is that an anarchist cap?
Yes, specifically the caps worn by the revolutionaries during the Spanish revolution
i asked because i was wondering they op was stoking the fires of the revolutionary divide between communists and anarchists.
I feel like the op meme would hit harder with this on the well guy
cause they’re fine to push the ‘lesser evil’ when it means getting their preferred evil in. when it comes to opposing communism then it’s suddenly purity testing is finei think that would have been expected given the propaganda behind the gulags
I would wear one.
probably doesn’t come in my size. lol
It lasted less than a generation, because it was a terrible design. They tried to get rid of capitol, but instead married the power of the state with the power of capitol
A benevolent hypercompetent dictator is obviously the greatest system of government. The rub is in the details
The USSR lasted several generations, generations are measured by the few decades and not by centuries. It lasted as long as it did because it worked remarkably well.
One thing that is important is that they didn’t “marry the power of the state to capital.” They had a publicly owned and driven economy, central planning is completely different from private ownership and production for profits.
You’re right, I meant lifetime.
But what I meant by they married the power of the state to capital is that as an agent of the state, you had the authority over capital.
In capitalism if you want a factory, you need money (and/or investors). In the USSR, you needed an agent of the state to make it happen.
In theory, that works. In practice, the agent of the state often becomes an investor - they profit off the factory, either through bribes up front or skimming off the top to sell the products on the black market
It’s a system that invites corruption at all levels. No amount of policing can regulate a system when the individuals are incentived to skim off the top… This works at a smaller scale, but when you scale it up to county size ideology and policing will never tamp down the temptation. And the more people do it, the more normalized it becomes
You will always have people trying to exploit any system, the system has to have an answer that doesn’t assume the individuals will act in good faith
You have to align incentives between actors and the system as a whole. I don’t think you can do that top down, but you could do it bottom up. No individual should be allowed to have much power, and centralized planning concentrates power
You’ll never approach communism top down. You can only do it by empowering the workers, from the bottom up
This is a pretty big misunderstanding of both what capital even is, and how socialist economies, the USSR included, function.
First, capital. Capital isn’t a synonym for “means of production.” Capital is a social function. Money, commodities, means of production, etc can all function as capital. What makes something capital is its use to generate more wealth in the form of profits. A worker that owns their own hammer is not an owner of capital, but an owner of a tool.
Secondly, socialism. Socialist economies, where production is generally planned for use rather than profits (depending on the stage), does not have the system of “skimming” like you imagine. In the USSR, the difference between the top and the bottom of society was about ten times, as compared to thousands to billions in capitalism.
Communism, in the Marxist sense, can only come about through full collectivization of production and distribution, it can’t happen from the bottom-up. I just posted an updated Marxist-Leninist reading list, maybe give it a try!
Capital is what allows you to obtain the means of production. Before capitalism, capital required a title of nobility. It is not the same as money… Capitalism is the system where capital is just money. Just money can buy the mine, can buy the land, can buy the tools for the factory, can employ the workers.
These are things that require authority under both feudalism and a Marxist-Leninist system
Socialism does not require skimming off the top. That’s obviously the opposite of what it aims to do
But going all in on central planning basically guarantees a system of skimming off the top.
There are other, better models for socialism. What if all companies became worker controlled, direct democracy style? What if the state controlled everything considered utilities, from food to healthcare to power and electricity to education, and you let capitalism compete in the background?
Communism is where the state withers away, because it’s not needed. Where we grow beyond needing rulers.
You’ll never get there by concentrating all the power and capital in the state. You could get there by using the state only as a check to make sure everything remains bottom up
Again, what determines what is capital or not is its social role. It isn’t purely money within capitalism, there’s money capital, commodity capital, etc.
Further, you’re deeply misunderstood on the rest of this comment.
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Central planning in a fully collectivized economy does not certify “skimming off the top.” You’re thinking of socialist production and distribution as the same as capitalist, but with the government. On the contrary, socialist production makes it far less likely, compared to capitalism where that is the sole aim.
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All companies being worker controlled cooperatives is not a better model, it’s much worse. Cooperatives can be a part of a broader, developing socialist economy, but cannot form the basis, as competition will result in some cooperatives flourishing and others dying, resulting in class striation.
