Is there any argument at all for Maoism or Marxism-Leninism over left communism?

Sorry, I'm completely retarded, for some reason I read OPs post as "why would anyone choose Maoism over Marxism-Leninism", please excuse my extreme retardation.

Leftcoms are entirely wrong in their analysis. Become ML.

They are all leftcom because ML was pretty much being persecuted in the West for the entire Cold War. So if you didn't want to get kicked out of the faculty, you'd become a leftcom.

Social democracy if you like the former, armchairs, spontaneity and the real movement if you like the latter.

The former already wasn't a thing, but the two together certainly aren't. Rosa died years before left communism became a thing (a current, really).

there's literally no ML theory lmao

Not even MLs states produced anything noteworthy after 1936

MLs are obsessed with realpolitik, they're drawn to the USSR and China for the same reasons SucDems are drawn to reformism, they think it makes them pragmatic and realistic, and they think pointing out that they aren't ashamed of Stalin or Mao BTFOs Liberals (which is actually kind of true, nothing triggers Liberals more then taking away the power of "muh gorzillion" from them). The real issue is, Communism isn't about establishing a Social Democratic state bureaucracy that manages some weird half-aborted kinda-sorta socialist, kinda-sorta Capitalist abomination. The Soviet Union never effectively negated the social relations of Capitalism, and while it's true that there are tons of external pressures and realities that made that an issue, it also doesn't make sense to endlessly obsessed over these failed former Socialist Republics when we should actually be spending our time trying to figure out why they failed and how to avoid their failures in the future, not to mention acknowledging that their material conditions simply are not our own. This is speaking as a former ML who's now a Leftcom btw.

Where did you get this from?

There are more academics who call themselves ML than academics who call themselves left communists.

Please stop forcing the Luxemburgism meme, it isn't any more real then "Kautskyism" or "Bernsteinism".

MLs, like always, are just liberals with guns

I don't know how many would regard themselves as leftcoms nowadays given that the term is basically a historical artifact, but most would classify those academics who do fall in that tradition to be "synthesist." Really that generally amounts to mostly developments out of the Councilist tradition rather than Bordiga. Just about the only thing that was still used from the latter's theory was his critiques of his contemporaries in the international workers' movement and his additions to Marxist critiques; the political methodology he advocated has been largely abandoned

Isn't Lenin often described as a Kautskyist?

I have no idea what that means

What made you make the switch?

Marxist-Leninist theory is the final culmination of both Marxism, Leninism and the historical review of the socialist revolutions which happened.

Your just ignorant

bookzz.org/book/862537/add33c

...

l m a o

Lenin, Luxemburg, and Kautsky (before going "renegade") were all just by-the-numbers Marxists, their ideas were just what most Marxists at the Second International believed and the differences between them were mostly polemical and are widely exaggerated today. I'd also argue there's really no such thing as "Leninism" proper, he was just a faithful Marxist, same as Luxemburg and the younger Kautsky. Marxism-Leninism on the other hand is something different, it was that state philosophy developed by the central committee of the USSR.

"we lost the race but at least we made a few steps before collapsing from exhaustion!"

Again, not a thing. You're forcing a meme here and I dare you to find at least three individuals who call themselves synthesists and fit the description of "mostly developments out of the Councilist tradition rather than Bordiga".

But I can.

a) Leftcoms are wrong to think that the material conditions for revolution will align with the material conditions for socialism

b) they often don't know the historic reality of the USSR or are delusional about it

c) their only argument is muh law of value

d) they don't have a guide to action even though history shows that both material conditions as well as individual endeavors are shaping historical outcomes

Actually reading Marx, actually reading Das Kapital, actually learning about LTV, it soon became undeniable that the Soviet Union had many of the characteristics of Capitalism, particularly wage labor and the value form. It's true that the extracted surplus value was then very evenly redistributed among the population, but that's not Communism, Communism is a society where the Proletariat has effectively abolished it's own class, not a society where the State benevolently redistributes wealth through a welfare apparatus.

The USSR never claimed to be communist

no need for critical thought as you can just blame everything that goes bad on revisionism

...

That's why I mentioned it in quotes you dunce.

wtf I love the left wing of capital now

wtf did i just read? anons? is this an actual think you people believe here?

That doesn't excuse inventing a shitty neologism, user.

And as far as really existing syntheses of Italian and Dutch-German left communism goes, there's just communization, which is actually in no way heavier on Pannekoek than on Bordiga.

Maoism doesn't exist. As for ML - the question should be "is there any argument for LeftCom?" Because ML provably works and is much more developed than any LeftCom theory to date.

Yes. What else do you want to? Small state apparatus either becomes elitist or degenerates into Capitalism.

State has to grow bigger and bigger, until it is all-encompassing and everyone is part of decision-making process. That's the only way forward. You can't exclude majority of population from the bureaucracy and hope that it will all somehow "work out".

I don't really see how this can be considered anything other then a slightly more effective form of Social Democracy tbh.

Then why do MLs obsess over it so much? I understand protecting the history of proletarian struggle, but in over 70 years of it's existence it only ever achieved the creation of a stagnant Social Democratic worker's state, I'm not saying it was "totalitarian" or "red fascism" or anything that retarded, I'm just saying there's no reason to valorize it to the point of repeating methods and theories that a.) don't reflect our current history and material conditions, and b.) ended in failure. Leftcoms are far truer to the actual ideas of Marx and Lenin than any ML who thinks that Socialism is about the creation of a State and that the nationalization of the economy is some kind of endgoal of Socialism.

Well, Marx didn't expect revolution to happen in a country which wasn't the most developed capitalist country. Therefore there needs to be a transitional phase before communism can be achieved. Don't call it socialism if you want, the fact that Marx used it interchangeably doesn't change that socialism is generally used as a term for a transitional phase between capitalism and communism.

You can't be arsed to come up with a different term and thinking that capitalism will just transcend into communism is retarded, so I'll continue to describe ML countries as socialist as long as they are dictatorship of the proletariat.

Wow, good argument, you really did a great job distinguishing why you disagree with me and what your counter claim is :^)

youtube.com/watch?v=qyFMKiHFZXg
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch05.htm
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm

i wasn't arguing, clearly… are you retarded?

Holla Forums needs more of this

get out faggot

wow, another great thought provoking post, keep it up user :^)

I don't think any ML would claim that communism has been achieved. We obsess over it so much because we don't go along with the defeatism to pander to liberals, denouncing the Soviet Union just because it hurts someone's fee fees is not an option. Calling yourself a communist these days will associate you with he USSR, and saying "socialism has never been tried" makes one the laughingstock in every debate. So we defend it because what's usually known about it is liberal slander.

Alright but I don't support Kruschevs revisionism. Besides that, you are sounding as if that wasn't an achievement in itself. There has never been such a state ever before. You sound like you're blaming the first man I space not to have gone to Mars

Nobody wants to copy-paste Stalinism. It was born out of the difficulties of the 30s and the upcoming years in a very specific situation. We just don't denounce it.

But the academic left is entirely consumed by activistic notions of revolution, which is why the academic left is in a constant war of attrition against "fascism" (read: what the same academic left believes the fate of the world hinges on) in universities, and then you post an image of Chomsky who unironically believes socialism is worker ownership and that we can just vote the next historical state of production into existence in parliament.

I wouldn't call state capitalism with red flags eventually returning to regular capitalism very succesful

...

ML is only relevant in Russian in the 20th century, as Lenin used proper historical materialism to write theory like any good Marxist. But using its revolutionary theory anywhere else is 'turning a necessity into a universal'. That being said, there are man useful parts of the theory you can use to understand the state - much better than simple Marxism

You can clinge to your antiquated definition of Social Democracy (which was Marxist in the 19th century) because I have no problem with describing the USSR as a Social Democracy if you go by the 1848 definition of it. The Bolsheviks were the Social Democratic party of Russia after all.

