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yeah nobody is saying that the building of the economy in an isolated socialist nation like the USSR is bad or an example of socialism in one country. the left opposition argued for the development of the soviet productive forces. the example of china is one of the soviets putting the russian party needs first because there are specifically notes where comintern leaders discussed how the fear was that japanese/british alliance against a communist movement in china would pose a larger threat to russia than a dictatorship by chiang. its also in keeping with the other policies the soviet leadership at the time pursued which were in keeping with policies they had pursued even before they held power and would continue to pursue into the future. again, the policies of the profintern and their "red unions" or the removal of national party leaders by the comintern or the reversal and overriding of policy within national parties by the comintern, or even the resistance to the very formation of the USSR by members like stalin who wanted the smaller nations of the russian empire to be part of one russian state. lenin had to fight for the creation of the USSR against the communist party leadership and it was one of his last battles, specifically in order to safeguard what would become the smaller soviet states from being merged into a russian dominated single state. unfortunately it didnt prevent the russification of many of these nations by the 30s but he and others were staunch internationalists who saw this problem developing even before it came to dominate soviet policy after his death.
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Apr 30, 2020 16:20
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Sheng-Ji Yang posted:i looked them up and aside for being jewish appear to have nothing to do with israel theyre a donor advised fund, right? so this is just someone donating their money to the org, and telling them to donate to Jacobin, which presumably lets them avoid taxes somehow lol. even the guy ben norton quotes admits this is a baseless smear lol
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Apr 30, 2020 18:05
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from the replies: people use JCF to explicitly donate to anti-zionist orgs lol https://www.israellycool.com/2016/05/10/why-is-the-jewish-communal-fund-supporting-bds/
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Apr 30, 2020 18:08
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Slanderer posted:theyre a donor advised fund, right? so this is just someone donating their money to the org, and telling them to donate to Jacobin, which presumably lets them avoid taxes somehow lol. this is exactly what I figured the case was, borderline anti-semitic
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Apr 30, 2020 18:09
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apropos to nothing posted:yeah nobody is saying that the building of the economy in an isolated socialist nation like the USSR is bad or an example of socialism in one country. the left opposition argued for the development of the soviet productive forces. the example of china is one of the soviets putting the russian party needs first because there are specifically notes where comintern leaders discussed how the fear was that japanese/british alliance against a communist movement in china would pose a larger threat to russia than a dictatorship by chiang. its also in keeping with the other policies the soviet leadership at the time pursued which were in keeping with policies they had pursued even before they held power and would continue to pursue into the future. again, the policies of the profintern and their "red unions" or the removal of national party leaders by the comintern or the reversal and overriding of policy within national parties by the comintern, or even the resistance to the very formation of the USSR by members like stalin who wanted the smaller nations of the russian empire to be part of one russian state. lenin had to fight for the creation of the USSR against the communist party leadership and it was one of his last battles, specifically in order to safeguard what would become the smaller soviet states from being merged into a russian dominated single state. unfortunately it didnt prevent the russification of many of these nations by the 30s but he and others were staunch internationalists who saw this problem developing even before it came to dominate soviet policy after his death. You're painting a too rosy picture of Lenin's vision compared to Stalin's IMO. Lenin's model of the USSR produced a federation for the nations that he recognized as legitimate nations, but in the area that USSR encompassed we are talking about lots and lots of nations that gave no reason to treat them unequally. Stalin recognized their existence but also that hyper-balkanization wasn't a realistic option, so the only way to centralize them equitably was to first prefer including them in a single country and if that was out of the question, then as another country within a confederation. It's incorrect to paint one as internationalist and the other as anti-internationalist: both were focused on how to make their internationalist principles work in practice given their preferences for effective centralization and knowledge of the peoples of old Russian Empire (which Stalin was the expert on, and Lenin an urbanite emigrant). The USSR model was in certain important ways more insistent on centralizing nations under the influence of Russia: Russia was still the dominant country because it wasn't carved up accordingly with all the nations trapped within its borders, and there was no consideration of anyone becoming a confederal partner to the USSR, only a federated part of it. What ended up happening to the USSR is inescapable proof that within that model as well, the only thing keeping Russia from dominating it was a principled refusal on part of the Russian communists to do so. Stalin was a consistent internationalist and active anti-russifier (actively undoing the effects of pre-Soviet russification policies, like lack of education and culture in other languages) at least until war considerations started to come to the fore and everything began being shifted toward the USSR being able to fight a big war without dissolving. The China policy being calculated to tie up a belligerent Japan as well as class collaborationist popular frontism in Europe were a change in policy, not a continuation of business as usual.
