Marxist-Leninist thread

A revolution is the most repressive act that exists. Do you think that the CNT fought Franco using flowers or something? Besides, "authoritarian socialism" is a buzzword. We are marxists-leninists.

you have Leontievs beginners course but there's this pre-revisionist work from 1955 (last link) that is way bigger and also elaborates on socialism

Economics And Politics In Th
e Era Of The Dictatorship
Of The Proletariat
(very short one but debunking that stalin "invented" any of his ideas against Lenin)
cpgb-ml.org/download/publications/lenin_economics_politics.pdf

POLITICAL ECONOMY
A Textbook issued by the Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R
marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/pe/

Thanks for the pdfs, based user.

Some points on questions of right and left wing deviations, nationalism, bureaucracy

Political Report of the Central Committee to the Sixteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.)
June 27, 1930
marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1930/aug/27.htm

Report to the Seventeenth Party Congress on the Work of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B.)1
January 26, 1934
marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1934/01/26.htm

How do we stop the trend of a dictatorship of the proletariat becoming a dictatorship of the party?

Do you authoritarians think you're different from rightwing authoritarians?

What was the difference between Stalin and Mussolini?
Nothing, both were fascists and statecapitalist

no oversight or accountability. cronyism and a bloated bureaucracy, banning political activity outside a single party, the party, state and military being one unit

then why should it exist?

if this faggot doesn't get banned this board has a massive bias and double standard

nice list of bullshit that got jack shit to do with the USSR, porky shill

...

all of that happened in the USSR and every other fucking "socialist state"

tankies like you are control freak cunts

suck my dick, fagglet

that's tough, huh?
a real contribution to the thread, right?

take your autism levels and inability for debate and fuck off to reddit, nigger

nope.
>>>/faggot/

wow you really proved me wrong

haven't you got some leftists and gays to throw in the gulag?

you're a fascist

prove me wrong

The main reason of that "trend" is an incorrect understanding of class struggle during the dictatorship of the proletariat, which came from the bolsheviks and was assimilated by other revolutionary parties of the III International, like the Albanian Party of Lavor. They believed that once the dictatorship of the proletariat had been established and the bourgeoisie of the country had been expropriated from their business, class struggle within the country basically ended, so the only real danger of capitalist restoration came from without.

This permitted the bourgeoisie to slowly rebuild its power and gain a hold of the new state. How? Because of two main reasons: first of all, because even after the defeat of the old bourgeoise regime, bourgeoise ideology is very strong. Failure to ideologically defeat the bourgeoisie during the transitional stage between the capitalist and communist mode of production leads to revisionism, which destroys the party from within and ideologically disarms the working class.

And second, they underestimated the ability of the overthrown bourgeoisie to use his knowledge (because bourgeois families had better access to education before the revolution) to slowly occupy key positions within the state (scientists, trade-union leaders, factory managers, even party cadres…) and use proletarian democracy to their advantage, slowly taking over the state.

These mistakes were detected by the left wing of the Communist Party of China, which tried to reverse the situation during the Cultural Revolution. Even if they were ultimately defeated, I think that it is fair to say that if a new revolution happened today and succeeded in establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat, those new revolutionaries will have learnt from the past in order to not make those mistakes again.

Having said that, this only happened on the Soviet Union, because the establishment of social-imperialist regimes in Eastern Europe mainly happened because Khrushchev basically purged all the socialist governments of the Warsaw Pact but Albania using the threat of an invasion, and the fall of the socialist governments in Albania and China happened in very different ways.

I recommend you to read more about the Cultural Revolution in general. You could start here: marxists.org/subject/china/peking-review/1966/PR1966-25f.htm

Do you realise that the Vietcong was backed by the Soviet Union, right?

tankies are red fascists so you'd know

so you can't prove me wrong that you're not a fascist, guess you really are one. and who'd give a shit about what a fascist says about the soviet union?

good thing you're a lazy retard and i can simply apply your own shit style of "discussion" and get rid of your faggot existence just like that.

good dialectics, comrade. fight imperialism!

...

Let's take Stalin era Soviet Union as an example. Under the 1936 Constitution, laws were made by the Soviets, anybody had the right to vote or get elected as a deputy, any deputy could have his or her mandate revoked and be expelled from the soviet if the voters wanted to, there was a constant and open debate about state policy in any area, anyone could print a newspaper and say whatever they wanted, and basically it was ten thousand times more democratic that any other country of its time.

As for the single-party thing. Do you really buy into the bourgeoisie fairy-tale that more parties equals more democracy? Because in reality, there is only two roads: the road to communism and the road to capitalist restoration. If the Communist Party is doing its job fine, having more parties would only harm unity for a common objective: communism. For example, when socialist construction started in the USSR, the cadres of the left wing of the Social Revolutionaries and other left wing parties happily joined the Bolsheviks, even when their parties existed, because the bolshevik political line was the correct one. And if the Party has betrayed his ideals and it is working towards capitalist restoration, then it must be overthrown, so it does not matter if there is one, two, three of a hundred traitor parties in the parliament. Case on point, capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union and its eastern European allies has always come in the guise of "plurality" and "freedom". Just read Khrushchev, Gorbachev or Tito to see what I'm talking about.

It is true that burocratism was a major problem, but the government made major efforts to fight against it and expel incompetent and corrupt burocrats from the state apparatus, like the famous purges. The Soviet Union failed, but those were not the reasons.

Because it is needed in order to defeat and repress the bourgeoisie, defend the revolution from imperialist threats. You cannot abolish the state overnight, the history of anarchism proves it. The material conditions of a classless society must be created beforehand. See Catalonia, for example. The CNT really wanted to get rid of the state, but they couldn't, because if they did so they would lose their better weapon against Franco's army in the battleground and the white fifth column in their home. So they accepted in all but in words the marxist thesis of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the Committee of Anti-fascist Militias became the new, proletarian state.

Stop taking the bait, user. He's just messing with you.

i'm just garnering more replies to report and get his faggot ass banned for a while
i got banned for stupid ass reasons while this nigger shits up a thread with Holla Forumsack tier shitpostings and is still here

Stalin did nothing wrong

Are you 13?
That was the age I was when i typed "nigger" on chan.

You crypto-altright bastard

YOUR MOTHER IS A WHORE

LEL IMMA NEVER RETURN TO THIS THREAD SO I HAVE THE LAST WORD, YA BITCH

...

suggesting deletion of all these posts (including mine) and ban of that "Viet Cong" shitposter
OP, please report these too
this faggot adds nothing to the conversation, milking replies to report didn't achieve any moderative action, still

the actual legitimate question you answered is fine, but the shitposting by this faggot needs to go

so edgy

He didn't shot Kosygin, Khrushchev and Zhukov when he had the chance. So he did at least three.

Go back to /marx/ where you belong Stalinists

also

Please do tell me how reading shitty old Stalinist textbooks is better than reading Marx & Engels

Bite me.

Most of the texts that I have linked are not textbooks. I have three reasons about the lack of Marx and Engels' works on my recommendation list.

First, because marxism did not freeze after Engels death, other authors continued developing it. If you just take Marx's original work, you would know nothing about the current stage of capitalism, aka monopolist state capitalism (or imperialism, for short), because Marx studied capitalism in its early stage.

Second, because I made the list as an easy introduction to marxism-leninism, so I linked works which I think are easy to understand, trying not to recommend several works about the same subject in the sake of brevity. Politzer's work is a superb explanation of dialectical materialism, for example. Besides, Marx's work is already known on leftypol. Bettelheim's, less so.

And third, because personally I think that the main problem of the communists today is not the critique of capitalism, but the problem of the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx's works give very little insight in this, because the experiences that we have about the dictatorship of the proletariat happened after Marx's death, with the exception of the Paris Commune.

Even so, you have a point. Anyone who calls himself a communist should read at some point at least Das Kapital and the three-volumes edition of Marx's and Engels' Selected Works. Personally, I recommend this books: Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Critique of the Gotha Programme, The Principles of Communism, Manifesto of the Communist Party, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State plus the works which I have already linked above.

Marxism as a body of knowledge can be taught by books, comics, tapes, movies, documentaries, music and whatever other form of media capable of transmitting ideas. Marxism as a movement, in the other hand, can only be learned by working in the revolutionary struggle. So textbooks can help in the first part.

what's the best tactics of US M-L these days and why is it entryism in the emerging Berniecrat movement?

I'm not american, I'm catalan, but seeing how the communist movement in the USA is in complete disarray I would say that the first step is the reorganization of the movement in order to build a party which can led the proletariat as a real vanguard. But be advised, a union of communists can only be done if they all agree on a certain political line and mass line, which they think correct. This may interest you: nodo50.org/mai/idiomas/ingles/indice_tesis_ingles.htm

Remember, the main factor in the start of a revolution is the subjective one. In order to successfully establish his power, the proletariat needs three tools: the vanguard party, the red army and the New Power. Your duty as a communist is to organize the people so this tools can be created and successfully used. Always remember this maxim: "politics in command of the economy, ideology in command of politics".

It is not, entryism has never succeed at anything, and a communist working for a socialdemocrat movement is not "making the movement more radical", he is making himself a socialdemocrat. You cannot lie to the people in order to attract them to communism, you must be open about your objectives and your political line, so the people can accept it and join you. I recommend you to read Luxembourg in general and also Lenin's "What is to be done" and Hoxha's "Eurocommunism is Anticommunism" to understand this better.

Communist theories are severely underdeveloped economically. There are a plethora of new ways that surplus value is created that don't adhere to the variable/constant split seen in hard labour like credit, and Marx's theories don't address those at all.

Today in the USA anyone can start a newspaper and get their opinions to the rest of the country. It is possible for anyone to become a CEO of a major corporation, and anyone can be elected for president. On paper.

The same is true for what you are stating, and you've fallen for the hype just like Americans holding their hand on their hearts and praising democracy and liberty under the star spangled banner. Political representation and worker control was repressed unofficially by a system of bureaucrats who looked after their own interests. You could call it corruption or opportunism, but it was the inevitable outcome of a state built behind a political power struggle.

How can you say that discussion was open and constant regarding state policy when critics were exiled and murdered? Anyone with an opinion that differed from the best interests of the bureaucrats was labeled a fascist, a kulak, a wrecker, or an imperialist spy or whatever, just like how media today labels anything bad for business as "evil Communist". Label your opponents as evil and you can do whatever you want to them and be seen as a hero.

The USSR failed and returned to capitalism because early socialist development was redirected into securing the positions of power of bureaucrats. Capitalism was inevitable.

Marx's economic theory is underdeveloped because he studied early capitalism, but marxist economy did not freeze after Marx's dead. Even so, I am open to any development of the economic doctrine, of course. ML is not a religion.

It is not the same case as the USSR. In the USSR, anyone could be appointed a manager, and the State gave the workers paper and printers so they could print their own papers. Precisely what the USSR was trying was to make the rights which the bourgeois constitutions proclaimed, real.

I recommend you to read "Soviet Democracy" by Pat Sloan. A lot of what you are saying simply is not true.

There was constant debate and discussion, within the limits of proletarian democracy. Do you object on principle with the repression of counter-revolutionary elements? Even if the Stalin administration made mistakes (everyone does), we should analyse this things on a case on case basis. Say some examples of people "unjustly labelled as an enemy by the bureaucrats" and we'll talk about it.

That's just defeatism. Alright user, it's 1922 and you are in charge. What would have you done, dissolve the army and make all the public sector a bunch of coops?

...

Stalinism is the logical conclusion of Leninism
Prove me wrong i dare you.

Stalinism is just a rip off of trotskyism with more (maybe less actually tbh) dissidents purging.

The entire sluggish schizophrenia diagnosis and everyone who was locked in asylums and forced to take brain-damaging antipsychotics as a result.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sluggish_schizophrenia

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1341504/

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3719218

Are you saying that marxism-leninism twists in some way the theoretical work of Lenin or the Bolshevik Party? If so, how? I certainly do not agree.

"Stalinism" does not exist, it is a buzzword made up by the bourgeois academia to attack marxism-leninism, which ended being adopted also by Trotskyists and Khrushchevites to serve the same objective.

No, marxism-leninism has nothing to do with trotskyism. Marxism-leninism is the strategy and tactics of the proletarian revolution in the age of monopolistic capital, and in particular it is the strategy and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Read "Foundations of Leninism".

What you linked is horrible and I condemn it, but your own sources claim that it happened between the sixties and eighties, it is the responsability of Khrushchevite revisionism, not of marxism-leninism, which fought and dropped blood fighting it. In fact, some of the victims of those tortures were marxists-leninists.

We marxists-leninists defend that the new soviet bourgeoisie slowly gained power in the USSR between the end of World War 2 and the XXth Congress of the PCUS. I explained before how this happened, check . This new bourgeoisie gained key positions in the soviet army, academia and state apparatus, and after Stalin's death made a coup inside the Communist Party, purging the marxist-leninists and ending soviet democracy (Beria was executed and Molotov was exiled, for example. Also, the new 1974 Constitution gave the party "the leading role of society"). After that, the soviet bourgeoisie launched several economic reforms which re-established profit as the drive of production, gave autonomy to the factory managers (effectively turning them into factory owners) and basically ended planned economy, de facto re-establishing capitalism. In the XXth Congress of the PCUS, Khrushchev denounced Stalin and with him the prior line of the PCUS, the marxist-leninist one.

While doing that, the revisionists used the Warsaw Pact, originally a defensive alliance, as a tool to threaten their socialist allies and purge marxists-leninists of the governments of Eastern Europe (polish leader Beirut was murdered in 1956, hungarian Rakósi was purged in 1956, bulgarian Chervenkov in 1954…) while putting revisionists in their place. At the same time, the USSR turned the COMECON (the economic treaty of mutual assistance with its allies) into a way to exploit its neighbours and turning them into colonies. Thus, the USSR became social-imperialist. This is the time when the Sino-Soviet split happened. The Communist Party of China and the Labor Party of Albania denounced Khrushchevite revisionism as a right wing deviation, the USSR as social-imperialism, and declared the need for the proletariat of Easter Europe to rise in revolution and re-establish the dictatorship of the proletariat in their countries. At the same time, the left wing of the Communist Party of China launched the Cultural Revolution, in order to mobilize the working class and fight their own revisionists and new bourgeoisie.

