Marxism for beginners

Was Russia really backward when she wins space challenge on 12 April 1961?
Or may be when she invented thermonuclear power faster than USA did?
Of course, it was hard to live among hostilely tuned countries but USSR possessed 1/6 of world surface and was rich in resources.
And it overcame extreme initial difficulties successfully.
So the problem is not here.
Bureaucracy is the root of the evil here.
It didn't feel well when Stalin was alive but it conquers USSR in a dozen years after he died. When it happens USSR get declining faster and faster... then missed new informational epoch and was trying to restrict people in their desires. It was a real puritan gerontocracy, the worst and rotting form of bureaucracy.

That all is because real power was not held by Soviet organs but by CPSU.
That could have happened because soviet organs were elected in a very false way, directly. It's not right to elect you deputies to the Supreme Soviet directly because you can't control them effectively when one deputy is elected by hundreds of thousand people. Your "right" to recall this deputy is a mere sound in this case. Also, when one deputy is elected by 0.1 millions people nobody knows him personally, and he can lie and overestimate his merits easily. No more we have here competitors in merits but competitors in the art of self-representing, and silly useless boasters are likely to win these competitions, poorly.
Also, there are many independent levels of power each of which is responsible to people and is elected by them. So, one such a level can try to eliminate another one, as Yeltsin did in 1993 (both Yeltsin and Supreme Soviet were elected by people and pretended to express their interests).

Real soviet system supposes multilevel elections. First of all, work collectives elect their deputies, then these deputies create executive committee that has power to manage their enterprise. This people (from executive committee) are responsible for enterprise GosPlan fulfillment and they elect some people to deal with other enterprises in the city in order to get details for their fabric etc. And so on, up to the Supreme Soviet.
This gives a real economic power to people.

 

Russia was backward in the 1920s when the ruling elite gave up on the idea of socialism.

No, bureaucracy is the result of the country being backward.

It was a backward country. Therefore the Bolsheviks had to employ tens of thousands of bureaucrats inherited from the Tsar. The bureaucrats took over.

Lenin:

"What then is lacking? Obviously, what is lacking is culture among the stratum of the Communists who perform administrative functions. If we take Moscow with its 4,700 Communists in responsible positions, and if we take that huge bureaucratic machine, that gigantic heap, we must ask: who is directing whom? I doubt very much whether it can truthfully be said that the Communists are directing that heap. To tell the truth they are not directing, they are being directed. "

This was how it started.

Yes they didnt implement enough democracy in the party and the soviets at the end of the civil war. Basically as soon as the civil war ended there was a famine and then Lenin died. Trotsky also warned of the dangers of bureaucracy in 1923.

But Stalin managed to consolidate power after that.

 

So, how is Marxism going to create Angels on Earth, without any aspiration to a divine Commune on Earth as well?

 

Ah, neolithic, as in the first known civilizations, period. I'm not going to pretend I speak for a majority here, but I find it incredibly convenient, again, that our evidence dates back before history itself. Do what you will with carbon dating, but as far as practical thinking is concerned, history before "history" is speculation at best.

Without historical accounts, it is not possible to understand with certainty what these cultures did, let alone how they established economies... a Turkish dig site, big whoop, you found some old houses... or graves... or temples, or both. How can you stand there and tell me with certainty that it points to "egalitarianism"? The houses are all the same size? What a surprise. Step into any suburban neighborhood in the west and you'll find no evidence of the whitehouse or wall street.

Don't get me wrong, I understand your point here, but the way you folks use this in an absolute sense, renders you incapable of productive discussion and your theory inapplicable to real life.

Obviously there's no real example of socialism or any other philosophy for that matter, since politics is inevitably a compromise... the complexity of humanity brings this about. The point is there are plenty of examples of societies utilizing socialist, capitalistic, and other economic philosophies, to varying degrees.

 

no idea what this means

There was no Wall Street. These were towns that were self sufficient. It was not a suburb it was a complete town. The was no nation, no government, nothing. A suburb is part of a city and a city has slums and mansions. Catalhoyuk had neither.

In Cayonu there were large temples where the rich priests lived, and smaller houses where the workers lived. The priests controlled the supply of obsidian, and the workers had to do all the work, making tools. Then there was a revolution and the temples were torn down, all the houses were rebuilt to the same size.

This egalitarian trend was taken up in the city Catalhoyuk which may have started that way from scratch. All the houses were the same, if your kids left home the spare space was converted to storage, so you didnt have more personal living space than a neighbour. There were no large public buildings of any kind. The dead were buried under people's floors and are very well preserved, and there is no evidence of violence. The men and women were very equal, both buried with tools and jewellery, both equally nourished.

