how could the soviet union have been a success?

[save catford]

good grief

 

[butchersapron]

Past tense, not relevant.

What? When was this house built?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It is wrong to talk about the USSR as if it were an unchanging entity. The country under Khrushchev in the fifties/sixties was very different from the terror of Stalin in the thirties and forties.

In the same way, it would be unfair to condemn the contemporary USA for being a racist state just because it practiced apartheid up to the 1960s.

 

[Random]

Anything that people might consider valuable.

Could be a house which has value to many people, but could be many other things.

I think capital is usually considered to be not just something of value, but value that is used to make more value.

 

[Random]

The existence of capitalism is dependent for any degree of stability on the ability in law to own private property, so yes, legally it can be done away with.

Surely the existence of capitalism, or otherwise, is dependent on whether capitalist social relations exist or not.

 

[Spion]

Surely the existence of capitalism, or otherwise, is dependent on whether capitalist social relations exist or not.

Yes, although the durability of those social relations will be dependent on the political sphere, on whether the state defends laws which facilitate that

 

[butchersapron]

Odd positioning for a marxist. Surely it should be the other way round. The juridical relations being determined by the underlying social relations, not the juridical relations determining the social relations? This is where the orthodox trot postion veers very sharply away from marx(ism).

 

[Spion]

You seem to be approaching this very mechanically - i don't see how in reality new forms of social relations and the political struggle to impose the 'law' of the w/c (and therefore the destruction of the existing capitalist law and its state) can be separated, other than conceptually

 

[butchersapron]

You seem to be approaching this very mechanically - i don't see how in reality new forms of social relations and the political struggle to impose the 'law' of the w/c (and therefore the destruction of the existing capitalist law and its state) can be separated, other than conceptually

Nor do i as it goees - but i'm just trying to use your method - you argued that capitalism had been abolished as the the legal form of property ownership had changed. You argued that juridcial relations were a clear determining factor in the USSR abolishing capitalism. Didn't you? Have i misread you? If not, if that's not the approach to take then why argue in those terms? If i have then what importance is the legal system?

Conceptually is good.

 

[Spion]

Changing the legal forms that enshrine property relations isn't trivial - it can't happen without politics and the use of force. I guess I assumed that would be taken as read

 

[mk12]

"In each historical epoch, property has developed differently and under a set of entirely different social relations. Thus to define bourgeois property is nothing less than to give an exposition of all the social relations of bourgeois production. To try to give a definition of property as of an independent relation, a category apart – an abstract eternal idea – can be nothing but an illusion of metaphysics or jurisprudence"

Good old Karl. The social relationships are important, not the legal form of property ownership.

"But the transformation, either into joint-stock companies, or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces."

Freddie Engels!

 

[save catford]

The social relationships are important, not the legal form of property ownership

thread over

 

[ViolentPanda]

Maybe, but when it comes to murdering its own citizens, the USSR was right up there near the top.

You do a very good line in posting up the obvious as though you were making a point nobody had previously considered.
Well done.

 

[Lock&Light]

You do a very good line in posting up the obvious as though you were making a point nobody had previously considered.
Well done.

There have been plenty of apologists for the USSR who manged quite nicely to avoid considering it.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Economics.

It's not called "the dismal science" for nowt, you know!

Economics is quasi-religious, it's not a science

 

[Barking_Mad]

Maybe, but when it comes to murdering its own citizens, the USSR was right up there near the top.

True, but it was a long way behind the US at murdering other countries citizens.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Economics is quasi-religious, it's not a science

I only said that it's called a science.

 

[Barking_Mad]

I only said that it's called a science.

heh so you did. As you were.

 

[sleaterkinney]

Maybe, but when it comes to murdering its own citizens, the USSR was right up there near the top.

Does that take into account native americans, slaves etc?

 

[Barking_Mad]

Does that take into account native americans, slaves etc?

that was a long time ago and doesn't count. Just like in 100 years or so those 1 million dead Iraqis wont count. You know, time is a great healer.

But dont ever forget 9/11!!

 

[alsoknownas]

<applauds Butchers until hands bleed>

 

[Kenny Vermouth]

My favourite quote about the Soviet Union and the reason it developed the way it did is by the Polish thinker Leszek Kolakowski:

Bukharin's biographer calls him "the last Bolshevik", a description which is true or false according to the meaning we attach to it. It is true if we mean by a Bolshevik one who accepted all the principles of the new order - the unlimted power of a single party, "unity" within the party, an ideology excluding all others, the economic dictatorship of the state - and who believed it was possible within this framework to avoid despotism by an oligarchy or individual, to govern without the use of terror, and to preserve the values the Bolsheviks had championed during the struggle for power: namely, government by the working people or proleteriat, free cultural development, and respect for art science and national traditions. But if "Bolshevik" means all this, it simply means a man incapable of drawing logical conclusions from his own premises. If, on the other hand, Bolshevik ideology is not just a matter of generalities but involves accepting the consequences of one's own principles, then Stalin was right to boast himself the most consistent of all Bolsheviks and Leninists.

 

[mk12]

Bukharn incidentally had some decent views in early 1918, but just like most dissident Bolsheviks, eventually came round to the leaderships views and shut up.

 

[gorski]

Or perhaps, what were the biggest contributing factors to its failure? Could it have worked with different leaders, or are isolated communist states doomed to failure due to the pressures of being in constant opposition to the system of government in other states?

It's a lesson Hannah Arendt taught us: the very basis of the system/order one establishes can not be irrelevant to the outcomes a system/order produces. If it's sheer violence and fear...

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

You do a very good line in posting up the obvious as though you were making a point nobody had previously considered.
Well done.

How kind and perspicacious of you to notice!

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Does that take into account native americans, slaves etc?

Yep.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

True, but it was a long way behind the US at murdering other countries citizens.

I dunno: how many Germans did they kill?

 

[sleaterkinney]

Yep.

Post up your figures then, I reckon around 30 million for the us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade
http://hnn.us/articles/7302.html

 

[gorski]

Quibbling!

What matters is the very foundations of a society...

Force or....????!!!???

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Post up your figures then, I reckon around 30 million for the us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade
http://hnn.us/articles/7302.html

Stalin killed that many just in a couple of decades.