Argument that the USSR worked

[thenondualtankie]

The USSR went from a feudal, backward country to a superpower in 20 years. It developed one of the best militaries in the world in 30 years. In 40 years, it managed to get a man to space.

While there were human costs to this, I argue that this is due to human cost that is inherent to rapid development, or inherent to the transition from undeveloped to developed in general. I further argue that this cost is actually much less under socialism than capitalism. For example, the cost of bringing the USA from "undeveloped" to "developed" was the brutalities experienced by the Native Americans and by Black people during the slave trade. The UK stole $45 trillion from India during colonial rule. This is far worse than what the Bolsheviks ever did.

But @thenondualtankie, what about the Great Purge? The Great Purge lead to around 700,000 deaths. Fundamentally, it was a policy that was enacted to prevent counter-revolution, as every new revolutionary government must enact such policies. It's worth noting that it was mainly party members that were targeted. Obviously, it's easy to argue it had excesses.

But @thenondualtankie, what about the Holodomor? Let me be clear. This was a brutal famine with 4-7 million deaths. It happened because of forced collectivization, as well as due to resistance from rich peasants who destroyed their own live stock en masse as a form of protest. Forced collectivization was done for the purposes of rapid industrialization. I think it's easy to argue that it would have been unlikely for the USSR to defeat the Nazis unless they enacted such rapid industrialization methods. Also, let me add that grain exports decreased by 80% once Moscow realized there was a famine in Ukraine.

Even if we entirely blame the communists on these two atrocities, we find that the human cost of development under socialism is far outweighed by the human cost of development under capitalism.

[WeCome1]

Ok, I'll bite. Define "worked"? If by "worked" you mean this,

48 minutes ago, thenondualtankie said:

The USSR went from a feudal, backward country to a superpower in 20 years. It developed one of the best militaries in the world in 30 years. In 40 years, it managed to get a man to space.

then you need to try harder, because becoming a military superpower and having a space program was basically IT in terms of socialists' "great achievements"; and even those two, besides being "grandiose" and "prestigious", did nothing for the quality of life of the remaining 100 million people outside the top 1% of the Party.

The greatest evil the Bolsheviks and their descendants committed was neither the Holodomor nor repressions - it was the destruction of the inteligentsiya (интеллигенция, the highly educated middle/upper-middle class) and the transfer of their power to the uneducated working class. This eventually led to half a century of stagnation and the famous "soviet mentality" of apathy, doom, corruption and dog-eat-dog, the consequences of which are very much felt to this day. There is a brilliant Soviet movie "Собачье сердце" / "Heart of a Dog" based on a novel by the great Mikhail Bulgakov which illustrates this catastrophe perfectly; highly recommended. Here is a link to YouTube, it's copyright-free and English subs are available.

I'm not sure what exactly is the outsider's impression of what the USSR life and mentality was/is like, but I can assure you that nobody, NOBODY inside EVER believed a single word of the Soviet/Socialist ideology - neither the Party members, nor the general population. But everyone abided by the implicit social contract of having to maintain the appearances. What everyone actually dreamt of was a pair of jeans, a pack of gum, a recording of the Rotten Capitalist rock-music - and, even better, and if at all possible - to get the fuck outta there to the other side of the Curtain. Never mind the fact that ALL socially positive changes (to the extent we can even call them such) began after Khrushchev started to emulate Western "best practices".

Anyway, "coulda-woulda-shoulda"; the history is as it is. But calling THAT - "worked"?.. The only reason Mother Russia didn't fall apart socially in the 20th century is because it is huge and resource-rich enough. People honestly have no idea... 

Edited June 15, 2023 by WeCome1

[Recursoinominado]

For the most part, the URSS didn't even had eletricity at the time of the revolution.

Became a superpower in a few decades competing with the US, that is fucking amazing.

[Gidiot]

I believe the best take I’ve heard on this type of discussion is from Osho on his talks communism and zen fire which you can listen to on Osho world for free.
 

