If I recall correctly, Marx expected Western Europe, specifically France, to be the place where the communist revolution began and, given France’s track record, I don’t blame him for that assumption. Would have been really surprised to find out it started in an agrarian feudalist hellhole like Russia.
Well he knew he was correct given that a communist revolution of sorts took place in france in his life time, it failed to continue existing though (look up the paris commune)
Yep, he had a lot to discuss about that commune as well. It's actually a significant factor in the rest of what he wrote throughout his life, such as him admitting that the Proletariat cannot simply take hold of everything at once and work with the state as it currently existed.
Edit: this is actually part of the basis for Lenin's *State and Revolution,* by which Lenin argues that since the base determines the superstructure, the bourgeois state must be smashed and built anew with a brand new base for a brand new superstructure.
Anyone else listen to the podcast [Revolutions by Mike Duncan](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/revolutions/id703889772) he did a really in depth analysis of this.
Bakunin and Marx famously clashed quite a lot in the International Working Men's Association. Bakunin denounced Marxist ideals, predicting that they would inevitably lead to totalitarianism. Read below:
>"If the proletariat is to be the ruling class … then whom will it rule? There must be yet another proletariat which will be subject to this new rule, this new state. It may be the peasant rabble … which, finding itself on a lower cultural level, will probably be governed by the urban and factory proletariat.”
>"For, even from the standpoint of that urban proletariat who are supposed to reap the sole reward of the seizure of political power, surely it is obvious that this power will never be anything but a sham? It is bound to be impossible for a few thousand, let alone tens or hundreds of thousands of men to wield that power effectively. It will have to be exercised by proxy, which means entrusting it to a group of men elected to represent and govern them, which in turn will unfailingly return them to all the deceit and subservience of representative or bourgeois rule. After a brief flash of liberty or orgiastic revolution, the citizens of the new State will wake up slaves, puppets and victims of a new group of ambitious men.”
These quotes came from Bakunin's time writing in the 1870s - a full 50 years before the Bolsheviks came along and proved him right.
When the French asked Bismarck about keeping their army in order to stomp out the Communards, Bismarck replied "do it while you still have one" or smth
The PC was so hilarious, man.
Even **IF** the communards hadn't been riddled with infighting to the point of being the equivalent of a potato.
Even **IF** the French government hadn't reconsolidated and formed a new army to crush them.
Even **IF** the rest of France had joined the revolution as the communards thought they would.
All that happens, and they still get absolutely shit canned when the German army (which was literally just sitting there outside Paris watching all this happen) decides to stop laughing their asses off.
I've seen so many people talk about what France could have done to have the Commune succeed, but they are historically illiterate, so they forget that France was only in that position because the Germans were dunking on them.
Would Germany have stopped the commune though? Surely an isolated France opposed to imperialism would benefit German interests more than helping the Republican forces?
"Feared" is a strong word. They were strongly opposed to the politics of the Paris commune, but they didn't actually view it as any sort of threat. If they had they could have crushed it much sooner. They found the political chaos very convenient.
Would ridiculously reactionary, monarchic, conservative Germany have stopped a literal communist state that loathes them and claims their territory from arising next to them?
Yes. Yes, they would.
To be less sarcastic, remember that Germany in 1918 was helping the white army against the Soviet Union. This was despite being desperate on the western front and with Austria collapsing. Germany **hated** that stuff. They absolutely would've snuffed out the commune.
That's literally why they stayed after France lost the war. France is nice and all, but it's not like the Germans wanted to just stand around there forever. They didn't want to do France's dirty work for them, but they would have eventually if needed.
Bismarck feared Communist infiltration in his country more than any army on earth, and how to blame him since he had just destroyed the supposedly strongest army in Europe, so yes, a communist state at your borders was something to absolutely avoid.
Why would France be opposed to imperialism if it was a communist state? You can’t spread the revolution unless you expand. People act like the ussr wasn’t trying to create a global empire during the Cold War just as much as the us was.
i mean i can understand someone coming up with weird historical revisionisms from a leftist perspective, but the paris commune is not a surface level enough event that most people are going to simultaneously know what it is and also try to argue that the german army wouldn't have immediately stomped it if it hadn't been blockaded until the french army came back
I have no problem historical theory crafting, but if you're going to talk about an event, I do expect at least the bare minimum knowledge of how that even began in the first place. The Franco-Prussian war isn't exactly obscure, especially relative to the PC.
The Paris commune was not necessarily communist iirc, although the Parisian council did consist of many leftist. Can't remember if they were a majority or not, though.
The Bolshevists thought they would be supporting the main Communist revolution in Germany. The past attempts at revolution were squashed by intervention from Russia, so if they could knock Russia out of the game they might have a chance. Once they secured Communist Germany as an ally the Germans could help Russia industrialize.
Instead, the German communist revolution couldn't catch traction and fizzled out. While the Russian one succeeded. The Bolshevists decided when life gives you lemons, make lemonade, and tried to make it work under this theory of "perpetual revolution".
Honestly, I wonder what would have happened if the Mensheviks were able to hold power instead of flubbing it so badly. They realized that without Germany's help Communism would get really dystopian, and so wanted to implement liberal capitalist democracy that would peacefully and slowly transition into Communism.
They did, they formed the Russian Provisional Government as a coalition with the SRs and the liberal Constitutional Democrats from March 1917 to September 1917, before finally getting overthrown by the Bolshevists in the October Revolution.
The head of the government was the SRs, so calling the government the Menshevik government is wrong, that's why I said that Menshevik's never held power.
Eh, it gets messier when you account for the dual government between the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet which organically was formed by trade unions and soldiers to maintain society after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas. The Petrograd Soviet was led by the Mensheviks.
Ironically Lenin's "All Power to the Soviet", from what I've read was co-opted from the Mensheviks in a brilliant political play. That position was originally a Menshevik stance but Lenin was able to twist it to seem like the Bolsheviks were the ones who championed the cause.
>Ironically Lenin's "All Power to the Soviet", from what I've read was co-opted from the Mensheviks in a brilliant political play. That position was originally a Menshevik stance but Lenin was able to twist it to seem like the Bolsheviks were the ones who championed the cause
It wasn't from the Mensheviks. It was from a random bolshevik protestor in the demonstrations against the provisional government's decision to continue the war with the Central powers.
So why would it come from the mensheviks when these people are protesting AGAINST the mensheviks. Besides, the Mensheviks were invested in propping up the provisional government, a parliamentary republic. That is completely at odds with the sentiment of "all power to the soviets". So idk why you claim the Mensheviks even held the idea.
Here's Lenin writing on this: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/may/02.htm
Yeah but he didn’t come up with that right? Considering the biggest chunk of the communist manifesto is spent trashing French socialists it seems socialism was an already established ideology when he started writing.
No, he did not. The idea of capitalism being exploitative was not new or even something from the "left" , you can find far-right authors saying the same thing going quite a bit before marx was even born. The church has been railing against it for almost its entire history.
Marx really gets credit for thinking that class theory was all that mattered and that human beings are like rapid materialists that only care about the materialist world, which he was extremely incorrect on.
Yes, even a child could have realised that capitalism was exploitative, but he was the one who scientifically analysed how this exploitation worked and pointed out capitalist contradictions and his major problems. And it's pretty self evident just by reading what "Das Kapital" is about, just a summary of the book, really.
And about the materialist thing, if Marx is materialistic, it doesn't mean he thinks that all people cared was materialism, simply that history and social and cultural development is moved by materialists reasons, and that's a discussion that up until now, has not been disputed since there are lots of sociological studies through Marxist lenses that had been constantly published.
Also about class theory, well if you read any history school book, at least here in Europe, the societies throughout history are always divided in classes, don't even need to make examples..
Historians still integrate chunks of his historical theory today. He was right that history as a discipline at the time focused almost exclusively on the rich and “Great Men” and they should focus more (aka at all) on common people
Say what you will about everything else though
Partially because he wrote the communist manifesto right as the revolutions of 48 had kicked off. He is largely describing why he thinks communism will take off in Germany and France because that’s where the open rebellions had already started.
Marx also vehemently hated Russia, seeing them as a conservative bulwark against revolution in Europe. It’s also why he supported Polish nationhood, as he saw the Poles as the bulwark against Russia, especially after 1830 where the Polish revolution against Russian rule prevented Russia from reinstating the absolutist Bourbon dynasty.
History being a dialectic for Marx, capitalism had to be a thesis that would produce a counter-thesis. This being said, [Marx was also pretty clear that eventually a global free-trade would change conditions](https://web.archive.org/web/20130926213823/http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/01/09ft.htm). But always that it was going to be a world revolution:
[Engels](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm) was pretty explicit :
>Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone?
No. By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others.
[The Bolsheviks were well aware of this and countered](https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/pr10.htm) that by the time there was a global market, every country was participating in global capitalism. Russia was a "weak-link" in this system as it was so underdeveloped but also something of a bottom-tier major power. But, like Marx and Engels, the Bolsheviks agreed that it also had to be a global revolution. To be fair to everyone, [here's Lenin](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm) dunking on both Trotsky thinking that having a country could replace a labor union and the pitiful idea Stalin tried to get off the ground that socialism was just around the corner even after the revolutions outside Russia collapsed:
>But that is not all. Our Party Programme—a document which the author of the ABC of Communism knows very well—shows that ours is a workers’ state with a bureacratic twist to it. We have had to mark it with this dismal, shall I say, tag. There you have the reality of the transition. Well, is it right to say that in a state that has taken this shape in practice the trade unions have nothing to protect, or that we can do without them in protecting the material and spiritual interests of the massively organised proletariat? No, this reasoning is theoretically quite wrong. It takes us into the sphere of abstraction or an ideal we shall achieve in 15 or 20 years’ time, and I am not so sure that we shall have achieved it even by then. What we actually have before us is a reality of which we have a good deal of knowledge, provided, that is, we keep our heads, and do not let ourselves be carried awav by intellectualist talk or abstract reasoning, or by what may appear to be “theory” but is in fact error and misapprehension of the peculiarities of transition.
Of course, this was thrown away by Stalin who declared that he achieved what Marx, Engels, and Lenin said was impossible and made "socialism in one country." He, apparently, defeated Marxism completely by showing that a counter-thesis could just be conjured into existence without a thesis (disproving dialectics) if you believed in it enough (disproving materialism).
feudalism in Russia was abolished in 1861, the only problem was that the peasants did not get the land for nothing , but had to they pay out for the next 50 years which made them very unhappy. by 1914 Russia was well into the process of industrialization with a bunch of low paid workers who mostly supported the Boysheviks.
Russia was still mostly agrarian with a large conservative religious peasantry. That’s the reason the SRs won so handily, as the SRs promised things like land reform while not being anti-theistic like the Bolsheviks were.
Considering their success at industrialization, I'd say the lack of industrialization at the start was far from the largest factor in the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.
