this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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Do you consider drastically improving upon previous conditions to be a miserable failure? Ignoring that Communism has never existed, and only specific forms of Marxism-Leninism have existed, and ignoring that MLism is only a fraction of all of Communist ideology, even MLism drastically improved upon previous conditions.
I'm not even close to a tankie, but I'm genuinely curious what you mean by what you've said.
Sure, and capitalism has never existed either, only specific forms of libertarian-constitutionalism 🤷♂️
Now, if you can see how silly what I just typed is, you should be able to see how silly it is to claim communism has never been tried. You say yourself that Marxist-Leninism is a communist ideology, so if it's being attempted, then it's valid to say a form of communism is being attempted.
All of the citation needed. Don't make the mistake of including the goals of outcome as part of the definition, that's just cheating. Op obviously rejects the idea that it makes things better, you can't just assume it a priori.
Socialism has existed, that's what the USSR was. It was an ML Socialist state, but it failed to become a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society. In other words, it failed to reach Communism. Communism has been attempted, but never reached. It never reached the Communist stage, so Communism itself hasn't been tried, only the ML form of Socialism.
The Soviet Union doubled life expectancy from the mid 30s to the mid 70s, had constant GDP growth until it liberalized and collapsed, guaranteed free Healthcare and education, and had mass housing initiatives. It had far lower wealth inequality than before or after its existence. This is all freely available information.
Am I a USSR Stan? Fuck no, the Politburo was a corrupt mess and Stalin was a thug. However, you've completely misconstrued my argument.
Okay I see what you mean. You agree attempted, but never achieved, I see that now. I'm sorry for misconstruing your argument, but I still take issue with your assertion that things got drastically better. That's a big red flag to me and tends to be a sign that someone is having a big misunderstanding.
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While true, it is essentially a lie by omission to leave out other key details. For one thing, if you think about it, what kind of conditions would one have to be in initially to make doubling the life expectancy even possible?
The Russians were in horribly dire straits. Life expectancy fell from 37 to 32 from 1930-1935. The chief cause was forced collectivization of farming by Stalin. Privately owned farms were confiscated by the state, and were horribly mismanaged which resulted in famine. Socialist policy directly caused that famine.
Life expectancy started going up again in 1935 after they relaxed grain procurement quotas, decentralized, and opened up private plots. This is the scaling back of socialist policy, and the implementation of capitalist policy. Capitalism policy is to thank for stopping the famine.
The US has had exponential growth, rather than linear, along with many of its allies. Russia also supplies a large percentage of the world's oil, you'd have to make fucking up an art to make your GDP go down with a supply like that.
Both were an improvement considering I don't think much was their for either before, so I'll give ya that.
These came in response to a housing crisis caused by inadequate supply of houses when the USSR nationalized it under the Central Board of Architecture. The housing initiatives did help, but the housing problem was never solved, and it was a problem created by them.
Because he killed the rich people, and no one had anything. Equality is not an intrinsically good quality, especially when it means everybody is equally impoverished.
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I guess this is why I find the observation that communism has never existed pretty naive. Socialism, in its most honest representation, is really the state ownership of the means of production. The way Stalin held ownership in common, was to collectivize it under the state that all citizens are part of. If we are trying to achieve a stateless society, then holding ownership in common is an antithetical goal. Every step the USSR took away from common ownership was a step towards private ownership, and therefor a step towards capitalism.
I wasn't referring to 30s and 70s as time periods, but the actual life expectancies. LE dropped sharply during the formation of the USSR due to civil war and WWI, and during the 30s due to famine from collectivization. After collectivization and WWII, the USSR was food secure and LE jumped sharply, combined with free Healthcare and mass housing initiatives.
Again, pre-USSR LE was far lower, and post-USSR there was another drop in LE until the last decade or so.
The US has insane growth because it managed to dodge all of the damage of WWII and export Imperialism and control over the global economy as it solidified itself as the reigning superpower. The USSR was a developing country, nowhere near as developed, and had a far more active role in WWII. Not a fair comparison, IMO.
The US has far worse housing problems even today than the USSR had. The USSR attempted to solve this problem, the US has not.
People in the USSR had far more than they had under the Tsars, and the idea that those at the top were cartoonishly wealthy is false. They didn't have luxury goods, but they had little issues with necessities.
Holding ownership in common is the only way to have a Stateless society, Private Property Rights require a state while public property does not, as the community itself enforces this.
All in all, I am not pro-USSR. I think the process of Democratic Centralism is highly flawed and not accountable to the Workers, as the Politburo sustained itself. I also think Stalin was a horrible thug, and tragedies like the Katyn Massacre should be learned from so as to never repeat them. However, it's also important to acknowledge that many parts of the USSR did work, and as such we should equally learn from where they did succeed.
My opinion is that decentralization is a fantastic thing, and is an excellent way to combat central control. However, this cannot be meaningfully achieved in a top-down system like Capitalism.
Oh, I must have assumed you meant otherwise because the USSR never reached that high of a life expectancy. They peaked in 1970 at 68 years old, at which point it trended down again. Russians never reached a life expectancy of 70 until 2015. You should also consider how volatile that graph has been in general, it simply isn't good for a state to have that much influence over the life expectancy of all of its people.
