this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2024
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Just to be clear. I don’t want the Soviet Union. I want workers co-ops to be the default form of employment followed by government employees, and a small portion of unionized companies with private ownership and self employed folks to fill in the gaps here and there with an understanding that over time the unions will buy out the private owners of their shares.
So you don't want a Soviet Union. You just want a... an elected local, district, or national council of workers to control the economy... but, like, a bunch of them in a kind of amalgamated political body?
Damn. Nobody tell this guy about Lenin's NEP.
Yes, I want what the Soviet Union claimed they wanted not what they got. You know, like any syndicalist worth her salt.
I’m not claiming that communism is bad, I’m saying that over centralization in the hands of a single party has done more harm to communism than MLs would like to believe.
one could argue that the Russian revolution failed after they beat back the white army when the Bolsheviks killed all the communists, because killing communists is all the USSR ever really did, except the one time it killed communists by grinding Nazis into a fine icy paste with them, which admittedly was pretty cool.
one could also argue that theres math about centralization that shows you necessarily get worse information to a central source, even with 0 inefficiency, because physical limits and compression and junk, and that a highly centralized body literally cannot make good decisions on purpose at that kind of scale. but then the tankies would stop cuddling their body pillows long enough to threaten to kill you.
If you could provide a non-crackpot reference to said math, I would be much obliged.
Ah but anarchism can’t work! Nobody with a back so weak to knives could ever form a stable society. /s
The Bolsheviks handed spain to Franco by utilizing the same strategy they used in the Russian civil war, ally with the anarchists and syndicalists right up until they’re sure they’ll win then kill everyone who isn’t on board with Bolshevism. We’ve learned our lesson, you don’t succeed by dying for the revolution, you succeed by making the people who will stop you die for it.
So to the neo-Bolsheviks, how about y’all put your books down and march in front of the other communists for once. Don’t worry, we’ve learned how to do logistics from running mutual aid networks, leftist print shops, unions, etc.
oh dont try to cite history personal experience or math at them; that's idealist, doing your revolution in the pneuma (if any of them knew enough history of philosophy to know what that is)
The original USSR was predicated on peaceful coexistence with European neighbors. Lenin's climb to power came on the back of an enormous anti-war movement, protesting the catastrophic loss of life during WW1.
What they got, instead, was a western sponsored counter-revolution via the White Terror, followed by a decade of border wars, and climaxing in a Second World War thanks to an unprompted invasion by Germany. By the time the wars were over and a lasting (abet tense) peace had been brokered with western nations, the Khrushchev Era of the USSR largely was this.
Workers soviets prospered immensely during the 60s and 70s. The Soviet block finally got to taste the fruits of the industrial revolution, complete with cheap nuclear power and high speed mass transit and surplus agricultural produce thanks to industrial fertilizers. Quality of life in the USSR easily rivaled western peers in England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. And their exports spared populations from Bangladesh to Cuba to Cambodia to Korea from engineered famines.
I would argue feuding partisan factions in western states have done more to harm than anything a unified worker's government has ever inflicted.
What good is a two-party system when each party claims the other is going to end democracy if their rival wins?
basically the thing Russia had before the Bolsheviks killed all the communists, the thing they promised. just listened to a six part podcast on this if you want a link.
Google "Anton Denikin" and then get back to me about who killed the communists.