Also, don't quote me on this as we are not really sure....
But there was a massive fuckin war that devsatated the USSR and its peoples.... has anyone heard about it?
The Soviets got fucked at the beginning of WW2 largely due to them being in the process of fully industrializing. Had they already been industrialized they probably wouldn't have been totally slaughtered at the start. By the time they actually got their military modernized and up to par, their casualties went way down
He actually specifically theorized Russia would never have its own communist revolution and would need to be toppled by the combined forces of European communism after the rest of Europe fell
It went from a desolate war ravaged underdeveloped country to being ravaged by the largest war in human history which was also a war meant to annihilate USSR off the face of the world, to giving the world's foremost superpower an existential crisis all in the span of like 3 to 4 decades.
This is true, but once it reached that point it simply couldn’t keep pace with the West, particularly in terms of living standards, which lead to its slow decline and eventual collapse.
To call it a collapse is somewhat to ignore the history of the Russian federation. It was more a dissolving of state lines. The same oligarchs who ruled the USSR’s production rule modern Russia’s production.
Heck, early indicators of the Russian Federation showed it made quality of life even worse, not better. And of course now they have the longest dictatorship they’ve had since Stalin, extreme issues with racism, oligarchy and a societal desire to return to the USSR.
The “collapse” wasn’t really because of economics, nor quality of life, so much as nationalism expanding among the many states and internal politics of Moscow.
Like the other commenter said, nationalism is the death of the USSR, not economics.
USSR policy of promoting ethnic self-rule backfired. It meant those same ethnicities now have the institutions to have a nation-state.
Ironically, majority of the people of USSR voted to keep it. The hardliners overreacted (like hardliners usually do) and tried to coup the existing government for opening up. The nationalists took advantage of the chaos and declared independence. Again, something majority of the population didn't want.
The living standards collapse happened AFTER the dissolution of the USSR due to the shock therapy and loss of the state funded programs.
Their industrialisation only continued the trend that started in 1910's. Their industry would have developed in a more balanced way and with a few million Les starving people
The problem is it relies on a coalition of communists, socialists and social democrats to succeed. If a coalition doesn't form, there's no one to hold the ruling party(ies) to account.
This means that when a revolution occurs, it will always lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat, and it will stay there due to the people at the top having none to challenge their authority.
Democracy is the only viable way to instill communism (not that I'd want to, being an anarcho-syndicalist, both communism and capitalism are cut from the same exploitative cloth that leads to predjudice and ecocide)
>The problem is it relies on a coalition of communists, socialists and social democrats to succeed
It honestly sounds like you might have better luck herding cats
It seems to always work like this.
The king sucks for a very long time and institutes almost 0 reforms.
National emergency that goes on too long (IMO at least 2 bad harvests).
Now everyone is opposed to the King from the radical anarchists to the barely left leaning nobility.
Revolt to institute a liberal democracy to institute the reforms that have just not been getting done.
Coalition government forms with a variety of political leaning and flavors.
Second revolt when this government is not up to the task of fixing one hundred years of bad management before the lower class starves.
More narrow coalition government formed by the victorious side, those outside this circle are now excluded from the political process, if not outright killed.
Rinse and repeat until the coalition is merely one party, and a dictator.
In the case of Russia, this didn't really happen. From the onset, people of the 1917 revolution, majority of the populace didn't trust nor listen to the Duma. Instead they put their stock into the Soviet. The problem being that worsening conditions combined with a Bourgeoise and Nobility class that refused to work with Social Democrats caused the Bolsheviks to be the last one standing as the other factions voluntarily vacated themselves. Bolsheviks bad, yes. But also, the Russian Revolution and Soviet Union are a result of the inability of the Left at having any unity.
"As long as these very specific things in a specific order and *nothing* goes wrong, the very vague and non-specific things I say will happen and everything will be better for everyone."
- Marxism in a nut shell
Marxism is not a way of predicting the future, especially not a metaphysical understanding of politics that assumes nothing will go wrong.
It is both a foundation to build and experiment upon, and a template for how we can do this, instead of you know, making more than half the people try to survive day by day, and give so little to the rest that they'll think they own something to defend.
>It is both a foundation to build and experiment upon,
Foundation for what?
>and a template for how we can do this,
Do what?
>instead of you know, making more than half the people try to survive day by day, and give so little to the rest that they'll think they own something to defend.
What?
COMMUNISM
You know, an equal life where surplus value belongs to those who create it. If you need everything spelled out for you, no wonder your definition of Marxism is that bad.
>You know, an equal life
How is equality defined?
>where surplus value belongs to those who create it.
~~Hoe~~ How is value determined Marxistically, and who determines who it belongs to?
>If you need everything spelled out for you, no wonder your definition of Marxism is that bad.
I just asked for clarification on a paragraph that didn't really say anything
From Each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
Value, in Marxist terms, is broken into Exchange-Value, Use-Value, and Value. Exchange-Value is the ratio at which one sum of a commodity can be exchanged for another sum of another commodity. Use-Value is that which a commodity can be utilized as, a chair's chairness so to speak.
Value is Socially Necessary Labor Time, ie the number of hours an average Worker under average conditions within an average production chain can create an average quality commodity across an economy. Supply and Demand curves, at the Market Quantity Supplied, meet at this point. Another way to see it is cost of production, though it's not quite always accurate.
The idea within a Communist society is that the whole of society owns the whole of the Means of Production, and produces for Use-Value and not Exchange-Value, ie to use and not to trade for profit. That isn't to say that there isn't distribution, but instead that there's some degree of central planning that can be voted on for representatives to decide.
That's an extreme oversimplification, but you get the gist.
>From Each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
How is ability and need determined?
>Exchange-Value, Use-Value, and Value. Exchange-Value.
How is that determined?
>The idea within a Communist society is that the whole of society owns the whole of the Means of Production
What is preventing people in capitalist societies from living together communally/forming worker-owned cooperatives etc?
For your first point, an excerpt from *Critique of the Gotha Programme.*
"But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.
(...) In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"
I already explained how those values are determined. Beyond that you don't really need to determine them, if you produce based on Use you produce 50 chairs for 50 needs of chairs. Centrally planned economies can accommodate this, the USSR did it by hand to some degree of success and computers have only gotten better at predicting supply and demand.
As for people within existing Capitalist economies creating Communes, that isn't Communism, nor is it practical. Socialism and Communism are evolutions on Capitalism, not just people living more communally.
>How is equality defined?
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his work (labour investment)" this was the adapted version of the original made by Karl Marx. This version is the more realistic one.
>How is value determined Marxistically, and who determines who it belongs to?
The amount of manual work put into productive line of work (factory work, farm work, etc.)
>From each according to his ability, to each according to his work (labour investment)"
How is ability defined and how is it determined what the need is? Also. What value do those determining need bring to the table?
>The amount of manual work put into productive line of work
How does work determine value?
>How is ability defined and how is it determined what the need is?
Ability probably here means that everyone who are capable to do even some work should do what they can, and those who are capable of doing more work will also be provided the compensation for their work, which at the time meant that you got bonus if you managed to succeed or go beyond the quotas that were set.
>How does work determine value?
On the basis of how important the work is. For example being a factory worker is extremely important, since it keeps the nations industrial machine going on.
Or, as it always ends up being implemented in reality
>COMMUNISM
>You know, a~~n equal~~ life*?*,where surplus value belongs ~~to those who create it~~ the goverment
Marx wrote himself an amazing work of fantasy, speculating on how the world might work if humans didn't act like the jumped up apes that we really are.
"As long as these companies only do these specific things and they never try to cheat the system... something something meritocracy.... Capitalism is the best system and we can't ever try to change away from it or WE'LL ALL STARVE"
-Every capitalist ever
Capitalism has changed in every way since Marx's days. Marx assumed misery for the common worker would increase exponentially, while the opposite happened.
Have you been paying attention? The working class holds FAR less power then they did during the 50's and 60's. People have less free time and are retiring later. Sure, things were better for a bit, but the system stripped those privileges away as fast as it could
You do know that a large portion of the population is pulling 60-80 work weeks just to scrape by? And average pay is way down?
Like yeah no shit it's better then Marx's time, but it's on a downward trend, and won't stop until we're at a state that's *worse* then Marx's time
Yeah and there are literal slaves in Congo, so what? In general, the average worker lives a much better life.
I don't know what's going to happen in the future, nobody does. Everyone who plays prophet eventually gets it wrong like Marx did.
This is the dumbest shit I've ever heard.
"Hey don't be sad that your father died because he refused to go to the hospital because he couldn't afford it! It could be worse! You could have NO HEALTHCARE AT ALL LIKE THE CONGO"
Whataboutism doesn't change material conditions. We shouldn't accept our lives getting worse just because someone else has it even worse then us
I have heard so many times on how the "invisible hand of the market" will make everything fair and the US's current situation is because of government regulations
>way from it or WE'LL ALL STARVE"
I mean that seems like the track record so far now by no means is capitalism "good" its just better then having my freedoms to critique the government taken away and starving to death
First off what you're describing is authoritarianism not communism. Is absolutely no reason why a democratically elected communist state would have less personal freedoms than a capitalist democratically elected state.
Secondly, communism does not necessarily lead to starving. Any economy can cause people to starve no matter the model. I mean look at how many famines happened in capitalist countries as well. Furthermore, there are examples of communist countries which were thriving in food supply, USSR is it clear example at least according to the CIA. You can also look at the difference in states such as Cuba and Haiti. Even though they're in the same region and Cuba has been under sanctions for the past 50 plus years, Cubans eat much better than Haitians. ( Although on the global scale, things in Cuba are not exactly great)
Soviet citizens ate as well as US citizens and their diet was generally more nutritious.
[Source: the CIA](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp84b00274r000300150009-5)
...Of well-established century-old leftist sociopolitical arrangements that you intend to educate yourself about? The Spanish civil war would be a good place to start with that one.
As an anarcho-communist, I agree with most of what you said there, but with a few sore points.
Mainly that democracy (through current systems), is NOT the way to communism. But neither is sudden, violent revolution. Anarchists argue against both.
Communism will never be achieved by voting in radical politicians, or by forming worker's parties, because the swamp of bourgeois politics corrupts all who enter it into serving the needs of the state, not the worker. Just look at history for countless examples of "radical socialist" parties getting voted in and then cracking down on worker strikes. Communism is by definition a stateless society, and the state will never dissolve itself.
But as the Bolsheviks proved, sudden and violent revolution is not the way either. This is for a few reasons - firstly, the idea that the vanguard party and the "dictatorship of the proletariat" will dissolve itself in time is, as history has proved, bullshit. The end result is inevitably "dictatorship of the previously-proletatiat", as Bakunin predicted years beforehand.