I recommend you to read this: marx2mao.com/Other/KPC64.html

haha so for exemple, let's take beria ; do you think what historians tell us about him nowadays is all lies ? Or do you defend the violence, and "personal advantages" he took, of his policy ?
And more important, in general, how do you explain/justify the treatment of the left opposition (not only trotsky) and of the right opposition (boukharine especially).

Also please use peer-reviewed historians as sources. It's not very convincing if you only have maoist and marxlen historians defending the legacy of their own ideas.

But there is (did OP edit it?):
>Wage, labor and capital, MARX: marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm
>Anti-Duhring, ENGELS: marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/index.htm
I don't know what your definition of "Stalinist textbooks" is, but surely you wouldn't include the books by Lenin in that? And Reed had sympathy towards Trotsky.

I did not edit anything, user is just being autistic.

So a historian's work can only be valid if it is accepted by the bourgeois academia, and if the author of a text happens to be marxist his work is automatically invalid. Is that what you are saying? Because it is a very stupid argument, bourgeoisie historians also have an agenda and an ideology behind them. That's McCarthy tier bullshit. Besides, what part of my explanation are you accusing of being false, exactly? I think that you are just name-calling me so you do not need to actually counter-argument me.

Depends on the historian, of course. But I can tell you right now that anything you learnt on school about the USSR is bullshit, for starters.

Of course I defence violence against counter-revolutionary elements, when it is needed. That's the reason why the dictatorship of the proletariat exists. Have you even read the Communist Manifesto?

That claim is very vague, I am not aware of any notable "personal advantages" that Beria had because of his post. If you post some source, I will be glad to check it out. Even so, Beria's job was to lead the suppression of counter-revolutionaries and foreign spies, and he was appointed to his post by the Soviet government, which was freely elected. So in general I support him, of course.

Here you mention two subjects at the same time: why the political lines of the left and right opposition were incorrect, and why several people of those groups were repressed. I'll begin by saying that only a small number of people from those groups were actually repressed or executed, and they were judged because of actual crimes which are posterior to those debates. Alexandra Kollontai, who I am sure that you have heard about, was part of both the workers' and the left opposition, and her positions on those matters did not affect her position in the Communist Party, she was a loyal member of it until her death.

Both the right and the left opposition were born of the same crucible: the failure of the German and Hungarian revolutions after the end of World War I. The general consensus inside the Bolshevik Party during the Russian Revolution and the Civil War was that their purpose was to inspire the main revolution in Europe. When this failed, they did not know what to do. The USSR was in ruins, an it looked like revolution had failed. Of course, today we know that the reason why this happened is because the idea that revolution will happen in the most advanced capitalist countries is simply wrong. Revolution depends on the subjective factor, class struggle; and not in the objective one, development of the productive forces. The later idea is a revisionist thesis born out of Kautsky and the Second International.

I continue

Thus, a debate began within the Bolshevik Party in order to decide the new way. In general, there were two opposing thesis:
1.- Communism cannot be build in the USSR, so we should maintain a state capitalist economy and wait to see what happens in Europe. For different reasons, both the right and the left opposition defended this.

2.-Communism cannot be build only on the USSR, but we can start to develop communistic relations of production abolishing profit-motive in our economy, industrialize the USSR and modernize its agriculture in order to elevate the productive forces, strengthen proletarian democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and become a useful base of operations for the world revolution. This is the thesis of "Socialism in One Country" defended by the marxists-leninists headed by Stalin, and included three major fronts: putting forward the famous five-year plans, turn agriculture into big coops so that productivity could increase, and a struggle to further democratise the USSR by expanding voting rights to all citizens in the country for the first time (the first Soviet constitution did not gave voting rights to the bourgeoisie and the NEPmen) and making all levels of soviet democracy directly elected by the people (in the early USSR, only the local representatives were elected by the people, this changed with Stalin's 1936 Constitution, which makes common statements as "the early Soviet Union was really democratic but Stalin killed democracy" laughable).

Eventually, the thesis of Socialism in One Country was accepted as the way to go by the majority of the militancy, and was approved in the 13th, 14th and 15th Congresses of the Bolshevik Party. Those who refused to acknowledge majority rule were expelled from the Party, not because they had different opinions in the debate, but because they refused to accept the will of the majority. And even those who were expelled then, could return if they if they decided to carry out what had been approved, as happened initially with Karl Radek and others. If the liquidationist thesis of the United Opposition had been carried forward, the USSR would have either been destroyed in World War II, or turned into today's China by the early 30's.

Why some people, like Bukharin or Radek were arrested and repressed in the 30's, then? Not because of their earlier positions, but because of their current actions. Since they had been incapable of defeating Stalin by democratic means, they tried to sabotage and coup the Soviet government. Trotsky, for instance, tried to provoke an insurrection in the USSR as late as 1940, barely before Operation Barbarossa. Debate is one thing, but this is completely unacceptable, it is counter-revolutionary and must be punished as it.

You said that you did not like sources written by communists, so I recommend you to read Joseph E. Davies' "Mission to Moscow". Davies was the American ambassador in the USSR between 1936 and 1939, so he saw first-hand and reported to Washington his impressions on soviet democracy and the Moscow Trials. And being an American politician, I think that it is fair to say that he is not precisely a "stalinist" or "pro-soviet" guy, but he recognised the validity of soviet democracy.

Srs question pls no bully.

If Marxist-Leninist had it right why did the USSR fail?

Read and for the tl;dr version, read works of the Albanian Party of Labor and the Communist Party of China to see the elaborate explanation. For example, this: marx2mao.com/Other/KPC64.html

Because politics was still representative. Sure, the soviets could have been, and were elected by most of the population regardless of political affiliation. You had four levels of political organization: local soviets for villages/towns/cities, regional soviets, national soviets and then finally the Supreme Soviet being the federal soviet.The Supreme Soviet was elected by national soviets and was the highest lawmaking organ of the state, like a parliament in any modern state. They decided on matters such as military, law enforcment, maintaining the political and upholding the economic system. The rest was pretty much delegated to the people: culture, education, free time, production and so on. One can see how alienated the Supreme Soviet was from the general population, because they were the people who actually knew politics, and when it came to be that different (revisionist) ideas were accepted on the highest level, the general population had no way of countering this. This is why they failed at establishing communism and economic matter certainly have nothing to do primarily with its downfall.

stupid dumb tankie scum please make some toast in the bath
permaban me stupid hotpockets i need to get off this reddit ass board and do something productive

Did it though? I never really see this challenged here but it's my understanding that it was pretty much hijacked by corrupt beaurocrats like Gorbychev and Yeltsin and everyone got completely fucked over by its dissolution.

It's just mind boggling really, a "democratic" Russia founded on a 10% referendum mandate, threats of civil war and shelling parliament when they challenge your criminal bullshit.

That's a cute gif.

I partially agree with you. Something that has to be understood is that even if a state is needed in order to defeat the bourgeoisie, in the long run the state in itself reproduces reactionary ideology, so class struggle still exists in socialism even if it takes other forms. It is a contradiction which only can be solved by communism. The Chinese did it far better in that regard.

isn't China capitalist today? Or do you mean smth else?

I think he's refering to the fact that the chinese were very aware that class strugle should continue even after the revoltion. I think Mao talks about this in On Contradiction.

I meant
I am perfectly aware that China today is capitalist, but proletarian power there did not banished without a fight.

I'm reading marx2mao.com/Other/KPC64.html right now, and I understand this is where your POV perhaps comes from. What I do NOT understand is, how is the bourgeoisie still present in a socialist state, say, the SU when they had a revolution for the specific purpose of removing them from power? It says that even thought they're dis-empowered, they still exist??? How??? Why would you let capitalists be roam freely in your state??? Banish the fuckers!

Oh, I c. this however
What do you think?

nevermind, found this

Leading functionaries of some state-owned factories and their gangs abuse their positions and amass large fortunes by using the equipment and materials of the factories to set up "underground workshops" for private production, selling the products illicitly and dividing the spoils. Here are some examples.

In a Leningrad plant producing military items, the leading functionaries placed their own men in "all key posts" and "turned the state enterprise into a private one". They illicitly engaged in the production of non-military goods and from the sale of fountain pens alone embezzled 1,200,000 old roubles in three years. Among these people was a man who "was a Nepman . . . in the 1920's" and had been a "lifelong thief''.[1]

In a silk-weaving mill in Uzbekistan, the manager ganged up with the chief engineer, the chief accountant, the chief of the supply and marketing section, heads of

[1] Krasnava Zvezda, May 19, 1962.
page 17

workshops and others, and they all became "new-born entrepreneurs". They purchased more than ten tons of artificial and pure silk through various illegal channels in order to manufacture goods which "did not pass through the accounts". They employed workers without going through the proper procedures and enforced "a twelve-hour working day''.[1]

The manager of a furniture factory in Kharkov set up an "illegal knitwear workshop" and carried on secret operations inside the factory. This man "had several wives, several cars, several houses, 176 neck-ties, about a hundred shirts and dozens of suits". He was also a big gambler at the horse-races.[2]

>>1085795
The original bourgeoisie of the Russian Empire was expropriated and repressed, but his ideology was still present. The whole point is that socialism in itself a process of change between the capitalist and the communist mode of production, and until the second completely triumphs over the first one (and that happens when the proletarian state withers away) there are still remnants of capitalism which must be fought. If the revolutionaries fail at doing that, the contradictions between the developing communist mode of production and the existence of a state will slowly generate a new bourgeoisie of factory managers, trade-union and party cadres, military cadres and intellectual academia. I advise you to read Chinese books on the Cultural Revolution.

I know, I know, like I've said, I am reading the text you've supplied. Maybe you didn't notice, but ok. I am shocked by the sheer amount of corruption in production. And people, the workers and farmers just let those managers and chairmen get away with it??? The fuck?

Why can't you all be like Sankara? Your ideology puts you in the perfect position for virtuous terror, but you all really suck at ethics tbqh.

ikr?

And what happened to Sankara? Revolution is a question of power, not ethics.

That kind of people are the ones who anticommunists talk about being "victims of totalitarianism" then Stalin or Beria send them to do forced labor in Kazakhstan.

Oh. Also, IIRC, those very people being exploited accused those corrupt officials, so I guess they did not let the criminals slide after all. But Khruschev still succeded in his revisionism. I'm led to conclude that the SU under Stalin just couldn't overcome its inherent contradictions which enabled officials to abuse their positions, not with all the purges and GULAG incarcerations. As if it were a matter of time before the embryonic exploiting class seized power under Khruschev. Not even the Chinese were able to stop the reactionary movements. Power breeds corruption, yet you need it to bring down the present corrupted power, the capitalist system. I guess that's what Žižek meant when he said "it's hard without a state, even harder without one".

forgot the punch line: "What do"?
20th c. MLism is not good enough, we need to rethink this. I got no idea right now on where to start. I got a bunch of Marxist literature yet to read and then some.

Bourgeois historians have agendas… Different ones. Many of them are actually not here to demonize the USSR. It has nothing to do with being marxist or not ; it has everything to do with your actual main job in life being history. I don't know if you know how "peer-reviewing" works, but it's about other historians looking at your sources to see if there's some bullshit in it. It helps, when you read someone, to also have people verifying his sources on the side. Because I personnally am unable to do it. If I read a text with the clear agenda of defending the USSR, written by someone who hasn't researched history at any other point in his life, and with no one ever examining his findings, I'm sorry but I cannot believe in him. It has nothing to do with him being a marxist-leninist or not (you're right I exagerated), it's just the icing on the cake.
Also, I'm calling you names because it's 4chan. I actually dont have much agaisnt you or your ideology.

by personnal advantages, I mean that in 2003 Soviet archives, at least that's what I've heard everywhere, confirmed he had committed quite a few sexual assaults when he was head of the NKVD. There I've read you find the testimony of two of his bodyguards saying he raped girls in his cute soviet limo (. And a lot of that. Now I haven't checked any of the sources so I leave you all latitude to defend yourself, as long as you refer to historical documents too.

This isn't important, but no, I only ask why those groups were repressed the way they were. Why internal opposition at the head of the russian state couldn't be handled in a different way. Or maybe "treatment" implies something different in english ?
If you didn't guessed already, I'm not having an argument with you I'm just curious of your positions.

See that's what I don't understand… Were do you see any proof Bukharin (forgot it was written like that in english) prepared a coup ? As I've always seen it, he actually did nothing else than publicly disagree, and was repressed for that. His little travel before his death is nothing really strange, and don't mention the fact that he met a menschevik leader because this is not enough evidence to kill someone.

Who and when believed it? Lenin specifically pointed such possibility out after Civil War, and so did Stalin in the 30s. Even in his last works (50s) there are some mentions.

Now, if we are talking post-war USSR (especially post-Stalin) - and substituting "Bourgeoisie" with "Bureaucracy", that might be correct. But by this point 3rd International (Comintern) was already over, so you cannot be talking about it.

Not every kind of exploitator is called Bourgeoisie (Capitalists). There is Aristocracy (Rantier) - when we are talking about Feudalism, there is Bureaucracy - when we are talking about early history (Egypt/Mesopotamia/..).

While you can - and certainly should - argue that private property on state (i.e. Bureaucracy) existed within USSR, calling it Bourgeoisie is wrong. For all intents and purposes, this semi-ruling class (it always grew in power, but managed to establish dominance only in 1989 and then immediately changed economic basis to another, since any lengthy dominance in Socialist state was impossible) was qualitatively different from Capitalists in most respects and should not be grouped together with them.

You fail the very same way.

Defeat - as a single conclusive event - of Bourgeois ideology is impossible as long as Bourgeois economic basis is maintained (unavoidable, until Communism is established as dominant economic relations). Ideology of Bourgeoisie has to be defeated every day, because it is rewarded by the Bourgeois economic basis of society.

That's jumping to conclusions. It can lead to anything.

