How do tankies argue that the USSR was socialist? From what I know, there was still private property...

I requested clarification, because it might've been not retarded (miracles happen).

Responding to what?

You didn't provide any arguments, only statements. You simply expressed your opinion and I found it unconvincing.

this isn't an argument, it's really just a statement

Now post that where you claim that the SU (not the Cold War propaganda, the real SU) was anarchist.

Surplus did get extracted. But the thing is that no means of production were owned by capitalists to earn a profit with it. The planners got normal salaries and all the surplus extracted was put back into the economy by additional investment or saving for the country.

It's not like every individual worker controlled the means of production, but they were not owned by individuals but rather by the society as a whole because the surplus got reinvested in society.

Even in the socialist utopia where every individual worker decides what happens with his surplus, some surplus would definitely be needed to pay taxes for collective services (healthcare, education etc.)

I'm no anarchist, but can we please stop this meme about how the USSR was Socialist. It clearly wasn't.
The workers didn't own the means of production.

Please enlighten me about how capital accumulation took place in the USSR and how people could get richer by owning the means of production.

I didn't say it was entirely capitalistic, but it sure as shit wasn't socialism

Then how could you call it instead?

Can't you add clarification on whose Socialism you are talking about?

I don't know not socialism

Oh please. I can guess that you'd do the same towards market socialists etc.

Worker ownership over the means of production

So mutualism.

The party bureaucracy responsible for the destribution, production and consumption of all goods in the economy. They owned all capital to be used for production to make products wich they would under central planning distribute/use according to party program. The workers were only there for the production and recieved their respective wage/healthcare and housing in composition of their service. The state owned all the capital and all the products and used them to according to party interest. Its central planning for a reason and the workers were only there for utility. Marxist Leninist socialism is on the same par as Social Democracy with keynesian economics, only diffrince being the whole market with semi central planning vs complete central planning but with foreign markets. (USSR did trade with other country's even under embargo)

Do what? Say that their Socialism is not Socialism?

IIRC, so far I've said that:
1) MarkSoc followers that deny Vanguard can't reach their goal, because they aren't organized and ready for violence. Their approach is that of Reformism.
2) If somehow implemented, pure MarkSoc will be hard to sustain and return to Capitalism will be inevitable. And "mixed" MarkSoc becomes indistinguishable from Stalinism.

I'm quite certain it did.

And were they allowed to use all their tools and factory's to produce products for personal use or were they consificated by the state apparatus to be destributed?

Your half measures are shit.

"Owning" it through the state doesn't count.

Are we talking about industrial co-ops or state factories? Because the latter kind was property lent to workers by the whole nation to get things done, not to play around.

And nobody confiscated anything coops produced (unless coops made a deal with government to sell stuff to it, in exchange for something - like credits with 0% rate or just for security against market fluctuations).

Why not?

That's not ownership, faggot. It's as stupid as counting "voting with your wallet" as ownership.

Can you actually explain this position properly?

Or ad hominem are all you are capable of?

I wonder why, maybes it against the law?

Its on the same degree as private property under capitalism where the concept of property comes into existance by the enforcement of the state whereupon you need to depend on the state for your 'private property. Private property is state property as the state is the one who defends it, without the state private property is just an idea, and the object can just be stolen without consequences.

When the workers own the means of production it means that they OWN and DEFEND their property without any dependence on anything. And a state is an external something wich protects property with an special group called the police who ENFORCE rules (Idea's) called laws.

Well comrade, at least you didn't say that market socialists were not socialists because if you did, I would have called you a filthy revisionist.

I accept critiques made to their system though.

Yes. Enunciate your problems, please. It's not like they've built the factory.

What law? Co-ops were free to do their thing. Notoriously so. Only priest tax evasion hijinks could've topped co-op schemes.

O-kay. Did you take your pills today? At least it's a coherent point of view. Can't say the same about many others.

Let me get this straight: worker co-op is only then a real co-op, when it actually acts as a state? I.e. fields its own army (and police)? And we can't call USSR one big co-op, because it violates something.

Rent is exploitation.

youtube.com/watch?v=BYVes44hcJg

Watch this comr8s and learn some lessons instead.

Skip to 14:10. You can recognize the left anticommunists he describes exactly here in leftypol too.

So the soviet union only had workers owning the means of production in co-op's. Fine but how mutch % of the economy was made out of co-op's or wernt the workers so interested in owning the means of production and preverd an other defintion of socialism with getting free housing/healthcare and good food and shit?

For something to be lent it must be owned by a something and that something is the state, the state lends property to people but the enforcement of sutch property is still by the state thus making it still a property of the state.

Worker coop is an market socialist concept, i prever syndicate's.

Also define a what YOU MEAN (Dont google the defintion cause the only people who do that are tho who never fucking knew the defintion but still shamelessly used the word.) with a state for the sake of communication.

youtube.com/watch?v=sZhJ-74FcR8

I'm not really saying anything btw. I just felt lie linking this

In a Capitalist state, in it's unmanaged and unregulated form it is prone to abuse, yes. But we are talking Socialist state.