That little bump in 1985-1990 correlates with the reign of Gorbachev. He implemented policy that gave more autonomy to enterprises (less state control), and allowed for foreign trade (opening the market, again less state control). This included giving way more autonomy to the collectivized farms, as well as allowing for private farms for both personal use and for sale on the market - in other words, he de-collectivized. Given that the central authority in the USSR was the state, you could also say the central authority has less control, and thus they decentralized.
Compare this the the US life expectancy of time. It's much less volatile for one thing, it's a very steady incline. They also actually did reach a life expectancy of 70 by 1970, they had it by 1965 in fact.
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Honestly, we totally agree on quite a bit here. We obviously both don't advocate for Stalin himself, and we totally agree decentralization is a good thing. It's just strange to me that in the case of the USSR you don't see how the act of decentralization was literally being less strict on collective control and more lenient on private control - in other words, being less strict on socialist policy and being a little more lenient on private ownership.
It's also important to acknowledge which parts worked, it's also important to acknowledge why they worked. When farmers were given private ownership, they had more freedom of choice in how to manage it, which is really important to have on farms for a myriad of reasons I can get into if you want. But in any case, they were better able to feed themselves as well as bring more product to market. Surplus on food and freedom of distribution means less hunger.
Take farming as an example since it's on topic. Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production. In 1985-1990 USSR most privately owned farms were small scale and personally managed. What's more top down, a guy owning a plot of land and doing what he wants with it, or being assigned to work a plot by the regional agriculture authority, who answers to the ministry of agriculture, who answered to the council of ministers, who answered to the Communist Party leadership?
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Public Property: something owned by the city, town, or state.
I understand that the line is blurry on whether public means "of the state" or "of the people". For example, the Romans saw the state to be in service of the people, so "public works" were state works for the people. They also saw the republic as a government of the people, so state projects were of the people either way you take it. This is exactly the same in our democracy, public spaces are managed by the state, on behalf of the people, but the democratic state is also a government of the people, so it's effectively redundant in the modern context.
In any case, I don't exactly think the distinction matters. As soon as a large group of people (the public) see the need to come together and make decisions and how to manage certain things and/or how to cooperate to get something done, a government is formed. When the Romans did this, they literally didn't have a distinctive word for it, which is why they basically just called it the "public thing", the group that handled public decision making. The nature of the Roman "public thing" swayed in and out of meaning of for the people, by the people, in service of the people, in command of the people, and it was never exclusive to one of those things.
Private property demonstrably does not require a state to exist, because that's not always how property rights are handled. In this early period of Rome, the state could purchase and grant rights, but so could private citizens. If the people of Rome wanted a plot of land to themselves, the legal way to do so would be through a legitimate exchange with a private owner. Property rights are granted by whoever holds the property rights, private or public. Modern nations technically own the land they claim, which is why they grant access.
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The far more important distinction are the things that which the people don't decide need collective cooperation. That's what we call "private". To be privately controlled, you can't be under the control of the collective or the control of the state, which is precisely why "private" is the antithesis of "public". In the context of Rome, centralization would be to make it part of the "public thing". So, if the people and senate of Rome decided to bring the whole market under the control of the people the way they did the army and roads, they would have been both centralizing control of the market and technically socialist, as the means of production would been publicly controlled. The USSR was socialist for exactly that reason.
You're continuing to compare a fully developed superpower that never had skin in WWII with a developing country the rest of the world tried to oppose at every step, that's still completely disingenuous. The graph was volatile because the USSR was founded in Civil War, had a famine in the 30s during the horribly botched collectivization of agriculture, then had their bread basket invaded during WWII while they took on the majority of combat against the Nazis. After that, steady!
Decentralization is firmly a Socialist ideal, and is incompatible with Capitalism. Capitalism requires that workers have no power, otherwise it wouldn't exist.
You then go on to completely butcher the definitions of Socialism by assuming it means state control, rather than collective control, of the means of production. State control is merely one path of Socialism.
Private Property requires a monopoly of violence to enforce, ie a state. You cannot have private property without threat of violence via a state, even your example proves this.
All in all, you're frustratingly bad at arguing anything coherent, and it's clear you don't actually care about proper definitions.
which implies that non-collectivized agriculture was doing a good job considering the significant upswing in the 20s. After the civil war, non-collectivized farms were doing a good job.
This response makes me think you didn't really read my comment very closely considering I literally explain the etymology of the word "public". Socialism is the public ownership of the means of production, and there's good reason to consider that state ownership given the history of the word and its use over time. I don't think I'm incoherent, I just think you don't understand, otherwise you'd actually address my comment instead of restating your position and implying I'm stupid for not agreeing. I honest to god do recommend taking my comment a bit more seriously and rereading it. Really try to look at what I'm telling you, and if you disagree, I'd love to see you actually point out what's wrong with my comment.
You're never going to convince me I'm out of line here unless I can tell from your response you actually took in what I was saying, because honestly, you really didn't have to read much of what I said to generate the response you made.