Was the USSR socialist or not? If not, was its system still preferable to that of the West?
Also, were Stalin and Lenin the evil mass-murderers they seem to be? The Finnish Bolshevik on YouTube claims otherwise, but can all of those historians all be wrong?
It depends on your definition of socialism. If defined by Marx it wasnt "socialism" but it was "lesser socialism" which was the transition state. By the Leninist definition it was absolutely. By the Trot definition, it was but under Lenin. By the Anarcho definition not in the slightest.
And unless you include casualties in a civil war as mass murder Lenin wasn't the mass murder, Stalin on the other hand was and I remain critical of continued support of him at least in the west considering he scares away normies like no tomorrow.
Sebastian Johnson
find me one country that was Socialist and I can answer your question. honestly the term "socialism" has lost all its meaning. just yesterday my French professor called France "socialist"
Logan Ortiz
It's like a Holla Forums thread where they sperg out about a society that was truly "Aryan", but even more self righteous…
Luke Cook
WRONG! Transition state is DoTP, not lower stage.
Samuel Howard
Marx described a form of lesser socialism you can't deny that
Adam Peterson
...
Parker Gomez
It was in the lowest stages of socialism.
YES!!
No to both.
David Taylor
Yea these threads are so fucking predictable and stupid. Do you people never get tired of having the exact same fucking discussion every single day?
Owen Bailey
That depends on your subjective feeling. What we can say for sure is that it was far superior to the capitalist systems which succeeded and preceeded it, aka modern Russia or the Russian Empire. Very few historians (the ones who are taken seriously at least) still support this narrative. Liberal historians don't praise the USSR but actually admitted since a while now that stuff like this so-called Holodomor is absolute bullshit. If you are a leftist, and you buy into this Robert Conquest shit, you are actually even behind the liberal consensus.
Cooper Green
No, I believe under Stalin's Five Year Plans farms were run in a "Collectivist" fashion, but its not Socialism in a Marxist sense, or any real sense. Maybe for some, kinda, but alienation and the law of value still existed so all the crap that came with that was there. To be fair, homelessness was eradicated I think and literacy improved, and this was coming out of a feudal shithole. Economically it seems to be better, no booms and busts and pretty stable growth (that's Russia, I dunno about other countries). Lenin no. Stalin sort of, the purges were retarded. Mao en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_of_landlords_under_Mao_Zedong seems so.
Samuel Bailey
Well, the government does stuff, innit
Jeremiah Perez
Oh yeah holodomor = bullshit Gulags = kinda bullshit the way its talked about is ridiculously exaggerated and hypocritical
Jason Cook
No, it was state capitalism. Yes
No Possibly depending on your sources and standards
Logan Martin
State capitalism is a bad meme. Leftcoms who call it just capitalism make a lot more sense.
Kevin White
I'm kinda glad Lenin died early and Stalin replaced him tbqh I get the feeling Lenin would've happily kept the NEP for decades
Jeremiah Flores
In Towards a new socialism Cockshott argues that it actually was socialist because the method of extracting surplus was different than the capitalistic method.
Adam Green
Naw, it's different when the state controls the businesses and not private firms. It's a useful distinction.
Benjamin Brown
Rather than answer all of your questions individually I highly reccomend you read Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti and make up your own mind. I'm still undecided about whether or not I consider its economic system socialist, but Parenti does a pretty good job of debunking the "communist" slur in the book.
Here's the pdf and a couple of excerpts
Benjamin Diaz
Kek,I chuckled. Still read the book
Samuel Martin
BO is a fag!
Jace Taylor
I mean personally I find it funny because I think the "R ed Fascist" accusation is nonsense. Whether you think M-Ls are socialist or not they have absolutely nothing to do with fascism and this is reddit liberal-tier analysis of M-L states.
Ian Ward
No, deformed and degenerated workers' states closely resemble fascist states.
Nathan Richardson
Even if is true it doesn't automatically make Marxism-Leninism as a theory or movement equivalent to Fascism. This is like saying that anyone who describes themselves as a conservative is automatically Mussolini.
Also the "deformity and degeneration" of the Soviet Union came long after de-stalinization if your looking at the economics of it.
Would you call Castro or Thomas Sankara fascists? How about the Black Panther party or Angela Davis?
Jayden Green
I never claimed as much.