I think you miss the point. There has only really been one revolution with the aim of establishing socialism, in Russia. But Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky all knew socialism is impossible in one country, especially a backward one. So it could only achieve socialism if it spread to other countries, but this didnt happen, eg the German revolution was defeated.

The revolution started going downhill. I dont have time to explain in detail, it's probably in this thread. Lenin and Trotsky could see it coming. Lenin died, Trotsky was ill, and Stalin got power.

After the civil war they had implemented the NEP to revive agriculture, it was a partial privatisation, regarded as a temporary retreat which carried dangers.

Stalin wanted to keep it going and rely on the idea that the desire for prosperity would keep the peasants on board.

Trotsky argued that the rich peasants would eventually challenge communist rule.

Stalin kicked Trotsky out of the country.

The richer peasants did start to challenge so Stalin adopted Trotsky's proposals after all, but did it in a distorted way, too late, too rapidly, for the wrong reasons.

His collectivisation was not socialism, it was his battle for his personal rule. he was forced to collectivise because of the opposition's campaign. If Trotsky and the Left Opposition had not existed, Stalin would probably have allowed capitalist restoration in 1928.

Lenin warned that the party was too bureaucratic, too much red tape, needed to educate the younger members to make decisions etc, move towards socialism.

Stalin did the opposite, consolidated one man rule. You cant run a planned economy this way. In 1922 at a speech to congress, Lenin went into great detail about how people in Moscow were hungry because a decision on buying canned meat from France had been passed (passing the buck) all the way up form the Moscow Consumers Cooperative to the Communist Party Central Committee.

It was kinda prophetic. a dictatorship can drag an economy forward via the advantages of a planned economy, but in the end it will die a slow death asphyxiated by bureaucracy.

 

Can you prove that the ruling elite gave up this idea of socialism?
Give please your definition of socialism and mark points which were broken?
And what is of much more interest, what would you do if you were Stalin in order to never give up the socialist idea?
I contend that the most important thing in socialism is official concentration of production and it's planning at state scale; as far as Stalin didn't give up this idea he didn't give up socialism. Furthermore have you ever seen capitalist country where pupils and students study Marxism at special lessons and in special universities and where Marx and Lenin works are published in great number of copies their study being stimulated and encouraged?

Well, so why we had bureaucracy in USSR in 1960 and 1970 when USSR wasn't backward?

That's right but there were not so many bureaucrats inherited from the Tsar in 1970s... No doubt backwardness leads to bureaucracy. It is a well established fact proved historically but now it isn't of much interest for us, is it? USA is not backward at all; USSR wasn't backward in 1970s. We still have India and China and many other backward countries but we can't influence revolution there (may be, you can? but i can't) so let's speak about what's interesting for us now?

So despite of Russia being backward Lenin considered getting rid of those communists who was able to make revolution but was not able to manage production. He was right and that was quite possible. Actually they did solve this problem under Stalin government. Weren't they solve this problem USSR would have been defeated in Great Patriotic War.

Everyone warned, and Stalin is no exception. You can take complete works of Stalin and find many negative words about bureaucracy, also he accused Trotsky in bureaucracy... (vol.5)

 

It may be that only Angels on Earth may be moral enough to create a Heaven on Earth without the need and expense of Government.

 

There will be a kind of government under communism.
There will be economics management for example Central Planning Bureau.
The main problem to reach communism is to improve our working efficiency with the help of science progress.

 

It was a gradual process, starting in 1924 and culminating in the Moscow Show Trials, the sabotage of revolutions in Spain and so on. I would need a whole thread on this and several hours. Stalin invented 'socialism in one country' and 'popular fronts'. In the 1920s, Stalin focussed on helping the rich get richer while Trotsky said this was a mistake. In 1928 Stalin realised this was true and started forcible collectivisation, but only to save his ass.

Democratic workers ownership and planning.

Read this
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1927/opposition/ch03.htm

He only collectivised after kicking Trotsky out because he faced a challenge for power from the kulaks and NEPmen. But it wasnt socialism. Socialism needs massive amounts of democracy.

Yeah right. And Trotsky's works were banned, Stalin's self censored, Lenin's quotes lifted out of context. Great. Creationists quote evolutionists you know.

Once established as a privileged elite, the bureaucracy wasnt gonna give that up. Originally the Bolsheviks tried to manage without the Tsar's bureaucrats, but they couldnt. The bureaucrats took over.

Well yeah, this is how Russia ended up a dictatorship.

Dont understand this.

He says nothing about getting rid of communists.

No idea what you are saying here. Stalin's words dont mean much, he rarely committed himself, always said the socialist rhetoric. What do you mean they solved the problem? Stalin became the leader of the 'heap' of bureaucrats.