There is absolutely nothing wrong with tankieism

When they admit that representation of the workers by a party is not the same as giving the workers control then i'll stop having a problem with them.

I always find this picture funny, since Dialectics is complete idealism.

Both anarchism and Marxism as problems.

Anarchism's problems are exterior and Marxism's problems are interior.

Libertarian Socialist ideas seem to win out over the long term. At least, I can only think of one Marxist revolutionary organization worth mentioning and they're getting their shit kicked in.

I find it funny because I read it in Foghorn Leghorn's voice.

It was.

If you call US of A democratic, this makes U of SSR democratic as well. Now, if you have your own special snowflake kind of democracy, that never happened before, then USSR might've not been truly democratic.

My problem is really just that, that they will not admit that a system comprised of representative political offices that take control of the state inherently separates control from the voters and thus you cannot have true socialism there. I'd even be amenable to the idea that a worker party state would make such a transition easier and smoother but I cannot accept that it IS extant socialism.

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Is North Korea the epitome of M-L democracy?

And if I say that the USA is not a democratic state? Because it's not.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-party_state
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban_on_factions_in_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union

This, it's ironically similar to lolbertarians in that they have their particular hobby horse (which for tankies is the state and for lolberts is the free market), that they see as some kind of unequivocal good. Yet somehow they both fail to see that each can both enhance and curtail freedom depending on how their used. Lolbertarians insist that the markets always make people free and ignore all the proof to the contrary, and tankies do the same with the worker's state.

Another thing I've noticed is that tankies seem more concerned with technicalities in theory than with the actual realities of a situation. What I mean by this is that they are more concerned with whether or not something fits their preferred vision of socialism on paper than whether or not it's actually achieving its supposed goal. A good example is the fact that in a state like the USSR, proletarians technically controlled the means of production theoigu the intermediary of the state, but were in practice completely excluded since the party elite had effectively become a class unto themselves largely separate from the rest of the people. Or the fact that in Yugoslavia the bourgeoisie was still technically very much alive despite the fact that the means of production were democratically controlled by the workers (who under market socialism are also technically part of the bourgeoisie).

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The USA's problems stem largely from the fact that you can't really have political equality as long as there is economic inequality, and that the wealthy will always have superior resources and influence over the bourgeois state. The issue here is not with the structure of representative democracy itself, but with the existence of class division, or more specifically the unequal distribution of material resources, that corrupt that democracy.

So it's not a question of special snowflake democracy, but one of the economic conditions that allow democracy to actually work as intended. The American system as it exists today would be extremely democratic if it were implemented in conditions of economic equality.

That is a strawman. Nobody has ever said that it is putting workers in a party that gives them control. It is giving worker's a party that is rooted in the theory of scientific socialism that gives them control. In order to exert control over society you need a scientific outlook in order to determine the best way to take actions to produce results. Having worker's have idealistic delusional false theories like anarchism will only lead to utter failure rather then worker's control.

Like Lysenkoism?

Yes.

There's no such thing. Nothing is scientific about DiaMat. You're argument assumes that the party was composed of perfect selfless true revolutionaries that could do no wrong.

But surely you have to actually give the workers the reigns of political power, not simply create a party that is well read and knowledgable and hope that they don't act purely out of self interest? You can have the greatest dream team of socialist thinkers in your vanguard party but without checks and balances and codifying the democratic rights of the workers you are essentially relying on an oligarchy to not act like an oligarchy.

Your*

Ah, so when the workers are separated from the control by the means of a political office that claims to represent the workers, the workers lack control. But when the party that occupies that system of political offices is "rooted in theory", suddenly the workers have control! I see now! Minor differences in how people act completely overrides the way a system works!

Thanks! I'll bring this up at work. It'll be "Democracy at work!" And we'll all vote on who gets to be the bourgeois owner of our company and we'll have a socialist cooperative!

Not having Khrushchev killed, not having Trotsky killed sooner, etc.

Sure there is .

Which is why it should be excluded from a scientific socialist party.

Nobody said the party wouldn't have checks and balances. Democratic centralism is a system of checks and balances.

Its not just minor differences. Before the banning of the constituent assembly the parties couldn't even agree on rather to end the imperialist war. After the banning of the constituent assembly the Bolsheviks were able to get things done because they had a better theory and they didn't have to spend all time debating things and having petty disagreements.

Ah, so these have to be major differences, but they don't have to be systematic. After all, the socialist critique of liberal democracies is based on how much they do things and not on the system by which they operate on.

Then how do you ensure that the party doesn't go the way of the USSR and become highly centralized, authoritarian, and oligarchic with faux elections and a strict party line?

