/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>2482616
Lenin went full realpolitiks but rest of his church followed his teachings dogmatically like complete retards.

>>2482646
This, it's a non-issue that entrepreneurship needs to be the solution to, that knowing what the fuck you're doing is somehow a crippling limitation for progress compared to those who are motivated only by personal wealth.

Bureaucracy by an environmental agency in recommending limitations on oil usage based on studies about climate change, for example, is an unnecessary blocker on progress when free market innovations in financing and marketing will allow every home to own two 6 seater cars each. That's the logic.

Thing is Soviet Union stopped being competetive.

China outdoing the US in capitalism is perhaps a betrayal to communism but better than the shithole Russia there is now

But I guess Russians are just lazy drunks. Asians are hard working people.

>>2482697
>free market innovations
Meds

no they sould have done a cultural revolution like china but like good this time

>>2482763
>>2482754
>>2482697
>>2482646
>>2482625
all of you should be hanged

>>2482763
>free market innovations in financing and marketing
Some people have no humour

Truth, the soviet unions needed to learn the "fail faster" principle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail_fast_(business)

>>2482820
total management consultant death

>>2482616
no

This thread is populated by total imbeciles.
>mUh bureaucracy
>muh entrepreneurship
>muh [insert retard execuse]
Truth is, the soviets should have just tiananmend' squared the whole country and turned it into north korea. Fuck freedom. You will be free digging uranium in a gulag, fucking ultras.
Soviets did everything right except protect party apparatus from opportunists like gorbachev and yakovlev and yeltsin etc.

>>2482616
socialism (not lenin's retarded definition) is impossible in a semi-feudal country with almost no developed proletariat
https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1894/01/russia.htm
>thus hastening the victory of the modern industrial proletariat, without which present-day Russia can never achieve a socialist transformation, whether proceeding from the commune or from capitalism.

>>2482983
Maybe they should have made the masses believe in communism and then no matter what leader tries to end it, the masses would overrule them. 70 years and they never managed to make anyone a true believer. Compare with America.

>>2482616
>In order for socialism to be built we need constant boom and bust cycles of burocreacy being built and then smashed down through constant uprisings
<we need to reinvent the people's crisis cycles
no thanks

I've raised this point many times over the years in leftypol, but how do we suppose we could make a signifigant portion of the population believe in this Marxist bullshit when the USSR couldn't with complete control over millions in almost a century? It is such a critical failure that is never addressed.

>>2483406
>we could make a signifigant portion of the population believe in this Marxist bullshit
<It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness
solution: do shit that works, prove to the people shit works, gain the people's trust because shit works, unlike the bourgeois state and imperialist policy, which doesn't work

>>2483409
How?

>>2483410
follow china's example

>>2483411
Hiw is China in anyway related to us? Their party has been in power for all of their modern history and we are not in power.

>>2483412
okay so step one is getting to power :)

>>2483415
How?

>>2483416
Not him, but the answer to the question is just going to devolve into more reactionary liberalism. At the end of the day he's going to tell you that voting labour and "pushing them left" is the revolutionary stepping stone to gain power.

>>2483417
I'm not a britbong but I believe the electoral process and whatever protest is all we have. Like I was saying the Soviets failed to convince their people of their cause in 70 years of complete control. That is a critical failure of the Communist experiment. What do we want? To have another USSR that lasts 70 years and ends the same way? You have to learn from your mistakes to grow.

>>2483419
>but I believe the electoral process and whatever protest is all we have
that's not true bcz history contradicts you

>>2483423
Such as?

>>2482778
You will never have political power to hang anyone thoughbeit.

>>2482616
Soviet Union should have fell in the 1960s so that:
>USA wins the Vietnam war
>Israel genocides Gaza by 1990
>Arab states flip to reaction even harder
>Shah in Iran keeps power
>Apartheid South Africa survives
>Dengism never becomes a thing and China stagnates without a deal with American devil (no need for that to contain USSR anymore)
>North Korea is nuked
>Cuba is invaded and occupied
>Venezuela or Nicaragua never become a thing

>>2483396
Ussr was built on thinking citizens
Usa is built on indoctrinated true believers who are unaware of being products of propaganda.
Now you understand why the american crisis is so much more difficult to fix.

>>2483396
the masses were massively in favor of keeping communism and ussr, the problem is without the state they didnt have the organizational tools to resist

>>2483391
You are wrong and I have two quotes from Marx and Engels that prove my point:

<The Communist Manifesto had, as its object, the proclamation of the inevitable impending dissolution of modern bourgeois property. But in Russia we find, face-to-face with the rapidly flowering capitalist swindle and bourgeois property, just beginning to develop, more than half the land owned in common by the peasants. Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina, though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of land, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West?

<The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development.

<Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, Prefácio do Manifesto comunista da edição russa de 1882

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm

Now let's see an example of how communists should act if there are many peasants as part of a country's population and that, as communist revolutionaries, it is not necessary to wait for the peasants to be ruined by large-scale capitalist industry for the proletariat to assume power in the dictatorship of the proletariat:

<We, of course, are decidedly on the side of the small peasant; we shall do everything at all permissible to make his lot more bearable, to facilitate his transition to the co-operative should he decide to do so, and even to make it possible for him to remain on his small holding for a protracted length of time to think the matter over, should he still be unable to bring himself to this decision. We do this not only because we consider the small peasant living by his own labor as virtually belonging to us, but also in the direct interest of the Party. The greater the number of peasants whom we can save from being actually hurled down into the proletariat, whom we can win to our side while they are still peasants, the more quickly and easily the social transformation will be accomplished. It will serve us nought to wait with this transformation until capitalist production has developed everywhere to its utmost consequences, until the last small handicraftsman and the last small peasant have fallen victim to capitalist large-scale production.