And no rent was actually paid.

No.

Not sure. I'd say at least half.

Industrial co-ops: 5-6% of economy by 1950s.
Hard to say about kolkhozs (agrarian co-ops), but more than half of population was agrarian even in 1953 (107,8 mil living in villages, while 80,2 mil - in cities) and kolkhozs were the absolute majority there (there also were "private farmers" - i.e. non-organized farmers, and sovkhozs - state farms).

What?

No. People. State is created by them to organize things.

What do I mean? USSR, co-op or armed force used to defend things?

You are really incoherent right. Go sleep (and get sober).

Social Democracy =/= Communist Tyranny that killed 100 million people

The state was created by the Bolsheviks to organize the exploitation of the people. They knew very well that you can't skip the capitalist stage of history but they still needed to somehow convince people that what they were doing is somehow communist, so they ended up calling it socialism and claimed that they were building communism. They even had to stop teaching Marx's Capital for a while at universities because economic students started asking some really embarrassing questions. The Soviet Union was nothing but a very effective system of primitive accumulation which collapsed as soon as it has succeeded in producing the material conditions necessary for free market capitalism.

So… 100% because the state is created by the workers and organisaed by the workers. You sure there isnt any seperation between party bureaucracy and the workers? Or is the part bureaucracy composed of workers with party membership?

Got a source and some info on the general relation between coop's and the party? Like what time period were they the most popular.

What definition of socialism do the people of the soviet union subscribe to.

Looks like you really need to take your pills thinking that the people actually had authority in the party especially with all the reforms that has happend in the later years of the soviet union without any insight of the workers. If the state truelly was of the workers it would have never collapsed in 1991/1989 with the generla population still wanting to preserve the soviet union.

What i asked was your defintion of the state, but looks like you allready have given it to me. And the defintion is funny enought the most on par with Anarcho-Syndaclism (le dont call it a state mem) where the enforcement of ownership isnt done by the state but by the armed population who can according to your words be defined as the state. As you confuse statism with governance.

Have you ever looked into statecraft or any theory on the state before? Have you looked into the party dynamics of the soviet union?

Are you saying that if NATO was dissolved, Nordic countries would be poor?

There would be mutch less cheap resources from isntalling puppet goverments in africa when africans can actually establish their own countries and build a society without any interference of super powers who want to exploit cheap labour and take all the raw resources.

What percentage of Denmark's GDP comes from exploiting resources of countries with a puppet government?

Isn't democratic control of the means of production the most basic requirement for socialism?

Go away Wolff. You are not Marxist, you are Marxian revisionist who didn't even read Lenin.

What the fuck.

You are in dire need of drinking some brainbleach.

Not 100%. Predominantly.

Sure there is. It's just workers had an upper hand in the decision-making process.

Part of government. Soviets had a pretty extensive system for grass-root movements to do their thing.

I'm not sure I understand the question. Industrial co-ops got suppressed during destalinization campaign (i.e. 1956-1960), while agrarian co-ops got shot with a silver bullet of being forced to privatize state agrotech stations.

That's pretty hard question. I have no idea. There was a lot of people, and hardly everyone was ML - 40-45% of government was nonpartisan, after all.

For me it's "movement towards Communism via industrialization managed by central planning that is itself controlled by direct democracy" (imperfect definition, but should be good enough).

They did.

Full stop. I do not consider post-Stalin reforms to be representative of ML. And it took over 30 years to demolish the basis of Stalinist USSR to be able to pull the shit that happened in the 80s. You can't actually claim that it was a consequence of ML.

Yep. I actually did. And it was a pretty extensive research. Maybe not enough to call myself the greatest expert, but enough to say that Party was far from what most people imagine.

It is, but the implication here is that appointing managers is somehow a blasphemy upon Socialism.

Did the workers appoint those managers in the USSR? Were the workers able to recall them when they were upset with their performance?

...

No, it was centrally planned.

Watch this, then read this if you wanted a deeper analysis.

Workers did not direct their own workplaces in the Soviet Union, plain and simple.

Well you are atleast an honest Marxist Leninst in your knowledge of your idealogy and not memeing it into stupidity with any post stalinist bullshit.

What books did you read? Also on the sidenote have you read ''Farm to Factory by Robert C. Allen and Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913-1945 by Robert William Davies.

Don't bother, he will just dismiss it as "propaganda".

Revisionist scum can't even post their propaganda book. What the actual fuck?

Sometimes, but they always could fire anyone they didn't like.

Yes. It was called "purges". Literally.

The extrajudicial mess that happened in 1937-38 - "Great Purges" - took it's name from the process of worker collective evaluating performance of it's members - primarily administration and managers - and then firing them, if they didn't get enough support. It existed since the Civil War.

...

Hello, Brazil. I take it you are still suffering from Stalinist oppression.

I cut out exploitable image differently, btw. Maybe it happened because I don't stay silent all the time? Am I overthinking this?

Pardon for the pun, but primary sources primarily. Quite a lot, actually. Do you want something specific?

