|
Hi, I started reading The State and Revolution. What if I agree with Lenin's theory of Vanguard Party, but instead of state owned economy I'd agree with a fundamentally Mutualist one. Would that have been completely out of context for the situation? Also, what where did the USSR go wrong, on a theoretical basis. I understand things went wrong in a historical context, (couldn't keep up with the arms race, etc.) Deimus fucked around with this message at 07:46 on Sep 30, 2016 |
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 07:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 21:06 |
|
|
Deimus posted:Hi, I started reading The State and Revolution. What if I agree with Lenin's theory of Vanguard Party, but instead of state owned economy I'd agree with a fundamentally Mutualist one. The collapse of the soviet economy was baked in place through Stalin's paranoia. The purges and his worry of any group growing too powerful developed a planned economy that was not able to communicate with itself. This meant there was massive redundancy in every sector of the economy in a way that was never fully able to get unwrapped. The economy probably would have collapsed in the late 70s but the oil crisis bought some time.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 08:18
|
|
|
Bip Roberts posted:The collapse of the soviet economy was baked in place through Stalin's paranoia. The purges and his worry of any group growing too powerful developed a planned economy that was not able to communicate with itself. This meant there was massive redundancy in every sector of the economy in a way that was never fully able to get unwrapped. The economy probably would have collapsed in the late 70s but the oil crisis bought some time. Purging of the bureaucracy wasn't the problem: it was the failure to reform the planned economy towards a more market oriented one once the plan exhausted its own potential for growth, in that regard the strength of the bureaucracy was the problem China is the counter-example to this
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 08:40
|
|
|
Can it really all be blamed on Stalin and not a theoretical flaw in system that allowed it? Like, I don't necessarily blame bankers for economic crisis, I just blame capitalism. I guess I have a pleb question, but Marx, Engels, Lenin concluded that the state is necessary to erase the material conditions of capitalism as the first step. And yeah, there is a lot of differing definitions of what the 'state' is, and even what socialism is, but I agree with a vanguard state in this context. To my knowledge, the capitalist mode of production (at least in a powerful way) started many decades before the bourgeoisie revolutions that instated capitalism as the major economic system. So wouldn't dialectical materialism conclude that socialism would first start with a worker autonomy, then revolution? Even if not, why would revolutionary vanguard states simply make the means of production state owned and replace the classic bourgeoisie with state officials, shouldn't there be some direct democratic autonomous element? Is the vanguard state just simply supposed to nervously keep productive control in check until global capital finally falls flat on it's face, because I don't know, I feel like there should be a better way. I ask these questions while acknowledging the Bolsheviks were the best shot Russia had, that the USSR did a lot of things right, and while also having the (un)controversial opinion that Stalin was a lot better than Trotsky would have been. But, yknow. Deimus fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Sep 30, 2016 |
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 08:55
|
|
|
Lenin said it himself, the Soviet Union only achieved state capitalism - The transfer to worker control of their own workplace never occured, the state was simply acting as the capitalist. This is also true for China. The capture of the state was not the be-all and end-all of socialism, capturing the state was the means to convert society to a socialist one, but Stalin said that government control of the economy WAS socialism.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 09:09
|
|
|
How do communists feel about Thomas Picketty??
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 09:21
|
|
|
Man Musk posted:How do communists feel about Thomas Picketty?? Maybe has some interesting things to say. But idk, actually taxing rich people at this point is more Utopian thinking than revolution, honestly. So i'm gonna say, 'heh, bourgeois economics.'
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 09:31
|
|
|
Man Musk posted:How do communists feel about Thomas Picketty?? he bad
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 10:14
|
|
|
Bip Roberts posted:The collapse of the soviet economy was baked in place through Stalin's paranoia. The purges and his worry of any group growing too powerful developed a planned economy that was not able to communicate with itself. This meant there was massive redundancy in every sector of the economy in a way that was never fully able to get unwrapped. The economy probably would have collapsed in the late 70s but the oil crisis bought some time. I don't think it can all be blamed on Stalin, since the Soviets had all the chances in the world to reform the state control model after Kruschev. The gerontocracy wasn't willing to cede enough control to allow for worker autonomy and greater dynamism, even long after the existential threat of capitalist encroachment had been checked through MAD. Man Musk posted:How do communists feel about Thomas Picketty?? He put together data that proves what we've been saying all along, but he hasn't been saying anything new or interesting. Picketty is useful in that he forces liberals to come to terms with the fact that wealth accumulation is bad.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 11:28
|
|
|
Pener Kropoopkin posted:The early 20th century was an era of unprecedented barbarism and destruction, so the willingness to make a militarized industrial omelette was much more desperate than the situation for anyone in the global north today. Nowadays the primary problem is what we're doing to other people, and not what other people can do to us. The United States is mobilized to combat relatively insignificant threats, and we live in a farcical age. This is not wrong.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 12:18
|
|
|
Homework Explainer posted:with every post itt c-ham puts more and more effort into projecting benign disinterest. a neutron star of irony, collapsing in on itself. occasionally there is a good joke it's hard to get legitimately mad at radical leftists, it's like a rapper having a feud with Vanilla Ice. plus nihilism is a pretty great defence mechanism for realizing that the vast majority of people around the world don't really care about things like 'policies' or 'ideology' and will happily vote for the TV rich man or the guy who says he wants to be 'hitler, but for drug users'.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 12:25
|
|
|
It seems to me like those people care deeply about ideology.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 12:31
|
|
|
caring is lame, that's why I'm a nihilist *gets super mad about The Terror*
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 12:32
|
|
|
Pener Kropoopkin posted:caring is lame, that's why I'm a nihilist *gets super mad about The Terror* *kills hundreds of thousands to millions of people* "lol u mad?"
