>1477599>please tell me it's just pretending to be dumb to trick normalfags into learningPutting things in an extremely simple way to teach burgerbrains has been Wolff's entire schtick forever.
No.1477608
>>1477590Why then did Stalin say that the USSR established basic socialism (History of the Bolsheviks)?
No.1477610
>>1477608because only retards like marx think socialism and communism are the same thing
No.1477611
and also THE WORLD "SOCIALISM" HAS BEEN RENDERED MEANINGLESS WELL BEFORE 1920 AND WE SINCERELY SHOULD HAVE STOPPED USING IT IF IT WEREN'T SO POPULAR
No.1477612
>>1477608basic socialism =/= communism
Stalin and others also distorted the plan significantly and were opportunistic about their politics to a significant degree, although not without reason since they were under siege. The OP quote gives an explanation for that, although it's overly simple.
>>1477610Marx didn't adhere to socialism vs communism as terminology, he referred to lower and higher phases of development. Calling the former socialism and the latter communism came later.
No.1477619
>>1477612>Stalin and others also distorted the plan significantly and were opportunistic about their politics to a significant degreePutting it lightly. I mean, yeah, it's politics, but the Bolshevik's abuse and reframing of terminology was… honestly I can't think of a better word than 'pathetic'.
No.1477620
>>1477617Also typing in the book name "class theory and history capitalism and communism in the ussr" then clicking on the "google books" link you get the first 85 pages of the book available to read
No.1477637
>>1477580Fucking trots. I had a hope those hype leftist historians would say something useful for once, but they are trotting instead
No.1477640
>>1477608Because USSR did establsh the primary stage of socialism (socialism == communism, actually). Economy was pretty much communist too. Return to capitalism happened after Stalin, when Khruschev and others outlawed 100k private self-employed/small businesses, nationalized kolkhozes, took away power from the planning organs to actually influence anything, while simultaneously giving autonomy to large enterprise
No.1477641
>>1477637I can't even find a single time wolff has mentioned Trotsky by googling keywords. Doesn't make sense to just call people Trotskyite cause said something you don't like
No.1477670
>>1477601this is why I tolerate Wolff
No.1477693
>state capitalism
no such thing
>the hecking bureaucracy
inevitable without automatic computation to solve the ECP. also trotoids detected
>the Soviet leader abolished the collectives in favor of "state farms run like factories."
is Wolff saying kolkhozes were replaces with sovkhozes in the 30's?
>Stalin short-circuited those plans by simply declaring the Soviet Union a communist-socialist state
this appears to be true. uncle Joe comes out at the end of the 2nd 5 year plan and proclaims that the USSR is socialist, something that he walks back in the 50's
>Now, with the collapse of the USSR, says Wolff, it is time "to drastically rethink the whole idea of communism."
communism is hecking coops
>literally doing the "Communism hasn't been tried" meme
Resnick is either a fed or an idiot
No.1477697
>>1477580>Richard D. Wolff & Stephen A. ResnickIm sick of these of these MINO retards
(marxist in name only) No.1477701
>marxism is when state controls everything and workers are treated as slaves
Most of /leftypol/ is barely even communist.
No.1477706
>>1477580This text is fantastic. I have to read this book.
No.1477708
>>1477580Wolff is a retarded anti-communist Trotskyist pushing anarchism whilst calling himself a Marxist. His entire spiel about "muh democracy at work" is anarcho-syndicalist bullshit
Say you "democratise the workplace" but the workplace is Lockheed Martin or Raytheon. Now those workers have a direct interest on selling more weapons and hiring (a "democratically run!") CiA agents to start more conflicts world wide so they have more weapons to sell. Hell you might even see the workers (who "decide what to do with the surplus") workin 100 hour weeks so they can fulfil arms shipments to Ukraine and Taiwan. This is why "Comrade Reagan" advocated employee ownership fyi
> >Under a true communist system, says Resnick, the workers would control all aspects of production and decide how any surpluses are used. Engels explains why this is fucking retarded
<We assume that all of Herr Dühring's preliminary conditions are completely realised; we therefore take it for granted that the economic commune pays to each of its members, for six hours of labour a day, a sum of money, say twelve marks, in which likewise six hours of labour are embodied. We assume further that prices exactly correspond to values, and therefore, on our assumptions, cover only the costs of raw materials, the wear and tear of machinery, the consumption of instruments of labour and the wages paid. An economic commune of a hundred working members would then produce in a day commodities to the value of twelve hundred marks; and in a year of 300 working-days, 360,000 marks. It pays the same sum to its members, each of whom does as he likes with his share, which is twelve marks a day or 3,600 marks a year. At the end of a year, and at the end of a hundred years, the commune is no richer than it was at the beginning. During this whole period it will never once be in a position to provide even the moderate additional allocation for Herr Dühring’s consumption, unless it cares to take it from its stock of means of production. Accumulation is completely forgotten. Even worse: as accumulation is a social necessity and the retention of money provides a convenient form of accumulation, the organisation of the economic commune directly impels its members to accumulate privately, and thereby leads it to its own destruction. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch26.htmMarx in communist manifesto states explicitly the goal of communists is to centralise production and open productive forces to their fullest
<The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible. Not sit around in 100 meetings a week 'democratically' deciding how basic functions are to be done.
Marx's critique of the Paris Commune was they were wanking too much over democracy when they should've marched on Versailles and you can see how prescient Marx was on the issue of capitalist encirclement (which Stalin writes a huge amount on with issues that faced Soviet Union)
So having sold Marxism as Anarchism (and socialism as it exists in real life as "horrible Stalinism") he moves onto the joke of "real socialism has never been tried but real socialism would allow workers to control production"
Who gives a fuck about control of production when socialists should be interested in who owns production. Society can own property at private/State level/collective farms cooperatives etc and for massive heavy industrial projects you want that done by the State, subordinated to a central plan and directed by the most educated specialists in that field
We gonna have the first nuclear power plant (which was actually built by Soviets) by Chaz style democratic debates in drum circles?
Lmao, democracy is for cucks and always leads to oligarchy, as pointed out by Aristotle thousands of years ago
Wolff basically advocates for Yugoslavia and what happened in Yugoslavia? Absent of a central plan organising production and distributing production among nations within Yugoslavia: people began to get resentful of the other nations who they perceived as "having to pay for". Partcularly Slovenia and Croats
By the time Tito died the nations were so at each others throats imperialism was able to easily come in, finance civil wars, tear apart Yugoslavia and divide it up into a bunch of retarded right-wing states and dumping ground for excess US/German capital that will never rise again, not even as bourgeois nations
No.1477711
>>1477708>Lmao, democracy is for cucks What the fuck is wrong with you?
No.1477713
>>1477580Idk why people like this guy. He's the epitome of an American socialist. He can't say the truth; he has to be a utopian cuck to get people to listen to him.
He's just preaching the Socialist Gospel like a hobo, and the crux of his arguements in any 'debate' is "imagine a better world bro, socialism is when the workers hold hands and pray". In effect, he's just a petty bourgeois book peddler.
No.1477714
>>1477709My critique was of who controls production not who owns it
>The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible. No.1477720
>>1477713>He's the epitome of an American socialist. He can't say the truth; he has to be a utopian cuck to get people to listen to him.You're so right, he should be holding high portraits of Mao and Stalin and praising the great purges, that will attract ordinary people to the left.
>>1477711forgive the MLs, for they know not what they do
No.1477721
>>1477708Why would you label that video in reference to Trotsky where Wolff is speaking? He only mentioned him 1 time in the video. The video isn't about Trotsky at all.
No.1477722
>>1477711Demokkkracy is for kkkuks
No.1477723
>>1477714Like there is a difference. Proletarians didnt own or control anything in Soviet Union and were trated as slaves.
No.1477724
>>1477720He's not attracting actual ordinary people to anything, hes just selling books. An ordinary person hears his nonsensical fairyland and goes back to the real world.