Not according to Trostky and the Trotskyists, who coined the terms.
Castro is closer to a fascist than many would like to admit. I know nothing about Thomas Sankara. Angela Davis has never held power, but I find her apologies for gangster culture disturbing.
Mason Thomas
Fair enough
The burden of proof is on them then.
How
You should learn about him
Okay but my point was that Marxism-Leninism itself can't be equated to Fascism simply because (according to Trots) the failure of Leninist states supposedly looks like the success of fascist ones
I find her vote for Hillary Clinton disturbing, both are irrelevant to the discussion at hand
Brayden Brooks
Learn to sage reddit. I'd call him an opprtunist whose alliance with the USSR was a matter of convienence and in an alternate timeline could have gone fascist if the US backed his overthrow of Batista. That isn't to say he was worse than Batista or a crimson nazi, but to recognise that his adoption of ML was born of convenience and not belief, at least not initially.
Daniel Bell
Gangsterism is protofascism.
Camden Lee
Yes, but today we can do socialism way better using computers.
Robert Rodriguez
Perhaps but Che was a M-L from day one. Who's to say that Che didn't influence Castro's thinking in any way shape or form, even if posthumously?
The US would back the overthrow of their own man in Cuba? Also please refrain from "alternate timeline" speculation when trying to prove that there is something innately fascistic about marxism-leninism
Than why pretend as if he would have "gone fascist" in some alternate timeline or even accept help from the US in the first place?
Can you link me where she supported gangsterism? I'm having a hard time finding it. Also you're correct but the Democrats are essentially an inverted fascist party at this point and she supported them as well long after her work as a serious revolutionary. That still doesn't prove that her early work had anything to do with fascism
Jacob Morales
Did workers own the means of production in Soviet Union? No. It was all in state control and workers had no control over the economy.
Jack Phillips
Me too, I might have peddled a lie there, my bad. I thought at one point I read a quote where she was defending gangster rap as a legitimate expression of rebellion, but I can't find it.
William Hall
It's interesting that this image calls "communism" the final stage and "socialism" the intermediate stage, because I've read that Marx called "socialism" the final stage and "communism" the intermediate stage, also known as the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Overall it seems that these semantic confusions are a serious problem.
Jonathan Martinez
everytime i see one of these shitty memes i'm less convinced to read cockshott
Ethan Moore
fbpb
Kevin Miller
That wouldn't change that Casto was initially not a ML or even a socialist, but a national liberationist The US has been overthrowing their own guys for a long time now fam. I wouldn't call ML fascist, if anything I'd call MLs socdem. Because had US interests been more aligned with Casto's goal of national liberation than Batista, Castro would have almost certainly taken the aid. Whether he would have become a fascist in such a scenario is unknown, but given the other coups the US aided in Latin America he certainly wouldn't be a socialist.
Jacob Reyes
It's not just semantics. The DOTP exists in capitalism, saying that it is "socialist" (i.e. non-capitalist) is wrong.
Hudson Nelson
Id say
no ehh sort of but not really
Lenin wasn't, if you think he "seems" to be an evil mass murderer you gotta stop reading that prop Stalin certainly wasn't "evil" but he was certainly responsible for a lot of suffering and death
Matthew Peterson
You might not be interested in this, but I think The Path Which Led Me to Leninism by Ho Chi Minh is a good, really short text on this topic (although it's pretty surface level and not at all deep). I don't think it's an accident that so many national liberation movements have also been communist ones. Imperialism is a natural outgrowth of capitalism at a certain stage of develoment. If you grow up in a colony, national liberation will probably be the most important thing to you, because that's an immediate issue that's causing you, your family, your people, a lot of suffering. But opposition to imperialism also necessarily becomes opposition to capitalism. I don't think the national liberation movements just pretended to be commies to get Soviet guns.
Hunter Williams
I'll look into that. I don't either and we can see that today with a certain territory that has caused a lot of drama on this board. However I think it would be easy for capitalists to subvert natlib movements if it could serve their interests.
Sebastian Miller
The USSR was just objectively not socialist. Socialism necessarily entails more advanced production than the most advanced capitalist countries. The USSR never reached that point, so it was never socialist.
It was a workers' state, however. That much is indisputable.
