Communists?

oh realy? go on sir and correct my mistakes

 

What I mean is this:
They could make so much wealth off the arable land they have. The soil was devastated by overuse and lack of modern equipment (fertilizers and vehicles and the like). So 10 years or so ago some Danish students were given some money for an experiment: They should rehabilitate Soviet officers now that their army was deteriorating. So they bought some land, and supplied these officers with some money to buy their equipment. When they first measured the fertility of the land given to the officers, it was extremely low (Think "the red earth of Sudan"-low).
A lot of the officers spent the money on vodka and whores, and of course they didn't achieve a lot of success. However, one or two of the officers (I assume there were around 20) actually spent the money on their farming. Guess what? After two or three years, the fertility of the soil had been completely restored and was now comparable with soil from Northern Jutland in Denmark (which is known for being very fertile).
My point is, they do not utilize the enormous potential.

 

If you consider the Soviet Union Socialist or not is completely down to perspective. I see the Soviet Union as Socialist because production was geared toward use and not profit, and because Private Property was outlawed. You, following a different school of thought, will have a different view on the definition of Socialism.

Also if Lenin wanted to achieve Communism or not, is irrelevant. The Soviet Union was not remotely prepared for Communism. It had to develop it's productive forces first. Communism cannot be achieved in a backward country that faces scarcity.

The public opinion toward Stalin at the time was overwhelmingly positive. The living standards of the Soviet people rose to never before seen heights. Of the local authorities on the other hand, the public opinion was not as favorable. This is why Central Committee started a campaign of restructuring of the local authorities to get rid of inefficient bureaucrats.

People who worked for the State cannot be considered a new class, because they had exactly the same relations to the Means of Production as any other person under Soviet society. The State is simply an instrument of class domination, so those who work for the state or manage the state, serve the interests of a particular class, they are not a class of their own.

The demands of the Kronstadt Rebellion were not only petty-bourgeois and counter-revolutionary, but would of jeopardized the Revolution, opening a door to Imperialism and Reactionary forces. Kronstadt would be such a long discussion that it would deserve a thread of it's own, let's move on.

 

Capitalism can never allow a country to achieve it's full potential. If it doesn't make a profit, it puts it to a side. If a Capitalist country can import food cheaper from Mexico that making it's own, why would it even bother with it's own land? Now here is the problem, cheaper does not mean more efficient. Even thought Russia might buy it's peppers from Mexico, fossil fuels are wasted bringing the food all the way across the Atlantic Ocean and through Europe. This is why Capitalism is horribly inefficient.

 

With pleasure:

1) Putin -In a thread about Communism/Socialism, you said "Putin". You probably don't even know that he is from a center-right party, do you?
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge - This is like answering "Hitler" to the question "Why did WW2 break out?". It doesn't mean anything if you don't expand it.
3) FSB-KGB - What does this mean?Expand this topic, at least. If anything, i think we can all agree about the fact that there is no single intelligence agency of any country that hasn't commited horrible crimes.
4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD_prisoner_massacres -See above.

 

You can define Socialism however you want. Its semantics. Nazi's called themselves Socialist. They had their own definition of it. I follow the Marxist definition of Socialism.

How exactly weren't the means of production held in common? Private property was outlawed. People who worked for the State didn't own the means of production any more than the average citizen. They played their role in management. They did not profit off the surplus value of workers, and therefore were not a distinct class.

On Stalin's Cult of Personality, he didn't create it himself, others built it around him. He personally hated it.

"On December 21, 1929, the nation celebrated Stalin's fiftieth birthday with unprecedented extravagance... It was the beginning of the Stalin cult, which developed on a phenomenal scale.

The frenetic adulation was in part the enthusiastic work of the party machine in Moscow and of the party officials throughout the country. They were praising and ensuring that the people joined by praising their chief, the General Secretary of the party. They owed their positions to him and they knew how his authority could reach into the most distant corners of the party organization. But servility and self-interest were accompanied by genuine veneration...

While accepting the need for the cult, however, Stalin probably took little active part in promoting it. The Yugoslav communist Milovan Djilas, meeting him in 1945, formed the opinion that 'the deification of Stalin . . . was at least as much the work of Stalin's circle and the bureaucracy, who required such a leader, as it was his own doing.'

Stalin was, in fact, not a vain, self-obsessed man who had to be surrounded by fawning and flattery. He detested this mass adulation of his position, and throughout his life he went to great lengths to avoid demonstrations in his honor. Indeed, he was to be seen in public only at party congresses and at ceremonial occasions on Red Square, when he was a remote figure standing on Lenin's mausoleum. He had the same lack of personal vanity as Peter the Great or Lenin....

Stalin had not changed greatly. He had power and position, but showed no interest in possessions and luxuries. His tastes were simple and he lived austerely. In summer he wore a plain military tunic of linen and in winter a similar tunic of wool, and an overcoat that was some fifteen years old. He also had a short fur coat with squirrel on the inside and reindeer skin on the outside, which he started wearing soon after the Revolution and continued to wear with an old fur hat until his death. The presents, many of them valuable and even priceless works of craftsmanship, sent to him from all parts of the country and, on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, from all over the world, embarrassed him. He felt that it would be wrong to make any personal use of such gifts. His daughter noted: 'He could not imagine why people would want to send him all these things.'"
(Ian Grey. Stalin: Man of History. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1979. pp. 233-35.)


