Leftcoms BTFO?

Did you watch his video about the Soviet democracy? By the way, the Supreme Soviet wasn't that important concerning the economic plan, however, they elected the ones that were, and additionally (very important) you have the all-union council that reciprocally contributed with the Gosplan. The Gosplan itself consisted out of over 1000 people, hardly a thing behind closed doors.

By the way, I never understood the negative connotation of the winged word "rubber stamp".

I mean, a document isn't legit if there is no stamp, right? If I refuse to put my stamp on it it's not valid.

"The inequalities of income were due to inequalities of the performance of labor, not due to inequalities in the relation to the means of production." Perhaps in an ideal system, yes. But not everyone has a yacht on the black sea or a summer home in…where ever a nice pace to have a summer home in the USSR would've been. Crimea? Ukraine? Anyway, this discrepancy is not something can can be accomplished merely by a worker being more of a go getter than their peers. As Kropotkin said in the bread book, you can pretty much guarantee that if you see someone with wealth, they could only have gained that wealth by exploiting someone along the way. That's how wealth beyond merely subsistence levels is gained.

I'll have to check that out, thank you.

Certainly withholding the stamping of something shows that a person has not given their consent to it. However, the term bears with it the connotation of something that is done without thought. Like Adolph Eichmann signing papers to send thousands of Jews to death camps, its something that should be thoroughly examined and requires a thoughtful decision about whether consent should be given or withheld, but instead it is a state of affairs where the people in question either don't care (like Eichmann) or have an incentive to just do what an authority wants. The action is performed without contemplation. Either unconsciously or consciously, the outcome is the same: the rubber stamping is a meaningless show of support by a person/people who haven't actually consented in the full sense of the word.

To my understanding of the term, the essence of wage-labor is this: a person, not having access to the means to produce commodities for themself, is thus forced to sell their labor-time (their very lives in the form of rent, hence the term wage-slave ) to a person/person who does/do (the bourgeois capitalist(s)). They receive only a portion of the value they create back to them in the form of a wage, where as the extra value, the surplus value, becomes "profit" for the capitalists. Hence, the worker is inherently exploited, as by their labor those who did nothing to receive the value they create take it, and give only a portion of it back. In the vid though, Endymion claims that wage-labor only exists when the worker labors and receives only subsistence back for their efforts. He uses this definition to claim that wage-labor didn't exist in the USSR since Laborers received more than just subsistence back from their labor. This is far too reductionist for my taste. Using this definition, a worker in the West might not be engaged in wage-labor if they, because of the subsidising of first world workers by the plundering of the natural resources and exploitation of the workers of the third world, they are able to afford more than a mere subsistence-level existence.

What then is the material difference between a given worker in a liberal capitalist nation and a given worker in a socialist nation? For the sake of argument, let's say these hypothetical individuals have identical standards of living, identical working hours, identical pay. What makes a worker in a socialist country not exploited while the worker in a capitalist nation is? It MUST be that the worker has control over the means of production. It's not a difference in quality of life, or happiness, or labor time, but that a worker engaging in the labor process within a socialist mode of production has control over their fate. They, like everyone else in a socialist society, decide what is to be done with ALL the value they create, not just the pittance given to them by a boss. If this is not the case, it is not a socialist mode of production. If the workers do not have real control over the workplace, then it is not Socialism. If workers receive an economic plan, approved by the Supreme Soviet, and this plan is anything other than a helpful suggestion, then this is not Socialism. If the workers in a given workplace disobey the plan, and are penalized for it by an authority from which they have no recourse, this is not socialism. It is tyrrany. You may argue that it is for the sake of establishing an efficient and workable nation, and that may be the case, but don't also argue that a nation in which intransigent workers can be arrested by police (I'm very skeptical about THAT institution existing under a socialist mode of production) is one in which they have meaningful control over their lives.

Left-wing communism is a parasitic ideology that only exists because of all the successful Socialist revolutions that they tumble over and shriek to constantly denounce.

Nice opinion bruv

...