No.1477728
>>1477726Historically speaking, demokkkracy is a cuckkked liberal societal mechination
No.1477729
>>1477720This is how you know leftypol are imageboard freaks: they talk shit about normies all the time, without understanding that maybe basing your entire politics over aesthetically worshipping dead men and dead governments doesn't actually do jack shit to win people over to socialism/communism/anarchism
No.1477730
>>1477724and you think ranting about the glory of the soviet union appeals to normies more? at least he's trying to bridge the gap
No.1477732
>>1477730Fuck the normals. They'll find out when they're starving and they put 2 braincells together
No.1477733
>>1477723Proletarians owned State property and their work conditions were incredible. Managers literally lived in fear because they could be sacked by the trade union whilst proles could not be
Soviet civilisation under Stalin was considerably higher than any civilisation before or since
No.1477734
>>1477732Yeah, keep feeling smug behind a screen while normal people who would benefit from socialist politics rightfully see you as a LARPing cringelord driven by aesthetics and spite.
No.1477735
>>1477725/leftypol/ once again doesnt give a single shit about workers. Only centralized planning matters to you people.
No.1477736
>>1477733What a joke. Nobody owned nothing except politburo members. Centrally planned fascism.
No.1477737
>>1477735As assumed, a richard wolfe thread attracts Richard wolfe types. He will end up like Bernie, a shambling corpse preaching the gospel.
No.1477738
>>1477737If anyone is enemy of workers its people like you.
No.1477739
>>1477708Nowhere has Wolff ever championed Trotsky or talked about him in depth. He is not a Trotskyite.
No.1477740
>>1477735They don't even give a fuck about centralized planning outside /cybersoc/ thread. The rest of the time it's just yelling "liberal" or "westoid" at each other.
No.1477741
>>1477720Kolechian scum detected
No.1477742
>>1477739Everyone who criticises Stalinism is inherently a Trotskyite, because Stalin said so
No.1477743
>>1477737As opposed to what? Wolff is an academic. What would meet a worthwhile accomplishment for him in today's era in your eyes? Lead a revolution himself?
No.1477744
>>1477736Ok ok, this is a little much, the USSR was pretty decent, it wasn't 'fascism'.
No.1477745
>>1477742I'm getting really confident that the medium is the message when it comes to imageboards. Not even in left-wing spaces on Reddit do you see the kind of embarrassing oversimplistic bullshit you see spouted here by people trying to get Edgy Boy points
No.1477746
>>1477736Your mother’s pussy is centrally planned, how about that.
No.1477747
>>1477738Marx wrote about Richard Wolfe and his type and how they're enemies of COMMUNISM in the manifesto.
No.1477748
>>1477744Im nostalgic too but its because USSR had potential to become socialist.
No.1477749
>>1477747Marx would have personally beaten the shit out of everybody who tried to turn every word he wrote into a faith.
No.1477750
>>1477708based
liberals in shambles
No.1477751
>>1477745That's true, imageboards definitely have an edgelord problem, but Reddit has innumerable other problems, so it is what it is. MLs are a plague in general.
No.1477758
>>1477756Suggest you guys scroll thru the top comments
No.1477761
>>1477756It's crazy how the bourgeois keep letting this guy on 🤪
No.1477762
>>1477580This is supposed to be Wolff's Magnum opus? Strawaning past socialist states? Using braindead, tired old lib talking points?
Are you fucking kidding me? What the fuck has he been smoking?
>Muh USSR wasn't a communist societyNo shit, asshole! The Soviets never claimed they were. No socialist country ever reached a classless, stateless, moneyless society.
They were still in their socialist stages at most.
>Capitalism is when bureaucratsResnick and Wolff completely omit a vital aspect of what the definition of capitalism is:
Private ownership over the means of production! Not just who directs them.
The bureaucrats didn't own shit, and couldn't accumulate wealth for their own benefit. Even the most privileged statesmen lived rather modest lives compared to workers and especially Western crapitalists.
>What is democratic centralism?Not even a critique of it.
>Communism is whatever people want it to be. Words have no meaning anymore LOLAbsolute brainrot.
I didn't expect it to be this shit. I thought Wolf was /ourguy/.
Inb4 someone mentions that Wolff has always been like this, similar to Zizek's shitty opinions about the 90s and NATO.
No.1477764
>>1477762Wolff has always been like this, similar to Zizek's shitty opinions about the 90s and NATO.
No.1477766
>>1477761Because they think they'll get an easy dunk. Doesn't always turn out that way. Of course instead you are implying Wolff is secretly controlled guy by entrepreneur guy who worships the Iranian shah. Not that he invites him on cause he thinks he can outwit him on a capitalist podcast when his whole podcast is centered sound preaching hustle capitalism
No.1477768
>>1477766Centered around*
No.1477770
>>1477766He is the entrepreneur
No.1477775
>>1477770>You sold books you took the time to write you are an entrepreneur now. You must make 0 dollars and do all your work for free because you say you are left wingLe iphone meme
No.1477776
>>1477764Sure, can mention examples please. I clearly missed those.
I thought, he just prefered co-ops
until he stated rather recently that a centrally planned economy would be the best system. No.1477777
Fuck liberals
No.1477779
Tbh the fact that he recognizes that extremely difficult material conditions are what (supposedly) halted the progress towards communism rather than Stalin just being evil still puts him head and shoulders over most burger "socialists" and even "Marxists". Still an overall simplistic view of the failures of the USSR though.
No.1477781
>>1477764Only "Marxist" academics that get pushed to the fore are Trotskyite-Reaganites like Richard Wolff or retards like Zizek who was a literal dissident in Yugoslavia then ran a political campaign for a liberal party post Yugo collapse
The other is David Harvey who has insisted "capitalism must not be overthrown because millions of people will starve"
No.1477783
>>1477781>Trotskyite-Reaganites like Richard Wolff Made up label. Wolff has never pushed Trotsky at all and especially not Reagan. Do you just hope these made up claims stick?
No.1477784
>>1477781>Trotskyite-ReaganiteI need some of you on this board to take a deep breath once in a while and read back to yourselves some of the shit you write
No.1477786
>>1477776I was just memeing, I just copy and pasted your text.
the 'New' book is from 2002>>1477781I hate how David 'there is no such thing as Imperialism' Harvey has become Le Das Kapital Man.
No.1477800
>>1477793The trot to neocon pipeline which doesn't apply to Wolff. He has never said anything positive about Reagan nor championed Trotsky at any point. You can't even begin to substantiate the label on him you are trying to attach.
No.1477801
>>1477796so wolff is going to change to a neolib at like age 70?
No.1477804
>>1477796Yes this is Tony Blair. I'm speaking about Richard Wolff specifically who the poster called a Trotskyite-Reaganite. Nothing from this label fits Wolff.
No.1477806
>>1477804to be fair, you dont have to call yourself a trot-regan to actually be one; politcal output can make people believe you are a trot without you ever referencing it; its mostly about repeating retarded ideas anti-tankeis throw at the USSR.
No.1477810
>>1477806and also co-opting marxist terminology without understanding the historical context it existed in, and usually being a fat fucking pseud and misrepresenting all points because you have been mindbroken by the west
No.1477811
>>1477806Yeah you don't have to call yourself it, you need to at least fit the description. Wolff doesn't at all. Like be serious for a moment here. You can hate the guy all you want you want you welcome to do so. You know he doesn't fit a label of a Trotskyite-Reaganite.
No.1477813
>>1477811he repeats a lot of the same shit that trots do; I dont have any knowledge of him outside of things i've read on this thread and a brief read of his wiki, he doesnt seem worth learning.
No.1477814
>>1477813Okay someone not being worth learning about to you does not make them a reaganite or a Trotskyite. You can just simply disagree with them on something without it needing to now he they follow some other ideology
No.1477815
>>1477814repeating deboonked truisms about the USSR does make you a reganite though
No.1477818
>>1477815Ok it looks like you are the type of person that even if people concede so much to you to even say okay the person isn't worth reading about, the person can be bad it still remains that no it has to be your way that it's just they are exactly the label you say instead. That he is a reaganite apparently.
There is no point in being flexible with discussion with you then if this is how you operate its just you are right no matter what, Wolff who spent whole life preaching agaisnt capitalism is just a reaganite.
No.1477820
>>1477730It's certainly better than repeating bourgeois lies about past socialist projects or saying "USSR wasn't reeeel socialism. Socialism has never been tried."
This is you!
You can critique the past, yes. But don't completely disregard it or even help in its demonisation. You're not going to win normies over by saying: "Yes, gomunisum failed every time so far and caused 100 gorrillion deaths, because Stalin ate all Cuckrainian grain with a spoon… but it will work this time, promise."