The problem is, the Golden Age of Social Democracy between 1918-1980 coined the term as being a welfare state with strong unions. This is widely established as a definition of Social Democracy and you are simplifying terms for no other reason than debating orthodox semantics of Marx who never even saw a Social Democratic state. And the USSR wasn't just a welfare state.

Kill yourself

Like a clockwork. You haven't made any feasible suggestion on how to abolish the law of value which was impossible to overcome in the face of the Cold War

Maiyxism-Leiiiism?

ffs this faux cyrillic shit needs to die

Calling ML social democracy goes with the full intention of associating it with the modern notion of social democracy. At least the original Marxian social democracy had a semblance of proletarian character, while ML is just plain social democracy with added despotism.

And nice, two replies in and you've already changed the goalposts from "as long as the proletariat was in control…" to "muh oppression doesn't matter anyways!". What's next, "they were kulaks anyways"?

The fact that you have a problem with socialism necessarily being absent of value and value production once again only again reveals that the person you have a problem here is Marx before anything or anyone else.

But ML doesn't stop at Russia in the 20s. It's not Maoism or Third Worldism.

Read Paul Cockshott "New Socialism", read through the Soviet Cybernetics thread, look to Kerala.

akarlin.com/2012/06/ayn-stalin/

hmmmmmmmmm

Really says something about the commitments of the USSR, doesn't it, Mussolini?

What Marxist academics? Capitalist-approved talking heads? You expect to hear truth from people who literally get appointed by the Bourgeoisie?

You don't know what you are talking about.

Stop being brainwashed. Also, learn some dialectical materialism: there are no binary states that affect society, only processes. USSR was a revolutionary state - a society at constant war with old social order, both within and without. You cannot evaluate USSR by some utopian standards of imaginary Communist State.

This is provably wrong. Planned distribution of material wealth is a negation of Capitalism.

Again with the binary thinking. Failure at what exactly? USSR "failed" in 1991, but Capitalism got introduced in 1987 and Party lost power in 1989.

There was no Soviet Socialism to fail by 1991.

It got abolished by the very same logic you are using RIGHT NOW. You literally acting like a mouthpiece of Gorbachev, like a Liberal with selective perception. You see collapse of Soviet Socialism where there is no Soviet Socialism, but refuse to see utter collapse and degeneration of ex-Soviet states that followed. Apparently, this doesn't prove anything whatsoever and is not relevant to anything.

Except everything was figured out ages ago. You just can't reconcile this with the Revisionism of Khrushchev, his Liberal opposition to the Big State. And so you attempt to find some other explanation to the events, the one that would conveniently allow you to avoid challenging Liberal (Capitalist!) morale that you got from mass-media.

But you can spend eternity trying to figure out something else, and you will find nothing. Because there is no other explanation. There is nothing else you can figure out. What failed was not Marxism-Leninism, but an attempt to Liberalize USSR. A Revisionist doctrine of Khrushchev that was supported by the elitist bureaucrats that wanted to stop the growth of State apparatus and retain their muh privileged positions. A doctrine that was developed later by Khrushchev (Kosygin reform) and inevitably led to Perestroika: transtition from socialised economy to Capitalist economy.

Then you are a retard. Worker control over the means of production, abolition of surplus extraction by the Bourgeoisie, abolition of private property, no unemplyoment, etc. is decidedly not inherent to the modern notion of Social Democracy.

It was. Do you think revolution, civil war, World War II while constantly under the DotP happens without anybody getting hurt? Stop moralizing, that's pathetic. I havn't moved the goalposts one bit.

I do have a problem with it. That doesn't make the USSR capitalist, since value production predates capitalism. I'd call the USSR socialism, you don't, which is fine, but you refuse to give any description of a post-capitalist society nor do you even dare to engage in the phenomenon that revolutions happen in the periphery. Historical reality massively triggers you

There was no socialism period. You completely miss what this post is trying to say which is that socialism is about transcending alienating social structures and this starts with abolishing value form. This is of course, impossible to do within a single country which is why the notion of "socialism in one country" is so utterly hilarious if it weren't so sad that so many buy into it.

Also: who's revisionism? The proletariats? The fact that tankies have to rely on such inane blabber is telling that they know deep down the Soviet State was never in the hands of the proletariat, that the revolutionary period of the State died long before Cornman came into power.

Not socialism, and this descriptor by no means whatsoever existed in Russia.

Not socialism, and the surplus instead went to the state which then was charged with redistribution.

Both existed.

"Marxism"-"Leninism" only has a very superficial understanding of what capitalism, socialism and communism are. It is implied that its adherents haven't understood Marx's critique of political economy in any way. For you, a centralized economy which is managed by the vanguard party already is socialist, and all it needs is post-scarcity of all goods to become communist. You see the law of value as transhistorical until the magical point of post-scarcity (which will never come using such productivistic standards as "scarcity", while maintaining and recording a GDP and expansion in your theoretical discourse). I (and Marx) would reject this on several levels: the idea here is that private property is an emergent property of commodity production; the fact that goods are produced for exchange. It is wrong, and always has been, to view private property in a false dichotomy between individual and state. The important feature is exclusivity: as long as there is an instance restricting free access to the means of production in order to produce value, private property exists. It doesn't matter whether that instance is an individual, a state, a corporation or a cooperative. As long as commodity production continues, you have capitalism, nothing else. You reproduce wage labour as a consequence of reproducing capital as an automatic subject.

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch05.htm

What you also do is task a vanguard party to act as a substitution for the proletariat, rather than being a part of it. MLs are being criticized for imagining a hypothetical society and applying this ideal to the world, instead of seeing communism as the real proletarian movement abolishing capitalism and class society.

Now read: marxists.org/archive/dunayevskaya/works/1941/ussr-capitalist.htm and sinistra.net/lib/upt/compro/lipo/lipoebubie.html.

To conclude:
1) Capitalists existed in Russia, both social and actual individuals. The state took the form of a capitalist and also the collective farms and peasants with their private plots. Markets existed, even free markets, including a black market. There were even Soviet millionaires. Private property was enshrined by law in the collective farms.

2) Capital ran Russia. The law of value made itself felt by the shifting changes in prices and wages and on what was produced. Profit existed, in fact, it was made into a legal requirement for state firms to make a profit. Speculation existed in the countryside with their markets.

3) Labour was alienated, there was a constant drive to push down wages and make labour more productive (along capitalist lines, of course). Relative freedom was only awarded due to the need for labour in the process of industrialisation. Still, unemployment was wide spread.

4) Russia was never tending towards or transitioning to socialism/communism only to be thwarted at the last minute by "revisionists" and "capitalist roaders"; it was its own utter failure of a social democracy that was so unpleasant that people wanted to escape it for proper social democracy.

marxists.org/archive/dunayevskaya/works/1941/ussr-capitalist.htm
sinistra.net/lib/upt/compro/lipo/lipoebubie.html

This is literally the purpose of socialism you brainless piece of shit. Nobody gives a shit about nationalization and a "worker controlled economy" does not substantially transform labor relations.

Socialism is revolutionary because it imagines a future in which production is no longer beholden to market dynamics. Our economy is based not on commodities, but the fulfillment of the needs of every community.

It did, however, claim to be socialist. From a Marxist standpoint, this is a bald-faced lie.

