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Pentecoastal Elites posted:there's no book you could possibly write to convince someone of the merits of communism over anarchism that would be even a fraction as powerful as this thread Using the free time in my 8-hour-day to poo poo talk anarchists who died for me, lol
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Jul 19, 2021 16:06
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xtal posted:Using the free time in my 8-hour-day to poo poo talk anarchists who died for me, lol if i want to poo poo talk imaginary characters id do it in one of the entertainment subforums
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Jul 19, 2021 16:09
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xtal posted:Using the free time in my 8-hour-day to poo poo talk anarchists who died for me, lol strong veteran's day energy
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Jul 19, 2021 16:10
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xtal posted:Using the free time in my 8-hour-day to poo poo talk anarchists who died for me, lol man i wish more would
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Jul 19, 2021 16:11
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Cerebral Bore posted:if i want to poo poo talk imaginary characters id do it in one of the entertainment subforums lmao god drat
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Jul 19, 2021 16:11
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Rutibex posted:so the party insiders of the USSR didn't steal the state collective property and make themselves billionaires? please tell me how collective ownership of the means of production still works in russia today most of those guys got hosed, too. the ability to defect from the bureaucracy and get personally rich only exists if the state becomes so weak that no one else can stop you, which is why comissars and steering committee chairs of every stripe at best enjoyed getting to be first in line to buy the same cars everyone else got for the ussr's lifespan additionally you're super wrong about the practicality of collective ownership; the workers at a factory could fire their boss and the product of that factory went to the state, not the manager
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Jul 19, 2021 16:11
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xtal posted:Using the free time in my 8-hour-day to poo poo talk anarchists who died for me, lol this is the thread to poo poo talk anarchists though. the regular anarchist thread you want is the Magic and Witchcraft one
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Jul 19, 2021 16:12
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F Stop Fitzgerald posted:this is the thread to poo poo talk anarchists though. the regular anarchist thread you want is the Magic and Witchcraft one lol
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Jul 19, 2021 16:13
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Ferrinus posted:most of those guys got hosed, too. the ability to defect from the bureaucracy and get personally rich only exists if the state becomes so weak that no one else can stop you, which is why comissars and steering committee chairs of every stripe at best enjoyed getting to be first in line to buy the same cars everyone else got for the ussr's lifespan Could yall go into more detail about things like this? I think that the non sovcit anarchists are under the impression that the bureaucratic class (commissars?) in the Soviet Union and China, specifically, seem to have enriched themselves in their roles. How much of that is simple propaganda I don't know. Similarly people like Beria existing seems like a bit of a black spot.
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Jul 19, 2021 16:21
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lol
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Jul 19, 2021 16:35
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Kaedric posted:Could yall go into more detail about things like this? I think that the non sovcit anarchists are under the impression that the bureaucratic class (commissars?) in the Soviet Union and China, specifically, seem to have enriched themselves in their roles. How much of that is simple propaganda I don't know. Similarly people like Beria existing seems like a bit of a black spot. i mean they did, bureaucrats or other administrative figures are always going to create perks for themselves whether they're officially supposed to have them. the question is the class context the bureaucracy exists in and therefore A) what results bureaucrats have to deliver in order to get rewards that they can then leverage or exploit and B) what rewards are even possible there was money in the USSR, but it was used to buy consumer goods at fixed prices. things like cars and apartments were rationed off by queue, and beyond that money was worthless - you couldn't buy a building and start renting it to tenants or buy a factory and start selling the goods or whatever. so, a venal and corrupt bureaucrat could certainly make sure they were at the front of the line for nice apartments or buy more luxuries on the black market or something but they just, you know, lived slightly to moderately better than regular people (and did so at risk of censure, since technically they weren't supposed to). i should note that the actual best-paid citizens of the soviet union weren't administrators or party officials, but rather artists and scientists under capitalism none of these restrictions exist, so instead of lots of bureaucrats living a little better you get a handful of bureaucrats, or as it happened kgb agents, ascending to stratospheric heights while everyone else suddenly loses their health care and housing
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Jul 19, 2021 16:39
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Becoming capitalist caused massive human misery on a scale never seen before: malnutrition, alcoholism, poverty, the biggest recorded decline in human life expectancy, etc. Anarchists: Why would communism do this?