That's not true.

Soviets didn't underestimate anything. Purges (i.e. removal from the posts) of Party members and management were quite regular. "Class background" was always taken into account.

Also, take note that neither Khrushchev, nor Brezhnev, nor Gorbachev, nor Yeltsin were part of the "overthrown Bourgeoisie". Soviets were destroyed by members of their own - new - elite, not by the old.

Essentially, I agree with your conclusions, but I think that we must not throw away marxism-leninism as some say, we must learn from experience in order to further develop it and find solutions to the limitations of the socialist revolutions of the XX Century. In that regard, I find very important to study and apply the experience of maoism, which I believe to be the most developed example of revolutionary theory. That is way I have mentioned the Cultural Revolution several times in this thread. My main argument is that when the Bolsheviks started the construction of socialism they were sailing uncharted seas. Today, we have an experience and knowledge that they did not have, and that is our main weapon.
If I had to rewrite Žižek's quote, I would say "it's hard with a state, but impossible without one".

I have read that accusation against Beria several times, but only from bourgeoisie historians so I find it hard to believe. Of course, if it had really happened (if you say that a credible source exists maybe is true, I do not know) I would condemn it, obviously. Even so, this kind of crimes are graves but do not undermine the political line of the Bolshevik Party during the period of socialist construction in the USSR, in the same sense as I condemn the criminalization of homosexuality in the USSR and I criticize Stalin for it, but I would not throw half a century of revolutionary experience because of it.

Physical elimination of opponents was not the usual or better way of doing things, evidently. Under democratic centralism, there must be open criticism and debate, but once a decision has been made the minority must submit to the will of the majority. That's how democracy works. When someone in a position of power (like the CC of the Communist Party, for example) refused to do so, he was removed from his post. Radek and Trotsky were expelled from the party years before their deaths, for example. The executions only affected those who actively tried to undermine soviet power by illegal means.

If you wanna look at the Bukharin affair by yourself, here's the entire report of his trial: drive.google.com/file/d/0B1ZP6ZurgOg-RGd4R1FRSnUwTW8/view

Here there is more information:
archive.org/stream/SovietPolicyAndItsCritics/Soviet Policy and Its Critics#page/n7/mode/2up
clogic.eserver.org/2010/Furr.pdf

No, we don't.

"New Soviet Bourgeoisie" (Bureaucracy) existed since the beginning, since division of labour (and necessity of managers) was impossible to abolish.

What was the actual mechanism of "exploitation"?

What are you talking about exactly? There are many historians.

Even wiki - grudgingly - admit some facts:

You are wrong.

"What do these changes signify? Firstly, they signify that the dividing lines between the working class and the peasantry, and between these classes and the intelligentsia, are being obliterated, and that the old class exclusiveness is disappearing. This means that the distance between these social groups is steadily diminishing. Secondly, they signify that the economic contradictions between these social groups are declining are becoming obliterated. And lastly, they signify that the political contradictions between them are also declining and becoming obliterated. Such is the position in regard to the changes in the class structure of the U.S.S.R. (…) Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that society consists of antagonistic classes, of classes which own wealth and classes which do not own wealth; that no matter what party comes into power, the guidance of society by the state (the dictatorship) must be in the hands of the bourgeoisie; that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by, and beneficial to, the propertied classes. Unlike bourgeois constitutions, the draft of the new Constitution of the U.S.S.R. proceeds from the fact that there are no longer any antagonistic classes in society; that society consists of two friendly classes, of workers and peasants; that it is these classes, the labouring classes, that are in power; that the guidance of society by the state (the dictatorship) is in the hands of the working class, the most advanced class in society, that a constitution is needed for the purpose of consolidating a social order desired by, and beneficial to, the working people."

On the Draft Constitution of the U.S.S.R, Stalin (marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/11/25.htm)

"The People's Socialist Republic of Albania and our socialist society are radically different from the capitalist and revisionist states and societies in the various countries of the world. In what does this difference consist?
In the first place, it consists in the economic base, the social structure and superstructure which reflects this base. In capitalist and revisionist societies, the base and the superstructure have an antagonistic internal structure whereas in our socialist society they are free from class antagonisms and, as such, they are constantly perfected.
In our conception of the base and the superstructure, which characterize every socio-economic formation, we are guided by the theoretical principles inherited from Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. Our Party has correctly mastered and implemented these principles in theory and practice, that is why our country, once economically poor and culturally and educationally backward, has been transformed into a free, independent and sovereign country with a developed socialist economy, an advanced culture, educational system and science, a powerful defence potential and a correct and principled foreign policy."

Proletarian democracy is genuine democracy, Hoxha (ciml.250x.com/archive/hoxha/english/enver_hoxha_proletarian_democracy_speech_1978.html)

There are three things wrong with this question.

First problem: USSR did not fail.

Second problem: If you are talking about dissolution of USSR, it happened after ML was abandoned. I.e. "failure" - in a nationalistic sense - could only be interpreted as an additional proof of ML being "right" (the correct word would be "practically applicable"), not the other way round.

Final, third problem, is the flawed (Popper's) premise that any strategy/tactics (i.e. ideology) can grant some eternal magic invulnerability against everything. Anyone can be defeated. ML is superior to other ideologies because you have the best chance at winning, but it doesn't mean that specifically your chance is 100%.

I don't agree. Supreme Soviets were still elected by the general public.

Main reason was the de-ideologization of the Vanguard and USSR in general.

WWII was - primarily - nationalist war, not class war. This greatly shifted perception of the Soviet people away from the Marxism: it was not as relevant as simple xenophobia. Additionally, Party had an immense influx of the people barely familiar with Marxism - who got in simply by virtue of their other qualities (personal bravery, for example). Finally, a lot of old Communists died during WWII.

This all weakened the hold of actual Communists over the Party and led to revisionism. Once the Vanguard had fallen, general public was left disorganized and unprotected from the rise of Bureaucrats - which led to restoration of Capitalism under Gorbachev as much more efficient way of exploitation.

How would you call it, then? And how it was qualitatively different if their objectives were the same as those of the bourgeoisie in imperialist countries? They did dismantle socialism, after all.

I fail to see how this differs from what I am saying.

Historically, it led to revisionism. Are you denying that?

Yes it is, read Stalin and Hoxha below.

But it did not have total political power until the XXth Congress of the PCUS.

Exportation of capital and importation of super-profits. This text explains it well, but it is in spanish: revolucionobarbarie.wordpress.com/2013/12/11/el-socialimperialismo-sovietico-como-pieza-fundamental-del-imperialismo-mundial/
I am sure that you can find similar writings in english here, but I have read just a couple of those: bannedthought.net/China/MaoEra/GreatDebate/index.htm

What exactly contradicts my point?

Stalin is speaking about completely different thing. You are taking it out of the context.

Since 1934 the general position was that the old Capitalist class has no power within USSR (kulaks being mostly destroyed). This is what Stalin in 1936 speaks about: now USSR is truly Socialist - in the sense, that everyone should have the same representation (before it workers had ~5 times more voting power since they were more revolutionary). But that's it. Nobody claimed that Counter-Revolution was impossible at this point, nor that USSR had no internal problems. Trials of the 1937/38 were explicitly about the internal threat - which was considered very real.

And Hoxha speech hardly proves anything. Besides, it's 1978. Also, contrast his "in our socialist society they are free from class antagonisms" with Stalin's "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR" - in which he goes on about potential problems (class struggle, effectively).

The most relevant bit:
marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1951/economic-problems/ch13.htm
> it would be wrong to rest easy at that and to think that there are no contradictions between our productive forces and the relations of production. There certainly are, and will be, contradictions, seeing that the development of the relations of production lags, and will lag, behind the development of the productive forces. Given a correct policy on the part of the directing bodies, these contradictions cannot grow into antagonisms, and there is no chance of matters coming to a conflict between the relations of production and the productive forces of society. It would be a different matter if we were to conduct a wrong policy, such as that which Comrade Yaroshenko recommends. In that case conflict would be inevitable, and our relations of production might become a serious brake on the further development of the productive forces.

Granted, it's phrased differently, and not actual "Counter-Revolution" is mentioned, but potential for contradictions in USSR is plainly pointed out.

Bureaucracy (I recommend Marx's Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, 3rd Part; it's a bit incoherent, but gives the general idea).

That said, Technocracy (even Theocracy) works too. At least, it's better than Capitalists or Bourgeoisie.

Both abilities, methods, and vulnerabilities are quite different from Capitalists.

For example, the rights of Bureaucrats are under constant scrutiny and could easily be revoked. It's muh privilege bestowed by higher authority, not an actual right - unlike private property within Capitalist state, which is treated as a basic right of individual that possesses it.

To keep and increase their power, Bureaucrats must resort to obfuscation, by turning their functions into mystery, artificially increase their importance - essentially shamanism (which is why early Bureaucracies were relying on religion and which is why Theocratic ideology is - imo - acceptable name). On the other hand, Capitalists can openly conduct their business and don't need to fetishize it.

Oppression from the Bureaucrats results from their obfuscation of the state functions (or whatever methods of altering public perception of their duties they use) and alienating state functions from the general public, unlike that of Capitalists, who must exploit their workers to turn in profit.

Finally, crises of Bureaucracy would be different from the crises of Capitalist states. It's not like there will be overproduction without free market of Capitalism, yes? I would suggest witch hunts (not unlike McCarthyism or 1937/38) as an example of Bureaucrats creating fake threats to legitimize their existence, but that's inconsequential.

Bureaucrats are different from Capitalists in both goals and methods.

That doesn't make them Capitalists.

You say that Soviets failed to defeat Bourgeois ideology. I'm telling that this is impossible to do for anyone - not until Communism is reached.

Thus it cannot be used as a reason.

No. I don't agree that it is the only possible conclusion. Contradiction could be solved in any way.

Nor did it have full political power during - nor after. Only 1989-1990 could be used as a breaking point - when qualitative changes in Soviet Union begun and muh privileges of Bureaucrats begun to turn into rights of Capitalists.

Concentrating on XXth Congress (it's CPSU, btw) alone is wrong. It's oversimplification. The very same processes existed long before it happened: we have to admit that Soviet democracy was a sham long before it happened, or accept that Bureaucrats did not complete their takeover during 1956 (or 1961, which was also significant).

Wordfilter is annoying

Honestly, I think that Stalin never had a clear policy on this matter and never thought of the possibility of capitalist restoration from within after World War II.

Alright, you have a point. But the important fact here is that the proletariat lost control of its state.

You don't understand my point. You said before that "Main reason was the de-ideologization of the Vanguard and USSR in general. WWII was - primarily - nationalist war, not class war. This greatly shifted perception of the Soviet people away from the Marxism: it was not as relevant as simple xenophobia. Additionally, Party had an immense influx of the people barely familiar with Marxism - who got in simply by virtue of their other qualities (personal bravery, for example). Finally, a lot of old Communists died during WWII. This all weakened the hold of actual Communists over the Party and led to revisionism. Once the Vanguard had fallen, general public was left disorganized and unprotected from the rise of Bureaucrats - which led to restoration of Capitalism under Gorbachev as much more efficient way of exploitation."
That translates into hegemony of bourgeoisie ideology, while communists during socialism should struggle for hegemony of marxism-leninism. The CPSU failed at that, didn't it? That's what I'm saying.

So you think that the dictatorship of the proletariat continued until the dissolution of the USSR?

I know, my mistake. In spanish is "Partido Comunista de la Unión Soviética, PCUS" and I was writing quickly…

Fool!

I fail to see your point.

Well, as I've pointed out - in 1951 Stalin was in the camp that believed that superstructure (Socialist state in our case) could come into the conflict with the basis (economy) in USSR - and Marxism is quite clear on what happens afterwards: basis wins and superstructure changes until it conforms to the basis.

I.e. possibility of Capitalist Restoration is there, even if not mentioned directly.

I can't make any assumptions based on the the absence of actual mentions of Capitalist Restoration. It was hardly a threat at the time - IRL it took 40 years for it to happen; even in the 80s practically nobody considered it possible - and Stalin was a politician, who was dealing with immediate problems: 5-10 years, maybe 20.

Yes. I just don't like people confusing terms. After all, referring to Bureaucrats as Bourgeoisie is one step away from calling them State Capitalists and that way revisionism lies. Clarity is important.

Ah. I see now. I'll elaborate then, but keep in mind, I still struggling to understand the whole situation (causes and consequences of the 50s in USSR).

Bourgeois ideology is the one of free exchange, of private property, of social darwinism, no? Can we say that Soviets had hegemony of this Bourgeois ideology before late 80s? I would say - no. Even in 1988 (rehabilitation of Bukharin, with a lot of media dedicated to his ideas - right-wing, compared to mainstream ML), most of Soviet population was not supporting it to the level of contemporary Western population - and this is what we call "hegemony of Bourgeois ideology". In the 50s right-wing ideas were even less popular and mass-media wasn't blaring Liberal dogmas.

I.e. ideology of masses was still Socialist (even Marxist). Even if Nationalism - which I could (and, probably, should) identify as one of the elements of Bourgeois ideology - did get some (mostly subconscious) prominence, it did not represent some cardinal shift, turning point for the masses of people. Much more important is the consequence of it: additional effect on the Vanguard.

What I meant when I talked about de-ideologization of Vanguard, is a slightly different "ideology": not one of popular everyday perception of the masses, but more developed body of theory and practice - the one that differentiates and defines Vanguard, the one that drives the practical change in society.

I.e. I was talking about loss of revolutionary (practically applicable) quality of Vanguard's ideology, not the shift from Socialist to Capitalist ethics of the general population - it was still Socialist, even if increasingly reactionary.

I would fully agree that Soviet Communists failed at sustaining (and increasing - you can't actually "sustain" anything, only develop further) quality of ML, but I'm not sure it could be said that "hegemony" was lost. Not in one decade, at least.

There is this idea that everything changed in 1956 (or 1953). I don't think this is true, nor can I accept this as Marxist analysis. I'm mostly arguing here against this idea.

If you are asking if we should strive to have DotP of USSR circa 1986, I say - no. We can do much better.