No.1477822
>>1477818yes i am likely to completely write off academics who make completely retarded and false claims, id feel the same way if someone covered in shit tried to speak to me about world events
No.1477831
>>1477786>the 'New' book is from 2002Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck! I even checked the article for its date earlier, and I misread it for 2022.
I apologise Alpha Wolff! I kneel.
I'm blind and an idiot.
I just waisted half an hour of my life, having a temper tantrum over completely outdated information.
LOL
No.1477832
>>1477831No worrys. Its OPs dishonest way he posted and didnt make it clear its from multiple decades ago.
No.1477836
>>1477818>That he is a reaganite apparently. What's the political difference between Reagan and Wolff when it comes to how they wanted to organise production?
>Wolff who spent whole life preaching agaisnt capitalism is just a reaganite.There's a lot of retard anti-capitalists
Wolff essentially rejects the Dictatorship of the Proletariat for anarcho-Reaganism. The Dotp is the cornerstone of Marxism (which Wolff rejects for Reaganism)
Marx and Engels had as their first article that you had to recognise the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and article 5 said you would be thrown out of their party if you weakened Article 1 in anyway
No.1477837
>>1477824>>1477588The USSR did claim to be socialist though, and they were run by the 'communist party', perhaps this is an issue of translation where the west would call them 'communist' but they themselves would not, but the confusion is sort of understandable no?
No.1477839
>>1477836>What's the political difference between Reagan and Wolff when it comes to how they wanted to organise production?Well Reagan said his 'super capitalism' stuff to blow smoke up people's asses but actually ran as a ruthless corporatocrat, presumably Wolff means it
No.1477841
>>1477820Wolff doesn't say Stalin killed 100 gorillion though but just admits the USSR wasn't socialist and Stalin was a bad guy.
No.1477844
>>1477837the confusion is understandble for a uneducated non academic, its not understandble for a published academic who calls themselves a marxist; they should know better
No.1477847
>>1477837>Your question might at first sight appear to be correct. Actually, it will not stand the slightest criticism. It should be easy to understand that when Lenin says that "Soviet power plus electrification is communism," he does not mean by this that there will be any kind of political power under communism, nor does he mean that if we have seriously set about electrifying the country we have thereby already achieved communism.
>What did Lenin mean to say when making this statement? In my opinion, all he meant to say was that Soviet power alone is not enough for the advance towards communism, that in order to advance towards communism the Soviet power must electrify the country and transfer the entire national economy to large-scale production, and that the Soviet power is prepared to take this course in order to arrive at communism. Lenin's dictum implies nothing more than the readiness of the Soviet power to advance towards communism through electrification.
>We often say that our republic is a socialist one. Does this mean that we have already achieved socialism, done away with classes and abolished the state (for the achievement of socialism implies the withering away of the state)? Or does it mean that classes, the state, and so on, will still exist under socialism? Obviously not. Are we entitled in that case to call our republic a socialist one? Of course, we are. From what standpoint? From the standpoint of our determination and our readiness to achieve socialism, to do away with classes, etc.
>Perhaps, Comrade Kushtysev, you would agree to listen to Lenin's opinion on this point? If so, then listen:
>"No one, I think, in considering the question of the economy of Russia has ever denied its transitional character. Nor, I think has any Communist denied that the term Socialist Soviet Republic signifies the determination of the Soviet power to achieve the transition to socialism, and not at all that the new economic order is a socialist order" (Vol. XXII, p. 513).
>Clear, I think.
>With communist greetings, Joseph Stalin (December 28, 1928)>https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1928/12/28.htm No.1477848
>>1477844But does the book actually say that the USSR claimed to be communist? He is saying they weren't socialist or communist which is correct even if they didn't claim to have achieved communism.
No.1477849
>>1477841>but just admits the USSR wasn't socialist and Stalin was a bad guy.Both of these things are wrong tho.
No.1477850
>>1477849How is state capitalism socialism? The USSR didn't have workers democracy or western multiparty democracy so how can the workers be said to own the MOP?
No.1477854
>>1477847>>1477848just read this, if wolff even did a little research on this he wouldnt have made that claim, hes not only wrong but hes parroting reganite propoganda and doing damage
No.1477856
>>1477580OP, this is from 2002.
No.1477857
>>1477854https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/11/25.htmAs for the country's trade, the merchants and profiteers have been banished entirely from this sphere. All trade is now in the hands of the state, the cooperative societies, and the collective farms.
A new, Soviet trade - trade without profiteers, trade without capitalists - has arisen and developed.
Thus the complete victory of the Socialist system in all spheres of the national economy is now a fact.
And what does this mean?
It means that the exploitation of man by man has been abolished, eliminated, while the Socialist ownership of the implements and means of production has been established as the unshakable foundation of our Soviet society. (Prolonged applause.)"
"
No.1477860
>>1477857'socialist system' is him refrencing the socialist methodology that was providing gains to there ecomony, its not any more complicated than that and again you fail to recongise the context of whats being said and are instead looking for gotchas!
learn what confirmation bias is
No.1477868
>>1477850>State capitalismRedundant, every capitalist country is "State Capitalism."
But you must post deeds to prove the organization in the ownership of MOP in the USSR is the same as other capitalist nations to your argument have effect.
>workers democracy or western multiparty democracy>western multiparty democracyyou fucking with me, aren't you.
No.1477870
>>1477868I said 'or', it didn't have either
No.1477877
>>1477868also, 'state capitalism' means the state acts as the bourgeois owner of property, which is why we don't call the west state capitalist as the state has only limited control of the economy
No.1477879
>>1477850The must fundamental distinction between Soviet socialism (with all its flaws) and capitalism was the fact that there was no internal engine of profitability forming the underlying logic of its economy. In capitalist society, the economy must grow endlessly or face collapse, but at the same time its rapid growth produces crises of overproduction which threaten it with collapse anyway. This factor was not operative in the USSR, which was based on rational planning and was capable of prioritizing things other than line going up. Since the imperative of accumulation is the material source of most of capitalism's worst tendencies (imperialism, constant downward pressure on wages, subordination of nature and human health to profit, etc.) even the USSR's flawed system represented a massive leap in human social development. To call a system where commodity production, market distribution, wage labour, and private property are all marginalized "capitalism" is to mangle the Marxist understanding of the concept.
No.1477880
>>1477861it literally is though, taking one thing he said out of context when he already explained these exact points you're making, you have set out with an assumption and are trying to find anything that confirms it; its bias.
No.1477883
>>1477880he literally said the USSR had achieved a socialist economy, how is that 'taking out of context', doesn't matter that he's flipflopping on what he said earlier
No.1477885
>>1477582There are two types of MLs.
1. Revolutionary MLs (who uphold Stalin, Mao). Anti-revisionists.
2. "MLs", sociopathic opportunists with no values who are after cushy positions within the bureaucracy and personal power (at the expense of the proletariat as a whole). An effect of bourgeois/bureaucratic degeneration on the socialist state and ideology under Khrushchev and Deng. These are as "Marxist-Leninist" as the pro-WW1 social fascists were "Marxists". They are modern revisionists.
No.1477887
>>1477885Stalin was the ultimate revisionist though.
No.1477891
>>1477841Imagine being so stupid and calling the man, who's responsible for the ending of the Holocaust, a "bad guy."
Seriously, communists should just frame the Stalin discussion in this way and laugh at how the libs will try to do mental gymnastics to get out of it. If they aren't careful, they'll expose themselves as anti-Semitic Nazis for the world to see (which they are deep down anyway, as all libs).
No.1477893
>>1477886Fuck off, Zizek. Kys.
No.1477894
>>1477891The USSR won in spite of Stalin, not because of him, he's the one who stacked most of the army on the border so it was instantly destroyed, and ignored warnings he was given that the Nazis were about to attack
No.1477895
>>1477883because the orginal claim was that the USSR achieved a communist class structure, stalin is not saying that; he is saying they have reorganized society into a socialist economic mode of production and have removed the class structure inherint to neo-liberal capitalism, which is completely true; they didnt make a *communist* class structure yet, but he never made that claim.
No.1477896
>>1477894he didnt ignore warnings the nazis where about to attack, he was preparing for war when hitler started making moves
regardless of one or two mistakes either, he still lead the army and won and none of your liberalisms change that fact
No.1477905
>>1477896Churchill and FDR also led the countries that beat the Nazis, I guess they're both good guys and socialists as well then?