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Jul 19, 2021 16:39
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Kaedric posted:Could yall go into more detail about things like this? I think that the non sovcit anarchists are under the impression that the bureaucratic class (commissars?) in the Soviet Union and China, specifically, seem to have enriched themselves in their roles. How much of that is simple propaganda I don't know. Similarly people like Beria existing seems like a bit of a black spot. the "enrichening" that went on in the ussr was poo poo like getting a nicer flat or a newer car if you had the connections, and if that is the extent of inequality in your society then you're in about an infinitely better place than where we are now
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Jul 19, 2021 16:39
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evilpicard posted:Becoming capitalist caused massive human misery on a scale never seen before: malnutrition, alcoholism, poverty, the biggest recorded decline in human life expectancy, etc. but think about how much more freedom and personal liberty they had afterwards!
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Jul 19, 2021 16:42
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it's also worth mentioning that the basic roles and therefore incentives of administrative institutions were different under socialism. if you're a greedy bureaucrat you need to actually do your job well or at least appear to do it well if you want rewards and kickbacks, and it does make a difference whether that job is making sure every collective farm gets its free tractor delivered by a due date or making sure that as few people get their surgery paid for as possible
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Jul 19, 2021 16:43
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Anarchism is funny because it asserts that hierarchy is the fundamental problem with human civilization and then sets up systems that would immediately be dominated by demagogues and ethnonationalists. Also pretty much every anarchist waves away the glaring issues that having an anarchist society would have as something that would be decided by the revolution because there is no workable anarchism at scale Another funny thing is ParEcon, which says that some jobs are more desirable than others so for instance a nuclear engineer should also work as a trash collector sometimes to balance things out. Not very realistic or efficient! Paraecon, i guess is economics for ghosts 
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Jul 19, 2021 16:46
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Rutibex posted:there is no such thing as collective rights. rights held in collective are just the privileges of whoever is in charge The Problem With Human Rights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhRBsJYWR8Q Cerebral Bore posted:if i want to poo poo talk imaginary characters id do it in one of the entertainment subforums F Stop Fitzgerald posted:this is the thread to poo poo talk anarchists though. the regular anarchist thread you want is the Magic and Witchcraft one 
PhilippAchtel has issued a correction as of 17:10 on Jul 19, 2021 |
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Jul 19, 2021 16:52
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Pentecoastal Elites posted:there's no book you could possibly write to convince someone of the merits of communism over anarchism that would be even a fraction as powerful as this thread
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Jul 19, 2021 17:32
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Jul 19, 2021 17:43
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Rutibex posted:so the party insiders of the USSR didn't steal the state collective property and make themselves billionaires? please tell me how collective ownership of the means of production still works in russia today quote:Many on the U.S. Left have exhibited a Soviet bashing and Red baiting that matches anything on the Right in its enmity and crudity. Listen to Noam Chomsky holding forth about "left intellectuals" who try to "rise to power on the backs of mass popular movements" and "then beat the people into submission .... Yo u start off as basically a Leninist who is going to be part of the Red bureaucracy. Yo u see later that power doesn't lie that way, and you very quickly become an ideologist of the right. ... We're seeing it right now in the [former J Soviet Union. The same guys who were communist thugs two years back, are now running banks and [are] enthusiastic free marketeers and praising Americans" (Z Magazine, 10/95). Chomsky's imagery is heavily indebted to the same U.S. corporate political culture he so frequently criticizes on other issues. In his mind, the revolution was betrayed by a coterie of"communist thugs" who merely hunger for power rather than wanting the power to end hunger. In fact, the communists did not "very quickly" switch to the Right but struggled in the face of a momentous onslaught to keep Soviet socialism alive for more than seventy years. To be sure, in the Soviet Union's waning days some, like Boris Yeltsin, crossed over to capitalist ranks, but others continued to resist free-market incursions at great cost to themselves, many meeting their deaths during Ye ltsin's violent repression of the Russian parliament in 1993.
