Most of the times theorists of state capitalism take it to the extreme and will claim that even factory per se is somehow capitalist. If you read Marx thoroughly, I don't think you can make the argument that the USSR was state-capiralist from a Marxist perspective. Marx didn't think co-ops are the capitalist mode of production (Capital Vol. III), he thought co-ops + planned economy is socialism (Civil War in France) and that the same metrics that rule commodity exchange rule distribution in socialism, namely labour time (Critique of the Gotha Program) as long as their is no exchange-value based exchange between individual producers (so even if the USSR was just "one giant firm" it's not capitalist because exchanges within a firm aren't commodity exchanges [Capital Vol. I]). These extremist views like that "the law value" still existed isn't really supported in Marx, especially since Marx barely used that term. Clearly the observable capitalist laws the labour theory of value describes can't be observed in the USSR.
Tips for arguing socialism
Hey guys, I'm a normie. The thing I find the dumbest about your worldview is that everything is supposed to be so bad when it really isn't, especially in Northern Europe. I don't get why the rest of the world isn't like us. The meme answer I get is "muh imperialism", but most of what we consume comes from other rich countries (minerals from Chile/Australia, wood from Sweden/Canada/Finland, corn from USA and so on) the exceptions are sugar/fruit from Brazil which doesn't exactly make up the backbone of our society. The reason I see that the third world is so impoverished is because we just got the head start and they still suffer the effects of colonialism, but eventually they'll get on our level. So the whole "revolution!" calling is pure cringe to me as a comfortably living european.
I hope that's a bait
I've been working on this recently:
Questions non-Marxists are unable to answer:
1.Do we live in history or after it–that is, has humanity completed its development or is it still developing?
a. If it has completed its development, why do we find such serious yet easily resolvable flaws as homelessness, hunger, and war?
b. If it has not completed its development, why would we not expect humanity to develop past capitalism, a system which has only been dominant for a few hundred years, and in that time has suffered numerous crises?
2. If capitalism is capable of resolving homelessness, why have we not seen it happen/what is preventing it from happening?
3. What is the driving force behind historical development?
4. If there is no such thing as class conflict, and all of the people's interests are reconciliable, then what is the point of government?
a. If there are irreconciliable differences between groups of people, is this not a tacit admission of the existence of conflicting material interests?
5. Why has the rise in productivity not been accompanied by a decline in working hours?
6. In a world where all labor is automated, under our current system, would we have universal wealth or universal unemployment?
a. Does this problem of unemployment under advanced technology not imply a limitation imposed by our current social organization?
b. Under what form of organization would there not be a problem of “robots taking all the jobs”?
(me)
The purpose of it is to force people to draw out the contradictions in their worldview. Obviously some people, particularly right wingers, will just maintain insane levels of dissonance, but they will look dumb in front of other people.
1b) Does this mean we will make up new political systems even after communism? And secondly, all of large-scale society has always been based around property rights, ever since the agricultural revolution. Communism won't work with societies with millions of inhabitants.
5. Because products have gotten cheaper, like PCs, washing machines, fruit and all else, which is a result of the productivity. So our purchasing power has skyrocketed.
6. Not all labour will be replaced with automation, that is a silly notion. Ask anyone working in the automation industry and they'll tell you that.
What was the comment about?
I'm going to play the devil advocate too.
Maybe. I don't like this kind of speculation since it's so much in the future, thinking about it won't do much.
Communism doesn't mean everyone has a say in everything and can enter everyone house at his will. That's a stawman which didn't exist even at times of primitivism.
Wages don't follow the rise of productive for something like 30 years. I can post the source if you don't believe me.
Call me a revisionist but if anything of Marx has to be rejected or interpreted differently, it's the phase "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". I think a society in which necessary labour would be an hour or so is communism.