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Apr 30, 2020 18:24
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apropos to nothing posted:yeah nobody is saying that the building of the economy in an isolated socialist nation like the USSR is bad or an example of socialism in one country. the left opposition argued for the development of the soviet productive forces. the example of china is one of the soviets putting the russian party needs first because there are specifically notes where comintern leaders discussed how the fear was that japanese/british alliance against a communist movement in china would pose a larger threat to russia than a dictatorship by chiang. its also in keeping with the other policies the soviet leadership at the time pursued which were in keeping with policies they had pursued even before they held power and would continue to pursue into the future. again, the policies of the profintern and their "red unions" or the removal of national party leaders by the comintern or the reversal and overriding of policy within national parties by the comintern, or even the resistance to the very formation of the USSR by members like stalin who wanted the smaller nations of the russian empire to be part of one russian state. lenin had to fight for the creation of the USSR against the communist party leadership and it was one of his last battles, specifically in order to safeguard what would become the smaller soviet states from being merged into a russian dominated single state. unfortunately it didnt prevent the russification of many of these nations by the 30s but he and others were staunch internationalists who saw this problem developing even before it came to dominate soviet policy after his death. soic is in general positioned by trot polemicists as being in opposition to permanent revolution post the comintern docs if you can Let's also keep in mind that Sun Yat Sen was the leader of the kmt not CKS. SYS was a progressive anti imperialist opposed to feudalism and the warlords. An alliance with the USSR was supported by the KMT and SYS, a friend of Lenin. There was little evidence that it would become reactionary after his death The comintern made mistakes by trying to replicate the Russian revolution by focusing on seizing the cities but Mao adjusted. let's also remember the result: the CCP, supported by the soviets won.
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Apr 30, 2020 19:57
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apropos to nothing posted:yeah nobody is saying that the building of the economy in an isolated socialist nation like the USSR is bad or an example of socialism in one country. the left opposition argued for the development of the soviet productive forces. the example of china is one of the soviets putting the russian party needs first because there are specifically notes where comintern leaders discussed how the fear was that japanese/british alliance against a communist movement in china would pose a larger threat to russia than a dictatorship by chiang. its also in keeping with the other policies the soviet leadership at the time pursued which were in keeping with policies they had pursued even before they held power and would continue to pursue into the future. again, the policies of the profintern and their "red unions" or the removal of national party leaders by the comintern or the reversal and overriding of policy within national parties by the comintern, or even the resistance to the very formation of the USSR by members like stalin who wanted the smaller nations of the russian empire to be part of one russian state. lenin had to fight for the creation of the USSR against the communist party leadership and it was one of his last battles, specifically in order to safeguard what would become the smaller soviet states from being merged into a russian dominated single state. unfortunately it didnt prevent the russification of many of these nations by the 30s but he and others were staunch internationalists who saw this problem developing even before it came to dominate soviet policy after his death. okay i've bolded the part of your post that's an actual specific claim as to how "socialism in one country" as a specific policy damaged the chinese revolution. however, i don't think what you're saying makes sense, because a japanese/british alliance against a communist movement in china would also pose a threat to... the communist movement in china, and indeed if the ussr were to be openly hostile enough to the world capitalist order that it got jointly invaded prior to ww2 that would also threaten the cpc by cutting it off from its biggest source of international material support and stifle the prospects of the global spread of socialism in general. you're criticizing everything bad that might or did come out of either making arguably-suboptimal short term decisions OR the general concept of playing the long game/taking losses now to reap gains later as specific fallout of SIOC but