<Frederick Engels 1894: The Peasant Question in France and Germany, Part 2: Germany

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/peasant-question/ch02.htm

why were stalin, trotsky and mao against the farmers even tough the sickle

>>2483671
That is just stupid. If they had all that support for communism and they couldn't form an uprising to preserve communism, how are we supposed to get enough people to support a communist uprising today?

>>2483923
Communists defend the common interest of peasants and the proletariat, based solely on their common interests in abolishing private property and socializing the economy against the landlords and capitalists. But remember that the proletariat is the revolutionary agent and the reference point for other working classes, such as peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, and the intelligentsia. These classes become confused if they don't always act on the basis of their common ground with the political dominance of the proletarian class.

Let's take Engels' text again, which I will post in more detail below:

<The main point is, and will be, to make the peasants understand that we can save, preserve their houses and fields for them only by transforming them into co-operative property operated co-operatively. It is precisely the individual farming conditioned by individual ownership that drives the peasants to their doom. If they insist on individual operation, they will inevitably be driven from house and home and their antiquated mode of production superseded by capitalist large-scale production. That is how the matter stands. Now, we come along and offer the peasants the opportunity of introducing large-scale production themselves, not for account of the capitalists but for their own, common account. Should it really be impossible to make the peasants understand that this is in their own interest, that it is the sole means of their salvation?

<Neither now, nor at any time in the future, can we promise the small-holding peasants to preserve their individual property and individual enterprise against the overwhelming power of capitalist production. We can only promise then that we shall not interfere in their property relations by force, against their will. Moreover, we can advocate that the struggle of the capitalists and big landlords against the small peasants should be waged from now on with a minimum of unfair means and that direct robbery and cheating, which are practiced only too often, be as far as possible prevented. In this we shall succeed only in exceptional cases. Under the developed capitalist mode of production, nobody can tell where honesty ends and cheating begins. But always it will make a considerable difference whether public authority is on the side of the cheater or the cheated. We, of course, are decidedly on the side of the small peasant; we shall do everything at all permissible to make his lot more bearable, to facilitate his transition to the co-operative should he decide to do so, and even to make it possible for him to remain on his small holding for a protracted length of time to think the matter over, should he still be unable to bring himself to this decision. We do this not only because we consider the small peasant living by his own labor as virtually belonging to us, but also in the direct interest of the Party. The greater the number of peasants whom we can save from being actually hurled down into the proletariat, whom we can win to our side while they are still peasants, the more quickly and easily the social transformation will be accomplished. It will serve us nought to wait with this transformation until capitalist production has developed everywhere to its utmost consequences, until the last small handicraftsman and the last small peasant have fallen victim to capitalist large-scale production. The material sacrifice to be made for this purpose in the interest of the peasants and to be defrayed out of public funds can, from the point of view of capitalist economy, be viewed only as money thrown away, but it is nevertheless an excellent investment because it will effect a perhaps tenfold saving in the cost of the social reorganization in general. In this sense, we can, therefore, afford to deal very liberally with the peasants. This is not the place to go into details, to make concrete proposals to that end; here we can deal only with general principles.

<Accordingly, we can do no greater disservice to the Party as well as to the small peasants than to make promises that even only create the impression that we intend to preserve the small holdings permanently. It would mean directly to block the way of the peasants to their emancipation and to degrade the Party to the level of rowdy anti-Semitism. On the contrary, it is the duty of our Party to make clear to the peasants again and again that their position is absolutely hopeless as long as capitalism holds sway, that it is absolutely impossible to preserve their small holdings for them as such, that capitalist large-scale production is absolutely sure to run over their impotent antiquated system of small production as a train runs over a pushcart. If we do this, we shall act in conformity with the inevitable trend of economic development, and this development will not fail to bring our words home to the small peasants.

<Frederick Engels 1894: The Peasant Question in France and Germany, Part 2: Germany

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/peasant-question/ch02.htm

latest Grover Fur
why the Soviet Union collapsed

>>2483887
>The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development.
purely political statement meant to support communist forces in Russia even if they wouldn't achieve anything
adn when Engels wrote on the peasant question, he wrote about france and germany, not backwards russia which had like 85% if not more of its population as peasants around 1905, how can you have a proletarian class consciousness when the vast vast vast majority of the population is peasant and, as a matter of fact, not even organized in the rural peasant communes Marx spoke of, as they were destroyed later, to develop socialism?
in any case, modes of production change when the means of production contradict the relations of production and that certainly didn't happen in 1917 and it didn't happen anywhere else because that hasn't happened yet

>>2484964
Tsarist Russia already had a capitalist economy established in the cities, while the landowning aristocrats were already collaborating with the imperialism of British finance capital in Russia, acting in a way that would delay the formation of bourgeois rights for the population, due to their reactionary nature and the fact that they had already co-opted the bourgeois liberals, playing no revolutionary role, but rather a conservative stance against the workers. Lenin had already written an analysis of Russia in "The Development of Capitalism in Russia," opposing economists who denied the existence of capitalism in Russia. Nevertheless, the proletariat has the right to organize and assume power, even if it is a minority, if it leads an alliance with the peasants to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proletariat will create the conditions to socialize the economy through expropriations, but before that, state capitalism can be used to acquire economic sovereignty and be used as a tool to bankrupt all petty-bourgeois classes, allowing them to be collectivized, where small-scale production still dominates, so that they can become accustomed to cooperative labor, while capitalists and landowning aristocrats can be immediately expropriated.

