Was the USSR socialist? I'm currently reading Towards a New Socialism, which argues that it was...

They still managed to avoid having economic crises, right?

they pumped massive amounts of liquidity into the system in the end, i think that even continued in some way under Yeltsin, it destroyed Russia economically

i mean bailouts and investment

Nice western propaganda you got there. Stagnation doesn't mean economic growth. What you are right about is that the USSR after 1956 didn't have exponential economic growth, but that's not what stagnation means. You know why people say this shit? Because western economists took 5 year plans with really high goals at face value and then concluded that the economy must be stagnating because it didn't meet that goal. Very dishonest, SAD

dictatorship of the proletariat by lenin's definition, not marx's

Yes, I remember reading a PDF about how Gorbachev allowed more autonomy to the state enterprises and deregulated the economy, which allowed their managers to buy their own products and sell it at international market prices, so they became oligarchs, while the country got a shortage of goods.

Can you go further into this? How does Lenin's definition differ from Marx's?

This only holds true if you accept a dictatorship that repressed worker unions as the ultimate expression of the working class, a highly dubious claim.
They exported goods to other countries, so part of the production was for exchange. Can't speek for the rest of the production.

last 20 years didnt meet most of 5year plan targets, that had never happened before(i think it happen partially during the war)

Nothing wrong with selling off your surplus.

Dunno about Lenin, but this is Marxs explaination of it. Think it is from some letter.

As in, Lenin's elitist group of buddies in their "vanguard" ruling "on behalf" of the proletariat, which in practice just turned into any other dictatorship.

The USSR (and the Eastern Bloc in general) only became an export nation arround the 70s, before the percentage of the economy which was producing for export was ridiculously small, sure you can hold this against them, but this was really just a marginal amount of the economic output. And as says when you accidently overproduce there is nothing wrong with just selling it. I mean look at the facts: There was no tendency to drive down wages, longer working hour or unemployment, which is all typical for production for exchange under the law of value. Don't believe Trotskysts like Raya Dunayevskaya, she doesn't have sources to back up her claims.

Export nation USSR in the 80s is of course revisionist, but not fully capitalist as yet.

Liberal buzzwords, I see nothing of substance

every 5year plan had to change things for the better
and they raise targets after
it had been long streak of success but things changed in the 70s apparently
(as i understand it)

More or less. Brezhnev through it was a good idea to put equality of outcome over equality of opportunity. Ruined the incentive and resulted in a different form of alienation. Marx was strictly against equality of outcome which can be seen in Critique of the Gotha Program

What? Lenin saw the DoP as a revolutionary vanguard ruling on behalf of the people and being their "teacher, guide, and leader." Marx and Engels did not see it that way at all.

Doesn't adress my first point. Is dotp nothing more to you than the "benevolent" dictatorship of a clique?

Fair enough, but you wrote about a bunch of cronies becoming another dictatorship. If you don't argue in good faith you won't get a proper answer.

Except that clique is actually millions of people involved in democratic decisionmaking. By 1926 every tenth citizen was involved in administration or democratic processes, and by that I don't means throwing a ballot in a box but actual direct democratic reciprocal participation. Not only, that the Bolsheviks were physically incapable of controlling the vast space which is the Soviet Union, it is safe to assume that people voluntarily became Bolsheviks carried out the build up of socialism. It was a mass movement. Under Stalin, during times of turmoil, he didn't even get reports outside of Moscow for months. How was he able to control everything? Yet socialism was built. And ironically, the areas which weren't under Stalins control were the most undemocratic and least socialist, when people say under Stalin there was no democracy (which isn't even true for the party, Stalin was always elected) it was so despite Stalin, not because of him. Stalin did everything he could to revive democracy whereever possible.

You also know that most of the population in the early stages were illiterate and uneducated? It's very unfair to expect a elongate agora where enlightened citizens discuss ideas and art. Don't be naive.

No.

Cockshott is an ML and it thus follows that he defines socialism the same way MLs do: state-centralized management and distribution of capital under the red banner while (by consequence) understanding generalized commodity production as transhistorical. (Except Cuckshitt goes even further than wrongly characterizing Marx's hypothesized lower stage as proletarian capitalism, as he also outright says that the higher stage is impossible or would need Star Trek replicators and other things tied to a productivist understanding of modes of production, though this is a separate problem.)