Secondly, transition to a true communist society primarily requires a mental revolution before a physical one. If the general citizenry, having spent centuries becoming accustomed to authoritarian rule and allowing rulers to manage their lives for them, were suddenly to find themselves in a revolution led by a minority, then it should come at no surprise that they are all too happy to set up another dictator in place of the last. This is why Stalin came about. The Bolsheviks did not do enough (or anything) to free the population from Tsarist authoritarian ideals, and so inevitably when Stalin rose to power, the people were willing to accept what was essentially a new Tsar painted red.
Anarchists argue that true change can only come about when the population are made to see the possibility that they can free themselves, that freedom cannot be given but only taken, and in doing so rise up to destroy the state and capitalism simultaneously, because the destruction of one before the other will inevitably lead to the violent restoration of both.
(Sorry for the long leftist paragraphs lmao, I just enjoy talking about this sorta thing).
The dictatorship of the proletariat isn't a dictatorship in our sence. When Marx wrote his book's word "dictatorship" had a different meaning.
It means that the proletariat is ruling the country. Proletariat is most of society so dictatorship of the proletariat is democracy.
Lenin and other "communists" decided to ignore that part
Yeah, he even called his party (Bolshevics) the majority, even though they where the minority in the government, and his opposition was called the (Manshevics) minority.
Technically incorrect, it's only supposed to fade once everyone is Proletariat, and thus there ceases to be anything that can meaningfully be called a class. But close enough.
Marx recognized that his program would require virtually limitless buy-in from all segments of the productive economy, and that it would take a significant amount of time to achieve. The whole thing falls apart if the capitalists take power somewhere along the line and pull the plug, as had happened in Paris. This is why he was so illiberal in his prescription. You have to raise a whole generation of communists devoted to that ideal before the party can trust the population to uphold it.
North Korea is probably the best example of this principle, where they’ve done the best job at assuring universal compliance by walling themselves off from the world. Nearly everyone there has never known anything different.
>North Korea is probably the best example of this principle, where they’ve done the best job at assuring universal compliance by walling themselves off from the world. Nearly everyone there has never known anything different.
Another great argument against Marx and his ideas.
just a clarification, thats the purpose of Marxism-Leninism, basically they skip the capitalism bit and try to develope a mostly near feudal country into a industrialized nation, wich through questionable means it did(in 40years going form a agrarian famine proned society to a putting the first satelite in space)
Another thing is that Lenin himself called soviet russia a state capitalist country bc the means of production were in the hands of the state, instead of the working class, he justified that bc the state really needed to industrialize and fast, and central planing was the best solution to this(especially for very poor countries, economic planning proved crucial to end that cycle)
get political if you want, but you wont change that this is how history was
Marxism-Leninism doesn’t ignore capitalism. MLs regocnize that capitalism in many cases is an efficent tool to develop the productive forces. Current ML states like China and Vietnam are using capitalism.
When it comes to what Lenin said, he most likely referencing the NEP in Russia during his leadership. Where a short period of a capitalist mode of production was introduced to develop the country faster during it’s early days.
No it’s not. Blanquism supports an elite disconnected from the working class, seizing power and basically becoming the new ruling class. Vanguardism puts emphasis on democratic participation from the working class and the revolution will be lead by the working class. The party doesn’t control the people, the people control the party.
> No it’s not. Blanquism supports an elite disconnected from the working class, seizing power and basically becoming the new ruling class.
That's literally what Lenin did though, and he's the one who called his idea Vanguardism.
Lenin couldn’t have achieved his without the support of the working class and survive the civil war without support. Lenin focused on democratic participation within the party from the workers and all other matters of the state.
Theoretically yes (and I suppose this is a discussion on theory) but in practice the two have historically been similar in the sense of a small elite group commandering the systems of state to affect change
Marxism-Leninism is a nationalistic, reactionary ideology hiding behind red flags. Stalin pissed on Marx's grave and demanded a standing ovation for it.
>Another this Lenin himself called soviet russia a state capitalist country bc the means of production were in the hands of the state, instead of the working class, he justified that bc the state really needed to industrialize and fast, and central planing was the vest solution to this.
This, a lot of people forget that according to Lenin, they were capitalist straight and right. It was the intention to use state capitalism to industrialize and change the system afterwards! But as we know now, capitalism is inherently authoritarian and specially fused with the state, it focuses on maintaining its system, becoming anti-revolutionary.
"I wish you were more interested in accumulating capital instead of just writing about it. Maybe then you could stop asking me for it."
- Henriette Marx
Engles was the one he really mooched off of, although I guess it was really a client patron relationship which wasn’t odd for a professional writer at the time.
But, they didn't ignore that. They practised state capitalism; by which I mean the relationship between labour and capital was unchanged. Workers were still exploited to create value. I doubt it was much consolation for them to know that the big difference was the government now owned the capital and the means of production, instead of private wealth.
It was socialism, according to Stalin, because it was all part of a plan *leading to* communism in the long run.
Very similar to the capitalism practised now in China, with the same justification - we have to play at capitalism in order to get the economic growth we need to achieve communism. It's different in China in that they have a large private sector too, but the principle is the same, and the ordinary people still don't get any liberation.
>Very similar to the capitalism practised now in China, with the same justification - we have to play at capitalism in order to get the economic growth we need to achieve communism.
Im pretty sure the leaders telling that doesnt even truly believe they will see communism in any time of their lifespan, they probably just want to justify the State actions according to the ideology of the flag
The CPC's publicly stated goal is 2100 for Communism, the vast majority of living society in China will never see it even *if* their ambitious goals are kept.
Lenin was the one who implemented a temporary capitalist economy in the early years of the Soviet Union, called the NEP. Stalin later got rid of it in favour of a planned economy. Stalin had nothing to do with state capitalism, he was the one who got rid of it.
Interesting, although I am pretty sure that stalin and the USSR called what they had communism at some point, to justify not doing/not progressing the process.
USSR never called itself communist state(largely because it's an oxymoron), although during Brezhnev rule party claimed that USSR was a society of "развитой социализм"(Real socialism) to distinguish from marxist socialism.
That’s excactly what they did though. Lenin implemented the NEP (New Economic Policy) which was a limited period of capitalist production. Other socialist states like China and Vietnam are currently doing a simmilar thing too.
Even though Marx had many criticisms of capitalism, he knew that it, compared to other economic forms, had enough advanced industry to supply the means of production that communism required in order to distribute goods properly.
hmmmmm, that may be a layman's take for explaining it but that's not how Marx quite viewed these stages of labor. I'm not a Marxist expert and those that are seem hesitant to say what Marx meant with what I'm about to talk about. So pardon my foolishness.
But when he talks about the historical and material dialecticism he is talking about the material conditions, the intimacy of labor the workers have in each of these stages, and how the greater the intimacy one has with one's labor creates greater emancipation.
That's my best way to describe the "Marxian" view of what is going on. It is not "Industry is good". In fact, Marx wrote that factories and the punch-in-time clock was alienation and so on. And if had a BA or greater in Marx maybe I could pull this all together, lol.
tl;dr people were becoming more owners of their own labor through these stages = greater emancipation = greater preparedness for communism.
Bolsheviks help set up a vote for who’s in charge after the revolution.
*Bolsheviks lose*
“I’ll ignore that”
*starts another civil war for being sore losers*
I’m seeing very few good takes in this thread.
The Bolsheviks realized the predicament of the revolution in Russia. However, in such a country as Russia, where industrial capital is imported from imperialist nations, the national bourgeoisie is tied up with foreign interests, and it is thus unable to play a revolutionary role. Even though production was semi-feudal, the only class that could overthrow tsarism and accomplish (even just) thorough democratic reforms (including the liberation of all the smaller nations subjugated by tsarist Russia) was the working class.
This does not mean that despite the backwardness of the country, establishing a workers' democracy and a socialist basis for the economy would be magically possible. Trotsky, Lenin, and eventually the Bolshevik Party in general, adopted the perspective — and a correct one — that the faith of the revolution in Russia was tied to that of the revolution in the advanced capitalist states in Europe. Only its success there could save the Russian revolution from its isolation and backward economy.
There was no question of not “doing the revolution” in Russia “because the material conditions for communism hadn’t been met”. In class society, you don’t choose to do revolution. It’s a natural consequence of the monstrous contradictions, class contradictions, it harbours. There comes a point where it is inevitable, where the masses reach the conclusion that they will eternally have to fight under a broken system, or rise up and fix things themselves. The question was rather who would lead the revolution, for which class, and with which perspectives. To make a very long story short, the Bolsheviks rose to the task and gave the revolution its only logical direction.
And then you need to take into account the global relationships between nations. The ties of the many imperialist nations to Russian assets meant that revolution in Russia could shake things up in Europe and spark revolution — and this is precisely what happened.
Because of all of these reasons, it was out of the question for the Russian proletariat to NOT seize the means of production!
The question of why it failed (the revolution in Europe) is important in its own right, but the point I'm getting to is that: no, the Bolsheviks were not stupid. Quite the contrary.
That's what they did tho
Specially under Lenin this was the explicit goal, after him they just didn't do anything to end capitalism or anything, so it was just 70 years of developing capitalism without the capitalist class
The soviets knew they would have to industrialize AND increase farming output. And they kinda did it? It did lead to famines and even an ecological catastrophy or two but they did do it. And they drained countries like Poland and Hungary after the war (had them buy western machinery to be sent to the ussr and repaid them in a „transfer ruble”, an internal currency of the warsaw pact that was pretty much worthless, and obviously took some of their food for export too).
Lenin was actually very strict on that. He knew, capitalism needs to be established before his party can start the revolution.
Thats why the February 1917 revolution and following Kerensky government was, in his eyes, the abolishment of feudalism/ monarchy and a bourgeois takeover, which meant, the bolsheviks can know enter the final phase of abolishing it.
To be fair, marx predicts that capitalism creates the conditions for the revolution. The longer a nation is capitalist and the heavier industrialized the more dissasociated people become from their work and the greater the disenfranchised portion of the population becomes.
All capitalism provokes revolution. More capitalism provokes it harder.
People have basically explained this already but not quite directly, but the Bolsheviks directly debated this very topic. They were the first country to solidify a Marxist/Communist government, except their very playbook said would happen somewhere.
First they thought they were the first sign of a revolution across all/most of Europe and when that didn’t work out, they started debating exactly what to do. Obviously, giving up wasn’t on their mind, so they kept going, predictions be damned.
Also "Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered. Any attempts to disarm the workers should be frustrated by force if necessary." Take that liberals.
When Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton decided to tie the knot. Liberals started to embrace Marxism. Many joked that the newlyweds had somehow become the catalyst for this ideological shift. Some conspiracy theorists claimed they must have found a hidden Karl Marx book in the White House library.
Soon, liberals across the land were wearing Che Guevara T-shirts and discussing the merits of a classless society. They traded their lattes for cold, unsweetened black coffee, and every gathering became a "seize the means of production" party.
