Why is it that Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Castro...

Bad theory basically. Leninism is a cancer.

you die a hero or live long enough to become the villain. We need moral revolutionaries that fight for good of the people not themselves. We need people who won't become corrupt and hoard resources as soon as the tide shifts.

Because they were in countries that didn't have any developed means of production, so they focused on developing the means of production.

What, you mean like the Mondragon region in Spain?

HAHAHA you set yourself up so much you must be autistic
HAHAHAHAHAHA

By "successful" do you mean "flies full speed headfirst into a wall and then explodes"?

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Because workers are stuoid as fuck and you always needed a new class of bourgeoisie to control state socialism.

You seem to think seizing the means of production is the endgoal of the revolution. It's not. Rather, it is the starting point of the revolution.

The goal of the revolution is to abolish all classes, including the proletariat itself. Therefore, the proletariat's control over the means of production makes sense only if said proletariat uses this control to abolish trade and thus classes.

Of course, the proletariat cannot go that far by instinct; it needs to be class-conscious, ie: conscious of its historic mission. In other words, it needs a proper theory (Marxism) and a proper organization structured on this theory (the party). Concretely, it is therefore only when the party seizes the means of production and uses them to complete this historic that the proletariat truly controls the means of production.

So yes, Lenin did "give the means of production to the workers" in the only way that matters.

As for the others, they were not communists.

god I hate tankies

Then proletariat could do what ever they want to do. Which is not necessary the same thing they wanted to do.

It is a matter of control. If you control means of production you are controlling people who are working in there.

What if part of proletariat would decide to become capitalist ? If they control means of production they could do that…think about it if communist (for example) "liberate" a country and gave means of production to proletariat and they decide to become capitalist then all that communist have fought for is meaningless.

aaaay lmao

what's funny was that the ussr was essentially state capitalist. they didn't even progress to the socialist part

Has anyone ever willfully ceded control over means of production?

No. Of course not.

First off, your question is implying that there was never any workplace control, which is wrong, USSR and Cuba did have committees and councils controlling the managers of the factories and farms. I don't know shit about China so I restrain myself from talking about them.

The question is: How do you organize the economy after the revolution in a way that a) isn't inherently revisionist, b) is able to withstand the constant attacks and subversion of capitalist invaders and c) accounts for the low literacy and education rate which you find in said countries.

Rephrase your question because there is a difference between legal property claims, workplace administration and national economic organization - "giving the means of production to the workers" is an absolute meaningless term once you eliminated the capitalist class because people still require organization unless we have FALC.

You're easily the worst poster on this board

t. someone whose knowledge of socialism consists of a single RDWollf lecture

This would be a question from the point of view of the person who is running a state after take over. It does not mean that people living in that state have the same point of view.

a.)maybe some workers are revisionist…should they have ability to express that opinion and revision the course of action ?

b.) is just an excuse. it happens but it is excuse.

c.) proletariat is peasants who do not understand what is going on and this is the reason why "we" should control everything. Why would you go into revolution for peasants who are uneducated and do not know how to think for them self ? You are going to liberate someone who does not want to liberated ? And then there is re education…you should learn stupid workers what and how to think….

tl;dr with this you are "liberating" people with actions that are identical to occupation. You are occupying them for their own good.

This would be a question from the point of view of the person who is running a state after take over. It does not mean that people living in that state have the same point of view.

maybe some workers are revisionist…should they have ability to express that opinion and revision the course of action ?

b.) is just an excuse. it happens but it is excuse.

c.) proletariat is peasants who do not understand what is going on and this is the reason why "we" should control everything. Why would you go into revolution for peasants who are uneducated and do not know how to think for them self ? You are going to liberate someone who does not want to liberated ? And then there is re education…you should learn stupid workers what and how to think….

tl;dr with this you are "liberating" people with actions that are identical to occupation. You are occupying them for their own good.

USSR was pretty much only state capitalist under Lenin

then it was state socialist and bureaucratic collectivism

You have those swapped. The collectivized farms under Lenin were the only form of socialism and they didn't last too long.

Getting from feudalism to capitalism (not state capitalism: what capitalism has no state?) IS progressing towards socialism. And it's the best the Bolsheviks could do, given the absence of a successful uprising in any developed country. What's tragic is that they couldn't keep their power long enough to get another chance to help such an uprising: they were purged by Stalin.

Unfortunately people disagreed.

The Bolsheviks, who had seized power in the October Revolution, believed that it would consolidate their power and prove that they had a clear popular mandate to govern. Instead, the election yielded a clear victory for the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SRs), who polled almost double the votes of the Bolsheviks. archive.is/pFiaL

Stupid proletariat

Leading to universal poverty under the capitalist mode of production as all profits will go to the owners of the robots and AI.