Yes, because it still to this represent a heavy distortion of some otherwise very interesting people's ideas: Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc. and many others associated to it. During a crisis of capital, we as communists want the proletariat to look wherever it can to help understand its conditions of existence, and if the proletariat comes to associate these individuals with actually existing Taylorist capitalism, it's going to be disadvantaged.

Except he never does this. Since OP claims that he's reading Cockshott right now, he hopefully sees through your utter bullshit.

Sounds pretty LARPish. Bring arguments or piss off.

Beyond the fact that whoever wrote this needs to go back to middle school, and that no source as to the document referenced, Lenin's definition in State and Revolution is more or less a state which is used by the proletariat for the suppression of the bourgeoisie and its attempts to resist.

There was surplus value extraction. A key element of socialism is the abolition of property in general. The existence of welfare is arguably a point against. Workers did not own the means of production outside of the Kuzbass AIC - Lenin crushed most of the factory committees and left alone this small self-managed industrial Siberian colony to make the American anarcho-syndicalists (who had been kicked out of the USA due to IWW activism) happy.

Private property didn't exist in the USSR. I don't know what you are on about. As for workplace control, managers were responsible to the staff. Under Stalin, workers could report on corrupt or incompetent managers which was done plenty of times. Not really sure you understand what surplus extraction means - I mean yes, if you build a tractor it will be shipped over to a an acer. No, you can't use the tractor to drive through the hood.

No, and this is really my problem eith Cockshott and his ideas of cybernetics, which although they are interesting in their own right, isn't necessary what we want.

See sinistra.net/lib/pro/whyrusnsoc.html, sinistra.net/lib/upt/compro/lipo/lipoebubie.html, marxists.org/archive/dunayevskaya/works/1941/ussr-capitalist.htm, marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1936/dictatorship.htm, sinistra.net/lib/upt/comlef/art/eightsuppe.html, libcom.org/library/capitalism-class-struggle-ussr-neil-c-fernandez, marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1937/08/nonsense-planning.htm and many more texts.

To quote a user from a few months ago:

Except if you are one of these idiots who belives that the workers sincerely elected Stalin, you have to recognize that there is a missing link between the wide majority of the population and the state, where the latter actually controlled the MoP and decided how it was to be used "on behalf of the population". And since there was no accountability, in all practical aspects (ie. disregarding official propaganda, etc.) they operated the MoP in the same way a capitalist would have, if they had a army and secret police force to aid them. Then add to that the fsat that they were will influenced by market fluctuations, the need for economic growth, etc. and the conclusion should be obvious.

Not at all. Have you read any Marxist-Leninist theory? Looking at your reading list, you probably haven't. State and population are the same thing in Marxism-Leninism. Indivual vs Collective is a liberal dichotomy. When everybody is a bureaucrat, nobody is. When the workers built Magnitogorsk, there was no police, no soldiers forcing them. American journalists reported how enthusiastic the workers were, they all believed they would build the future or humanity. Sure, there were a lot of accidents and all that - because it was an authentic workers movement (of which many weren't schooled in industrial construction).

But there was. Lots of managers were removed on behalf of the workers.

Not at all.

In the beginning yes. But you are aware that Stalin completely eradicated market forces, right? What the fuck do you actually want? Overcoming marker fluctuations over night?

An agricultural society needs to industrialize to have socialism? Imagine my shock!

Nope the nati0nal socialists were not socialist, the union of soviet socialists republic were not socialist, the socialist republic of Vietnam was not socialist. The socialist republic of romania was not socialist. The socialist federation of Yugoslavia was not socialist. The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is not socialist. The list goes on and on.

The clue is in the name. If it has the word socialism in the government name then its not socialism.
Its not difficult. Try to keep up retards.

You got me there. This totally isn't an ideology that legitimizes the existing ruling conditions. No the state and the population were exactly the same.

Which was totally the case!

Managers organize planning, ie. the pre-set rules. They didn't determine them, nor influence their creation. Let alone the workers.

Well if you say so, I'm convinced. All hail Stalin and le immortal false conciseness of Marxism-Lelinism-Maoism XXXD!!! Let's do FALGSC, comrades, by doing exactly what filed in the 2)th century BUT with more gulags and punching nazis this time.

Read the articles I posted on planning, I'm writing this from my phone so it's a bit cumbersome to copy the paragraphs.

Socialism without capitalism. And no, socialism isn't determined by the amount of red flags.

