Was the Soviet Union great?

The bureaucratization of the Soviet Union is what ultimately led to its downfall

That I think was Stalin's greatest mistake

Lenin was good.

Stalin was a mistake. Everyone after him who tried to ameliorate his mistakes, were a mistake.

I give the USSR a 4/10: decent attempt.

Stalin, like Lenin, regularly campaigned against bureaucracy, I don't know exactly what more you think he could have done within the Soviet framework. We don't live in the imaginary anarchist world where every head of state is omnipotent.

Theyre still shit

who else should've been leader? trotsky would've been the same

It was the pinnacle of human civilisation

Lenin (and the Bolshiviks) is the reason the USSR was so shit.

...

Alright then perhaps it was the successors

No need to get so anal anguished

Fuck off. Also

The council part had potential. Then it fell apart.

they lived there, unlike you. go wank over bordiga

It was. De-Stalinization was exactly what the CCCP needed after the war but not the kind Khrushchev introduced. Political strongmen like Stalin are the exact opposite of what bureaucrats and capitalists want in their ideal government, their decisions too often place national interest ahead of lining the pockets of the elite.

lel

Oppressive and grey? No, growing up under communism was the happiest time of my life
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1221064/Oppressive-grey-No-growing-communism-happiest-time-life.html

for jews

what

It demonstrated the superior efficiency of a planned economy and forced US capitalists to pay their workers decent wages. It also pushed forward space exploration. However, it was bureaucratic and has, for the most part, given socialism a bad rep. Overall I would say it was more bad than it was good, but it definitely had some impressive aspects and shouldn't be entirely disregarded.

Also I think we need to abandon the USSR aesthetic. I like it, but it scares the fuck out of normies.

I think the West needed the Soviet Union psychologically.

I wouldn't want to live there, but I wish it still existed. The world needs a counterweight to the USA.

The aesthetic is great and it was undeniably better than the feudal shit they had before. A good experiment that can teach us a lot about what not to do in the future.

Ruined the term communism though so I'm gonna go with it being total shit

the 50s were objectively better for the American working class than today - strong unions, full employment, high wage growth etc

This.
The utter failure of the Soviet Union killed leftism off for the foreseeable future.

I'm sure that the Nordic countries would long for Nordic """"Socialism""""" if it were replaced with a neoliberal shithole as well.

Your point being what exactly? It's not an all or nothing situation. The USSR actually was socialist and not merely social democratic, at least until Gorby turned up.

And the "utter failure of the Soviet Union" is an ahistorical myth spread by triumphalist right wing Americans to justify their actions, before and after 1991.

gowans.wordpress.com/2013/12/23/seven-myths-about-the-ussr/

It had some benefits and undoubtedly would have worked better if the Soviets actually had any real power and the country was democratic. A lot of its economic woes came from corruption which is a political problem that stemmed largely out of the USSR's impenetrable bureaucracy and total lack of democratic accountability.

Even the ML model might have worked if it had been implemented gradually. The thing about revolution is that it breeds political chaos and economic hardship. Political chaos breeds strongmen and economic hardship breeds corruption. If the newborn socialist government is plagued by corruption and authoritarianism then a massive expansion of its power as it takes control of the economy is going to spread that authoritarianism and corruption into every aspect of the economy.

This is why a mutualist model is imo an important transitional period. It democratized the workplace, puts porky put on his ass, empowers workers, and keeps the economy running while the new government stabilizes itself and roots out corruption. After all a smaller government is easier for the people to control and cleanse of corruption than a massively sprawling one. In the meantime the market creates oligopolies of co-ops, meaning that production will already be largely centralized in a handful of democratic worker organizations. Once the government gets its shit together it just steps in, socializes the economy, and implements central planning and Soviets.

I think in the future any economic planning needs to be far more decentralised. Fortunately we also have the benefit of the internet which will make economic coordination much easier.

Wasn't the central planning one of the reasons the Soviet Union ultimately collapsed?

The USSR didn't collapse, it was pretty transparently destroyed by the party itself. But central planning was both responsible for the astonishing growth and disappointing stagnation of Soviet society. The latter because it was under the total control of bumbling gerontocrats with no political incentive to prioritize consumer goods over their bizarre fetish for steel production. Wish I could elaborate more but I'm on my phone.

Central planning of the Soviet Union had a lot of problems, but the USSR achieved continual GDP growth (for what it's worth) up until it was dissolved. The largest contributor to its dissolution imo was the political ossification of the party and especially the party leadership.

The Soviet Union wasn't perfect but there's much to be learned from it.

My understanding is that for much of the 20th century steel production was the measure of economic achievement, at least for the first half of the century. It's one of the reasons Mao put such an emphasis on ramping up steel production as quickly as possible even though the Chinese economy really couldn't support it.

So I would imagine that these oldfags running the economy still held on to that idea, that the more steel they produced, the better they were doing overall.

With that coment i asume you don't understand jack shit about USSR history, because the 60's and 70's was the best years to live there.

Leftism is politics, the SU is a country faggot

Something similar happened in Spain, with Franco's planned economy there was a steady growth but then after the growth started to stagnate and economic bubbles popped the economy ended up in ruins.

Forseeable future is Podemos winning and doing some kind of wannabe proletariat revolution thing.