Yes, I think I read a bit of it some time ago, but didn't do the proper job. Want to discuss it?

lol, called it

Only read Farm or Factory a year ago in my ML phase so its kidna vague in my mind like my Marxism. (Didnt do to deep of a research back then)

Just the most essential or influencal.

Are they online and translated? Or are they obscure and Russian :3

Not shitposting, I legit want to get as much info as I can on the Lenin and Stalin eras since there's so much conflicting info floating around, and I want to figure it out myself.

Collectivization and nationalization are not the same thing. Something belonging to the gubnment isn't the same as it belonging to the workers. Unless the workers have control over the means of production, and handle every facet of it, it isn't socialism.

To clarify, I'm not the same person who you were arguing with

Well, I'll take a look at it, when I finish Wolff. I think I didn't like something (besides usual biases), but I can't remember what it was about.

Gah. There is no such thing.

Well, there is infamous Short Course: marx2mao.com/Other/HCPSU39NB.html

Even if it's a bit on a propaganda side, it's quite good to read in parallel to Western books on USSR.

Both. Lenin works are freely available and have quite a bit of information, for example. There are also a lot of translated memoirs.

It's actual statistics that are hard-ish to come by. For example, I still didn't find proper data to compare Soviet bureaucracy to US bureaucracy. Even with all the Planning going, I'm quite certain Soviet was several times smaller, but I need good numbers.

But it's impossible for one person to understand the whole industrial cluster he is working it. Especially for every worker. Shit has to get delegated.

That's why people DEMOCRATICALLY elect DELEGATES nigga

And? They didn't do it in USSR?

Not from 1918 to 1989.

you know ancaps say "a corporate state isn't a state because it's done by the private sector"?

tankies say "state-run capitalism isn't capitalism because it's done by the public sector"

Both groups operate on absurd fallacies

marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1951/economic-problems/

The point is that, since some authority is inevitable, by defining socialist society as "worker control" rather than a mode of production you've effectively reduced socialism to something that can be subjectively defined to suit your whims. If a worker council is elected every 20 years is that socialism? You may say no, other anarchists may say yes.

I would say the defining factor however, is whether the workers are able to remove the council members from their positions by vote at any time

Oh, and don't give me some nonsense about how elected delegates don't have authority. I recall a quote where Engels ridiculed such notions that you can change the nature of authority by changing its name. "Anti-authoritarianism" is just a mental disorder that can only conceivably exist if you guys want to revert to a form of primitivist pacifism.

That just means they have less authority, it's no more a determining factor than term limits. The right to recall will rarely ever be used anyway.

Oh, boy.

No. You are wrong.

It was used a lot. Soviets didn't actually have many options when it came to administration - quite a few posts were got by bourgeoisie, anti-Bolsheviks politicians, or even kulaks. There were literally kulak-run kolkhozs.

...

Nigga I ain't saying I agree with what happened with the bullshit reforms passed, I'm stating that the "temporary" ban put in place by Lenin is what forced workers councils to stop existing.

Authority should be based on merit, and I don't think you'll find an anarchist that doesn't agree with that to an extent. A dentist has authority over you when it comes to knowing about dental hygiene.

What I want is for authority to be minimal, and in cases where it exists, to be easily removable to prevent abuse.

Please, clarify what exactly you are talking about. Because you aren't making much sense now.

I'm feeling, as if I'm talking with another guy, who thought it was "common knowledge" that Bolsheviks revoked nationalization in 20s and gave back factories to Capitalists and was very clever about it.

Why not just use the regular terminology 'justified' that also makes a lot more sense?
There are cases where 'a lot' of authority makes sense, is needed, and non-oppressive. In that case it's 'non-minimal' but still justified. E.g. the hierarchy between a child and their parent.

The point being that you don't need to argue anything about the 'size' or 'amount' of authority, just about the ease of dismantling it if it happens to be/become unjust or contradictory

[takes notes on little black book]

Can't make this shit up. But good job providing a non-argument to the other user.

How did worker's direct democratic rule, which you claim existed in the USSR, get demolished after Stalin?
Who was responsible and how was it even possible considering the workers had direct authority over the state?
Khruschev and the revisionists?

What about the Marxist intelligentsia, the academia and other intellectuals letting the revisionism slide?

Please, defend your position that asserts that the workers had direct control over the state; because that, and nothing else, is direct democracy.

Inb4 you respond saying workers didn't control the state directly but delegated their power to officials they democratically appointed themselves,
because I know you already stated somewhere here on Holla Forums that officials had authority which could've and has been abused,
even though workers regulated the officials and fired/hired them accordingly.

There is a huge gaping hole in your view of the governance in the SU, because, you know, a worker's democracy would hardly ever let a gov THEY control roll back to more and more capitalist measures.

only legitimate answer
OP is a faggot

Bumpo.

stalinists

Please tell me how surplus value was extracted. I give you the fancy dachas and some limousines but in the big scheme of things, this is really marginal, isn't it?

USSR was pure capitalist exploitation, the biggest slavery is the one where freedom doesn't exist.