this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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No. If you knew how ridiculous that statement was, I don't think you would have said it. The USSR was never a communist society. Do we change between direct democracy and a democratic republic depending on which party is elected in the US?
Never? Even when they tried to get rid of the ruble, implementing their strides system instead, that tried to measure work based on the average exertion it required?
This occured before Stalin, under Lenin. It lasted about 20 years.
A communist society is a stateless, classless, moneyless society where the means of production are owned by the workers, the basic needs of all people are met, and all people give what they are able. Considering the fact that the means of production were owned by the state, the state maintained currency, and that they were a state, I don't think they met the criteria. This can be said even if an informed leftist has a different definition of communism. Lenin was experimenting with methods of implementing a socialist economy. As the first country to have a proletarian democracy with a communist party, they didn't exactly have a lot of historical examples to try and model.
Fair. Thank you for the reasonable response. My point is that strides were being made, before Stalin was in charge. Then serious attempts largely stopped. Would you describe that as inaccurate?
I acknowledge that this isn't a question towards me, but I'm gonna take a stab regardless, so compared with Lenin, Stalin:
He was decent. He isn't a god, he didn't do perfect, but when you count how shitty the hand he was dealt was and how much better things were going by the time he walked from the table, he did pretty damn decent.
Russia has more arable land than any other polity on our planet. I find it awfully suspicious that famines were somewhat frequent, and so conveniently not his doing. China had a long history of famines, but they're often weather-related. A famine requires a good excuse, you can't just be like "oops". Otherwise you should be fixing it before the humans all starve, which takes weeks at a minimum, usually much longer since there are some things to eat.
Thank you for your reasonable response btw. I'm enjoying this conversation with the people that are willing to actually have a serious one. I know I probably look like a troll, but I'm really not trolling.
you are in over your head if you think replacing a currency with a different currency pegged to the value of labor is communist. Socialist, maybe, communist, not even a little.
This document is very dated and fairly simplistic but it's a good 101 basis for what we believe. Just so we're speaking eye to eye, go read this (it's very short and light reading, don't worry), then come back, and use this definition of communism. It's the definition that communists actually use and it'll do you well to know your enemy before you pick fights with them.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm jk the Manifesto is more relevant here, a little less short and substantially more dense but if you're gonna argue with Marxists about Marxism you should probably read the 23 page pamphlet that Marx is actually famous for https://www.marxists.org/admin/books/manifesto/Manifesto.pdf
I would argue that the attempt to abolish money and replace it with a measure of value that was neither arbitrary nor pegged to a commodity like gold was very much a move to liberate the proletariat.
I picked it because the abolition of money has a great deal of symbolic value, that's all. We could use them getting rid of factory owners and seizing industry instead if you wish.
That's still money. It's just pegged to something besides a bar of gold.
Yeah, true. A step in that direction perhaps, but not the actual result yet. Alright, fair point.