Here is a link below for you to read "The Development of Capitalism in Russia":
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/pdf/lenin-cw-vol-03.pdf

Remember that the Soviet Union abolished private property, unemployment, and all features of capitalism for the planning of the economy. The state capitalism, small commodity production and private capitalism of the NEP by peasants in the rural sector were eventually abolished by Stalin who made the rest of the economy organized by a socialist economy according to an economic plan with state farms and agricultural cooperatives that do not compete for profit.

Marx and Engels supported the idea that a socialist revolution should be carried out as soon as possible without waiting for capitalism to develop “on its own” and destroy the peasantry. Lenin’s policy of worker-peasant alliance, developing of agricultural co-operatives and using state-capitalism as a transition from semi-feudalism and undeveloped capitalism to socialism is in accordance with Marx and Engels.

<We, of course, are decidedly on the side of the small peasant; we shall do everything at all permissible to make his lot more bearable, to facilitate his transition to the co-operative should he decide to do so, and even to make it possible for him to remain on his small holding for a protracted length of time to think the matter over, should he still be unable to bring himself to this decision. We do this not only because we consider the small peasant living by his own labor as virtually belonging to us, but also in the direct interest of the Party. The greater the number of peasants whom we can save from being actually hurled down into the proletariat, whom we can win to our side while they are still peasants, the more quickly and easily the social transformation will be accomplished. It will serve us no reason to wait with this transformation until capitalist production has developed everywhere to its extreme consequences, until the last small craftsman and the last small peasant have fallen victim to capitalist large-scale production.

<Engels, The Peasant Question in France and Germany

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/peasant-question/ch02.htm

This is what Lenin said in 1923:

<Infinitely stereotyped, for instance, is the argument they learned by rote during the development of West-European Social-Democracy, namely, that we are not yet ripe for socialism, but as certain “learned” gentleman among them put it, the objective economic premises for socialism do not exist in our country… “The development of the productive forces of Russia has not yet attained the level that makes socialism possible.” All the heroes of the Second International, including, of course, Sukhanov, beat the drums about this proposition. They keep harping on this incontrovertible proposition in a thousand different keys, and think that it is decisive criterion of our revolution… You say that civilization is necessary for the building of socialism. Very good. But why could we not first create such prerequisites of civilization in our country by the expulsion of the landowners and the Russian capitalists, and then start moving toward socialism? Where, in what books, have you read that such variations of the customary historical sequence of events are impermissible or impossible?

<Lenin, “Our Revolution” (1923)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/jan/16.htm

Lenin reiterates that it is feasable and necessary to implement measures of proletarian state-control, which is not socialism, but a step towards it:

<Under no circumstances can the party of the proletariat set itself the aim of “introducing” socialism in a country of small peasants so long as the overwhelming majority of the population has not come to realise the need for a socialist revolution.

<But only bourgeois sophists, hiding behind “near-Marxist” catchwords, can deduce from this truth a justification of the policy of post poning immediate revolutionary measures, the time for which is fully ripe; measures which have been frequently resorted to during the war by a number of bourgeois states… the nationalisation of the land, of all the banks and capitalist syndicates, or, at least, the immediate establishment of the control of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, etc., over them… which are only steps towards socialism, and which are perfectly feasible economically.

<Lenin, The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution (1917)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/tasks/ch09.htm#v24zz99h-073-GUESS

Lenin also realized that in order to transition to socialism it was necessary to create a collective agriculture sector. He said in 1923, talking about agricultural co-operatives:

<As a matter of fact, the political power of the Soviet over all large-scale means of production, the power in the state in the hands of the proletariat, the alliance of this proletariat with the many millions of small and very small peasants, the assured leadership of the peasantry by the proletariat, etc, …is not this all that is necessary in order from the co-operatives – from the co-operatives alone, which we formerly treated as huckstering, and which, from a certain aspect, we have the right to treat as such now, under the new economic policy – is not this all that is necessary in order to build a complete socialist society? This is not yet the building of socialist society but it is all that is necessary and sufficient for this building.

<Lenin, “On Cooperation” (1923)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/jan/06.htm

Lenin’s opponents claimed that Lenin was going backwards and betraying socialism by advocating development on state-capitalist lines. Lenin reminded them of what he said already in 1917:

<For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.

[…]

<Imperialist war is the eve of socialist revolution. And this not only because the horrors of the war give rise to proletarian revolt—no revolt can bring about socialism unless the economic conditions for socialism are ripe—but because state-monopoly capitalism is a complete material preparation for socialism, the threshold of socialism, a rung on the ladder of history between which and the rung called socialism there are no intermediate rungs.

<Lenin, “The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat it” (1917)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/11.htm#v25zz99h-360

Remembering that The Communist Manifesto is at odds with any concept of liberal or petty-bourgeois socialism from people who imagine isolated cooperatives competing with each other as the end in itself.

<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.

<Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

<These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

<Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

<1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
<2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
<3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
<4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
<5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
<6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
<7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
<8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
<9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
<10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

<When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

<In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

<Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), Chapter II. Proletarians and Communists

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

khrushchev should've stayed in power and ordered Kosygin to be shot and we would've never seen this thread appear

>>2486458
benis :DDDD

Fuck this alternative history bullshit. China with a fully automated AI economy is the next stage of development.

