They were economically socialists, politically authoritarians - and, for better or worse, communism and the Leninist concept of the vanguard party are inextricably linked. At the end of the day, the question is: can a state democratically become socialist? The answer is clearly no, hence the vanguard party, hence Lenin, hence Ho Chi Minh, hence Mao. I’m not talking about a mixed economy, I’m talking about socualism.
By their own admission, the economy of the Soviet Union was “state capitalism”. Means of production were not owned by private individuals and companies (as in capitalism) but also not by the people or workers (as in socialism). They were owned by the state, and since the state was not democratic, this does not count as shared or public ownership. This may have been meant or justified as temporary at the start, but it did not change.
How do you define “democratic?” Because the “soviet” of “soviet union” is a type of council which was directly elected by citizens. The USSR was a democratic republic in that each soviet usually voted for a higher level soviet. Not that unusual, especially back then.
Now, I’m not suggesting that the books were never cooked. We know that Stalin rigged at least some higher level elections at the very least.
But “democratic” does not mean multi-party. It can also be “no party” or “three parties” or anything. In the USSR you could run for your local soviet or petition them to vote for you. Yes, you’d have to be a party member. But that doesn’t mean blind allegiance and no differing thought. I’ve brought it up before, but you had severe infighting in the party because of the diversity of opinions and thought, not lack of it. Sure, they were all communists or some flavor thereof at least superficially. But there’s a hell of a difference between Stalin and Kruschev and Gorbachev as examples.
And, Stalin aside given his prominence in the early years of the nation, the other prominent leaders were very dependant on entities like the Supreme Soviet which was elected by your elected representatives.
Uhh… I might be wrong, and do correct me because I’m not good at politics or geography or stuff, but isn’t The Republic of Ireland a democratic socialist country?
The ROI is I think a social democracy rather democratic socialist. It is economically capitalist though with state intervention.
When we are talking political science ‘state’ is political entity that exerts legal power over a territory. They may be federalised like in the USA or they may be independant (or a few other things.) It can also refer to the systems of this power, like government, legal system, and civil service including entities like police and military forces.
Yeah, fascism includes authoritarianism but not the other way around. You can be authoritarian and not a fascist. Which doesn’t make you good, just different flavour of bad
All governments and all societies as of today are authoritarian by nature, no matter how small or big. Even those “direct democracy” villages have hierarchy, and are thus authoritarian. Stop claiming authoritarian = bad.
Wether or not the SU handed the means of production to the workers or just transferred them to a different previleged class is debatable. But it surely did not abolish the commodity form.
From a theory standpoint, Russia didnt really fullfill the prerequisites for a transition to communism. The social structures were still too aligned with serfdom. In such an environment it is difficult to actually transition from state capitalism to socialism in a functional way, and most critiques of the Soviet Union seem to stem from this problem.
SU wasn’t fascist per se. It was a militaristic authoritarian dictatorship that overlapped with fascism on a lot of issues, but technically fascism means a different thing, yes.
Militaristic might be not technically correct, it was more of a police state than a military state, after the WWII Stalin put a lot of effort to make sure that military will remain a tool and not have agency on itself. All the police-adjacent organisations though were so powerful that they didn’t have to be militaristic to exert all the power.
Everything else is absolutely correct though, complete, absolute power was in the hand of an unelected individual and the people he empowererd, as much as power was concentrated. So as much as authocracy and dictatorship could overlap, USSR was an embodiment of that.
That’s the main issue. But their approach to the economy was awful as well. Unions just collected money and did nothing, plants and factories produced either copies of goods created in the capitalist world, or things that looked bad. People who wanted to wear good-looking clothes were waiting for the end of the month because shops to gain the desired number of purchases were selling western goods for a day or two. Jeans weren’t officially imported and sold. People were buying jeans for two monthly salaries, and it was ok because anyway it was hard to spend the earned money. For a worker, it wasn’t beneficial to improve something in the factory, and nobody wanted to suggest such improvements. There was no market and because of this, nobody wanted to make better goods or make the production process more effective. There was no need in economy of resources, and because of this, production was ineffective. The Soviets admitted it, but weren’t able to change it. Goods made in the USSR and briefly in the ex-USSR countries after the USSR collapsed, were ugly, outdated and expensive. They just couldn’t compete in the market. And there are many people telling capitalism is bad. Capitalism is more effective in providing cheaper good-looking goods because companies have to make profit and compete for customers.
