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Engels, Lenin and Bukharin all talked about state capitalism. Lenin decried it as “not real socialism”

the erroneous bourgeois reformist assertion that monopoly capitalism or state-monopoly capitalism is no longer capitalism, but can now be called “state socialism” and so on, is very common

Lenin, The State and Revolution

That was until after the October revolution, at which point he seemed to think it was based and cool actually, and that it was definitely what the USSR was doing.

Reality tells us that state capitalism would be a step forward. If in a small space of time we could achieve state capitalism in Russia, that would be a victory.

Lenin, Minutes of the Sessions of the All-Russia C.E.C., 4th Convocation. Verbatim Report

This is around the time he stripped the soviets of their power and disenfranchised the workers in favour of a central state that alienated them from control over the means of production.

You know, like a capitalist.

And now tankies are distancing themselves because they can’t square the circle that their beloved revolutionary heroes were actually capitalists, and they pretend the concept doesn’t exist.

So tell me, was Lenin wrong about this? If so, was he wrong twice? Why the flip-flopping on whether it was good or bad? Nobody seemed to dispute at the time that it existed, and an analysis of what happened shows that the USSR liberalised quickly. The bolsheviks were in effect liberal reformists.

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holo@lemmy.wtf ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
That’s a hell of a gpt response and all, but no, state capitalism isn’t a thing and left wing thought has evolved in the last nearly 200 years. Except in the US.

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- Jimbo@yiffit.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  How in the hell is that comment anything GPT-like other than the fact that it’s slightly long???
  
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  - Excrubulent@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    It’s the AI-related way of saying “I’m not reading all of that.”
    
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- Excrubulent@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Oh wow, you called me a bot and an American. Checkmate. No need to respond to anything I actually said, you obviously know how to get right to the heart of dismissing me so you can repeat your opinion without any actual argument.
  
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volodya_ilich@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
You’re taking things out of context. In the first example, Lenin specifically says “bourgeois reformist assertion”, he’s talking of monopoly in the context of a bourgeois state, not in a worker’s state. He understands that for as long as a strong bourgeoisie exists, not even a state monopoly can be considered socialist, because the state is in fact controlled by the bourgeoisie.

That was until after the October revolution

Wow, so you’re telling me that, when confronted with real situations and material conditions, the opinions of someone can change? Baffling.

This is around the time he stripped the soviets of their power and disenfranchised the workers in favour of a central state that alienated them from control over the means of production

Good luck fighting a civil war in which you get invaded by 14 other world powers for the sin of being a communist, while your industry is disorganized and not centralized towards the war-effort.

And now tankies are distancing themselves

Wait, so tankies are actually against centralized economic planning? Strawman

an analysis of what happened shows that the USSR liberalised quickly

“liberalism is when centrally-planned economy”. Seriously, do you know what “liberalism” means?

You know your REAL problem with the Bolsheviks? That they won. The problem YOU have with Bolsheviks, is that they had to face real historical and material problems, and big ones, and therefore had to make tough decisions. You claim to know better than the people of the time that spent their literal lives in jail or exile prior to the revolution, studying and theorizing and discussing about communism in real life, risking their lives in organizing the workers and in fighting against Tsarism, and you know why? Because the ONLY socialists that supposed “leftists” like you will support, are the leftists who failed. You’ll support Salvador Allende because he didn’t face the real conditions of his time and didn’t apply the necessary policy to fight the advance of fascism. You’ll support the anarchists in the Spanish Second Republic because they failed to fight against fascism and, because of rejecting taking power, they didn’t have to apply harsh policy to fight reactionarism. But you won’t ever support actual socialists who DID understand the dangers of fascism and of capitalist counter-revolution, and actually did something about it, because as soon as they apply their ideology to real-world conditions, they’re not perfect anymore. Because they ACTUALLY were a threat to the system, and so the propaganda will paint them as intolerable autocrats, and you’ll swallow that propaganda whole and share the same views of socialists than fucking Zbigniew Brzezinsky.

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- Excrubulent@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  At no point in any of this are you adressing the argument being made, which is that state capitalism absolutely is a thing, which means Lenin became a capitalist.
  
  You can make excuses for it all day, the only difference between them and the liberal revolutions is ideological at that point, which makes you an idealist.
  
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  - volodya_ilich@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    “I will overfixate on a debate on the academic definition of capitalism in order to be able to call X communist leader a capitalist instead of looking at the actual policy implemented” isn’t an honest framework to deal with this. In a worker state without bourgeoisie, such as the soviet union, there is no such thing as surplus value because there’s no capitalist class appropriating the wealth for itself. Instead, salaries are decided centrally, goods are provided at centrally-planned prices and NOT through the market principles. This is enough for me to claim that the USSR was socialist and not capitalist, and I refuse to engage in semantics rather than talking about policy: the USSR was materially and significantly different from any classical capitalist state, and much better by ANY actual metric than any capitalist state, and you’re just trying to bend definitions to call your Marxist-Leninist of choice a capitalist
    
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    Excrubulent@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Bourgeoisie aren’t some genetically distinct group. The party supplanted the bourgeoisie and became them.
    
    I will never understand how tankies can see a small group gain control of the means of production and understand it as anything but a new bourgeoisie.
    
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