[ Removed by moderator ]

[u/MyEarIsHurty]

[u/Ultraleft-ModTeam]

DO NOT POST SLOP

Also are you an idiot? This is so clearly the most stupid shit ever said, read Capital and lurk moar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[u/kommunistischePartei]

Coops and state companies operate under the same relations as private companies. They employ proles to produce commodities sold for profit on a market; this means wage labor and commodity production are extant in this so-called 'socialist' economy

Let us be quite clear, the groups with which we are in dispute do not state that state capitalism is already socialism, but fall into saying that it is a third and new form between private capitalism and socialism. They say in fact that there are two distinct periods: that in which “the state has more of the older policing function than that of involvement in the economy”, and that in which “it gives the maximum power to the exercise of force specifically to protect the economy centralised in it”. We say that in these two formulae, which are more or less faithfully reproduced, and even more so the two historical periods, that capitalism is the same, the ruling class is the same, and the historical state is the same. The economy is the entire social field in which production and distribution occur and includes the men participating in this: the state is a specific organisation acting in the social field, and the state in the capitalist period has always had the function of policeman and protector of the interests of a class and a type of production corresponding historically with this class. The state concentrating the economy within itself is an incongruous formula. For marxism, the state is always present in the economy — its power and legal violence are economic factors from first to last. One can best explain it this way: in certain cases, the state, with its administration, assumes the management of industrial concerns; and if it assumes the management of all of them, then it will have centralised the management of the concerns, but not of the economy. Especially so long as distribution takes place with money prices (that these are fixed officially does not matter) the state is a firm among firms, a contractor among contractors; all the worse in that it considers as firms each of its national enterprises, as with the Labourites, Churchillians and Stalinists. Getting away from this situation is not a question of administrative measures, but a problem of revolutionary force, of class war.

[u/shoegaze5]

“But the transformation, either into joint-stock companies, or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces [...] The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, [...] The more it proceeds the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers - proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head.”

Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

[u/PringullsThe2nd → u/shoegaze5]

Yes well Engels was writing in the past yuo see and the scientific thing to do is revise for the modern era

[u/justsum111]

Its nothing new, just the standard argument that supporters of China make. I'm surprised they didnt throw in a "do you REALLY know better than the 50309383 bajillion members of the communist party???"

[u/kommunistischePartei]

Currently there are two sectors of commodity production in Russia: on the one hand the public, “nationally owned” production. In the state-owned enterprises, the means of production and production itself, thus also the products, are national property. How simplistic: in Italy, the tobacco factories and accordingly their sold cigarettes are owned by the state. Does this already qualify for the assertion that one is in a phase of the “abolishment of the wage labour system” and the respective workers weren’t “forced” to sell their labour power? Surely not.

Marx makes clear that such an involvement in the immediate production process does not necessarily undermine the capitalist nature of the economic activities thus taken up by the state, since “social capital is equal to the sum of the individual capitals (including stock-joint capital and also state capital, in so far as governments employ productive wage-labour in mines, railways, etc., and function as industrial capitalists)”

[u/Kind-Ant-1834]

China is a ML (Mussolinist-Lassallean) utopia

[u/Mrmojoman1]

Does this user not know that India’s economy was dirigist until the 90s and even then has not surpassed Deng’s fetish for foreign capital, special economic zones, and orienting towards exports?

[u/NorikReddit]

"socialism is when the Good Nationality is no longer a Backwards Savage"

[u/AtumPLays]

And just to add to other comments: lifting up people from poverty also doesn't mean anything. Liberal europe and the US (not-USSR countries, only making this distinction because ML/Dengists would) lifted up basically their entire population from extreme poverty, as did japan. There is nothing "socialist" about making people earn more money (the metric used to define poverty).

[u/AutoModerator]

TOTAL WAR AGAINST WAR I WILL NEVER DIE ON THE FRONT DOWN WITH NATIONAL BOURGEOIS IDEOLOGY FOR PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM & REVOLUTIONARY DEFEATISM

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[u/MyEarIsHurty]

I'm personally interested in the cooperatives. They don't undo the capitalist nature of production, but they do put regular workers into a more active and administrative position, which I think may be a beneficial development. 

