/notrealsocialism/

Fascist states killed organized labour yes, but public services and welfare were greatly expanded. The modern welfare state was originally enacted by fashies against socialists.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state#History_of_welfare_states

Also forgot this:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state#Germany

It was Bismarck, you revisionist faggot.

Yes, I know. I guess I shouldn't have said "originally" just "was enacted"

Honestly, it has much deeper roots than that. Even Victorian Britain had a welfare state and Marx wrote about its effects on the agricultural working class in particular.

The USSR was some weird form of state market socialism. I would say they were about as 'right-wing' as they could get while still being technically socialism.

We really, really have to stop this "it wasn't real socialism" bullshit. It's a cheap deflection that addresses no problems and only puts the person defending socialism in a bad rhetorical situation.

Barring some very notorious exceptions like Pol Pot, yes it was socialism. The key feature is that the means of production were collectively owned. Extended social welfare measures, like right to work, stipends for students, incentives for the arts etc. are often involved, but are ancillary.

It fucked up bad and fell horribly short of it original goals and promises, but Soviet Russia and the ml States that followed were socialist ones, no matter how much we bemoan how far they fell off the mark. We have to own our demons before exorcising them.

The problem is that the reactionaries say, "Look at the USSR! It was an utter failure, thus we shouldn't try socialism again because it failed."
The problem is generally our adversaries being stubborn more so than our own. What is needed is for reactionaries to understand early capitalist failures.
Why don't we have a stickied thread dedicated to debunking anti-socialist shit? It would probably be useful.

I don't think that will work because, as far as personal experience goes, reactionaries at large simply are not interested in honest discussion. It's always a circular fallacy with them: they have their conclusion known beforehand, derived mostly from "feels". It's mostly a matter of eulogizing and defending it.

So, as they say, we should argue for the audience, not the other debater. And owning up to mistakes, if done right, can be an extremely powerful rhetorical weapon. Especially given that the usual "but capitalism is worse" we have been saying for decades hasn't reaped many rewards. Of course, we should never ever let go of capitalism's crimes, my suggestion is, shall we say, that we preface debates with that owning-up I mention, as it will make the accusations against capitalism all the more meaningful.

Example of this premise in action?

Well that's the thing, no one did it in a debate I know of yet because everyone goes "it wasn't REAL socialism" instead.

So how would one employ it in a debate? Just say, "Yo the USSR may have been socialism but it kinda missed the mark," or something similar?

The point of saying the USSR wasn't socialist isn't just pointing out of how it wasn't marxs vision of communism or even leninis vision of communism incarnate but the fact it shared many similarities to capitalist society and while an attempt was made never quite managed to transend the commodity form.

I figure it should easy to bait your opponent into playing the "let me guess, you gonna say it wasn't real socialism, am I rite?" card. The fuckers absolutely can't resist using that "burn".

Yes, Lenin regime had small commodity production, so then it was not fully but as soon as Stalin came in it was fully socialist.

His argument was that the USSR still operated under generalized commodity production and wage labour. That's capitalism.

And both is evidently wrong. For such a hot take he'd have to actually provide evidence, which he didn't. He quoted the theoretical work of some random Japanese ultraleftist, that was all.

Such as? The law of value clearly didn't determine production in the USSR, while in capitalist countries it clearly does.

That's another thing I find weird about certain leftcom arguments. Sometimes (and I think xexizy did this) they say that since the law of value existed (and Stalin admitted this) it must have been capitalist, not socialist. But in the next breath they will say that a socialist/communist society in an early stage should use labour vouchers, but I don't see how the law of value wouldn't still exist in a labour voucher system.

Like I wrote in the thread I made on this subject: In the lower phase of communism, where there's a system of labour vouchers, the law of value must still exist and operate, right? One product is still exchangeable for another in some specific ratio based on their socially necessary labour time.

I know this is only one facet of socialism, but did workers have any control over their workplaces? Over the MoP? Because if not is it possible to achieve socialism without this occurring so long as private property is established. And before anyone points to the state I hardly think that qualifies so don't make that argument.

even Stalin himself admitted it does iirc.

do leftcoms advocate labour vouchers though?

There's a difference between saying the law of value exists (like Stalin said) and that it determines production (which tank poster said it did not). Here's what Stalin wrote in Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR:

If the law of value is operational, then production is for exchange. In a communist society where allocation is done by labor vouchers, production can still be measured by labor time, but this does not mean production is done *for* value.

...

It depends what you mean by "operational". Even when not all production is for exchange, whenever there is some commodity exchange, there will be some form of the law of value that will apply to those exchanges. When there is generalized commodity production (and hence capitalism), the law of value becomes dominant over all of society. Under the labour voucher system described by Marx, there is no exchange of commodities, hence no law of value in any form.

Same, even though I am an Marxist-Leninist, there are good arguments for USSR being State Capitalism. Unfortunately, I think Muke got too smug lately and feels as if he already won the "debate"so he doesn't need to provide more detail or arguments. .

The irony of this is that Soviet union fell, because it didn't focus enough on Commodity, civilian production.
Since Brezhnev , old and dumb generals who wanted ww2 part 2 had received a lot of investment into tanks, planes and ships that never saw combat nor would hold any value in a war with nato. Getting into Afghanistan was also dumb move.
TL;DR
Soviet Union fell because they had too weak commodity production and focused to much on tanks. They should have invested into science and civilian happiness and wait for crapitalism to fail by itself.