No.1477910
>>1477903half of these things are already crossed off in this thread lol
No.1477911
>>1477905they where going to ally with hitler, so no; russia also where the ones putting flags above the reichstag.
No.1477912
>>1477893you could have looked past your ideology but instead you are telling me to kill myself
No.1477916
>>1477911Stalin also allied with Hitler
>>1477915The entire reason why the USSR got fucked so much in the early war is due to Stalin's purges and Stalin's failure to prepare properly, it's the generals who should take credit for reforming the red army and finally striking back
No.1477919
>>1477894>Victory despite Stalin mythWe'll just ignore all the industrialisation policies and diplomatic actions to delay the Nazi invasion, which were extremely decisive for the Soviet victory. /s
Westeroids always obsess over "muh tactics!" as if they were the reincarnation of Prussian generals or Sun Tzu.
>stacked most of the army on the border so it was instantly destroyedIf that were true, the war would have been over in 1941. Use your brain, you idiot. Who defended Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad etc.? A Soviet version of Volkssturm or the Red Army, which was anything but (mostly) destroyed. I guess the Wehrmacht just got tired of winning and didn't lose the majority of their mechanised troops in their prior offensives.
>and ignored warningsPeople repeat this a lot. Never provided any evidence for it. Do you have any? Did Stalin and all of Soviet command just oversleep, when the Nazis attacked, as the Western myth describes?
I'm not saying, there weren't any Soviet blunders, but you focus on the completely wrong things.
No.1477920
>>1477916>Stalin also allied with Hitlerand the liberal reveals himself
No.1477922
>>1477708Hmm, so, Engels' quote kinda debunks workers' cooperatives based economy that uses wages and money form. Since in capitalist mode of production, the problems are different [Which, the USSR had commodity form and an internal market too]; at least , the bourgouis surely acts more effective than the state-appointed bureucrats and gosplanners because its more decentralized and has more feedback with the productive forces [Even if the value essentially is wasted in market form] Also note that in USSR, the bureucrats rejected - or took a status quo aproach on adopting new mechanized tools as I know- , while a capitalist , ( which, if low wage workers is more profitable than the robots and their maintance, it will still result in status quo in capitalism ) if it profits , it will adopt the newer equipment and the worker is most likely to have same wage despite of production of commodities increased. (In capitalism, mostly most people cant indulge in scientific activities- and everyone cant indulge in the capital's decisions, but so in the USSR, being a scientist or a worker was a fixed job!)
And for the bureucrats, they are mostly alienated from the scientific development too, an example is rejection of OGAS
So, surely, I think Engels criticism is for the thing I stated at first , and either Engels and Marx visualised a down-to-top council economy instead of full centralized one which still adopts commodity form.
No.1477927
>>1477926also we can tell you literally just googled this 5 seconds ago and are pulling this out your ass, go read a book reddit
No.1477928
>>1477922I need citations from the text with the page numbers
No.1477929
>>1477922>Engels and Marx visualised a down-to-top council economy instead of full centralized one which still adopts commodity formI mean, commodity form could still exist in a transtition period - but surely a fully centralized planned economy has not sharp distinctive characteristics from the capital.
No.1477930
>>1477928I only responded to Engels quote
No.1477931
>>1477927yes I just googled it, I'm not a stalin historian, but both of those articles quote the (russian) authors
No.1477933
>>1477931if you dont know anything about this topic stop trying to act like you know, the bbc isnt going to give you an unbiased perspective of this
No.1477934
>>1477933I knew it happened, just not the exact source, so what? This isn't even a controversial claim, the ML gishgallop is neverending.
No.1477937
>>1477934
>my sources disprove your pointyour sources are dogshit written by liberal capitalists with incentives to lie about stalin and are completely removed from the reality of the situation, which was a USSR victory with allied support of which Stalin lead; he takes the positive responsabilty
you engage in moral relativism and it spits on the russian effort; I would have done differently, stalin was lackluster!
If he was so bad, why did they win?
No.1477940
>>1477925>Articles cite no evidenceTry harder, lib.
>>1477897Whose orders were they following, hm?
>>1477916>Non-Aggression pact = alliance>What is the Anglo-German Naval Agreement?>What is the Munich Agreement?>What is Nazi appeasement by the West?>What is not enforcing the Treaty of Versailles, when Krauts continued breaching it?>Who helped Nazis' rise to power? etc.<Big thinkKys.
No.1477942
I mean this sincerely, people should put more thought in to the OPs they make. I am not saying every one has to do well and get all replies and front page time but it would only improve the content and general experience of browsing the website.
I mean this as constructive critique.
>>1477831Lmao. Don't feel bad anon it happens to the best of us and it was only a thread a probably slide thread deserving of /ITG/ or /Siberia/ or QTDDTOT about the same old shit anyways.
No.1477943
Lol richard wolff is saying the NEP was actually communism
No.1477957
>>1477925>PravdaOkay…
>1989Oh.
>>1477777cheka’d
No.1477961
Communism isn't about policy decisions, debating around whether this policy or that policy is communist is useless and can't apply universally. Such debate is only useful for sectarian flexing, which is ego flexing and thus liberal according to Mao.
No.1477963
>>1477950dengoids in ruins
No.1478017
>>1477585naw I mean he's more of a post-althusserian western socialist than an ML
No.1478021
>>1477798So is Wolff pro China then? seems compatible with Dengism
No.1478023
>>1477963more like boloids in ruins
No.1478046
>>1477761because he has a show called "Economic Update" on NPR. He's highly respected, has a degree in phD economics from Yale, jumped through all the bourgeois hoops, etc. Even my liberal boomer dad listens to him. In fact I would say liberal boomers are his main audience.
No.1478053
>>1477847poor lenin looks so rough in that pic :(
No.1478078
>>1477903Kind of 14b but satirical and breaks up the circlejerk so I'm not banning this unless it gets into "dae leftypol racist!!1" put me in the screencap tier.
No.1478086
>>1477762>Resnick and Wolff completely omit a vital aspect of what the definition of capitalism is: Private ownership over the means of production! Not just who directs them.>The bureaucrats didn't own shit, and couldn't accumulate wealth for their own benefitYou don't need private ownership to have capitalism. The whole point of the "state capitalism" argument is that the USSR had (at least at certain points) essentially a mutated version of capitalism where the same functions normally carried out by capitalists were simply moved over to the state. You can argue (and I would tend to agree) that this broadly entailed running things on behalf of the workers rather than purely for the purpose of profit and capital accumulation. However, that doesn't mean it's socialism. Saying that the USSR didn't put communism into place is not necessarily a criticism or condemnation either (as you point out it's largely acknowledging facts). I think a lot of the problem here is that Wolff is trying to create entry level texts for people with typical burger educations, and in laying out some pretty basic information he can come across as argumentative or snobby
toward examples of socialism when it's more like he's trying to explain this stuff to people with training wheels.
No.1478099
>>1478053He's just fatigued from getting mogged by Stalin's hairline.
No.1478103
>>1478086>The whole point of the "state capitalism" argument is that the USSR had (at least at certain points) essentially a mutated version of capitalism where the same functions normally carried out by capitalists were simply moved over to the state.lenin did not deny this
>You can argue (and I would tend to agree) that this broadly entailed running things on behalf of the workers rather than purely for the purpose of profit and capital accumulation. correct
>However, that doesn't mean it's socialism.Stalin's 1928 reply to Kushytev acknowledges this.
> Saying that the USSR didn't put communism into place is not necessarily a criticism or condemnation either (as you point out it's largely acknowledging facts).correct
>I think a lot of the problem here is that Wolff is trying to create entry level texts for people with typical burger educations, and in laying out some pretty basic information he can come across as argumentative or snobby toward examples of socialism when it's more like he's trying to explain this stuff to people with training wheels.true
No.1478104
>>1478021he's talking less China and more about a federated economy full of co-ops or some shit.
No.1478107
>>1478103Yeah.
To be clear, I'm not trying to win an argument with somebody.
I'm trying to tell people we broadly agree on these points so there is no need to be upset about them.
>>1478102>>You don't need private ownership to have capitalismYes.