i just don't think it makes sense for you to tie those things together honestly i've never been clear on what the alternative to socialism in one country was supposed to be. you yourself have (rightly, i believe) criticized stuff like egging on the canton uprising as ultraleft adventurism that prioritized taking an insane moonshot over soberly evaluating the conditions on the ground and playing the hand you're dealt. so, given that the russian revolution succeeded but the german revolution failed, what were the soviets to do that WASN'T a desperate scramble for internal industrial buildup in order to give them the best possible chance of surviving an inevitable capitalist or fascist (but i repeat myself) invasion? wouldn't, say, a deeper if not all-out commitment to kickstarting socialist efforts at insurrection in other parts of europe or asia just be another canton uprising? Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Apr 30, 2020 |
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Apr 30, 2020 21:15
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gradenko_2000 posted:rally to restore sanitary conditions
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Apr 30, 2020 21:17
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Also, the left-opposition's big plan was to push collectivization and centralized industrialization back in 1923-1924, which was way too early to do. The NEP was necessary in the first place if only to allow state enterprises some breathing room to re-tool and also for the Soviets to get access to foreign markets. There is a pretty good chance that early collectivization/force grain purchasing would have lead to even earlier supply issues especially since the Soviet Union barely had any tractors at that point. Collectivization was in the end only forced because of the Great Depression, which was a black swan event.
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Apr 30, 2020 22:11
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Ardennes posted:Also, the left-opposition's big plan was to push collectivization and centralized industrialization back in 1923-1924, which was way too early to do. The NEP was necessary in the first place if only to allow state enterprises some breathing room to re-tool and also for the Soviets to get access to foreign markets. There is a pretty good chance that early collectivization/force grain purchasing would have lead to even earlier supply issues especially since the Soviet Union barely had any tractors at that point. if i recall correctly the left opposition was stridently against the NEP and wanted to immediately collectivize, and then was stridently against collectivizing and wanted to be gentle with the NEP
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Apr 30, 2020 22:24
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There is one issue I thought of with regard to democratic socialism. I buy into the idea that workers can manage their company just as well as capitalists can, but as far as how the overall economy fares, what will be the impact of the money the workers keep being unable to flow across different industries, say from paper manufacturing to pharmaceuticals or from grocery stores to airlines? I guess workers would probably be better off as a result of the net change, but not the same as if workers had all the money that capitalists have now. There doesn't seem like something it'd be possible for there to be evidence for, like how there are plenty of successful WSDEs for the "workers manage as well as capitalists" part I read The Communist Manifesto, and I read some 20-page PDF from Richard Wolff and watched a two hour lecture from him, but I haven't read or watched anything else yet
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May 1, 2020 00:43
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the end goal should be an economy that allocates based on need and not based on markets worker coops in a market economy should be seen as kind of a tactic on the path to mass class consciousness
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May 1, 2020 01:19
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Ferrinus posted:if i recall correctly the left opposition was stridently against the NEP and wanted to immediately collectivize, and then was stridently against collectivizing and wanted to be gentle with the NEP I believe the switcheroo happened only after the first five-year plan started. I know that Trotsky's line was that Stalin's collectivization was really bad...but he would have done it better because of ... reasons that will be decided on later. For your time here is a bad rambling Jacobin article: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/12/new-economic-policy-stalinism-nep-bolsheviks-october-revolution .
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May 1, 2020 01:30
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Folks, do not post "Anne Frank was a Becky," unless you are a Don Hughes level poster.