His argument is basically "they sometimes act against the law of value" just like the argument marksucc's use about how co-ops don't follow the law of value all the time.

What the fuck is this post

...

Lelwat how deluded is that.
You're acting as if there is no historical basis for other socialists not to be wary of MLs violently suppressing them (and other worker movements), doesn't that seem a bit silly to you?

3, 2, 1… Let the sectarian shitflinging commence!

yes but the days of the eastern bloc, the Cold War and Joseph Stalin are over marxism-leninism is now just a memory whether it is good or bad would depend on who you ask but either way it doesn't really matter since again those days are over, stop whining about things done by people who are either dead or will be dead within ten years.

Ok, disregarding any bad blood in the past why should other socialists work with 50+ grandpas and edgy college students whose praxis is largely to vote for a fringe party? What is to be gained by an alliance with these distinguished proletarians and what happens when short-term goals or strategy becomes unbound or even opposed?

I agree with that post. In order to settle the question whether the USSR was socialist we need to determine exactly how much power the workers had over their labor. Any other approach is meaningless. So, since I and I hope many others actually want to learn something could someone who thinks of himself as well read on the subject present a case for or against it and then maybe another well read person could try to present a rebuttal? Also, I think it would be important to address the role of the media in the USSR since even if the state apparatus was perfectly accountable to the workers it couldn't be considered democratic by any stretch of the imagination if the media was propagandist on a structural level.

Nobody said dialectics are pleasant.

Obviously, but this isn't going to immediately be the case after a socialist revolution. Allow me to quote Marx from Cotgp:
This transitional period that Marx describes for the most part also describes the Soviet Union, does it not?
To argue that it's "not real Socialism" or "State Capitalism" is a useless criticism that Marx probably would have laughed at. Believe me, I have my misgivings towards many of the methods the Bolshevik party used, as well as the leaders of the Soviet Union that succeeded Stalin but the fact that it's "technically state capitalism" isn't one of them. If you believe that communism should just be something that happens instantly and is an easy hop, skip, and jump away from the aftermath of a revolution, then there's already an ideology for you comrade, it's called Anarchism.

I think you misunderstood that post. It didn't suggest that the USSR not being socialist is a critique on its own. It was just a response to the idea mentioned in the OP, namely that the USSR was in fact socialist. It even specifically addressed your point within the post:

Also, seeing this discussion (>>2261291) would be interesting.

Oops, this was obviously meant for this .

Fuck off crypto fascist

This video is fucking baffling, he literally just describes a situation where the USSR extracted surplus value from workers and then very evenly distributed it among the population through wages and welfare, this is exactly what Leftcoms are talking about and exactly the kind of shit Marx constantly warned against in his writings time and again, but he claims that it isn't Capitalism just because there isn't a Bourgeoise, that's a completely un-Marxian view of what makes Capitalism Capitalism. Hell, Marx's entire critique of Mutualism was that it was basically "Capitalism without Capitalists", as in workers would essentially exploit themselves under Mutualism, under Marxism-Leninism the Party functions in the exact same way as the Capitalists, as a nonproductive owner of the means of production who then extracts surplus value. You know, before I started posting on this board I actually had respect for MLs, but now that I've seen their arguments and logic up close I'm convinced that most of them are either teenagers or retards.

I'm not arguing that it's for the sake of establishing an efficient and workable nation. I'm arguing many of the practices that leftcoms try to point out as anti-Marxist are not that.
To be clear, I'm not saying the Bolsheviks dindu nuffin wrong or anything like that. Just that things like the law of value will still be present before communism is achieved. Anyone who tries to argue otherwise you can pretty much consider utopian, hence the aside about Anarchism at the end of my post.

Can you actually quote where in any of Marx's writings that he said anything like that?: "Warning" against anything that you believe the Soviet Union did?