To a degree this is one of reasons why Venezuela is failing.
Because when Hugo Chavez had billions of dollars of oil money he brought planes and tanks from putin rather than investing into industry and civilian population. He should have trained engineers and workers and not generals.

this

iffy. They had commodity production, but whether they had generalized commodity production is iffy

I can't help but think this suggests that the USSR was the bastard child of both capitalist and socialist systems.

It'd certainly explain why it's possible to point to bits of evidence either way.

So, it's confirmed that the Bolsheviks were socdems? Except socdems generally support trade unions and are socially progressive.

To this I will actually defend the USSR as socialist and even Stalin, appearing like a full tank. But it's better than pulling the old card which will only get you laughed at even if you think it's true. Debates are not about being right but about using lots of rhetoric to ruin your opponent.

So this is how dialectics look like in action

...

Of course. Could it have been anything else?

Because when you use welfare to defend the USSR, you're showing that you are still defined by the capitalist mindset. Capitalists will also use the same rhetoric to say that capitalism lifts all boats under a rising tide, because when more stuff is produced people get more stuff.

In a nutshell, what you are showing is that you are better stewards of capitalism, as socdems claim to be.

yes, except the dauvist/communization type ones, they don't like labour vouchers

No. Just because social democracy has public services doesn't mean that socialism won't. Do you really think there won't be public healthcare, etc. under socialism? Will you have to spend your private consumption labor vouchers on it?

Btw hes not saying the welfare parts is not to say welfare = socialism. the point of any economic system is to produce the best living standard and freedom possible, this is simply saying this is an accomlishment of the ussr, not that its literally ideal socialism/'mission accomplished'

To be honest you need to be a special kind of retard to still think that labour vouchers are necessary with the material conditions surrounding us.

Don't buy into the FALC hype, as long as there are scarce resources you need a rationing system, whether its based on labor, some other type of tokens, or a council just allocating things or w/e.
You
need
rationing.
The earth is a finite planet with finite resources, not to mentioned the carbon emissions/environment. With the population growing and expectations of living standards always rising, resource usage needs to be metered harder than ever. Marx never said communsim=when the stores are so full they never run out of stuff no matter how much you take from them

The whole point is that it will no longer be described as public. Just producing stuff and giving a certain portion of it to the people isn't socialism.

Wolff deals with it really easilly. Capitalism was born, it lives, it will die and be replaced by something else.

Before it came into existence there were many failed attempts and small scale successes. People said the failed attempts proved it would never work and the successes didnt prove anything.

Finally, capitalism worked. Socialism will go through the same processes.

Why not, thats what it is. Not everything will be public, people still have articles of private consumption. The ham sandwich i get from the socialism store get is my personal property for me to eat. Same for clothes, etc.

No.

I want Alunya to bully me

So under socialism, I can just take your shit and move into your house?

???

So, under socialism, we all use the same toothbrush?

Come again?

...

>Left anticommunists remained studiously unimpressed by the dramatic gains won by masses of previously impoverished people under communism. Some were even scornful of such accomplishments. I recall how in Burlington Vermont, in 1971, the noted anticommunist anarchist, Murray Bookchin, derisively referred to my concern for “the poor little children who got fed under communism” (his words).
lmao

How? There would be no money - GDP and similar measures are all measured in terms of money. Without some way to equate commodities (value), there would be no way to produce a single number representing the total value produced. Moreover, it is precisely this idea that capitalist economics transhistorically describes all possible human societies instead of being an analysis of a certain mode of production that occurs in certain historical circumstances that was one of Marx's main criticisms of the classical political economists.

How? There would be no money - GDP and similar measures are all measured in terms of money. Without some way to equate commodities (value), there would be no way to produce a single number representing the total value produced. Moreover, it is precisely this idea that capitalist economics transhistorically describes all possible human societies instead of being an analysis of a certain mode of production that occurs in certain historical circumstances that was one of Marx's main criticisms of the classical political economists.

even then, there were mass privatisations. The only welfare that existed for things like mortage if you were a pure blooded german with 4+ children

exactly

...

No one but the ignorant say and repeat this, usually idiots from Holla Forums because they're too stupid to understand nuance.

You people change opinions faster than teenagers change phones. And why the fuck are there so many tankies here all of a sudden, this board used to be filled with anarkiddies.

The tankies made the better arguments.

YPG are CIA puppets

...

It's time to move on, Jodi have been already exposed as a fraud.

The tankies were bussed in from reddit around spring of this year.

nah the real problem was BO going on a ban spree after a particularly bad rojava sperg out. A leftist ecosystem can't be sustained if there aren't proper levels of anarchos, tankies, and leftcoms and the balance was thrown way off and the tankies took over

...

what on earth are you talking about?

You're fucking delusional. Tankies are a minority around here.

tankies increased tenfold and only recently are non-tankies coming back in full. there were a few weeks when it was impossible to even have a rojava cyclical without everyone in it getting banned and driven out, and the thread saged/spammed to shit

I remember when we could actually talk about North Syria without a fuckton of people sperging about about it. First it was a minority of leftcoms, now all the Unruhe tankies are out in full force. Probably been a year now since we had a civilized discussion about anything related to Communalism.

you unironically believe in the toothbrush meme?

thats cuz tankie-ism is the correct ideology