I’ve been thinking if we could just make all companies employee owned by law. You’d still get the benefits of capitalism but instead of vampiric investors getting all the benefits it would be the employees that reap the rewards of their own hard work. There are already employee owned businesses that compete just fine against investor owned businesses so I feel like it’s already proven out.
Investors are not bad. They cover early-stage expanses, and of course, they want to return that money and get profit. Having investors is better than having nothing. As an alternative, workers can work for free until the company becomes profitable, or even invest some money in it. But I don’t think most workers will agree with such a scheme.
Your issue with the soviets is that you’re utterly illiterate on the subject of the soviets and should educate yourself instead of posting nonsensical comments in a public forum.
Go ask some Polish people how well the Russians treated them. You can have two bad parties, just because one is worse doesn’t make the other not bad. I mean it’s such a simple concept.
Lot of folks from Eastern Europe will agree on that.
I believe current social issues need fixing - maybe even adopting some radical changes. E.g. I still can’t get over the fact that capitalism allows for existence of something as ridiculous as billionaires - real life wealth ‘black holes’. And that’s just the start. On the other hand, there are some things that capitalism does extremely well, e.g. competitive markets are very good at producing cheap goods and can drive innovation (when disallowing monopolies). So maybe the right path for us is somewhere between the two extremes?
Anyways, while I understand the distaste for capitalism for some folks and the feeling that it failed them and working people below CEO level in general, I still can’t get over the fact that lots of neo-communists use USSR as a role model. The only people in that country who benefited from that system were the people at the top and those with connections to them (sounds somewhat familiar, doesn’t it?). IMO anybody trying to base their political views on communist ideology should cut off entirely from the USSR and simply deem it as a failed state (that was only communist by name) with too much blood on their hands. Definitely not something that we want to go back to.
I still can’t get over the fact that lots of neo-communists use USSR as a role model. The only people in that country who benefited from that system were the people at the top and those with connections to them
Demonstrably false. For example, are you suggesting that the 23 million serfs–dirt farmers–of the imperial Russian empire were better off not knowing how to read, having no education, no healthcare, no subsidized food supplies, no industry tools, and no ability to break free from being born into a rigid inherited socioeconomic class from which there was no escape?
Capitalists need to remember that last point. They have a shared and reoccuring thread throughout their history of thinking they can treat people in a similar way and that a break will never come. Except they know it does, which is why they were literally murdering communists, socialists, and union folk in both the Americas and Europe (and likely elsewhere, but I’m not well versed enough to speak on other regions of the world).
The USSR, as a model, worked. Capitalists don’t want to accept it publicly because it threatens their monopoly on state and enterprise power. A young government, forged through raw power, is going to be a bit different than what we expect. But the USSR was trending toward what we understand as liberalization which is why it dissolved the moment some ethno-nationalist capitalists were allowed to seize control of newly free media outlets and get people on their side with talking points. People like Yeltsin. I’d like to remind you that Gorbachev, leader of the USSR, didn’t react when people like (but not exclusively) Yeltsin used ethnonationalism to whip up mass riots and protests. He didn’t roll out the tanks,something tankies really hate. He didn’t refuse to recognize the results of elections and votes.
We know the USSR worked because the entire region went from nothing to world superpower in a single generation. It spooked the Americans and a lot of Europeans such that they adopted a practice of containment after WW2 in order to prevent a rival system from spreading. They dirtied the word for a couple generations such that people wouldn’t and still won’t consider what the ideology means. And that, just maybe, a period of time under an autocrat doesn’t define the entire nation.
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My issue with the soviets wasn’t that they were communists, it’s that they were fascists.
That’s about as accurate as saying Nazis were socialists.
They were economically socialists, politically authoritarians - and, for better or worse, communism and the Leninist concept of the vanguard party are inextricably linked. At the end of the day, the question is: can a state democratically become socialist? The answer is clearly no, hence the vanguard party, hence Lenin, hence Ho Chi Minh, hence Mao. I’m not talking about a mixed economy, I’m talking about socualism.
By their own admission, the economy of the Soviet Union was “state capitalism”. Means of production were not owned by private individuals and companies (as in capitalism) but also not by the people or workers (as in socialism). They were owned by the state, and since the state was not democratic, this does not count as shared or public ownership. This may have been meant or justified as temporary at the start, but it did not change.
How do you define “democratic?” Because the “soviet” of “soviet union” is a type of council which was directly elected by citizens. The USSR was a democratic republic in that each soviet usually voted for a higher level soviet. Not that unusual, especially back then.