That said, I do not treat "dictatorship of the proletariat" as a binary state. It's an abstract concept, sum of all the social relations. Some are Socialist, some are not. You can never have 100% of anything IRL. And I would say those social relations in USSR were predominantly Socialist until around 1988-89 (specifics are unimportant: we don't have exact units of measurement).

Can you explain why you think a revolution in those places would have any effect on a revolution occurring in the US?

I think that our main disagreement is in the class character of the Soviet State after the de-stalinization.

My reasoning is not that in 1956 Khrushchev pulled the "end socialism" switch and communism ended there. In dialectical terms, my reasoning is that proletarian dictatorship (this is, proletarian rule over the Soviet State) was slowly eroded between World War II because of limitations in the praxis of the PCUS and the Bolshevik line (like the primacy of elevation of productive forces over revolution of productive relations, the primacy of party cadres over soviet deputies…) failed to surpass the inner contradictions in socialism, and the XXth Congress marks the moment where this situation jumped from a quantitative degradation of proletarian rule to a qualitative change of situation. I am not necessarily saying that elections were a sham or something like that, western bourgeoisie democracies also have free elections but their class character is clear. What I am saying is that the soviet proletariat lost control of its state, which became the dictatorship of a new class (the ones who you called Bureaucracy or technocracy) which first tried to accommodate the State into a phony socialism made at their own measure and which developed capitalist relations of production (in the Lieberman reforms, for example). Eventually, the contradictions between this capitalist relations of production and the socialist model of productive forces that the second became a limitation to the first, so the contradiction was solved with a new synthesis: the abolition of the USSR and the restoration of free market.

Because of three reasons:

1. Because a successful revolution of that size would end the consensus of "There Is No Alternative", give inspiration to revolutionaries in the entire world and show the masses that the road to socialism is possible, as the October revolution did.

2. Because a successful revolution would also mean a successful revolutionary model and a guide to revolutionaries around the world, giving cohesion to the left into a main, viable project; much like the October and Chinese revolution made most of the revolutionaries of the XX Century marxists-leninists. A quick wikipedia search will show you that almost all the successful revolutionary parties of the XX Century have their origins in the III International, which appeared because of the October Revolution.

3. Because the existence of an important socialist stronghold of that size would mean extensive material support to revolutionaries around the world, in the same way as the lone USSR in the 30's gave countless money and materials to foment revolution everywhere.

I don't think bourgeois historians buried skeletons in the garden of Beria's villa, comrade.

Source?

Yes.

I have some problems understanding this bit:

Also, I don't like "surpassing inner contradictions in Socialism" as a turn of phrase. In my opinion, this is something only Communism is capable of, not Socialist state. Contradictions of Socialism are inherent. They can managed, but never surpassed - not within Socialism.

And I still haven't gotten around to read Spanish texts about Soviet "colonialism" you provided.

But - yes. Class character is the basic problem.

In my opinion:
- XXth Congress (speaking broadly) is still quantitative change - for USSR as a whole (it was qualitative change for the Vanguard - Party). Qualitative changes for USSR would be Gorbachev reforms.
- Proletariat still retained it's position as a ruling class (even if it begun to lose ground)
- Bureaucracy did not become an actual class (that would happen only in late 80s)
- Capitalist relations of production never became significant until much later (late 80s).

Now, to specifics:
This is why I don't like words like Capitalists (or Bourgeoisie), when it comes to USSR. It's cargo-cultism, that stems from an attempt to denigrate Soviet model, by claiming that it's no different from Capitalist states, by rejecting the very basics of Marxism.

So, "capitalist relations" in 1964 are already "developed"?

But what is "Capitalist relations"?
- It's a necessity for worker to sell himself to Capitalist into wage slavery to live. Do we see this in USSR circa 1964? Do we see armies of jobless, that allow Capitalist to exploit his workers under the threat of unemployment? No, we do not. First wave of unemployment (after its official liquidation in 1933) happened only in 1988.

- It's private ownership of the means of production. This includes an ability to buy and sell means of production. Whatever excesses Bureaucracy was capable of (the scope is much more limited than many post-Trotskyists claim), it did not possess the ability to freely buy and sell Capital. It could neither loan money, nor invest some other way. More often than not, it couldn't even legally large sums of money (by the virtue of being unable to earn large sums of money legally).

- It's an anarchy of production (an unavoidable consequence of individuals fully owning MoP as private property), with intense competition arising between different enterprises that unavoidably results in constant bankruptcies and closures. Did this happen in USSR? The obvious answer is "No".

Those are but few of "Capitalist relations" that every Capitalist state has - but USSR did not have. I can add more, but it is obvious already that it is not regular Capitalism we are talking about. What kind of "Capitalism" was it then? Shall we develop some special Capitalism for USSR specifically, or redefine the word Capitalism (like Wolff does)? Shall we say that Marxism is outdated since it does not allow us to put a label of "Capitalism" on USSR?

Specifically Lieberman reforms were hardly "Capitalist". It's a restoration of "director's fund" (introduced in 30s, got effectively scrapped in 1955) - material rewards for the working collectives - I could even call it anti-Bureaucratic move, since Bureaucracy lost a bit of power. Either way, while it did put working collectives mindset of profit-oriented activity, it cannot be used as an example of "Capitalist relations". It's a very long road from this to the actual Capitalism.

In case somebody claims that "director's fund" belonged to director personally, I'd like to say that this is bullshit. It's use was strongly regulated.

I would agree with this happening in 1988-1991.

Also, I don't really understand what "socialist model of productive forces" should mean in this context. It's Capitalist basis that came into conflict with the Socialist superstructure (I'm speaking about 1988-1991). You make it sound like Socialist basis and Capitalist basis came into conflict, which is weird.

>while it did put working collectives into mindset of profit-oriented activity,

i've seen ML threads on 4pol lately, was that your doing OP?

...

Bumping the only good thread

With that I meant planned economy. It seems like neither of us is able to convince the other, so I will just link some texts about the matter which I find interesting. I think that they can explain my point far better than I and this way everyone will be able to judge, even if it's a lot of text. If you wanna recommend some texts on the matter too, feel free to do it and I will try to read them.

>The Polemic on the General Line of the International Communist Movement, by the CC of the Chinese Communist Party (bannedthought.net/China/MaoEra/GreatDebate/PolemicOnTheGeneralLine-1965.pdf)
>Reject the revisionist theses of the XX Congress of the CPSU and the anti-marxist stand of Khruschev's group! Uphold Marxism-Leninism, by Enver Hoxha (marx2mao.com/Other/RRT60.html)
>The working class in revisionist countries must take the field and re-establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, by the CC of the Labour Party of Albania (marx2mao.com/Other/WCRC68.html)
>A criticism of Soviet economics, by Mao Tse-tung (marx2mao.com/Mao/CSE58.html)

Probably.

I recommended Lenin's Karl Marx because as a 101 reading is quite good, since it's a quick read and explains the basis of dialectical materialism, marxist economic doctrine and communism. Even so, I also recommended Anti-Düring, so your point is moot. Besides, most people on this board already read Marx. If people worry so much of this shit, the next time I open a thread like this I will include

Geez, user. Instead of being an uppity asshole you could recommend some Marx's texts that you think that I should include in the OP.

That's not the point here. The point is the exchange of information. As long as methodology is correct, given the same facts, we shall arrive at the same conclusion.

For example, I strongly doubt we have the same sources at our disposal. Given only "capitalist" evaluation of Soviet economy and little to no access to primary sources, it is impossible to make any judgement beyond that of post-Trotskyist "State Capitalism" (even if timeframe is a bit different).

Yeah. I'll need to get researching Maoist ideas at some point. They seem iffy, but I withheld my judgement until I can properly understand Mao's approach.

Well, since you speak Spanish (much better than I do, if there is any doubt; so don't make a habit of linking Spanish texts) and are familiar with Maoism (which I tend to eschew), I'd like your opinion on Che's text (I don't think there is English translation) of the same period (1964):
marxists.catbull.com/espanol/guevara/64-finan.htm

Incidentally, he also mentions Liberman reforms (though, he doesn't elaborate), but that's of no importance.

The question I'm interested in is the analysis of his text from your point of view. Of particular importance are the methods of material remuneration (in "estímulo material versus conciencia" and further) and contradictions of Socialism in general. I.e. his ideas about Socialist/Capitalist economic relations in context of Maoist theory and practice (especially practice) - preferably with links to Maoist texts and quotes that support/contradict his statements, but that's a lot to ask.

Ok, I'll read Che's text.

bumping

pump

Explains a lot tbh

Is Stalinism even communism? Can Stalinists call themselves communists? Was Stalin really any different to Hitler?

n2ce b9 m9

i wish /marx/ was more alive

Same tbh this is one of the few about ML/USSR threads in a long time that hasn't been completely derailed by anarchists and leftcoms.

Have you read bland on the restoration of capitalism in the USSR (revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/BlandRestoration.pdf)? He argues one of the most important things that the Khrushchev era reforms did is put more autonomy back in the hands of the managers of Soviet enterprises, and hence they became private, corporate-like enterprises in everything but name. There were many other things they did to bring about the existence of a capitalist class, such as reintroducing interest and bankruptcy, unemployment as "economic levers" upon workers and the "state" enterprises.

You have some elements like outright gangsters, corrupt officials, secret capitalists, and those in the relatively small private sector (which grew in size in the revisionist era) that practiced capital accumulation in a way familiar to us in the West even if it was underground or marginal.

What do M-L's think of former M-L's like Murray Bookchin and Abdullah Ocalan?

Nope. Frankly, the amount of bullshit post-Trotskyists produce is astonishing. I tend to ignore most of secondary or tertiary sources when the magic words "Capitalism in USSR" are used.

After looking through:

I see he has a lot of Soviet sources quoted, which is good. However, interpretation is biased in the extreme.

For example, ability of enterprise to act independently in some areas - the ones that Central Planning did not and could not regulate (production of goods over planned amount, for example) - is presented as a complete freedom of enterprise.

But it should be obvious that to expect from Central Planning to oversee everything and react to everything is nonsense. Nobody knows how much stuff will be produced - not exactly. If during one month enterprise produced 5% more, what should be done? Shall we stop everything and demand from Gosplan to recalculate Five-Year Plan to include this surplus? Is it BETRAYAL OF THE REVOLUTION to let enterprise independently sell this surplus to some other enterprise - whose supplier underperformed during this month?

Also, he resorts to semantic trickery, pretending that the terms hold the same meaning in USSR as they do in the West and leaves actual practice out of discussion. It's hypocrisy to say that "enterprise has the rights of possession" when he himself admits that those "rights" were regulated in the extreme and - as I know from other sources - were exercised in a very limited fashion.

Sure, enterprise had some powers in decision-making process. Sure director had some powers over enterprise. But what were those powers? How do they compare to the "correct" Stalinist economy? What was the difference, when it happened? What was the impact?

He doesn't explain and thus lies by omittance.

Yes. I'll clarify that it would be in Top-10 list. This is why Khrushchev is often called Trotskyist - reduction of evil "Soviet Bureaucracy". Which, obviously, resulted in actual growth of actual power of Bureaucracy - but not its transition to full-fledged class. Especially, class of Capitalists.

Nope. That's bullshit. Even after 1977 - decades later - you can't call them private. Even in 1989, before Privatisation - when the power of Bureaucracy reached it's apex - I would not call them private. It was state (administrative relations) that became private property, not economic relations between entities within (not fully, to be precise).

Specifics, please. I could say "yes", but I would mean "yes, in 1989", not "yes, in 1961".

This difference is crucial. State Socialism in decline is still State Socialism, not State Capitalism. Pretending otherwise is ignoring Marxist analysis in favour of political opportunism.

> You have some elements like outright gangsters, corrupt officials, secret capitalists, and those in the relatively small private sector (which grew in size in the revisionist era) that practiced capital accumulation in a way familiar to us in the West even if it was underground or marginal
Emphasized bit is important. Yes, there were illegal activities in the USSR. There were secret Capitalists. That doesn't mean that they - as some suggest - defined and dominated economic relations.

...

But Bland was a Hoxhaist fam.

You've obviously not spoken to stalinfag enough, everything he doesn't like is trotskyism.

I made the list as an "introduction", but seeing how people complain I'll link more Marx and Engels next time.

It has more to do with communism than anarco-capitalism with anarchism, if you want the truth.
>>1096584
Same. But I think that if we maintain a ML general in leftypol we can do some good work. A lot of the people here haven't read a lot of marxism, economics or history and have only heard a one-sided version of the history of socialism in the XX, so I'll try to turn this into a general thread, as people do in 4chan. I think that I'll call it /mlg/, "marxist-leninist general". This way we can create movement and people can ask questions if they need to. Two-line struggle against opportunism, m8.

I've read that, Ismail recommended it. I thought that it was quite good.

Could you explain what do you mean with "post-Trotskism"?

Revisionists. In Ocalan's case, people's protracted war in the Middle East (and specially in Syria's case) is clearly the way to go, but the PKK have abandoned communist struggle in favour of purely nationalistic and opportunistic objectives, while becoming puppets of US imperialism. Just imagine what could have meant a people's war which connected the communist guerrillas in Turkey, Palestine and Afghanistan while threatening the oil supply of the entire imperialist system. Instead we have shitty regionalism and a pseudo-libertarian speech which disguises the social-democratic and chauvinistic political line of the PKK.

Are you an idiot? There is so much anti-Soviet propaganda, ten lifetimes will not be enough to read through.

Or do you read through every bit of tinfoil nonsense that you come across because otherwise it would be unfair?

I wouldn't care even if he self-identified as an attack helicopter.

The concept of Capitalism in USSR is the thing that got popularized and developed by members of 4th International - after Trotsky's death, because he was absolutely against it. That's 40s and 50s. That makes this concept post-Trotskyist.

Granted, Bland is a bit different in that he shifts timeframe a bit: this time it's not Stalin who abolished Socialism and created Capitalism, but Khrushchev. But that is not enough to change the core of reasoning - it relies on the same approach.

At least paste in my tripcode, if you want to use someone else's posts as mine.