Put the memes down and back seat slowly.

defend trotskyism pls

Also check out Chapters 6-7 of this.
libcom.org/files/Chattopadhyay, Paresh - The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience.pdf

Basically this. Marx never talked about socialism in terms of the State planning production. From 1844 till he died it was always a free association of producers. The idea that State planning is a "negation" of Capital (one gets the impression all these self proclaimed Marxist-Leninist don't really understand what negation means) shows a lack of understanding as to what capital is.

damn that's a good one

Marxism-Leninism is theory written to justify everything that happened in the Soviet Union, while theory should dictate what happens.

not sure if you're being facetious or not but it's a pretty accurate description of the soviet union

marxism-leninism should be renamed to taylorism-blanquism

And yet the USSR wasn't Socialist by it's own standards, in all it's decades of existence no meaningful attempt was made to transition society from Capitalism to Communism. The bare minimum of what could be called a "revolutionary state" is that it actively participates in the abolition of Capitalism as well as social classes, the USSR achieved neither, if that's "Utopian", you triple faggot, then Marx is Utopian.

Wage labor and the value form (along with private property) are literally Marx's definition of Capitalism. A planned economy that evenly distributes socially produced value isn't Communism you retard, it's the literal definition of a Social Democratic welfare state.

No you bufoon, it failed when it literally proved itself incapable of actually negating and sublating Capitalism or class based society.

What are you talking about you braindead mong? I'm saying the USSR didn't do enough to actually create Communism, not that the USSR needed market reforms or some shit, did you even read my post? Or are you operating on ML programming where you only know how to argue with revisionists, and everything else frys your circuits?

I'm honestly not even sure what your talking about anymore, your clearly arguing with an elaborate stawman. I've never perceived Khrushev as a right Libertarian "Small State" crusader, and my problem with Stalin isn't that he made the State too big, it's that he never actually created Communism, you faggot, do you not realize that Communism is stateless? The endgoal is literally no state, but my problem with Stalin isn't "le scary big state", I'm not an ancap, I don't care about that, it's that the USSR never actually effectively used the State as a vehicle for accelerated class warfare and never actually moved past the most rudimentary lowest stages of State Capitalism, even at his hight of power Stalin never effectively moved past the NEP, and the reason it was so easy for revisionists to take over in the first place was precisely because of this lukewarm revolutionary incrementalism.

Everything you're perceiving as "pandering" and "defeatism" is literally just disciplined self-critique and a genuine attempt to move past the theories and praxis of the previous century into the present. But you've just proven my initial claim that the only reason people get dragged into identifying as ML is so that Liberals don't laugh at them for pulling the "communism's never been tried" meme. I'd say what Communists actually need in this moment is the intellectual honesty, courage, integrity, and confidence to admit the failures, as well as successes, of the past without being consumed by the shadow of previous revolutions and epochs.

I actually do think it was an achievement, but I also think Marxists are thoroughly limiting themselves in the realm of theory and ideas by locking themselves onto the USSR, there's a serious lack of political imagination on the Left today, and the degree of theoretical poverty among Marxists is inexcusable, especially considering the rich tradition of thought we come out of, and I hate to say it, but MLs are some of the worst offenders.

I'd suggest you actually read Bordiga or Dauve's critiques of the former USSR, I'm not saying it'll convert you or something, but if you're honestly interested in understanding why a lot of the things went down the way they did I don't see why it would hurt. I just don't understand why MLs are so adamant about never reading outside of ML canon, Marxists should read as widely and broadly as possible, without fear that it'll "taint" them.

You're setting you expectations very low. Our goal isn't "Anything" but Communism.

And aparently so does huge beaurocratic state aparatus, so I don't see how this is an argument.

Out of every description of the State withering away this is hands down the single most retarded. Please tell me this isn't what most MLs believe.

doesn't the ICC also draw heavily from Rosa?

Except the criticisicms of the Soviet Union are as old as the Soviet Union itself, both from the Social Democratic camp (Kautsky) as well as from the Leftcom camp (Bordiga) and Stalin himself has written responses to it. If you criticize us for clinging to outdated ideas, we could claim you are doing just the same. How much self-critique do you find in left communism? You guys literally meme the armchair. Self-critique goes both ways. It's always easy to denounce everything while never being tasked with something yourself.

It's not a meme, it's as bad as it sounds. Communism has been tried and to tell people it hasn't based not on historical review but on social-philosophical literature is a cheap cop-out. This is why leftcoms often get torn apart by right-wingers in debates, luckily they don't engage in debate often outside the leftist sphere. I didn't become a Marxist-Leninist so I would have it easier presenting socialism to people, in fact defending Stalin gives liberals a heart attack.

As long as we also get to admit the successes. I think you're mostly aiming at a strawman. Earlier in this thread I was mentioning Paul Cockshott and Kerala, both are very modern developments fitting into the Marxist-Leninist theory and praxis. Stalinism in practice was limited to the material conditions of Russia in the beginning of the 20th century. But we still believe in the fundamentals of Leninism, such as the vanguard party, anti-imperialism and a centrally planned economy, for example. My emphasis lies on praxis though. Left communism doesn't have a praxis and Anarchism a very, very weak one. Only Marxist-Leninist and Maoists have a praxis that is relevant.

I agree with you. Žižek ends every lecture with "I have no idea what to do" and communalism sort of moves away from classical materialism/class struggle to not be associated with the USSR. I'd like to argue that the creative bankruptcy in the left also stems from the fear of not being associated with 20th century communism in any possible way. Pretty much all leftists I meet in real life could use a good dose of Marxism-Leninism.

Also, name a political ideology that isn't ideologically bankrupt nowadays. Neo right-wingers and 21th century liberals are a joke in my opinion.

I do read widely and broadly, it is just my personal preference that when I read outside of the ML-"canon" I usually read literature outside the leftist sphere, like medieval history for example. I have read Bordiga, not Dauves though.

there's a difference between attempting and actually realizing socialism

What about a state which is democratically controlled by the proletariat? In 1928 every tenth citizen of the Soviet Union was participating in Soviets, Factory commitees, party platforms and community councils. That's literally a state made up by the people in reciprocal participation.

that's whyy it still exists today

You don't seem to understand why Marxists don't like the USSR. It's not just because the USSR was mean (although a lot of atrocities have happened under red flags) but because the USSR was always a capitalist entity. The state served as employer over masses of proletarians. Not only did wage labor exist in the Soviet Union, but there was a bona fide bourgeoisie of wealthy bureaucrats and local officials. You guys go on about Khruschev's revisionism, but he didn't make the USSR "less socialist." It was a capitalist entity under Stalin. Khruschev simply stepped away from the pretense of socialism.

It's not defeatism to admit that the USSR, since the 1920s, was a failure. In fact, we NEED to identify that the USSR never created socialism, and probably never could have when bombarded on all sides by foreign bourgeois elements. If we don't recognize this, future socialists will make the same mistakes and simply perpetuate capitalism under a red flag.

We literally can. The bourgeoisie will revolt violently if this happens, but there's no reason why a revolutionary transformation cannot be inaugurated within a legislative framework.

Nepal is currently controlled by a communist government which was democratically elected. Why the hell can't they build socialism in Nepal, once the global order of capital has been toppled?

it's funny tho

It was futile. The USSR is such a tragedy because without capitalism as the hegemonic mode of production being overturned, it was essentially impossible to develop socialism while also competing

Stalin's absurd notion of "socialism in one country" was just plain old social democracy. In his intentions to develop the Soviet economy, the five year plans and all that were just the NEP but nationalized.

As Lenin did, Stalin should have explained that this was not socialism but instead a means of relieving the suffering of Soviet proletarians and ensuring that they would be more comparative respective of bourgeois nations.