And this is relevant why?

Finally, someone mentions historical materialism, which is the correct answer. Russia, China, and Cuba were in a very early stage of capitalism when they had their revolutions. They needed to industrialize before they even had a proletariat majority.

Peasants do not want working class control. Go figure.

this sounds like a very Rosselli-esque thing to say

Well I'm agreeing with Marx, sorta. He said socialism must come from capitalism not straight from feudalism as attempted in China and Russia and North Korea (which were of course disasters). The economic factor matters but I believe also the political context, a country that has always had dictators is almost destined to suffer under another if it's done through vanguardist revolt.

well the USSR didn't really go straight from feudalism to capitalism, they went from feudalism to state capitalism, no? I realize Stalin did things differently from Lenin, and didn't follow the NEP, but still

it explains original question

because they were stupid proletariat. And this great leader had no other options then to:

The Constituent Assembly convened on 18 January 1918. However, the other parties refused to give their support to Bolshevik leader and premier Vladimir Lenin's idea of a soviet republic. The VTsIK dissolved the Assembly the next day, leaving the All-Russian Congress of Soviets as the governing body of Russia.archive.is/pFiaL

I think state capitalism is a silly meme since the USSR wasn't capitalist but I would accept the term of a deformed workers state, ie. a failed attempt at socialism. It never really got to capitalism as seen in the west until the 90s, and even then it's a pretty basic and illiberal form.

marxists.org/archive/dunayevskaya/works/1942/russian-economy/index.htm

well i suppose, but i mean, that's how lenin described the USSR, state capitalist, you could consider it as something separate from liberal capitalism and socialism

it is not a meme. Lenin actually did try to do it in USSR

Reality tells us that state capitalism would be a step forward. If in a small space of time we could achieve state capitalism, that would be a victory. (Lenin 1918)

It doesn't explain anything. Workers' control of the means of production has nothing to do with a parlement majority.

What, if any, is the difference between state socialism and state capitalism? In my mind capitalism requires private property.

No it's not. As the other user quoted:

State capitalism would be capitalism with only one capitalist: the state.

"State socialism" is an oxymoron.

Lenin (and other great leaders) did not turn control of means of production to workers who were producing because workers would do different things than Lenin (and others) wanted.

also, this

define state ?
define socialism ?
define capitalism ?
And differences between this definitions are answer to the question, correct ?

The Bolsheviks did not need to turn control of means of production to "workers who were producing" because "workers who were producing" (aka the proletariat) already controlled the means of production through the Bolsheviks.

Pragmatism and condition-specific necessity. Lenin instituting New Economic Policy was not born from some comically evil villain caricature controlling him and making him a Porky; the fact of the matter is that Russia was poorly equiped and industrialized to face the looming threat of counter-revolutionary loyalists to the tsar in the White Army, liberal democracies undermining Soviet sovereignty and the then already existing threat of fascist reaction in Italy and the knowledge that it would spread to Italy. "Worker control" is also a recent category; post-capitalism, for Marx (and thus at least Lenin too) was envisioned as more than just worker-ownership of production, but a total transformation of the productive forces. This is why, quite ironically, and much to the unawareness of many ITT, the USSR post-NEP fit the description of worker-owned largely: the state bureacratic capitalist was at once allocating labor and performing it, and the various cooperative-style systems of Sovkhoz industrial firms and Kholkoz agricultural firms were worker-controlled and managed on a sub-national, regional level after Stalin formed them with his so-called "collectivization" periods. This entire economic paradigm had worker-delegated control in the capitalistic sense: wage labor, production for exchange (a national stock exchange, literally) and a state ensuring the validity of the money form. This ironically failed to consistently be capitalistic alongside liberalized capitalism precisely because only the most ruthless and productive capitalisms survive. Aside from heavy industry, the USSR had little to show for itself in sheer numbers, although it used the strength of its national economy and a power Rouble to achieve major feats like space travel, the sciences and engineering.

Furthermore, the direct aftermath of the Russin revolution, which we dub the post-'17 period and consequently War Communism period, was the closest we've ever gotten to a dominantly lower communism-style society; one in which Soviet councils reigned supreme, the Rouble was permanently outlawed and labor time-defined production and consumption was the working of the economy. This same system was incapable of being as explosively productive as capitalism was, and it was at once also still semi-feudal, largely controlled by peasantry.

Yeah that's what I thought. State capitalism is anarkiddie bullshit. I bet you consider market 'socialism' to be non capitalist too right.