To elaborate further: attempts to put the label of Capitalism on Stalin's USSR happened during 30s, but Trotsky - still being Marxist - resisted them. Of course, he developed instead his "degenerated worker state", but he didn't go fully anti-Marxist.

Which is why it is unfair to call this concept Trotskyist. Nevertheless, it got propagated by people who identified as Trotskyists - which is why post-Trotskyist.

Let me guess, in the Syrian situation Assad is "objectively" a progressive force?

Also I find it funny that you use Maoist terminology but subsumed under a Stalinist framework when Maoism is a (internal and immanent) critique of Stalinism

Also what is your obsession with including a picture with almost all of your posts? I noticed this with Ismail as well.

So Bland is "objectively" a Trotskyist like Khrushchev? Is every leftist (revisionist ones included) who opposes Stalinism a Trotskyist?

saged thread, back to /marx/ please

This also goes very much for Bettelheim as well to be particular in what I mean.

No. And what's with the "objectively"?

No.

Can you even read?

I hate you Holla Forums

I see. Obviously Trotsky was always against calling the USSR capitalist, but he did it because if he had said so he would be condemning his own work and accusing himself of being a capitalist-roader. He never tried that stunt because he's was a pretentious cunt who was butthurt of not being the leader of the Soviet Union, and didn't really have valid criticism of the USSR and the III International. And the idea of a "degenerated worker's state" is anti-marxist, it would be like saying that a bourgeois state with a communist-led government and a leftist majority in the party is a "deformed bourgeois state", closer to the dictatorship of the proletariat than the one of the bourgeoisie. But it is also obvious that the USSR fell and capitalism has been reinstalled in Russia, so accusing any work which tries to explain this without using the excuse of "Gorbachev did it" of being a Trotskyist is ridiculous. If Perestroika happened, then something was very wrong years or even decades before it started it. And just blaming Perestroika doesn't explain why capitalism was also reinstalled in China, Albania, Vietnam or Cambodia.

Having said so, I think that it's important to distinguish the subtle difference between socialization and nationalization of the means of productions. In modern, monopolistic state capitalist economies (as in the US or Europe), the state is the owner of a lot of businesses, but this nationalised capital it is not in the hands of the people. We know that socialization of the industry is made by nationalization, so the most important thing that we have to look in order to know if a socialist economy is truly socialist once nationalization happens is the class character of the state. If the state is in the hands of the proletariat, then it naturally follows that the economy is also in the hands of the workers. If not, then the economy is not socialist, because it is in the hands of the class who has control of the state.

After the XXth Congress, the political line defended by Stalin was attacked and abandoned under false accusations and lies. Is this Leninism, or revisionism?
Khrushchev abandoned the socialist principle of using the large-term profit of the national economy as the way to guide the economic planning, and instead made short-term profit of each business the main guide. Is this the way to communism, or to capitalism?
Under the Lieberman's and later economic reforms, the factory managers were given more and more free hand in the economic affairs, while ignoring the role of the workers and undermining the role of the state. Does this benefit the workers, or the factory managers?
Khrushchev and later Brezhnev abandoned the struggle against imperialism in the third world, imposing a policy of "détente" with USA, and defending that national and colonial struggles do not need to be lead by communist parties in order to become proletarian movements, defending things like the petty-bourgeois "arab socialism" which repressed the real communists, while obtaining huge profits from unequal trade with the third world and their "allies" of the socialist camp. Is this struggle against imperialism, or neo-colonialism with a faux red flag?
After 1956 the USSR began to ruthlessly use their armed forces to coup supposed allies of the Soviet Union, as Czechoslovakia or Afghanistan (a policy which was later made official with the name of "Brezhnev Doctrine"). I know that the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia had fallen under the control of revisionists, but what's the difference between this and the condemned and failed Trotskyist tactic of "exporting revolution" with the Red Army? And in the invasion of Afghanistan the excuse of "saving socialism" did not even exist, because the purged ones were the revolutionaries! Is this internationalism, or social-imperialism?
After 1956 the USSR tried to sabotage the economic development of those "allies" who didn't submit to the revisionist and neo-colonialist praxis of "socialist international division of labour", going so far as to attack with armed force the People's Republic of China! Is this how Khrushchevites understand frienship between socialist nations?

Could any of this ever happen if the USSR was led by a revolutionary party and the working people? The answer is no.

If the proletariat lost it's power over the Soviet state, who won that power? The answer is obvious: the same people who latter dismantled the USSR: the factory managers, the upper cadres of the Soviet Army and the corrupt leaders of the CPSU who took control over the Party after Stalin's death and the purge of the marxists-leninists.

I didn't said that. Nice straw-man.
Maoism is does not abandon Marxism-leninism, maoism develops marxism-leninism while learning from the errors of the previous experiences of proletarian dictatorship. Mao himself said that "Stalin was 70% right and 30% wrong", so you are full of shit, read this: On the question of Stalin, HONGQI MAGAZINE: marxists.org/subject/china/documents/polemic/qstalin.htm
It's not an "obsession", it's just a way to make the thread more colourful. This is a image board, you know?
Nice to see that you like to debate with those with different opinions than you. Truly a libertarian and democratic move. Don't worry, if this thread dies before it's time I'll just make a new one.

So I know you're a Maoist but you seem pretty well-read across the spectrum. What's your opinion on Hoxha, the Albanian critique of Maoism and the Hoxhaist movement in the world today?

which one of you made this

boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/100753587

Why not just say tankie general?

Why not make a Trot, Anarkiddie, and left-com general? Oh, wait…that's every thread.

Hoxha was a great marxist-leninist who successfully lead Albania during its darkest years, so I respect him, even if him (as any other) made some mistakes.
The critique of Maoism by the LPA has some good points: the cult of personality around Mao has to be harshly criticized, the national bourgeoisie had too much power during the period of socialist construction (even if it is true that the CPC tried to combat that) and during the Cultural Revolution it was proven that an important section of the Central Comitee of the CPC were capitalist-roaders and revisionists, being Deng Xiaoping the prime example.
Even so, some of the Albanian critique is incorrect or unjust, as the false claim that Mao supposedly believed than the peasants and not the proletariat were leadership of the revolution (in fact, Albania's and China's revolutions developed similarly: small worker organizations (the Communist Parties of China and Albania) mobilised the petty bourgeoisie and the huge peasant population under the banner of national liberation, and after driving out the fascist invader a broad democratic coalition led by the Communist Party began to build socialism).
The main problem with the Albanian critique and the Labour Party of Albania in general is that they didn't fully understood the lessons from the capitalist restoration in the USSR, so they did not understood the two-line struggle between the rightwingers of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping in one hand, and the leftwingers of Mao and the Gang of Four in the other, thus failing to understand the entire point of the Cultural Revolution and what was happening in China in general during the 60s and 70s. On the long term, this led the LPA into the same mistakes that the CPSU made, and to the fall of communist rule in Albania.

Not me, but whoever is doing this is based and should keep doing it.

Could you remind me of how many Trotskyist revolutions have happened in the history of ever?

Oh, I remember: none.

the russian revolution

I didn't give the Albanian critique much credence because, after all, Albanian communism "failed" too. But reading Mao's transcripts between Nixon and Kissinger really broke my heart and made me rethink my impression of Hoxha's critique (revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/index.htm#yugo)

Although I must say Albania's "failure" to me is interesting because a common theme in neo-maoist circles is that the 8grade wage system or wage inequality of any sort is the breeding ground for revisionism, in this respect Albania perhaps went furthest with an income inequality rate of just 2:1 effectively making it the most egalitarian country in terms of income on earth. Or maybe they needed to adopt Stalin's concept of getting the party out of government in order for it do more direct work with the masses and the working class (clogic.eserver.org/2005/furr2.html). I don't know. Maybe the next step for Albania needed to take was to move towards communism but it seems like a doubtful possibility considering hostile imperialist encirclement.

What do you think of Bland's claim that planning, as in central planning from Beijing, effectively ceased around 1956 (ml-review.ca/aml/China/historymaotable.html) with Khrushchev's deStalinization campaign? Do you think China ever moved beyond the People's Democracy stage?

I don't mean to be too harsh on Mao tbqh and actually I think the Gang of Four especially produced some interesting material but many Maoists admit that Mao's work doesn't really get interesting until the 60s, that anyone could justify a revisionist line using his 30s-50s writings. If we're looking for what's salvageable out of the PRC legacy is Mao really our guy? It seems like he was a centrist in the party and admittedly the left was pretty ultra-left but there was that minority producing some pretty good theory.

It won't be long till we're living in a world dominated by Chinese social-imperialism–not US imperialism. For me that drives home the need to critique the legacy of Maoism and the PRC but hopefully without going full-retard like the New Left did during the Cold War and especially after the emergence of Soviet social-imperialism.

What do you guys think of the Khmer Rouge?

true comrades of the socialist struggle

...

relax friend im just shitposting

Even with their own mistakes, I think that the main reason behind the restoration of capitalism in Albania was the fall of the Soviet bloc and Yugoslavia. Albanian independence depended on the balance between the two superpowers, once America achievedd global hegemony they were left with no room to manoeuvrer. And yes, with repeating the mistakes of the CPSU I meant the mistakes made during the Stalin era, such as the one you point out.
>What do you think of Bland's claim that planning, as in central planning from Beijing, effectively ceased around 1956 (ml-review.ca/aml/China/historymaotable.html) with Khrushchev's deStalinization campaign?
At first hand it seems strange, because the 50s were the times when nation-wide socialization of the businesses in the hands of the national bourgeoisie and proper socialist development began, and Chinese textbooks on political economy from the 60s are very adamant in the importance of planned economy. But it could be possible, China's revolution wasn't as "clean" as the Russian one and the light industry had a larger role in the economy than in the Soviet Union. >Do you think China ever moved beyond the People's Democracy stage? Yes, during the 50s and 60s. They never achieved total political hegemony of the proletariat, tho.
I don't agree with the idea that Mao was a centrist, he was at the left of the general line of the international communist movement. But I can see how the theses on New Democracy can easily lead to revisionism if they are not understood in their context. And some of his work during the 30s is quite good, like "On contradiction" and "On practice".
Of course, the Cultural Revolution ultimately failed, so Mao and Maoism must be critised and developed in order to understand what went wrong and how to correct those mistakes in the future, in the same way as Mao himself did with Stalin's work.

utopian socialists paid by the CIA to attack Vietnam. Even so, some of the things that are said about the Cambodiann genocide" are false,Americann bombings on Indochina were the main reason of the famine.

What do you think of Gao Gang, Bland says he was very close to Stalin and wanted something I guess more a long the Soviet lines of the dictatorship of the proletariat. I don't know that much about him tbh but he seems like a good guy. I could see a justified reason for the hostility against him he was based in Manchuria which was at the time the richest and most developed part of China so there may have been good reasons to fear workerist adventurism but idk the real truth about him.

I really don't know. At first glance he seems as a valid guy, but I want to investigate him more before giving a real answer.

Resounding success, OP
Your example has inspired me to run a Trot thread that cites Posadas, George W Bush, Corbyn, and like one actual book by Trotsky.

Thanks, user.

>Well, since you speak Spanish (much better than I do, if there is any doubt; so don't make a habit of linking Spanish texts) and are familiar with Maoism (which I tend to eschew), I'd like your opinion on Che's text (I don't think there is English translation) of the same period (1964): marxists.catbull.com/espanol/guevara/64-finan.htm

I've finished reading Che's text (and I read another one on the same subject, called "Consideraciones sobre los costos de producción como base del análisis económico de las empresas sujetas a sistema presupuestario". It was certainly interesting.

As I understood it, Che's text is part of a larger economic debate within Cuba after the revolution, which is also part of the larger debate of the economic reforms in the USSR and the Popular Democracies of Eastern Europe. Guevara's explanation in "Sistemas de financiamento" actually talks about three different subjects at the same time: how he thinks that the Cuban economy should be run after the revolution, which should be the role of the law of value in the transition between capitalism and communism, and the relation between material and moral encouragement in production.

In the first matter, it was hard to me to understand what he was saying because I have not really studied Cuban economy and do not know their institutions, much less the ones that existed in the sixties. But in general he tries to explain the need to further centralize the Cuban economy (turn it into a single company, in his own words), on the grounds that Cuban industry is almost non-existent and decentralize it would only increase bureaucracy.

>>1104313

About the law of value, he agrees that it must have a role in socialist planning, but only as a remnant of capitalism which must be fought and eventually abolished; opposed to post-Stalin Soviet political economy. He clearly says that commodity exchange between state-owned must be abolished (as in right now, not when communism arrives), the complete opposite of the Soviet position of that time on the matter. He quotes several times the soviet textbook on political economy on this subject, and harshly disagrees with the notion that profitability of each individual business should be the main guide to economic planning. Instead, he focusses on the amount of socially necessary labour time of Cuban companies in comparison with the world market as a way to measure efficiency. So here he is clearly taking a stand with orthodox "Stalinist" economic thought, and tacitly criticising the Soviet economic reforms.

In "Economic problems of the USSR" (marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1951/economic-problems/ch04.htm), Stalin says:

On the same subject, Mao says in "Critique of Stalin’s Economic Problems Of Socialism In The USSR" (marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-8/mswv8_66.htm)

>>1104313

On the third subject, he agrees that material incentives on production are necessary (at least in the early stages of socialist construction), but disagrees with the Soviets in the matter of how this should be done. He argues that the economic bonuses should never be proportional or greater to the amount of extra value created by those who work harder, and that the bonuses should be given to entire units or companies and not individual workers and managers, on the grounds that the opposite creates competition and a individualistic and capitalist conscience.
He defends that moral incentives and education as the most important foundation in the building of communist conscience and, in the long run, increase the productive forces while changing relations of production. He stresses the last point.

Is on the third subject where I find many similarities between Guevara's and Mao's economic thought. For example, on "Reading Notes On The Soviet Text Political Economy" (marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-8/mswv8_64.htm), Mao says:

lel
You misunderstand me, good sir, for I was mocking you.

...

...