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May 1, 2020 02:13
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i'd like to speak to the holocaust's manager please
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May 1, 2020 02:20
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comedyblissoption posted:the end goal should be an economy that allocates based on need and not based on markets this is exactly right, the conception of what goods should be produced would be divorced from the concept of profitability the forced imposition of work and the consumer culture which accompanies it in the current socioeconomic milieu makes this difficult to conceive
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May 1, 2020 02:33
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Ardennes posted:Also, the left-opposition's big plan was to push collectivization and centralized industrialization back in 1923-1924, which was way too early to do. The NEP was necessary in the first place if only to allow state enterprises some breathing room to re-tool and also for the Soviets to get access to foreign markets. There is a pretty good chance that early collectivization/force grain purchasing would have lead to even earlier supply issues especially since the Soviet Union barely had any tractors at that point. Collectivization was a continuation of NEP. NEP was amalgamation of small scale production and collectivization was amalgamation of farms into cooperatives and state farms. Lenin wrote: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/apr/09.htm Report on the Tax in Kind posted:
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May 1, 2020 03:07
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Atrocious Joe posted:Folks, do not post "Anne Frank was a Becky," unless you are a Don Hughes level poster.
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May 1, 2020 03:08
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galenanorth posted:There is one issue I thought of with regard to democratic socialism. I buy into the idea that workers can manage their company just as well as capitalists can, but as far as how the overall economy fares, what will be the impact of the money the workers keep being unable to flow across different industries, say from paper manufacturing to pharmaceuticals or from grocery stores to airlines? I guess workers would probably be better off as a result of the net change, but not the same as if workers had all the money that capitalists have now. There doesn't seem like something it'd be possible for there to be evidence for, like how there are plenty of successful WSDEs for the "workers manage as well as capitalists" part i don't actually think "democratic socialism" is a real thing with actual policy prescriptions or theoretical underpinnings. it's just "socialism but without all the bad parts you learn about in social studies" and might signify either that the person professing it is not very well read, or that the person professing it thinks YOU'RE not very well read Ardennes posted:I believe the switcheroo happened only after the first five-year plan started. I know that Trotsky's line was that Stalin's collectivization was really bad...but he would have done it better because of ... reasons that will be decided on later. this article coming out hot on the heels of "kautsky was right, actually" drives me up the drat wall
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May 1, 2020 04:23
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Wtf is the Soviet Union
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May 1, 2020 04:36
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comedyblissoption posted:the end goal should be an economy that allocates based on need and not based on markets The problem with this is that it's a very incomplete description of an economy because so much economic activity isn't based on need. For example a socdem country could be said to satisfy that criteria because everyone can get food, shelter, clothes, healthcare, education, entertainment, etc. But it's still capitalist
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May 1, 2020 04:42
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Jewel Repetition posted:The problem with this is that it's a very incomplete description of an economy because so much economic activity isn't based on need. For example a socdem country could be said to satisfy that criteria because everyone can get food, shelter, clothes, healthcare, education, entertainment, etc. But it's still capitalist a social democratic economy is still ruled by the profit motive, the stewards of the state just have the foresight and discipline to recognize that it's harder to generate profits if your population is dying of deprivation and/or in open revolt. that's why marxism is about actually seizing the means of production and controlling what gets made and for whom rather than simply extracting increasingly better deals re: health care, wages, whatever
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May 1, 2020 04:47
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Ferrinus posted:a social democratic economy is still ruled by the profit motive, the stewards of the state just have the foresight and discipline to recognize that it's harder to generate profits if your population is dying of deprivation and/or in open revolt. that's why marxism is about actually seizing the means of production and controlling what gets made and for whom rather than simply extracting increasingly better deals re: health care, wages, whatever Right. That's why comedyblissoption's definition of the ultimate economy is incomplete
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May 1, 2020 04:49
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Jewel Repetition posted:Wtf is the Soviet Union A miserable little pile of secrets
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May 1, 2020 05:22
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rip, just gave bhaskar  for a year's supply of toilet readin'
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May 1, 2020 06:04
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can someone redpill me on what's bad about markets
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May 1, 2020 07:32
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NotNut posted:can someone redpill me on what's bad about markets whats another word for a free market on insulin? murder
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May 1, 2020 07:37
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Fly Molo posted:whats another word for a free market on insulin? insulin shouldn't be a market good but I'm more talking about the idea that there should be no markets at all
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May 1, 2020 07:52
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NotNut posted:insulin shouldn't be a market good but I'm more talking about the idea that there should be no markets at all what should be a market good and why
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May 1, 2020 07:55
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NotNut posted:insulin shouldn't be a market good but I'm more talking about the idea that there should be no markets at all its a good idea. 