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Jul 19, 2021 17:48
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Kaedric posted:Could yall go into more detail about things like this? I think that the non sovcit anarchists are under the impression that the bureaucratic class (commissars?) in the Soviet Union and China, specifically, seem to have enriched themselves in their roles. How much of that is simple propaganda I don't know. Similarly people like Beria existing seems like a bit of a black spot. First, in communist countries there was less economic inequality than under capitalism. The perks enjoyed by party and government elites were modest by corporate CEO standards in the West, as were their personal incomes and life styles. Soviet leaders like Yu ri Andropov and Leonid Brezhnev lived not in lavishly appointed mansions like the White House, but in relatively large apartments in a housing project near the Kremlin set aside for government leaders. They had limousines at their disposal (like most other heads of state) and access to large dachas where they entertained visiting dignitaries. But they had none of the immense personal wealth that most U.S. leaders possess. The "lavish life" enjoyed by East Germany's party leaders, as widely publicized in the U.S. press, included a $725 yearly allowance in hard currency, and housing in an exclusive settlement on the outskirts of Berlin that sported a sauna, an indoor pool, and a fitness center shared by all the residents. They also could shop in stores that carried Western goods such as bananas, jeans, and Japanese electronics. The U.S. press never pointed out that ordinary East Germans had access to public pools and gyms and could buy jeans and electronics (though usually not of the imported variety) . Nor was the "lavish" consumption enjoyed by East German leaders contrasted to the truly opulent life style enjoyed by the Western plutocracy. Second, in communist countries, productive forces were not organized for capital gain and private enrichment; public ownership of the · means of production supplanted private ownership. Individuals could not hire other people and accumulate great personal wealth fro m their labor. Again, compared to Western standards, differences in earnings and savings among the populace were generally modest. The income spread between highest and lowest earners in the Soviet Union was about five to one. In the United States, the spread in yearly income between the top multibillionaires and the working poor is more like 10,000 to 1.
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Jul 19, 2021 17:51
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i am once again asking everyone to read blackshirts and reds
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Jul 19, 2021 17:51
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This got shared on a Lefty Facebook last week  The biggest response was "But the State didn't wither, instead you crushed Kronstadt" these loving idiots think that the State is going to wither away, in 4 years during a Civil War
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Jul 19, 2021 18:07
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see, this kinda poo poo is why im absolutely convinced that you need to keep the anarchists away from any real power at all costs because holy poo poo they'd get us all killed within weeks
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Jul 19, 2021 18:12
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mila kunis posted:i am once again asking everyone to read blackshirts and reds shameful there’s no hardcover of this
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Jul 19, 2021 18:17
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KomradeX posted:This got shared on a Lefty Facebook last week radek's notes on kronstadt need to be required reading
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Jul 19, 2021 18:17
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MLSM posted:shameful there’s no hardcover of this enjoy: https://eastsidemarxism.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/michael-parenti-blackshirts-and-reds-rational-fascism-and-the-overthrow-of-communism.pdf
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Jul 19, 2021 18:17
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MLSM posted:shameful there’s no hardcover of this There appears to be one on amazon for 800 dollars
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Jul 19, 2021 18:50
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Also thank you for the detailed answers about the soviet union. Does the same hold true for China? I feel like Cuba and Venezuela(though not communist) don't suffer as much from this characterization for whatever reason.
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Jul 19, 2021 18:51
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Kaedric posted:Also thank you for the detailed answers about the soviet union. Does the same hold true for China? the income disparities allowed are obviously much larger in china given that there are billionaires and all (which has been part of a deliberate economic strategy) but the important part is that in china the billionaires are subservient to the state and the cpc rather than the other way around
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Jul 19, 2021 19:23
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Kaedric posted:Also thank you for the detailed answers about the soviet union. Does the same hold true for China? it varies by the country the ussr never had a real capitalist economy after the days of the NEP in the 20s - the state always ultimately controlled firms, prices, net social products, etc and allocated those products on the basis of democratically-decided plans of production. towards the last ten or so years the USSR liberalized to an extent by allowing firms to set their own prices and compete a bit, but you could never get rich and start a business or something like that after its revolution china also had a classical socialist planned economy, and towards the end of mao's life undertook the cultural revolution (with mixed results) to try to sweep away a lot of old vestiges of authority, tradition, property ownership, etc. however despite china's attempts in the great leap forward it wasn't able to undertake technical development on par with the rest of the world under its own power, so