Kek, stay btfo, nazi cuck!!!

That's what I get for being nice to a shitposter.

best thread

Since a lot of the questions and debate on this thread are around the question of capitalist restoration in the USSR, I'll link this pdf which explains the general anti-revisionist (maoist and hoxhaist) point of view:

How Capitalism has been restored in the Soviet Union and what does it mean for the World struggle, RED PAPERS 7 (1974): bannedthought.net/USA/RU/RP/RP7/RU-RP7.pdf

I'm a bit low on time, so I am not giving proper answer today - or tomorrow. Probably will by Sunday.

I don't understand one thing, though. Do you have access to the actual Liberman-Kosygin reform? Not second-hand descriptions from extremely biased sources, but the actual changes?

Check and balances and if that doesn't work a one party state with multiple "partys" all just the same thing like the united states.

The only checks on bureaucracy should be the unrestrained, democratic will of working people. Not simply federalizing and increasing the number of bureaucrats. The state itself should be as democratic and totalitarian as possible.

Get in the fucking gulag.

bump

I've been reading Bland's book on China, and after finishing chapters one to six I can say that a lot of what he says is bullshit. First, Bland correctly says that:

But then he attacks the Chinese communists for doing exactly that same thing. For example, here he quotes Mao in order to prove that he was against building socialism:

Or here:

But just check the dates: all this quotes come from a decade before the People's Republic of China was even born! No wonder how Mao says that socialist construction won't start yet, or even in the next years. The Chinese Civil War didn't end until at least 1949, and even after that there were still anti-colonialist fighting in Tibet, Korea and a lot of other places! Saying that the CPC should have stabbed in the back the national bourgeoisie in the middle of the war against Japan is just ultraleftist bullshit, it's like when the anarchists tried an insurrection against the republican government in the middle of the Spanish Civil War.

And given than the USSR actively supported the Kuomintang, even while it was fighting the CPC; and that after 1949 the USSR and the International Communist Movement fully endorsed the Chinese revolution (while denouncing Yugoslavia, for example) the thought of a "right-wing deviation from the Soviet model" is absurd.

And then he claims that under New Democracy the proletariat shared political power with the comprador bourgeoisie, without ever giving a single quote proving it.

I recommend you to simply read On New Democracy (marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_26.htm) and On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People (marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_58.htm) to see what the Chinese communists were actually doing. It is true that the Chinese revolution developed in a different way as the Russian revolution, but their conditions were also drastically different.

Irrelevant. The fact is that he didn't do it. Therefore, we can't call it Trotskyism.

So? Lenin's description of NEP - bourgeois economy under communist-led government is "State Capitalism". Almost "deformed bourgeois state". Was he also anti-Marxist?

Even more ridiculous is to accept every work (there were hundreds) that predicted it just because Restoration happened.

This contradicts Marx.

It is control (via property relations) of MoP that gives you control over state. If simple change of government is enough to change the ruling class, then Reformists were right all along: we simply need to elect "good people".

The whole political line - Socialist line - was not abandoned.

It's not Socialist principle. It's simple efficiency.

This doesn't make USSR Capitalist.

Wrong.

Was "Socialism in one state" counter-revolutionary?.

This dates back to Stalin, to Lenin, even to Marx.

I don't accept Socio-Imperialism as a concept. Not only it is anti-Marxist, factual evidence is flimsy. But this deserves a separate post.

Were Horthyists of Hungary also Soviet allies?

That's not Trotskyism. World revolution is a thing.

Or does Marxism demand from Communists to stay bound by Bourgeois borders of nations? No. Given appropriate circumstances, armed intervention is not only necessary, but may also be desirable.

Trotsky's failure was overobsession with it, not the support of it.

Coup d'etat is not a Revolution: Taraki (Amin's predecessor) was already Socialist, Communist, and pro-Soviet. Murdering him was not revolutionary. Nor were Amin's purges of Communists and his attempts at establishing dictatorship revolutionary in any way.

But much more importantly, this all has nothing to do with class structure of USSR. You are going anti-Marxist again.

...

Concerning the Red Papers #7: HOW CAPITALISM HAS BEEN RESTORED IN THE SOVIET UNION AND WHAT THIS MEANS FOR THE WORLD STRUGGLE

Quite a few bits a good, but:

1) Pre-Dengist Maoist approach is thoroughly LeftCom, if not outright AnCom - which is hardly surprising, given Mao's approach to Cultural Revolution (sans Vanguard).

For example, it is considered a weakness of Stakhanovite movement that it rewarded innovators with material incentives. Another weakness was sending Stakhanovites to universities to get better education.

Ability of Soviet diplomats successfully trade on international market (Great Grain Robbery on 1972) is presented as a proof of their Capitalist nature - as well as a testament by US bureaucrat that Soviets are "very good capitalists" (Marx would be proud of someone who shot the author of this thoroughly Marxist analysis).

2) There is a lot of sloppyness in general. Instead of attempts at proper Marxist analysis we mostly get Marxian rhetoric.

For example:
> top bourgeois careerists are especially well placed to restore capitalism relatively bloodlessly because of state ownership of the means of production and the Party's control over the work of the state and enterprises.
How can Bourgeois class exist, if Capitalism is yet to be restored? In what context are they Bourgeois? Just because their actions could lead to restoration of Capitalism, it does not make them actual Capitalists.

3) Facts are often distorted for the sake of propaganda.
For example:
This bit implies that there was a deliberate division between the experts and the politicians. This was predominantly (not absolutely) the case during the very early days of USSR simply because there were very few Communist experts. But by 1930s - when Industrialization begun - it was not Bourgeois (inherited from Imperial Czarist Russia; or hired from foreign, Capitalist states) experts that were managing things. It was Soviet experts that were in charge. They were Party members, they were Communists.

At no point did the Stalin demand separation of technical specialists from the "levers of political authority". Nor did Lenin, nor Marx.

Or, in "Restoration of Capitalism in Agriculture: The Creation of a New Kulak Class" Kulaks are primarily defined as rich independent peasants who might've hired workers. Neither predatory lending, nor grain speculation - nor consequences: famine, social unrest, riots and eventually uprisings - are mentioned anywhere. Apparently, because neither could be found in USSR of 1974, but "kulaks" have to exist somehow.

Thus, purely for propaganda reasons it is actual Stalinist USSR of 1930s that gets slandered, just to support attempts to paint USSR of 1974 as anti-Communist.

I think that you just went turbo-revisionist, user.

But the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire were not the same state, the first destroyed the later. The Soviet government during the NEP was a proletarian dictatorship.

"Why is Soviet power so firm and stable, despite the incredible ordeals, the terrible famine and the difficulties created by war and economic dislocation? Because it is the power of the working people themselves, of the millions of workers and peasants. The workers hold state power. The workers help the millions of labouring peasants. (Lenin - Two Years of Soviet Power, marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/nov/07.htm)"

I did not said that we must "accept" all the theses on the matter, but we must have one.

Wrong. The dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialization of the means of production are means to the creation of communism, but are not the same. Marx says it clearly, first the proletariat takes power and then uses it to expropriate the means of production, not the other way:

"We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy. 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. (Marx and Engels - Communist Manifesto, marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm)"

And Lenin clearly said that even if the USSR was a dictatorship of the proletariat, the economic system of the NEP was clearly not socialist, but capitalist:

"The New Economic Policy means substituting a tax for the requisitioning of food; it means reverting to capitalism to a considerable extent—to what extent we do not know. Concessions to foreign capitalists (true, only very few have been accepted, especially when compared with the number we have offered) and leasing enterprises to private capitalists definitely mean restoring capitalism, and this is part and parcel of the New Economic Policy; for the abolition of the surplus-food appropriation system means allowing the peasants to trade freely in their surplus agricultural produce, in whatever is left over after the tax is collected—and the tax~ takes only a small share of that produce. The peasants constitute a huge section of our population and of our entire economy, and that is why capitalism must grow out of this soil of free trading. (Lenin - The New Economic Policy
And The Tasks Of The Political Education Departments, marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/oct/17.htm)"

There was not a "change of government", the political leadership of the Socialist camp in Eastern Europe suffered a massive purge after Stalin's death, and the takeover of the CPSU by the revisionists did not happened peacefully but with the threat of a military coup led by Zhukov.

Wrong. Compare the 1977 Constitution of the USSR (the Brehznev Constitution) with Marx and Lenin:

"THe aims of the dictatorship of the proletariat having been fulfilled, the Soviet state has become a state of the whole people. (…) Article 1. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is a socialist state of the whole people, expressing the will and interests of the workers, peasants, and intelligentsia, the working people of all the nations and nationalities of the country. (Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/77cons01.html#preamble)"

"The question then arises: What transformation will the state undergo in communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions? This question can only be answered scientifically, and one does not get a flea-hop nearer to the problem by a thousand-fold combination of the word 'people' with the word 'state'. Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. (Marx - Critique of the Gotha Programme, marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm)"

"Socialism means the abolition of classes. The dictatorship of the proletariat has done all it could to abolish classes. But classes cannot be abolished at one stroke. And classes still remain and will remain in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship will become unnecessary when classes disappear. Without the dictatorship of the proletariat they will not disappear. Classes have remained, but in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat every class has undergone a change, and the relations between the classes have also changed. The class struggle does not disappear under the dictatorship of the proletariat; it merely assumes different forms. (Lenin - Economics And Politics In The Era Of The Dictatorship Of The Proletariat, marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/sep/x02.htm#fw02)"

And these theses of the "State of the whole people" were born in the sixties; so yes, the political line of the CPSU after Khruschev was anti-marxist, revisionist and capitalist-roader.

"Totally incorrect, too, is the assertion that under our present economic system, in the first phase of development of communist society, the law of value regulates the "proportions" of labour distributed among the various branches of production. If this were true, it would be incomprehensible why our light industries, which are the most profitable, are not being developed to the utmost, and why preference is given to our heavy industries, which are often less profitable, and some-times altogether unprofitable. If this were true, it would be incomprehensible why a number of our heavy industry plants which arc still unprofitable and where the labour of the worker does not yield the "proper returns," are not closed down, and why new light industry plants, which would certainly be profitable and where the labour of the workers might yield "big returns," are not opened. If this were true, it would be incomprehensible why workers are not transferred from plants that are less profitable, but very necessary to our national economy, to plants which are more profitable - in accordance with the law of value, which supposedly regulates the "proportions" of labour distributed among the branches of production. Obviously, if we were to follow the lead of these comrades, we should have to cease giving primacy to the production of means of production in favour of the production of articles of consumption. And what would be the effect of ceasing to give primacy to the production of the means of production? The effect would be to destroy the possibility of the continuous expansion of our national economy, because the national economy cannot be continuously expanded with-out giving primacy to the production of means of production. (…) What is the aim of socialist production? What is that main purpose to which social production should be subordinated under socialism? The aim of socialist production is not profit, but man and his needs, that is, the satisfaction of his material and cultural requirements. As is stated in Comrade Stalin's "Re-marks," the aim of socialist production is "the securing of the maximum satisfaction of the constantly rising material and cultural requirements of the whole of society." (Stalin - Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1951/economic-problems/index.htm)"

"The struggle for general and complete disarmament is a major component of the foreign policy of our Party (…) It should be plain that the idea of our program for general and complete disarmament is not the unilateral disarmament of socialism in the face of imperialism or the other way around, but a universal renunciation of arms as a means of settling controversial international problems (Programme of the XXIIth Congress of the CPSU, archive.org/stream/DocumentsOfThe22ndCongressOfTheCpsuVolI/DocCong22#page/n7/mode/2up)"

What do you think that "complete disarmament" means for the people of the Third World? No wonder the Communist Party of Vietnam, while being pro-USSR denounced the theory of "peaceful coexistance".

Socialism in one state has no contradiction with internationalism, and you know it as well as I.

Wrong, that is a grave distorsion of marxism-leninism. The national-democratic revolution can only lead to a socialist revolution if it is lead by the vanguard party of the proletariat, the Communist Party.

"Earlier, the bourgeoisie, as the heads of nations, were for the rights and independence of nations and put that "above all." Now there is no trace left of this "national principle." Now the bourgeoisie sell the rights and independence of their nations for dollars. The banner of national independence and national sovereignty has been thrown overboard. Without doubt, you, the representatives of the communist and democratic parties must raise this banner and carry it forward if you want to be patriots of your countries, if you want to be the leading powers of the nations. There is nobody else to raise it. (Stalin - Speech of the 19th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1952/10/14.htm)"

I didn't know that the Hortyists had taken power in Czechslovakia.

I've got several pdfs on the matter (Centralized planning of the economy by Shvyrkov, Planning in the USSR by Sorokin, Political Economy: Socialism by Kozlov, and several more which I found on /marx/) and even if they are written by Soviet economists and do not say it as bluntly as the (arguably bias) Chinese sources, the trend is clear: more decision-making power to the factory and trust managers, more flexibility of labour power and intensity of labour, and a growing importance of profit as the way to measure success in business.

I think that tomorrow I'll go to a library to get "Planning and profit in the Soviet economy" (amazon.es/gp/product/B00774W8SY/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3VSGOFE1HD695), which is written by Liberman.

I've tried to find the find the actual "bylaw of the socialist state company of production, aproved by the Council of Ministers of the USSR in October 1965", the actual law that Leontiev's compendium on political economy mentions, but I am unable to find it anywhere.

Let's see.

What does Russian Empire has to do with anything?

So? Lenin referred to arising economic relations as State Capitalism.

Political Report Of The Central Committee Of The R.C.P. (B.) March 27, 1922
marxists.catbull.com/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm
> On the question of state capitalism, I think that generally our press and our Party make the mistake of dropping into intellectualism, into liberalism; we philosophise about how state capitalism is to be interpreted, and look into old books. But in those old books you will not find what we are discussing; they deal with the state capitalism that exists under capitalism. Not a single book has been written about state capitalism under communism.

Highly improper use of words, imo. But then proper terminology has yet to emerge.

So, shall we consider Trotsky's deformed worker state to be absolutely anti-Marxist, on the same level as post-Trostkyist Soviet Capitalists? If so - what is to be done about Lenin?