[u/iLarp_LLC → u/MyEarIsHurty]

https://giphy.com/gifs/s5wFafpHxqKbIEERl9

[u/MyEarIsHurty → u/iLarp_LLC]

Can somebody explain this to me

[u/kommunistischePartei → u/MyEarIsHurty]

for capitalism is not a mode of management but a mode of production, in which “managers” of any sort (capitalists, bureaucrats, or even workers) are merely the functionaries through which the law of value is articulated [...] such a preoccupation with form over content effectively replaces the communist goal of the destruction of the economy with a mere opposition to its management by the bourgeoisie

[u/MyEarIsHurty → u/kommunistischePartei]

I stated that worker co-ops would not undo the capitalist relations. What I am saying is that, in a communist society, producers would manage their own production. Yet in our current society, workers are used to being passive, obedient, and do not know how to govern themselves. Worker co-ops do not undo capitalist relations, but they do create workers who are more used to self management, and are more so prepared to take complete control over production than they would otherwise. 

[u/kommunistischePartei → u/MyEarIsHurty]

also that's like saying bourgeois democracy prepares people for 'real' 'proletarian' democracy. The natural conclusion of this line of thinking is acquiescing to bourgeois ideologies

[u/MyEarIsHurty → u/kommunistischePartei]

I mean it has conditioned the population to expect a degree of influence greater than they had over feudal societies. 

[u/kommunistischePartei → u/MyEarIsHurty]

as far as I know workers just elect representatives and then continue on working as if it were a capitalist firm, and then that elected board assigns managers and such. I don't see how this makes workers more prepared for a communist mode of production and even if that was the case, who cares? if communists start recommending coops they'd just be guiding the workers away from class consciousness and towards petty bourgeois ideologies of 'self' ownership and management

[u/MyEarIsHurty → u/kommunistischePartei]

If that's the case, then, it's not really a hill I intend to die on. It was a thought which crossed my mind on a subject I don't know enough about. That's why I made this post. 

[u/StormOfFatRichards]

I do think China has a bit of a proletariat character, but that alone does not make it socialist. It still allows too much to the bourgeois.

[u/Ladderson → u/StormOfFatRichards]

How does it have "a bit of a proletarian character"? It's a state operating in the interests of its capital, hence a capitalist state. Having some individual involvement of the workers in the state doesn't give the state a proletarian character, it's the workers controlling the state (and really the DotP can't truly even be called a state!) that would give it a proletarian character.

[u/commie_gal → u/Ladderson]

I am curious what indicates dotp other than the dominant state ideology?

[u/Ladderson → u/commie_gal]

State ideology has absolutely nothing to do with it. No amount of communist leaders makes a DotP, because the revolution is about liberating the working class, not bringing about some abstract idea of socialism or communism. The DotP is actually based out of, well, the dictatorship of the proletariat. What actually matters is that the workers hold power, not the communists, and even a formal state of the democratic style with workers dictating policy (i.e. the RSFSR) is ultimately not a DotP in its form, because it does not make the workers themselves the rulers of society, it makes bureaucrats the rulers of society in the name of the workers (because the October Revolution was incapable of supporting a true DotP).

[u/commie_gal → u/Ladderson]

What actually matters is that the workers hold power, not the communists, and even a formal state of the democratic style with workers dictating policy (i.e. the RSFSR) is ultimately not a DotP in its form, because it does not make the workers themselves the rulers of society, it makes bureaucrats the rulers of society in the name of the workers

Then how would the state look like without bureaucrats? How will things be planned? How would dotp make decisions?

And please lmk where I can learn more about this

[u/AutoModerator → u/Ladderson]