So MLs are now pointing to literal examples of bourgeois social democracy as evidence for their success?

Why am I surprised.

okay, I'll bite

Who are some important Marxist-Leninist theoreticians from 1950 or later?

Nope. You can't be "a little socialist". A society in which has commodity production, private property, class society, wage labor, or ANY of the preceding conditions is still governed by capital. Thus, it is still capitalist.

To quote Andrew Kliman:

I'd like to have a source for that. Just because western propaganda likes to portray the singular cases of corruption over and over doesn't mean that every state official and workplace manager was corrupt. Managers in factories weren't just only responsible to the workers but also to the superiors. In order to keep their position they'd had deliver results. Workers also had the option to report on corrupt managers and directors, which they repeatedly did.

Kerala has a bottom-left system of councils which collectivelly manage the means of production, as much as this is possible within the capitalist nation of India.

Stay mad

*bottom up

...

Pol Pot had some very important innovations for the science of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. He discovered important strategies for overcoming the revisionism pushed by 🍀🍀🍀western imperialism🍀🍀🍀 and 🍀🍀🍀academia🍀🍀🍀.

wdhmbt?

Actually "our goal is anything but communism" is a stalin quote I believe.

Whatever you call it, they got elected and it works. I'm not calling it socialism because it's obviously just a state and no independent nation. But it's a model that could spread amongst India which has a strong communist movement since it's rather successful.

Why the fuck are you trying to sabotage the left so much?

Do Karela and the Naxalites have any kind of coalition with one another?

...

law of value implies that distribution of labor is governed by profit

as Stalin wrote

also funny that Khrushchev's populism was all about giving priority to the production of articles of consumption

now I'm gonna screencap this and shove it into the face of every leftcom

here it is, part of the commons

Why are people who make these images retarded?

Go kill yourself, you fucking imbecile. I did not miss the point. It's just I am not a Liberal pseudo-Leftist who hides behind "Socialism never happened".

> This is of course, impossible to do within a single country
But why is it impossible to do it within a single country? It is repeated quite often, but nobody can give proper answer. At least, not after 1930s.

What is hilarious is you mindlessly repeating Bourgeois propaganda from before WWII, after it had been conclusively proven that it is nothing but empty words and excuses.

Political prostitute Kautsky and his hysterical whining had been proven wrong.
Right-wing market "socialist" Bukharin and his kulak apologists had been proven wrong.
Opportunist Trotsky and his crony demagogues had been proven wrong.
"Left"-wing SocDems Kamenev and Zinoviev with their utopian pseudo-socialists had been proven wrong.

They had all been proven wrong. Initial arguments against Socialism in one country had been utterly annighilated. Today it is an undeniable fact that monopoly on foreign trade is enough to allow Planned economy to function within one country and will not get destroyed by the external free market.

Modern arguments hinge on pseudo-Marxist Frankfurt school that redefined the meaning of the word Socialism and claims that Marxism has nothing to do with economy!

Marxism relies on abolition of exchage-based economy, not some nebulous "social structures".

Write it down somewhere, you retard.

And now you hide behind the Proletariat? I had written whose Revisionism it was: Khrushchev's and his cronies.

The fact is that your method is thoroughly Idealist (magical thinking, yes). You believe in some monolithic Soviet Union, refusing to recognize the fact that the words "Soviet Union" mean hundreds of millions of people, multiple roles those people assume within their life, and numerous social relations between those roles.

But such Materialist approach does not follow the dogmatic patterns of Bourgeois Propaganda you grew accustomed to. Your monkey-brain cannot process anything beyond the boundaries of binary logic. USSR can be either Socialist or Capitalist - and anything that contradicts this must be "inane blabber"!

Seriously, kill yourself. Being Liberal moron is one thing, but using Marx's icon and being Liberal moron is incurable.

You should prove existence of time travel first, since both Marx and Lenin wrote their texts long before 1930s.

What the fuck are you even talking about?

Accusations should happen after evidence is presented, not instead of.

This is a consequence of exchange-based economy, you moron.

Exchange (market) => accumulation of capital => monopoly on labour => wage labour

You cannot abolish wage labour without abolishing exchange-based economy first.

Nobody ever suggested even distribution, you lunatic. You are literally arguing with the voices in your head right now. If anything, Soviets are being accused of being State Capitalist precisely because there wasn't even distribution of goods.

Have you been hunting Snark lately? No, if you repeat some bullshit three times it does not becomes truth.

We are talking about your crypto-Liberal whining about Hierarchy Big State ruining everything. It is the same logic as the one that was used to justify Perestroika, that was supposed to be about "Real Socialism without Big Government". Except it turned into Liberal reforms and abolition of Socialism

You are accusing bureaucracy of being a hindrance to the creation of Communism, which is retarded in the extreme: fighting against bureaucracy is like reducing number of cashiers when you are annoyed by long lines.

Just like lines are not going to get shorter because you halved number of cashiers, economy is not going to become more efficient after you reduce number of people who make decisions.

Just like lines can disappear only when you have enough cashiers, the abuse of power by bureaucracy can disappear only when you have enough bureaucrats. And setting up private cashiers - private decision-makers, aka Capitalists - is not a solution.

As economy gets more and more complicated, it requires more and more management. Information has to be processed. That's what people should be focusing on: increasing number of people who make decision, making decision-making more efficient and spread-out throughout the population.

That's how State will "wither away": via strengthening, by becoming all-encompassing.

When everyone is a bureaucrat, when everyone is part of decision-making process, then "state" as something separate from the society, from the general population, will cease to exist.

But what are you trying to do? You claim that "Communism isn't about establishing a Social Democratic state bureaucracy"!

Apparently, State taking over and managing economy has nothing to do with Communism! And since Marx and Engels argued on numerous occasions for nationalization of MoP of all kinds, from land to factories, they must've been not real Communists, but State Capitalists in denial! Filthy Revisionists, we should've been instead taking notes from Mises and Hayek, who will surely lead us to Communism, by abolishing all this icky State Bureaucracy, eh?

What use has the theory without practice?

No works made in DDR or Cuba after 1950s could be relevant in current circumstances. Problems we face are the same as the ones that were in 19th and early 20th century, not post 1950s. Not only works from 1930s are too advanced for contemporary situation, even discussions of NEP from 1920s pre-suppose existence Socialist party running the state - which we don't have yet.

See above about binary logic and monkey-brain doing the thinking.

Let's start with actual evidence, then proceed to (baseless) accusations.

Why do you need to quote this Liberal whore? It's nothing but cheap sophistry and obfuscation.

Let's quote Lenin (“Left-Wing” Childishness, 1918):

As you see, we have nothing to discuss here. Within ML discourse economy is not a monolithic entity. It is a conglomerate of multiple socio-economic relations that do not have a uniform character - as the Kliman's sophistry pre-supposes.

Since I have no intentions of debasing myself by arguing within the boundaries of idealist dogmas, you'll have to either find some quote that does not require worship of imaginary entities (idealist concept of economy Kliman uses), or simply fuck off and go read some actual Communists.

just plain Marxists, just plain Leninists, and full-on leftcoms are all wrapped up in the academic left these days

Such radical ideas always infected the intelligentsia and academia first before moving on to the actual working class.

Which the soviet union completely failed to do.

Here's the thing, when Marx and Engels advocated for nationalization, they advocated for nationalization under a dictatorship of the proletariat. Since the state is now under complete control the working class, and the state owns the means of production, it goes to reason that the working class itself owns the means of production and simply use the state as an efficient organizing intermediary. The workers own the MoP, making it socialism.

However, this requires there to be a genuine dictatorship of the proletariat. Which has never existed for anymore than a few years at best.

