No, that’s what they told everyone they were going to be. That was the concept that was hijacked by the Bolsheviks.
In reality it was an economy owned by the state, since the state represented the people, and one in which oversight was given primarily to those who towed the party line above all else. Eerily similar to the way fascist societies function, where the private means of production is given by force to those that accept the party line. Hey, haven’t we seen this one already?
This created an environment where the military and government leadership took what they wanted off the top of the production, and left the rest to the proletariat. Who got scraps to fight over and wait in line all day for.
Except you also have to follow our belief system as well or we’ll throw you in a gulag, and we’re going to waste our resources on things our society doesn’t have a use case for while forgetting that stuff called “food” that doesn’t grow super well in most places and should probably be invested in technologically.
Oh well, we can buy that once we get rich from all the oil. Well by “we” obviously I mean the men in power. The rest get the leftovers.
Stop this revisionist bullshit, the ideals don’t always make it over to the government once it’s applied. Communism cannot exist until we live in some kind of a random number generator elected technocracy with a fully automated economy via robotics and ML, anything else is just going to be the same authoritarian bullshit that the USSR was.
“Authoritarian” is meaningless here. The U.S. is authoritarian too.
I really wish you meant Marxism-Leninism by ML there…
Also, why do English speakers insist on using “gulag” instead of their own word “prison”? The U.S. has far worse private prisons than gulags ever were even today.
(Apologies if you’re not American, but it still works as an example, since you appear to support it by contrast.)
If the Soviets were a new aristocracy then why did they get payed the same as a normal worker? Why was there strong worker input in the government and anyone could call for a vote to recall a leader.
What? The Soviets were a workers’ state run for the benefit of the proletariat.
No, that’s what they told everyone they were going to be. That was the concept that was hijacked by the Bolsheviks.
In reality it was an economy owned by the state, since the state represented the people, and one in which oversight was given primarily to those who towed the party line above all else. Eerily similar to the way fascist societies function, where the private means of production is given by force to those that accept the party line. Hey, haven’t we seen this one already?
This created an environment where the military and government leadership took what they wanted off the top of the production, and left the rest to the proletariat. Who got scraps to fight over and wait in line all day for.
Except you also have to follow our belief system as well or we’ll throw you in a gulag, and we’re going to waste our resources on things our society doesn’t have a use case for while forgetting that stuff called “food” that doesn’t grow super well in most places and should probably be invested in technologically.
Oh well, we can buy that once we get rich from all the oil. Well by “we” obviously I mean the men in power. The rest get the leftovers.
Stop this revisionist bullshit, the ideals don’t always make it over to the government once it’s applied. Communism cannot exist until we live in some kind of a random number generator elected technocracy with a fully automated economy via robotics and ML, anything else is just going to be the same authoritarian bullshit that the USSR was.
“Authoritarian” is meaningless here. The U.S. is authoritarian too.
I really wish you meant Marxism-Leninism by ML there…
Also, why do English speakers insist on using “gulag” instead of their own word “prison”? The U.S. has far worse private prisons than gulags ever were even today.
(Apologies if you’re not American, but it still works as an example, since you appear to support it by contrast.)
If the Soviets were a new aristocracy then why did they get payed the same as a normal worker? Why was there strong worker input in the government and anyone could call for a vote to recall a leader.
Sure, and Putin has been fairly elected everytime and hasn’t poisoned his opponents.
Where did I mention Putin? Current Russia sucks compared to the USSR.