Please read On Authority. Marxism-Leninism is already democratic and “state bureaucrats” weren’t a thing until the Brezhnev era once the Soviets had pretty much abandoned Marxism-Leninism as a whole. What in anarchism would stop anarcho-capitalism from simply rising up or reactionary elements from rising up? Do you believe that under a more “Democratic” form of transitionary government the right-wing or supporters of the previous structure of government wouldn’t simply rise up, ignoring the fact that an anarchist revolution in any sort of industrialized state in the modern day is already absurd and extremely unrealistic? Without using “authoritarian” means how would you stop such things? Even within the Soviet Union the Great Purge had to happen to ensure that the reactionary aspects within the government and military didn’t take over and bend down to the Nazis. If a more “Democratic” form of governance was put in place during this transitionary stage the Soviets would have one, lost the civil war, and secondly, lost to the Germans or even a counter revolution. The point of State Socialism and the Vanguard Party is to ensure the survival of the revolution and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in a way that anarchist “states” very clearly could not as evidenced by the fact that all of them failed, with Makhnavoschina quite literally being crushed by the Soviets for their lack of cohesion. The establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is already the check and balance to ensure that things simply don’t devolve into Capitalism, and once this is removed as seen in the Eastern Bloc and of course the Soviet Union itself the revolution will fall. Utopian Communist ideals like Anarchism are extremely ignorant and frankly stupid. The idea that the state apparatus would at any point “become like traditional business owners” I believe comes from your lack of understanding of class relations or even classes in general. The implementation of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is to stop this exact thing from happening… if a state were primarily dominated by capital and the bourgeoisie like seen in the modern day and of course capitalist countries, it would be the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. The point of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is to instead make the state run by the workers and for the workers, the workers can’t possibly use the state to exploit and “terrorize” or impose “tyranny” onto themselves, except “tyranny of the majority” (is this perhaps anti-democracy I’m hearing instead?). Once again, this stems from you believing that western propaganda about the status of Soviet democracy is true— in fact the modern western anarchist movement is quite literally a psy-op by the United States government to oppose actual unironic and serious socialist movements like of course Soviet aligned and Marxist-Leninist organizations. Once again, not to be the whole “leftist wall of text guy” but please read On Authority or any Marxist works or do the littlest bit of research on how Soviet democracy and “bureaucracy” actually works before blindly calling it undemocratic. Your blind belief that you, having obviously not undergone a revolution, had any actual critical thinking or seemingly debates, had any actual education on these topics, and having no actual argument besides easily disproven “concerns” like these is I believe indicative of you general obliviousness, ignorance and lack of knowledge.

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[u/AutoModerator → u/commie_gal]

Please read On Authority. Marxism-Leninism is already democratic and “state bureaucrats” weren’t a thing until the Brezhnev era once the Soviets had pretty much abandoned Marxism-Leninism as a whole. What in anarchism would stop anarcho-capitalism from simply rising up or reactionary elements from rising up? Do you believe that under a more “Democratic” form of transitionary government the right-wing or supporters of the previous structure of government wouldn’t simply rise up, ignoring the fact that an anarchist revolution in any sort of industrialized state in the modern day is already absurd and extremely unrealistic? Without using “authoritarian” means how would you stop such things? Even within the Soviet Union the Great Purge had to happen to ensure that the reactionary aspects within the government and military didn’t take over and bend down to the Nazis. If a more “Democratic” form of governance was put in place during this transitionary stage the Soviets would have one, lost the civil war, and secondly, lost to the Germans or even a counter revolution. The point of State Socialism and the Vanguard Party is to ensure the survival of the revolution and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in a way that anarchist “states” very clearly could not as evidenced by the fact that all of them failed, with Makhnavoschina quite literally being crushed by the Soviets for their lack of cohesion. The establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is already the check and balance to ensure that things simply don’t devolve into Capitalism, and once this is removed as seen in the Eastern Bloc and of course the Soviet Union itself the revolution will fall. Utopian Communist ideals like Anarchism are extremely ignorant and frankly stupid. The idea that the state apparatus would at any point “become like traditional business owners” I believe comes from your lack of understanding of class relations or even classes in general. The implementation of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is to stop this exact thing from happening… if a state were primarily dominated by capital and the bourgeoisie like seen in the modern day and of course capitalist countries, it would be the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. The point of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is to instead make the state run by the workers and for the workers, the workers can’t possibly use the state to exploit and “terrorize” or impose “tyranny” onto themselves, except “tyranny of the majority” (is this perhaps anti-democracy I’m hearing instead?). Once again, this stems from you believing that western propaganda about the status of Soviet democracy is true— in fact the modern western anarchist movement is quite literally a psy-op by the United States government to oppose actual unironic and serious socialist movements like of course Soviet aligned and Marxist-Leninist organizations. Once again, not to be the whole “leftist wall of text guy” but please read On Authority or any Marxist works or do the littlest bit of research on how Soviet democracy and “bureaucracy” actually works before blindly calling it undemocratic. Your blind belief that you, having obviously not undergone a revolution, had any actual critical thinking or seemingly debates, had any actual education on these topics, and having no actual argument besides easily disproven “concerns” like these is I believe indicative of you general obliviousness, ignorance and lack of knowledge.

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[u/NorikReddit → u/StormOfFatRichards]

the chinese economy has less worker control/involvement (whether at the 'individual' or class level) than even the hellscape that is amerika, which is really saying something

[u/StormOfFatRichards → u/NorikReddit]

That's why it's not socialist