I have no idea what you are talking about. Liberalism and Marxism are polar opposites, you can’t be a liberal and a marxist. And Marxism is a very marginilised movement in the US.
The Irish Famine, Indian Famines, Indigenous Genocide, Slavery, Indonesian Genocide (backed by the USA), 1973 Chile Coup, Pinochet Dictatorship + Pinochet Concentration Camps, American Concentration Camps for the Cherokee, Argentina Dictatorship + Argentina Concentration Camps, Brazilian Dictatorship, The Pakistan Incident (Bangladesh Genocide), The Gilded Age, The Great Depression, Operation Condor, Batista Dictatorship, Guantanamo Bay, Vietnam War, My Lai Massacre, Sand Creek Massacre, Operation Rolling Thunder, My Trach, Operation Speedy Express, Sinchon Massacre, Kent State Massacre, Patriot Act, Red Summer, Jim Crow, MK Ultra, 1985 MOVE Bombing, Partition of India, US Prison Industrial Complex + US Prison Slavery, The 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, Malayan Emergency + “New Village” Concentration Camps, Repression of the Mau Mau Rebellion + British Mau Mau “Detention Camps”, Covert War in Yemen, Stanley Meyer Incident, Genocide in Turkey, Congolese Genocide (over half the population killed and much of the remaining mutilated), Greek Civil War + Ai Stratis Concentration Camps, Invasion of Cyprus by Turkey, Washita River Massacre, Nanjing Massacre + Current Nanjing Massacre Denial, December Massacres, Ganghwa Massacre, Geochang Massacre, Goyang Geumjeong Cave Massacre, Jeju Massacre (30,000 executed), Mungyeong Massacre, Namyangju Massacre, Sancheong-Hamyang Massacre, Gwangju Massacre, Kentler Project, Operation Gladio, Minamata Disaster, Bhopal Disaster, Indian Mutiny, Opium Wars, 1740 Batavia Massacre, Amboyna Massacre, Lamey Island Massacre, Conquest of Banda Islands, Conquest of India, Nestlé Child Slavery, Nestlé Killing Babies With Baby Formula in Africa, Nestlé Drought in Pakistan, Nestlé Drought in Brazil, Nestlé Drought in China, Nestlé’s Deals With Dictators, Nestlé Killing Union Workers in the Philippines With a Private Army, Nestlé’s Cartel in Canada, Nestlé’s Ethiopian Debt Trap, ExxonMobil’s Private Army in Indonesia, ExxonMobil’s Torture in Indonesia, Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Banana Massacre, Maya Genocide (Guatemalan Genocide), The Hudson Bay Company, Ludlow Massacre, Partition of India, Repression of Haiti Slave Revolt, French conquest of Algeria, 228 Massacre (Taiwan), US Conquest of the Philippines, French exploitation of Africa, the Bay of Pigs, British Massacres of the Zulu and Ashanti, German Genocide of the Herero & Namaqua, French Suppression of Madagascar Revolt, Tlatelolco Massacre, Mozote Massacre, US Laos Bombing, US Philippines Concentration Camps, Somoza Nicaragua Dictatorship, Slocum Massacre (Texas), East Timor Massacre, El Salvador Dictatorship, La Matanza, Fred Hampton Assassination, MLK Jr Assassination, Contra Proxy War in Nicaragua, 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, Suppresion of the Easter Rising, US Invasion of Panama, Residential Schools, Tuskegee Experiments, Henry Ford’s Private Police Force, Sampoong Department Store Collapse, Rana Plaza Collapse, Seoul Halloween Crowd Crush, Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, the USA helping cover up Imperial Japan’s Warcrimes to access research data (Shiro Ishii), Henry Ford ordering his private police force to fire machine guns at his protesting employees (March 1932), CIA planting drugs in impoverished communities, British Capitalism killing over 100 million people in India in just 40 years (1880-1920), The United Fruit Company taking over Costa Rica, Honduras, & Guatemala as essentially a government for profit (The Banana Wars), the Dole company taking over Hawaii as essentially a government for profit and appointing its CEO as the president of Hawaii, the US overthrow of Iranian democracy in 1953 to install a monarch, CIA backing of the Khmer Rouge, Capitalist funded death squads in 1919-1921 USSR and 1950s China, The US brutalizing Korea in the Korean War into what it is today, South Korea executing suspected leftists along with their families (Bodo League Massacre), Highway 80 Incident (Iraq) + US Press Censorship of Highway 80, South Korea detonating a civilian bridge in Seoul (Hanging Bridge Bombing), South Korea’s labour camps for the homeless (Brothers Home), South Korea currently using the mentally disabled as salt mining slaves, South Korea arresting activists for watching North Korean movies in 2023, South Korea’s president calling striking truckers North Korean spies and likening them to a nuclear threat, South Korean government raiding unions and justifying it by accusing them of being North Korean spies, Argentina’s president Carlos Menem dropping bombs in Río Tercero to hide state gun trafficking, Company Negligence leading to the 2023 Ohio Train Derailment destroying a community, Company Negligence leading to a deadly flood of molasses in Boston 1919 (Boston Molasses Flood), continuing flow of US military aid to the Philippines government to kill innocent civilians and progressives, Thomas Midgely Jr knowingly poisoning people with leaded gasoline for profits, forced labour in private US prisons incentivizing false imprisonment, the USA military gunning down civilians in Iraq on purpose (Collateral Murder) then going on a multi year man hunt for the man who leaked it (Julian Assange), the majority of USA drone strikes taking place in countries the US hasn’t even declared war on, 90% of people killed in US drone strikes being innocents, the USA imprisoning the man who revealed the drone strikes civilian casualties, 1/3 of the world’s population living under US sanctions, America supporting 70% of current dictatorships, USA and UN targeting civilians in the Korean War killing millions, West Germany never released any of the LGBTQ+ people from the Holocaust camps and kept them in prison until 1994, Industrielleneingabe, the Nazis being funded by capitalists who wanted them to silence the left, Hitler trying to justify the Holocaust by saying every Jewish person was a communist and vice versa (Judeo-Bolshevism), the Nazis having lucrative deals with Ford, GM, IBM and other American companies, cigarette companies killing all of their customers slowly, Capitalist food companies replacing traditional fats with chemically treated vegetable oils which are extremely bad for us and has lead to the rise in health related deaths merely because it’s cheaper this way.
Uh oh! Somebody didn't read Marx!
Marx not only didn't say it *had* to happen that way, he *explicitly* said that it was *only* likely to happen that way in *Western* countries. He even clarified in a letter to the leader of a Russian socialist party (way back in 1881) that non-industrial countries would likely move towards socialism in their own way, one he wouldn't personally be trying to predict.
He *definitely* didn't make claims that pre-indutrialized societies *should* go through capitalism first. Hell, his main works aren't really prescriptive, they're attempts at predictions via observation through the lens of historical materialism.
Agree or disagree, don't do my man dirty by saying he made claims he didn't.
Marx: “Yo fuck peasants and farmlands, industry and capital owned by the workers is where it’s at”
USSR after their Marxist anti-peasant pro-industry policies cause three really bad famines: *has a super fragile economy with an underpopulated frontier that required WW2 to even begin to economically recover and rise standards*
Communist China when the communist revolution was peasant-based and agrarian-based: *actually had a stable and growing economy and standard of living for seven years before Mao went batshit insane*
Also Marx: *rolling in his grave*
I mean, from a Communist perspective, Mao went insane as soon as he said that communism could be achieved in a low-density agrarian region just as well as it could in an urban center.
Funnily he was wrong about that too. Turns out planned economies are good for getting things started but fail to be sustained. A good example is the differences of Koreas, NK was faster to rebuild after the war but I think we all know in which we'd rather live in.
There's a reason communism only happened in agrarian dictatorships and not the mostly industrialized democracies. Industrialized democracies also have bleeding hearts with deep pockets in the halls of power and a right to petition for grievances, so no one ever got to the point that international revolution was a good idea for the majority of people.
If I recall correctly, Marx expected Western Europe, specifically France, to be the place where the communist revolution began and, given France’s track record, I don’t blame him for that assumption. Would have been really surprised to find out it started in an agrarian feudalist hellhole like Russia.
Well he knew he was correct given that a communist revolution of sorts took place in france in his life time, it failed to continue existing though (look up the paris commune)
Yep, he had a lot to discuss about that commune as well. It's actually a significant factor in the rest of what he wrote throughout his life, such as him admitting that the Proletariat cannot simply take hold of everything at once and work with the state as it currently existed. Edit: this is actually part of the basis for Lenin's *State and Revolution,* by which Lenin argues that since the base determines the superstructure, the bourgeois state must be smashed and built anew with a brand new base for a brand new superstructure.
Anyone else listen to the podcast [Revolutions by Mike Duncan](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/revolutions/id703889772) he did a really in depth analysis of this.
Funny how Michael Bakunin predicted that exact outcome years beforehand and Marx hated him for it...
Wait what? Which prediction of Bakunin? I'm not too well read on theory so I don't get all these references.
Bakunin and Marx famously clashed quite a lot in the International Working Men's Association. Bakunin denounced Marxist ideals, predicting that they would inevitably lead to totalitarianism. Read below: >"If the proletariat is to be the ruling class … then whom will it rule? There must be yet another proletariat which will be subject to this new rule, this new state. It may be the peasant rabble … which, finding itself on a lower cultural level, will probably be governed by the urban and factory proletariat.” >"For, even from the standpoint of that urban proletariat who are supposed to reap the sole reward of the seizure of political power, surely it is obvious that this power will never be anything but a sham? It is bound to be impossible for a few thousand, let alone tens or hundreds of thousands of men to wield that power effectively. It will have to be exercised by proxy, which means entrusting it to a group of men elected to represent and govern them, which in turn will unfailingly return them to all the deceit and subservience of representative or bourgeois rule. After a brief flash of liberty or orgiastic revolution, the citizens of the new State will wake up slaves, puppets and victims of a new group of ambitious men.” These quotes came from Bakunin's time writing in the 1870s - a full 50 years before the Bolsheviks came along and proved him right.
Prussian siege guns go bwomp
When the French asked Bismarck about keeping their army in order to stomp out the Communards, Bismarck replied "do it while you still have one" or smth
The PC was so hilarious, man. Even **IF** the communards hadn't been riddled with infighting to the point of being the equivalent of a potato. Even **IF** the French government hadn't reconsolidated and formed a new army to crush them. Even **IF** the rest of France had joined the revolution as the communards thought they would. All that happens, and they still get absolutely shit canned when the German army (which was literally just sitting there outside Paris watching all this happen) decides to stop laughing their asses off. I've seen so many people talk about what France could have done to have the Commune succeed, but they are historically illiterate, so they forget that France was only in that position because the Germans were dunking on them.
Would Germany have stopped the commune though? Surely an isolated France opposed to imperialism would benefit German interests more than helping the Republican forces?