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May 1, 2020 08:00
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NotNut posted:can someone redpill me on what's bad about markets markets have existed for thousands of years. People would produce goods for their use and sell surplus at the market. Now people only produce for the market and for profit. That's bad
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May 1, 2020 08:14
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NotNut posted:can someone redpill me on what's bad about markets Supply is either too big or too small, never corresponding to demand; because in this unconscious condition of mankind no one knows how big supply or demand is. If demand is greater than supply the price rises and, as a result, supply is to a certain degree stimulated. As soon as it comes on to the market, prices fall; and if it becomes greater than demand, then the fall in prices is so significant that demand is once again stimulated. So it goes on unendingly a permanently unhealthy state of affairs a constant alternation of over-stimulation and flagging which precludes all advance a state of perpetual fluctuation without ever reaching its goal. This law with its constant adjustment, in which whatever is lost here is gained there, is regarded as something excellent by the economist. Yet it is obvious that this law is purely a law of nature and not a law of the mind. It is a law which produces revolution. The economist comes along with his lovely theory of demand and supply, proves to you that one can never produce too much, and practice replies with trade crises, which reappear as regularly as the comets. Of course these commercial upheavals confirm the law, confirm it exhaustively but in a manner different from that which the economist would have us believe to be the case. What are we to think of a law which can only assert itself through periodic upheavals? It is certainly a natural law based on the unconsciousness of the participants. If the producers as such knew how much the consumers required, if they were to organise production, if they were to share it out amongst themselves, then the fluctuations of competition and its tendency to crisis would be impossible. Carry on production consciously as human beings not as dispersed atoms without consciousness of your species and you have overcome all these artificial and untenable antitheses. But as long as you continue to produce in the present unconscious, thoughtless manner, at the mercy of chance for just so long trade crises will remain; and each successive crisis is bound to become more universal and therefore worse than the preceding one; is bound to impoverish a larger body of small capitalists, and to augment in increasing proportion the numbers of the class who live by labour alone, thus considerably enlarging the mass of labour to be employed (the major problem of our economists) and finally causing a social revolution such as has never been dreamt of in the philosophy of the economists. When the fluctuation of competition is small, when demand and supply, consumption and production, are almost equal, a stage must be reached in the development of production where there is so much superfluous productive power that the great mass of the population has nothing to live on, that the people starve from sheer abundance. For some considerable time England has found herself in this crazy position, in this living absurdity. When production is subject to greater fluctuations, as it is bound to be in consequence of such a situation, then the alternation of boom and crisis, overproduction and slump, set in. Thus the ultimate expression of the contradictory character of the capitalist mode of production lies in this alternation of boom and crisis, and in the coexistence of poverty and superabundance, of over-work and unemployment.
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May 1, 2020 08:17
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smarxist posted:what should be a market good and why most goods and services that aren't natural monopolies, or have very low elasticity (like insulin, or bottles of water in a crisis), or where innovation doesn't actually do anything good (like insurance). because markets are good at approximating value, because decentralized planning seems to be more robust and quicker-responding than centralized when there are no tragedies of the commons involved, and because markets incentivize greater efficiency of production and quality of products
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May 1, 2020 08:23
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Top City Homo posted:markets have existed for thousands of years. People would produce goods for their use and sell surplus at the market. Now people only produce for the market and for profit. that seems more like an argument for socialism than an argument against markets
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May 1, 2020 08:26