>>2485274
>The dictatorship of the proletariat will create the conditions to socialize the economy through expropriations, but before that, state capitalism can be used to acquire economic sovereignty and be used as a tool to bankrupt all petty-bourgeois classes, allowing them to be collectivized, where small-scale production still dominates, so that they can become accustomed to cooperative labor, while capitalists and landowning aristocrats can be immediately expropriated.
pure fantasy, if state capitalism is run by the 'workers', who were in any case a minority in Russia in 1917, they (the ones who oversee this process) become objectively become the bourgeoisie and are thus no longer workers, everything that they must do would be in their own, self-defined interests and no sane Marxist, I think, would ever think that the bourgeoisie, in general, will act against its interests and I don't see why workers turned bourgeois would not do this
>while the landowning aristocrats were already collaborating with the imperialism of British finance capital in Russia, acting in a way that would delay the formation of bourgeois rights for the population, due to their reactionary nature and the fact that they had already co-opted the bourgeois liberals,
the 1905 revolution started to turn Russia into a bourgeois state with a parliament, which had its own representatives, even if the landowning aristocracy existed
even if British finance capital did cooperate with Russia, their constant expansion into new markets would've inevitably drawn Russia into the capitalist world-market and the landowning aristocracy would either have turned bourgeois themselves, or their production would not have been as competitive as that of British capitalists or their own emerging ones
and a bourgeois revolution happened in Russia regardless, without the intervention of Lenin or the Bolsheviks in the form of the Provisional Government, which was lead by Kerensky
>Remember that the Soviet Union abolished private property, unemployment, and all features of capitalism for the planning of the economy. The state capitalism, small commodity production and private capitalism of the NEP by peasants in the rural sector were eventually abolished by Stalin who made the rest of the economy organized by a socialist economy according to an economic plan with state farms and agricultural cooperatives that do not compete for profit.
can you prove that private property was actually abolished, and not that the party became the bourgeoisie and managed the state capitalist economy, which changed, but still remained after the end of the NEP? wage-labor still remained, commodity production still remained and it was nowhere near small scale, that's an absolute lie
>Marx and Engels supported the idea that a socialist revolution should be carried out as soon as possible without waiting for capitalism to develop “on its own” and destroy the peasantry.
he was of course, writing about France and Germany, which were significantly more advanced and had much less peasants than Russia, how can you have a socialist proletarian revolution when there are barely any proletarians? Such a revolution of peasants and workers must've acted not necessarily in the interests of purely workers, but also in the peasants (which is why you saw Lenin redistribute land etc.), and peasants due to their own economic class are interested not in socialism, which would destroy them as a class, but in capitalism, which would allow them to turn into capitalist land owners
I can see a society with a small amount of peasants with a proletariat that significantly outnumbers them transitioning into socialism, but not a country that consisted of 85% peasants
>For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.
this is how lenin defined socialism, I don't care at all how he defined it
state capitalist monopoly made to serve the interests of the whole people is bullshit and I won't believe it, they will ALWAYS serve the interests of those who control it and that was the party
the party was the bourgeoisie
>Remembering that The Communist Manifesto is at odds with any concept of liberal or petty-bourgeois socialism from people who imagine isolated cooperatives competing with each other as the end in itself.
irrelevant to my argument

>>2487279
>Pure fantasy: if state capitalism is run by the 'workers,' who were in any case a minority in Russia in 1917, they (those who oversee this process) objectively become the bourgeoisie and are thus no longer workers. Everything they must do would be in their own, self-defined interests and no sane Marxist, I think, would ever think that the bourgeoisie, in general, will act against their interests, and I don't see why workers turned bourgeois wouldn't do this.

You're confusing here that at the time of the Russian Revolution, there was already a massive expropriation of capitalists and aristocrats by the proletariat and peasants, who are workers. Where the civil war eliminated the superstructure of the bourgeoisie, the Mensheviks were preparing with the Kadets and Tsarists to create a coup d'état and use the bourgeois state to reverse all the structures of workers' power advances, but for the Bolsheviks to follow all the warnings Marx gave against the Paris Commune. such as the immediate appropriation of banks and the abolition of private banking through nationalizations and expropriations, acting decisively in the instability of the bourgeois state, pushing it to its limit, and when the working masses are ready, initiating armed conflict by organizing to occupy all means of production, transportation, and communication, along with the supply centers of the weakened bourgeois state, to facilitate its abolition so that the dictatorship of the proletariat can more easily initiate its revolutionary terror and the proletariat can become the new ruling class.

You are confusing state capitalism, which was used when there were no developed means of production, with capitalism, which is the example of small peasant production isolated from each other, which is outdated for collective planning due to a lack of technology and organizational techniques. In this case, preparing a limited grain market with state capitalism is acceptable so that impoverished small peasants receive benefits for working in cooperatives, because the more prosperous peasants were acting like gangs, sabotaging and coercing the smaller peasants to submit to what would be the "new capitalists" who were preparing to eventually pit rural workers against urban workers in an attempt to restore the bourgeois state.

State capitalism is not something stable and must be used by the dictatorship of the proletariat to facilitate all the conditions for the entire economy to be socialized, such as having a level of education, machinery and self-sufficient national technology for collective planning. This will eventually have to come into conflict with a small minority of the petty bourgeoisie that is more prosperous and will try everything to get counterrevolutionaries to assume power to end proletarian democracy and the domination of the proletarian class over the intelligentsia, petty bourgeoisie and the rest of society.

<In the first place economically state capitalism is immeasurably superior to our present economic system.

<In the second place there is nothing terrible in it for the Soviet power, for the Soviet state is a state in which the power of the workers and the poor is assured. . . .

