3 ms·

> In socialist countries, workers form the ruling class So you're one of those people who claim that USSR wasn't a socialist let alone a communist country?

by qwytw 3y ago

defrost 3y ago
It's a pretty common position outside of the USofA, one held by political students globally and, if you care to dig back, one held by the founders of the USSR who held (textbook) communism ahead as a worthy eventual goal that made up for the intermediate period od state controlled capitalism. Ask around, no one who fled the USSR will tell you the actual people at ground level were in control. Even within the US you can find people that weren't caught up with the McCathy era mislabelling and understood the abuse of terminology: https://www.umass.edu/pubaffs/chronicle/archives/02/10-11/economics.html https://www.umass.edu/pubaffs/chronicle/archives/02/10-11/ec... Sure, many in the USofA called the USSR state "communist" but that didn't make it an example of what intended when the word came about. We can at least agree, I trust, that regardless of the naming of the state authoritarianism within the USSR that it sucked as a system to live under.
- qwytw 3y ago
  Right. So I'm just trying to figure which states do you think are/were actually socialist. > held (textbook) communism Not if bolshevism was textbook communism. They did reject some core ideas promulgated by Marx (already back in ~1918). > outside of the USofA, I don't think US is particularly special in that regard compared to most western countries.
dragonwriter 3y ago
The USSR had a state capitalist system (openly acknowledged early on as a transitional phase, but even though it stopped using the term it never transitioned out of it, and neither did most other Leninist-derived systems except a few into systems which incorporated more private capitalism later on while the “Communist” Party retained authoritarian power) with the claimed near-term intent of transitioning to functional socialism and claimed long-term intent of achieving communism. The most actually socialist systems in the world are democratic states with mixed economies starting with the wave of reforms within advanced democratic capitalist economies in the early to mid-20th century that created them; that we tend to call them “capitalism” and the less socialist state capitalist regimes under Leninism and its descendants “socialism” or “communism” is largely a result of 20th century geopolitical block identities and not actual analysis of politico-economic systems against some set of clear consistent standards of what constituties “socialism”, etc.
- qwytw 3y ago
  > most actually socialist systems in the world are democratic states with mixed economies Well by any reasonable metric they are still significantly more 'capitalist' than 'socialist'. Or rather are these days, due to some reasons there even those 'democratic pseudo-socialists' states from the 60s shifted to 'capitalism' much more since the 60s.

> In socialist countries, workers form the ruling class So you're one of those people who claim that USSR wasn't a socialist let alone a communist country?

by qwytw 3y ago

> In socialist countries, workers form the ruling class So you're one of those people who claim that USSR wasn't a socialist let alone a communist country?

defrost 3y ago

It's a pretty common position outside of the USofA, one held by political students globally and, if you care to dig back, one held by the founders of the USSR who held (textbook) communism ahead as a worthy eventual goal that made up for the intermediate period od state controlled capitalism. Ask around, no one who fled the USSR will tell you the actual people at ground level were in control. Even within the US you can find people that weren't caught up with the McCathy era mislabelling and understood the abuse of terminology: https://www.umass.edu/pubaffs/chronicle/archives/02/10-11/economics.html https://www.umass.edu/pubaffs/chronicle/archives/02/10-11/ec... Sure, many in the USofA called the USSR state "communist" but that didn't make it an example of what intended when the word came about. We can at least agree, I trust, that regardless of the naming of the state authoritarianism within the USSR that it sucked as a system to live under.

qwytw 3y ago
Right. So I'm just trying to figure which states do you think are/were actually socialist. > held (textbook) communism Not if bolshevism was textbook communism. They did reject some core ideas promulgated by Marx (already back in ~1918). > outside of the USofA, I don't think US is particularly special in that regard compared to most western countries.

dragonwriter 3y ago

The USSR had a state capitalist system (openly acknowledged early on as a transitional phase, but even though it stopped using the term it never transitioned out of it, and neither did most other Leninist-derived systems except a few into systems which incorporated more private capitalism later on while the “Communist” Party retained authoritarian power) with the claimed near-term intent of transitioning to functional socialism and claimed long-term intent of achieving communism. The most actually socialist systems in the world are democratic states with mixed economies starting with the wave of reforms within advanced democratic capitalist economies in the early to mid-20th century that created them; that we tend to call them “capitalism” and the less socialist state capitalist regimes under Leninism and its descendants “socialism” or “communism” is largely a result of 20th century geopolitical block identities and not actual analysis of politico-economic systems against some set of clear consistent standards of what constituties “socialism”, etc.

qwytw 3y ago
> most actually socialist systems in the world are democratic states with mixed economies Well by any reasonable metric they are still significantly more 'capitalist' than 'socialist'. Or rather are these days, due to some reasons there even those 'democratic pseudo-socialists' states from the 60s shifted to 'capitalism' much more since the 60s.