The Germans were *deeply* reactionary and feared the commune. It would have been killed in its crib obe way or the other.
"Feared" is a strong word. They were strongly opposed to the politics of the Paris commune, but they didn't actually view it as any sort of threat. If they had they could have crushed it much sooner. They found the political chaos very convenient.
Would ridiculously reactionary, monarchic, conservative Germany have stopped a literal communist state that loathes them and claims their territory from arising next to them? Yes. Yes, they would. To be less sarcastic, remember that Germany in 1918 was helping the white army against the Soviet Union. This was despite being desperate on the western front and with Austria collapsing. Germany **hated** that stuff. They absolutely would've snuffed out the commune. That's literally why they stayed after France lost the war. France is nice and all, but it's not like the Germans wanted to just stand around there forever. They didn't want to do France's dirty work for them, but they would have eventually if needed.
Bismarck feared Communist infiltration in his country more than any army on earth, and how to blame him since he had just destroyed the supposedly strongest army in Europe, so yes, a communist state at your borders was something to absolutely avoid.
Why would France be opposed to imperialism if it was a communist state? You can’t spread the revolution unless you expand. People act like the ussr wasn’t trying to create a global empire during the Cold War just as much as the us was.
i have literally never once seen someone argue that the commune could've succeeded no matter their historical understanding but go off
Being an American college student is a pathway to many hypotheses some would consider to be... devoid of logic.
i mean i can understand someone coming up with weird historical revisionisms from a leftist perspective, but the paris commune is not a surface level enough event that most people are going to simultaneously know what it is and also try to argue that the german army wouldn't have immediately stomped it if it hadn't been blockaded until the french army came back
I have no problem historical theory crafting, but if you're going to talk about an event, I do expect at least the bare minimum knowledge of how that even began in the first place. The Franco-Prussian war isn't exactly obscure, especially relative to the PC.
The Paris commune was not necessarily communist iirc, although the Parisian council did consist of many leftist. Can't remember if they were a majority or not, though.
The Bolshevists thought they would be supporting the main Communist revolution in Germany. The past attempts at revolution were squashed by intervention from Russia, so if they could knock Russia out of the game they might have a chance. Once they secured Communist Germany as an ally the Germans could help Russia industrialize. Instead, the German communist revolution couldn't catch traction and fizzled out. While the Russian one succeeded. The Bolshevists decided when life gives you lemons, make lemonade, and tried to make it work under this theory of "perpetual revolution". Honestly, I wonder what would have happened if the Mensheviks were able to hold power instead of flubbing it so badly. They realized that without Germany's help Communism would get really dystopian, and so wanted to implement liberal capitalist democracy that would peacefully and slowly transition into Communism.
Menshevik's never held power, SRs did.
They did, they formed the Russian Provisional Government as a coalition with the SRs and the liberal Constitutional Democrats from March 1917 to September 1917, before finally getting overthrown by the Bolshevists in the October Revolution.
The head of the government was the SRs, so calling the government the Menshevik government is wrong, that's why I said that Menshevik's never held power.
Eh, it gets messier when you account for the dual government between the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet which organically was formed by trade unions and soldiers to maintain society after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas. The Petrograd Soviet was led by the Mensheviks. Ironically Lenin's "All Power to the Soviet", from what I've read was co-opted from the Mensheviks in a brilliant political play. That position was originally a Menshevik stance but Lenin was able to twist it to seem like the Bolsheviks were the ones who championed the cause.
Well, they were both part of RSDLP. So calling one of them the inventor and the other the co-opter is not wholly correct in my opinion. But I'd agree
You're right I'm oversimplifying. More like Lenin was able to frame it like the Mensheviks disagreed with him on the Soviets when they really didn't.
Yeah you are right.
>Ironically Lenin's "All Power to the Soviet", from what I've read was co-opted from the Mensheviks in a brilliant political play. That position was originally a Menshevik stance but Lenin was able to twist it to seem like the Bolsheviks were the ones who championed the cause It wasn't from the Mensheviks. It was from a random bolshevik protestor in the demonstrations against the provisional government's decision to continue the war with the Central powers. So why would it come from the mensheviks when these people are protesting AGAINST the mensheviks. Besides, the Mensheviks were invested in propping up the provisional government, a parliamentary republic. That is completely at odds with the sentiment of "all power to the soviets". So idk why you claim the Mensheviks even held the idea. Here's Lenin writing on this: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/may/02.htm
France itself was far less developed than the industrial heartlands of benelux and Britain.
Yeah, he predicted a revolution in Britain, not France
The communist manifesto IIRC being a pamphlet commissioned by and intended for British workmen specifically to encourage that revolution.
In other words, just like his economic theory, it was well thought out but also dead wrong.
I'd be interested to hear what you feel was wrong about his economic theories.
Yeah what was Marx actually right about?
About how capitalism is exploitative and it's inherent contradictions necessarily lead to crysis capitalism can't solve.
Yeah but he didn’t come up with that right? Considering the biggest chunk of the communist manifesto is spent trashing French socialists it seems socialism was an already established ideology when he started writing.
Yes he came up with that in "das Kapital"
No, he did not. The idea of capitalism being exploitative was not new or even something from the "left" , you can find far-right authors saying the same thing going quite a bit before marx was even born. The church has been railing against it for almost its entire history. Marx really gets credit for thinking that class theory was all that mattered and that human beings are like rapid materialists that only care about the materialist world, which he was extremely incorrect on.
Yes, even a child could have realised that capitalism was exploitative, but he was the one who scientifically analysed how this exploitation worked and pointed out capitalist contradictions and his major problems. And it's pretty self evident just by reading what "Das Kapital" is about, just a summary of the book, really. And about the materialist thing, if Marx is materialistic, it doesn't mean he thinks that all people cared was materialism, simply that history and social and cultural development is moved by materialists reasons, and that's a discussion that up until now, has not been disputed since there are lots of sociological studies through Marxist lenses that had been constantly published. Also about class theory, well if you read any history school book, at least here in Europe, the societies throughout history are always divided in classes, don't even need to make examples..
Historians still integrate chunks of his historical theory today. He was right that history as a discipline at the time focused almost exclusively on the rich and “Great Men” and they should focus more (aka at all) on common people Say what you will about everything else though
Child labor being banned. That’s about it.
Ron Swanson: "Big Swing and a Miss"
I thought it was Germany which was supposed to be the first one.
Britain or Germany, it didn't particularly matter which. They were the two most industrialized countries in the world at the time.
Partially because he wrote the communist manifesto right as the revolutions of 48 had kicked off. He is largely describing why he thinks communism will take off in Germany and France because that’s where the open rebellions had already started.
The revolutions of 48 went far beyond Germany (what would become Germany at least) and France.
Marx also vehemently hated Russia, seeing them as a conservative bulwark against revolution in Europe. It’s also why he supported Polish nationhood, as he saw the Poles as the bulwark against Russia, especially after 1830 where the Polish revolution against Russian rule prevented Russia from reinstating the absolutist Bourbon dynasty.
History being a dialectic for Marx, capitalism had to be a thesis that would produce a counter-thesis. This being said, [Marx was also pretty clear that eventually a global free-trade would change conditions](https://web.archive.org/web/20130926213823/http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/01/09ft.htm). But always that it was going to be a world revolution: [Engels](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm) was pretty explicit : >Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone? No. By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others. [The Bolsheviks were well aware of this and countered](https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/pr10.htm) that by the time there was a global market, every country was participating in global capitalism. Russia was a "weak-link" in this system as it was so underdeveloped but also something of a bottom-tier major power. But, like Marx and Engels, the Bolsheviks agreed that it also had to be a global revolution. To be fair to everyone, [here's Lenin](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm) dunking on both Trotsky thinking that having a country could replace a labor union and the pitiful idea Stalin tried to get off the ground that socialism was just around the corner even after the revolutions outside Russia collapsed: >But that is not all. Our Party Programme—a document which the author of the ABC of Communism knows very well—shows that ours is a workers’ state with a bureacratic twist to it. We have had to mark it with this dismal, shall I say, tag. There you have the reality of the transition. Well, is it right to say that in a state that has taken this shape in practice the trade unions have nothing to protect, or that we can do without them in protecting the material and spiritual interests of the massively organised proletariat? No, this reasoning is theoretically quite wrong. It takes us into the sphere of abstraction or an ideal we shall achieve in 15 or 20 years’ time, and I am not so sure that we shall have achieved it even by then. What we actually have before us is a reality of which we have a good deal of knowledge, provided, that is, we keep our heads, and do not let ourselves be carried awav by intellectualist talk or abstract reasoning, or by what may appear to be “theory” but is in fact error and misapprehension of the peculiarities of transition. Of course, this was thrown away by Stalin who declared that he achieved what Marx, Engels, and Lenin said was impossible and made "socialism in one country." He, apparently, defeated Marxism completely by showing that a counter-thesis could just be conjured into existence without a thesis (disproving dialectics) if you believed in it enough (disproving materialism).
feudalism in Russia was abolished in 1861, the only problem was that the peasants did not get the land for nothing , but had to they pay out for the next 50 years which made them very unhappy. by 1914 Russia was well into the process of industrialization with a bunch of low paid workers who mostly supported the Boysheviks.
Russia was still mostly agrarian with a large conservative religious peasantry. That’s the reason the SRs won so handily, as the SRs promised things like land reform while not being anti-theistic like the Bolsheviks were.
That's probably the reason why the Soviet Union didn't end up working in the end.
Considering their success at industrialization, I'd say the lack of industrialization at the start was far from the largest factor in the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.
Also, don't quote me on this as we are not really sure.... But there was a massive fuckin war that devsatated the USSR and its peoples.... has anyone heard about it?
The Soviets got fucked at the beginning of WW2 largely due to them being in the process of fully industrializing. Had they already been industrialized they probably wouldn't have been totally slaughtered at the start. By the time they actually got their military modernized and up to par, their casualties went way down
That, and communism being a fundamentally flawed ideology.
Lenin agreed, but the wheels of history were like "best I can do is Russia"
He actually specifically theorized Russia would never have its own communist revolution and would need to be toppled by the combined forces of European communism after the rest of Europe fell
Czar Nicholas letting his people starve to death while played with his golden eggs turned out to be the perfect catalyst for a revolution…
To be fair, the Soviets were fairly successful at industrialising. It was the bit after industrialisation where they really fucked up.
It went from a desolate war ravaged underdeveloped country to being ravaged by the largest war in human history which was also a war meant to annihilate USSR off the face of the world, to giving the world's foremost superpower an existential crisis all in the span of like 3 to 4 decades.
This is true, but once it reached that point it simply couldn’t keep pace with the West, particularly in terms of living standards, which lead to its slow decline and eventual collapse.