But the post you replied to didn't even say anything about "anti-Marxism". He merely replied to the OP who claims that the USSR was a socialist system:

He only explained what he understands to be socialism. Nowhere did he claim that a transitional effort of some kind isn't needed and he definitely didn't claim that such a transitional effort is anti-marxist. Also, most leftcoms I know don't argue against a transitional effort of some kind, they only argue against the specific form this effort took in the Soviet Union. Anyway, what I'm getting at is this, no matter whether you're right or wrong, you addressed points that weren't mentioned in the comment you replied to.

What. He just said the opposite

The Gotha Critique and Poverty of Philosophy were the first two to spring to mind when listening to this, but also all throughout Capital Marx makes the exact point that Capital isn't simply the rule of the Bourgeoise, or even of one class over another, he pretty rigidly defines Capitalism through it's characteristics of wage labor, private property, and production for value, now while the USSR certainly didn't have private property, nor an exclusive class of private owners, it did have a class of wage laborers who worked for the creation of commodities that were then sold back to them on a market. I'm not saying that's Capitalism, but it certainly isn't the "lowest stage of Communism", and I would hope contemporary Marxists would be willing to aspire to a bit more then that.

How do you mean? How did you perceive what he was saying in the video?

No it didn't. Wage labour necessitates capital, which didn't exist in the USSR.
They didn't work for the creation of commodities. I know that the products became commodities when they were sold to the workers, but this doesn't mean that production wasn't planned beforehand which because of this negated capital.
How does this negate production for use in itself?

Well it's more than that, but it's certainly also that.
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch01.htm
This and the following seems to mean that remuneration of work doesn't imply capitalism.
>The thing which interests us here is this: If M — L appears here as a function of money-capital or money as the form of existence of capital, the sole reason that money here assumes the role of a means of paying for a useful human activity or service; hence by no means in consequence of the function of money as a means of payment. Money can be expended in this form only because labour-power finds itself in a state of separation from its means of production (including the means of subsistence as means of production of the labour-power itself), and because this separation can be overcome only by the sale of the labour-power to the owner of the means of production; because therefore the functioning of labour-power, which is not at all limited to the quantity of labour required for the reproduction of its own price, is likewise the concern of its buyer (…) It is not money which by its nature creates this relation; it is rather the existence of this relation which permits of the transformation of a mere money-function into a capital-function.
Even though its true that the market system reinforces the existing split capitalist-worker, it would be a bit too much to claim that markets are capitalism, as leftcoms do. They seem to put too much focus on circulation.
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch02.htm
Seems to mean that you can talk about a society with commodities without talking about capitalism, no?
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch04.htm
And isn't that superficial over-emphasis on exchange exactly what leftcoms are guilty of?

In the year 1933 Trotsky wrote in 'The fourth internationale and the USSR' (on page 13): A class is defined not by its participation in the distribution of the national income alone, but by its independent role in the general structure of economy and by its independent roots in the economic foundation of society. Each class (the feudal nobility, the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, the capitalist bourgeoisie, and the proletariat) works out its own special forms of property. The bureaucracy lacks all these social traits. It has no independent position in the process of production and distribution. It has no independent property roots. Its functions relate basically to the political technique of class rule. The existence of a bureaucracy, in all its variety of forms and differences in specific weight, characterizes every class regime. Its power is of a reflected character. The bureaucracy is indissolubly bound up with ruling economic class, feeding itself upon the social roots of the latter, maintaining itself and falling together with it…. Nevertheless, the privileges of the bureaucracy by themselves do not change the bases of the Soviet society, because the bureaucracy derives its privileges not from any special property relations, peculiar to it as a “class”, but from those property relations which have been created by the October revolution, and which are fundamentally adequate for the dictatorship of the proletariat."
Besides some wryness Trotsky himself admits that a "dictatorship by the bureaucracy" in the Soviet Union is impossible. Bureaucracy can never and nowhere become an independent class. It thus cannot constitute its own dictatorship. This is the unambiguous marxist and leninist standpoint, and if Trotsky later rants against the supposedly existing "dictatorship of bureaucracy", this too only is further proof of him willingly throwing Marxist insights over board for his power struggle while turning against Marxism. In the same paper, in which Trotsky argues that the bureaucracy doesn't constitute an own independent class and thus cannot carry out the functions of a ruling class - the dictatorship - he goes on to claim the roughly opposite (page 16/17): 'Yet the development of the bureaucratic regime can lead to the emergence of a new ruling class; not on the organically way of degeneration, but through counterrevolution.' What does this mean? There'll emerge a new class that will take rule and wields the dictatorship. Should the bureaucracy develop to the new ruling class? How does it become the new ruling class? Trotsky says, not on the organic way of degeneration but through counterrevolution. Who's to perform the counterrevolution? The bureaucracy?

