Thread about how a socialist economy would work

Why is it necessary for the party to exist to fight of counterrevolution though? Why can't the state itself handle that? If the goal is to exclude reactionaries from entering the government then I fail to see how having a party would stop that. It didn't keep revisionism at bay in the USSR, China, or really anywhere apart from maybe the DPRK.

Why not a two party state, but both the parties are socialist and differ only on social policy?

It seems to me that if you are going to have a one party state then you might as well have a no party state, and if you have a no party state you might as well have a multi-party state. I think that a socialist constitution that would make it nearly impossible to restore capitalism through legal means would be sufficient to prevent liberals from staging a counterrevolution through reform. All parties would have to swear allegiance to the constitution to be legitimate, and any attempt to restore capitalism through force is a job for the police and military, not the party.

I should clarify that I mean that stopping any attempt to restore capitalism by force is a job for the police and military.

Read motherfucker read.

Yeah because vanguard party worked so well last time

Also inb4

Face it. The vanguard party model is IRRETRIEVABLY flawed. You're just handing the entire country over to politicians without leaving an alternative to the people should the organization itself become corrupted or it's principles degraded. Counter revolutionary actors fucking coated the CCCP for it's entire goddam existence, literally from inception in the RSDLP days when Tsarist agents infiltrated it all way till Yeltsin (a fellow CCCP member who was fucking CHAIRMAN OF THE RSFSR FOR GODS SAKE) fired artillery on them. The literal only thing that kept the Union and other Bloc states socialist for as long as they were was genuine popular will to keep the system alive and deter imperialism. The Party itself was often a hindrance to this process more than anything else, the USSR was a successful socialist state in spite of the Communist parties. I refuse to hear this drivel defending the vanguard anymore, it was a bad fucking idea.

What exactly is the problem with sortition? A randomly selected body will allow an automatic working class majority in all decision making. There is no concrete reason for professional politicians to exist.

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but I want to larp as stalin and vanguard parties are the only way I can do that

I object to the vanguard remaining in place after the revolution but you have to admit that in terms of revolutionary praxis it’s easily the most successful model.

The majority of people don't want to be politicians. Not everyone is fit to be a leader. Properly democratic government is a complicated issue that will require a comprehensive solution, likely exploiting modern technology.

"I can only imagine"

Utopian visions are all the same. Non-systemic wishes of fools. They exchange one deity for a much more boring yet no less unreal one.

Not that guy, but I dunno. Even Lenin wrote that "Under socialism all will govern in turn and will soon become accustomed to no one governing." The introduction of the masses to politics and administration is one of the key factors in the withering away of the state, no? And what better way to ensure that everyone takes their turn than sortition? It could conceivably be an opt-out process, even, though one would hope that inculcating a sense of duty and responsibility such that people more actively want to play their part would be part of any future social revolution.
Hardly all-encompassing, but Cockshott wrote about his experience prototyping a system for electronic direct voting in .pdf related. I'm not sure if he's ever built any kind of sortition software; at least, I found no mention of such in TANS or any of his other works that I've read. Interesting either way.

Why would you need an example of a sortition program? The problem is trivial. Random number generation → pick out from a list out of eligable candidates. Add that any special conditions you may like (40%

Communism can't function without universal participation.

I mean yeah, it's not exactly hard to do, but a simple proof of concept is always a plus for this sort of thing imo.