No.1478112
>>1478100>trying to pull a "gotcha" on me by posting and linking a sentence that is so obviously biased that you can tell from the first 2 sentences nice one bro
No.1478118
>>1478107>Yes.What is your straightforward definition of capitalism, if not "private ownership of the means of production"?
No.1478120
>>1478112Slobjob ReeShrek is a liberal
No.1478140
>>1478135post the full one plz
No.1478143
>>1478118Poor question but I'll answer anyway.
Capitalism is production for sale at a profit (as a rule), to reinvest and expand production.
The reason it's a poor question is that capitalism is complicated and any straightforward definition will necessarily omit important information, e.g. historical context.
Focusing on private ownership as a simple definition is extra poor for a few reasons:
>it is not technically correct - there is capitalism without private ownership (state capitalism), and there is private ownership without capitalism (e.g. slave societies where the masters own the MoP privately)>it is only historically correct in a contingent sense (re: describing its origins and typical form rather than all its forms or its more general character)>it ignores the most essential aspects of the thing (the nature of production process & relations) by focusing on just the formal legalistic structure of property ownership, which is often used by defenders of capitalism to mystify the nature and behavior of capitalism, making this a definition that serves them (muh toofbrush!) No.1478144
>>1478135Slob Job Ree Shrek ran for president of Slovenia as a liberal in a liberal party and advocated for privatization. He was in favor of the NATO bombing of his own country. Please explain how I am "defeated" for recognizing this.
No.1478151
>>1478102You gotta realize that profit can actually be accumulated by the bureaucracy of a worker's state, which means that anarchism
No.1478153
>>1478143well yes there is private property without capitalism, but I wouldn't argue that there's capitalism without private property. You argue that state capitalism seeks to profit through reinvesting and expanding production, but I argue that it's not "profit" if the state is not pocketing the surplus. If they're reinvesting all of it and building up productive forces rather than individuals privately pocketing some of it, it's just reinvested state revenue, which is different from profit. The state can and should accumulate and reinvest surplus into expanding production for planning the economy and moving beyond scarcity. Reinvesting state revenue is not the same because it misses the crucial element of private ownership over the surplus.
No.1478177
>>1478153>but I argue that it's not "profit" if the state is not pocketing the surplus. If they're reinvesting all of it and building up productive forces rather than individuals privately pocketing some of it, it's just reinvested state revenue, which is different from profit.What makes it surplus isn't that there's an individual or group pocketing it. What makes it surplus is that it's value generated by laborers that they don't get. Surplus isn't inherently bad of course - having a public fund is generally a very good thing. However, the component that makes it capitalism is precisely the circuit where surplus continues to be reinvested into production so there is an increase in production so there's more profit that can be invested to increase production… etc. In examples of so-called "state capitalism" this process is oriented toward the interests of the workers (or at least that's the intent), but it is a socialist project
using capitalism as a means to try to achieve a socialist end. The effectiveness of the strategy is another question.
>The state can and should accumulate and reinvest surplus into expanding production for planning the economy and moving beyond scarcity.This is where the topic can get thornier and cause trouble, because the question here really is who is in control of the surplus and what happens with it. In an "true" dictatorship of the proletariat scenario, with the workers in charge for real, you would be correct that there is not really capitalism and profit going on here. That's because the "surplus" being extracted is essentially volunteered and under the direction of the workers - directly or otherwise. If, however, it is not the working class but an alienated group of bureaucrats (who don't have to answer to the workers) or the mechanics of the system itself that dictate things, then you are still having the surplus being expropriated from the workers and put to uses they don't decide. You still have capitalism. That's not to say that failing to bridge this gap invalidates a historical socialist project - it's an uphill battle and working out
how to solve these issues is part of that.
>Reinvesting state revenue is not the same because it misses the crucial element of private ownership over the surplus.Well yes, but actually no. The main point of
criticizing the USSR (and others) for doing state capitalism is that you don't need private ownership in the strict traditional sense because the same functions of capitalists can be fulfilled by bureaucrats (or in other contexts by the pressures on a worker co-op for instance). The argument can either go that class dynamics are replicated (the bureaucrats replacing the bourgeoisie) or that they aren't necessary and that the process itself forces the people "using" capitalism to behave like capitalists (especially for examples like the co-op ones where there is no group you can point to as having separate class or pseudo-class interests).
Just for the sake of illustrating the point further, the whole "gig economy" and freelance labor is another example of the "private property" definition breaking down. Are Uber drivers bourgeois? They own the means of production (car). Yes, the service that Uber sells is the ability to connect the driver and passenger, but the Uber app only does some basic bookkeeping - the actual value production of moving someone (wherein they will gain some use-value) is done by the car and driver. Or in the case of freelancers where in a legalistic sense they are small proprietors but are de facto employees of a bigger company. To keep a similar example, this is how Amazon handles the "last mile" of most deliveries, by hiring small businesses which are
technically their own entity who own their own vehicles but the vehicles are Amazon branded and they are always delivering for Amazon. In a context like this describing capitalism as privately owning the means of production obscures what's actually going on here.
No.1478194
>>1477847>with communist greetingsHow I'm going to sign all my emails and letters from now on
No.1478206
>>1478177>What makes it surplus isn't that there's an individual or group pocketing iti said what makes it profit, not what makes it surplus. I wasn't arguing against surplus under state capitalism, I was arguing against profit under state capitalism.
see:
<but I argue that it's not "profit" if the state is not pocketing the surplus. If they're reinvesting all of it and building up productive forces rather than individuals privately pocketing some of it, it's just reinvested state revenue, which is different from profit. No.1478213
>>1478177>Surplus isn't inherently bad of course - having a public fund is generally a very good thing. However, the component that makes it capitalism is precisely the circuit where surplus continues to be reinvested into productionThe component that makes it Capitalism is the capitalist privately pocketing some of that surplus
as profit and preventing it from going to workers or expanding production.
No.1478221
>>1478177>This is where the topic can get thornier and cause trouble, because the question here really is who is in control of the surplus and what happens with it. In an "true" dictatorship of the proletariat scenario, with the workers in charge for real, you would be correct that there is not really capitalism and profit going on here. That's because the "surplus" being extracted is essentially volunteered and under the direction of the workers - directly or otherwise.i agree
No.1478232
>But as Wolff notes, those collective decisions didn't fit into the plans of the Soviet leaders and their state capitalism. By the mid-1930s, the Soviet state was having such a hard time getting enough food to feed the workers that Josef Stalin "decided that whole revolution was at risk because of the farmers," says Wolff. In response, the Soviet leader abolished the collectives in favor of "state farms run like factories."
This is entirely backwards
Comrade Stalin invented the mass line
These were popular changes from below
Think about it a share of a risky venture subject to the weather
Or a house with a nice huge yard for a cow some chicken and pigs or whatever you want to grow and a job with all the latest agricultural machinery; including caterpillar tractors
Shout out to comrade Wolfe btw
I'm assuming he's being misrepresented or hyperbolised by the greentext?
No.1478233
>>1478177>However, the component that makes it capitalism is precisely the circuit where surplus continues to be reinvested into production so there is an increase in production so there's more profit that can be invested to increase productionNot capitalism cumrag
Marx states when capital is created: when a worker is forced to sell their labour power in a market which has turned their labour power into a commodity
<In themselves money and commodities are no more capital than are the means of production and of subsistence. They want transforming into capital. But this transformation can only take place under certain circumstances that center in this, viz., that two very different kinds of commodity-possessors must come face to face and into contact; on the one hand, the owners of money, means of production, means of subsistence, who are eager to increase the sums of values they possess, by buying other people's labor power; on the other hand, free laborers, the sellers of their own labor power and therefore the sellers of labor…. With this polarization of the market for commodities, the fundamental conditions of capitalist production are given. The capitalist system presupposes the complete separation of the laborers from all property in the means by which they can realize their labor. As soon as capitalist production is once on its own legs, it not only maintains this separation, but reproduces it on a continually extending scale." (Capital, p. 714.)<"The historic conditions of its existence are by no means given with the mere circulation of money and commodities. It [capitalism] can spring into life only when the owner of the means of production and subsistence meets in the market with the free laborer selling his labor power." (Capital, Vol. I, International ed., p. 170.)If all property is owned by the State/collective farms or cooperatives, the constitution guarantees you employment, you are allocated to a factory/office/farm by a State directed plan and they are not separated from the means of production: you can no longer call this is capitalism.
