How could the USSR even theoretically be considered communist if the market was never actually done away with? Even before the NEP the black market existed on a massive scale, and by the time of Brezhnev, it was close to 40% of GDP. How can a state claim to be socialist if the market is still a dominating factor in the daily impact of people's lives? Also why does a Communist state under Marxist-Leninism see trade unions as counter revolutionary, yet every lefty Ive ever talked to sees unions as an important step in the advent of socialism?
How could the USSR even theoretically be considered communist if the market was never actually done away with...
Sebastian White
Levi Parker
Is that photo real?
Tyler Price
it's not a pic of trotsky, it's some other bolshevik
Kevin Jones
OP, you need to read more.
Mason Morris
That doesn't answer the question, shit at least give the titles of books that do answer the question if you can't
Jayden Parker
jesus christ are people this retarded? he doesn't even look like trotsky besides his facial hair and glasses.
Josiah Perez
OP, you really oughta read more shit before asking dumb questions like this, no one will answer you seriously. I'm feeling nice however so to answer you as simply as possible, the USSR was socialist within the years 1928-1956 (from the abolition of the NEP to Kruschev's privatizations).
Carson Cook
Why not include the war communism years?
Nathaniel Ramirez
Well the CCCP and RSFSR actually were both quite communist in their production at varying points particularly under War Communism and during the 30's. But even leaving the black market aside the Comecon economies were very much still tied to the world market.
It always baffles me that socialists focus solely on the working of the Soviet economy to figure out whether it was a bourgeois state or not. Like, you guys are aware it isn't possible to establish a co-operate economy in one nation while it is linked to the world market right? That's a clear logical contradiction. To understand how communist a government is you need to understand their theory, praxis, and organization. And it is true that the CCCP was inspired by Marxism, to varying degrees, depending on the time.
Your mention of unions is a joke as they are heavily reformist organizations by their very nature and their usefulness is quite limited.
Don't listen to this retard. All Khrushev's reforms did was scrap the industrial ministries in favor of 105 planning councils. They were still co-ordinated by Gosplan as usual and it was mostly a sound move to put some of his political rivals out of a job.
Sebastian James
KAMENEV ROLLS IN HIS GRAVE
Camden Gray
Yeah, but he guy on the right isn't Trotsky
Kevin Sanders
nigga if you were socialist in the first place you would never TOUCH the world market, international trade is cancerous
Jonathan Morgan
It's a mystery.
Robert Baker
Peak brainletism. Communist countries, in their early DoTP stage, have literally no choice in this matter unless they just want to dismantle all their industries and destroy their economy. Which would be a fucking brilliant idea, of course.
Opening up to the world market is literally the only reason China hasn't been attacked again these last few decades.
A true associated economy is impossible until all the world's major developed nations have agreed to construct it together. Until then, a DoTP will have to content itself with the management of capital.
Isaac Peterson
You've got no right to call anyone a brainlet you fucking red liberal, this is why we need Red Guards and public denouncements.
Xavier Hughes
Dude, use your fucking head. I agree that China today isn't exactly a perfect bastion of Orthodox Marxism, and Deng probably knew the risks of letting capital run rampant, but if he didn't allow foreign investment China would still be even more of an agrarian backwater than it already is. The US propped up China far, far more than China propped up the US.
Oliver Butler
And poverty in communism is preferable to riches and decadence in capitalism. The implication that every economy in the world has to be industrialized and digitized is not only an expression of vulgar materialism, but conpletely ignorant in regard to the environmental crisis we are living in.
Hudson Howard
No it's not. Especially if said poverty discredits communism. You have to walk before you can run.
Again, China is so clearly a revisionist state, but the one good thing is that at least they are now in a material position to pursue socialism. Who the hell knows if they'll do that, though.
Luke Russell
Socialism is the reduction and eventual dissolution of man's alienation from the products of his and society's overall labor, if that means people live simple farmer's lives it's better than the bullshit decadence the first world has.
Wyatt Baker
communism is when there is a hammer and sickle on the flag and the more hammer and sickles on the flag the more communistic it is
Parker Stewart
when will this meme stop? i swear most MLs don't even know what Khrushchev did and just shit on him because muh secret speech and smear him as some kind of anti-communist.
Tyler Cox
The Soviet Union today is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, a dictatorship of the grand bourgeoisie, a fascist German dictatorship, and a Hitlerite dictatorship. They are a bunch of rascals worse than De Gaulle.
Henry Green
don't forget the red star, the yellow background and the brush if you are feeling chinese
Brayden Green
literally how
Thomas Gomez
read more Mao and fight out
Charles Scott
"Other than his most identifiable features, this man looks nothing like Trotsky!"
James Smith
he literally doesn't, you don't need to be a scientist to see the obvious differences between the two.
Jack Richardson
Mao was senile when he declared that
Adrian Evans
I am reading starting with the greeks. jk.
how about at least an answer to the second question? or at least point me to the book where lenin outlines the "trade unions from within the party" policy that he later abandons and does away with completely siding with trotsky.
also its a fact that the USSR never got rid of the need of the market even during the height of collectivization, and it wasn't just kulaks breaking the law. When the NEP came along and legalized some of the markets to a degree, all it really did was make preexisting conditions legal rather than subversive. I can understand during wartime that a market although anti-ideological could fulfill basic needs, but Im asking why these conditions weren't slowly phased out rather than exacerbated
Asher Nelson
thats a good point about not being able to get completely rid of the market when the rest of the world is capitalist. Doesn't this sort of argue against the "socialism in one state" approach though. How can one socialist state compete with hundreds of capitalist ones? they will wither it away like they did I guess.
the union part makes sense, but I figured unions would still be necessary so long as there is a "state" that exists, even a bolshevik one.
Easton Stewart
He looks more like Trotsky than Dughashvili looks like Stalin.
Xavier Morris
>socialism is when the government military does things
Ethan Thomas
NIGGER THAT'S MIKHAIL KALININ
Lucas Phillips
I consider the Soviet Union the Greece/Roman Republic to the modern idea of democracy: inherently flawed, but still the forerunner to whatever comes next. Clearly they fucked up, but from that we must take lessons, not bitterly argue about who was right.
David Fisher
t. Good marxist
John Ward
Holy shit, i just remembered knowing for so many years about Russia being the european country with the highest suicide rates, never really thought about that.
Ayden Peterson
Marxism-Leninism was not real Socialism?
youtube.com
Nolan Wright
what is this anarcho-primitivism tier argument?
Hunter Parker
Is FinnBol going to ignore that Marx claims in the CotGP which he quotes that he envisioned a system of distribution and not exchange? If goods are not exchanged they are literally not a commodity. Even Stalin fucking wrote this, he's literally regurgitating Krushchevite talking points
Gavin Harris
[citation desperately needed]
Sebastian Parker
*Kalinin screams in his grave*
Aiden Brooks
This isn't true, and you have no source. The USSR during and before Stalin's leadership was absolutely socialist, and it was one of the best societies to have ever existed. Eat shit if you disagree.