<To make things even clearer, let us first of all take the most concrete example of state capitalism. Everybody knows what this example is. It is Germany. Here we have “the last word” in modern large-scale capitalist engineering and planned organisation, subordinated to Junker-bourgeois imperialism. Cross out the words in italics, and in place of the militarist, Junker, bourgeois, imperialist state put also a state, but of a different social type, of a different class content—a Soviet state, that is, a proletarian state, and you will have the sum total of the conditions necessary for socialism.

<Socialism is inconceivable without large-scale capitalist engineering based on the latest discoveries of modern science. It is inconceivable without planned state organisation which keeps tens of millions of people to the strictest observance of a unified standard in production and distribution. We Marxists have always spoken of this, and it is not worth while wasting two seconds talking to people who do not understand even this (anarchists and a good half of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries).

<Lenin, 1921, The Tax in Kind (The Significance Of The New Policy And Its Conditions)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/apr/21.htm

>the 1905 revolution started to turn Russia into a bourgeois state with a parliament, which had its own representatives, even if the landowning aristocracy existed even if British finance capital did cooperate with Russia, their constant expansion into new markets would've inevitably drawn Russia into the capitalist world-market and the landowning aristocracy would either have turned bourgeois themselves, or their production would not have been as competitive as that of British capitalists or their own emerging ones and a bourgeois revolution happened in Russia regardless, without the intervention of Lenin or the Bolsheviks in the form of the Provisional Government, which was lead by Kerensky

Again, you are distorting the historical situation. All the bourgeois rights you have came from the workers' struggle, which led to concessions due to the threat of communists who granted suffrage and other rights because even Marx and Engels saw that the bourgeoisie had already become conservative and reactionary when faced with the proletariat that was forming against the bourgeoisie. The Duma in Russia existed as a facade that was dissolved by the Tsar several times for not being reactionary enough. While the imperialism of British finance capital would lead to other economies becoming underdeveloped with the collaboration of local reactionaries, the White Army had already planned several ways to prepare coups d'état that failed due to the decisive action of the proletariat in preventing these various plans. Among the military of the Russian White Army, foreign capitalist influence, reactionary counterrevolutionaries such as the Black Hundreds, the liberal Kadets, the Right SRs, and Mecheks, in an attempt to pacify the workers by destroying the popular councils and then creating a provisional military government to restore all the power of capitalists and aristocrats and then return power to the Tsarists with a monarchy. The October Revolution of the Bolsheviks destroyed the center of reactionism as an independent force, and after the First World War, this reactionism was completely absorbed into finance capitalism and existed only as prototypes of what became today's neoliberalism. All the current rights of the bourgeois state are concessions of temporary class conciliation due to the failure of capitalism's offensives against the workers, the defeat of various reactionary groups, and the instability of global imperialist capitalism. Remember that these bourgeois rights would not have come about if it were not for the cowardly complacency you are demonstrating in betraying the proletarian class, deceiving them into not organizing to take power. Therefore, your actions are those of a counterrevolutionary.

>can you prove that private property was actually abolished, and not that the party became the bourgeoisie and managed the state capitalist economy, which changed, but still remained after the end of the NEP? wage-labor still remained, commodity production still remained and it was nowhere near small scale, that's an absolute lie

The Soviet Union used state capitalism to create a collective agricultural sector with a limited market because the wartime policy called "War Communism" of confiscating peasant produce at a fixed price to feed urban workers and the revolutionary army was no longer necessary after the Civil War. Furthermore, this policy was unpopular among peasants and did not abolish the isolated private property of peasants, which should have been organized collectively but was impossible due to the technological backwardness of these properties. Furthermore, by preparing peasants to work in agricultural cooperatives under the NEP or state farms, it ruined the plan of the prosperous reactionary petty bourgeoisie to try to use hatred against the urban population to deceive other peasants and start a civil war so that capitalism could be restored through foreign intervention or the collaboration of these reactionaries in carrying out a coup d'état.

The Soviet Union lacked the elements of capitalism because employment was guaranteed, all industry was public because it was nationalized, and all production followed a collective plan rather than selling for profit in the market. There was no financial speculation or methods of accumulating capital. Cooperatives had an exclusive relationship with the state, not competing with each other, with workers receiving the surplus after deductions from the total according to their labor and needs.

I think you're mistaken in thinking that socialism means workers receiving the profits from the sale of everything produced in a society of cooperatives that compete with each other. Therefore, I'll leave you with some quotes to help you understand what socialism is, according to Marx:

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

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

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

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

<Before this is divided among the individuals, there has to be deducted again, from it: First, the general costs of administration not belonging to production. This part will, from the outset, be very considerably restricted in comparison with present-day society, and it diminishes in proportion as the new society develops. Second, that which is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc. From the outset, this part grows considerably in comparison with present-day society, and it grows in proportion as the new society develops. Third, funds for those unable to work, etc., in short, for what is included under so-called official poor relief today.

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

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

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

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

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

<Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm

Now let's look at the constitution of the Soviet Union to demonstrate my point:

<ARTICLE 1. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is a socialist state of workers and peasants.

<ARTICLE 2. The Soviets of Working People's Deputies, which grew and attained strength as a result of the overthrow of the landlords and capitalists and the achievement of the dictatorship of the proletariat, constitute the political foundation of the U.S.S.R.

<ARTICLE 3. In the U.S.S.R. all power belongs to the working people of town and country as represented by the Soviets of Working People's Deputies.