At no point in this rant did you actually adress any of my claims, instead you continued to strawman me about "Big State" and beuracracy, even though I never mentioned this is any of my previous posts and you were the fist person in this thread to bring it up. I don't care about that, you're argueing with delusions in your own mind, what I'm saying is that the Marxist-Leninist definition of a Socialist State is a state which inevitably abolishes itself, what I'm saying is that Communism is undeniably a stateless society, it's fine to say there are reasons that the USSR couldn't achieve that at the time, but the second you claim that the creation of a stateless society is either imossible or "liberal" you cease to be a Communist, and instead become some kind of Social Democrat. That's what I'm getting at, it isn't just Anarchists who want to abolish the State, I honestly wonder if you've ever actually read Lenin's State and the Revolution, or if you even care bout Marx or Lenin's initial project of creating a stateless and classless society.

The USSR had wage labor, surplus value extraction, and currency. Even you admit this, I don't know why this is an argument or why you're so triggered by this fact.

Exchange (market) => accumulation of capital => monopoly on labour => wage labour
You cannot abolish wage labour without abolishing exchange-based economy first.

It's interesting that you keep calling me a Liberal and yet you're the one trying to prove to me that abolishing wage labor and the value form is naive and impossible, you realize in this moment you cease to be a revolutionary Marxist, this is why you're a Social Democrat.

No, the USSR was State Capitalist because there was still a class of wage laborers and the USSR did little to nothing to allow the Proletariat to abolish itself as a wage laboring class. Remember, that the goal of Communism, it's the whole reason Marx wrote and engaged in the class struggle, the endgoal is the Proletariat's self-abolition. That said, I'm not sure what you're getting at because there was even distribution of goods in the USSR. The value extracted from labor in the USSR was ver evenly redistributed amongst the people, the problem isn't that there wasn't even enough distribution, it was the persistence of production for value and wages.

Fuck, why do you have such terrible reading comprehension. No one in this entire thread has made any of the claims you're strawmaning at you schizo. Perestroika was literally just Russian NeoLiberalism, it was "small government" in the way Ragonites and Right Libertarians mean it, which just means all power to the private sector and a deregulated market, when has any Leftcom ever talked about Liberal market reforms? This feels like reading schizophrenic jiberish, even you have to realize how intellectually dishonest you're being by pushing this conparison. What people in this thread are doing is criticizing the USSR for having most of the characteristics of a Capitalist state and never effectively moving into any of the further movements or "stages" of revolution that Marx once envisioned or Lenin once wished for the USSR. That doesn't mean the USSR was shit, or that it was "totalitarian" or "red fascist", but it was ultimately a failure in the most literal sense.

This is literally just revisionist garbage, and I mean revisionist in the ML sense, I used to be an ML and even then I never saw anyone say anything even remotely close to this retarded shit.

great, DotP now is a political category and not economic one

why?
this is also how I imagine the withering of the state
you have some other ideas?

Such flawless argument. How can it be refuted? If only there was some way to challenge this statement. Oh, wait. I got a refutation right here: you are wrong.

See how easy it was? It's almost as if there was no argument to refute.

Such flawless argument. How can it be refuted? If only there was some way to challenge this statement. Oh, wait. I got a refutation right here: you are wrong.

See how easy it was? It's almost as if there was no argument to refute. x2

Really makes me ponder.

It's time to quote! Again! This time with links to your posts!

Oh, I'm sorry. My brain kinda filtered out the most retarded interpretation of your post. I did not realize you were accusing Soviets of not disbanding army right before WWII.

Why does it need to be said in the first place, you moron? Nobody in their right mind would ever suggest this as an argument.

I never claimed this. I said that creation of stateless society does not happen via reduction of state apparatus as is suggested by the "anti-authoritarian" "Left". It's the opposite process that leads to Communism.

So, your nonsensical "arguments" should've been simply ignored? Because if it's an option, I'll gladly choose it. I'm no mood to explain what does the word "Capitalism" mean, what is the difference between Labour voucher and currency, what are the basics of Materialist historical analysis, or THE WHOLE MARXIST THEORY YOU'VE NEVER READ.

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. It's like you've never read it. Oh, wait. You didn't.

Capitalism is defined by the economic relations of production.

Receiving remuneration for your labour is not "wage labour" that needs to be abolished.

Marx, (Critique of Gotha Programme, 1875):
This is a description of Socialist (first-stage Communism) society. By Marx. One of the most often quoted bits.

Except Marx himself argued against idiotic attempts to abolish everything in one go.

You literally never read anything whatsoever, if you persist with your "even distribution".

Engels (Anti-Dühring, 1877):
This was in addition to the Critique of Gotha Programme (which also addresses this bullshit equality you attribute to Marxism).

(cont)

It was presented as the return to the roots of Socialism. To the true Communism and Leninism. It was not presented as Liberalization until much much later. And it relied on the very same bullshit argumentation you used.

Always. The whole LeftCom movement is about preserving Capitalism. LeftCom arguments against "Socialism in one country" were arguments for keeping market economy of NEP and not introducing Planned Economy. Supposedly you can't abolish Capitalism in any way until you complete World Revolution and it is folly to try.

Which is why LeftCom are foaming at the mouth when anyone says that USSR became Socialist. It would mean that their defence of Capitalism is nothing but betrayal of Socialism. Which it is.

"People" (morons) in this thread are simply parroting mouthpieces of Bourgeois propaganda without thinking about it too much. Only very few are sufficiently delusional to seriously believe in some secret Capitalist society that was running USSR without telling anyone.

It's just "people" refuse to add two and two: if there was no Capitalists and any state is a dictatorship - what was USSR then? The answer is - either Marx was wrong or USSR was Dictatorship of the Proletariat. And however inept this Dictatorship was - it is not an excuse to not recognize it as DotP. Engels did not hesitate to call Paris Commune a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, despite its policies being borderline AnCap.

It was ultimately the greatest achievement on Mankind in Modern History.

Such ML, much wow.

Stalin (The Results of the First Five-Year Plan, 1934):
> Some comrades have interpreted the thesis about the abolition of classes, the creation of a classless society, and the withering away of the state as a justification of laziness and complacency, a justification of the counter-revolutionary theory of the extinction of the class struggle and the weakening of the state power. Needless to say, such people can not have anything in common with our Party. They are either degenerates or double-dealers, and must be driven out of the Party. The abolition of classes is not achieved by the extinction of the class struggle, but by its intensification. The state will wither away, not as a result of weakening the state power, but as a result of strengthening it to the utmost, which is necessary for finally crushing the remnants of the dying classes and for organising defence against the capitalist encirclement that is far from having been done away with as yet, and will not soon be done away with.

The concept of state withering away via its strengthening is one of the core concepts of non-revisionist Marxism-Leninism. You can't eradicate Petit-Bourgeoisie (within Socialist state itself, yes) without organization and total incorporation of Proletariat into the State.

It is political. The state is a political organ, not an economic entity. It's merely shaped by material conditions and attempts to uphold whatever economic system it's ruling class adheres too.

Give me one example of a genuine dictatorship of the proletariat that lasted more than 10 years.

USSR. DDR. Cuba.

wdhmbt

You know there's a quality debate about to roll up when you see this gem.

No. Maybe in it's very early days, perhaps, but it very quickly became something else. There was no workplace democracy, the party was not a party made up of fellow workers but instead of bureaucratic parasites, and especially after Stalin it just became a revisionist shit hole.

This was just a puppet state that spent nearly all of it's existence under the heel of the post-Stalin revisionist USSR.