For what purpose? Supposedly it already exercises its dictatorship over the people. Should it conduct the counterrevolution to overthrow its own rule? All of these are very complex riddles. However: we know that bureaucracy under the dictatorship of the proletariat isn't an independent class just as much as it isn't under capitalism. So how can it, who can only be a tool of the ruling class, conduct a counterrevolution out of its own resources and how can it become an independent class after the victory of its counterrevolution? We know from Trotsky himself that bureaucracy can only be the clerk of the bourgeoise, even under fascism. Talk about the bureaucracy, in the Soviet Union out of all, making a counterrevolution or that it must become the ruling class after the victory of its counterrevolution, is utter nonsense judged from a marxist perspective. Yet Trotsky needs such intricate constructions to justify his fight against the Soviet Union. What he's pretending to to fight doesn't even exist. His struggle is aimed against the bolshevik party, the first workers state, his struggle serves the regression, the counterrevolution."
"Not only in the single branches of production the percentual proportion of the bureaucratic apparatus declined substantially during the second five year plan, also the state apparatus became simplified. In the report of the State Planning Comission of the USSR it says regarding this (467): 'The second five year plan sets out a decline in the number of employees in administrative and bureaucratic apparatus of 20 %, assuming the necessarity for a simplification of the state apparatus, mechanizing a great quantum of work for accounting and other works and raising the working public into the work of the state apparatus (holding office without payment in the state apparatus and so on)' In the whole of the Soviet Union according to the same source the percentual share of administration depressed from 8 % in the year 1932 to 5 % in the year 1937." [12]
With this it becomes obvious that the Soviet Union wasn't ruled by a dictatorship of bureaucracy but by the dictatorship of the proletariat. During the October Revolution the old tsarist state apparatus was shattered and the working class, in alliance with the peasantry, emerged to power. Out of this a new power apparatus emerged, controlled by the masses of the people and that was completed and renewed by it.
Accordingly there are essential differences between capitalist and socialist bureaucracy resulting from the complete contrast of the conducting ruling class.

[12] Seydewitz, Max, 1938. Stalin oder Trotzki, Kapitel 6: offen-siv.net/Lesenswertes/stal-tro.shtml

Other critics also argue that after the socialist revolution a privileged class could arise not only in the format of the bureaucracy but also from the higher layers of the working class and intelligentsia. For there didn't develop any equality in the Soviet Union. Regarding this Otto Bauer writes in his book "Between two World Wars" (p. 164./165): On the other hand the Soviet Union was forced to substantially differenciate the income of all peoples classes, the workers, the employees, the peasants, the clerks. They had to pay more for more intense work, higher qualifications and higher quality work to grow the incentive for productivity, intensification, qualification of work. Thus a "posh people" sediment of privileged grew out of all classes of people, that, distinguished through especially proficient performance, had especially high income, special social reputation and enjoyed certain privileges. From this segment the industrial bureaucracy was supplemented. Their children were favored for acceptance into higher schools. They had special and tight boundaries with the ruling bureaucratic apparatus. This essentially inevitable development included a very severe danger: …. It wouldn't be a socialist society but some kind of technocracy, a rule by engineers, economic leaders and the state bureaucracy emerging from the great revolutionary process. This danger couldn't be overcome any other way than the democratization of the states constitution of the Soviet Union and its enterprise constitutions." [13]
A similar train of argumentation comes from Trotsky who says that the labor productivity was low and thus there weren't enough goods at disposal and the cultural and material needs were only fully sated for a preferred minority. This minority however (the bureaucrats and parts of the workers, peasants and intelligentsia, that, to raise their labor productivity, were incited with higher pay) developed to a raised social status that differed significantly from the masses. [14]

