this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
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The USSR moved out of State Capitalism with the end of the NEP. It is technically correct that they had a State Capitalist economy, but they moved on to a traditional Socialist economy relatively early on.
"State Capitalism" is a form of Socialist economy primarily categorized by a State's participation in a market economy, heavily directing it. The NEP was used early on as the USSR was very underdeveloped, and Marxists believe markets serve as efficient tools for rapidly developing productive forces at lower stages of development. This was shifted away from after the NEP to a more Publicly Owned and Centrally Planned economy characteristic of traditional Marxian Sociailsm. There were still some small markets and small commodity producers, but by far the primary sector of the economy was in the Public Sector.
Socialist economies are when you have commodity production and MOP owned by an ownership class.
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"Uhh akshually the proletariat owns the means of production because the state is basically the people." Please, tell me you don't actually believe this.
?????
The owners of something are the owners of that thing.
Yes, and the owner of the MoP in the USSR was the state, which was controlled by a small political elite.
This creates a class conflict very similar to the conflict under free market capitalism.
https://comlib.encryptionin.space/epubs/this-soviet-world/
Also see https://comlib.encryptionin.space/epubs/soviet-democracy/
When you don't know anything, keep posting.
You do not understand marxism, and then proceed to dismiss it.
Maybe. But you clearly don't understand it all that well.
For what it's worth, they evidently don't understand more than you, considering a recurring assertion by them conflating the State with government in general, which is foundational for how Marxists understand Communism as a "stateless" society of full public ownership and a common plan.
You have three things wrong there:
Socialist economies are determined by which form of production is primary in an economy, and in the USSR post-NEP this was public ownership and central planning. It is undeniably Socialist from a Marxian analysis, the ownership being the public and therefore the Proletariat, not some obscure "ownership class" that has no bearing in Marxist analysis.
The Proletarian State is the tool of class oppression against the bourgeoisie. This is traditional Marxism, the public owning the MoP is the hallmark of Socialism, and the Proletarian State withers with respect to how collectivized production has become. Marx was certainly no Anarchist, there can be no Marxism without Public Ownership and Central Planning.
This doesn't mean it wasn't commodity production.
Not even but you're too deep in the kool-aid to even understand your own prophet.
And yet, it was a tool of oppression against the proletariat.
Turns out that the state and capital are one and the same, and when you try to use a system of oppression to liberate someone, it doesn't work out.
"Actually, worker control of the MoP is when a very tiny political elite decides how the MoP is used."
And of course, the fabled "withering of the state" which can be seen by how the late USSR oligarchy withered into the Russian Federation mafia state!
Take a drink every time a tankie randomly stays this.
Marx was pretty vague about central planning in his writing in general, and there are arguments that he could have been opposed to it later in his life, this is however irrelevant.
I cannot emphasize enough that I do not care about Marxism, it's a useful tool for analysis of capital, but Marx lived and died in the 1800s.
It's time for the socialist movement to move on forward, we can synthesize the old with new information and analysis which waa gained throughout the last 150 years, and create better systems and theories.
The endless discussion on what the "prophet" Marx and Engels wanted us to do are fucking poinltess and furthermore incredibly boring and played out.
There was commodity production in the USSR, yes. That was not the basis of the economy. The basis was on industrialized publicly owned and planned production, in a manner working towards the end of overall commodity production.
You don't really make any points regarding this mysterious "ownership class," just a snide remark about worshipping Marx.
You keep asserting that the Proletarian state was the instrument of oppression of the Proletariat, but make no points as to how or why. Moreover, you make the unjustified claim that the State somehow is Capital, which is fundamentally confused.
Moving on to your next point, the idea that central planning is somehow antithetical to Marxism, I ask why you believe ownership means it cannot be planned by others. Central Planning is a necessity for fully publicly owned economies. Furthermore, the withering of the state can only happen once all production is folded into the public sector at a global scale, and happens with the degree to which production has been collectivized. Government and the "state" are separate, the State is a tool of class oppression while government remains a necessity for administration.
The fact that Marxists correctly point out that Marx was not an advocate for a horizontalist system and instead for full public ownership and central planning doesn't make this wrong.
Either way, you're correct that Marx and Engels are not prophetic, which is why Marxism-Leninism has been refined and continued over the many decades by subsequent Marxists like Lenin, and much has been learned through the real existence of AES states. You keep asserting inflexible dogmatism as the core of your complaint when the people you complain about don't actually exist, just strawmen that haunt you.