He basically agrees and says that biggest sin of Soviet style communism was the dissolution of spirituality, he agrees that getting rid of organized religion was a great thing, but not having any inner awareness and regard of the soul/god/universal energy was a big mistake and he criticizes gorbachev for cozying back up to the west. 
 

given that the talks were happening in the 80s when the Soviet Union was still in full swing, it’s a good piece of recorded history.

Osho himself wasn’t a communist but believed in the concept and even said as much as it’s the natural progression of humanity to this type of system. 
 

it’s also pretty ironic from the talks that Marx often thought that the USA would be the first communist country in the world and one could argue that the U.S. has  been its greatest enemy

Edited June 16, 2023 by Gidiot

[Schizophonia]

18 hours ago, Recursoinominado said:

For the most part, the URSS didn't even had eletricity at the time of the revolution.

Became a superpower in a few decades competing with the US, that is fucking amazing.

It was not so much a superpower as that, the GDP of the USSR was quite low for such a large country, rich in resources and with so many inhabitants.
Its GDP in the 1990s was comparable to a "small" Western European state like France or the United Kingdom, or even an American state like Texas or California.
Many of the so-called USSR advances were pure propaganda.

[thenondualtankie]

2 hours ago, Schizophonia said:

Its GDP in the 1990s was comparable to a "small" Western European state like France or the United Kingdom, or even an American state like Texas or California.

This is just false.

• 1989 GDP of America: $4,862 billion
• 1989 GDP of USSR: $2,500 billion
• 1989 GDP of UK: $927 billion

Source: I just googled it.

Even Wikipedia says that "the USSR was the first major non-Western country to close the developmental gap that had existed with the West since the 16th century".

Edited June 16, 2023 by thenondualtankie

[Schizophonia]

53 minutes ago, thenondualtankie said:

This is just false.

• 1989 GDP of America: $4,862 billion
• 1989 GDP of USSR: $2,500 billion
• 1989 GDP of UK: $927 billion

Source: I just googled it.

Even Wikipedia says that "the USSR was the first major non-Western country to close the developmental gap that had existed with the West since the 16th century".

You are right, I exaggerated.

[thenondualtankie]

Quote

then you need to try harder, because becoming a military superpower and having a space program was basically IT in terms of socialists' "great achievements"; and even those two, besides being "grandiose" and "prestigious", did nothing for the quality of life of the remaining 100 million people outside the top 1% of the Party.

This is false. The USSR eliminated homelessness and joblessness. Life expectancy skyrocketed under the Soviet Union:

[WeCome1]

28 minutes ago, thenondualtankie said:

Life expectancy skyrocketed under the Soviet Union

You don't say?.. 

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/life-expectancy-globally-since-1770.svg

[Recursoinominado]

10 minutes ago, WeCome1 said:

You don't say?.. 

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/life-expectancy-globally-since-1770.svg

Well, this proves that the URSS did work then.

If it was the disaster that the US propaganda says it was, we shouldn't see that kind of jump in life expectancy eve if it was a global trend. 

[Hatfort]

Kind of did, yes, the same way as China. Both were massive countries with huge undeveloped areas in extreme poverty, meaning people dying of hunger and no real economy at work. Both got a central government developing all the basic services as we know them, like infrastructures, transport, healthcare, army, police, etc...

It has been argued that part of what capitalism does is to take private control of what before was in the hands of the state and charge at least the same, plus the benefits for the corporations and its bosses and shareholders, which is a bad deal for the service takers. There should be a healthy improvement of the orange state, but there are also very problematic ones, I think some hardcore capitalism defenders fail to see that.

Not all countries have followed the same line, but it's kind of going from blue to orange. You cannot skip one, look at undeveloped countries in Africa. Maybe what they need is a bit more of state organization and control before getting what oranges call freedom, which in reality leaves more people in poverty and zero freedom about their lives.

And it's not exclusive to undeveloped countries, it's happening in developed ones too, there should enter the green.