You also don't understand the principles of class. For there to be bourgeoisie, there must be Private Property. There must be private accumulation of surplus value from the labor of the workers. There was no Capitalist class in the Soviet Union. There was a petty bourgeois class though, especially during the NEP, which Stalin crushed.

 

I disagree with you on the government side, you were right comrade when you mentioned SU was never communist however Communism described by Marx IS Anarchy like you prefer however Anarchy never works and it never will the people need to be led, the leaders lead the followers follow. I actually liked the Post-Stalinist state of Russia 1960-1991. Life was good Government was strong etc.

Yes I am a Communist, i'm an Authoritarian-Socialist and partly Marxist-Leninist. Glorious Comrade Lenin led the revolution and he will return to lead another one! Now the government did go to far in some things, however that is totalitarianism for you lol, I just prefer a strong (authoritarian) centralized government that provides for the proletariat.

IN soviet union, Education was free, healthcare provided free, housing free, and you ALWAYS had a job.

 

I so want to shake your hand right now!

 

strange i dont

 

....Oh sure, they provided after having taken their large slice of the pie.

 

well said

 

If anyone has any other questions about this shiznit just ask.

 

I'm hardly an expert on these kinds of things, but I guess here's my two cents.

I'm obviously going to be a bit biased as an American, for reasons that should be more than apparent, let's just get that out of the way. I personally am most comfortable with a Capitalist society, because the ideals behind it make sense to me, and it's what I've grown up with.

The thing is that I think most people seem to want to find some kind of perfect government system where you can combine accurate representation of the governed people with the efficiency of organized rule, but nobody seems to have really cracked that case yet. Everybody seems to have an idea of what should be, but only because it's either what they've been taught is right, or is the closest widely-known solution to their problems. Every system has its advantages and disadvantages, but none of the proposed systems really live up to their goals entirely because of a nasty little thing called human nature that tends to muck up even the most deliberately laid plans.

And then we have the issue that nobody wants to seem to acknowledge: the one that changing a system of rule typically involves lots of hard feelings, and lots of desperate people willing to act violently on those hard feelings. Revolution aint pretty.

I think we can all agree that the government should serve the people. Actually, I think that deep down, our goals are mostly the same. We're just raised differently. When 99% of the people you meet have a positive opinion on Capitalism (and vice versa), it tends to stick. But while I think it should be the people's responsibility to keep the government in check and, in the worst case scenario, do something drastic if things get out of hands, I'd also rather not see another generation of lives get thrown into the meat grinder over some ideology, so I tend to feel a bit uncomfortable whenever really radical ideas are brought into play.

 

I'm an american too. :|

Depending on what you mean by government I may disagree. If you mean a state that is separate from the people, whether in its name or not, then I do not want that. If you mean that it is an act of the people in how it collectively does things then that is murky water my friend.

You should definitely expand on this 'human nature' business and look up the naturalistic fallacy.

Who said that it would be pretty? I would prefer it to be but cannot say that it would be. Now, to say whether or not it is preventable is another story.

I'm a weirdo then.

Radical changes are scary but I'm not sure of your point here.

 

Then I misinterpreted what people said. I, uh...damn. Words are hard.

Man, looking back over this thread, this is actually some volatile stuff to talk about, and if our fundamental goals really do differ, then I should probably just shut up, because I don't feel like people are looking to make any kind of formal compromise.

Just to wrap up and address what you said in reply:
-You're right, that's some pretty murky water. I still think every government system has its positives and benefits based on what criteria you judge it on. Some forms are obviously more popular and some more successful, but the moment somebody starts saying that somebody else's is objectively bad, the discussion is all downhill from there.
-Oh no, I'm no Hobbes-esque depressed person who hates everyone. I think I have more faith in humanity than most people. I just think that no system is idiot-proof, and someone's bound to come along eventually and fuck it up.
-Nobody did, but I've never really heard anyone bring it up in these types of discussion, and I at least thought it should be taken more into account, since most people I typically see talking about big reform seem to think that once people start listening, it'll all just be sunshine milk and rainbow cookies from there on out.

I think that's as far as I can go without hopefully stepping on somebody's toes. I'm honestly still figuring out my own opinions on this kind of stuff, and it seems like everybody else's is pretty well established, so, uh, pardon my textual dust.

 

If you are looking for a discussion with a "communist" ( i don't identify with that, but still), feel free to send me a message.

Discussion is the roots for knowledge.

 

It's funny when Neo-nazis say that Communists are their main enemies, yet they do not know why. Communism and National Socialism are basically the same ideologies, except the first is international socialism, and the second one is national.

Hitler used this name for his political party, it was pretty much socialistic regime after all, although he used Social Darwinism as well, this made it look like a far-right regime BUT IT IS NOT. Just because Hitler did something wrong, it does not mean every regime similar to this will be the same.

Stalin and Hitler worked together, Hitler conquered Norway with his fleet located in Soviet port. Stalin also handed over the immigrant jews back to the hands of gestapo, while murdering jews in Soviet Union. They were basically the same people, this made Communism and National Socialism look like ultra-right/ultra-left violent regimes.

One thing you should agree on with me, even you capitalists. Every man has/had respect for Soviet Union, for it showed how strong mankind is. Communism means calluses, sweat, work, cooperation. While Capitalism means stress, sex, debt, money, death, violence, corruption.

Socialism is the only way for me to get rid of everyday problem of man.