Just as there doesn't develop a new class out of bureaucracy there doesn't emerge a new class from a better paid diverse segment through its higher income. The formation of classes is dependent on the relations of production. In a society in which the means of production are socialized there are no private capitalists that could aquire surplus value through exploitation of the workers.
________
13 Quoted in Seydewitz, 1938, ibidem
14 compare ibidem

Furthermore, "Marxism … never understood the demand for equality as destruction of every individuality and making all people equal. Such notions are only found in the precursors of scientific socialism, the utopians, that didn't recognice the character of class society and the neccessity to abolish classes. … In the "communist manifesto" Marx and Engels wrote: What distinguishes communism isn't the abolishment of property altogether, but the abolishment of bourgeoise property. Yet the modern bourgeoise private property is the last, most perfected expression of creation and aquiration of products based on class antagonism, on exploitation of one through the other." This bourgeoise private property, this exploitation has to be abolished with the inequality of classes. However, as it continues in the "communist manifesto": "We don't want to abolish the personal aquisition of the products of work for reproduction of immediate life, an aquisition that doesn't leave any net income that could lead to power over others work. We only want to remove the miserable character of this aquisition in which the worker only lives to increase the capital, only lives in so far as it is in the interest of the ruling class. In the bourgeoise society is the living labor only a means to increase accumulated labor. In the communist society the accumulated labor is only a mean to broaden the process of life for the worker, to enrich, to promote ….Communism doesn't take anyones power to aquire sociatal products, it only takes the power to exploit others work." [15]

As a class society (by the working class against the bourgeoise) the socialist principle takes effect: "Each according to their abilities, each to their performance". However: "The societal conditions in the Soviet Union gave everyone the options to develop their abilities freely. Thus everyone has the same right to increase their qualifications, to raise their performance and their share on the available goods." [16]
Even some bourgeoise historians get to more sensible results in their analysis of soviet bureaucracy than the "leftist" critics of Stalinism. To which belong in example David W. Lovell. In his work "Trotsky's Analysis of Soviet Bureaucratisation - A Critical Essay" Lovell manages to expose serious weaknesses in Trotskys remarks, even though his analysis and and conclusions don't reach the level of marxist-leninist analysis. Lovell explains that Trotskys analyises cannot explain the character of the Soviet State sufficiently enough,
______
15 ibidem
16 ibidem

since he's arguing morally. "I believe that moralism is a central component of Trotskys thoughts, especially in his reactions to the events of the Octobre Revolution." Continuing, Lovell writes: "Trotsky doesn't say much about the character of the soviet bureaucracy even though he claims to analyse it and its power." [17]
In this we can agree with Lovell, since Trotsky, after losing his influence, claimed that the bolshevik drove the state and party continuously into degeneration. Yet we know that Trotsky, as long as he was in office and had his influence, was a downright bureaucrat. It shows, in example, in the question of Trade Unions, that'll be analysed later in this work in the chapter on Trade Unions. The class character of bureaucracy and the rottenness in Trotskys "Critique" on the soviet system has been presented sufficiently. Additionally in this context let me refer to important works: Ludo Martens "Another view of Stalin" and Harpal Brar "Trotskyism or Leninism".
It's clear for communists that bureaucracy has a dialectical double character and is accordingly contradictory. It cannot be abandoned at once, that'd be pure utopian. Through the socialist revolution the old bureaucracy is shattered and a new one being created that allows perspectivaly all bureaucracy to vanish. [18] Trotskys take on the other hand is undialectic and one sided.
This also shows in Trotskys thesis of soviet "bureaucratic segments" that supposedly benefited from the stalinist system. This of course includes the party leadership as well the leadership of the army, trade unions, party secretaries and others powerful in the party. In total this counts about 500.000 people. Not enough with that. Beneath that follow executive committees of soviets, clerks of the GPU, commanders in the army etc. According to Trotsky this counts for another 2 million. Then follow plant managers, Managers and their representatives in the party and trade unions. These are another 500.000. Followed by this segment of the segment of economy, technicians, administrators, specialists in industry, trade and argiculture. These are about 5 to 6 million people. Moreover we have to add 6 million Stakhanovite workers, shock workers etc. Counting all these together and calculating
_______
17 David W. Lovell: Trotsky's Analysis of Soviet Bureaucratisation - A Critical Essay, p. 7 and p 2 cont.