True but a worker’s state can. Honestly I don’t see the need to deviate too far from the models of representative democracy already in place in most western countries. The problem with liberal democracy isn’t the way it’s institutions function on paper, it’s the fact that the position and economic power of porkies allows them to exert influence far disproportionate to their numbers. But in a socialist society they wouldn’t have that power. I would also be in favour of an official mechanism that would allow the state to exercise revolutionary terror under the oversight of the legislature. I think that this is key to balancing the security needs of the revolution while ensuring that it doesn’t lead to on oligarchy like in ML states. I would envision a clause that allows for the suspension of some political freedoms and temporarily expands executive power, but would provide immunity to sitting members of the legislature. Under this clause, the executive branch would be able to rule by decree, although these could be vetoed by a 2/3 majority in parliament opposing it. The government would also have the ability to disband or outlaw any political organization apart from those currently sitting in the legislature, and declare membership in it illegal. This state of emergency would need to be re-approved by a 2/3 majority in the legislature every year, otherwise it would automatically expire. Also upon expiration, there would be an inquiry into the actions of the security forces to expose and punish any excesses such as torture, arrests of innocents, illegal executions, etc. If it seems a little overly specific then that’s probably a good thing. I think one of the Bolshevik’s biggest mistakes was exercising revolutionary terror and limited democracy (which was necessary and justified) without having a formal mechanism to make sure that it didn’t damage the integrity of worker’s democracy in the long term.

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Well let's take an analytical view of this proposition and look at the facts. First a little bit of history. I think what you find if you look at the facts is that Lenin was a right wing splinter of marxism and was regarded as such by his peers. The original marxists in Russia wanted federalised councils and were highly critical of the notion of centralised authority and vanguards. They thought it would lead to tyranny. ⛏️rotsky used to exact same points up to 1917. The authentic left wing marxists (who Lenin regarded as infantile leftists) lost, which is why you never hear about them. You only hear about the people who won. The revolution in which the Bolsheviks took over (which in my opinion should be called a coup) ended up taking power away from workers' councils which everyone else was happy with and put power into Lenin's hands- by that point I don't think there was anything even remotely socialist about the coup at that point.

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It’s not as if the Bolshevik party was run entirely by Lenin though. Sure they had de-fanged the Soviets, but within the party itself there was still a high degree of diversity and democracy until Stalin disbanded the opposition years later. I would say that Lenin laid the foundations for the death of worker’s democracy, but did so unintentionally and in response to desperate circumstances. The actual blow came from Stalin after Lenin’s death.

ah yes, that engineer level income of the elite
the definition of oligarchy, overseeing socialized MoP that while stupidly eventually being profit-oriented didn't give dividend to the management
yeah… ok, totally, sure… i mean why not, who cares about meanings of words and how things work

Actually the definition of oligarchy is a small, unaccountable elite that governs the country with little power in the hands of the general citizenry. Which is how the USSR worked considering it was a single party state, make heavy use of press censorship, demoted or expelled party members who consistently resisted or challenged the leadership, and only held party congresses every five years instead of having a proper sitting legislature. You’re delusional if you think it was a genuine democracy.

what is the supreme soviet

reddit.com/r/communism/comments/5skve6/how_soviet_citizens_shaped_the_their_constitutions/

god all you do on this board is spout black book of communism tier shit under the guise of "b-but the USSR had flaws! I am just c-critically supporting!"

what is the ban on factionalism

I'm not exactly an expert Sovietologist, but I agree more with Cockshott's view that centralization and elitism in the party were more a result of the federal parliamentary system chosen not just by Bolsheviks but the most of Marxist factions and intelligencia involved in the revolution. The Bolsheviks definitely persued a policy that led to the essential disenfranchisement of non-RSDLP/Communist representatives in Soviet elections, but federal elections by themselves generate a centralization of power and alienation between representatives and their constituencies. I find it hard to believe that, if the left SRs or Mensheviks recieved 'fair' representation in SOVNARKOM and local Soviets, it would have made much of a difference in terms of preventing poor decision making, revisionism, counter revolution, or corruption. Lenin, having livedmost of his life in aristocratic and autocratic states, probably thought the parliamentary and federative models to be quite libertarian and even democratic. Makes me wonder if an equally radical revolutionary leader from France or the United States would have pursued the same policy.