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 12:42
|
|
|
Constant Hamprince posted:*kills hundreds of thousands to millions of people* *rubs chin thoughtfully* Why this don't seem very nihilistic at all...
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 12:46
|
|
|
Guys help me out here does Marxists.org have any essays I can link on the difference between ironic and authentic detachment I'm having trouble getting through here
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 13:53
|
|
|
Deimus posted:the (un)controversial opinion that Stalin was a lot better than Trotsky would have been. idk anything about this, why would this be?
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 14:33
|
|
|
Constant Hamprince posted:Guys help me out here does Marxists.org have any essays I can link on the difference between ironic and authentic detachment I'm having trouble getting through here Sure, Mao wrote about this during the Long March but there are licensing issues in the United States that mean it can't be posted on Marxists.org, so I have to spoil the url: stop posting
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 14:42
|
|
|
Pener Kropoopkin posted:Sure, Mao wrote about this during the Long March but there are licensing issues in the United States that mean it can't be posted on Marxists.org, so I have to spoil the url: stop posting purge ur account lol
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 15:27
|
|
|
Deimus posted:where did the USSR go wrong, on a theoretical basis Typo posted:Purging of the bureaucracy wasn't the problem: it was the failure to reform the planned economy towards a more market oriented one once the plan exhausted its own potential for growth, in that regard the strength of the bureaucracy was the problem I'd argue the opposite; that its stagnation and ultimate collapse were rooted in being too market-oriented. The short version of the argument goes like this: Soviet enterprises always maintained accounts reflecting their profitability, but rather than being the primary indicator of health, it was a mere datum of secondary importance, after production quotas. Such a schema was supported by a system of subsidies that primarily targeted heavy industry, but also R&D and new/innovative products that are initially less profitable to produce. However, beginning in the 1950's, major price reforms were passed that gave greater importance to profit indicators and de-emphasized or in many cases eliminated subsidized production. New products soon thereafter were less profitable and more costly to produce, so why bother innovating when you can meet your quotas with the old stuff? This problem was not especially pronounced in the 50's and early 60's, but this compounded over time and led to much more visible stagnation in the 70's and 80's. A capitalist system, for all its severe and world-threatening faults, nevertheless has within it an internal drive for technical innovation, creating its own system of incentives through the interactions of capitalists who take control of the process of valorization, insist on procuring labor-saving technology to gain a competitive advantage, etc. In this case, government subsidies are effectively a bonus (e.g., the Pentagon system of the postwar period). One cannot adopt this same mindset with a socialist economy, a system that gives the driver's seat to conscious decision-making rather than market stimuli. In this case, the government must take on an active role in fostering new technologies, better products, etc. Fail to do so, and in the best case you're standing in your own way, since the goal is to revolutionize production such that necessary labor time is reduced to a bare minimum (and, in turn, leisure eventually increased to the maximum); in the worst case, capitalist rivals leave you in the dust. The long version of the argument can be found, e.g., in this paper that garnered some discussion maybe 2-3 D&D Marx threads ago. I disagree with the author on a couple things but I think the thrust of the paper is persuasive. There are also some useful supplemental thoughts on the USSR "not [being] socialist enough" here. Tacky-rear end Rococco posted:On the contrary, you can reduce literally everything to "material forces." We live in a mostly deterministic universe. Given the initial conditions within our solar system a hundred thousand years ago, there was only one way things could have possibly unfolded, which is exactly as they have. Free will simply does not exist; you were always going to make this post, and I was always going to reply to it in this manner. This has the seeds of a much more interesting discussion in it, since the combined critiques of both absolute idealism and fundamentalist materialism are what yielded dialectical materialism. I don't have the time to dive in on it right now, but if there's any light left in the ember when I get back, I may have to blow on it. Aeolius fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Sep 30, 2016 |
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 15:43
|
|
|
IMO the problem was in great part political as already Lenin by the end saw that bureaucratization was running rampant and tried to reformulate the party/state trying to include more check's and balances but failed. Stalin brougth the regime to it's natural conclusion with it's insane autophagy. Not to say it was all bad as there certainly were a bunch of missed opportunities for change.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 16:02
|
|
|
Bip Roberts posted:The collapse of the soviet economy was baked in place through Stalin's paranoia. The purges and his worry of any group growing too powerful developed a planned economy that was not able to communicate with itself. This meant there was massive redundancy in every sector of the economy in a way that was never fully able to get unwrapped. The economy probably would have collapsed in the late 70s but the oil crisis bought some time. boy a lot of people who have written political economies and histories of the soviet union are going to be surprised when time-traveling psychoanalysis was the answer all along
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 16:43
|
|
|
Pener Kropoopkin posted:I don't think it can all be blamed on Stalin, since the Soviets had all the chances in the world to reform the state control model after Kruschev. The gerontocracy wasn't willing to cede enough control to allow for worker autonomy and greater dynamism, even long after the existential threat of capitalist encroachment had been checked through MAD. Except sort of the opposite of TRPF.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 16:44