Which is not sufficient argument for dismissing labels such as post-Trotskyist.

I.e. having in charge either Revolutionaries or Counter-Revolutionaries doesn't directly and immediately affect the economic relations: be they Socialist or Capitalist. Then it does not automatically follow that not having "state in hands of the proletariat" immediately leads to "economy not being socialist".

But we are not talking about revolution. The question is identifying economic structure of existing society.

King might appoint a bureaucrat that will swindle him out of his money, but the structure is still Feudal. Similarly enough, if posts in Socialist state has fallen to counter-revolutionaries, the Capitalism is not automatically and immediately re-instated. Counter-revolutionaries has to cardinally (qualitatively) change laws for this to happen - that was Perestroika.

Which is still political change, not economic.

That was 1977, almost quarter century after death of Stalin and 20 years after 1956.

Changes that were applied to the discourse in USSR were predominantly revisionist, but not the whole discourse, not politics itself. It did not change overnight. Or are you trying to say that in 1956 Khrushchev said that it is no longer Socialism that he will pursue, but Capitalism? Because that would be a change of political line.

As is, it was a slow process of quantitative changes that took almost 40 years.

Economy went from establishment of sovnarkhoz under Khrushchev, to Kosygin reforms under Brezhnev, and then it all had to wait until Gorbachev attempted to push the envelope further, to the level of Bukharin, and ended up with Capitalism. There was no Capitalism in 1953, nor in 1956, nor in 1961, nor in 1966, nor in 1977, nor in 1985.

As for quotes, they are taken out of context.
This is a declarative statement, not Capitalist law that regulates economic relations.

Here Marx is speaking about transition to Communism. What is necessary for movement from Capitalism to Communism. He isn't saying and isn't proving that you magically transform into Capitalist state overnight, if you don't have 100% undiluted Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Doesn't have anything to do with the topic, no?

Yeah, I can't say its an impressive book but the claims he makes about Gao Gang and the collapse of genuine central planning in China in the 50s particularly the Great Leap era is interesting. I haven't been able to find proof for that outside Bland and the sources he cites but I'll let you know if I find any.

This article by the Albanian press and Hoxha's own writings are perhaps the most interesting expositions of the Albanian view of the PRC:
marxists.org/history/erol/albania/albania-1.pdf
enverhoxha.ru/Archive_of_books/English/enver_hoxha_reflections_on_china_volume_I_eng.pdf

There are two major claims in the first article I've been able to find evidence for:

And:
trade and bank activities in Hong Kong the Chinese revisionists have secured a net profit of about 27 billion dollars in 1967 through their banks, trade enterprises, cinemas and theatres, film studios and the sale of water, without mentioning profits from drug traffic (“Neue Züricher Zeitung”, July 3, 1967).

The first claim Maurice Meisner:
>By 1956 the urban bourgeoisie had all but ceased to exist as a social class, its members reduced to pensioners collecting paltry dividends on government bonds exchanged for their factories and businesses (The Deng Xaoping Era: An Inquiry Into the Fate of Chinese Socialism 1978-1994 p.32)

As for the second claim:
>To the Chinese Communists, Hong Kong was the south door of China through which Beijing carried out a Hong Kong policy of “long-term utilization.”27 Business conducted through Hong Kong provided much- needed foreign currencies to China, and in return China allowed water and other necessities to be supplied from the mainland. Trade from Hong Kong between 1961 and 1972 earned five billion U.S. dollars for China— a significant source of foreign-exchange income. (Chinese Communists and Hong Kong Capitalists 1937-1997 Cindy Yik-yi Chuh p 48)

Now that's not as large as the 27 billion dollar figure the Albanian press gives but its still quite significant. And likewise, the activities alleged by the Albanian press like banking and forming capitalist shell companies, would not show up in a statistic about foreign trade.

I'll see if I can find the German article they cite, translate it as accurately as possible and fact check it. I suspect its an exaggeration tbh but its still significant. There was an embargo on China for sometime so in part its understandable. Chu finds that contrary to the anti-communist rhetoric that makes it into the mainstream media coming out of hong kong, the CPC and Chinese capitalists had alliances going back to the 1930s. During the 60s the Hong Kong police actually raided most of the leftist organizations and shut down their papers except the front organizations and paper for the CPC tellingly enough.

The fact that most sources cite the 30s-50s is a weakness of much Hoxhaist analysis I find
as most Maoists admit that since that was Peoples Democracy era Mao's writings on class struggle were kind of weak. In some ways what Maoist China struggled with were problems that all socialists countries in the 20th century struggled with.

I do think the Albanians had a point when they pointed out that their country was at least as poor as China prior to Liberation and China's economic performance and improvement of the masses conditions had been worse then their own. I like what I see from certain Maoist movements like the Naxalites but certain policies like the joint-state-private nationalization schemes in Maoist China make me doubt the Maoist model.

Best thread in leftypol. You may be converting some people, to put it frankly

I'd like a maoist answer to that :

:-)

Vanguard bump

Central Planning is a method, not a goal.
Stalin was saying that it is a good method. He did not claim it to be a goal.

If you want to refute this statement, then argue properly.

I can't say for all the people of the Third World, can I?

But I can say that Soviets were suggesting disarmament 40 years before Khrushchev (1922, Genoa conference), which makes Lenin the original turbo-revisionist.

Also, Vietnam war (with Soviet support) lasted until 1975, which slightly contradicts your statement of abandoning struggle in 1962.

Then declarative statements that could be idealistically (dogmatically) interpreted - outside of context, mind you - as implying surrender of World Revolution cannot be used as arguments.

To clarify: I'm not talking about Socialist Revolution. The question was about anti-colonial movements. Even national Bourgeois parties could be progressive in those circumstances and should be used by the Communists.

Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism
marxists.catbull.com/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/ch06.htm

Not to say that international politics of late USSR were fully Socialist, but you are going way overboard.

> Stalin - Speech of the 19th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1952/10/14.htm
Here Stalin was talking about specific (new) circumstances. About post-WWII situation.

1956 is Fascist counter-revolution in Hungary, not Czechslovakia. I was referring to it.

Bump

Does this apply to the SU as well? If so, how? Also, does it mean that socialism inherently contains bourgeois economic basis? What is bourgeois econ. basis?

Sorry for making a lot of questions, but I've recently dropped my aversion towards Marxism-Leninism and I'd actually like to get a better grasp on these concepts, and since I'm low on time being a student and working part time, I hope you'd might want to share some insight.

As I see it, socialism is not an economic mode of production in itself, but the period between the capitalist and communist mode of production, when the first has not been totally banished and the second has not totally triumphed yet. During this period, the capitalist relations of production slowly vanish while the communist ones are born. For example, in the USSR the market was abolished, but commodity production still existed in some areas (like agriculture). This is the "orthodox" Marxian view. But this subject is very polemic, because a lot of people argue that socialism is a new mode of production, different of both capitalism and communism.

You said that the early USSR could be seen as a "deformed bourgeoisie state", and I proved that this is not true.

Under the Soviet model, the MoP are kept on the hands of the proletariat because there are in the hands of the worker's state. If the proletariat loses control of their state, or the state loses control of the state companies, then they also lose control of the economy. And if because of that they are working for companies which are not socialized, then the workers are once again reduced to the role of wage-labourers, even if they work for the state. It is not so hard to understand.

But you are saying that the USSR was socialist and a proletarian dictatorship until Perestroika. And the thesis of "State of the whole people" is from the XXII Congress of the CPSU, much earlier.

HOW? They are saying that they are no longer a dictatorship of the proletariat! And they repeat it on the preamble, and on the programme of the CPSU! How is that "out of context"? The dictatorship of the proletariat is the régime in the transition between capitalism and communism. If it ends but communism has not been established, then it is very clear what happened.

Of course it has. It's one of the most important works of Lenin, he talks about how class antagonism and class struggle still exist under socialism.

What Stalin says on the text is perfectly clear, he is saying that the ideas behind the Kosygin-Liberman reforms are completely anti-socialist and revisionist. I posted the entire text because if I don't do it you say that it's "out of context".

So? The Communist Party of Vietnam condemned the thesis of "Peaceful coexistence" and refused to sign it.

"Our task is that of ruthless criticism, and much more against ostensible friends than against open enemies,.." - Karl Marx

Well Marx and Engels used socialism and communism interchangeably, it is Lenin who distinguished socialism as being this transitional system between capitalism and communism, afaik that is. But I understand the latter is ML point of view after all. So commodity production is bourg econ. basis because, the way I see it, commodities are things to be bought and sold, made for exchange based on their exchange value. But there is a discrepancy between use value and exchange value which leads to commodities sometimes being overvalued or undervalued in exchange, causing inefficiencies such as shortages and over-supply, and worst of all, profit. However, even if profit is made off a commodity, if this profit is appropriated and distributed socially, there should be no issues arising from this, right? Not sure if that's how it is, I'm yet to read Das Kapital, but I've acquainted myself with some terms and concepts through articles, discussions elsewhere and this board apparently.
My question is whether the creation of an abundant supply of MoP is the only way to end value production?

Well, OP has already answered (more or less; I feel suspicious of the phrase "in the USSR the market was abolished" - regulated market of consumer goods always existed, but that's nitpicking), but I'll elaborate on this.

Of course. Until Communism (post-scarcity economy) is reached, we can't have can't have "to everyone according to his needs".

Constitution (of 1936) ARTICLE 12:
> In the U.S.S.R. work is a duty and a matter of honor 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."

By forcing people to use money (arguably Labour Certificates, since people get them for working) to buy life necessities, rather than simply get goods one requests.

Marxist terminology is a bit iffy, especially when it comes to the early works. And I sometimes get sloppy myself. You need to understand the context to understand the meaning.

tl;dr: Bourgeois economic basis is not inherent in Socialism itself (not directly), but in scarcity economy. However, since Socialism is another consequence of scarcity, it is acceptable (imo) to equate both to some degree.

Basically, the idea is that during scarcity economy you do not have enough goods to satisfy most of peoples desires - even daily necessities - without having people work beyond the level they would voluntary choose to work themselves. I.e. people have to be somehow forced to work to live (under the threat of starvation, for example).

The "fairest" (morale is relative) thing you can achieve in those conditions is to reward people according to the amount of (useful) labour they contribute.

This is kind of morale is Bourgeois (ideology of early Liberalism). Instead of actual equality that makes access to all goods basic right of every individual, we get hierarchical (money-based) restrictions put on the people when it comes to the access to the goods. Money (as a reward for labour) becomes the ultimate determinant of persons "worthiness".

This reward for labour forms the basis of Bourgeois economic relations (Bourgeois exchange). This is what I called Bourgeois economic basis.

Communism is about abandoning this kind of reasoning and allowing everyone get whatever they want. However - see above - this kind of reasoning is unworkable in scarcity economy. Communist morale is justifiably called irrational and insane for this. We need to transition (via increase of productive forces) from scarcity economy to post-scarcity to make Communist morale rational and practically applicable.

And this is what Socialism (i.e. Marxist Socialism) is about: movement from Bourgeois model/economic relations/basis (rewards for work) to the Communist model (basic rights; "rewards" for existing). It is generally done by introducing elements of Communist relations (free education, for example; UBI would be another element - but not the whole of Communism, since exchange is not abolished).

As you see, Socialism has to start with Bourgeois model and ends when there are no more Bourgeois relations left. And, obviously, will never fully end - we can only get predominantly Communist economy, not 100% - when any desires can be satisfied.

Socialism ("fair" Capitalism): to each according to his work
Communism (actual equality): to each according to his need

P.s. Anarchists don't really differentiate between Socialism and Communism.

Explain to me how North Korea is a socialist country and how we need to defend it not only from an anti-imperialist perspective but an commie perspective.

because nothing says i-want-a-new-master more

You are by far the most shit tripfag i have ever seen

very insightful, thank you!

to think I was arguing that one time with you and you said I was mad for saying that the workers of the SU swindled themselves, perhaps you've forgotten, but I have changed my perspective on things since then, and continue to do so

...

...

What the actual fuck.

Please read this again:
>So? Lenin's description of NEP - bourgeois economy under communist-led government is "State Capitalism". Almost "deformed bourgeois state". Was he also anti-Marxist?

If you insist on being obtuse: my point is that he used concept that defines of mixed state of affairs.

Lenin referred to economy as State Capitalism. If State Capitalism - deformed bourgeois economy, not state - is acceptable, then similar concept - the one that describes mixed state of affairs, but the one about state - shouldn't be too much of a heresy.

But you referred to it as anti-Marxist.

...

...

yikes, Pol Pot was one ugly fuck.

He was also based as fuck

Shitposter, shit opinions. Kill yourself.

this is an ironic post, right?

Zizek is a revisionist whose only objective is to shock people so he can sell more books, if he criticises and attacks us we are doing well.

Yes, but they already defended the idea of a transitional political régime between capitalism and communism, and defended that there was no transitional mode of production between capitalism and communism/socialism, so in the end they and Lenin said the same thing on that matter.

I do not really understand the question. Are you asking about the principle that heavy industry must be the focus of economic planning?

Ok, I'll read the part that you talk about and I'll say my opinion.

Caaaallmm down with the links there buddy

Talk about a shit opinion: espressostalinist.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/the-truth-about-hungary.pdf

Bumping because the rest of Holla Forums is filled with trash threads t b h

That's cool, I have to say thread this and your posts are like water in a revisionist desert.

More like an illiterate desert

...

They argued that there's no transitional mode of production? It's been a while since I've read the CommMan. Shit, but that wage-labor tho', sure it wasn't exploited, but it was still there in the SU.

Nope, just trying to understand that if you don't have enough MoP, you won't have an abundance of use-values making people follow the "to each according to their needs" principle

This is a pretty good thread. While I'm not sold on Marxism/Leninism, this does show that reality was a lot more nuanced than "Stalin was a sociopathic red fascist".

...

Ay yo, ML's! What about the wage-labor still existing in the USSR?

Unless you're for immediate free access to all consumer goods your criticism of wage-labor, whatever is meant by that, is an empty one.