Aaron Peterson
Just gonna quote a part I think is relevant. My guess is that many communist revolutionaries in national liberation movements have walked a similar ideological path:
>At first, patriotism, not yet communism, led me to have confidence in Lenin, in the Third International. Step by step, along the struggle, by studying Marxism-Leninism parallel with participation in practical activities, I gradually came upon the fact that only socialism and communism can liberate the oppressed nations and the working people throughout the world from slavery.
Charles Long
??
Ayden Roberts
Yes. Read Marx, for fuck's sake.
Nicholas Fisher
Or you could just explain what you mean by that, if you actually understand it and aren't just parroting shit?
Liam Smith
Socialism proceeds capitalism when capitalism's productive forces become more advanced than the property relations that sustain it.
This is why capitalism tends toward pre-socialist type production in its later stages, such as monopoly, globalization, and automation.
Jason Ortiz
This is correct. This is formally correct but incorrect in context with your later statement. This is a very Stalinist interpretation of dialectical materialism which you guys supposedly reject where you need "development points" to be ready for socialism. Marx himself pointed at potential for socialism in Russia, and the material conditions Marx was talking about were pretty much realized by World War I.
The USSR advanced far beyond the type of capitalism Marx saw and envisioned. If you think the USSR could never realize a socialist economy you either disagree with Marx or Marx was wrong.
Russia was certainly ripe for socialist revolution (as shown by the socialist revolution), but socialism itself could only be properly realized with the aid and support of socialist revolutions in more advanced countries, like Germany. After WWII, Russia was maybe advanced enough economically to bring about a genuine socialist project, but by then the revolution had degenerated so much that the State had no interest in such an experiment.
And you're right that socialism could absolutely have been realized in the WW1 era, but NOT by the SU alone. That's the primary distinction between Stalinist and Trotskyist thought.
Logan Howard
Trotsky couldn't have done anything about this. The revolution in Germany failed, and similar movements in Europe couldn't even get off the ground. Socialism in One Country isn't an ideology as it is more of a way to deal with reality. Stalin didn't drop the ball and went all the way to the end, despite being isolated.
I also haven't heard a good argument as to why Socialism in One Country is an impossibility, as long as you have the natural resources. You might argue that foreign trade presupposes production for exchange, but come on: Even in revisionist times foreign trade of the USSR didn't make up more than 4% of its economy.
Brayden Rogers
You need enough natural resources not just to sustain your population, but to compete in a nuclear arms race. That's why the USSR failed. In order to make sure they had enough nukes for mutual assured destruction theory to work, the USSR wasn't able to invest enough in the rest of its economy, which eventually did lead to proper shortages.
Christian Robinson
To add to this, had Stalin taken a less hostile approach towards the West and America, perhaps even given up East Germany, and been able to avoid the nuclear arms race, he would have been able to invest much more in the consumer economy, growing it much faster.
Angel Cruz
Any revolution needs to be defended. Global revolution at the same time is unlikely. The shortages ended after World War II though. Quality of life peaked in the 50s and was easily on par with the west if not better for a few years a least. I'm not defending Krushchev or Brezhnev here, they were shit. But anyway, let's assume for the sake of argument Soviet socialism lacked certain features of socialism you'd expect, I still don't see this as an argument against Marxism-Leninism, exact that you don't like its semantics about socialism.
This is dishonest, sorry. Stalin was absolutely trying to deescalate with the West after WWII, and I have no fucking clue where you get the idea that Stalin hinged on East Germany. Stalin didn't even wanted East Germany and advocated for a neutral Germany: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin_Note Even in the Korean War, Soviet support was marginal to say the least. It was Mao who pushed back the US.
I find this line of argument quite incoherent. On one hand, Trots love to claim that Stalin wasn't enough of an internationalist, but at the same time, every time he exported the revolution he gets blamed as well for taking a hostile stance against the West at the cost of his economy. You can't have your cake and eat it.
Leo Smith
What exactly would a "neutral Germany" had meant?
He should have exported communism with messaging, propaganda, sending "missionaries", not militarily.
Nicholas Rodriguez
Source?
Blake King
No. Yes. Lenin and stalin fulfilled their historical role.
Chase Morris
What is this, a liberal thread?
Charles Robinson
For example, could you imagine the profound impact of dropping leaflets making the communist case along with LSD over western cities?