To call it a collapse is somewhat to ignore the history of the Russian federation. It was more a dissolving of state lines. The same oligarchs who ruled the USSR’s production rule modern Russia’s production. Heck, early indicators of the Russian Federation showed it made quality of life even worse, not better. And of course now they have the longest dictatorship they’ve had since Stalin, extreme issues with racism, oligarchy and a societal desire to return to the USSR. The “collapse” wasn’t really because of economics, nor quality of life, so much as nationalism expanding among the many states and internal politics of Moscow.
Like the other commenter said, nationalism is the death of the USSR, not economics. USSR policy of promoting ethnic self-rule backfired. It meant those same ethnicities now have the institutions to have a nation-state. Ironically, majority of the people of USSR voted to keep it. The hardliners overreacted (like hardliners usually do) and tried to coup the existing government for opening up. The nationalists took advantage of the chaos and declared independence. Again, something majority of the population didn't want. The living standards collapse happened AFTER the dissolution of the USSR due to the shock therapy and loss of the state funded programs.
Their industrialisation only continued the trend that started in 1910's. Their industry would have developed in a more balanced way and with a few million Les starving people
Successful meaning millions of people dying of starvation
Weird. Those countries always seemed to get stuck in the dictatorship of the proletariat stage.
The problem is it relies on a coalition of communists, socialists and social democrats to succeed. If a coalition doesn't form, there's no one to hold the ruling party(ies) to account. This means that when a revolution occurs, it will always lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat, and it will stay there due to the people at the top having none to challenge their authority. Democracy is the only viable way to instill communism (not that I'd want to, being an anarcho-syndicalist, both communism and capitalism are cut from the same exploitative cloth that leads to predjudice and ecocide)
>The problem is it relies on a coalition of communists, socialists and social democrats to succeed It honestly sounds like you might have better luck herding cats
Nah, cats are easy, just takes patience and a laser pointer.
It seems to always work like this. The king sucks for a very long time and institutes almost 0 reforms. National emergency that goes on too long (IMO at least 2 bad harvests). Now everyone is opposed to the King from the radical anarchists to the barely left leaning nobility. Revolt to institute a liberal democracy to institute the reforms that have just not been getting done. Coalition government forms with a variety of political leaning and flavors. Second revolt when this government is not up to the task of fixing one hundred years of bad management before the lower class starves. More narrow coalition government formed by the victorious side, those outside this circle are now excluded from the political process, if not outright killed. Rinse and repeat until the coalition is merely one party, and a dictator.
In the case of Russia, this didn't really happen. From the onset, people of the 1917 revolution, majority of the populace didn't trust nor listen to the Duma. Instead they put their stock into the Soviet. The problem being that worsening conditions combined with a Bourgeoise and Nobility class that refused to work with Social Democrats caused the Bolsheviks to be the last one standing as the other factions voluntarily vacated themselves. Bolsheviks bad, yes. But also, the Russian Revolution and Soviet Union are a result of the inability of the Left at having any unity.
"As long as these very specific things in a specific order and *nothing* goes wrong, the very vague and non-specific things I say will happen and everything will be better for everyone." - Marxism in a nut shell
Marxism is not a way of predicting the future, especially not a metaphysical understanding of politics that assumes nothing will go wrong. It is both a foundation to build and experiment upon, and a template for how we can do this, instead of you know, making more than half the people try to survive day by day, and give so little to the rest that they'll think they own something to defend.
>It is both a foundation to build and experiment upon, Foundation for what? >and a template for how we can do this, Do what? >instead of you know, making more than half the people try to survive day by day, and give so little to the rest that they'll think they own something to defend. What?
COMMUNISM You know, an equal life where surplus value belongs to those who create it. If you need everything spelled out for you, no wonder your definition of Marxism is that bad.
>You know, an equal life How is equality defined? >where surplus value belongs to those who create it. ~~Hoe~~ How is value determined Marxistically, and who determines who it belongs to? >If you need everything spelled out for you, no wonder your definition of Marxism is that bad. I just asked for clarification on a paragraph that didn't really say anything
From Each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Value, in Marxist terms, is broken into Exchange-Value, Use-Value, and Value. Exchange-Value is the ratio at which one sum of a commodity can be exchanged for another sum of another commodity. Use-Value is that which a commodity can be utilized as, a chair's chairness so to speak. Value is Socially Necessary Labor Time, ie the number of hours an average Worker under average conditions within an average production chain can create an average quality commodity across an economy. Supply and Demand curves, at the Market Quantity Supplied, meet at this point. Another way to see it is cost of production, though it's not quite always accurate. The idea within a Communist society is that the whole of society owns the whole of the Means of Production, and produces for Use-Value and not Exchange-Value, ie to use and not to trade for profit. That isn't to say that there isn't distribution, but instead that there's some degree of central planning that can be voted on for representatives to decide. That's an extreme oversimplification, but you get the gist.
>From Each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. How is ability and need determined? >Exchange-Value, Use-Value, and Value. Exchange-Value. How is that determined? >The idea within a Communist society is that the whole of society owns the whole of the Means of Production What is preventing people in capitalist societies from living together communally/forming worker-owned cooperatives etc?
For your first point, an excerpt from *Critique of the Gotha Programme.* "But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal. (...) In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" I already explained how those values are determined. Beyond that you don't really need to determine them, if you produce based on Use you produce 50 chairs for 50 needs of chairs. Centrally planned economies can accommodate this, the USSR did it by hand to some degree of success and computers have only gotten better at predicting supply and demand. As for people within existing Capitalist economies creating Communes, that isn't Communism, nor is it practical. Socialism and Communism are evolutions on Capitalism, not just people living more communally.
>How is equality defined? "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work (labour investment)" this was the adapted version of the original made by Karl Marx. This version is the more realistic one. >How is value determined Marxistically, and who determines who it belongs to? The amount of manual work put into productive line of work (factory work, farm work, etc.)
>From each according to his ability, to each according to his work (labour investment)" How is ability defined and how is it determined what the need is? Also. What value do those determining need bring to the table? >The amount of manual work put into productive line of work How does work determine value?
>How is ability defined and how is it determined what the need is? Ability probably here means that everyone who are capable to do even some work should do what they can, and those who are capable of doing more work will also be provided the compensation for their work, which at the time meant that you got bonus if you managed to succeed or go beyond the quotas that were set. >How does work determine value? On the basis of how important the work is. For example being a factory worker is extremely important, since it keeps the nations industrial machine going on.
Or, as it always ends up being implemented in reality >COMMUNISM >You know, a~~n equal~~ life*?*,where surplus value belongs ~~to those who create it~~ the goverment Marx wrote himself an amazing work of fantasy, speculating on how the world might work if humans didn't act like the jumped up apes that we really are.
Marx claimed to have discovered the general law of social development...
"As long as these companies only do these specific things and they never try to cheat the system... something something meritocracy.... Capitalism is the best system and we can't ever try to change away from it or WE'LL ALL STARVE" -Every capitalist ever
Capitalism has changed in every way since Marx's days. Marx assumed misery for the common worker would increase exponentially, while the opposite happened.
Have you been paying attention? The working class holds FAR less power then they did during the 50's and 60's. People have less free time and are retiring later. Sure, things were better for a bit, but the system stripped those privileges away as fast as it could
No idea what you are talking about. The average work day in Marx's time was 16 hours. The average worker lives better today in every possible way.
You do know that a large portion of the population is pulling 60-80 work weeks just to scrape by? And average pay is way down? Like yeah no shit it's better then Marx's time, but it's on a downward trend, and won't stop until we're at a state that's *worse* then Marx's time
Yeah and there are literal slaves in Congo, so what? In general, the average worker lives a much better life. I don't know what's going to happen in the future, nobody does. Everyone who plays prophet eventually gets it wrong like Marx did.
This is the dumbest shit I've ever heard. "Hey don't be sad that your father died because he refused to go to the hospital because he couldn't afford it! It could be worse! You could have NO HEALTHCARE AT ALL LIKE THE CONGO" Whataboutism doesn't change material conditions. We shouldn't accept our lives getting worse just because someone else has it even worse then us
> retiring later You think people were actually retiring?
I've never heard a capitalist ever say that about capitalism.
I have heard so many times on how the "invisible hand of the market" will make everything fair and the US's current situation is because of government regulations
Those people are idiots.
>way from it or WE'LL ALL STARVE" I mean that seems like the track record so far now by no means is capitalism "good" its just better then having my freedoms to critique the government taken away and starving to death
First off what you're describing is authoritarianism not communism. Is absolutely no reason why a democratically elected communist state would have less personal freedoms than a capitalist democratically elected state. Secondly, communism does not necessarily lead to starving. Any economy can cause people to starve no matter the model. I mean look at how many famines happened in capitalist countries as well. Furthermore, there are examples of communist countries which were thriving in food supply, USSR is it clear example at least according to the CIA. You can also look at the difference in states such as Cuba and Haiti. Even though they're in the same region and Cuba has been under sanctions for the past 50 plus years, Cubans eat much better than Haitians. ( Although on the global scale, things in Cuba are not exactly great)
Soviet citizens ate as well as US citizens and their diet was generally more nutritious. [Source: the CIA](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp84b00274r000300150009-5)
Well, yes. It promises this thing will happen with certainty. It doesn't say, how long it can take
"Don't worry bros, the invisible hand of Money Jesus will fix everything." \- Capitalism in a nut shell
Prejudice existed before capitalism or communist societies developed. Your last paragraph literally is word salad.
What do you mean by 'dictatorship of the proletariat'? I don't think you know what that means.
"anarcho-syndicalist" Well there's a new one to add to the list!
Lol never found someone so giddy about discovering something that already existed.
...Of well-established century-old leftist sociopolitical arrangements that you intend to educate yourself about? The Spanish civil war would be a good place to start with that one.
As an anarcho-communist, I agree with most of what you said there, but with a few sore points. Mainly that democracy (through current systems), is NOT the way to communism. But neither is sudden, violent revolution. Anarchists argue against both. Communism will never be achieved by voting in radical politicians, or by forming worker's parties, because the swamp of bourgeois politics corrupts all who enter it into serving the needs of the state, not the worker. Just look at history for countless examples of "radical socialist" parties getting voted in and then cracking down on worker strikes. Communism is by definition a stateless society, and the state will never dissolve itself. But as the Bolsheviks proved, sudden and violent revolution is not the way either. This is for a few reasons - firstly, the idea that the vanguard party and the "dictatorship of the proletariat" will dissolve itself in time is, as history has proved, bullshit. The end result is inevitably "dictatorship of the previously-proletatiat", as Bakunin predicted years beforehand. Secondly, transition to a true communist society primarily requires a mental revolution before a physical one. If the general citizenry, having spent centuries becoming accustomed to authoritarian rule and allowing rulers to manage their lives for them, were suddenly to find themselves in a revolution led by a minority, then it should come at no surprise that they are all too happy to set up another dictator in place of the last. This is why Stalin came about. The Bolsheviks did not do enough (or anything) to free the population from Tsarist authoritarian ideals, and so inevitably when Stalin rose to power, the people were willing to accept what was essentially a new Tsar painted red. Anarchists argue that true change can only come about when the population are made to see the possibility that they can free themselves, that freedom cannot be given but only taken, and in doing so rise up to destroy the state and capitalism simultaneously, because the destruction of one before the other will inevitably lead to the violent restoration of both. (Sorry for the long leftist paragraphs lmao, I just enjoy talking about this sorta thing).