Now, I’m not suggesting that the books were never cooked. We know that Stalin rigged at least some higher level elections at the very least.
But “democratic” does not mean multi-party. It can also be “no party” or “three parties” or anything. In the USSR you could run for your local soviet or petition them to vote for you. Yes, you’d have to be a party member. But that doesn’t mean blind allegiance and no differing thought. I’ve brought it up before, but you had severe infighting in the party because of the diversity of opinions and thought, not lack of it. Sure, they were all communists or some flavor thereof at least superficially. But there’s a hell of a difference between Stalin and Kruschev and Gorbachev as examples.
And, Stalin aside given his prominence in the early years of the nation, the other prominent leaders were very dependant on entities like the Supreme Soviet which was elected by your elected representatives.
Different != undemocratic.
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Uhh… I might be wrong, and do correct me because I’m not good at politics or geography or stuff, but isn’t The Republic of Ireland a democratic socialist country?
EDIT: Wait, by state do you mean American State?
The ROI is I think a social democracy rather democratic socialist. It is economically capitalist though with state intervention.
When we are talking political science ‘state’ is political entity that exerts legal power over a territory. They may be federalised like in the USA or they may be independant (or a few other things.) It can also refer to the systems of this power, like government, legal system, and civil service including entities like police and military forces.
Ireland is very much capitalist. Where did you get that idea? Free healthcare is not socialism.
Honestly? Someone I know once mentioned it was socialist and I know they vote there. That’s it. All 100% of my knowledge.
I did say I was bad at this stuff. :')
You sparked a little curiosity in me, by asking with earnest; so ya did good by at least one person here
They mean a sovereign territory which you would probably call a country.
That’s basically what the entire philosophy of democratic socialism attempts to answer.
Dont confuse authoritarian with fashism.
potato tomato
Isn’t oppressive authoritarianism one of the elements that make up fascism?
Fascism is explicitly right wing. If it’s not right wing then it’s still authoritarian, but not fascist.
Yeah, fascism includes authoritarianism but not the other way around. You can be authoritarian and not a fascist. Which doesn’t make you good, just different flavour of bad
All governments and all societies as of today are authoritarian by nature, no matter how small or big. Even those “direct democracy” villages have hierarchy, and are thus authoritarian. Stop claiming authoritarian = bad.
if by “authoritarian” you mean “when the government does stuff”, then by your logic every government in existence is authoritarian.
Really don’t feel like going into a supposed gotcha since you have to realize it’s a sliding scale. So it’s not my logic, it’s your logic.
What??? How???
Oh right, now I remember. They taught me the same crap in school. Fuck the anti-communist indoctrination, fuck George Orwell, and fuck my teachers.
Wether or not the SU handed the means of production to the workers or just transferred them to a different previleged class is debatable. But it surely did not abolish the commodity form.
From a theory standpoint, Russia didnt really fullfill the prerequisites for a transition to communism. The social structures were still too aligned with serfdom. In such an environment it is difficult to actually transition from state capitalism to socialism in a functional way, and most critiques of the Soviet Union seem to stem from this problem.
I replied to someone who said the soviets were fascists. Does failing to achieve communism make them fascist or what’s your point exactly?
SU wasn’t fascist per se. It was a militaristic authoritarian dictatorship that overlapped with fascism on a lot of issues, but technically fascism means a different thing, yes.
That’s a gross over-generalisation, to the point of being misleading.
Militaristic might be not technically correct, it was more of a police state than a military state, after the WWII Stalin put a lot of effort to make sure that military will remain a tool and not have agency on itself. All the police-adjacent organisations though were so powerful that they didn’t have to be militaristic to exert all the power.
Everything else is absolutely correct though, complete, absolute power was in the hand of an unelected individual and the people he empowererd, as much as power was concentrated. So as much as authocracy and dictatorship could overlap, USSR was an embodiment of that.