|
|
|
Mods please rename this to the soviet union relitigation thread
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 16:46
|
|
|
it really is like the lost causers lol "Looks like those Knyazhev boys are at it again!" hollers Šef Bórov as the two yokels tear past in a crimson Lada at a blistering 36 miles per hour with a trunk full of bathtub vodka
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 17:14
|
|
|
considering the state of russia and the former soviet republics in the decades after the fall (and what they themselves believe about socialism, funny how that gets discarded) politifact must rate your analogy STupid as gently caress
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 17:38
|
|
|
I'm pretty sure I cut into this argument the last time you used it, but that's not a sufficient explanation. You've moved the cause into the territory of strict policy, leaving the area of power and governmental structure that create that policy untouched - ie, the 'stagnant bureaucracy' argument still works, simply by reincorporating your data ("Why didn't they accurately diagnose and correct this problem? Why was the bureaucracy incapable of actively fostering innovation"). It's those failures of structure that are the more troubling questions, that have to be answered, and that are not by your sources.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 17:47
|
|
|
Also as China showed innovation isn't actually nearly as important in developing/'catching-up" economies (and the Soviets were indeed playing catch-up for their existence) because it's pretty easy to steal/adapt poo poo from more advanced countries and just copy it
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 18:04
|
|
|
Homework Explainer posted:considering the state of russia and the former soviet republics in the decades after the fall (and what they themselves believe about socialism, funny how that gets discarded) politifact must rate your analogy STupid as gently caress remember when you used this argument to try and claim that soviet satellites in eastern europe were legitimate reflections of popular aspiration
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 19:54
|
|
|
Nude Bog Lurker posted:remember when you used this argument to try and claim that soviet satellites in eastern europe were legitimate reflections of popular aspiration Did I.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 20:41
|
|
|
Fados posted:IMO the problem was in great part political as already Lenin by the end saw that bureaucratization was running rampant and tried to reformulate the party/state trying to include more check's and balances but failed. Stalin brougth the regime to it's natural conclusion with it's insane autophagy. Not to say it was all bad as there certainly were a bunch of missed opportunities for change. stalin was fine
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 20:48
|
|
|
Homework Explainer posted:boy a lot of people who have written political economies and histories of the soviet union are going to be surprised when time-traveling psychoanalysis was the answer all along Dunno, that's basically the Moshe Lewin thesis. Not sure what the psychoanalysis is.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 21:50
|
|
|
i give stalin a 6
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 21:54
|
|
|
Its the classic tankie deflection strategy - you cant even begin to have a conversation with them about this because you haven read the correct literature or you havent read it in the correct order or you completely misunderstood what the literature said, you idiot
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 21:59
|
|
|
Al! posted:Its the classic tankie deflection strategy - you cant even begin to have a conversation with them about this because you haven read the correct literature or you havent read it in the correct order or you completely misunderstood what the literature said, you idiot asking people to back up their assertions with things besides bromides — classic tankie deflection
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 22:17
|
|
|
Al! posted:Its the classic tankie deflection strategy - you cant even begin to have a conversation with them about this because you haven read the correct literature or you havent read it in the correct order or you completely misunderstood what the literature said, you idiot Al: i think the moon is actually a paper plate and the night sky is a big sheet of plywood with lights in everyone else: astronomy exists Al: this is the classic tankie deflection strategy - you cant even begin to have a conversation with them about this because you haven read the correct literature or you havent read it in the correct order or you completely misunderstood what the literature said, you idiot
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 22:33
|
|
|
it's horselord this thread is officially complete
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 22:37
|
|
|
Typo posted:it's horselord this thread is officially complete i probably got here before you did
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 22:40
|
|
|
HorseLord posted:i probably got here before you did You did.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2016 22:56
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 21:06 |
|
|
Homework Explainer posted:boy a lot of people who have written political economies and histories of the soviet union are going to be surprised when time-traveling psychoanalysis was the answer all along Turns out those people were wrong; the personality of totalitarian leaders does, in fact, play a role in how their regime fares.  e: Unless the authors you're citing didn't reduce it to purely material factors, and did, in fact, leave room for Stalin's personal shittiness to play a part too. Which I'm guessing is the actual truth. e2: from the Joseph Ball article: quote:Condemning everything that happened in the Soviet Union in the Stalin-era due to the Purges is very unscientific There's some truth to this, but when one's tenure in office is characterized by the systematic murders of a whole lot of people, welp...it's kind of hard to blame people for giving you a negative performance review. Majorian fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Oct 2, 2016 |
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2016 05:16
|
|
