apropos to nothing posted:

nathan robinson is a much better argument against socialism than anything ive ever heard a reactionary say

apropos to nothing posted:

nathan robinson is a much better argument against socialism than anything ive ever heard a reactionary say

T-man posted:

Remember how Peterson went years talking about postmodern neo Marxism and it was obvious within half an hour near Ziezik he'd read the communist manifesto the night before? The entire media class missed it until a cocaine fueled trashman showed up and ended his career. The ideology goes right through the bone with anyone allowed in media.

Constantly LARPing posted:

The best answer I’ve read on “What was the USSR?” is who the gently caress knows, it was really weird historically! But I feel confident in saying that it wasn’t socialist or communist. The difference between River Rouge between Magnitogorsk was minimal, you’re still producing value under capitalist social relations around production. To be clear, this isn’t an anarchist critique of the state, producing steel for a worker owned coop where your friend is the foreman for a one year term or something is still sucks (maybe more!).

apropos to nothing posted:

its not dealing with them, it was specifically the pressure to join uncompromisingly with the kuomintang. when the canton uprising occurred for example on the orders of the comintern to coincide with the party congress which was occurring at the same time, the communists didnt have access to guns or supplies because the USSR was supplying directly through the kuomintang and not through the communist party.

the mistake the comintern made with the chinese united front (which really was a popular front though the distinction between the two hadn;t been made at the time) is the same one the mensheviks made which was thinking political development had to proceed through a period of bourgeois revolution which would then lay the foundation for the proceeding socialist revolution. this was the policy of the comintern throughout the 20s especially in asia in how they tried to orient many of the communist parties and it flew in the face of the russian experience. it was a conservative and orthodox marxist approach which had been completely discredited by the experiences of the bolsheviks in 1917.

Ferrinus posted:

wasn't the decisive factor here NOT a dogmatic belief that bourgeoise society had to develop to a certain point before socialism was possible (which, as you say, the soviets themselves had disproved) but the fact that japan was either breathing down china's neck or actually and actively invading? i'm reminded here of trotsky openly fantasizing about a Real Socialist coup against stalin while the literal nazis attacked

smarxist posted:

Hi mods, please ban me you bootlicking thugs!

I love CSPAM and because of that I'm doing my best to save it from the completely lovely junkyard that it sprang from before the literal child-brained owner flushes either the community here, or the entire website down the toilet

the events that occurred on the night of the stream with the "livebans" were really beyond the pale and basically killed any appetite I had to post here or spend money here, at the behest of a nazi chud peanut gallery, a man in his 40's banned some of my favorite people from their favorite place and seriously upset them, if you can countenance that poo poo, be my guest

i've been workin' hard (thank you!) to capture as many disaffected, displaced and banned posters as I can, and have literally hundreds trickling into the new hotness.

so come check us out!
https://breadnroses.club/register/

if you register with your SA account name, I can track you down and approve you (we're doing manual approvals for now) and you can come check out the new joint, which despite being a work in progress is already REALLY loving solid.

if you can't be bothered, or if all of this is "dumb online bullshit" or you don't care, then I bid you good posting friend, it was nice making content with you!

hasta siempre,
Smarxist

gradenko_2000 posted:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

uncop posted:

It was the dogmatic belief. The Comintern did not recognize immediate socialist potential in eastern countries, and committed socialists like Mao basically had to pretend to be doing nationalist capitalist development even in the 50's when the Comintern and Japan were long gone. The Soviets weren't happy when the Chinese announced that actually they were going to do a five-year plan with a massive industrial development goal, it was just too late for them to do anything about it. The basis for the Sino-Soviet split was basically there from the beginning: the USSR's stance was very paternalistic while China immediately set itself the goal to outgrow the USSR and take leadership internationally.

Lightning Knight posted:

I'm curious about what some of this meant to Marx, or would mean to modern communist theorists. Some of it seems obvious and agreeable to me, and some of it is either confusing or worded in a way I must not be parsing. Example, "confiscation of of the property of all emigrants [and rebels]." The rebels part seems obvious to me, but it's not clear why emigrants are in this category. Is it because of absentee landlordism?