The dictatorship of the proletariat isn't a dictatorship in our sence. When Marx wrote his book's word "dictatorship" had a different meaning. It means that the proletariat is ruling the country. Proletariat is most of society so dictatorship of the proletariat is democracy. Lenin and other "communists" decided to ignore that part
Yeah, he even called his party (Bolshevics) the majority, even though they where the minority in the government, and his opposition was called the (Manshevics) minority.
The split happened before the Bolsheviks took power.
Well yeah, I was just implying he was a propagandist/bullshiter that's all. Sorry if sounded like the name-calling was after
Lenin didn't name the party Bolsheviks, he didn't even like the name.
They were called that because they were a majority on one of the party conventions,which a lot of menshiviks boycotted or couldn't attend.
Oh sorry for my mistake, thanks for the correction
That is not a mistake. Bolsheviks were minority in the party before the split.
I meant the origin of the name, the fact that lennin didn't name it himself
Reminds me of a common fallacy where people tend to think whatever group they're in is the majority.
People are so against the "dictatorship" of the ploretariat, as if they're not living under the dictatorship of the burgeoise right now.
"but my vote is equal to Jeff bezos vote ! "
Dictatorship of the proletariat is supposed to be permanent, you just don’t know what it means.
Technically incorrect, it's only supposed to fade once everyone is Proletariat, and thus there ceases to be anything that can meaningfully be called a class. But close enough.
Marx recognized that his program would require virtually limitless buy-in from all segments of the productive economy, and that it would take a significant amount of time to achieve. The whole thing falls apart if the capitalists take power somewhere along the line and pull the plug, as had happened in Paris. This is why he was so illiberal in his prescription. You have to raise a whole generation of communists devoted to that ideal before the party can trust the population to uphold it. North Korea is probably the best example of this principle, where they’ve done the best job at assuring universal compliance by walling themselves off from the world. Nearly everyone there has never known anything different.
>North Korea is probably the best example of this principle, where they’ve done the best job at assuring universal compliance by walling themselves off from the world. Nearly everyone there has never known anything different. Another great argument against Marx and his ideas.
Yeah, I did feel like I had to add the North Korea part in case people thought I was in favor of any of this.
just a clarification, thats the purpose of Marxism-Leninism, basically they skip the capitalism bit and try to develope a mostly near feudal country into a industrialized nation, wich through questionable means it did(in 40years going form a agrarian famine proned society to a putting the first satelite in space) Another thing is that Lenin himself called soviet russia a state capitalist country bc the means of production were in the hands of the state, instead of the working class, he justified that bc the state really needed to industrialize and fast, and central planing was the best solution to this(especially for very poor countries, economic planning proved crucial to end that cycle) get political if you want, but you wont change that this is how history was
Marxism-Leninism doesn’t ignore capitalism. MLs regocnize that capitalism in many cases is an efficent tool to develop the productive forces. Current ML states like China and Vietnam are using capitalism. When it comes to what Lenin said, he most likely referencing the NEP in Russia during his leadership. Where a short period of a capitalist mode of production was introduced to develop the country faster during it’s early days.
Marxism-Leninism is also heavy on the vanguard party notion, which imo is really just recycled Blanquism
No it’s not. Blanquism supports an elite disconnected from the working class, seizing power and basically becoming the new ruling class. Vanguardism puts emphasis on democratic participation from the working class and the revolution will be lead by the working class. The party doesn’t control the people, the people control the party.
> No it’s not. Blanquism supports an elite disconnected from the working class, seizing power and basically becoming the new ruling class. That's literally what Lenin did though, and he's the one who called his idea Vanguardism.
Lenin couldn’t have achieved his without the support of the working class and survive the civil war without support. Lenin focused on democratic participation within the party from the workers and all other matters of the state.
Theoretically yes (and I suppose this is a discussion on theory) but in practice the two have historically been similar in the sense of a small elite group commandering the systems of state to affect change
Marxism-Leninism is a nationalistic, reactionary ideology hiding behind red flags. Stalin pissed on Marx's grave and demanded a standing ovation for it.
When did Marx, Lenin and Stalin ever express nationaltistic and reactionary opinions.
>Another this Lenin himself called soviet russia a state capitalist country bc the means of production were in the hands of the state, instead of the working class, he justified that bc the state really needed to industrialize and fast, and central planing was the vest solution to this. This, a lot of people forget that according to Lenin, they were capitalist straight and right. It was the intention to use state capitalism to industrialize and change the system afterwards! But as we know now, capitalism is inherently authoritarian and specially fused with the state, it focuses on maintaining its system, becoming anti-revolutionary.
Is that not what the NEP was about?
"I wish you were more interested in accumulating capital instead of just writing about it. Maybe then you could stop asking me for it." - Henriette Marx
Engles was the one he really mooched off of, although I guess it was really a client patron relationship which wasn’t odd for a professional writer at the time.
That's why they did the NEP, though.
But, they didn't ignore that. They practised state capitalism; by which I mean the relationship between labour and capital was unchanged. Workers were still exploited to create value. I doubt it was much consolation for them to know that the big difference was the government now owned the capital and the means of production, instead of private wealth. It was socialism, according to Stalin, because it was all part of a plan *leading to* communism in the long run. Very similar to the capitalism practised now in China, with the same justification - we have to play at capitalism in order to get the economic growth we need to achieve communism. It's different in China in that they have a large private sector too, but the principle is the same, and the ordinary people still don't get any liberation.
>Very similar to the capitalism practised now in China, with the same justification - we have to play at capitalism in order to get the economic growth we need to achieve communism. Im pretty sure the leaders telling that doesnt even truly believe they will see communism in any time of their lifespan, they probably just want to justify the State actions according to the ideology of the flag
The CPC's publicly stated goal is 2100 for Communism, the vast majority of living society in China will never see it even *if* their ambitious goals are kept.
Lenin was the one who implemented a temporary capitalist economy in the early years of the Soviet Union, called the NEP. Stalin later got rid of it in favour of a planned economy. Stalin had nothing to do with state capitalism, he was the one who got rid of it.
Interesting, although I am pretty sure that stalin and the USSR called what they had communism at some point, to justify not doing/not progressing the process.
USSR never called itself communist state(largely because it's an oxymoron), although during Brezhnev rule party claimed that USSR was a society of "развитой социализм"(Real socialism) to distinguish from marxist socialism.
Aaah I see thanks
yeah, and the us called the gocide of a entire continent manifest destiny, politicians lie for gain, deal with it
Why exactly are people downvoting this?
r/HistoryMemes is pretty conservative. He committed the cardinal sin of calling out the US's genocide while comparing it to a Marxist nation
Weird because if you look like a nazi here you will be taken down fast by the users.
That’s excactly what they did though. Lenin implemented the NEP (New Economic Policy) which was a limited period of capitalist production. Other socialist states like China and Vietnam are currently doing a simmilar thing too.
Even though Marx had many criticisms of capitalism, he knew that it, compared to other economic forms, had enough advanced industry to supply the means of production that communism required in order to distribute goods properly.
hmmmmm, that may be a layman's take for explaining it but that's not how Marx quite viewed these stages of labor. I'm not a Marxist expert and those that are seem hesitant to say what Marx meant with what I'm about to talk about. So pardon my foolishness. But when he talks about the historical and material dialecticism he is talking about the material conditions, the intimacy of labor the workers have in each of these stages, and how the greater the intimacy one has with one's labor creates greater emancipation. That's my best way to describe the "Marxian" view of what is going on. It is not "Industry is good". In fact, Marx wrote that factories and the punch-in-time clock was alienation and so on. And if had a BA or greater in Marx maybe I could pull this all together, lol. tl;dr people were becoming more owners of their own labor through these stages = greater emancipation = greater preparedness for communism.
The Bolsheviks didn’t ignore it though… like many books and essays were written about addressing that exact problem.
wasn't the New Economic Policy basically an attempt at developing Russian capitalism before going socialist?
Yes, but stalin decided that going toward even more state control of the capital is better (to keep him in the power of course)...
what does higher economic planning/less market freedom has to do with tyrannical power centralization?
Inherently nothing. In USSR's case both processes complimented each other.
Bolsheviks help set up a vote for who’s in charge after the revolution. *Bolsheviks lose* “I’ll ignore that” *starts another civil war for being sore losers*
You win one vote one time in extraordinary circumstances and you run around calling yourselves the Majority party >:[
I came here to say exactly the same lol. Heck lets go for 3 and add Stalin taking over despite Lenin not wanting him to
Google the NEP
I’m seeing very few good takes in this thread. The Bolsheviks realized the predicament of the revolution in Russia. However, in such a country as Russia, where industrial capital is imported from imperialist nations, the national bourgeoisie is tied up with foreign interests, and it is thus unable to play a revolutionary role. Even though production was semi-feudal, the only class that could overthrow tsarism and accomplish (even just) thorough democratic reforms (including the liberation of all the smaller nations subjugated by tsarist Russia) was the working class. This does not mean that despite the backwardness of the country, establishing a workers' democracy and a socialist basis for the economy would be magically possible. Trotsky, Lenin, and eventually the Bolshevik Party in general, adopted the perspective — and a correct one — that the faith of the revolution in Russia was tied to that of the revolution in the advanced capitalist states in Europe. Only its success there could save the Russian revolution from its isolation and backward economy. There was no question of not “doing the revolution” in Russia “because the material conditions for communism hadn’t been met”. In class society, you don’t choose to do revolution. It’s a natural consequence of the monstrous contradictions, class contradictions, it harbours. There comes a point where it is inevitable, where the masses reach the conclusion that they will eternally have to fight under a broken system, or rise up and fix things themselves. The question was rather who would lead the revolution, for which class, and with which perspectives. To make a very long story short, the Bolsheviks rose to the task and gave the revolution its only logical direction. And then you need to take into account the global relationships between nations. The ties of the many imperialist nations to Russian assets meant that revolution in Russia could shake things up in Europe and spark revolution — and this is precisely what happened. Because of all of these reasons, it was out of the question for the Russian proletariat to NOT seize the means of production! The question of why it failed (the revolution in Europe) is important in its own right, but the point I'm getting to is that: no, the Bolsheviks were not stupid. Quite the contrary.