Thomas Phillips
That's an entirely different discussion. I think Stalin still hoped that after the horrors of fascism there was still some hope left for a genuine socialist success. In West Germany, competing with East Germany, controlled and propped up by the US and later NATO, such a thing was impossible (as proven by the KPD being outlawed by the constitutional court). Primary motive was probably to have a buffer zone, and with the German economic power, serving as a mutual trade area between East and West. My point is that the West started the Cold War. Not the USSR. That's not always as easy. When they tried to agitate all over Europe im the 20s, Europe got pretty mad. UK expelled the entiry Soviet embassy. Secondly, I fail to see how Stalin "imposed" socialism with military. I mentioned Korea as an example. The Korean people elected Kim Il-Sung as their president of the short-lived People's Republic of Korea, which was declared illegitimate by the US which proceeded to erect a military dictatorship under Syngman Rhee that killed up to one million of its own people. It is false to claim that all the other socialist revolutions where engineered by the USSR, they were genuine people's movements. If you think that they degenerated, blame them, not Stalin who was merely supporting them. Remember it wasn't Stalin who sent in the tanks everytime they went against the party line.
I'm on my phone. The last time I just googled it and to my knowledge it came up pretty quickly. These information aren't obscure.
Hudson Bell
Funny how Lenin himself referred to it as state capitalism before he died.
Asher King
Source for this? I've heard this before but never been able to find any accessible, credible sources that explain it. Why do people say Kim Il-sung was just a Soviet puppet, if he was actually elected by the korean people?
During the NEP.
Daniel Hall
Now that I'm reading about the Stalin Note, it does seem fucked up that the West didn't accept these terms. Obviously it's difficult to tell how it would have worked in practice, but in its face, the West seems to have rejected a very reasonable reunification proposal.
Now, I have another question for you. How would you describe the relationship between the USSR and its so-called "satellite states", like Poland for instance? In the West they often describe them as "under Soviet domination", but you seem to be implying that they willfully adopted communism? How did the populations in these countries generally feel about communism and the USSR?
Thomas Jackson
Don't just settle for Parenti's ☭TANKIE☭ analysis though, read this one too.
Charles Hill
Really nigga?
Kevin Cook
What's wrong with Wolff?
Connor Bell
I might've misinterpreted what you meant by "Parenti's ☭TANKIE☭ analysis", but I assumed it had something to do with "muh USSR wasn't real socialism, muh social democracy with guns". If that was what you were implying is the problem with Parenti, then shilling for a book by Richard "USSR was state capitalist, co-ops are literally socialism tho" Wolff would be pretty dumb.
Nathaniel Stewart
Again I'm on my phone but Kim Il-Sung was elected by the Provisional People's Committee together with Kim Tu-bong in all of Korea in 1946.
Think about it: Why do you think Rhee had kill hundreds of thousends of people? People's Republic of Korea wasn't even that communist, there were strong communist influences because communists have been dominant in the anti-colonial fight against Japan, but that was reason enough for the US to intervene.
I'll answer your other post tomorrow with sources
Brandon Jackson
You're talking to two different people.
Liam Sullivan
dishonest what about the law of diminishing marginal returns?
Anthony Bell
That's why the graph has a curve and isn't a straight line. I first learned about "Guns And Butter" from Ron Paul, by the way. It's so-called "basic economics".
Zachary Martin
Do you have an actual argument against Wolff and Resnick? Read the book, they present a convincing analysis.
Levi Adams
...
Lincoln Gutierrez
dude why are you assuming curvature is such that you can trade 160 guns for 800lbs of butter? why not assume 1lbs to 10000000000guns
Anthony Gomez
The graph isn't meant to be accurate, it's just meant to illustrate a point.
Gabriel Cook
graph does not illuminate your point if in the real world with objective constraints on production (especially in agriculture) you can trade million guns for one lbs of butter
Luke Barnes
You're being a pedant and you know it.
Liam James
bump
Kevin Hill
Wew lad
Hunter Brown
How about reading something to understand all points of view, not because of memes you goddamn brainlet
Christian Wood
You have to admit he is pretty ☭TANKIE☭ sometimes.
Nicholas Jones
This tbh. Real socialism is when you spend your whole day voting about production goals.
Aaron Hernandez
You can do that every Friday and spend the rest of the week working.