1. I'm obviously talking about the need for growth for it's own sake
2. So you're admitting the USSR wasn't socialist?

Excuse my jokes, but I just had to

this is just wrong

No but if daddy Stalin tells me not to worry; I don't.

Let's quit with this "was/wasn't REAL socialism" ping-pong, all it does is fuel strawmen spouted by nitwits.

The Soviet Union had a form of socialism, that is, Marxism-Leninism, which is what every single other country adopted as well, with few changes. There were attempts at other forms of anarchist and/or socialist societies (Paris, Shinmin, Catalonia, Free Territory etc.), but every single one of them was crushed, some by MLs themselves. The only such experiment still alive (for now) is Rojava. And of course, there are the innumerable number of other proposals made through the past century and a half, which never had a chance to be tried.

And just as important: Soviet socialism did not collapse, that's flat-out propaganda. It was dismantled. Pic related.

I'm going to ignore the parts which consist of autistic screeching.

The Five Year Plan was drafted by the Gosplan, a think tank of the smartest individuals responsible to both the Supreme Soviet as well as to the Politburo. They were in theory and practice subjugated unter the dictatorship of the proletariat as I explained above. So, as you don't make an effort to attack my claim about the managers being responsible to the workers, you can see how economic planning both on the grand-scale as well as on the bottom scale was in the hand of the workers. Should every aspect of the five year plan be submitted to a nationwide referendum? What is your alternative? Are you aware what alternative Cockshotts suggest in his book?

On a sidenote, Cockshott is far from being a pure ML. He's just triggering Leftcoms because he says the USSR was socialist. That's enough for Leftcoms to label someone as ML.

But that wasn't the case. The economic miracle under Stalin wasn't at all enslaved by capital. You can clearly see this by comparing it to the capitalist NEP, under which economic growth was stifled by the lack of investment and profitability. People improved the country to have a better quality of life - and to resist capitalism/fascism. You seem to think that economic growth is a bad thing. Not everything successful is capitalism. Even John Scott who was literal CIA said that the workers built factories for use, and not for capital reproduction.

Then prove it faggot

If you expect me to read Trotskyst/Leftcom stuff you can as well be arsed to read Marxist-Leninist theory.

...

Well Leftcoms only argue semantics, it's tedious, but yeah. They can only play this game because otherwise they know they lose all their high-ground because they have no praxis and wrong, vulgar understanding of the base-superstructure-relationship.

The only thing they have going for them are pretty cool sounding book titles, I give them that. Sometimes I feel that Leftcoms actually just strive for some sort of dashing intellectual stylization of communist theory instead of applicable content.

You are also right that the USSR was dismantled and didn't collapse on it's own. I have yet to see a single example where Marxism-Leninism failed, e.g. collapsed on its own.

This question is not very related to the topic, but according to you, what could have been done to prevent these states from falling? USSR fell thanks to Gorbachev, China thanks to Deng Xiaoping (who on my opinion Mao should have purged correctly in the first place), and perhaps other minor countries that one often forgets about.

Did the workers have democratic control over the means of production, and receive the full value of their labor?

In my opinion they should have merged the party with the state after Stalin. Obviously don't let revisionists in power - have some feedback system in place, have a more vigilant system democratic centralism.

Pic related wanted to reestablish workplace democracy and soviets as well as driving back market forces and establish democratic. Sadly, he died early and Gorbachev seized power, whose reforms, obviously, went into the opposite direction. Gorbachev was just a traitor and drunk on ideology: Andropovs reforms - which could only be implemented in a skeletal form because he died early - were raising productivity immensely.

Forgot pic

Of course not.

yes they were a state socialist entity. State capitalism is what China practices (and Russia)

Not even Marx agreed with the whole "full value" schtick. It doesn't work unless you wanna let nan starve for not working anymore.

Yes, but it was also, in general, not good. Leading to the sad conclusion, that socialism can be bad.
No. Even if you use a definition of socialism that would exclude USSR, most everyone in the world will disagree, confusion and pointless arguments will inevitably follow.

The Marxist critique isn't of private property, it's of property in general, you tool. Most of it has its roots in a book called "What Is Property?", after all.
Being allowed to snitch on people for not following military-like orders from above isn't the same as managing your own work - how can you be this dumb? People lived in terror, hand to mouth. Hardly freedom - that you would think so is unbelievably ridiculous and sounds brainwashed, denialistic.
The state took what the workers produced and only gave them back a portion of its value in wages. Just look at the corruption of the nomenklatura, living easy off pushing papers and hobnobbing with party elites! It doesn't matter that they were poor too relative to the West - they were better off than the average person by miles! Absolutely exploitative!