<ARTICLE 4. The socialist system of economy and the socialist ownership of the means and instruments of production, firmly established as a result of the abolition of the capitalist system of economy, the abrogation of private ownership of the means and instruments of production and the abolition of the exploitation of man by man, constitute the economic foundation of the U.S.S.R.

<ARTICLE 5. Socialist property in the U.S.S.R. exists either in the form of state property (the possession of the whole people), or in the form of cooperative and collective-farm property (property of a collective farm or property of a cooperative association).

<ARTICLE 6. The land, its natural deposits, waters, forests, mills, factories, mines, rail, water and air transport, banks, post, telegraph, and telephones, large state organized agricultural enterprises (state farms, machine and tractor stations and the like) as well as municipal enterprises and the bulk of the dwelling houses in the cities and industrial localities, are state property, that is, belong to the whole people.

<ARTICLE 7. Public enterprises in collective farms and cooperative organizations, with their livestock and implements, the products of the collective farms and cooperative organizations, as well as their common buildings, constitute the common, socialist property of the collective farms and cooperative organizations.

<In addition to its basic income from the public, collective-farm enterprise, every household in a collective farm has for its personal use a small plot of land attached to the dwelling and, as its personal property, a subsidiary establishment on the plot, a dwelling house, livestock, poultry and minor agricultural implements - in accordance with the the statutes of the agricultural artel.

<ARTICLE 8. The land occupied by collective farms is secured to them for their use free of charge and for an unlimited time, that is, in perpetuity.

<ARTICLE 9. Alongside the socialist system of economy, which is the predominant form of economy in the U.S.S.R., the law permits the small private economy of individual peasants and handicraftsmen based on their personal labour and precluding the exploitation of the labour of others.

<ARTICLE 10. The right of citizens to personal ownership of their incomes from work and of their savings, of their dwelling houses and subsidiary household economy, their household furniture and utensils and articles of personal use and convenience, as well as the right of inheritance of personal property of citizens, is protected by law.

<ARTICLE 11. The economic life of the U.S.S.R. is determined and directed by the state national economic plan with the aim of increasing the public wealth, of steadily improving the material conditions of the working people and raising their cultural level, of consolidating the independence of the U.S.S.R. and strengthening its defensive capacity.

<ARTICLE 12. In the U.S.S.R. work is a duty and a matter of honour for every able-bodied citizen, in accordance with the principle: "He who does not work, neither shall he eat."

<The principle applied in the U.S.S.R. is that of socialism : "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."

<J. V. Stalin, Constitution (Fundamental law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, With Ammendments and Additions adopted by the First, Second, Third, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Sessions of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R (1936).

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/12/05.htm

>>2487279
>he was of course, writing about France and Germany, which were significantly more advanced and had much less peasants than Russia, how can you have a socialist proletarian revolution when there are barely any proletarians? Such a revolution of peasants and workers must've acted not necessarily in the interests of purely workers, but also in the peasants (which is why you saw Lenin redistribute land etc.), and peasants due to their own economic class are interested not in socialism, which would destroy them as a class, but in capitalism, which would allow them to turn into capitalist land owners
I can see a society with a small amount of peasants with a proletariat that significantly outnumbers them transitioning into socialism, but not a country that consisted of 85% peasants

In the text "The Principles of Communism" Engels already wrote in 1847 that communists can organize the proletariat to assume power much earlier and having much fewer proletarians and industrialization in the countries of the world when it was written:

<18. What will be the course of this revolution?

<Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat. Direct in England, where the proletarians are already a majority of the people. Indirect in France and Germany, where the majority of the people consists not only of proletarians, but also of small peasants and petty bourgeois who are in the process of falling into the proletariat, who are more and more dependent in all their political interests on the proletariat, and who must, therefore, soon adapt to the demands of the proletariat. Perhaps this will cost a second struggle, but the outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat.

<Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means for putting through measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat. The main measures, emerging as the necessary result of existing relations, are the following:

<(i) Limitation of private property through progressive taxation, heavy inheritance taxes, abolition of inheritance through collateral lines (brothers, nephews, etc.) forced loans, etc.

<(ii) Gradual expropriation of landowners, industrialists, railroad magnates and shipowners, partly through competition by state industry, partly directly through compensation in the form of bonds.

<(iii) Confiscation of the possessions of all emigrants and rebels against the majority of the people.

<(iv) Organization of labor or employment of proletarians on publicly owned land, in factories and workshops, with competition among the workers being abolished and with the factory owners, in so far as they still exist, being obliged to pay the same high wages as those paid by the state.

<(v) An equal obligation on all members of society to work until such time as private property has been completely abolished. Formation of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

<(vi) Centralization of money and credit in the hands of the state through a national bank with state capital, and the suppression of all private banks and bankers.

<(vii) Increase in the number of national factories, workshops, railroads, ships; bringing new lands into cultivation and improvement of land already under cultivation – all in proportion to the growth of the capital and labor force at the disposal of the nation.

<(viii) Education of all children, from the moment they can leave their mother’s care, in national establishments at national cost. Education and production together.

<(ix) Construction, on public lands, of great palaces as communal dwellings for associated groups of citizens engaged in both industry and agriculture and combining in their way of life the advantages of urban and rural conditions while avoiding the one-sidedness and drawbacks of each.

<(x) Destruction of all unhealthy and jerry-built dwellings in urban districts.

<(xi) Equal inheritance rights for children born in and out of wedlock.

<(xii) Concentration of all means of transportation in the hands of the nation.