You can call it magical biscuits, umbrellas or lampshades if you like
>What makes it surplus is that it's value generated by laborers that they don't get. Surplus surplus surplus - the familiar kvetching of the anarcho retards and leftcomms. If me and you own a vegetable plot and we hand farm this every year and retain our "surplus" then we have 20 extra turnips each at the end of the year.
(Engels already explained why this is retarded and dismissed this 150 years ago.)
If we reinvested that back into production we could have tractors, fertilisers, grow lamps to grow all year round, ability to farm more land and invite new people into our state farm/collective farm/coop etc
If we have reached a food security level of production the reinvestment no longer needs to go into farming but can go back to the State to allocate for schools/hospitals/roads/spas/railways and the military
In a few years we now produce 2000 surplus turnips, 1000 tomatoes, 1000 potatoes and even if we say wages are at 20% and we claim those products directly.
I would rather have 20% of 2000 turnips than 100% of 20 turnips and so would every other worker that isn't a retard
All the while we are now farming with state of the art technology instead of shitty peasant farming, inefficient medieval style strips of land, breaking our backs just so we can claim to have the "full surplus of our labour" and go through a famine every ten years like the world did prior to agricultural industrialisation
No.1478239
>>1478072Kys, crack-sniffing Cracker wannabe.
No.1478263
>>1477933> the bbc isnt going to give you an unbiased perspective of thisMarxoid Leninoids won't either. Even the liberals are closer to reality than tankies. That's how schizotarded tankies are.
No.1478269
>>1478263please enlighten us to the truth
No.1478278
>>1478263>tankies tankies tankiesi bet you don't even know the origin of that term
No.1478310
It's funny how Wolff contributes to an explanation of
why the USSR doesn't fucking exist anymore that seems overall correct, and pretty mild compared to what other Marxian thinkers like Cornelius Castoriadis and Robert Kurz already wrote back in the 1980s-1990s, yet /leftypol/ can't help but get mad because Wolff took a little jab at their favorite Big Guys lmao
>"What it means to be socialist is up for grabs," he says. "Marxism is up for grabs."This is an enormously inspiring quote, but the kneejerk reaction here, instead of being:
>What lessons could we learn from 200 years of class struggle, from the 1848 revolutions to the present-day atomized protests happening regularly all over the world?is
<muh Trotskyite-Reaganite<muh Cliffite<muh Big Guys with military medalsIt's so fucking funny, coming from people who claim that muh westoid leftists are obsessed with purity because some won't consider Xi's China as socialist for various reasons. Some of y'all need to get your head out of your own ass.
I'm starting to think the /leftypol/ glowop was successful, maybe it's finally time to leave the hot zone
>>1477886>>1478072This, on the other hand, is proper sigma mindset.
No.1478320
>>1478278It's even more ridiculous when you learn the origin of the term, because nerds on the internet both decry Khrushchev's revisionism, and support the 1956 invasion of Hungary.
No.1478440
BTW an actual mistake I made was leaving out the abstraction of value and labor which are key components distinguishing capitalism from other modes of production. But these are the costs of simplistic definitions.
>>1478206>>1478213Profit is not a question of being personally pocketed by capitalists. They have discretion over how much to pocket vs reinvest because they control the values created. By surplus I am referring to the total produced in excess of what is compensated for the workers (distinct from surplus value). What makes profit different is its relation to the cost of inputs - labor cost (wages) and cost of capital expended. Profit is basically the ratio of the surplus to the cost to get it. It's two different ways of looking at the same thing. What makes the surplus different in capitalism is that it is abstracted through a medium of exchange and reinvested in production to grow it.
>>1478212>Marx never even argued that workers are entitled to all of the surplus value.I didn't argue that workers should be paid all the surplus value. I said that if it was the workers dictating what is done with it, that would entail the end of exploitation.
>Marx and Engels both understood the need for expanding production by reinvesting surplus.So do most workers. The key is that they are the ones doing it and not some other party.
>It's part of how a socialist planned economy transitioning to Communism would workYes, they expected more or less that there would be a transitional process from a state overseeing production and socializing it until everything was socialized and there was nothing left for the state to do, hence the "withering away."
>>1478221👍
>>1478233>Marx states when capital is created: when a worker is forced to sell their labour power in a market which has turned their labour power into a commodityMarx here is describing the ascension of capitalism's inception here. The conditions for a thing coming into existence and what the thing is are not the same. He is probably correct that the only way for capitalism to get started is this particular class arrangement.
>If all property is owned by the State/collective farms or cooperatives, the constitution guarantees you employment, you are allocated to a factory/office/farm by a State directed plan and they are not separated from the means of production: you can no longer call this is capitalism. Plenty of communists smarter than either of us have called it state capitalism. Which, to reiterate, is not necessarily a criticism.
>If we reinvested that back into production we could have tractors, fertilisers, grow lamps to grow all year round, ability to farm more land and invite new people into our state farm/collective farm/coop etcYes, and your argument is a good demonstration of how this is common sense and the workers will agree. The point I am making is that when the workers control the value (whatever the form) it isn't surplus, because what makes it surplus is that it is separated from control by the workers. That's true whether it's capitalists underpaying proles or lords demanding labor from peasants. The surplus is the "extra" that is left over after what the workers get. If the workers actually control the production process fully, then they may decide to pocket it, to reinvest it, to direct it somewhere it's needed, etc. And in this case they are effectively "pocketing" it virtually, to then use it in a discretionary manner (individually or collectively in varying degrees).
>If we have reached a food security level of production the reinvestment no longer needs to go into farming but can go back to the State to allocate for schools/hospitals/roads/spas/railways and the militaryBut the matter here is who makes this decision. Is it the farmers? The national working class as a whole? Bureaucrats? Something else? If the workers have control (directly or otherwise) then any reinvestment or pocketing of "surplus" is not separated from the workers' ownership/control (technicalities). I am not saying private ownership is irrelevant, but that this formulation is too narrow both regarding the legalisms and the focus of the definition on that component of the system.
>>1478347>You are way too smart to be posting on this shithole, get out of there as soon as you can.I'm not just sitting here waiting for replies to accumulate lol
No.1478470
>>1477903>has lone sane take I appreciate the sentiment, but Im not infalliable, and besides there is more than one Eureka anon.
still watching that midwestern marx vid No.1478487
>>1478310This is the correct take.
The USSR will not resurrect and Zombie Lenin will not summon 72 virgins from heaven to take your V-card. Learning from the past is fine but there comes a point at which we all need to shut the fuck up and focus on the future.
No.1478526
>>1478440I appreciate your honest engagement Anon, but I think you're making a couple of mistakes here. Not to get too deep into semantics, but the mere fact that workers did not directly decide how to allocate surplus is not in my view enough to apply the label of capitalism, even state capitalism, to what the USSR was doing. Keep in mind that Lenin coined this term to apply to the NEP, I.e. a mixed economy with a heavy state sector. This is pretty different than what came after Stalin's industrialization. Crucially, what is missing in the post NEP period is the anarchy of production and imperative of accumulation. Sure, the USSR did pursue capital accumulation, but this was A) out of necessity, B) in line with Marx's formulation in the Manifesto that a socialist state would need to build up the productive forces as rapidly as possible, C) driven by external necessities rather than the internal logic of their economic system. What really distinguished the USSR from capitalist countries was the fact that its economy was to a far greater degree subject to centrally planned decision making. Of course capitalist countries engage in economic planning as well, but this planning must operate within the basic laws of capitalist economics, i.e. accumulate indefinitely and exponentially or collapse. No such imperative existed in the USSR, and as a result this fundamentally alters the relationship of humanity to the productive process. The Soviet Union possessed no internal economic imperative that would force it to constantly intensify exploitation, seek out new sources of profit abroad (imperialism), or treat capital accumulation as its own end at the expense of social wellbeing. Under capitalism humanity is an appendage of impersonal laws of motion, not so under socialism. If capitalism is a stampede of wild bison, socialism is an orderly cattle drive, and the USSR far more closely resembled the latter. To say that the absence of genuine (according to whatever standard you're using) proletarian democracy makes it "state capitalism" is to reduce the distinction between state capitalism and socialism to a question of the distribution of political power rather than the underlying driving forces of the productive process and the effects these have on society. I would go so far as to say that a state socialist economy like the USSR's was much farther from capitalism than even a market socialist economy like Yugoslavia's, despite the latter having considerably stronger worker self-management.