in their family members we end up with an elite that reaches 20 to 25 million members. [19]
What does this overwhelming arithmetic achievement mean? Absolutely nothing! What Trotsky wanted to prove us is that the bureaucratic segments detached themself from the masses of the population and took over the political power. Just appart from this "small elite" makes out about a sixth of the soviet population of its time, Trotsky only lists different segments of occupation that have a higher standard of education than common skilled workers and accusing them of having detached themself from the masses. How wrong and fraudulent these accusations are will be exposed in the course of this book.
To close with the words of Hans-Jürgen Falkenhagen: "A very characterless method of antisocialist diversion by Leo (Lew) Trotsky was to transfer the ills of the capitalist society into the socialist society. He even predicted these would get worse in the real existing socialism of the Soviet Union, (…). He wanted to signal the oppressed workers and peasant masses of the capitalist society to take distance to any revolutionary change."[20]
"One foundation of the arguments of Trotsky was the emphasis of a supposed growing inequality and social differences in the soviet society. (…) The class perspective was completely factored out, so he could completely "carefree" put the super profits of big capitalists and even those of high street banks and mega speculators (…) on the same level with the pay, salary and bonuses for hard working soviet officials, eingineers and workers contributing to the benefit of the people." [21]
"The people attributed by Trotsky to the imaginary concept of the bureaucratic class, didn't form a possessing class. They were part of the worker and peasant classes. They didn't enjoy any privileges as parasitic owners that didn't have to live of their own work. They didn't own the means of production and less so the major ones. They also weren't owners of lands as it was state property. When a party official had the opportunity to become member, in example, of a Hunters or Sailing Club, this wasn't a privilege as it didn't depend on his income and of course any other worker was free to be member of such a club (…) Rational purchase and health support opportunities weren't only established in administration but predominantly in manufacturing plants. Titels, medals and state prizes, awarded for merits and performances, didn't create a system of privileges." [22]
_________
19 J.R.Campbell, Soviet Politics and its Critics, p. 153 cont.
20 Hans-Jürgen Falkenhagen, Leo Trotsky and the Character of Trotskyism,
Part 2, p. 19
21 ibidem, p. 23
22 ibidem, p. 25

Soviet Democracy and Stalin
Theory and Practice in the Soviet Union 1917 - 1953
Publisher: offen-siv
offen-siv.net/Buch-Kubi-Stalin.pdf

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.

In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.

Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation. In broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient,[A] feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as epochs marking progress in the economic development of society. The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production – antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence – but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism. The prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation.

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm

The socialised appropriation of the means of production does away, not only with the present artificial restrictions upon production, but also with the positive waste and devastation of productive forces and products that are at the present time the inevitable concomitants of production, and that reach their height in the crises. Further, it sets free for the community at large a mass of means of production and of products, by doing away with the senseless extravagance of the ruling classes of today and their political representatives. The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialised production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day by day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties — this possibility is now for the first time here, but it is here. *11

With the seizing of the means of production by society production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then for the first time man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature because he has now become master of his own social organisation. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face to face with man as laws of nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man’s own social organisation, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, with full consciousness, make his own history — only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the humanity's leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.