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Sheng-Ji Yang posted:Supply is either too big or too small, never corresponding to demand; because in this unconscious condition of mankind no one knows how big supply or demand is. If demand is greater than supply the price rises and, as a result, supply is to a certain degree stimulated. As soon as it comes on to the market, prices fall; and if it becomes greater than demand, then the fall in prices is so significant that demand is once again stimulated. So it goes on unendingly a permanently unhealthy state of affairs a constant alternation of over-stimulation and flagging which precludes all advance a state of perpetual fluctuation without ever reaching its goal. This law with its constant adjustment, in which whatever is lost here is gained there, is regarded as something excellent by the economist. Yet it is obvious that this law is purely a law of nature and not a law of the mind. It is a law which produces revolution. The economist comes along with his lovely theory of demand and supply, proves to you that one can never produce too much, and practice replies with trade crises, which reappear as regularly as the comets. Of course these commercial upheavals confirm the law, confirm it exhaustively but in a manner different from that which the economist would have us believe to be the case. What are we to think of a law which can only assert itself through periodic upheavals? It is certainly a natural law based on the unconsciousness of the participants. If the producers as such knew how much the consumers required, if they were to organise production, if they were to share it out amongst themselves, then the fluctuations of competition and its tendency to crisis would be impossible. Carry on production consciously as human beings not as dispersed atoms without consciousness of your species and you have overcome all these artificial and untenable antitheses. But as long as you continue to produce in the present unconscious, thoughtless manner, at the mercy of chance for just so long trade crises will remain; and each successive crisis is bound to become more universal and therefore worse than the preceding one; is bound to impoverish a larger body of small capitalists, and to augment in increasing proportion the numbers of the class who live by labour alone, thus considerably enlarging the mass of labour to be employed (the major problem of our economists) and finally causing a social revolution such as has never been dreamt of in the philosophy of the economists. the main critique here seems to be that supply and demand don't respond quick enough to each other and it was written 200 years ago before there was computers or even cars
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May 1, 2020 08:30
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Jewel Repetition posted:Right. That's why comedyblissoption's definition of the ultimate economy is incomplete He was pretty clearly speaking in a workers own the means of production context
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May 1, 2020 08:36
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What is the point of a market? If people need more widgets, produce more widgets. If anything, the computers and massive logistical network we have today would make a planned econoky even easier imo. Also wanna thank posters for all the effort posts on the cpc and china's revolution stuff
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May 1, 2020 08:36
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NotNut posted:the main critique here seems to be that supply and demand don't respond quick enough to each other and it was written 200 years ago before there was computers or even cars do you believe markets as they exist now are rational because of computers? Are bubbles not a thing anymore? Why did the recession happen in 2008? But no, that critique applies now just as much as in the 1840s and has nothing to do with "responding quickly enough" Sheng-Ji Yang fucked around with this message at 08:39 on May 1, 2020 |
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May 1, 2020 08:37
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NotNut posted:can someone redpill me on what's bad about markets Empirical failure at allocating resources efficiently: you only need to ask corporations like Walmart why they don't run internal markets. The only good part about markets is that they enable pretty complex economic operations to happen without any form of organization or even actual trust between the economic actors. Organizing production is hard, takes time to master for each kind of enterprise, and requires a lot of trust on part of relative equals and a strict and powerful hierarchy for the rest, so markets in general still can't be immediately abolished by decree, only to the extent the requisite organization already exists. The *bad* bad part about markets is the labor market specifically, because it pushes market actors to compete on the basis of infinite exponential expansion and naturally centralizes wealth into more and more monopolistic arrangements. As soon as workers are allocated on the basis of payment, enterprise can and has to expand in proportion to its monetary success. The good part about that though is that it makes more and more of the economy a non-market economy: again, capital doesn't run internal markets because they suck compared to what they get by consciously organizing production. But of course as long as the non-market economy is run for the purpose of accumulating capital within the external market, we are just talking about efficient tyranny. And middle class people instinctively react to that tyranny by imagining an escape into markets (start your own business, break up the monopolies...) Basically if you want to make the middle class fantasy real, you have to take out the labor market. Then market actors aren't going to grow to capture their market or the political system anymore, but they're also going to be worthless in terms of advancing the economy in any meaningful way. Like the USSR had an army of small businesses that filled the gaps in state-organized production but were technologically stuck with what was sold to them and could in no way stay relevant in any field where the state just brought in complex organization to do things. All in all, markets either produce both development and tyranny as two sides of the same coin, or neither, in which case they're inoffensive but very suboptimal.
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May 1, 2020 08:47
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look just let me make the economy be like factorio
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