FluffyPotato

It will depend on the person but for me personally I love crazy fashion, my ideal world is where everyone dressed like they were in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. So a necklace with a massive gemstone that looks like it contains the souls of a long dead race is ideal.

I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with a computer in the woods but I guess Windows 7 if I have to pick between those.

No it doesn't, I read it too. If this has degraded to you just going nuhuh we can call it a day, that's no longer fun.

I guess you missed the link I provided: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_Soviet_Union

During those elections you were voting for local party picks that all had the same instructions from the party. Who won had no effect on how things were run. The high ups in the party controlled how the means of production were used, not the workers. As you may recall from your own link factions in the party were banned meaning dissent got you ousted.

Elections that don't give workers any control over the means of production are meaningless and not socialism. How many times do I have to repeat this?

Are you being purposely optuse or bad faith? The elections were symbolic with no effect on production as I already said and provided sources for. It's not socialism if workers have no control over the means of production.

The Wikipedia article you started with had this info. The party was more interested with remaining in power and benefitting it's members than the working class after Lenin. They banned any dissenting voice and cracked down on the working class. They became closer to a royal family in a monarchy with Stalin. And I do repeat that the workers had no control of the means of production after 1924, potentially even after 1921.

Are you saying that if the bolshevik party had 1% workers in it it would count as socialist even though the party had different class interests to the workers and workers had no control over the means of production? If the party was controlled by the workers there would be no need to violently put down mass worker protests.

The assumption was made based on how insufferable some of your ad hominems were and contact with other people who talk like that. Work in effective local politics groups tends to mellow people like this out and makes them less pedantic.

What I wrote was that workers did not control the means of production, the party did. Having symbolic elections does not give workers any control.

You should find a local political group that actually takes part in local politics, that actually has a chance of bringing about socialist policy. Political book clubs are largely useless and only good for mutual mental masturbation.

You know the anarchist group I'm part of had people like you join from time to time that seem more interested in reading, purity testing and just calling other members "bad lefties" instead of taking part in local politics which is our main goal. Calling me unserious while complaining about definitions takes the cake though.

You seem to have misread it more. Yes, parties were banned but so were factions in the bolshevik party, elected city soviets and pretty much all groups outside the party. Meaningful elections happened only inside the party, the elections everyone took part in were for show, they gave no control to the workers. It's all in that source.

If you are interested in how elections were run in the USSR this is pretty much how I remember: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_Soviet_Union From what I remember the candidates you could actually vote for were party picks that would do the same thing anyways so your vote was merely symbolic. Over time people cought on to that and voter turnout crashed so hard the party started handing out exotic fruit to people who show up, I got my first orange that way.

If you want to know what happened to the worker councils in the USSR read it here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_council

Pat Sloan probably took part in an election before Stalin, as I previously said, the election process after Lenin was very different. So, yea one dissenting historian.

You provided one source which also lists the Thurston and Sloan quotes as a dissenting opinions to the rest of the article. The Wikipedia article itself states that worker councils lost both their power and ability to vote followed by protests by workers which were violently put down.

Why do I need to provide more sources when the one you provided almost fully agrees with my statement with the exception of one dissenting historian?

As I have said I have read enough Marx in my youth and usage of one word does not change a single part of my argument or any point which was that post Lenin in the USSR workers did not own the means of production.

Also you earlier said that your opinion is supported by historians and I missed that comment then so let me address that: It's supported by one dissenting opinion on the Wikipedia article. The rest of the article agrees with my statement.

I'm old, I'm not going to reread all of the things I read in my youth. The usage of bourgeoisie has changed colloquially and I don't really care either, it's irrelevant to the USSR having worker control after Lenin.