Second, I don't think the problems with democracy in the USSR can be used to assume that workers had no control over the allocation of surplus. As an anarchist you will probably disagree with me here, but the notion of any state standing wholly above the people it governs is a liberal invention. All power is reciprocal, and even if the bureaucracy is a privileged stratum within Soviet society, it ruled in alliance with the broad masses of workers who were generally supportive of the socialist system as it existed. As Gramsci says, the interests of the dominant group must be coordinated concretely with those of the subordinate group. This is especially true when you consider that the interests of bureaucrats and workers are not fundamentally opposed the way those of capitalists and workers are, meaning there is plenty of room for mutual benefit. So even if workers didn't have much direct say in how surplus was used, they still held considerable indirect influence by virtue of the fact that the bureaucracy depended on them to govern. This is in much the same way the American bourgeoisie of the era did with its own middle class.
No.1478556
>>1478526I'm personally a bit hesitant to black-and-white categorize the USSR as state capitalism given that it was a dynamic system going through a lot of uncharted experimental politics. It's important for us to seriously re-evaluate these kinds of categories, and to do that we need to establish what we're talking about in the first place which is why I'm bothering to write up these posts. So thank you for contributing.
>Crucially, what is missing in the post NEP period is the anarchy of production and imperative of accumulation.I agree this is an important distinction to make, but because the USSR did not exist in vacuum it was still subject to these from externally. It functioned more or less as something similar to an extreme form of monopoly capitalism. This wasn't the original intent of course, but the expectation going into the project was that the USSR would not be standing alone. The NEP was a coping mechanism (not in a derogatory sense) for this predicament.
>Sure, the USSR did pursue capital accumulation, but this was A) out of necessity, B) in line with Marx's formulation in the Manifesto that a socialist state would need to build up the productive forces as rapidly as possible, C) driven by external necessities rather than the internal logic of their economic system.But by this point capitalism is a global system so "external necessities" are in the last analysis internals of capitalism. And yes, the drive to accumulate is necessary in all cases - the specifics vary but for the USSR or for a corporation there is a need to develop and grow production to survive in the larger context of the market. As for Marx's idea of a socialist state, he did not think that capitalism would be abolished overnight.
>What really distinguished the USSR from capitalist countries was the fact that its economy was to a far greater degree subject to centrally planned decision making.I agree, but that doesn't mean they weren't doing state capitalism. Welfare states are distinct from neoliberal hellholes are distinct from colonies etc and they are still capitalism. A banana republic run by a fruit company is also a centrally planned economy.
>No such imperative existed in the USSR, and as a result this fundamentally alters the relationship of humanity to the productive process.This makes sense in theory but like I said before, they could not escape the global reach of capitalism and their methods were insufficient to defend against the influence of those imperatives in the end. So the question must be asked how that could be done, and if not what the alternatives are.
>To say that the absence of genuine (according to whatever standard you're using) proletarian democracy makes it "state capitalism" is to reduce the distinction between state capitalism and socialism to a question of the distribution of political power rather than the underlying driving forces of the productive process and the effects these have on society.But the underlying driving forces of the productive forces are the productive relations. All the factories and tractors and so on are there to use in their numbers, but it is the organization of the production process that overdetermines what gets used, how, how much, and to what end. Both of these factors matter, but no amount of productive forces can make a mode of production by themselves - you need the people for that, and it is the relations of production between them that defines what the system is. There are certain prerequisites for this or that system, but whether those are exploited is not a question of quantity (of productive forces) but of quality (of the nature of the productive relations).
>I would go so far as to say that a state socialist economy like the USSR's was much farther from capitalism than even a market socialist economy like Yugoslavia's, despite the latter having considerably stronger worker self-management.I agree with that, but it's not because the USSR had more developed productive forces, but because their model was more socialized in the macro scale and as you said specifically designed to avoid being driven by the circuit of capital, something you can't do with "market socialism."
>As an anarchist you will probably disagree with me here, but the notion of any state standing wholly above the people it governs is a liberal invention.I don't disagree with that at all.
>All power is reciprocal, and even if the bureaucracy is a privileged stratum within Soviet society, it ruled in alliance with the broad masses of workers who were generally supportive of the socialist system as it existed.This is true. However, it does not mean that the bureaucracy necessarily pursued the interests of the workers. If the workers do not have the power to make the system change (e.g. through reforms) or have the ability to organize some replacement, they of course prefer the status quo to a failed state, especially when under siege by capitalist powers. It's not as if they were spoiled for choice in the situation. That said, I wouldn't characterize the USSR as perpetually holding a gun to its citizens' heads like liberals do, just to point out that while the power is reciprocal, that doesn't mean it's balanced.
>the interests of bureaucrats and workers are not fundamentally opposed the way those of capitalists and workers are, meaning there is plenty of room for mutual benefit.This is true, and for this reason I would agree that the USSR was far better than the great capitalist powers of the world. But it can be improved upon. After all, the separation and room for mutual benefit implies the negative space constituting the room for conflict, which is the contradiction that remains in the system. It is of particular concern because the failure to resolve this contradiction ultimately led to the end of the USSR, since it was dissolved by bureaucrats against the public's wishes. The state and the bureaucracy are not just some abstract idea or dumb inhuman system - these are sophisticated organizations operated by people, who by virtue of their position have the opportunity to steer politics towards their interests. You are correct that the USSR citizens put a check on the bureaucracy, but history shows that it was not strong enough to save the project.
No.1478561
>>1477582>>1477580I am an ML. I would not argue that the Soviet Union had established communism, however, I do disagree with the idea that the Soviet Union "wasn't socialist." If people are talking about the New Economic Program, maybe they could call that State Capitalism, but the fact of the matter is, no matter how you slice it, the Soviet Union had actually established the dictatorship of the proletariat. It was NOT the Capitalist class that was in power. If the Capitalists were in the USSR, it was because they were invited to be there, but ultimately they weren't running the show, and that the fact that they weren't running the show is a major sticking point.
No.1478565
>>1478118>>1478143From where does the profit derive?
No.1478568
>>1478072In every lie there is a kernel of truth. This post, through framed in an ungenerous framing, is true in the sense that we should not let the legacy of the Soviet Union prevent us from actually engaging with the people of our class and struggling alongside them.
However, there is a crucial point that ought to be made here: it is necessary to defend the legacy of the Soviet Union because the massive privatization that followed was infinitely worse than any of the inefficiencies of bureaucracy. We're talking about a massive spike in homelessness, a decline in healthcare outcomes in every post soviet country, mass proliferation of AIDS after the USSR had actually been better than most countries in the world at handling it, reduced productivity, reduced life expectancy, increased costs for housing, including rents, massive increase in rates of prostitution and sex trafficking, the former being informed by devastating conditions of poverty that are necessarily the product of privatization, etc.
No.1478575
Glow thread.
Glow author.
The USSR never said this and never looked like this.
No.1478576
>>1477854This
>>1477850>>1477868The term state capitalism invites a kind of libertarian-esque framing where one pretends that there is no relationship between capitalism and the state, that the normal state-of-being of capitalism is to have no connection to the state, but the fact of the matter is that capitalism could not ever have formed historically if it hadn't been for the support of the state. The state, being a monopoly on violence, does have to take sides in the course of material development. If it was not for the colonial state in the North American colonies, a system of private property would not have existed, because the colonial state would systematically take the common "wilderness" from the indigenous people, remove the indigenous people through various genocidal means, and then partition up the land and allow for homesteaders to make use of it, selling it, etc. The state has an involved role in capitalism, even if it does not directly own any firms, because it develops the infrastructure necessary for the development of capitalism (such as roads, bridges, police, etc!!). The state is actually very involved with Capitalism in the so-called bourgeois democracies. And this isn't even mentioning the fact that the bourgeois Capitalist state will bailout the capitalists. That is no accident, no freak of policy, that is just class interests being secured all the damn time
No.1478578
>>1477582Which mls are you talking about retarded concern troll faggot?