Imo the best option is for workers to seize control of the means of production directly, then hold onto them and administer them directly in the form of collective enterprises, syndicates, soviets, communes, or whatever form of organization that they choose. This will effectively remove the economic system that supports bourgeois democracy without dismantling the actual structure of the system itself, allowing a relatively seamless transition as election officials are forced to act on behalf of the workers and not their bourgeois benefactors.

Either that or go the socdem route and keep up sustained pressure, don't let up like they have in Europe recently.

Actually its all a matter of revolution. How can an effective revolution be achieved without the state? How can the revolution be led without a vanguard party without being bogged down in petty disagreements as it would be if ever voice was given a platform?

This isn't going to work. The bourgeoisie state is never going to allow for you to just take over the enterprises and transform the way they work. They will crush any attempt to do that with their police forces. You need a party to lead a revolutionary struggle to take over the state. Then control of the state by the party can be used to transform the production system.

As I said, libertarianism's problems are related to exterior forces and centralism's problems are related to inner forces ravaging the cause.

So then it's not actually socialist worker control but a denial of actual socialism and democratic control for the sake of war demands?

I think that you may be underestimating how much modern states (at least in the West) rely on the velvet globe component of the "iron fist, velvet glove" style of governance. They have certainly come to rely on it far more as a number of developments ranging from WW2 to the student movement have made people far less tolerant of heavy handedness on the part of the state. The majority of people in the West clearly buy into the liberal narrative of equal rights, democracy, freedom, etc. In a situation like the one I described, if the government were to crack down on them like they did at Ludlow, it would likely only drive more people towards the cause of the workers and undermine its own political support base. The government then will be left with the choice of allowing the workers to keep what they have taken for themselves, or else risking its own complete delegitimization and collapse.

The real trick is waiting until the circumstances are right to seize the means of production, and ensure that its a widespread movement and not a few isolated incidents. This will make it harder for the state to dismiss any such actions as terrorist or fringe.

Define "actual socialism" and where it has ever existed. But yes, the denial of democratic control was necessary to get the treaty of brest-litovsk passed and to achieve other tasks necessary for the revolution to go forward without getting bogged down in petty disagreements spending all day debating well millions were dieing to the imperialist war

Libertarians have the distinct advantage of their entire ideology being basically "lol do whatever you want idk just get the fucking Mexicans off my lawn" so there's a lot less room for infighting within the movement.

By libertarians, I mean propertarians.

No more revisionist yankee language.

Interesting that people make that distinction here, I actually found that it was classical liberal writing (specifically John Stewart Mill and a little Hegel) that pushed me more to the left. It seems increasingly obvious to me that socialism is the logical conclusion of liberal reasoning and proprietarians as you call them are either just not trying to actually understand their own ideology or they just don't care.

By "actual socialism" I mean democratic collective ownership of productive property. Representative republicanism, "worker party" or no, "scientific socialist theory" or no, is not democratic control. Where has it actually existed? I have doubts it has outside of small temporary irrelevant instances in history.

Well we were first, It wasn't until capitalist scholars came in more than 100 years after the libertarian school of socialism arose that that they began co-opting the term. In the Anglosphere, people use backword revisionist political language. In this country, libertarians are still the anti-authority left.

I don't think the majority of the West buy into the liberal narrative of equal rights, democracy, freedom, etc. Thats why we could descend into fascism. Most people are rather apathetic. If the police were to crush your movement then the media wouldn't portray it in a positive light. With that aside if the reputation of the police was such an important factor they could always hire a private group of thugs or get a fascist group to do their dirty work for them. In that case you are going to wish you had a party with a disciplined, organized army that is loyal to it to fight back.

Socialism is more than workers' control. Workers' control absent all other factors is mutualism.

where do you get that from?

Workers' control in mutualism is worker access to capital and productive property. There's no need to worry about commodity production, market forces, and the accumulation of capital. Marx took him to task for all of these and more, which is what defined "Marxism" as such.

Saying that all socialism = worker's control, the end, is ignoring what Marx spent all that time arguing about with Proudhon, Bakunin, and many others.

Took Proudhon to task, that is. Co-ops are workers' control and exist today, but that is not socialism as its supposed to be.

Socialism wasn't invented by Marx. Not all socialists are Marxists. Marx just expanded on his socialist theory. Proudhon was part of the broad socialist movement during that time. Market socialists have existed for centuries now.

If we're going to get more technical about it then yes, there are more aspects to socialism than just democratic worker's control. However, trying to claim that you can omit that the way a good number of leftists claim, and still have socialism, is flat out wrong.

No, because socialism is about building an economy whose framework is predominantly based on worker control of the mop. There small capitalist entities in some feudal lands, but the lands were still feudalist. If the capitalist mop were abolished and replaced with a worker-based one, that would make it socialist.

I never claimed it was. Technically Marx was a communist; socialism as we know it was developed after his death.

And market socialists are still a step above mutualists.

