Is state socialism actually a form of socialism? Or is it socialism in name only (like Not Socialism)?

t. hitler

He called the NEP State Capitalism. NEP was abolished in 1928 and Stalinism lead to socialism by collectivizing agriculture. Italian leftcoms are a waste of time.

Not that guy, but half the economy under Stalin consisted of kolkhozes which had private property, produced commodities in order to sell them to the Soviet state and operated under the capitalist law of value, which Stalin just claimed to exist also under socialism without any proof but a misreading of an Engels quote.

Italian leftcoms and Bordiga in particular are the only people who made a decent critique of the USSR without resorting to petit-bourg whining about muh authoritarianism and muh lack of democracy.

Marx laid out in Critique of Gotha that the first stage of socialism would look like capitalism and operate on a capitalist principle, so that's not concerning for me.

Collective farms

Wiki'd it and they had small amounts of private property.

Capitalist economics claim that all objects produced for use are commodities, while Marxists use the word 'commodities' for the objects produced under capitalism for sale on market, where the price goes nuts according to supply and demand. That doesn't seem to be true for the collective farms.

In 1948 the Soviet government charged wholesalers 335 rubles for 100 kilograms of rye, but paid the kolkhoz roughly 8 rubles.[6] Nor did such prices change much to keep up with inflation. Prices paid by the Soviet government hardly changed at all between 1929 and 1953, meaning that the State came to pay less than one half or even one third of the cost of production.[6]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolkhoz

Got any interesting reads on the collective farms in the Stalinist USSR?

Commodities are products produced for sale on the market rather than for use. Fixed prices and subsidies don't change the nature of commodity production.

For an overview of the view that kolkhozes were a host for capitalist production you can try this essay.
sinistra.net/lib/pro/whyrusnsoc.html

For claims of the USSR being socialist it basically comes down to Stalin's own Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR (marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1951/economic-problems/)

If you happen to know Italian or French you should also check out Amadeo Bordiga Dialogue with Stalin (sinistra.net/lib/bas/progra/vaki/vakinbedii.html) for a more detailed critique of Stalin's work.

I think Trotsky also took for granted that the USSR was socialist after the discontinuation of the NEP but I don't know if he ever wrote a thorough piece of economical analysis in support of this. Maybe someone else can help you out with this.

Thanks for the links, and unfortunately I'm monolingual English. Sucks.

You aren't entirely wrong, but whenever a capitalist nation fucks up (of which the majority have been capitalist for centuries), suddenly its economic policy is unrelated or it's "corporatism", aka capitalism when it's inconvenient. Economics only cause the downfall of government when they're socialist.

Plus, most people who say "socialism" has always failed pretend that the ONLY socialist governments in existence were the Soviets, China and North Korea. I have never once heard a rebuttal after pointing out the economic miracle of Yugoslavia or how Cuba has a decent HDI despite the embargo and even offered the US relief after Katrina.

I have a simpler explanation for all of this: the 20th century sucked dick for everyone. And I'd bet my left nut that in a century, capitalism will cause more suffering a year than the USSR did in eighty.

Black markets always creep into socialist societies. Always. Even in North Korea.

Socialism spread to most of the world. Guess, what, not anymore.

Of course, you mean that miracle of a car know as the Yugo.
Did you also mention the rampant racism and ethnocentrist elitism in those countries? Did you mention how Cuba props up Big Pharma by not allowing Africans to use folk remedies? Did you mention how Cuba violated UN resolutions by selling arms to North Korea?

That is entirely unrelated. The double standard I mentioned is very real,

Uh, no, it didn't. This is literally US "domino theory" propaganda. And even in nations where it did get popular, they were still usually better off in the end; the Soviet Union's own territory sucked, but Burkina Faso after Sankara has some of the lowest crime rates in sub-Saharan Africa. Transitioning to capitalism was also rarely an improvement, usually the status quo stagnated.

They started producing these cars after being so undeveloped that even the capital was mostly rural, you faggot.

Wow, it's as if no society is perfect. Besides, most rightists would consider this the silver lining, not the dark cloud.

What "Big Pharma"? Their medicine is state run. They don't allow folk remedies because they want people to be healthy; kids and rural folk don't know any better.

It's cut off from most of the world because of US hegemony yet expected to play by its rules? It's obviously bad, but you reap what you sow. Besides, the DPRK are retarded and will only successfully nuke the ocean.

What double standard?
Black markets always lead to either a softening towards capitalism or increased militancy.

It spread through every continent.

Most of Africa, including Burkina Faso, has been targeted by economic hitmen. Their leaders have become unwilling puppets of the World Bank/IMF/UN. Who knows what would happen if they could become full-on international markets without all of the traps of urbanization.

Most people didn't see a difference because they are too concerned with their subsistence farming to care about the finer points of socialist analysis. Now the UN wants all these places to develop eco-tourism, which is basically increasing poaching. Thus is the fate of post-state socialism.

No. He called state capitalism a goal. The NEP was not even there yet.

It will operate on a bourgeois principle only in the sense that goods will be distributed to people according the labour they furnished. But this distribution will not take place via trade and commodity production. Quite the opposite: Marx stresses out that, as soon as we get to socialism, "the producers do not exchange their products".

Private property belongs to a person. Kolkhoz property belonged to collective.

Learn terminology.

We already had this moronic discussion twice.

If you want to do it all over again, please, present full body of evidence. Begin by defining how economy without law of value actually looks like.

It's called personal property and it was not part of kolkhoz.

What do you mean by this? I can simply call you an idiot, but let's try giving benefit of the doubt.

Okay. No benefit of the doubt. You are officially retarded.

Can you logic?

Because

And I already provided links on what Lenin meant by "State Capitalism", both before Civil War and after it.

No, that was with me. And you are a moron indeed.

Socialism that fails is real socialism, capitalism that fails is not real capitalism. Alternatively, capitalism has never even failed at all, which is lunacy.
Then why do they exist literally everywhere? Black markets will exist so long as it is illegal to fuck children.

In the sense that some people in every continent supported it, same with fascism. The vast majority of real socialist political power was held in Asia, where it was largely indifferent to Western left wing philosophy, opting instead for its own local disasters like Maoism and "Socialism In One Country".

If markets under capitalism did not allow for exploitation, they would wither and die. It is through the exploits of the IMF and World Bank that the global economy functions. They are not ruining the system, they are the system. It was and is merely a preferable alternative to feudalism.
You also did not refute my point (while ignoring my points about Tito's economic miracle) about the vast social improvement of Burkina Faso while the majority of Africa opposed the red movement on traditionalist grounds.

But they're capitalist now, where is the absence of poverty?

State socialism is a thing but communism is supposed to be stateless.

The question is if we should take the power for ourselves and go to Communism as a socialist state, or should we let Capitalists do their thing, until they build us Communism.

That's the real question. Not some ambiguous definitions of words or amount of Stalin's "victims".

Ehh, it's impossible to take over.

Why the red flag?

Correct me if I'm wrong but the definition of socialism is something along the lines of "a economic, political ans social system in which the means of production are collectively owned by the community", which is not by itself incompatible with existing solely in a sovereign state, unless you happen to interpret it as meaning all existing means of production, rather than just the means of production that affect that community.

It's a battle flag.

As long as the workers own the means of production, and there is no market, it's socialism. So yes, state socialism is socialism.