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Having public ownership for part of the economy and private for the rest is either social democracy, ie capitalism with safety nets, or the primary stage of socialism, before more development and collectivizing. If the large firms and key industries are privately.owned it’s capitalist, if they are publicly owned it’s some kind of socialism.
a. Social democracy, as its still capitalism, still has far more “skimming off the top” as that’s the purpose of capitalism to begin with. You’re still under a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the workers still have no power, and in the global north you still rely on imperialism.
b. The socialist market economy is just what the PRC is doing now, and it’s extremely effective. They are still pursuing a fully collectivized economy, but are working with diverse forms of ownership of medium and small firms as they are only in the primary stage of socialism.
- The state withers away when class withers away. Communism in the Marxist sense is a global, fully collectivized economy run along a common plan. The state is merely the extension of the class in power, ie the bourgeoisie or the proletariat, it isn’t a class in itself. Once all property has been collectivized by the state, it ceases to function as a “state,” but planning still takes an active role. Over time, formal structures are replaced by habit, but you still have a huge, interconnected, planned economy.
Ultimately, you are fundamentally confused about what Marx was advocating for, and are mixing it up with anarchism, when these are fundamentally different concepts. Reading theory would be a good idea for you.
3·3 hours agopublicly owned it’s capitalist
Private
Oof, thank you! I need to stop replying to comments before I’ve had my first coffee, lmao 🫠
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Well, it was the first iteration.
It did quite well, considering how it rapidly indistrialised their union of states, gave national-level voting rights to women before USAmerica did, fought external and internal sabotage, was waay better than the USAmerica which had racial discrimination on voting till the 1960’s etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965They also were the major force to fight against Nazis.
Cool, so they rapidly industrialized. Putting aside my feelings on industrialization, how is that useful a second time? It’s also not unique
That system was good for growth, but it instantly was filled with corruption. It was manageable when there was explosive growth and everyone in the government just skimmed a little off the side, but once they modernized that growth slowed. From there the corruption spread like cancer
They went from being mostly agrarian to the most advanced county in the world to complete stagnation, and finally collapsed into complete oligarchy at record speed
I’m not saying they did nothing good, but that model is trash. We can learn from what it did well, but it has no answer to bad, or just selfish, actors
What we need is stability and quality of life, and for that I think you need to set an upper limit on how much power any one person can obtain.
I’m on board with the end goal, but this is a bad starting point to build a new system on
“Nation of workers” lol
Some animals are more equal than others.
A Critical Read of Animal Farm
Towards a Critique of Totalitarianism
Orwell hated the working class, his chief critique was that the working class is too stupid to think for itself and that it is destined to be swayed by whoever is most charismatic. The same monster snitched on gays, jewish people, and communists to the British government, and during WWII claimed that criticizing the USSR was the real litmus test of a leftist. That’s not even getting into his history of sexual assault.
As for the USSR in reality, read Blackshirts and Reds and This Soviet World. If the CPSU was a “ruling class,” it absolutely failed at being so. The discrepancy between the wealthiest and poorest in the Soviet Union was around ten times, but that number is in the thousands to billions in the Tsarist and capitalist eras respectively, and not just in Russia, but all capitalist systems.
Imagine criticizing Orwell for not thinking for himself
by posting links to a bunch of people criticizing Orwell lmfao
…what? I criticized Orwell for his hatred of the working class, anti-semitism, homophobia, work with MI6, anti-communism, being a sex-pest, and criticizing the country that was responsible for 85% of Nazi soldiers killed during World War II in the midst of fighting said genocidal invader. The issue wasn’t “thinking for himself,” it’s him being a social fascist antisemitic fed. Critique of him is by no means hypocritical.
Do you have some theory reading which supports that, comrade? If not then you should read more theory, comrade. Make sure to post like 15 paragraph replies when you’re done compiling your theories.
I already posted the sources for Orwell being a piece of shit at the beginning of this conversation, though that certainly isn’t “theory.” It’s just documenting how much of a piece of shit Orwell was as a human being.
Comrade earlier you said that the CPSU was a failure, why are you so critical of glorious leaders, comrade? Would it be so bad if they were in charge of everything, comrade? You need to read more theory, comrade.
This is just incoherent slop, are you doing it for your personal amusement? Is defending an antisemitic homophobic fed worth it to you?
Plus, I never said the CPSU was a failure.
You wanna elaborate on that, or are we supposed to feel convinced when you simply… restate the thing the meme is making fun of, but in an even more cliche sentence?
Do you think there’s people out there joining the PSL or some other communist party who are gonna hear this 7th grade tier criticism and change their minds, or do you say it just for your own comfort?
Quote harry potter next if you’re gonna be getting your political education from children’s fables