<It is impossible, of course, to carry out all these measures at once. But one will always bring others in its wake. Once the first radical attack on private property has been launched, the proletariat will find itself forced to go ever further, to concentrate increasingly in the hands of the state all capital, all agriculture, all transport, all trade. All the foregoing measures are directed to this end; and they will become practicable and feasible, capable of producing their centralizing effects to precisely the degree that the proletariat, through its labor, multiplies the country’s productive forces.

<Finally, when all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought together in the hands of the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord, money will become superfluous, and production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off whatever of its old economic habits may remain.

<Frederick Engels, 1847, The Principles of Communism

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

>this is how lenin defined socialism, I don't care at all how he defined it state capitalist monopoly made to serve the interests of the whole people is bullshit and I won't believe it, they will ALWAYS serve the interests of those who control it and that was the party the party was the bourgeoisie

You're being ignorant. A socialist economy requires the means of production to belong to the entire society to be planned, not just to the petty bourgeoisie and cooperative workers who blackmail the rest of society following the logic of profit, which creates regional inequalities with price gouging and abuse of cooperative workers who went bankrupt against market competition, thus restoring capitalism as capitalism's crises advance and prejudices increase due to the lack of abolition of private property and the anarchy of production.

Let's see with a quote from Marx:

<And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.

<By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.

<But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other “brave words” of our bourgeois about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.

<You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

<In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.

<From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes.

<You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.

<Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.

<Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), Chapter II. Proletarians and Communists

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

>irrelevant to my argument

But in Marx and Engels's texts, there is no fear of organizing to overthrow the bourgeois state, spreading revolutionary terror, and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, rather than being complacent and believing in the superstitions of the bourgeois state for fear of "authoritarianism" or being demonized for wanting the proletariat to become the new ruling class that will abolish social classes, private property, and the anarchy of production. You forget that even in Marx and Engels's time, the bourgeoisie had already become conservative and reactionary when faced with the proletariat, where the revolutionary role lies with the proletariat.

