Tbf it’s not that anybody saw that coming. Maybe Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta and all the other anarchists but aside from them, nobody could have known it.
If there’s no exploitation, and if everyone can voluntarily join the communist party and the unions (and is encouraged to do so), how can you say there was an owning class?
I love how tankies (and in varying degrees most Marxists) have no analysis of (vertical) power structures. As Bakunin so perfectly predicted:
So the result is: guidance of the great majority of the people by a privileged minority. But this minority, say the Marxists will consist of workers. Certainly, with your permission, of former workers, who however, as soon as they have become representatives or governors of the people, cease to be workers and look down on the whole common workers’ world from the height of the state. They will no longer represent the people, but themselves and their pretensions to people’s government. Anyone who can doubt this knows nothing of the nature of men.
That the Russian Soviets were incapable of providing the anatomy for a truly popular democracy is to be ascribed not only to their hierarchical structure, but also to their limited social roots.
Nobody in their sane minds argues that there wasn’t overbureaucratisation in the USSR. That’s a well established truth. The question is, if people aren’t only allowed but encouraged to join the party, and if there’s no exploitation of the working class, what’s the argument to suggest that the “bureaucrats were the new owning class”
But we agree that they were the ruling class? Once everything belongs to the state, it really belongs to those who rule the state.
And there is power structure within parties. Being member of the party doesn’t make you an equal to every other member. Many people were not only encouraged but coerced to join the party and do as the higher ups say. Centralism is never democratic.
Once everything belongs to the state, it really belongs to those who rule the state.
Again, not that easy. Khruschev didn’t decide that the iron in the factory #3 would be used in the steel beam factory #7. The planning of the productive forces was an incredibly complex process in which thousands of bureaucrats union members were involved. Calling that amalgam of workers an “owning class”, especially when they’re not extracting surplus value at all from the workers seems a big stretch to me.
Centralism is never democratic.
The fact that the USSR wasn’t as democratic as ideal, doesn’t mean that the existence of a state can’t be democratic. “Centralism” is an umbrella term covering many different possibilities of governance, and a single party ruled by elected leaders of worker councils is a recipe of some sort of centralism that can provide a very reasonable degree of democracy. I’m not arguing this was the case for the USSR. If you want to read on a practical case of the existence of democracy within a Marxist-Leninist single-party regime, I recommend you have a look at a book called “How the worker’s parliaments saved the Cuban revolution”, from Pedro Ross, which describes this exact form of functioning of back and forth between the central government and the worker councils in which millions of Cubans participated to overcome the worst consequences of the “periodo especial” after the illegal and antidemocratic dissolution of the USSR.
I myself am from a country with a rich history of anarchism in the 20th century: Spain. By the 1930s, the CNT, a union of workers which proposed some sort of anarcho-syndicalism (which I bet you’d be happy to agree is a good method of governance), had more than a million members, which for the population of the country at the time was absolutely huge. The lack of centralization of sorts initially among the leftists, and their consequent weakness to respond to threats, is actually the very reason why fascism could trump the democratic government in many places of the country and destroy this anarchist movement and all social progress for the following 40 years. Funnily enough, the dictatorial USSR was the only country which assisted the republicans in their civil war against fascism, other than the admittedly heroic volunteer corps from the brigadas internacionales.
Khruschev didn’t decide that the iron in the factory #3 would be used in the steel beam factory #7.
Who do you think makes such decisions in a capitalist context?
Funnily enough, the dictatorial USSR was the only country which assisted the republicans in their civil war against fascism
Even funnier they didn’t support the CNT nor POUM.
According to Worshiping Power by Peter Gelderloos, decentralized structures have an advantage in self-defense but a disadvantage beyond their base territory. That’s why both the Spanish Civil War and the Makhnovshchina were lost once the popular front strategy were implemented.
Why no mention to the democratic participation in Cuba in your response?
Who do you think makes such decisions in a capitalist context?
Markets make those decisions in a capitalist context, surely not a committee of experts consulting the unions.