Wagelabor has something to do with surplus extraction. In captalism, the bourgeoisie would keep the profits, live in abundant material conditions and damage the economy by not reinvesting the profits - so no, wagelabor didn't really exist there.

"no".

Lukács was no fascist.

"Now let me tell you about this thing called Dialetical Materialism, which is a Marxist term that Marx never aknowledged".

Jesus Christ. The left is failing not only my country but everywhere in the world and you say this shit? "Doing well" by posing no threat to capital! What a victory.

Did not exist.

I'd like to see source of this claim.

pls email [email protected]/* */ if you're a cat named sakamoto and want a cute furret to lick your paws
I think I can do it

But when the motivation runs out, without discipline you will fail. Discipline keeps the will strong, motivation is the distraction.

Whos this lanky mexican?

He's on IR. He can't come back even if Jesus Christ Himself lays His hands on him.

...

But none of the games with TTGL had any hope either

Like which ones?

Burnout….are you okay man?

get aids faggot

What would be the utility of such a vessel?

North or south?

This

A concrete wall

Put up a plywood mold and do it

I'm sort of coming around to ML(M). I've always admired Bakunin and Kropotkin but increasingly I can't help but think a state is necessary. But how can the abuses of the 20th century be avoided if a socialist state arises again?

By ignoring everything Lenin and his successors did and said.

In Albania, income inequality was actually the lowest in the world it was 2:1 meaning the difference between the highest paid job and the lowest paid job was pretty small–so I think they mostly did the right things though it could've been better. Thats actually a big problem I can see with 20th century socialism not that they didn't do the right things structurally most of the time but that they permitted wage inequality as an incentive where they probably should've tried to rely more on working people's natural enthusiasm for socialism, for working in a place they own and control. Grover Furr argues that the permission of wage inequality, owing to natural inequality was perhaps a critical failing that Marx himself made when describing the lower-phase of communism.

I think he's closer to the mark everyone says its Engels, Lenin, Stalin, or Hoxha who made the mistakes but no one ever concedes Marx made the mistakes.

Anyways, unless you're attached to the Naxalite movement I can't blame you their pretty cool I'd recommend going over to Hoxhaism. I think Mao's thought is really too revisionist and conceded way too much to bourgeois democracy and populist ideas like "the masses" and even the "national bourgeoisie".

Everyone gives us Stalinists grief for being "too dogmatic" but to me Maoism is much more dogmatic and idealist then regular MLM.

All in all everyone's worried about a socialist state going back to capitalism cause its happened before, but the thing is in the 21st century most countries aren't facing the same problems and are far more developed–I honestly think things will go easier. People forget that you need to make the revolution before you have the muh privilege of worrying about the restoration of capitalism. And likewise, things like the falling rop and automation creating even worse structural problems for capitalism then existed in the past, revisionism thrives imo when there is a strong world capitalist alternative and prolonged period of peace like after WWII. I think that's unlikely to be our problem in the future, the problem will most likely be something like WWIII or a global fascist mobilization.

I wouldn't recommend it. It's a silly dogma that I'm thankful I grew out of. Socialism needs something new to be relevant. Marxism had it's day a century ago but nowadays it gives people downright satanic vibes and the materialist reductionism only makes it harder to win people over anyway.

You can safely ignore the idiot below you though, ML is pretty awful but the standard criticisms of a lack of democracy or a proneness to corruption are not even worth considering. People only come to those conclusions by grossly misrepresenting the views of Lenin and taking Nazi propaganda about the USSR at face value. Such is the face of socialism in the West today. Divided into a million different Marxist and anarchist cults, agreeing on nothing except that real socialism should be totally condemned.

If you really think socialism is so inherently tyrannical I'd advise you to just drop it. The last thing this movement needs is more cowards with no confidence in the feasibility of worker's liberation.

astroturf memes arent cheap

Redpill me on why the state would ever just wither away

Shit just ain't logical

It is if you believe that humans have absolutely no inherent nature (which coincidentally goes against literally everything we know about psychology so far.)

Its like you fags dont ever learn your fucking lesson, horsefuckers are the most stubborn persistent shitbags ever, raiding them is asking for a raid back X4.

Reddit white knight faggots are doubling down…

I'm glad you're advocating for people stupid enough to believe this shit to suicide by car

doin God/Darwin's work op

You mean why leafs are on /pol?
Yes. All the fucking time.

Good comedian. Shits on libtards and conservocucks.

Fuck climate and the environment. Recycling is fucking useless in my state. Solar panels on houses and nuclear power plants are the future.

Swedes are more sophisticated than the barbaric Norwegians, everybody knows this

I had a beer

I think Sweden shits enough on us as is

now reform constitution luigi

Its good country tbqh

The outside of the wrist. You can always tell by the wrist. That's a man.

Doesn't say much, since social package is not included.

To what extent should enthusiasm be relied on? Without some specifics this statement doesn't mean much.

Also, keep in mind that pre-Dengist Maoists going full LeftCom paved the way to right-wing revisionism of Dengists.

I'll agree with too "idealist". But dogma doesn't mean much, since LeftCom (Maoists included) - from my point of view - deviate from it.

Actually, I don't. 70 years is a long time. Even with creeping Bureaucracy it might be just enough to finish the backbone of Communist economy.

Revisionism always thrives. It thrived during Marx's time. Lenin begun his career by fighting against revisionists and continued to do it until his death. Stalin was similarly opposed by revisionists.

Who gives a fuck

Doesn't matter who does this, it's a cancer.

np man, keeping the information alive is pretty important. I have been downloading a shit ton of this stuff because i feel confident that in the next 20 or so years none of it will be available without some special goycredentials TM

Also, i am an ethnocentric white nationalist but a nationalist first (whites are a minority here and i am pragmatic). I want to learn more about the sort of economics that Hitler had in mind or at least the kinds of issues that intellectuals that supported Hitler had foreseen.

jews pretty much rule the world right now and its really unsettling me how filthy and soulless they are

Even though Mittens is a retard, it's insane how manipulative the media is in hindsight.

fuck off to le_donald

INVADE COMMUNISTS REEEE

No, the egyptians stole (back) everything from the Nubian dynasty, and then the persians conquered them a couple times, then the greeks, the romans, and eventually the arabs

So…a journalist?

...

Steve Bannon was at Goldman Sachs.

No one ever mentions that though. And he's considered here to be the best Trump pick.

You dumb fucks don't pay attention to anything do you? You just parrot MSM headlines.

Trump said day 1 he was going to get nasty guys from the world of business who know how to get things done and make deals. And guess where you find those guys?

He's also been quoted saying to surround yourself with the best people, but don't trust them.

They all answer to him. They all have to carry out his policies.

...

In one day? Not likely.

Oh you mean the Russians tried to undermine America and the candidate who all but declared war on them?

A five year old could have concluded that. Meanwhile, the American media conspired to get Hillary elected, so, boo boo.

that felt good

Why do you think it failed? It achieved all the goals of it`s superiors on downing street and on wall street.

fuck off shitskin

holy shit buddy I hope you didn't make this

you are even dumber than him.

the only reason she was wife materialis cuz her box hurt, if it had functioned as per natural she would have jumped on board the promiscuity train.

To be fair it should have always been actor since actress is like presidente or doctress.

Niggers are greedy.

same shit

...

america is GOAT so long as you aren't some beta queer delusional kike puppet.

No shortage of jobs, no shortage of terrain or climate diversity. Something for everyone so long as you're willing to work for it and get after your dreams.

Tough if you;ve been brainwashed by the jews to believe you're a victim though, like this faggot right here >

Buy a large and fast ship. And weapons.

Proceed to defend the oceans around my sovereign land and taxing unannounced shipping. Sell fishing rights for money to supplement my taxation. Eventually use money to build a large light house like structure. Turn it into a data center and sell servers for those looking for a free internet.

Cake the money become filthy rich and start building up the island or searching for off island resources

because of christianization and later on americanization

YOUR NOT COMPARING THE SAME NUMBERS.
F22 WAS ONLY DEVELOPMENT COSTS
F35 INCOLUDES PROCUREMENT FOR THOUSANDS OF AIRCRAFT AND THEN MAINTENANCE ON THOSE AIRCRAFT UNTIL THEY TURN INTO SCRAP METAL.
WIKIPEDIA IS A HORRIBLE SOURCE FOR EXACTLY THIS REASON. YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE ACTUALLY READING.

I tried this just now..
I broke my back

I can't move

call the ambulance please my adress is schlossweg 23 Rupertahl 3255

Sweden or Romania

they make my wee wee hard

No, no she fucking isnt

If you asked any of these questions while sexually interacting with a woman she would immediately be turned off.

Uncut here this is bullshit. The skin is so sensitive it's sometimes painful to touch after cumming. Cut friends tell me they don't have this problem. Also they last longer :(
Also girls say it looks better circumcised :(

nope.

Depends on the country you live in. Historically Russia has been universally hated because of their aggressive and expansionist history. More recently Germany because of the world wars. UK has been see as the Island jew nation that only looks out for it's own interest.

Bump because good thread and the bot spam stopped

OP - should I wait for answers?

Modern Maoism IS MLM (Marxism-Leninism-Maoism) dummies

necessityandfreedom.wordpress.com/2016/09/18/marxism-leninism-maoism-is-not-just-marxism-leninism-plus-mao/

This is an oxymoronic term, the need to manage resources and reproduce social life (Oikonomia) is abolished in Communism with the advent of post-scarcity

Guess they don't call it mautism for nothing.
There was a typo in my response so I guess I'll give credit where its due, what I meant to write is:
Though what I meant should've been apparent from the context.

As for your point regarding Maoism no one disputes that it calls itself MLM–though I don't see what's particularly original about its latest incarnation but whatever, I respect that that's what they choose to call themselves.

Your comment does display the basic opportunism of Maoism tho anti-Stalinist when its convenient and a matter of looking cool in front of your Trot and New Left "socialist"/anarchist friends, which happens to be the majority tendency on this board. Not so terrible in itself if it was consistent but whenever Mautists want to make in-roads with other MLs they turn around and pretend to be pro-Stalin.

It's called oxymoron.

Much more importantly, you need to learn to manage your autism somehow: "Economy" as a word has many different meanings. It's quite clear that I'm using "Communist economy" in a sense of "productive forces capable of sustaining Communist property relations".

No. The need to manage things is not abolished. It simply becomes a hobby.

It = management

I sort of assumed that would mean that wealth inequality was the same or more equal. Since well-ran social services can reduce inequality to a certain degree in even capitalist countries and the much of the wage-package of Soviet workers was taken home in the form of the social-wage.

I wrote a critique of Maoist socialism here

Imo I don't think they ever surpassed the People's Republic stage. So in a sense the whole thing about them going full-left com was a bit of a fraud there was always a rightist-drift in the political economy of the PRC which worked in tandem with its ultra-leftist political line.

What you say makes certain amount of sense they did basically destroy the party and create a lot of chaos in the GPCR. However, I think Albania does demonstrate that there are marxist-leninist alternatives to the anarchistic ultra-leftist methods applied to fight the degeneration of socialist states.

I'm not really either but a lot of people are and we have to address that. To be fair even though the USSR lasted for 70 years only about 30 of those were led by anti-revisionist leaders with an anti-revisionist line. PRC has been around almost as long as the USSR by now but they are not heading towards communism or even socialism. I think the next attempt at socialism will be much more successful if its guided by a proper line since the technology is there, so its unlikely we'll have the same problems, but we can't rule out the possibility that such degeneration can happen again.

Very true. My major point wasn't that revisionism disappears in bad times or times of war but that its harder for it to disguise itself or to thrive out in the open. If we think of the last 30 years openly right-wing capitalist ideologies have been strong enough to swindle workers and colonial countries–this followed the global post-war bloom of revisionism after Stalin's death. The post-war boom and relative peace allowed revisionism to thrive which in turn helped stabilize capitalism. The collapse of revisionist regimes after 1989 and the moderate prosperity of the neoliberal West in the late 20th century gave rise to the bald neoliberal right-wing taking the field in economics. Now with the neoliberal model collapsing is it a surprise that the establishment is turning back to many soft revisionist ideologies and that the Left has failed to supersede them?

War and depression acts to radicalize people as terrible as it is.

Why do people think Hitler is a Leftist?

Its a lie the right keep pushing.

Because the word "socialist" and "worker" are in the name and they forget that the word "national" is typically associated with the Right in European politics. Also general ignorance, they don't know that the NDSAP was a collage of far-right ideologies and personalities despite the apparent centrism or center-leftism suggested by the name.

Then you have the outright retarded people who think that just because there was some state-intervention, welfarism and protectionism involved in the Nazi economy it was ipso facto socialist.

This book goes a long way towards refuting that:
drive.google.com/file/d/0B1ZP6ZurgOg-RTZHdy1TenpmREk/view
Also here are two decent short pieces:jacobinmag.com/2014/04/capitalism-and-nazism/
mccaine.org/2010/03/14/what-was-nazi-germany-part-iii/

This thread is amazing, somebody should organize these resources on an infographic or a pastebin

That image is so garbage for so many reasons.

pls this

Well 8archive is back so worst case scenario, you can link to it.

That is something but I want an organized reading list

I think it's better to make a pdf file. And we can update it later.

What posts do you want from here?

I have no idea, this thread is too extensive and editing the posts into a pdf may make things harder

How would it make things harder? I'll be the one doing the editing, if that's the problem.

In other news:

In case not everything is already online (on marxists.org), found somewhat crappy scan of Che's notes on Economy (60 MB; Spanish):
sendspace.com/file/j0vev8

Bump

bump quality

friendly reminder the state a fucking shit cucks

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stay mad

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bakunin sucks too

m-muh "natural laws"

No war but the class war friend.

Read Hal Draper.

bakunins theory was based on antisemitism fucking kek

In my head, the words need and hobby don't like sitting close to each other. I don't believe administration of production will ever become just an administration of things, as Engels put it. Rather, the possibility to turn back into a class society will continue to exist, with the group that might turn into the ruling class being the administrators.