Not really. Cuba certainly better than the first two, but it's ultimately still a dictatorship headed by bureaucrats and party elitists rather than the working class. Though to be fair, I don't think Cuba can achieve it until the other major powers (including the US) becoming socialist and stop trying to sabotage Cuba whenever they can.

hell yeah my dude

I've noticed that pretty much all emancipatory politics begin in the academy, spread to the broader activist movements, and then enter the hearts and minds of the population before lastly being expressed through revolution or evolutionary legislation.

Western socialism is decidedly in the second stage.

Is your argument that a Communist society is a society with a State? Also, what does a People's Army have to do with a State, these two things are not mutually exclusive.

Then why are you so deeply triggered by even the most mild critiques of the USSR?

Is your idea of a Communist society a society where the State is so large that half of the population participate in it's management as bureaucrats and civil servants? Tankies really are the flip side of anarkiddies, this is like the ML version of the bookchinfag utopia where all of society is reduced to one giant town hall meeting that never ends and goes on for all of eternity. I can assure you, if this is your vision of what the end result of a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, with no hope of the Proletariat abolishing it's own class, then I can tell you without the shadow of a doubt that no one would ever participate in this revolution. What you've described is what Marx himself once referred to as Barracks Communism.

Currency in the USSR literally just functioned as regular currency. I'm not saying currency is a defining characteristic of Capitalism, it's decidedly secondary, like markets, but the USSR never even made a meaningful atempt to abolish currency, and the idea that they had a labor voucher system is laughable.

Once again, are you arguing that a Communist society is one which can retain wage labor and the value form? If you think this then pleas kindly refrain from ever describing your self as a Communist or a Marxist in the future.

Every quote you've mined is either Marx describing the earliest and lowest stages of Socialism (my whole arguement this entire thread is that the USSR never properly moved past the NEP), or you using your vast autism to think Marx supported wage labor because he believed workers should directly receive the fruits of their own labor.

Strawman. I'm not a member of the Soviet central committee from the 1980's and trying to say I am makes you seem like a delusional LARPing retard.

Once again, strawmaning about shit that's never been brought up in this discussion. Also, SiOC was a literal compromise, I'm not saying it didn't work or that it can't, but Marxism is a naturally internationalist position, if you take SiOC to the point where you reject internationalism and think that revolutionary nationalism is the natural state of Marxist praxis then you're a revisionist.

I do think the USSR was a Dictatorship of the Proletariat. But DoTP=/=Communism. The USSR was Socialist, the reason I keep calling it State Capitalist, and the reason Bordiga and Dauve do, is because it was permanently traped in the earliest developmental stages of Socialism, State Capitalism, by Lenin's own definition.

I agree, once again, to an extent. It was arguably the single greatest achievement in human history in so far as it's the closest anyone's ever come to Communism, but arguably one of mankinds greatest failures, as it didn't even come close to actually achieving said Communism.

Nothing he describes in this quote ever actually happened though. Why are MLs so prone to magical thinking?

...

What kind of Trotskyst bullshit is that? The USSR supported communist movements all around the globe and made almost half the world communist. Without socialism in one country the USSR would have been destroyed. You're strawmanning. Stalin was not a nationalist as he literally purged national identities to the point where even I think he went a bit too far.

Sorry nobody wants to LARP in your Trotskyst fantasy of eternal war communism against the whole world

They missed out on the vital opportunity of the 1920's when workers were rallying and multiple, first world countries were on the brink of revolt.

The USSR also only began to take the initiative in spreading the revolution when it became revisionist.

This is what MLs actually believe.

I'm an ML and I'm a proletarian internationalist.

But what should they have done? The UK threw out the Soviet ambassador when his connection to workers movements in England were made public. It is safe to say the Western countries would have seen this sort of agitation as an act of aggression.

I could agree on that they could have done something more for the Chinese communists when they were shot by liberals (I don't remember which year). But that's about it and China would have been more of an obligation at this point.

Things hinged on Germany but Germany was a deeply reactionary nation

I never fucking said that. You should work on your reading comprehension

I don't think the western imperialists would've invaded Russia, considering they just came out of WW1 and were fucked with their own problems.

Really, I think the USSR should've thrown more men at Warsaw, crushed the polish reactionaries, linked up and supported the Spartacists (toppling the Wiemar Republic), and then join together to support the Hungarian Soviet Republic. The Soviets also should've aided the Bolshevik Revolution in Finland.

Like you said, everything hinged on Germany, If the Soviets couldn't have saved the German Communists, the Soviets were good as dead. I recall even Lenin saying something like: we [the Bolsheviks] don't matter; only that the Germans win their revolution.

Western imperialists literally invaded Russia, you moron. Soviets were at war with everyone: Japan, USA, Poland, France, Germany, England, Chinese warlords … Even Vatican was supplying weapons.

SHOULD'VE?

Before accusing Soviets of anything, you should start by explicitly stating that EVERYONE ELSE FAILED UTTERLY, numerous times. For every "should've" of Soviets there are dozens of "they should've made revolution themselves", "they should've not sat on their asses", "they should've not succumbed to the pressure of SocDem", "they should've been murdering reactionaries" - but are you telling any of it? No! By some magic it's the Bolsheviks who are guilty of being insufficiently revolutionary.

Is your "internationalism" an euphemism for Couchism-Potatoism?

Germany was not reactionary. Socialist traditions were so strong, even Hitler was forced to pretend to be Socialist. It's the German Communists (Liebknecht and Luxemburg) who couldn't get their shit together out of fear of looking too authoritarian.

Gargle all you want, but that's the essence of LeftCom: inventing some super-ultra-hardcore standards that are impossible to meet so as to use them as an excuse to preserve Capitalism.

Yes. We've been there before: either your definition of DotP is different from Marxist, or you don't have any evidence except for Liberal mass-media that relies on hearsay to prove that there is no alternative to Capitalism and any infringement on private property is an evil anti-democratic dictatorship of bureaucrats.

I'm betting it's both.

Why are you confusing Communist society (second-stage Communism) with Socialist society (first-stage Communism)? If you aren't even aware of distinction, why did you claim to be ML?

I'm assuming you meant mutually inclusive. If it's mutually exclusive - one can't exist if there is the other.

The answer should be obvious: any organized structure that can supply Red Army capable of stopping united offense of most of continental Europe will be indistinguishable from state.

How delusional one needs to be to consider baseless accusations of USSR being Capitalist state "the most mild critiques"?

All of the population participates in decision-making.

Yes. It's called Direct Democracy.

Are you going to claim that October was financed by Wall Street?

It is exactly opposite, you fucking liar.

The quote in question:

Where do you see participation of the population in the decision-making, the "never-ending town hall meeting" you so derisively referred to? I could've said, it is your bullshit "True Communism" that is being described, but pseudo-leftists learned their lesson and are no longer discussing their fantasies out loud.

(cont)
It clearly did not.

Currency (money) within Capitalist economy functions as a part of M-C-M cycle: investment of money into some commodity for profit, with the intent to get more money. That's its defining feature.

But the whole profit motive was not the driving force of Soviet economy after NEP. State no longer relied on industrial goods being distributed through market, but was distributing those goods directly. It was using virtual currency that did not interact with the actual paper money that were exchange for consumer goods. I.e. money were not invested with the intent to produce more money. It was production for use, not for profit.

Consequently, we can say with certainty: after transition to Planned economy currency in USSR did not function as Capitalist currency. If anything, primary function of Soviet currency was that of labour vouchers: part of C-M-C cycle. Exchange of commodity (labour) for money with the intent to acquire another commodity (consumer goods).

As I already explained above: you are a fucking liar.

Just kill yourself.