Likewise, I understand that there is a delineation between private and personal property (although I have seen disagreement of where the line is), so I'm curious how the thread would take "abolition of all rights of inheritance." Example, my grandmother owns a house, and when she dies, it will fall to my mother and her two sisters to clean it out and deal with it somehow. I understand the land it is on is (usually considered to be) private property, but what about the house itself? Would you even "own" a house in a socialist society, let alone be able to have a generational family home?

I'm also curious what line 8 is meant to entail.

I find line 9 fascinating in a modern context when discussing something like environmental sustainability, it seems like that part may be out of date?

Understanding Marx has always been hard for me due to a combination of not being well read and struggling with getting into the reading due to my own issues recently with mental health, so discussions of his thoughts like this are immensely interesting to me.

Lightning Knight posted:

I'm curious about what some of this meant to Marx, or would mean to modern communist theorists. Some of it seems obvious and agreeable to me, and some of it is either confusing or worded in a way I must not be parsing. Example, "confiscation of of the property of all emigrants [and rebels]." The rebels part seems obvious to me, but it's not clear why emigrants are in this category. Is it because of absentee landlordism?

Ferrinus posted:

i think confiscating the property of emigrants is specifically to stop capital flight. a factory owner can flee the country but he can't take his machinery with him

i think the "liability of all to work" in combination with "industrial armies" basically means that anyone and everyone can potentially be conscripted into being a garbageman or machinist or farmer or w/e

Atrocious Joe posted:

I assume this relates to the experience of the French Revolution, when the estates of fleeing reactionary aristocrats were seized by the state. Those aristocrats were called émigrés.

Lightning Knight posted:

The part about drafting people to do that stuff doesn't sound very pleasant to me but in fairness the way we currently assign those jobs is also not very pleasant so maybe I need to expand my horizons.

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/nachdermas/status/1255479378479403009

Sheng-Ji Yang posted:

marx wanted everyone to live in a big jail

Lightning Knight posted:

Ok, that makes sense then.

The part about drafting people to do that stuff doesn't sound very pleasant to me but in fairness the way we currently assign those jobs is also not very pleasant so maybe I need to expand my horizons.

Ferrinus posted:

wasn't the decisive factor here NOT a dogmatic belief that bourgeoise society had to develop to a certain point before socialism was possible (which, as you say, the soviets themselves had disproved) but the fact that japan was either breathing down china's neck or actually and actively invading? i'm reminded here of trotsky openly fantasizing about a Real Socialist coup against stalin at the same time as, indeed because of the opportunity presented because, the literal nazis attacked

Ferrinus posted:

i've long assumed that any socialist state would have to draft people to do essential work at some point. obviously you'd offer the order of lenin and extra labor vouchers or whatever to people who actually volunteer for lovely jobs but if that's not enough then SOMEONE'S gotta do it. the good news is that the labor draft would probably be way more humane and pleasant than the existing system, because it's probably something like "they drew your name out of the bucket down at city hall, you're going to have to collect garbage on thursday mornings for the next three months" rather than "this is the best your economic circumstances will ever allow you, enjoy the rest of your life you poor sap"

apropos to nothing posted:

regardless of what the basis for the decision was, the result was the liquidation of the chinese communists on 2-3 separate occasions by forces in the kuomintang. I'd argue there was an ideological basis though, especially based on writings from communists in vietnam and others from the period which specifically point to the idea of a cross-class government and mention applying "the principles of the new economic policy to develop the economy of the country in collaboration with the possessing classes."

the same idea is more or less present 20 years later when mao is arguing for new democracy or the bloc of four classes. i dont really see much differentiation between maos ideas or the way stalins presents revolutionary stages in the foundations of lenninism. its also more or less the position many of the leaders of the comintern had held when they were bolshevik leaders prior to the april theses who supported the provisional government with the idea that it and the bourgeoise had to be supported by the socialists to complete the bourgeois revolution and lay the foundation for socialism

Ferrinus posted:

Ferrinus posted:

i would say that the ideological BASIS for supporting the kmt first and foremost is found in "foundations of leninism", where stalin writes that even a nationalist bourgeoise movement is revolutionary if it's part of the third world's resistance to the first (and that conversely even "socialist" movements in the first world, like the british labor party, are reactionary by default).