To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism.

marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.html

The State and the Revolution
Chapter V: The Economic Basis of the Withering Away of the State
marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm

V. I. Lenin
The Tax in Kind
(The Significance Of The New Policy And Its Conditions)
marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/apr/21.htm

POLITICAL ECONOMY
A Textbook issued by the Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R
marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/pe/
Part III : THE SOCIALIST MODE OF PRODUCTION
marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/pe/pe-ch23.htm
and following

Joseph Stalin
Economic Problems of the USSR
2. Commodity Production Under Socialism
marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1951/economic-problems/ch03.htm

that girl is so beautiful

The game plan of the early Soviet economy was to collectivize and modern agriculture, in order to extract a surplus to reinvest in industrialization. How is that not like the function of capital, even if the Soviets didn't call it that?

Having a surplus just means you have more than what covers survival, doesn't it? How is that bad? And how is that defining capitalism? And to say "to reinvest" sounds a bit silly, doesn't it? It suggests the use of money, taking X amount of money to buy this or that. Did they buy means of production? True, they had some trade with the rest of the world, but they certainly did not do that within the USSR. The expropriators were expropriated. It makes more sense to think of what happened physically: making possible an increase in output per person in the agricultural sector which in turn makes possible an increase of human time committed to other things.

Making dinner for my girlfriend is capitalism now.

Have you watched the video? He doesn't say that the USSR was extracting surplus value.
What is wage labor for you? I don't know what definitions you are using but it's surely not the ones of Marx.

heil pol pot thought

He didn't need to say it

The goal is not to better manage surplus, It's to produce for use and not the generation of surplus

I thought our goal was the free association of producers, and not a better managed production process?

Considering how outraged the poster was it's rather silly that he need to resort to a strawman.

How do you not generate surplus? Do you want to produce everything for direct consumption? Again, that's Pol Pot. Read Critique of the Gotha Program.

And yet there were workers, and they were paid wages. Regardless of whether this makes you uncomfortable, this is empirically true.
It's true that the USSR had a command economy, but as contemporary China shows us, a planned economy is not necessarily an economy that has overcome the value form, the mode of production in the USSR was still one of alienated labor for the production of value, i.e. there were still "workers", a subclass of toilers who worked for the purpose of creating commodities that they would then now recompense the full value of, but rather have to use their wages to buy back from the owner, who in this case is the Party.

Are you denying that Marx's conception of Capital is one in which Capital is a structure largely independent from human autonomy? And that in a sense, when Marx talks about Scientific Socialism, and a planned economy, what he means is the end of this cycle, and the beginning of a time when humans themselves will control, and also eventually abolish political economy altogether. All that said, it stands to reason that Capitalism, as a system, doesn't have orchestrators or conspirators who set it in motion, but in a sense the Bourgeoise are "managers" of Capital, in the USSR, where the commodity form and wage labor were never properly abolished, it isn't too ridiculous to claim that the Party itself ended up as these managers of Capital, I'm not saying that they became a new class, I'm saying they just functioned as a patchwork pseudo-class of owners for the sake of keeping their weird "not really capitalism but also not really socialism" economy together.

Is your point here that the USSR wasn't ready to become truly Socialist, but rather was trapped in a developmental phase of Capitalist productivism? Because if so I agree comrade, and it's sad to see so many potentially good Marxists waste their entire lives defending dead States instead of doing what Lenin would be doing were he alive today, devising new forms of theory and praxis for the new historical and material conditions of our time.

But it was, and he doesn't mount any real arguments as to why it wasn't, he just hand waves and moves around rhetorical goalposts.
But what I'm doing is referring to a common ML talking point, this idea that just because surplus value was extracted, it's okay because all workers got the full value of their labor back between "living wages" and tons and tons of welfare programs and social services.
I don't need to strawman, your arguments are often silly enough without need for much alteration.

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Just dropping by to shill for this work about worker control in the USSR which I just finished today.
ia800506.us.archive.org/1/items/WorkersParticipationInTheSovietUnion/Workers Participation in the Soviet Union.pdf