after mao's death deng xiaoping's cpc enacted "reform and opening up" which liberalized the chinese economy and allowed for private ownership and foreign investment, albeit with baffles like foreign investors being absolutely mandated to share their technological secrets with chinese companies, all companies needing to have communist party members on their boards, etc. this allowed for lots of exploitation and the creation of a lot of billionaires and especially in the 90s/early 2000s looked really dire for the prospect of chinese socialism, but a lot of recent developments have proven that chinese capital is still under cpc control cuba also has basically a planned economy that's sort of liberalized a bit around the corners, so while they've got economic problems as far as i know individual administrators and bureaucrats getting too rich and powerful is not one of them. they do have worries like, the racial wealth gap is growing because white cubans are much more likely to have expat relatives who can send money back home than black cubans most venezuelan socialists would tell you that venezuela is a capitalist country, just one that - thanks to being ruled by the PSUV, a socialist party - is attempting to construct socialism. so there are rich industrialists exploiting their workers in venezuela that have a big influence over/lots of friction with the PSUV, but at the same time the PSUV has allocated a lot of land and resources to the development of semi-independent venezuelan communes which are meant to be the seeds of a new socialist society. this is reported directly by a delegation from the DSA's international committee which got to visit venezuela and even meet maduro last month vietnam was a planned economy able to depend on the USSR to stay afloat until the USSR collapsed, at which point it had to liberalize as a condition of taking in IMF loans for its own development, so it's also got rich businessmen, exploitation, etc. that said the communist party is still in charge and working to advance progressively towards socialism despite capitalism being the country's main economic engine, and they've been seeing steady improvements in vital statistics, economic equality, etc over the past few decades. luna oi's youtube videos are good sources here
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Jul 19, 2021 19:48
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xtal posted:The two foundational trees of anarchism are individual and collective. Anarcho-communism, for example, is just communism without a state. There's nothing individual about it.
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Jul 19, 2021 20:04
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R. Mute posted:communism is communism without a state. i'm once again asking anarchists to read a single piece of theory that isn't the No, gently caress You, Dad Manifesto One might even go as far as to say when the workers take over, the state will naturally dissolve.
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Jul 19, 2021 20:05
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Ferrinus posted:it varies by the country the big takeaway from this stuff for me is that the big challenge actually facing communism is defeating the west. insofar as your bureaucracy and technical intelligentsia are able to metastasize into a capitalist class that's out of your control, that's a symptom of you getting couped or losing a trade war or something. if you can keep hold of your own economy then there's still obviously going to be corruption, graft, whatever, but those things are just regular-rear end symptoms of living in a society, and able to be managed by that selfsame society, rather than existential threats to worker power
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Jul 19, 2021 20:21
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all roads lead to Maoist Third Worldism
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Jul 19, 2021 20:32
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Epic High Five posted:all roads lead to Maoist Third Worldism https://twitter.com/Hezbolsonaro/status/1416106696741580802
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Jul 19, 2021 20:33
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Epic High Five posted:all roads lead to Maoism Yes
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Jul 19, 2021 20:39
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Cerebral Bore posted:see, this kinda poo poo is why im absolutely convinced that you need to keep the anarchists away from any real power at all costs because holy poo poo they'd get us all killed within weeks thats fine i dont want any power thats a hierarchy man if you communists manage to overthrow capitalism i'm certainly not going to try and stop you I'll even lend a hand. but after the revolution we're going to have a discussion, one which hopefully doesn't end with me living in an alaskan gulag for counterrevolutionary thought. i'll just be happy if the capitalists go there first
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Jul 19, 2021 20:43
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AnimeIsTrash posted:One might even go as far as to say when the workers take over, the state will naturally dissolve. That's the best part. Wiki says a "communist society is characterized by common ownership of the means of production with free access to the articles of consumption and is classless and stateless, implying the end of the exploitation of labour." So as far as being stateless, communists and anarchists agree. The issue is with the vanguard party and how power tends to corrupt anyone who touches it. There hasn't been a fully realized communist state yet because they all end up indulging in power once they have it. Cerebral Bore posted:see, this kinda poo poo is why im absolutely convinced that you need to keep the anarchists away from any real power at all costs because holy poo poo they'd get us all killed within weeks You should reject anyone who wants power, they're the least deserving of it
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Jul 19, 2021 21:04
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you sound like the latest adam curtis documentary. "power" this and "power" that, not a whiff of "class" or "capital"
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Jul 19, 2021 21:08
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