Saying they beat the Americans in the space race several times over doesn’t mean the Statesians didn’t make it to the moon first, it means the Soviets beat them to many major milestones, yet this is brushed under the rug.

The Soviets were the first to space, first to send probes to Venus, first animals in space, first returning animals from space, first humans in space, and more. The moon landing was a huge milestone, sure, but the soviets took a number of firsts themselves.

Do you think that people don’t work in China? Cuba, Korea, Vietnam? Laos? Do you think they didn’t work in the USSR, when they went from feudalism to space in half a century? I really don’t think you understand how socialism works in real life, or how production in the future will be run.

Lenin the GOAT

That’s not how it works, the people work and capitalists make all of the money, and use the state to prevent people from getting uppity.

Money in general becomes superfluous if all production and distribution is collectivized and run along a scientific plan. If you develop beyond markets, why do you need money?

We are talking about communism, it sounds like you’re talking about welfare and getting upset at those on welfare and not the capitalists that plunder all of the social surplus. Of course capitalists control the state, the state serves the ruling class.

You are describing capitalism. Capitalists plunder the surplus value created by the working classes. Production is already socialized and collaborative, but the spoils go to a tiny handful of people.

Elections aren’t democracy, as you said democracy is rule by the majority. Pluralism, the ability to choose between parties, isn’t actually democracy either. A single party system can be more democratic if it’s a consultative democracy and reflects the will of the majority, like how it works in China (though China obviously has many, many elections). That also doesn’t mean pluralism is inherently antidemocratic, countries like the DPRK have multiple political parties with seats (even if the majority are held by the WPK), just that the will of the majority be upheld.

In capitalism, a tiny class of people controls the most essential means of production and distribution for society. The state represents their interests, and any parties that exist must represent them, or instead have strong grassroots support and work against the state (such as the Bolsheviks). Choosing between any number of capitalist parties doesn’t mean workers are going to be represented. No western country represents the will of the majority.

Nah, most seem in support of it.

Cheers back!

I have never once said states and revolutions are the same thing, only that the only way to create a leftist state is revolution, and that states themselves are inherently violent towards the non-dominant class. Regimes are just scary words for states in common lingo, so please explain what a regime is.

I’ve been talking about both revolutions and states, which you call “regimes” to sound scary. States are itself tools by which one class dominates the rest, this is inherently violent.

History and time are not the same thing. Development continues to happen, and it happens through struggle, the class struggle being primary now.

Did you read my comment? I said the Soviets ended famine in a region where famine was historically common. Further, socialism worked in the USSR, and continues to work in Cuba, Vietnam, Korea, China, Laos, and Venezuela. Greed did not ruin any of these, greed is expressed in greater degrees in capitalist countries where profit is the goal above all else.

I’m aware that they played a critical and heavy role in colonialism, and am not trying to downplay that in any way. I appreciate the added context, but I don’t believe we are opposed in any way here.

If only Putin was actually a communist. If Putin actually was trying to remake the USSR, then the world would be in a much better position.

The USSR had steady and consistent economic growth, and provided free, high quality education and healthcare, full employment, cheap or free housing, and fantastic infrastructure and city planning that still lasts to this day despite capitalism neglecting it. This rapid development resulted in dramatic democratization of society, reduced disparity, doubling of life expectancy, tripling of functional literacy rates to 99.9%, and much more. Living in the 1930s famine would not have been good, but it was the last major famine outside of wartime because the soviets ended famine in their countries.

Literacy rates, societal guarantees in the 1936 constitution, reports on the healthcare system over time, and more are good sources for these claims.

The USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference.

When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski’s Human Rights in the Soviet Union.

The truth, when judged based on historical evidence and contextualization, is that socialism was the best thing to happen to Russia in the last few centuries, and its absence has been devastating.

Death rates spiked:

And wealth disparity skyrocketed alongside the newly impoverished majority:

Capitalism brought with it skyrocketing poverty rates, drug abuse, prostitution, homelessness, crime rates, and lowered life expectancy. An estimated 7 million people died due to the dissolution of socialism and reintroduction of capitalism, and this is why the large majority of post-soviet citizens regret its fall. A return to socialism is the only path forward for the post-soviet countries. A lot of Eastern European countries were swarmed with western capital during the destruction of socialism, which is what temporarily caused the rise of the far-right in these countries, but in time their problems will no longer be able to be ignored.

Yes, of course I can read. You rejected my interpretation, and I very clearly explained how your rejection is baseless. What is a “non-violent leftist regime?”

So we are back to square one: since all leftist states are the result of revolution, it is definitionally correct that “tankies” are those who support socialist states. All states are tools by which the ruling classes retain their dominance, in socialism this is the working class. Therefore, all states are inherently violent, and trying to label some as uniquely violent misses the entire point of the state, a monopoly on violence.

Yet this is very clearly not something that all commodities have in common

This is not clear at all. Elaborate, please.

and that a thing’s status as a commodity and its ability to be exchanged for other commodities has nothing to do with its being a product of labor

Why not? Are you saying that the utility of a commodity to someone does not change whether or not it was made with labor? This doesn’t really matter, though, the point of the Law of Value is that commodities are socially produced, and socially distributed, which normalizes their price around their values. Arguments like the “mud pie” don’t apply, because mud pies are neither useful nor difficult to make.

The only way Marx’s argument can be accepted is if you start with the presupposition that commodities are valued by the labor required to produce them.

Incorrect, the exchange-value that price fluctuates around is representative of the value in a commodity. Another way to look at it is that the value of a commodity is the sum of its inputs, which can be reduced to labor and natural resources.

How this happens that commodities are exchanged at their “value” is a complete mystery by the way, since Marx says it has nothing to do with the conscious considerations of either the buyer or the seller.

Marx is correct, though this is no mystery. Commodities are social products, and are socially exchanged. What’s universal to goods bought and sold is that they require natural resources and human labor to create them, thus capitalism in being a social process acts as a price-finder for commodities, all based on inputs and outputs.