Maybe they're not good enough on their own to make socialism (the similar ERP systems are already used by capitalists to manage the extraction of surplus value and reproduction of capital), but they're a necessary step forward if we ever want to see modern socialism. I don't think any of those writers would disagree with that. Not everyone into cybernetic planning agrees with Cockshott on everything - hell, I brought it up on Holla Forums and I've been an anarchist for years. I can't accept the USSR as socialist, but after studying some introductory accelerationist writings, I'm not sure that I can properly call it state capitalist, either, as the superficial resemblance to capitalistic acceleration came from its bureaucracy's self-interested drive to keep up with capital's acceleration in order to ensure its own reproduction and survival. If "The Prince" was a critique of power dynamics before capital and "Capital: A Critique Of Political Economy" was a critique of power dynamics after the growth of this abstract dictatorial system, then the USSR was a reversion to Machiavellian dynamics, where what drives the system are the self-interested actions of collectives of individuals directly grasping for control over labor-power and organized violence to advance themselves rather than technology come alive and given a will of its own through individuals who can command labor-power and violence.

Man, Deng was purged twice and managed to not only survive, but make his way to the top and completely subvert the party. Dude was hardcore. If he was arrested and a guard came with a single gun to execute him, he might end up taking Beijing over.

Was it you who made that thread about Andropov fixing things up? Could I have some reading on the subject, please?

Huh, so when you remove price controls in communism you get more or less the same result as if you created price controls in capitalism. Really embiggens the encephalon.

I'm pretty sure it's bullshit. We already know that Andropov expanded the police state further and that this tankie's idea of workplace democracy is the militaristic state enterprise system under Stalin.

A capitalist society is defined by these characteristics. Since these existed in the USSR, it was by definition a capitalist society.

Let's move on.

Yes I did! Glad somebody remembered it. A highly recommend you read "Socialism betrayed" by Kenny and Keeran.

Go fuck yourself.

Mary critique of property that goes beyond the distinction between private property and personal property, but rather unlimited access to property in second-stage communism can not physically be achieved without post-scarcity.

I don't see much of value in that heap of dung which is your rant. Only regurgitating western propaganda which has been debunked over and over and over. You don't engage in a proper economic/materialist analysis you just moralize like the liberal you are.

So the state didn't reinvest it? I'm pretty sure it did. The only time where you can complain about surplus extraction when they built, like, a statue of Stalin or some other purely representative thing. But that isn't a decisive amount of the economy. Again, show me precisely where surplus extraction happened, and no, fighting fascists who want to genocide you isn't surplus extraction you autistic mongrel. Yes man, if you build a ship it's supposed to be used on water. No you can't keep your ship in your garage. Sorry.

Start arguing anytime

Again, Marxism isn't equality of outcome but of opportunity. We can talk about several theories as how to measure rewards for labor (responsibility, skill, physicality, etc.) but the way you write it is not an argument.

By that logic the Paris Commune wasn't socialist since it also "failed"

jesus christ you didn't even fucking read towards a new socialism, he refutes this in the intro

Yes, however it doesn’t matter because there’s MANY different types of socialism. I just say it is because I don’t want to have to deal with crapitalists say “there’s no real socialism."

Guy probably hasn't even read Cockshott. Most Leftcoms here are severely suffering from Dunning-Kruger-Syndrome.