That’s the main issue. But their approach to the economy was awful as well. Unions just collected money and did nothing, plants and factories produced either copies of goods created in the capitalist world, or things that looked bad. People who wanted to wear good-looking clothes were waiting for the end of the month because shops to gain the desired number of purchases were selling western goods for a day or two. Jeans weren’t officially imported and sold. People were buying jeans for two monthly salaries, and it was ok because anyway it was hard to spend the earned money. For a worker, it wasn’t beneficial to improve something in the factory, and nobody wanted to suggest such improvements. There was no market and because of this, nobody wanted to make better goods or make the production process more effective. There was no need in economy of resources, and because of this, production was ineffective. The Soviets admitted it, but weren’t able to change it. Goods made in the USSR and briefly in the ex-USSR countries after the USSR collapsed, were ugly, outdated and expensive. They just couldn’t compete in the market. And there are many people telling capitalism is bad. Capitalism is more effective in providing cheaper good-looking goods because companies have to make profit and compete for customers.
I’ve been thinking if we could just make all companies employee owned by law. You’d still get the benefits of capitalism but instead of vampiric investors getting all the benefits it would be the employees that reap the rewards of their own hard work. There are already employee owned businesses that compete just fine against investor owned businesses so I feel like it’s already proven out.
That’s called market socialism if you’re interested in reading about it.
Investors are not bad. They cover early-stage expanses, and of course, they want to return that money and get profit. Having investors is better than having nothing. As an alternative, workers can work for free until the company becomes profitable, or even invest some money in it. But I don’t think most workers will agree with such a scheme.
Your issue with the soviets is that you’re utterly illiterate on the subject of the soviets and should educate yourself instead of posting nonsensical comments in a public forum.
This happens when a Redditor leaves his bubble.
Ah yes the people that killed fascists and put a stop to extermination camps were actually the fascists.
I am very smart 🤓
“We have liberated Europe from fascism, but they will never forgive us for it.”
— Marshal Zhukov
Go ask some Polish people how well the Russians treated them. You can have two bad parties, just because one is worse doesn’t make the other not bad. I mean it’s such a simple concept.
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You’re deflecting. The Soviets were not fascists and you know this.
They were allied with the Nazis until the Nazis decided to attack them.
See also: Venezuela
“Waaah I don’t like countries I can’t exploit and take resources from”
Lot of folks from Eastern Europe will agree on that.
I believe current social issues need fixing - maybe even adopting some radical changes. E.g. I still can’t get over the fact that capitalism allows for existence of something as ridiculous as billionaires - real life wealth ‘black holes’. And that’s just the start. On the other hand, there are some things that capitalism does extremely well, e.g. competitive markets are very good at producing cheap goods and can drive innovation (when disallowing monopolies). So maybe the right path for us is somewhere between the two extremes?
Anyways, while I understand the distaste for capitalism for some folks and the feeling that it failed them and working people below CEO level in general, I still can’t get over the fact that lots of neo-communists use USSR as a role model. The only people in that country who benefited from that system were the people at the top and those with connections to them (sounds somewhat familiar, doesn’t it?). IMO anybody trying to base their political views on communist ideology should cut off entirely from the USSR and simply deem it as a failed state (that was only communist by name) with too much blood on their hands. Definitely not something that we want to go back to.
Demonstrably false. For example, are you suggesting that the 23 million serfs–dirt farmers–of the imperial Russian empire were better off not knowing how to read, having no education, no healthcare, no subsidized food supplies, no industry tools, and no ability to break free from being born into a rigid inherited socioeconomic class from which there was no escape?
Capitalists need to remember that last point. They have a shared and reoccuring thread throughout their history of thinking they can treat people in a similar way and that a break will never come. Except they know it does, which is why they were literally murdering communists, socialists, and union folk in both the Americas and Europe (and likely elsewhere, but I’m not well versed enough to speak on other regions of the world).
The USSR, as a model, worked. Capitalists don’t want to accept it publicly because it threatens their monopoly on state and enterprise power. A young government, forged through raw power, is going to be a bit different than what we expect. But the USSR was trending toward what we understand as liberalization which is why it dissolved the moment some ethno-nationalist capitalists were allowed to seize control of newly free media outlets and get people on their side with talking points. People like Yeltsin. I’d like to remind you that Gorbachev, leader of the USSR, didn’t react when people like (but not exclusively) Yeltsin used ethnonationalism to whip up mass riots and protests. He didn’t roll out the tanks,something tankies really hate. He didn’t refuse to recognize the results of elections and votes.
We know the USSR worked because the entire region went from nothing to world superpower in a single generation. It spooked the Americans and a lot of Europeans such that they adopted a practice of containment after WW2 in order to prevent a rival system from spreading. They dirtied the word for a couple generations such that people wouldn’t and still won’t consider what the ideology means. And that, just maybe, a period of time under an autocrat doesn’t define the entire nation.