You're moving the goalposts. What you've been spouting for a number of threads now is polemical nonsense.

You're just restating the argument in a different way. I'm not denying that workers' control is vital, and i mean that, to what socialism is meant to be; but to say that it's the one metric by which we can judge a society socialist, is simply not true.

The word market socialist wasn't used until the debate between socialists during the economic calculation problem, but they've existed for a long time.

How is mutualism not just an anarchist school of market socialism?

Marx took a lot from Proudhon like his concepts of property which are essential to Marxist thought.

When I think market socialists I think Marxians like Richard Wolff, or Tito's Yugoslavia. There are probably other examples.

Mutualism predates, as you say, the economic calculation debate, so there's one distinction. In general, socialism denote leftists who want to utilize the state before abolishing it, anarchism denote leftists who wish to abolish it from the outset.

So what? All true. Marx's critique of Proudhon still stands. He never claimed to be an entirely original thinker; who has?

No, I disagree with you here. Anarchism or libertarian socialism, were born a part of the socialist movement that sought to not use the state but to abolish it but get also sought to reach socialism. It is again, a historical part of the socialist movement. To say that all socialists wish to use the state is not true at all. Mutualism used the LTV and worker-ownership of the mop. It is definitely socialist.

So-called mutualistss today however, are much more tricky to diagnose because of their other ideas they usually have taken fro elsewhere.

I have made this point over and over and over. You need democratic worker control for socialism. This was not something seen in the USSR. How is this even difficult?

I can live with that.

Yes, you have, it's getting annoying. I'm not going to argue because i know you're not going to change your mind. Instead I'll post what I always post when people froth at the mouth about how the USSR had nothing to do with socialism.

Also, Proudhon himself called himself a socialist and mutualists then called themselves libertarian socialists. This was before socialism was smeared by state propaganda the way it is now and revised by shits like S a n d e r s

Stalin fullfilled the tasks of the bourgeois revolution in Russia alright; but he did litterally nothing towards the communist revolution. And what is worse: he even pretended having reached socialism! – disarming the global communist movement for his own benefit.

I don't know why you couldn't just fucking agree with me about the fact that the USSR was not socialist instead of making me read through a paper that ends up saying that.

kek

Mfw democratic centralism is technocracy

Renouncing Stalin is an essential part of being a "tankie" aka revisionist who thinks North Korea and Pol Pot were building communism.

That's a pretty grave and far-fetched claim, lad. Care to back any of that shit up?

You've argued in multiple threads that the USSR was not socialist, period. If it's not socialist, then I figured you were just another one of those 'state capitalist' memers. I would be first to agree that the USSR wasn't genuine socialism, but neither can it be simply dismissed as "not-socialism", aka state capitalism, as so many do.

I'm still not sure if you're an actual Marxist-Leninist or just someone trying to make M-L's look bad.

I think this one is pretty obvious: Russia was mostly feudal before Stalin, it wasn't anymore after.

That's even more obvious.

Now, I assume you disagree here. But, see, if you do, you should be the one backing it up: what actions did Stalin take towards a communist revolution (apart from fulfilling the bourgeois one in Russia of course)?

Yes, that's true. It appears in any society undertaking commodity production.

It's a pretty funny kind of bourgeois revolution that requires the liquidation of the remaining urban capitalists to succeed. I'd ask you why this was but I'd probably just get an answer that the USSR was "obviously" capitalist. As for what actions Stalin took towards communism, that really is obvious. Instead of going the Market Socialism with Russian Characteristics(™) route the economy set up in the 30's actually ended the commodification of labor-power and industry, holding society's key resources in common. Whatever misgivings you may have towards the many imperfections of Soviet communism is irrelevant, a society where the key economic authorities do not purchase commodities cannot be capitalist. Such a system inherently implies production geared primarily for use, not profit.

This is completely delusional.

No it isn't, the industrial ministries/people's commissariat's directly allocated all labor and owned every industrial means of production with no exchanges in ownership occurring between them. Even a cursory glance at the Stalinist economy could give you this information. Commodification of the former category only only started to begin after Khrushchev destroyed these ministries and began to gradually break down the plans that determined Soviet production. Yet even after that point labor was still often allocated directly throughout the history of the USSR.

Stalin (!!!), Economic problems of the USSR

He is factually correct.

"Tankie" was used to refer to "tank politics" use of USSR that begun with Khrushchev (the most rabid anti-Stalinist).

You are the one who made the claim, kiddo.

No. Kolkhozs would be the most obvious exception.

No. Industrial co-ops were independent.

Planned economy did a lot, but not everything you claim.

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Ahem.

If someone claims that God doesn't exist, then the concept of God was already introduced by someone else. You cannot deny a thing, if you don't even know about it.

We cannot deny that you're a faggot

Was that supposed to be actual argument?

no