It was state capitalism!!!

If the USSR was state capitalism because it had a bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy is a separate class from the proletariat, then what class are bureaucrats under capitalism? Anarkiddies and trots, please explain.

Other urls found in this thread:

marxists.org/archive/bookchin/1950/state-capitalism.htm
revleft.com/vb/threads/189886-The-Soviet-Union-Thread
greanvillepost.com/2012/11/30/opeds-super-etatism-and-socialism-towards-a-statement-of-the-problem/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

read bookchin
marxists.org/archive/bookchin/1950/state-capitalism.htm

.

one of the problems with the USSR wasn't bureaucracy. In fact, it was the lack of a neutral, functioning bureaucracy. It was in a constant state of emergency just for things to approach functioning.
But yeah, it was "state capitalism" in the sense that the state used markets and money and banking and waged labor. It became full-on capitalism when they started to allow "patriotic capitalists" to become the drivers of investment.

Bookchin is a meme. Horizontalism is shit. There is absolutely nothing wrong with authority.

authority causes resentment which leads to resistance and eventually open rebellion. You are spooked as fuck

No, they were just the new bourgeoisie. They now controlled the means of production. It isn't that being a bureaucrat makes you a different class. Read a book, nigger.

nice none argument

but…. theres nothing wrong with rebellion

Spooky. There can not be communism with irrational authority. Irrational authority is the manifestation of forming a ruling class for the mere purpose of being ruled – be it by a king or a capitalist – it is self-reproducing and toxic to the community.
Since this the nature of irrational authority it can only be maintained if you make use of propaganda that makes sure your citizens are irrational as well – to instill in them the thought that authority for the sake of authority is a good thing, which ultimately leads to irrational authority popping up all over society and thus destroying the goal of a classless society.

People who appropriate and redistribute surplus labor value are known as "bourgeoisie".

What profit did the 'bureacracy/new bourgeoisie' steal from the workers?

that's not dialectical.

There's no such thing as "state capitalism"

It's just a false analysis perpetuated by people on the "left" who wish to disassociate themselves from the icky, messy aspects of socialism. It's all well and good to sit back on your bourgeois laurels and proclaim any attempt to build socialism as "state capitalism", "stalinism", "authoritarianism" or "tankie", but that ignores material reality and the importance of seizing state power to smash capitalism forever.

FACTS

I seriously hope you don't pretend to be any kind of consistent Marxist.

I meant in the sense that anti-Leninists use it

There's no such thing as NON-state capitalism, fucking idiot. Go ahead, name one truely libertarian society. Pro-tip you can't, really existing capitalism is limited to 3rd world shitholes at the end of a gun somewhere.

"state capitalism" does not mean mere state intervention in the economy

bump

well you clearly have no fucking clue what youre talking

What do Stalinists smoke

Hey, Christian comrade. I have a few questions that I want to ask a religious socialist.

The USSR owned the means of production, and the workers didn't. Explain how it wasn't state capitalism.

Also: Read Bookchin

It depends on what they are running. Congressmen are unproductive labourers.

Yes there is.
T. Engels.

revleft.com/vb/threads/189886-The-Soviet-Union-Thread
Tim Cornelis dumps a bunch of information in this thread about the Capitalist relations that persisted under the USSR.

Well, they sold their products abroad and also kept using wage labor while increasing their wealth. If this isn't surplus value theft, then I don't know what is.

ooh boi

This poster gets it.

Whose? Against whom?
Resentment of whom?
of whom?
of whom?

the bureaucrats in eastern bloc were pretty much capitalists

The bureacrats under the soviet union more or less became the bourgoise as they decided how the means of production was run, even though markets were not used.

Under Capitalism though, bureacrats and just state apperatus and are told what to do instead of deciding themselves. They're as proletariat as the police, so I'll let you decide to what degree that is.

...

Bourgeoisie?

Like how stupid can tankies be?

exactamundo

welcome to… actually taking a look at how things work efficiently

wtf

I don't believe the USSR was socialist, but holy shit that's a terrible argument. If the USSR was capitalist in any form it's because the law of value and the capital accumulation cycle still operated.