According to Worshiping Power by Peter Gelderloos, decentralized structures have an advantage in self-defense but a disadvantage beyond their base territory. That’s why both the Spanish Civil War and the Makhnovshchina were lost once the popular front strategy were implemented.
I’d have to read that book to give an actual answer to why that analysis is made. My point is that the coup was allowed to happen to that degree in the first place due to the failure of anarchists of arming the working class and stewarding it against the increasing threat of fascism.
Let’s get that straight: Your argument that the USSR didn’t have a ruling class was that Khruschev didn’t make all the decisions. Capitalism has a ruling class (the owning class) but they don’t make the decisions either. It’s the market that does in capitalism. Sounds like capitalism doesn’t have a ruling class by the criteria you introduced. On the other hand, the USSR had a committee of elitist experts and the union bureaucracy. Which to me sounds more like a ruling class. Maybe try to use some consistency.
My argument – following Simone Weil – is that both liberal capitalist states and bolshevik states are at their core bureaucracy as in the bureaucracy is the ruling class. In liberal democracies, there are 3 bureaucracy: the state bureaucracy, the industrial bureaucracy (think (middle) management) and the worker bureaucracy (unions). All of them are detached from those they are supposed to represent. Bolshevik states, as self proclaimed worker states, unite all these into one, which doesn’t change alot. The problem is the vertical power structure within unions and parties and stuff. That’s something, I am as convinced as before, most Marxists have no analysis of. I will not repeat the Bakunin quote but I think he nailed it (even tho he wasn’t a perfect person over all).
the failure of anarchists of arming the working class
Well, it’s not that easy to arm the working class without weapons. Guess who had weapons and decided to side with the republicans instead of supporting the revolutionary socialists? Why no mention to the relationship between the USSR and CNT in your response?
Ok, so in the USSR, the country with no exploitation of labor and which promoted membership of party and unions, the owning class was the working class, right? Or are you gonna do some mental gymnastics to say it was the politician class?
Why do democratically elected government officials constitute a “class?” How would Socialism be Capitalism?
Bakunin himself was incredibly antisemetic, and considered the State itself to be a Jewish Conspiracy, so I’m not sure we should trust the background of his arguments.
The above commenter is wrong about it being capitalist, but they’re right about there being a ruling class in the USSR. The ruling class was the communist party, the “intelligentsia.” Communist party members pre-selected candidates for all political appointments, and becoming a member of the communist party involved passing through multiple stages of party-administered education and then having your past scrutinized and approved by committees of existing communist party members.
At its’ highest level of membership it never surpassed roughly 3% of the population. That is a politically privileged class that enjoyed better wages, benefits, general living conditions, and political influence than the general population.
The above commenter is wrong about it being capitalist, but they’re right about there being a ruling class in the USSR. The ruling class was the communist party, the “intelligentsia.”
The Bolsheviks and the Communist Party were not the Intelligentsia. The Intelligentsia predated the USSR, and was a cultural term for engineers, mental leaders, and other “educated” classes. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was made up of various members, not exclusively Intelligentsia. In fact, the close-link to the bourgeoisie that pre-Revolution Intelligentsia had caused distrust towards the Intelligentsia.
Communist party members pre-selected candidates for all political appointments, and becoming a member of the communist party involved passing through multiple stages of party-administered education and then having your past scrutinized and approved by committees of existing communist party members.
This does not make the CPSU a class, nor does iy mean it was not democratic. The US functions in much the same way, outside of fringe areas where third parties win.
At its’ highest level of membership it never surpassed roughly 3% of the population. That is a politically privileged class that enjoyed better wages, benefits, general living conditions, and political influence than the general population.
Yes, Marxism has never stated that people cannot have it better or worse. Anarchists seek full-horizontalism, while Marxists seek Central Planning.
Even at the peak of disparity in the USSR, the top wages were far, far closer than under the Tsars or under the current Russian Federation, and the Workers enjoyed higher democratic participation with more generous social safety nets, like totally free healthcare and education.