As for a government of autonomous local Soviets, I think that idea has been far too romanticized. The fact is that municipalism (in purely economic terms) would most likely be far too inefficient, compared to a body like Gosplan that collects data and diverts resources to where they are needed most and coordinates production between Soviets. I really don't think it's conceivable that local Soviets, without a central organization coordinating them, could possibly have achieved the level of development necessary to repel the nazis by 1941 (they barely managed to do it under the excruciatingly austere industrialization regimen of Stalin's tenure). I also don't believe that smaller localized elected governments really do anything to resolve the overall problems of election and professional politicians, despite what 'libertarian' theorists like Bookchin might claim.

However, it might have been nice if Gosplan was slightly more open to the public and had elections of it's own, if anything just to lend legitimacy to its decisions. But they did a damn good job anyway, easily the best institution that ever emerged from the Leninist movement (probably the best of the Marxist movement as a whole).

PAUL COCKSHOTT IS BBOC GANG

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This. There are plenty of things to criticize the USSR and it's leadership for, but don't fall into the trap of assuming the country was a dictatorship because American media outlets claim it is so. Despite the electoral landscape being limited to one party and independents, the USSR (mostly) had a legitimate contested republican process.

True tho

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cockshott is based but unless he has historian credentials outside of economic planning then his analysis of the USSR can't be infallible

The supreme Soviet was dominated by the party, it was basically just a rubber stamp. I have no problem with the official political institutions of the Soviet Union. The issue was that these were all controlled by the party, and the internal structures of the party were undemocratic.

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Tbh yeah you're right. Honestly while I really enjoyed his perspectives on Gosplan, surplus extraction through turnover tax, and the Soviet electoral system, his analysis of Soviet history and characterization of the leadership and Stalin's administration are probably the least supported and weakest part of TANS. Robert Conquest at least bothered with citations, I mean come on.

Point is that it's possible for a person to have an opinion on the USSR's democracy that tends towards negative without necessarily being a BBoC-thumping redlib

I… don't think he was saying that at all tbh

That’s not what I said. Democracy is when the general public can openly challenge and criticize the political leadership without fear of reprisals (such as expulsion from the party which would effectively end your political career), as well as hold those leaders accountable through elections, recalls, or better yet make make decisions themselves through plebecites.

hard disagree fam
give me councilism instead

I’m not suggesting that the USSR was le ebil totalitarian dictatorship where they would send you to the gulag for not praising Stalin hard enough. I’m not even denying the existence of some democratic elements, after all, their system was perfectly democratic on paper. Even within the party itself there were elements of democracy. Rather my position is that these elements were stifled and overshadowed by those things I mentioned previously, particularly the ban on factions, press censorship, the limited role of the party congress, and their approach to democratic centralism. If you really insist on considering the USSR a genuine worker’s democracy, then you would have to at least admit that it was an extremely limited democracy.

in addition to this, if you look at how the USSR was governed, managed, and administered during the Stalin era it becomes clear that over time there was a degeneration of normal organization and an increasing reliance on informal meetings between Stalin and his clique.

In the last 12 years of Stalin's life there was only one party congress.
In the last 16 years of his life there were only six meetings of the Central Committee.
The Politburo only met six times in 1937, four times in 1938, and twice in 1939. Between 1950 and 1953 it did not meet at all.

But I would argue that the idea of a worker's democracy or some kind of genuine workers state was lost very early in the history of the USSR. People like Victor Serge and even Amadeo Bordiga wrote about the siege-mentality that was ruining the USSR and the international communist movement from within. The paranoia and "spy-hunting" as Bordiga called it weren't an invention of Stalin. They existed before he consolidated his leadership. By the 1930s it was clearly a top-down system depending more upon personal connections and patronage than any kind of bottom-up democratic process. During the problems of collectivization Stalin personally visited various regions and simply removed local party leaders who failed to achieve the goals that had been set.

At what point would you consider the Soviet Union to no longer be a democracy? It seems to me that the suppression of Soviet power, and subsequent ban on factions set up the mechanisms that would abolish democracy, but significant opposition to the party existed until the disbanding of Bukharin and Trotsky's factions in 1927. It seems to me that that was the death blow.

i'm not sure if one can give any specific point.