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To Germany* (or elsewhere in European nations with a strong bourgeoisie).

What the hell?

It's not socialism because it has market economics, worker ownership is hardly the only problem with capitalism that needs to be solved, are you one of those people who think a muh self employed tradesman who bilks his unfortunate customers and sells them shit they don't need that was produced by people earning way less than him is socialist?

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Tankies are the single greatest threat to socialism.

Why can't anarchkiddies get this into their heads?

Haven't you heard?
Tankies are a religious cult.

He didn't use state capitalism as a perojative like everyone else who says it.

Why do you think markets are inherently bad?

Neither did I.

Read Capital.

Can't say it's not an improvement.

the flaws of the market can be addressed within the market system, read Minsky, Kalecki, Keen

Please elaborate a bit on this.

Then they are not the flaws of the market genius.

Really Capital. Do it.

well, name something specific, and I'll explain how it can be addressed

This part.

that's not something specific, it's just saying the problems that aren't problems aren't problems of the market, I don't know what specifically is being referred to

IE. Overconsumption and the tragedy of the commons
Inequality between co-ops
Unemployment and welfare
Planned obsolescence

The division of society in classes, the state, the falling rate of profit, imperialist wars, to name a few.

Not that I'm disagreeing with you, but could you explain how the market is inherently related to those things.

I read the basics of Marxist theory the other day, and understand that competition across an industry causes falling rate of profit because they have to spend more in investment. Correct me if I'm wrong.

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Market socialism involves competition though instead of cooperation.

Competition is a form of mutual cooperation

???

It's not an either/or?

Kinda it is, either you're cooperative or competitive. Competition (for economic resources) is cruel and wasteful. Competing co-ops would mean the same shitty problems we have under capitalism.

"no."

Because they were all Marxist Leninist countries (note that Marxism Leninism is different than Leninism) so since those people followed that ideology (except Lenin who only did what he did because of WWI and the material conditions at the time) then they gave the means of production to the state instead of the people. Read more if you want to understand, but basically Leninism wants to form what's called a vanguard which is basically a revolutionary organization that during a revolution organizes, guides, and then takes over the state after revolution. Marxism Leninism still keeps the idea of the vanguard, but it's basically Stalinism it's helpful in third world countries because it usually leads to the advancement and industrialization, but the problem is other than being Stalinism that it seems to end there and it doesn't really ever try to move past the state having the means of production and towards actual socialism.

This makes no fucking sense. The original question per was the relationship between the market and the structure of Capitalist society.

How is this an answer?

You implied that the falling rate of profit was just because of competition but market socialism is competitive.

That isn't even my argument anyway, nobody replied to my post, that market socialism will still involve environmental destruction, resource depletion, unemployment, inequality between firms, so what the hell was the point in having a revolution?

No, that's not what I said. (Also, isn't me. But he's right. You didn't answer my question.)

I didn't advocate for market socialism. I was seeking clarification in how markets cause each of those things, specifically.

I was implying that your distinction between competition and cooperation was irrelevant in view of the relationship of the market to "those things".

Chapter 2 of Capital Volume 1 and onwards will explain the relationship if you're committed to a partial answer to those questions. If you want an immediate answer, begin from Part 3.

Thank you

I think the falling rate of profit is dubious, the empirical evidence for it often uses statistics starting from the mid 20th century period where profits were unusually high, I can't find good figures for the entire history of the US for example, but if we look slightly before the WW2 era we can see the rate of profit now is actually slightly higher than the peak preceding the massive spike in the rate of profit

Perhaps you're misunderstanding the law. Take into account the difference in variable capital and constant capital.

(And this is assuming you're correct in that profit hasn't fallen.)

Markets may suck but they do not define capitalism. Capitalism is a relationship between workers and production and socialism is when that relationship is democratic.

Where are you getting these figures? Rate of profit is how much you get back per investment, not the total amount of profit earned. Total profit is at record highs for the small few that are able to consolidate industries around themselves.

Can somebody explain to me what is the idea behind few last posts ? There seems to be some kind of idea (clarification) that you are trying to find out. But I do not understand what is the point you are trying to clarify ?

In capitalism workers control means of productions through capitalist. It seems all the same to me.

Well I was looking at the US, though I suppose if for the world it is a consistent secular decline then that would vindicate the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, I would be curious as to where the information on that graph comes from in any case

also, ultimately, even if the rate of profit continues to fall profit will always exist in a market system due to markup pricing, and I'm not sure why this would be a threat to markets overall (though of course it could be a threat to the current systems we have in place)