The USSR was by no means perfect, but it was absolutely progressive for its time, and would even be considered progressive today, despite the issues they faced internally and externally.
The Bolsheviks and the Communist Party were not the Intelligentsia. The Intelligentsia predated the USSR, and was a cultural term for engineers, mental leaders, and other “educated” classes. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was made up of various members, not exclusively Intelligentsia. In fact, the close-link to the bourgeoisie that pre-Revolution Intelligentsia had caused distrust towards the Intelligentsia.
I’ll concede on this point, the communist party and intelligentsia aren’t necessarily equivalent, though the intelligentsia did make up the largest organized bloc within the party.
This does not make the CPSU a class, nor does iy mean it was not democratic. The US functions in much the same way, outside of fringe areas where third parties win.
Party membership in the US is open to all US citizens with some exceptions. Some states even have open primaries allowing non-party members to vote. This system is flawed and is in some ways a facade since the parties are not legally required to hold primaries, but this particular element of the US political system is more democratic than the Soviet system.
CPSU members make up a privileged class because they occupy a higher position in a state sanctioned social hierarchy. It represents a controlled social stratification, enacted ostensibly for the common good. I see this as a sort of paternalistic distrust of the proletariat as a whole by a subset of it.
Yes, Marxism has never stated that people cannot have it better or worse. Anarchists seek full-horizontalism, while Marxists seek Central Planning.
I’ll note here that Anarchism doesn’t necessarily state that people cannot have it better or worse either. Anarchism primarily positions itself as opposition to the centralization of power which can lead to social stratification, but differences in standard of living are allowable insofar as it is not a condition imposed upon one by another.
Even at the peak of disparity in the USSR, the top wages were far, far closer than under the Tsars or under the current Russian Federation, and the Workers enjoyed higher democratic participation with more generous social safety nets, like totally free healthcare and education.
The USSR was by no means perfect, but it was absolutely progressive for its time, and would even be considered progressive today, despite the issues they faced internally and externally.
I am in full agreement here, though I would argue that this was achieved at a cost to personal freedoms (i.e. censorship and political persecution). Innocents were harmed in order to preserve the centralization of power in the hands of the communist party. I won’t go so far as to say the evils outweighed the good that was done, only that they were not necessary and ultimately led to contradiction and collapse.
I’ll concede on this point, the communist party and intelligentsia aren’t necessarily equivalent, though the intelligentsia did make up the largest organized bloc within the party.
I don’t personally see a problem with the government largely being made up of educated people.
Party membership in the US is open to all US citizens with some exceptions. Some states even have open primaries allowing non-party members to vote. This system is flawed and is in some ways a facade since the parties are not legally required to hold primaries, but this particular element of the US political system is more democratic than the Soviet system.
There is some truth to this, yes, but we have to consider historical context. The US is in a fundamentally different geopolitical position than the USSR ever was, the USSR was under constant threat.
CPSU members make up a privileged class because they occupy a higher position in a state sanctioned social hierarchy. It represents a controlled social stratification, enacted ostensibly for the common good. I see this as a sort of paternalistic distrust of the proletariat as a whole by a subset of it.
Yes and no. They made up a more privledged subsection, yes, but this does not make it a class. The Means of Production were collectively owned, and managed via elected officials and Soviets. The Soviet system was more democratic with respect to what you could vote for, even if it was less democratic in other ways.
I’ll note here that Anarchism doesn’t necessarily state that people cannot have it better or worse either. Anarchism primarily positions itself as opposition to the centralization of power which can lead to social stratification, but differences in standard of living are allowable insofar as it is not a condition imposed upon one by another.
I’m aware of what Anarchism espouses, but given that we haven’t seen much example of actually existing Anarchism, we are left with unstable Revolutionary periods, such as in Catalonia, or in Enclaves like Communes.
I am in full agreement here, though I would argue that this was achieved at a cost to personal freedoms (i.e. censorship and political persecution). Innocents were harmed in order to preserve the centralization of power in the hands of the communist party. I won’t go so far as to say the evils outweighed the good that was done, only that they were not necessary and ultimately led to contradiction and collapse.
All governments censor, all governments persecute political opponents, or remove the conditions that allow them. Given, again, the historical context of the USSR, these were unfortunate necessities for much of its existence.
I do disagree on centralization leading to collapse, this was one aspect of the USSR that worked remarkably well. The USSR didn’t really “collapse,” it was killed off from within. I would argue that secluding themselves only partially from the rest of the world and slightly liberalizing until it became very liberalized towards the end marked the shift towards more bourgeois corruption.
The soviets were democratic but the bolsheviks smashed the soviets as soon as they realized they wouldn’t infiltrate them and stayed a Soviet Union in name only. Why wouldn’t they keep the soviets as a decision making body if the were interested in a democratic government?
No, the Bolsheviks did not smash the soviets. The Factory Committees were replaced with the Union system, because the Factory Committees were acting in their own interests irrespective of the needs of the whole. The Union system added the interconnected element to the Soviet Planning system. The Soviet system retained until the collapse of the USSR.
The wikipedia article on Soviet Democracy makes this clear, the Soviets were the main operating organ of the USSR throughout its lifetime. If you believe the Soviets to be democratic, then you believe the USSR to be democratic, or misunderstood the history of the Soviets within the USSR. This is on top of you referencing a wild anti-semite who considered the state itself to be a Jewish conspiracy as reasoning for complete anarchism alone.
I think you need to hit the books for a bit and come back later. Blackshirts and Reds goes over what did work, and what did not work in the USSR. There were definitely issues with it, but it was democratic.
Tbf it’s not that anybody saw that coming. Maybe Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta and all the other anarchists but aside from them, nobody could have known it.
If there’s no exploitation, and if everyone can voluntarily join the communist party and the unions (and is encouraged to do so), how can you say there was an owning class?
I love how tankies (and in varying degrees most Marxists) have no analysis of (vertical) power structures. As Bakunin so perfectly predicted:
But don’t take it from someone who saw it coming, but from Bookchin who was very sympathetic to the USSR:
Nobody in their sane minds argues that there wasn’t overbureaucratisation in the USSR. That’s a well established truth. The question is, if people aren’t only allowed but encouraged to join the party, and if there’s no exploitation of the working class, what’s the argument to suggest that the “bureaucrats were the new owning class”
But we agree that they were the ruling class? Once everything belongs to the state, it really belongs to those who rule the state.
And there is power structure within parties. Being member of the party doesn’t make you an equal to every other member. Many people were not only encouraged but coerced to join the party and do as the higher ups say. Centralism is never democratic.
Again, not that easy. Khruschev didn’t decide that the iron in the factory #3 would be used in the steel beam factory #7. The planning of the productive forces was an incredibly complex process in which thousands of bureaucrats union members were involved. Calling that amalgam of workers an “owning class”, especially when they’re not extracting surplus value at all from the workers seems a big stretch to me.
The fact that the USSR wasn’t as democratic as ideal, doesn’t mean that the existence of a state can’t be democratic. “Centralism” is an umbrella term covering many different possibilities of governance, and a single party ruled by elected leaders of worker councils is a recipe of some sort of centralism that can provide a very reasonable degree of democracy. I’m not arguing this was the case for the USSR. If you want to read on a practical case of the existence of democracy within a Marxist-Leninist single-party regime, I recommend you have a look at a book called “How the worker’s parliaments saved the Cuban revolution”, from Pedro Ross, which describes this exact form of functioning of back and forth between the central government and the worker councils in which millions of Cubans participated to overcome the worst consequences of the “periodo especial” after the illegal and antidemocratic dissolution of the USSR.
I myself am from a country with a rich history of anarchism in the 20th century: Spain. By the 1930s, the CNT, a union of workers which proposed some sort of anarcho-syndicalism (which I bet you’d be happy to agree is a good method of governance), had more than a million members, which for the population of the country at the time was absolutely huge. The lack of centralization of sorts initially among the leftists, and their consequent weakness to respond to threats, is actually the very reason why fascism could trump the democratic government in many places of the country and destroy this anarchist movement and all social progress for the following 40 years. Funnily enough, the dictatorial USSR was the only country which assisted the republicans in their civil war against fascism, other than the admittedly heroic volunteer corps from the brigadas internacionales.
Who do you think makes such decisions in a capitalist context?
Even funnier they didn’t support the CNT nor POUM.
According to Worshiping Power by Peter Gelderloos, decentralized structures have an advantage in self-defense but a disadvantage beyond their base territory. That’s why both the Spanish Civil War and the Makhnovshchina were lost once the popular front strategy were implemented.
Why no mention to the democratic participation in Cuba in your response?
Markets make those decisions in a capitalist context, surely not a committee of experts consulting the unions.
I’d have to read that book to give an actual answer to why that analysis is made. My point is that the coup was allowed to happen to that degree in the first place due to the failure of anarchists of arming the working class and stewarding it against the increasing threat of fascism.
Let’s get that straight: Your argument that the USSR didn’t have a ruling class was that Khruschev didn’t make all the decisions. Capitalism has a ruling class (the owning class) but they don’t make the decisions either. It’s the market that does in capitalism. Sounds like capitalism doesn’t have a ruling class by the criteria you introduced. On the other hand, the USSR had a committee of elitist experts and the union bureaucracy. Which to me sounds more like a ruling class. Maybe try to use some consistency.
My argument – following Simone Weil – is that both liberal capitalist states and bolshevik states are at their core bureaucracy as in the bureaucracy is the ruling class. In liberal democracies, there are 3 bureaucracy: the state bureaucracy, the industrial bureaucracy (think (middle) management) and the worker bureaucracy (unions). All of them are detached from those they are supposed to represent. Bolshevik states, as self proclaimed worker states, unite all these into one, which doesn’t change alot. The problem is the vertical power structure within unions and parties and stuff. That’s something, I am as convinced as before, most Marxists have no analysis of. I will not repeat the Bakunin quote but I think he nailed it (even tho he wasn’t a perfect person over all).
Here you are.
Well, it’s not that easy to arm the working class without weapons. Guess who had weapons and decided to side with the republicans instead of supporting the revolutionary socialists? Why no mention to the relationship between the USSR and CNT in your response?
Because there’s always one. Name one county where there isn’t a owning class
Ok, so in the USSR, the country with no exploitation of labor and which promoted membership of party and unions, the owning class was the working class, right? Or are you gonna do some mental gymnastics to say it was the politician class?
I’m looking forward to your mental gymnastics on how the Kronstadt rebellion were the bad guys
Id rather wait for you to answer my comment instead of deflecting
What are you talking about?
I’m talking about bolshevik parties and their bureaucracy becoming the new capitalist or ruling class as Bakunin told Marx would happen
Why do democratically elected government officials constitute a “class?” How would Socialism be Capitalism?
Bakunin himself was incredibly antisemetic, and considered the State itself to be a Jewish Conspiracy, so I’m not sure we should trust the background of his arguments.
The above commenter is wrong about it being capitalist, but they’re right about there being a ruling class in the USSR. The ruling class was the communist party, the “intelligentsia.” Communist party members pre-selected candidates for all political appointments, and becoming a member of the communist party involved passing through multiple stages of party-administered education and then having your past scrutinized and approved by committees of existing communist party members.
At its’ highest level of membership it never surpassed roughly 3% of the population. That is a politically privileged class that enjoyed better wages, benefits, general living conditions, and political influence than the general population.
The Bolsheviks and the Communist Party were not the Intelligentsia. The Intelligentsia predated the USSR, and was a cultural term for engineers, mental leaders, and other “educated” classes. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was made up of various members, not exclusively Intelligentsia. In fact, the close-link to the bourgeoisie that pre-Revolution Intelligentsia had caused distrust towards the Intelligentsia.
This does not make the CPSU a class, nor does iy mean it was not democratic. The US functions in much the same way, outside of fringe areas where third parties win.
Yes, Marxism has never stated that people cannot have it better or worse. Anarchists seek full-horizontalism, while Marxists seek Central Planning.
Even at the peak of disparity in the USSR, the top wages were far, far closer than under the Tsars or under the current Russian Federation, and the Workers enjoyed higher democratic participation with more generous social safety nets, like totally free healthcare and education.
The USSR was by no means perfect, but it was absolutely progressive for its time, and would even be considered progressive today, despite the issues they faced internally and externally.
I’ll concede on this point, the communist party and intelligentsia aren’t necessarily equivalent, though the intelligentsia did make up the largest organized bloc within the party.
Party membership in the US is open to all US citizens with some exceptions. Some states even have open primaries allowing non-party members to vote. This system is flawed and is in some ways a facade since the parties are not legally required to hold primaries, but this particular element of the US political system is more democratic than the Soviet system.
CPSU members make up a privileged class because they occupy a higher position in a state sanctioned social hierarchy. It represents a controlled social stratification, enacted ostensibly for the common good. I see this as a sort of paternalistic distrust of the proletariat as a whole by a subset of it.
I’ll note here that Anarchism doesn’t necessarily state that people cannot have it better or worse either. Anarchism primarily positions itself as opposition to the centralization of power which can lead to social stratification, but differences in standard of living are allowable insofar as it is not a condition imposed upon one by another.
I am in full agreement here, though I would argue that this was achieved at a cost to personal freedoms (i.e. censorship and political persecution). Innocents were harmed in order to preserve the centralization of power in the hands of the communist party. I won’t go so far as to say the evils outweighed the good that was done, only that they were not necessary and ultimately led to contradiction and collapse.
I don’t personally see a problem with the government largely being made up of educated people.
There is some truth to this, yes, but we have to consider historical context. The US is in a fundamentally different geopolitical position than the USSR ever was, the USSR was under constant threat.
Yes and no. They made up a more privledged subsection, yes, but this does not make it a class. The Means of Production were collectively owned, and managed via elected officials and Soviets. The Soviet system was more democratic with respect to what you could vote for, even if it was less democratic in other ways.
I’m aware of what Anarchism espouses, but given that we haven’t seen much example of actually existing Anarchism, we are left with unstable Revolutionary periods, such as in Catalonia, or in Enclaves like Communes.
All governments censor, all governments persecute political opponents, or remove the conditions that allow them. Given, again, the historical context of the USSR, these were unfortunate necessities for much of its existence.
I do disagree on centralization leading to collapse, this was one aspect of the USSR that worked remarkably well. The USSR didn’t really “collapse,” it was killed off from within. I would argue that secluding themselves only partially from the rest of the world and slightly liberalizing until it became very liberalized towards the end marked the shift towards more bourgeois corruption.
Yes, and Mussolini won by plebiscite.
The best democratic elections are those where you only have one choice, it’s known.
The soviets were democratic but the bolsheviks smashed the soviets as soon as they realized they wouldn’t infiltrate them and stayed a Soviet Union in name only. Why wouldn’t they keep the soviets as a decision making body if the were interested in a democratic government?
No, the Bolsheviks did not smash the soviets. The Factory Committees were replaced with the Union system, because the Factory Committees were acting in their own interests irrespective of the needs of the whole. The Union system added the interconnected element to the Soviet Planning system. The Soviet system retained until the collapse of the USSR.
The wikipedia article on Soviet Democracy makes this clear, the Soviets were the main operating organ of the USSR throughout its lifetime. If you believe the Soviets to be democratic, then you believe the USSR to be democratic, or misunderstood the history of the Soviets within the USSR. This is on top of you referencing a wild anti-semite who considered the state itself to be a Jewish conspiracy as reasoning for complete anarchism alone.
I think you need to hit the books for a bit and come back later. Blackshirts and Reds goes over what did work, and what did not work in the USSR. There were definitely issues with it, but it was democratic.