>>2488018
>You're confusing here that at the time of the Russian Revolution, there was already a massive expropriation of capitalists and aristocrats by the proletariat and peasants, who are workers.
which? the february revolution?
>Mensheviks were preparing with the Kadets and Tsarists
wrong
the Mensheviks-Internationalists (the dominating force after 1917) in the Mensheviks strictly did not fight against the Bolshevik regime. Only the right SRs and some of the right Mensheviks, the defencists (under Potresov I believe) sided with the Whites.
with the rest I have nothing to say
>You are confusing state capitalism, which was used when there were no developed means of production, with capitalism, which is the example of small peasant production isolated from each other, which is outdated for collective planning due to a lack of technology and organizational techniques.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Are you saying that state capitalism exists when there are no developed means of production? Or are you saying that state capitalism in Russia existed when there were no developed means of production? Wouldn't this contradict the general tendency for the accumulation of capital, one of the reasons for which would be the change in the technical composition of capital (that is, how much is constant and capital) with a greater portion being constant capital? Because this greater constant capital requires in very simple terms a greater economy of scale, as this scales up, so does the initial capital required to enter the market as a competitive capitalist, so you see the general tendency towards monopolization. A state capitalist society would then exist there, where the share of constant capital is the greatest. That was not the case in Russia at all.
>with capitalism, which is the example of small peasant production isolated from each other, which is outdated for collective planning due to a lack of technology and organizational techniques.
Perhaps we're talking about different things. I'm not really arguing about the NEP. I am saying, very simply, that even after the end of the NEP, the USSR was state capitalist and not socialist. By socialist I don't mean, for whatever reason you assumed me to mean, the ownership of property in small groups, I mean quite literally a classless, stateless society. I do not accept Lenin's definition of socialism as state capitalism that merely serves the interests of the people. If this is what is meant by the "socialist republics" in the name of the USSR, then everything is fine with me. But if the socialist republics part means something other than Lenin's understanding, then I have to disagree.
>State capitalism is not something stable and must be used by the dictatorship of the proletariat to facilitate all the conditions for the entire economy to be socialized, such as having a level of education, machinery and self-sufficient national technology for collective planning.
The state becomes the abstract, universal capitalist and the ones who manage according to their own plans can dispose of it as they wish, as a class, thus they themselves must be capitalists. I think that the Bolsheviks in the USSR, that the party was the capitalist class.
>Again, you are distorting the historical situation. All the bourgeois rights you have came from the workers' struggle, which led to concessions due to the threat of communists who granted suffrage and other rights because even Marx and Engels saw that the bourgeoisie had already become conservative and reactionary when faced with the proletariat that was forming against the bourgeoisie.
What about the emancipation of the serfs? Without that, you could not have had a proletariat (and it was indeed extremely small at that point), who did it? The reactionary aristocracy accidentally going against their interests, or the bourgeoisie? I would note, for instance, that the Polish-Lithuanian uprisings consisted of mostly peasants, lead by the bourgeoisie and they took part in a large part of the Russian Empire at that point, especially in 1863. I think that this uprising is an example of class struggle between the bourgeoisie and peasants on the one hand and the aristocracy on the other hand. Eventually, there was full, real emancipation of the serfs.
>Marx and Engels saw that the bourgeoisie had already become conservative and reactionary when faced with the proletariat that was forming against the bourgeoisie.
Yes… The proletariat against the bourgeoisie.
>While the imperialism of British finance capital would lead to other economies becoming underdeveloped with the collaboration of local reactionaries
Leninist nonsense. Real empirical evidence shows, although this is not a great measurement, that the inequality between all of the states in the world is decreasing, unlike what Lenin claimed. Compare the historical data of the Gini index of various countries, such as China and the US, Germany too.
>All the current rights of the bourgeois state are concessions of temporary class conciliation due to the failure of capitalism's offensives against the workers, the defeat of various reactionary groups,
I agree.
>Remember that these bourgeois rights would not have come about if it were not for the cowardly complacency you are demonstrating in betraying the proletarian class, deceiving them into not organizing to take power. Therefore, your actions are those of a counterrevolutionary.
I'm not deceiving them into not taking state power. Because I think that's good now, but it wasn't possible in Russia. And the very fact that the Bolsheviks quite quickly repressed all of the Soviets and lost their initial support is proof that it was no proletarian dictatorship, but the Blanquist regime of soldiers and the bourgeoisie (in the form of the Bolsheviks). Counterrevolutionary is an arbitrary statement, especially when you liken it to disliking the Bolshevik regime.
>The Soviet Union lacked the elements of capitalism because employment was guaranteed, all industry was public because it was nationalized, and all production followed a collective plan rather than selling for profit in the market.
>employment was guaranteed
Has nothing to do with the circuit of capital, M-C-M'.
>all industry was public because it was nationalized,
Nationalization is not equal to socialism.
>and all production followed a collective plan rather than selling for profit in the market.
Is that not exactly what capitalist monopolies attempt to do today? To be able to relatively accurately predict consumption, change consumption, thus managing demand? The key thing that both the USSR shared and present day large companies is that the workers, as a class, were not in control of the planning, production and they did not own this property. The party controlled all of it, not the workers.
Before you tell me anyone could've become a member of the party, so can anyone, theoretically, become bourgeois. But that does not make the bourgeoisie not exist.
>Cooperatives had an exclusive relationship with the state, not competing with each other, with workers receiving the surplus after deductions from the total according to their labor and needs.
Competition is regardless important, but not an essential feature of capitalism, see monopolies. The M-C-M' circuit, however, is.
>I think you're mistaken in thinking that socialism means workers receiving the profits from the sale of everything produced in a society of cooperatives that compete with each other. Therefore, I'll leave you with some quotes to help you understand what socialism is, according to Marx:
Irrelevant, as I never claimed that this is what socialism is.
>Now let's look at the constitution of the Soviet Union to demonstrate my point:
>they said it so it must objectively be true! they would never lie
>In the text "The Principles of Communism" Engels already wrote in 1847 that communists can organize the proletariat to assume power much earlier and having much fewer proletarians and industrialization in the countries of the world when it was written:
>Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat. Direct in England, where the proletarians are already a majority of the people. Indirect in France and Germany, where the majority of the people consists not only of proletarians, but also of small peasants and petty bourgeois who are in the process of falling into the proletariat, who are more and more dependent in all their political interests on the proletariat, and who must, therefore, soon adapt to the demands of the proletariat. Perhaps this will cost a second struggle, but the outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat.
I understand Engels to mean that the political dominance will come from the objectively superior economic position the proletariat will have, as the petty bourgeoisie and such will disappear.
In any case, Engels later wrote:
https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1893/letters/93_10_17.htm
>You yourself admit that "the social conditions in Russia after the Crimean War were not favourable to the development of the form of production inherited by us from our past history." I would go further, and say, that no more in Russia than anywhere else would it have been possible to develop a higher social form out of primitive agrarian communism unless – that higher form was already in existence in another country, so as to serve as a model. That higher form being, wherever it is historically possible, the necessary consequence of the capitalistic form of production and of the social dualistic antagonism created by it, it could not be developed directly out of the agrarian commune, unless in imitation of an example already in existence somewhere else. Had the West of Europe been ripe, 1860-70, for such a transformation, had that transformation then been taken in hand in England, France, etc., then the Russians would have been called upon to show what could have been made out of their commune, which was then more or less intact. But the West remained stagnant, no such transformation was attempted, and capitalism was more and more rapidly developed. And as Russia had no choice but this: either to develop the commune into a form of production from which it was separated by a number of historical stages, and for which not even in the West the conditions were then ripe – evidently an impossible task – or else to develop into capitalism; what remained to her but the latter chance?
He clearly admits that there can be situations when that transformation is impossible.
>You're being ignorant. A socialist economy requires the means of production to belong to the entire society to be planned, not just to the petty bourgeoisie and cooperative workers who blackmail the rest of society following the logic of profit, which creates regional inequalities with price gouging and abuse of cooperative workers who went bankrupt against market competition, thus restoring capitalism as capitalism's crises advance and prejudices increase due to the lack of abolition of private property and the anarchy of production.
But why are you saying that I want the petty bourgeoisie? as a basis for socialism???????????? Give me at least one place where I advocated for it. Because I am saying this: the USSR was only, at best, under Lenin's definition of socialism, state capitalist, whether it was during the NEP period or whether it was in the 1970s. I am saying that the Bolsheviks constituted the bourgeoisie, as it was within their essentially exclusive power that the use and planning of production happened. The rest of the workers did not have any real say, the Soviets were destroyed soon after the Bolshevik coup and lost the real support that they initially had. Afterwards, of course, they had to let the Chekists plunder, steal and fight with the Soviets who sided with the Mensheviks or other groups. I liked this video on the topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xaqVf1B3Fg
>But in Marx and Engels's texts, there is no fear of organizing to overthrow the bourgeois state, spreading revolutionary terror, and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, rather than being complacent and believing in the superstitions of the bourgeois state for fear of "authoritarianism" or being demonized for wanting the proletariat to become the new ruling class that will abolish social classes, private property, and the anarchy of production.
Yet I wasn't arguing against any of this.

>>2482625
shoulda listened to engels