GunnerJ posted:

what say you, cspam commie thread

https://twitter.com/guaph/status/1255495040299945988

GunnerJ posted:

what say you, cspam commie thread

https://twitter.com/guaph/status/1255495040299945988

Ferrinus posted:

you sound like the theorists of the other prevailing western theory of the ussr (and of course other modern socialist states), one that of course operates to this day: the ussr wasn't socialism, but simply "state capitalism!" because workers went in every day and put in more labor-hours than were strictly necessary to feed them, and because the resulting surplus was appropriated by the state and used to create new factories or whatever, in reality the state was like a single gigantic capitalist capturing ALL the profits from ALL your work!

however, i think this is in practice a very stupid take, because capitalism isn't when somebody gets to tell you what to do, and capitalism isn't when you produce a surplus by working more than you strictly need to stay fed and clothed. capitalism is specifically when private actors pilot the means of production to create things based on their market value, which was not what was going on. socialism - and here i mean lenin's socialism, or marx's "lower stage of communism" - doesn't actually mean you're not going to have a lovely job or hate your foreman or whatever. it just means that utility rather than profit will motivate production and it'll be the proletariat evaluating that utility

Beyond Marx, Marxism, and Marxisms posted:

Engels does note that “the transformation, either into joint-stock companies, or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces,” but nonetheless sees an immediate transition to socialism setting in as a result, whereas the concepts of monopoly and state intervention remain “economically completely undetermined.” Engels thus suggests that the workers’ movement merely has to take over the forms of corporate bookkeeping in joint-stock companies and the comprehensive planning by monopolies developed in capitalism. For Engels, the bourgeoisie has already become obsolete through the separation of ownership and management functions. The “transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into jointstock companies and state property” demonstrates, according to Engels, “how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose”, i.e. for managing “modern productive forces”: “All the social functions of the capitalist are now performed by salaried employees. The capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. At first the capitalist mode of production forces out the workers. Now it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus population, although not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army.”

Lightning Knight posted:

This makes sense, insofar as how doing it randomly for set intervals would be more fair than the people on the bottom being forced to do it, but it sort of makes me wonder, how did the Soviet Union handle this? Like, I actually don't know how jobs were assigned in the Soviet Union.

Lightning Knight posted:

I feel like the first half of this doesn't really track in practice, although the second half pretty much does tbf.

GunnerJ posted:

what say you, cspam commie thread

https://twitter.com/guaph/status/1255495040299945988

GunnerJ posted:

what say you, cspam commie thread

https://twitter.com/guaph/status/1255495040299945988

Dreddout posted:

the rate of meat consumption in the first world is ridiculously unhealthy and unsustainable. I also think a civilization that doesn't have slaughterhouses is a noble goal in the same sense that communism is. That being said I don't see how a popular movement can ban meat unilaterally and remain popular.

Realistically phasing out meat completely would be a multi-generational project. I think it's much more likely a socialist government would put in place a rationing of meat to get the consumption rate down to sustainable levels. This is of course assuming we don't find a way to grow vat meat cheaply in the near future.

In any event any transition away from meat eating on an industrial scale is gonna have to take place under socialism. Capitalists couldn't stop factory farming if they wanted too.

Constantly LARPing posted:

But, Engles, as was often the case, was wrong and is coming dangerously close to a left-Ricardian argument that Marx railed against. You can’t just put the workers in charge and call it a day. Making the peasants feudal lords doesn’t abolish feudal social relations. Marx’s critique goes beyond simply a belief in exploitation, it points out that things like commodity production, labor time, etc. are all social constructs and historically contingent. And, most importantly, that exploitation and alienation are wrapped up in all of those things. River Rouge and Magnitogorsk were both engaged in commodity production (even using the same Fordist model!) because capitalist logic held even when the workers were in charge.

Now is there a counter factual where the USSR wins the Cold War and the world transitions away from capitalism as a result of changing global dynamics? Maybe? I’d also state that from a historical perspective I’m somewhat glad that the Stalin didn’t sit down and say “Guys, time to abolish the value form” because then the Red Army would have never won WWII.

Lady Militant posted:

being against eating meat sounds like a really good way to make people write you off instantly because they will always take it to mean NO BURGERS EVER instead of burgers only 3 times a week

Sheng-Ji Yang posted:

dumb poo poo

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/nachdermas/status/1255479378479403009