No.1478580
>>1477912Zizek is a russian saboteur and a faggot
No.1478633
>>1477585>MLs respect wolff tho right?Depends on the ML (some MLs I know personally have called him a "weird social democrat") but it is worth pointing out that Wolff sometimes appears on the Socialist Program, which is principally hosted by Brian Becker, who is a Marxlist-Leninist, and on the executive committee for the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). You will notice if you listen to a few of these podcast episodes that Wolff seldom appears on an episode where foreign policy is discussed. He is usually there to offer Marxian economics analysis but he is rather absent in other cases. The Socialist Program aims also to be non-partisan. I think the value of Wolff is that he is generally a good-faith individual who does the invaluable work of introducing a lot of people (like my mom, born in 1955) to socialism. Wolff sometimes says things that I disagree with, but the negative aspects about him pale in comparison to Agent Kochinski, for example, who doesn't merely say incorrect things but incorrect, chauvinist things, that are dressed up in the deception of language that on the outside appears to be "leftist" but in every material capacity is imperial-chauvinism.
No.1478666
>>1477735Centralised planning means no crisis even with a market sector of sorts; Artels, farmers markets etc etc or Chyna
This is great
Control of means of production like in Best Korea or coops like Huwei is the next step
Look at how hard Huawei got bodyslammed by the Haute porkies
No crisis is great for us proles
and also artisan level petit bourgeois also fwiw things should be stable enough the lumpens will prolatarianise or move into an artisinal class position inb4 but lumpens want to be lumpens, gulags, polytechnics and stable housing fuck you**
No.1478670
>>1478633Good explanation. Thank you
No.1478673
>>1477580Not really "state capitalism" that is misleading. Where is the capitalism part? Deformed worker's state that degenerated into capitalism yeah though
No.1478677
>>1477587Doesn't even seem to be that, seems like Wolff is saying Co-Operatives should be redefined as Communist.
No.1478679
>>1478677How the fuck else is he supposed to explain it to burger normies without scaring them
Listen to his chat with Varoufuckdis where they both up their power levels by over 9000 from their usual normie wrangling pablum
No.1478682
>>1478679wat specifically did varafuckis say? my understanding of him was sucdem opportunist splitting the left vote in Greece
No.1478684
>>1478682I'll give you the link to the chat in a few hours if nobody else finds it first and posts it
No.1478716
>>1477963>>1478023they ruin our garloids
No.1478754
""""sd=Conclusions flipped as both socialist infasuctualy
No.1478767
>>1478694Is it just me or does Varoufuckthis sound incredibly more competent that Wolff? I am sorry but I've yet to see a video of him where he "drops his powerlevel" and doesn't sound like a simpleton. I do not care if he "waters it down for American normies" or whatever, you shouldn't treat people like babies, especially when you participate in videos that are very much likely only watched by people who are already agreeing with you on the basics.
I am getting the feeling that Resnik does all the heavy lifting for Wolff and Resnik himself has problems too.
No.1478770
>>1477756They make these comments because they can dance circles around him. He got owned by a lolbert in here
>>1477713 and he has zero arguments besides his "democracy at work" shit. It's not a convincing argument for most, who cares if your firm is democratic? You gonna vote on who is going to clean the toilet? Marx and Engels ranted against such Utopian Socialist thoughts over a century ago.
No.1478780
>>1478147Pls post a better quality image version , I liked it XD
No.1478783
>>1478780Also , Idk if I am schizoposter or have dumb opinion on things, It's kinda another one's perceptions on me~
Since "In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule." –Nietszche
But yea, doing these bingos are fun
And I also think even in so called baits, the poster desire a form of response like all other, so maybe, responding to a far rightie with right magical words would maybe affect that anon tho. So why not
No.1478796
How the fuck is the "state capitalism" thesis new? Is this just the result of most Millennials going through "the end of history" and so having no knowledge of the history of debate around the USSR, so that this tired old thesis can be dug up?
Or is Wolff so obsessed with his non-violent revolution based around co-ops idea that he is willing to be intellectually dishonest?
No.1478797
>>1478320>both decry Khrushchev's revisionism, and support the 1956 invasion of Hungary.And? It was based when Khrushchev rolled on US backed Hungarian fascists and gave missiles to Cuba and it was cringe when he did revisionism and drew first blood in the sino Soviet split.
No.1478799
>>1478487China is the future. China and climate change and trying to survive amerikkka'$ global chimpout at declining
No.1478832
>>1478797He didn’t even do that, he just rubber stamped the military intervention. Khrushchev was far too busy organizing the Real Holodomor to bother with little things like crushing fascist uprisings and he actively worked to prevent Hungary from being made an example of, thereby encouraging the Czech fascist coup. And don’t give him credit for Cuba either because that was objectively a loss, he purposefully pussied out because a possibility of a war with the United States would have put a damper on his personal ambitions, had Beria been in the same position he would have launched the nukes and we’d have a global socialist order by now and that’s not even an exaggeration. It’s hard to fully quantify just how much damage Khrushchev did in his pursuit of vengeance
No.1478843
>>1478832Cuba wasn't even strategically logical. The USSR had NATO by the balls in Berlin and NATO knew it which is why they didn't really challenge the USSR during the blockade or during the later stand off. NATO was encircled had the dilemma that West Berlin forces would eventually be starved out in any conflict yet NATO didn't look weak by abandoning West Berlin thus NATO war plans had to start NATO off way too overextended to deal with the Warsaw Pact rationally.
Then if USSR and China were still friends there was Taiwan where Mao wouldn't have objected to Stalin launching nuclear strikes against US airbases in Taiwan from China and the USA feared this when Stalin was alive.
No.1478845
>>1477943The NEP was true communism, Stalin was a left deviationist that ruined it with collectivization (state capitalism)
No.1478853
>>1478845I take it you never researched the scissors crisis. Stalin's policies came from NEP failing to bring forth a coherent market due to the chasm between the incests of urban and rural producers under NEP.
No.1478859
>>1478843I can’t help but wonder how Stalin let Khrushchev slip by, leaving him wide open to take over the USSR and cause the deaths of millions. Surely Stalin must have suspected that Khrushchev was a double agent, right? He knew he was in contact with Trotsky. Did his eagerness to trust and see the best in people blind him to Khrushchev’s faults? Or was he perfectly aware and let Khrushchev schemes play out as a lesson for future generations? I genuinely don’t know
No.1478896
>>1478716noooooo my garrrloiidds how could they do this to me
No.1478898
>>1478031>lenin said so it must be trueI like lenin as much as the next guy and somewhat agree with the quotes but we can't just all quote the same 5 guys
No.1478903
>>1478898Do you think Lenin was a liar? Is that the hill you want to die on?
No.1478919
>>1477622the lending is done through their weirdo online reader, you don't really get access to the file itself
No.1478976
>>1478903Oh my god if all you want is idols just become religious and leave the rest of us alone.
No.1478983
>>1478832> had Beria been in the same position he would have launched the nukes and we’d have a global socialist order by nowPosadist Beria posadist Beria
No.1479022
>>1478903He isn't perfect, noone is. He's capable of being wrong when he intended to be right in good faith
No.1479390
No need to kill leninoids when progress and history stomps over them.
No.1480300
>>1478556>But by this point capitalism is a global system so "external necessities" are in the last analysis internals of capitalism. And yes, the drive to accumulate is necessary in all cases - the specifics vary but for the USSR or for a corporation there is a need to develop and grow production to survive in the larger context of the market.Here's the thing you're missing Anon. Yes, the USSR was forced to pursue growth oriented policies to survive the competition with the capitalist world, but this would only be the case so long as the capitalist world existed. What we had here was a case of the Soviet socialist system being forced to adopt capitalistic behaviours by the capitalists themselves. If the world revolution had been successful, or if the imperialists had not posed an existential threat to the Soviet Union, then this wouldn't have been necessary. Compare this to the world we have now, where every major threat to capitalism has been defeated, and yet the ruling class still pursues these suicidal policies of growth for its own sake. Even monopolistic corporations behave in this way, since they operate essentially on borrowed money which they must return to investors in addition to dividends. Capitalism has an internal logic which drives endless, exponential accumulation, socialism does not. Hence even the socialist system as it existed in the USSR brought about a fundamental change in the relationship between society and the productive process.
>Welfare states are distinct from neoliberal hellholes are distinct from colonies etc and they are still capitalism.Yeah but we're talking about a system without private property or commodity production here. To call it any kind of capitalism is to really stretch the definition of the term. This is especially the case when you consider how much it radically altered
No.1480338
>>1479390neoliberal in chat.
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