Yes

...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bettelheim

You don't even seem to understand the concept of property as it exists today (a tool of a group of people to exercise power over those not included in it) and why it must be abolished immediately, at most being left as an administrative category (I would argue even further against this, but whatever). I recommend that you go read Marx, because you clearly haven't. A transition to socialism must be democratic in the most absolute sense, or even more characteristically proletarian as in the case of the council communists. Otherwise, it remains property as it exists today and behaves the same way. No matter that everything was state-owned. You wouldn't argue that Social Security and Medicare constitute socialism, would you? That nationalization of rail lines or even energy constitutes this? If you nationalized everything, it would still preserve within it the embryo of the capitalistic mode of production and eventually give way back into it, as surplus value extraction and value production in general have not been abolished. It's perfectly possible for the people to collectively regulate their own consumption without property if we look at more recent history using Marx's critical method, never mind what CotGP says.
I didn't even mention the famines - I'm pretty sure that Holodomor's not real. Stop strawmanning. The fact of the matter is, it was a militaristic, Taylorist system - "war communism" was acknowledged and praised as such by Lenin as being a model derived from the height of capitalist exploitation [1][2] (although he expresses the best of intentions in source 1, in a spirit not too dissimilar to my own version of accelerationism's stance on the gig economy and free software), and Stalin brought it back and in more severe fashion, returning them to exactly the same purposes as what they served in more industrialized countries.
Value production existed! Surplus value extraction is a logical result of it. Read "Eclipse And Reemergence Of The Communist Movement". It was possible to leave everything to self-managed soviets and to integrate industrial production into community life, allowing for free exchange between cities and countryside as was developing between the (at the time independent) rural soviets and urban factory committees before Lenin crushed them and set the stage for Stalin's completion of a return to value production and quasi-capitalism.
You don't even seem to understand my argument. They could not have lived their lives of relative luxury if they did not have absolute power in society as a collective group and extracted surplus value from the laborers through this. That's it.

Stop shoving words in my mouth, read Marx, and accept that your utopian system was retarded then and is even more so now.

"no"
All you people need to know to realize that the book linked is retarded historical revisionism is that it calls Trotsky part of the right of the Bolshevik Party and an advocate of concessions to capitalism beyond the NEP when it was the triumvirate of Stalin, Kamenev, and Bukharin who isolated and expelled the Left Opposition led by Trotsky and advanced the NEP's development. Read an actual book. I'm not even a Marxist, let alone a Leninist, and I know that those statements are bullshit.
>[1] - The Taylor system—without its initiators knowing or wishing it—is preparing the time when the proletariat will take over all social production and appoint its own workers’ committees for the purpose of properly distributing and rationalising all social labour. Large-scale production, machinery, railways, telephone—all provide thousands of opportunities to cut by three-fourths the working time of the organised workers and make them four times better off than they are today. - marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/mar/13.htm
preparation for socialism, the threshold of
socialism, a rung on the ladder of history
between which and the rung called socialism
there are no gaps” - marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/11.htm

I'm actually sure you were right when you said the only reason leftcoms don't like cockshott is because they heard once that he said the USSR was socialist and can't stop sperging out about it

...

Some leftcoms like Cockshott, though, just not that part

...

You should read a review of Marx if you have problems understanding him. You are mushing everything together right now.

Marx clearly distingushes between property relations and an assesment of property itself by describing it as a restriction of free association. Did the USSR reach Second-Stage Communism? No, of course not, it didn't achieve post-scarcity. Did it achieve socialism? Yes. Marx decidedly speaks about the immediate abolishment of private property, which is not a legal right in rem but rather a specific relationship to the means of production.

A transition to socialism must have the proletariat as the revolutionary subject, which the case both in February 1917 as well in October 1917. Again, what the fuck are you arguing?

There is a huge difference between State Capitalism (China today, for example) and Marxism-Leninism. Have you even read Lenin? Nobody says "we just make the state the biggest shareholder and leave everything in place". I won't repeat what I've already said above.

What do you think central planning is, dumbfuck? Again, see what I wrote above.

I already know you just cherrypick Marx' writings and ignore what you don't like

Then stop behaving like such a humongous faggot sperging out about muh red terror.

Define militaristic, any revolution will have vigilant aspects, and so did Catalonia. Again, read Marx and what he had to say about the Paris Commune.

It was never seen as an end in itself. What kind of argument is that? Your hero was sitting on his fat ass in Italy getting cucked by fascists while the Bolsheviks were fighting for survival.

Brought what back? War Communism? Maybe in World War II, yes? Even then the system was decidedly different compared to the war communist period. Vastly. I'm getting a feeling you purposely try to obsfucate things. Point at the things you have a problem with so we can discuss it instead of making vague implications.

Law of value =/= production for exchange. USSR produced for use, not for exchange, as explained above, Law of value transcendents capitalism in different forms until we reach post-scarcity. No, surplus extraction does not necessarily result of it, Dauve was wrong about this. Production under the law of value happened in Feudalism as well, but Feudalism more than often didn't have surplus extraction.

Except is has been tried and it wasn't. First off, Soviets did exist and there was self-management, especially under Stalin. So first off, go fuck yourself for making such a generalizing unhistoric statement. Secondly, the population was illiterate and not trained to undergo the struggle which was needed to industrialize. You complain about the party being a watchdog, but council democracy has explicitly failed as corruption was rampant and delegates of the higher Soviet were more concerned about retaining their position. "Proletarian blood" didn't solve the economic problems the USSR had, as Lenin admitted himself.