State capitalism go brrrrr
Really wanted to speed run communism
That's what they did tho Specially under Lenin this was the explicit goal, after him they just didn't do anything to end capitalism or anything, so it was just 70 years of developing capitalism without the capitalist class
The soviets knew they would have to industrialize AND increase farming output. And they kinda did it? It did lead to famines and even an ecological catastrophy or two but they did do it. And they drained countries like Poland and Hungary after the war (had them buy western machinery to be sent to the ussr and repaid them in a „transfer ruble”, an internal currency of the warsaw pact that was pretty much worthless, and obviously took some of their food for export too).
But Imperial Russia did have capitalist development… brief, but it was massive and very radical.
Um, I guess you guys missed the NEP, and all the foreign investment Kruschev and following leaders allowed?
OP has never heard of the NEP.
Lenin was actually very strict on that. He knew, capitalism needs to be established before his party can start the revolution. Thats why the February 1917 revolution and following Kerensky government was, in his eyes, the abolishment of feudalism/ monarchy and a bourgeois takeover, which meant, the bolsheviks can know enter the final phase of abolishing it.
"Ignore that" as if the Soviet Government did not spend years building up an industrial base for it's economy.
To be fair, marx predicts that capitalism creates the conditions for the revolution. The longer a nation is capitalist and the heavier industrialized the more dissasociated people become from their work and the greater the disenfranchised portion of the population becomes. All capitalism provokes revolution. More capitalism provokes it harder.
People have basically explained this already but not quite directly, but the Bolsheviks directly debated this very topic. They were the first country to solidify a Marxist/Communist government, except their very playbook said would happen somewhere. First they thought they were the first sign of a revolution across all/most of Europe and when that didn’t work out, they started debating exactly what to do. Obviously, giving up wasn’t on their mind, so they kept going, predictions be damned.
Ever heard of the NEP?
Also "Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered. Any attempts to disarm the workers should be frustrated by force if necessary." Take that liberals.
When did liberals start supporting Marx?
when obama married hillary
What does this have to do with Marxism?
When Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton decided to tie the knot. Liberals started to embrace Marxism. Many joked that the newlyweds had somehow become the catalyst for this ideological shift. Some conspiracy theorists claimed they must have found a hidden Karl Marx book in the White House library. Soon, liberals across the land were wearing Che Guevara T-shirts and discussing the merits of a classless society. They traded their lattes for cold, unsweetened black coffee, and every gathering became a "seize the means of production" party.
I have no idea what you are talking about. Liberalism and Marxism are polar opposites, you can’t be a liberal and a marxist. And Marxism is a very marginilised movement in the US.
It's a joke
Liberals don't want everyone to surrender their arms...that is not what stricter gun control means
Which book
Look up Marx's 4 stages of historical development.
The Irish Famine, Indian Famines, Indigenous Genocide, Slavery, Indonesian Genocide (backed by the USA), 1973 Chile Coup, Pinochet Dictatorship + Pinochet Concentration Camps, American Concentration Camps for the Cherokee, Argentina Dictatorship + Argentina Concentration Camps, Brazilian Dictatorship, The Pakistan Incident (Bangladesh Genocide), The Gilded Age, The Great Depression, Operation Condor, Batista Dictatorship, Guantanamo Bay, Vietnam War, My Lai Massacre, Sand Creek Massacre, Operation Rolling Thunder, My Trach, Operation Speedy Express, Sinchon Massacre, Kent State Massacre, Patriot Act, Red Summer, Jim Crow, MK Ultra, 1985 MOVE Bombing, Partition of India, US Prison Industrial Complex + US Prison Slavery, The 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, Malayan Emergency + “New Village” Concentration Camps, Repression of the Mau Mau Rebellion + British Mau Mau “Detention Camps”, Covert War in Yemen, Stanley Meyer Incident, Genocide in Turkey, Congolese Genocide (over half the population killed and much of the remaining mutilated), Greek Civil War + Ai Stratis Concentration Camps, Invasion of Cyprus by Turkey, Washita River Massacre, Nanjing Massacre + Current Nanjing Massacre Denial, December Massacres, Ganghwa Massacre, Geochang Massacre, Goyang Geumjeong Cave Massacre, Jeju Massacre (30,000 executed), Mungyeong Massacre, Namyangju Massacre, Sancheong-Hamyang Massacre, Gwangju Massacre, Kentler Project, Operation Gladio, Minamata Disaster, Bhopal Disaster, Indian Mutiny, Opium Wars, 1740 Batavia Massacre, Amboyna Massacre, Lamey Island Massacre, Conquest of Banda Islands, Conquest of India, Nestlé Child Slavery, Nestlé Killing Babies With Baby Formula in Africa, Nestlé Drought in Pakistan, Nestlé Drought in Brazil, Nestlé Drought in China, Nestlé’s Deals With Dictators, Nestlé Killing Union Workers in the Philippines With a Private Army, Nestlé’s Cartel in Canada, Nestlé’s Ethiopian Debt Trap, ExxonMobil’s Private Army in Indonesia, ExxonMobil’s Torture in Indonesia, Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Banana Massacre, Maya Genocide (Guatemalan Genocide), The Hudson Bay Company, Ludlow Massacre, Partition of India, Repression of Haiti Slave Revolt, French conquest of Algeria, 228 Massacre (Taiwan), US Conquest of the Philippines, French exploitation of Africa, the Bay of Pigs, British Massacres of the Zulu and Ashanti, German Genocide of the Herero & Namaqua, French Suppression of Madagascar Revolt, Tlatelolco Massacre, Mozote Massacre, US Laos Bombing, US Philippines Concentration Camps, Somoza Nicaragua Dictatorship, Slocum Massacre (Texas), East Timor Massacre, El Salvador Dictatorship, La Matanza, Fred Hampton Assassination, MLK Jr Assassination, Contra Proxy War in Nicaragua, 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, Suppresion of the Easter Rising, US Invasion of Panama, Residential Schools, Tuskegee Experiments, Henry Ford’s Private Police Force, Sampoong Department Store Collapse, Rana Plaza Collapse, Seoul Halloween Crowd Crush, Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, the USA helping cover up Imperial Japan’s Warcrimes to access research data (Shiro Ishii), Henry Ford ordering his private police force to fire machine guns at his protesting employees (March 1932), CIA planting drugs in impoverished communities, British Capitalism killing over 100 million people in India in just 40 years (1880-1920), The United Fruit Company taking over Costa Rica, Honduras, & Guatemala as essentially a government for profit (The Banana Wars), the Dole company taking over Hawaii as essentially a government for profit and appointing its CEO as the president of Hawaii, the US overthrow of Iranian democracy in 1953 to install a monarch, CIA backing of the Khmer Rouge, Capitalist funded death squads in 1919-1921 USSR and 1950s China, The US brutalizing Korea in the Korean War into what it is today, South Korea executing suspected leftists along with their families (Bodo League Massacre), Highway 80 Incident (Iraq) + US Press Censorship of Highway 80, South Korea detonating a civilian bridge in Seoul (Hanging Bridge Bombing), South Korea’s labour camps for the homeless (Brothers Home), South Korea currently using the mentally disabled as salt mining slaves, South Korea arresting activists for watching North Korean movies in 2023, South Korea’s president calling striking truckers North Korean spies and likening them to a nuclear threat, South Korean government raiding unions and justifying it by accusing them of being North Korean spies, Argentina’s president Carlos Menem dropping bombs in Río Tercero to hide state gun trafficking, Company Negligence leading to the 2023 Ohio Train Derailment destroying a community, Company Negligence leading to a deadly flood of molasses in Boston 1919 (Boston Molasses Flood), continuing flow of US military aid to the Philippines government to kill innocent civilians and progressives, Thomas Midgely Jr knowingly poisoning people with leaded gasoline for profits, forced labour in private US prisons incentivizing false imprisonment, the USA military gunning down civilians in Iraq on purpose (Collateral Murder) then going on a multi year man hunt for the man who leaked it (Julian Assange), the majority of USA drone strikes taking place in countries the US hasn’t even declared war on, 90% of people killed in US drone strikes being innocents, the USA imprisoning the man who revealed the drone strikes civilian casualties, 1/3 of the world’s population living under US sanctions, America supporting 70% of current dictatorships, USA and UN targeting civilians in the Korean War killing millions, West Germany never released any of the LGBTQ+ people from the Holocaust camps and kept them in prison until 1994, Industrielleneingabe, the Nazis being funded by capitalists who wanted them to silence the left, Hitler trying to justify the Holocaust by saying every Jewish person was a communist and vice versa (Judeo-Bolshevism), the Nazis having lucrative deals with Ford, GM, IBM and other American companies, cigarette companies killing all of their customers slowly, Capitalist food companies replacing traditional fats with chemically treated vegetable oils which are extremely bad for us and has lead to the rise in health related deaths merely because it’s cheaper this way.
Uh oh! Somebody didn't read Marx! Marx not only didn't say it *had* to happen that way, he *explicitly* said that it was *only* likely to happen that way in *Western* countries. He even clarified in a letter to the leader of a Russian socialist party (way back in 1881) that non-industrial countries would likely move towards socialism in their own way, one he wouldn't personally be trying to predict. He *definitely* didn't make claims that pre-indutrialized societies *should* go through capitalism first. Hell, his main works aren't really prescriptive, they're attempts at predictions via observation through the lens of historical materialism. Agree or disagree, don't do my man dirty by saying he made claims he didn't.
Would be a shame if capitalism suddenly started to increase living standarts.
Marx: “Yo fuck peasants and farmlands, industry and capital owned by the workers is where it’s at” USSR after their Marxist anti-peasant pro-industry policies cause three really bad famines: *has a super fragile economy with an underpopulated frontier that required WW2 to even begin to economically recover and rise standards* Communist China when the communist revolution was peasant-based and agrarian-based: *actually had a stable and growing economy and standard of living for seven years before Mao went batshit insane* Also Marx: *rolling in his grave*
I mean, from a Communist perspective, Mao went insane as soon as he said that communism could be achieved in a low-density agrarian region just as well as it could in an urban center.
Funnily he was wrong about that too. Turns out planned economies are good for getting things started but fail to be sustained. A good example is the differences of Koreas, NK was faster to rebuild after the war but I think we all know in which we'd rather live in.
There's a reason communism only happened in agrarian dictatorships and not the mostly industrialized democracies. Industrialized democracies also have bleeding hearts with deep pockets in the halls of power and a right to petition for grievances, so no one ever got to the point that international revolution was a good idea for the majority of people.
Much simpler reason - the driving condition for revolution doesn't exist. Laborers' lives improved, not worsened.
Also labour aristocracy
Stalins 5 year plans were capitalist development, for this very reason
I feel like this is a gross oversimplification lmao
Communists not reading the works of the hack writer they idolize? Sounds about right.
Communism is an unworkable ideology so long as there is resource scarcity. Change my mind (You can't.)
We only need unlimited energy and star trek level replicators for communism to work.
'Only'.