First-stage Communism (Socialism) is clearly based on "to each, according to his contribution". A principle that persisted as defining feature from pre-Marxist Socialists, - through works of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin - until it eventually enshrined in Soviet constitution of 1936.

Not even being aware of it is beyond inexcusable. You are Nazi tier "Socialist".

There are no "lowest stages", you fucking liar. There are only two stages: first stage (Socialism) and second stage (Communism). Marx was describing first stage, when society cannot progress to the "to each according to his needs" due to insufficient development of industrial forces. And nobody ever claimed that industrial forces were developed to that level at the time. Consequently, there was no other stage of Communism USSR could have had, except for the first.

And NEP was not Socialism, you fucking liar. Nobody except right-wing Bukharinites ever attempted to label it as such. Only Market "Socialists" nowadays pretend that it was Socialism.

You are a joke. It's not just your opinions, your whole existence is a joke. You can't even differentiate between pre-industrial economy and industrial, if you are talking about workers directly receiving "fruits of their labour".

Get real: just because you support the same bullshit Gorbachev used to cover his ass, nobody would ever consider you a memeber of the Soviet central committee.

You are the one who asked about LeftCom, you fucking liar.

With whom? There were two options: keep NEP or go Planned. That's it, you fucking liar. There was nothing more radical than the Planned economy Stalinists were suggesting. They did not compromise with anyone - neither Trotsky, nor Kamenev/Zinoviev, nor - least of all - Bukharin.

How long will you keep lying so blatantly? If anything, it was anti-SiOC "Left" Opposition that was rejecting international Marxism by making USSR dependent on goodwill of Capitalist nations.

At no point was SioC about rejecting international expansion of Marxism. Even Liberal can realize that you need autarkic economy to survive international embargoes. In what delusional fantasies does ability to be independent from Capitalist nations become harmful to the Socialism?

Nobody claimed that second-stage Communism is DotP, you fucking liar.

Bordiga's delusional rants about USSR being Capitalist because it traded with Capitalists are not worth discussing. And Dauve is not even Marxist, you fucking liar. Are we going to have Cultural "Marxism" of Frankfurt school make an appearance here as well? Because they also "identified" USSR as State Capitalist.

As for Lenin: at no point did Lenin define State Capitalism as Socialism or Communism, you fucking liar. At no point state monopoly capitalism - the one Russia did not have at the moment of writing - was called Socialist.

What kind of deranged logic is that? Are you calling car going at speed 99 km/h the slowest car, because it's speed is below 100 km/h?

And you are lying again.

Wikipedia calls Luxemburg a leftcom, so its understandable that ignorant people think that

Stop projecting.

Are you implying I called Luxemburg LeftCom?

What "strong movements" LeftCom had ever made? None. Even in theory you refuse to challenge status quo without some bullshit "support of the population". As if you can simply win elections in Bourgeois "Democracies" and abolish Capitalism by voting.

Marx not only most scrupulously takes account of the inevitable inequality of men, but he also takes into account the fact that the mere conversion of the means of production into the common property of the whole society (commonly called “socialism”) does not remove the defects of distribution and the inequality of "bourgeois laws" which continues to prevail so long as products are divided "according to the amount of labor performed". Continuing, Marx says:

"But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged, after prolonged birth pangs, from capitalist society. Law can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby."

And so, in the first phase of communist society (usually called socialism) "bourgeois law" is not abolished in its entirety, but only in part, only in proportion to the economic revolution so far attained, i.e., only in respect of the means of production. "Bourgeois law" recognizes them as the private property of individuals. Socialism converts them into common property. To that extent–and to that extent alone–"bourgeois law" disappears.
marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm

In fact, when a learned professor, followed by the philistine, followed in turn by the Tseretelis and Chernovs, talks of wild utopias, of the demagogic promises of the Bolsheviks, of the impossibility of “introducing” socialism, it is the higher stage, or phase, of communism he has in mind, which no one has ever promised or even thought to “introduce”, because, generally speaking, it cannot be “introduced”.

And this brings us to the question of the scientific distinction between socialism and communism which Engels touched on in his above-quoted argument about the incorrectness of the name "Social-Democrat". Politically, the distinction between the first, or lower, and the higher phase of communism will in time, probably, be tremendous. But it would be ridiculous to recognize this distinction now, under capitalism, and only individual anarchists, perhaps, could invest it with primary importance (if there still are people among the anarchists who have learned nothing from the “Plekhanov” conversion of the Kropotkins, of Grave, Corneliseen, and other “stars” of anarchism into social- chauvinists or "anarcho-trenchists", as Ghe, one of the few anarchists who have still preserved a sense of humor and a conscience, has put it).

But the scientific distinction between socialism and communism is clear. What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the “first”, or lower, phase of communist society. Insofar as the means of production becomes common property, the word “communism” is also applicable here, providing we do not forget that this is not complete communism. The great significance of Marx's explanations is that here, too, he consistently applies materialist dialectics, the theory of development, and regards communism as something which develops out of capitalism. Instead of scholastically invented, “concocted” definitions and fruitless disputes over words (What is socialism? What is communism?), Marx gives an analysis of what might be called the stages of the economic maturity of communism.

Maybe that's too much for the attention span of someone who never actually read Lenin, so just focus on the last paragraph of this post, you little pretentious leftcom dumbfuck.

Can an ML answer me something about soviet democracy?
I've read about the way the USSR government was structured at least in theory and how some supporters say it's a form of mass representative democracy.
But how do you respond to the claims that most democratic functions in these states were in fact fraudulent in various ways, either through manipulation of the votes, or the real possibility of reprisal for voting against the ruling party, leading to 80% to 100% wins in every case.
are these bourgeois lies? based it truth but not a total invalidation of the system? or true but actually just how dictatorship of the proletariat works?

You should ask this question at >>>/marx/. You are less likely to get memes as answers. There is a Q&A thread, replies usually take 2-4 hours.

I meant invade as in the countries fully mobilizing their economies, and using hundreds of thousands of men to invade and displace the Bolsheviks, not sending in some expeditionary forces that acted almost purely as support for the white forces. Work on comprehension you twit.

>By some magic it's the Bolsheviks who are guilty of being insufficiently revolutionary.
We're discussing the Bolsheviks, not the other revolutions. Holy shit, did I ever say it was the Bolsheviks that were insufficient? Did I ever say that the others did NOT fuck up again and again?

Regardless of petty morals and who is to blame who, it was the Bolsheviks who came out as the sole victors of their respective revolution. They were the ones that won out, they were now the ones that must work to spread the revolution.

What are you even accusing me of anymore?

Socialism is worker ownership of the means of production. No matter how many times you jerk off to your Stalin portraits while worshipping Mao, it does not change the fact that the USSR did not achieve socialism.

Spoiler alert kids, but you can't skip the capitalist phase of development. Source: the whole fucking 20th century

Spooked af. You can emulate capitalist development. A fucking factory is a building made out of bricks and iron, not some metaphysical political concept. You can go ahead and build it, like daddy Stalin did.

You can do something like Lenin's NEP or Stalin's economic policies. Neither of them practiced socialism. Socialism wasn't feasible until after Stalin passed away.

TRIGGERED

So then what's your problem again? You just straight up admitted that Stalin did in 20 years what capitalism would otherwise do in 50 (if even). Unless you are claiming that Stalins industrialization happened with capitalist mechanics which is laughable.

My problem is that the USSR was never socialist. I'm disagreeing with the mindless ones that think that the USSR was socialist just because it dressed it's self up in red and had nominal democracy.

It wasn't socialist but it wasn't capitalist enough for the West either.