You can't bend economic reality. USSR was not an industrialized country at that point. You are being an Utopian Socialist. Even Bukharin (and he clearly isn't a Stalinist) realizes this 100%. You know what the Scissor Crisis was?

Stalin had one pair of shoes. I told you you could only complain about surplus extraction when they've built a statue or some other purely representative bullshit. I was giving you a hint where you could apply legitimate criticism but you keep punching into the air.

You literally advocated for an utopian system as you want to bend the material conditions.

I'm a history major and I can tell you you are wrong. The triumvirate between Stalin, Kamenev and Bukharin existed not because of ideological overlappings, but because of political practicability. Kamenev was left-leaning in economic theory. Trotsky made a 180° turn in terms of economic policy once Stalin consolidated power because he was just an edgy contrarian at that point.

You know I would have been with people having different opinions on wether or not the USSR was socialist but Leftcoms are physically incapable of making a post without lashing out against other tendecies. Tells you something about their self-confidence.

*would have been fine

The key to understanding what Marx wrote isn't to take his material suggestions at face value, but rather to understand his method of critique. On the issue of Russia, Marx was very clearly on my side of things.
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/zasulich/
How could it be possible that he would say this when the stated process was feudalism -> capitalism -> lower stage of communism -> higher stage of communism?
edensauvage.wordpress.com/2016/12/09/marxs-dialectical-method/
Read and learn. It's a framework for determining the best plan of action given particular material circumstances.
Not self-regulation of the people as advocated. All power to the soviets - down with your politburos and unresponsive gosplans!
facepalm
See above. His actual proposals were related to a specific historical instance and not universally applicable as a framework for eliminating capitalism universally. That is a form of thinking which brings to mind the "cookshops of the future" which Marx and Proudhon criticized as utopian.
Someone above you gives you orders at gunpoint, someone above them gives them orders at gunpoint, and so on and so on

The two are inseparable as shown by Dauve, and your argument against this is…
Ahahaha, you dumb tankie!
Marx argues that part of the genius of capitalism is that it obscures the extraction of surplus value, which was clearly visible under feudalism in the form of lords either requisitioning a portion of what peasants produced or having peasants work on the lord's land for part of the year.
(cont)

It was only tried under Makhno.
libcom.org/files/Stalin-moon.pdf
Lenin shut down all debate in the soviets and KAS-organized factory committees before the Civil War even began in earnest, despite their willingness to collaborate against the Whites.
By free exchange, I'm referring to immediate communization as advocated on the topic of Russia by Kropotkin, Dauve, and Marx(!). Hardly a set of utopian socialists, wouldn't you say? Had they allowed for people to give to each other through their own organs as according to need instead of recreating the capricious organized violence of markets, it would have balanced itself out.
I still don't think you know what these words mean. I recommend that you go read Marx or Proudhon - they both explain the concept. Statues and nomenklatura are symptoms at most and I use them as examples - they are not the disease itself.
I'm partial to neither side, but general historical consensus lays the burden of proof on you here to prove your point, buddy.
The PCdI was incredibly active in both the streets and the factories. The complacency introduced by the parliamentary victory of the socialists is what let the fascists take over, in part.
Yes. It was centralized state control to meet a particular end, with workers generally being given back only what they needed to survive in a state which maximized productivity. The rest does not matter.
It was the revolutionary subject until Lenin crushed soviet power and substituted the party as such. The soviets are meaningless without the action, the proletarian self-activity, which characterizes their formation and initial character.
…and this continued to exist under the USSR, slowly making itself more and more known. You tankies criticize the Kosygin reforms as if they were a choice of "evil revisionist traitors" to reintroduce elements of capitalism, but they had to be made because it had been blindly productivist capitalism before where more of everything was needed and more equated better unequivocally. It's no coincidence that the reforms were made not that many years after the last famines passed.
And yet this is what asserts itself every single time without fail because your utopian plan fails to abolish the Law Of Value wherever it may lurk in society's structures and relations.
There is no easy dismantling of brutal dictatorship of the state bureaucracy once its time of "need" has passed. Moreover, as discussed in "Stalin Didn't Fall From The Moon", the Bolsheviks eliminated workers' self-management before there was need to. There was no experimentation with what could actually be called a "war communism" akin to what Kropotkin proposed.