another +1 for obisidian. used it for years with no complaints

happy anniversary of the october revolution!

ive been manifesting gov collapse since summer 2024

the bolsheviks became a faction of RSDLP in 1903 and only formally split in 1912-1914. The split mainly occurred because of opportunism / petite bourgeois tendencies in the ranks of the mensheviks. if they stayed as one party the opportunism would surely have doomed the revolution.

I wrote a comment on that recently

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9435144/7150002

I wouldn’t be surprised tbh. I don’t revere his economic analysis or anything. It’s just hard to find anyone at all working on economic planning theory.

yeah I think the main argument of the book is to dispel the myth that economic planning doesn’t work, by giving the example of economic planning all around us all the time even in a capitalist economy. socialist planning would of course be vastly different because it would not focus on profit maximisation.

it’s the smart thing to do to ask questions. you might also be interested in The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government by Lenin if you want to learn more about socialist governance immediately after a revolution. In general I’m an advocate for learning about the history of the ussr.

It is important to keep in mind that there is no one way to do socialism / planned economy. Even in the soviet union, the way the economy was planned was vastly different throughout it’s lifetime. So take everything you read with a grain of salt, any theoretically designed planned economy will not survive colliding with reality. That doesn’t mean that a planned economy cannot exist, it’s just that the implementation of it will depend on the exact time and place. And we haven’t seen a large scale centrally planned economy since the USSR, so there is very little practical experience to base any theory on.

Paul Cockshott tries to describe an such an ideal system in Towards a New Socialism (fyi don’t read his non economy opinions, he’s a transphobe of the UK variety). It’s an interesting thought experiment, although theory heavy. I also second what others commenters recommended.

what are you looking for exactly?

Hearing about the soviet leadership club things that students were forced to be in was intriguing.

do you mean the komsomols? that’s just the youth wing of the communist party. i wouldn’t say you were forced to participate in it, but it was strongly encouraged (since it gives you a pathway to being a CPSU member, and also looks good on your “CV”). the only reason not to join is if you are not a communist, which was very questionable for obvious reasons (up until late 1980s)

I know as a child I would’ve HATED being forced to do club-like activities that soviet children had to (maybe it was more voluntary than the film made it seem, I am unsure)

imagine you have no internet, you have read every book in the house, and you are bored out of your mind. of course a lot of kids chose to go to the clubs, it’s where you socialise and see your friends etc etc.

and yeah, i also didn’t like the film because it felt to me very superficial. no one really goes into depth on any single topic. at the same time, it is kind of true to life in that a lot of russians who are the age of the characters have completely contradictory stances and ideas about the soviet union / russia. i attribute it to a sort of extreme individualism (caused by the stress of the 90s?), that makes them prioritise self-reliance / libertarianism / lone-wolf mentality

this is a general assembly resolution, which means that it is non-binding. the only binding resolutions are passed in the security council, where US has a veto (this is where the Israel-Palestine related resolutions have been failing to pass for the past two years if you recall). this exact general assembly resolution has passed for 33 times now.

She then told us we had to watch the documentary called My Perestrioka for our discussion next week.

honestly, out of western documentaries about the end of the soviet union i like traumazone better. my perestroika is very very much skews towards the “90s were bad, but at least we had #freedom” view that i mentioned before. i think theres only one (anarchist?) character who criticizes capitalism. i wonder what your perception of the film is (as someone from outside the post soviet space) and how the discussion in your class will go.

Yeah I think your position is more clear to me. I don’t particularly think the comparison to China is useful since China actually had a communist party in government. I am just really specific about the party aspect of a socialist state and I don’t think it can be brushed off so easily. Even if lukashenka is supported by the CPB, he is not part of their structure and discipline.

A vanguard party is not what makes a country socialist but the entire workers being able to participate in their development. Just having a vanguard is not DOTP. Just ask yourself how can the teachers, the workers unions, students, the scientist be able to influence their material conditions? Are all these masses of people within the Vanguard party?

A bit provocative question to this may be, can a liberal democratic system be socialist? Because most people (even working class) technically would consider that they influence their conditions by voting. Or participating in local government etc.

i have taken the time this morning to read the article. it doesn’t mention class relations even once. it seems to define socialism as “when government does stuff.” i don’t agree with this assessment. while government control over the economy is important for socialist development, it doesn’t automatically make an economy socialist.

for instance if you look at public sector size by % of employment, you will see that there are quite a few countries with higher percentages than Belarus, which are not socialist. And a lot of countries have similar public sector size, and are not socialist.

then, the article (in the paragraph that you quoted) talks about how there are no ruling parties because it maintains stability. to me it is completely revisionist to claim that you can have a dotp without a proletarian party. how else do you organise the working class? just on vibes?

is it your position that a working class party is unnecessary for dotp? because if so, then that is a major deviation from marxism leninism, and to me would need to be supported by a lot of evidence.

How is this an argument against anything I’ve said? Belarus is not a socialist state

I don’t disagree with you on these points. I just think it’s a stretch to claim that a country is socialist / ML without a socialist party in power.

Is your argument that belaya rus is secretly an ML party? I don’t really understand where you’re going with this

i am glad i could help!

one comment about a textbook doesn’t prove that belarus is ruled by a communist party