=THEY'RE ALL WORSE

People need to get their head of the the 20th century and stop dealing with either of these buffoonish ideologies. Read whomever you like and take what ideas you can salvage, but just call yourself a socialist or communist for God's sake.

hella right tbh

What

19th century is where it's going on fam. Although, quite honestly, I would have to say in general that modern political theory has almost always been superior to more contemporary thought. Don't know why though

By saying that this is bullshit. Everyone of note agrees that Soviets did not falsify elections. Any accusations eventually degenerate into wild conspiracy theories of some shadow government that left no traces of its existence, but secretly controlled everything.

If you know how Soviet democracy worked (voting procedure being nothing but a confirmation of decision that was reached by voters throughout the months of discussions), you will not get surprised by votes often having over 90% support. In fact you will consider inherently fraudulent any other voting procedure that relies on voters being unable to organize themselves and being forced to choose lesser evil among the presented to the by Bourgeoisie.

Yes.

Oh, so that wasn't "real" invasion. Cute.

There was no need to mobilize fully, with Bolsheviks having no real army at the time of invasion. The only armed force of note in Russia was Czechoslovak Legion - which fully supported invasion and was the only "white force" of note. None others existed before the invasion, there was nobody to support. Capitalists organized and armed Whites after invasion begun, starting "Civil War" - which is a misnomer, since White Army cannot be classified as anything but foreign mercenaries.

By your logic US never invaded Iraq, since economy wasn't fully mobilized and current pro-Capitalist regime is enforced by local forces.

You explicitly supported statement that Bolsheviks rejected internationalism because they missed some vital opportunity. Except it has nothing to do with internationalism and there was no "vital opportunity" to miss.

They did not win, you illiterate Liberal.

Look at the facts: Bolsheviks had a truce in their Civil War against rural Capitalists. NEP. Permission for kulaks to exploit rural population to their heart's content. Bolsheviks truly controlled only ~10% of Russia until 1930s, when Soviets finally crushed right-wing opposition - kulaks - via collectivization. That's when they finally won. Any war before that would've immediately kickstarted kulak insurgency that would've paralyzed USSR.

Of trying to find excuses.

You are leaving out crucial bits. Socialised economy means ownership of all means of production by all workers (as one organized entity). Market "Socialism" with co-ops waging war on each other is not Socialism.

You can start using arguments now.

And here we have typical reactionary (LeftCom) whining about necessity to keep Capitalism safe, because stars aren't right.

You don't even know what Socialism means.

Are you retarded? We have hordes of pseudo-Socialists running around. Are supposed to remove anything that distinguishes us from them, so as to confuse Proletariat as much as possible? Fuck off.

pic related

I don't oppose the idea of centralism as long as proletarians are involved, Herr Platonismus. Not all of them have to be; the preconditions can come about through action but they must be the right preconditions.

All I want is a revolution which doesn't stagnate in social-democratic convulsions; your centralism cannot do that as shown by the abolition of the Soviet model despite proles wanting it back. But don't worry; the masses are wrong.

So many Platonists, so little time. I don't oppose socdem until it becomes extremely difficult to remove; if it was not for this, I would be an ML.

Go back to your tankie subreddit and stay there - or read Dauvé. I'm illiterate as fuck and yet I'm still laughing.

Have you ever thought that it's not what you call SocDem is difficult to remove, but rather what you want is extremely difficult to implement? Has this reasoning ever crossed your mind?

We are on the same side comrade but with such a cancerous attitude I'm afraid I have to oppose you.

Then why didn't Stalin do it?

I didn't say that. It wasn't in the same way the world powers duked out WW1. It wasn't in the same way Germany invaded Russia in 1941. The forces sent to aid the whites were very minor compared to actually mobilizing and attacking with millions of men. If you still can't see the difference, you're rather baiting me or should go back to school and learn to read again.

By modern standards, they did. In modern military conflicts, war is conducted by a very small group of extremely specialized fighters. The broad-front, million-man armies that would fight battles for weeks on end were the standard in 1920.

If I made it sound like that, then sorry, but I'm not accusing the Bolsheviks of rejecting internationalism. Simply that they should've tried to do more for the international revolutions.

You're playing a word game now. The Bolsheviks were the faction that consolidated power and came out on top of all the other factions after the civil war. They won their revolution, stop playing a silly semantics game, and I'm not a liberal.

I'm excusing Lenin and Stalin for not implementing socialism, if that's what you mean.

I was giving a generalized definition for the sake of the argument, not a nuanced definition that you'd expect to find in a damn dictionary.

I already made the argument that the USSR was not socialist.

You think society can skip the capitalist phase of development? How revisionist of you, you Stalin-cock sucking tankie shithead.

If you think the USSR was socialist, you clearly don't know what socialism means. If you think you can skip capitalism, then you have but a fantasy notion of how to achieve socialism.

The intelligent ML would tell you that socialism wasn't feasible in Stalin's time and Stalin was simply doing the best he could making socialism technically feasible through his industrialization and anti-illiteracy programs.

That would involve admitting that the USSR wasn't socialist, something stalinists really don't like doing.

You are not ML, you fucking liar. You aren't even Marxist.

Weren't here some more posts?

This is a communist board after all.

Shit just disappears.

Not only your practical achievements are nil, you don't even have arguments.

You oppose Socialism. That's all there is to it. Stars will never "just right" for your "Real" "Revolution".

And now you degenerated into incoherent ranting. What exactly was proven? How was it proven? If I crash a car into the wall, does it prove that internal combustion engine does not work?

Because there was no need for it.

How many times do I need to repeat the same thing?
There was no need for it.

Invasion had happened. Invasion was repelled. That doesn't make invasion unhappen.

Battles that last for weeks require someone on the other side fighting back.

They should've used Alladin's lamp and summoned genie to make a wish for World Revolution to happen, yes.

Did or did not Bolsheviks control rural Russia?

Until 1930s rural Russia was running private Capitalism (not even State Capitalism). Either Bolsheviks did not control it or they weren't Socialist. Which is it, you fucking moron?

Who is playing the word game now? Did they win Revolution by 1922 or did they win Civil War? Because those are two different things.

Unless you are going to claim that NEP is Socialism, I don't see what Revolution was won by 1922. And - yes, you are Liberal. Your Socialism is nothing but an imaginary entity that never existed and cannot exist. For all intents and purposes your "Socialist ideas" only defend existing Capitalism.

You were giving revisionist Market "Socialist" definition of Socialism. There is a crucial difference between economy being split between independent co-ops and united economy.

You made a statement. Argument is supposed to prove your point.

Of course. But that was not the case for USSR - not only Lenin conclusively argued in his "Development of Capitalism in Russia" (1899) that Imperial Russia was already Capitalist, there was also NEP - a period of State Capitalism.

Yes, meltdown of the brainwahsed Liberal.

Socialism is defined by existing conditions: socialized economy, not by some events that happened in the past.

That thread is not particularly sympathetic to MLs. A wide variety of praxes are proposed in that thread, and the overall political character is closer to ancom/ansyn/leftcom. Central planning is most definitely not the main model being discussed there, far from it. TaNS especially is simply used as a jumping-off point for the discussion, not as great praxis - many of its proposals are frankly abhorrent (like the commune-specific domestic labour tokens that would almost instantly devolve into reduced payment for 'women's work').

One the great things that thread has produced is the idea that as communists we should 'build the tools that the workers will use to build communism', which is about as non-ML a formulation as you could get - I would rate it as a bastardised version of left communism.

Please don't misrepresent the cybernetics thread as an M-L project. The OP isn't an M-L, many of the posters aren't M-Ls, and it really isn't your place to make those kinds of declarations in any case.

youtube.com/watch?v=4ZWBkyo5fOs

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