That's missing the point miserably.
The whole point was that it was still anti-political statecraft just as any other regime or state in history and this made no relevant systematic change to differtiate itself from civilization.

you don't know what capitalism is. start there.

State capitalism is a step on the road to communism, not the destination.

Of course, leftists who would tell you it wasn't state capitalism are idiots.

Ho boy do you need to read

USSR was superetatist (neither socialist, nor capitalist) read Tarasov greanvillepost.com/2012/11/30/opeds-super-etatism-and-socialism-towards-a-statement-of-the-problem/
"So, we know the main characteristics of a socialist (communist) society: it is a classless, stateless, non-commodity system of direct democracy (participatory democracy), which has overcome exploitation and alienation, is based on the communal ownership of the means of production, and is generated by the socialist (communist) mode of production.

It is obvious that “real socialism” did not correspond with these primary characteristics of socialism. Under “real socialism” we had:

a) a state (that, compared to capitalism, even expanded its authority – instead of “withering away”);

b) commodity-money relations, which inevitably, according to Engels, had to generate capitalism;

c) the institutions of bourgeois representative democracy (in addition, it was reduced, in essence, to oligarchy);

d) exploitation and alienation, which in their intensity and totality equaled the exploitation and alienation in the capitalist countries;

e) state (and not communal) ownership of the means of production

f) social classes

and finally

g) the same mode of production as under capitalism – large-scale commodity machine production or, in other words, the industrial mode of production.

At the same time, it can be proven that “real socialism” was not also capitalism: the market mechanism was absent (even since the “Libermanian” reform only some elements of the market economy have appeared, but not the market itself; in particular, the market of capital was completely absent, without which the market mechanism cannot work in principle); the state did not act as a private owner and an aggregate capitalist (as it should be under state capitalism), i. e. as one (even the main one) of the subjects of the economy, but absorbed the economy and tried to absorb society, i. e. the state acted rather as an aggregate feudal lord in relation to its citizens, at the same time not having the capacity to act in the same way in relation to other means of production (because of the absence of private property and other “feudal lords”); market competition was completely absent.

I propose that in the USSR (as in the other “real socialist” countries) we were dealing with a special socio-economic system – super-etatism, a system which developed parallel to capitalism within the framework of a single mode of production – the industrial mode of production.

In the Marxist tradition the system is named after of the most progressive owner (“slave-holding system”, and not “slave system” – after the slaveholder; “feudalism” – after the feudal lord, and not after the serf; “capitalism” – after the capitalist, and not after the worker). In this sense it would be more correct to call super-etatism simply etatism, but, unfortunately, this term is—as it is usually said in similar cases—a matter of debate in the social sciences."

The USSR was not capitalist because it had a bureaucracy: it had a bureaucracy because it was capitalist.

And it was capitalist because it had markets.

The burocrats under capitalism do not own the means of production, nor do they control them, they merely do paper pushing work for the bourgeoisie, in the interest of the bourgeoisie. If they go against the interests of capital, they are removed from office, just like any workers.

There is a big difference between a bureaucrat who answers only to himself, and a bureaucrat who has to do what he is told.

Goddammit, read Marx or something

The proletariat as a class operated through the Communist party in the soviet union. The bureaucrats were in fact mostly drawn from the workers and peasants, which doesn't make any sense if the Soviet Union was capitalist. There were in fact bourgeois elements in power, but they mostly operated through the black market and the shadow economy. They were able to accumulate wealth and eventually overthrow the soviet state altogether.

It's obvious that the Soviet Union did not follow the laws of capitalism. The lack of capitalist crisis is a pretty clear example in my mind.

the bureaucrats answered to the proletariat

Why do you think it collapsed, genius?

nothing wrong with the community appropriating the surplus to reinvest in expanding the MOP

You don't need "market relations" to have Capitalism. Defining feature of Capitalism is Capital on one end, labour on the other. It's why Engels says in Socialism, Utopian and Scientific that: