Socialism is not the absence of wealth. Every state has mixed forms of ownership, but the principle aspect is what’s dominant. The USSR did not have “oligarchs who stole from the people,” they had a socialist economy oriented towards satisfying the needs of everyone. Free education and housing, healthcare, dramatic improvements in infrastructure, huge increases in living standards, all came from the socialist system. Same for the PRC, though their safety nets aren’t as strong. This idea that socialism is about equalitarianism is exactly why you’re being anti-Marxist, Marx railed against equalitarians.
Cuba has a very similar structure and economy to the USSR and PRC, with their own characteristics. The main difference is that they are much smaller and much more cut off.
The USSR absolutely had oligarchs, don’t be absurd. I’m not strictly talking about the Politburo…who stole plenty and took the fall, I’m talking about the oligarchs - who didn’t blink into existence out of the ashes of the USSR - but rather came to be because of what they amassed at the expense of the people during the USRR. The savvy middle managers, the smugglers, the entire KGB. The Art of the Bribe is an excellent book that methodically outlinines how these proto-oligarchs came to be and how they destroyed and corrupted socialism. Telling me about the idealistic version of the USSR isn’t interesting…I’m more interested in reality.
Meh…save the “Marx wasn’t an egalitarian” stuff for the people who aren’t socialists. There absolutely was a very large wealth and power class in the USSR as there is in China now…both would be abhorrent to Marx. There’s a difference between being somewhat better off because you work harder and/or are responsible for administering a novel concept…and literally never working because you have so much power and influence you don’t need to: those people were lousy in the USSR, and exist to a lesser extent in China.
It’s an apples and oranges conversation because it can be argued that the Chinese billionaires hurt their people less than the oligarchs/kleptocrats did in the USSR…but you first must acknowledge they exist - if you want to move past the mass intentions of their systems and have the conversation about how the classes in communism were/are bad and why.
The reason I prefer Cuba isn’t because their system is a superior application of socialism…but rather because Cuba is so small and their rich people tend to be more enmeshed in the population and steal less/have less to steal.
I’m not saying all this because I don’t like socialism and dismiss The USSR and China as failures out of hand - quite the contrary - I’m saying it because socialism is a project that we need to achieve and we have to learn from what’s been done/being tried to achieve it.
I’m not being absurd, you are. You’re defining the mode of production of a majority collectivized and planned economy that was oriented towards satisfying the needs of everyone as a “kleptocracy.” This is ridiculous and requires an extreme level of evidence explaining why such a focus was both put on satisfying everyone’s needs, and on this “kleptocracy” you claim. You’re confusing the capitalists that rose from the ashes of the USSR with the USSR’s mode of production. I’m aware that China has billionaires, and again, you seem to be under the impression that Marxism is about equalitarianism and not about gradually collectivizing production and distribution to satisfy the needs of everyone.
Good reading for you would be China has Billionaires. Marxists don’t deny the struggles of the USSR and PRC, we do learn from them, what we don’t do is dismiss their successes or take liberal perspectives on them like you’re doing here.
I’m aware that you consider yourself a socialist, but your analysis is far from that of a socialist.
I gave you evidence…and you ignored it. I can provide additional evidence beyond ‘54, if you acknowledge those archives.
You believe Marxism allows for the billionaire and political classes in China that control the means of production? Bold.
You don’t “own” Marxism, btw. Most Marxists I know at least acknowledge and criticize the very large problems in the USSR and China. I mean…I also could be considered a Marxist…but I consider myself a post-Marxist because he’s been improved on. I also think we can do better than Marx the man as a foundation - don’t get me started on Lenin, lol. The weird thing is I like Stalin (but Che all the way).
This isn’t zero sum: I’m not saying either is all bad because they have kleptocrats and billionaires. We haven’t even broached the topic of what I think about the USSR and China as a whole (because you’re so hung up on denying their systematic problems in favour of focusing on the positives?) in contrast to what we see in the western democracies (for example) you’re typing as if i condemn them and I prefer the USA, or something…not a thing.
Yes, you indeed linked a US Federally funded liberal historian that is paid to present a certain view of the USSR. If you want sources on the socialist economy of the USSR, and how it was run, here are some great ones:
I don’t own Marxism, correct. I also study it a great deal, organize in real life with a communist party. I do acknowledge real faults with the USSR and PRC, but I don’t acknowledge fake ones. You should read the essay I linked called China Has Billionaires, it explains China’s position as an early socialist economy and its process of gradually collectivizing production and distribution. The class that controls the state and holds the principle aspects of the economy in China is the proletariat, as it was in the USSR, as it is in Cuba.
You defining Cuba as more correctly socialist because its rich people are poorer is what I mean by you being anti-Marxist, this poverty fetishism isn’t Marxist in the slightest.
That’s a ridiculous way to frame a public university employee…but I’m just going to declare an impasse and drop it if we can’t agree on facts.
Talk about virtue signalling and purity testing, yikes. Still, thank you for the conversation, I will admit I’m a little amused at you trying to “out socialist” me, but I don’t feel I need to list my credentials in return…I’m comfortable with how militantly virulent I am on the subject of socialism ;)
Like I said: put two leftists together, and they’ll find a way to argue. I’ve been guilty of it too…it is what it is.
Financial support for this research was provided by a number of foundations and organizations, including the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH), the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (NCEEER), the Archives and Library of the Hoover Institution for War and Peace at Stanford University, the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Open Society Archive (Budapest). His first book was Inventing a Soviet Countryside: State Power and the Transformation of Rural Russia, 1917-1929 (2004).
There’s a concerted effort within western academia to keep demonizing socialism, and funding is one of the ways the state keeps that going. I provided more than plenty sources given an alternative view. None of this is about me trying to “out-socialist” you, nor virtue signal nor purity test. It’s about trying to come to a consistent understanding grounded in reality, from a proletarian point of view, rather than accepting liberal framing of socialism.
Seem like he’s a typical academic. I get it…you prefer to muddy the waters and shoot the messenger then engage with the content. Alternate view to…something you didn’t read? I assure you it doesn’t “demonize socialism”…it just chronicles events according to disclosure/a “data dump” of declassified files. It’s not ideological…it’s for eggheads who don’t want to read thousands of documents. When I read it it just helped me understand the playing field better.
The problems with the USSR weren’t with socialism, you’re missing my message. They were with capitalists corrupting it from within. There’s certainly an argument to be made that too much control was allocated to regional bureaucrats - when targeted positive/idealistic authoritarianism was more appropriate while socialism was in its infancy. But this in the context of just Russia, because I don’t agree with the expansion that created the USSR: my opinion is it created an unmanageably large state with too many “distracting” regional issues that were ripe for capitalists to exploit. Those faithful to the cause were simply stretched too thin and they couldn’t deliver a meaningful improvement to enough people, largely because the guilty regional bureaucrats weren’t loyal to the cause and they created systematic exploitation of the people they were tasked to help. Obviously I’m being unrealistic…just trying to get closer to 20/20 hindsight.
Socialism is not the absence of wealth. Every state has mixed forms of ownership, but the principle aspect is what’s dominant. The USSR did not have “oligarchs who stole from the people,” they had a socialist economy oriented towards satisfying the needs of everyone. Free education and housing, healthcare, dramatic improvements in infrastructure, huge increases in living standards, all came from the socialist system. Same for the PRC, though their safety nets aren’t as strong. This idea that socialism is about equalitarianism is exactly why you’re being anti-Marxist, Marx railed against equalitarians.
Cuba has a very similar structure and economy to the USSR and PRC, with their own characteristics. The main difference is that they are much smaller and much more cut off.
The USSR absolutely had oligarchs, don’t be absurd. I’m not strictly talking about the Politburo…who stole plenty and took the fall, I’m talking about the oligarchs - who didn’t blink into existence out of the ashes of the USSR - but rather came to be because of what they amassed at the expense of the people during the USRR. The savvy middle managers, the smugglers, the entire KGB. The Art of the Bribe is an excellent book that methodically outlinines how these proto-oligarchs came to be and how they destroyed and corrupted socialism. Telling me about the idealistic version of the USSR isn’t interesting…I’m more interested in reality.
Meh…save the “Marx wasn’t an egalitarian” stuff for the people who aren’t socialists. There absolutely was a very large wealth and power class in the USSR as there is in China now…both would be abhorrent to Marx. There’s a difference between being somewhat better off because you work harder and/or are responsible for administering a novel concept…and literally never working because you have so much power and influence you don’t need to: those people were lousy in the USSR, and exist to a lesser extent in China.
It’s an apples and oranges conversation because it can be argued that the Chinese billionaires hurt their people less than the oligarchs/kleptocrats did in the USSR…but you first must acknowledge they exist - if you want to move past the mass intentions of their systems and have the conversation about how the classes in communism were/are bad and why.
The reason I prefer Cuba isn’t because their system is a superior application of socialism…but rather because Cuba is so small and their rich people tend to be more enmeshed in the population and steal less/have less to steal.
I’m not saying all this because I don’t like socialism and dismiss The USSR and China as failures out of hand - quite the contrary - I’m saying it because socialism is a project that we need to achieve and we have to learn from what’s been done/being tried to achieve it.
I’m not being absurd, you are. You’re defining the mode of production of a majority collectivized and planned economy that was oriented towards satisfying the needs of everyone as a “kleptocracy.” This is ridiculous and requires an extreme level of evidence explaining why such a focus was both put on satisfying everyone’s needs, and on this “kleptocracy” you claim. You’re confusing the capitalists that rose from the ashes of the USSR with the USSR’s mode of production. I’m aware that China has billionaires, and again, you seem to be under the impression that Marxism is about equalitarianism and not about gradually collectivizing production and distribution to satisfy the needs of everyone.
Good reading for you would be China has Billionaires. Marxists don’t deny the struggles of the USSR and PRC, we do learn from them, what we don’t do is dismiss their successes or take liberal perspectives on them like you’re doing here.
I’m aware that you consider yourself a socialist, but your analysis is far from that of a socialist.
I gave you evidence…and you ignored it. I can provide additional evidence beyond ‘54, if you acknowledge those archives.
You believe Marxism allows for the billionaire and political classes in China that control the means of production? Bold.
You don’t “own” Marxism, btw. Most Marxists I know at least acknowledge and criticize the very large problems in the USSR and China. I mean…I also could be considered a Marxist…but I consider myself a post-Marxist because he’s been improved on. I also think we can do better than Marx the man as a foundation - don’t get me started on Lenin, lol. The weird thing is I like Stalin (but Che all the way).
This isn’t zero sum: I’m not saying either is all bad because they have kleptocrats and billionaires. We haven’t even broached the topic of what I think about the USSR and China as a whole (because you’re so hung up on denying their systematic problems in favour of focusing on the positives?) in contrast to what we see in the western democracies (for example) you’re typing as if i condemn them and I prefer the USA, or something…not a thing.
Yes, you indeed linked a US Federally funded liberal historian that is paid to present a certain view of the USSR. If you want sources on the socialist economy of the USSR, and how it was run, here are some great ones:
Is the Red Flag Flying? The Political Economy of the Soviet Union Today
Soviet Democracy
Russian Justice
This Soviet World
Blackshirts and Reds
All much better sources.
I don’t own Marxism, correct. I also study it a great deal, organize in real life with a communist party. I do acknowledge real faults with the USSR and PRC, but I don’t acknowledge fake ones. You should read the essay I linked called China Has Billionaires, it explains China’s position as an early socialist economy and its process of gradually collectivizing production and distribution. The class that controls the state and holds the principle aspects of the economy in China is the proletariat, as it was in the USSR, as it is in Cuba.
You defining Cuba as more correctly socialist because its rich people are poorer is what I mean by you being anti-Marxist, this poverty fetishism isn’t Marxist in the slightest.
That’s a ridiculous way to frame a public university employee…but I’m just going to declare an impasse and drop it if we can’t agree on facts.
Talk about virtue signalling and purity testing, yikes. Still, thank you for the conversation, I will admit I’m a little amused at you trying to “out socialist” me, but I don’t feel I need to list my credentials in return…I’m comfortable with how militantly virulent I am on the subject of socialism ;)
Like I said: put two leftists together, and they’ll find a way to argue. I’ve been guilty of it too…it is what it is.
Not just any public university employee:
There’s a concerted effort within western academia to keep demonizing socialism, and funding is one of the ways the state keeps that going. I provided more than plenty sources given an alternative view. None of this is about me trying to “out-socialist” you, nor virtue signal nor purity test. It’s about trying to come to a consistent understanding grounded in reality, from a proletarian point of view, rather than accepting liberal framing of socialism.
Seem like he’s a typical academic. I get it…you prefer to muddy the waters and shoot the messenger then engage with the content. Alternate view to…something you didn’t read? I assure you it doesn’t “demonize socialism”…it just chronicles events according to disclosure/a “data dump” of declassified files. It’s not ideological…it’s for eggheads who don’t want to read thousands of documents. When I read it it just helped me understand the playing field better.
The problems with the USSR weren’t with socialism, you’re missing my message. They were with capitalists corrupting it from within. There’s certainly an argument to be made that too much control was allocated to regional bureaucrats - when targeted positive/idealistic authoritarianism was more appropriate while socialism was in its infancy. But this in the context of just Russia, because I don’t agree with the expansion that created the USSR: my opinion is it created an unmanageably large state with too many “distracting” regional issues that were ripe for capitalists to exploit. Those faithful to the cause were simply stretched too thin and they couldn’t deliver a meaningful improvement to enough people, largely because the guilty regional bureaucrats weren’t loyal to the cause and they created systematic exploitation of the people they were tasked to help. Obviously I’m being unrealistic…just trying to get closer to 20/20 hindsight.