Nort

5y

in my mind, abolishing the state is a very long term goal. i know i’m relatively new to leftism but i’m not naïve enough to think we can rid of it tomorrow.

Slurrin

5y

" The first act by virtue of which the state really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not "abolished". It dies out."

-Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm

Sloth

5y

· edited

Lenin covers this quote on chapter 1 section 4 of The State and Revolution if cck wants to bother reading it.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm#s4

Nort

5y

i do not believe in this idea of the state “withering away”. it’s never been demonstrated to happen in any ML project. the idea of an authoritarian one-party state potentially perpetuating itself forever is horrifying. state ownership over the means of production does nothing to liberate the workers. i would require an insane amount of trust in the vanguard party to be somewhat okay w this.

space0cadet

5y

would recommend to think on why the dissolving of the state is your only criterion for success:
why do you believe people are not already liberated under state socialism? why not take this as a success?
why do most socialist states choose not to immediately dissolve the state?
what can we see throughout history?

Nort

5y

dissolving the state isn’t my only criteria of success. direct worker ownership over the means of production is. my issue with state socialism is that it’s just not socialism in my mind. we’re replacing one oppressive system with another. i’m not willing to sacrifice democracy for the slight suppression of the bourgeoisie. i want to replace them altogether.

how would the material conditions in the average worker’s life be improved upon in this system?

space0cadet

5y

why is direct worker ownership over the means of production your main criterion? what does this mean to you? is a communal means of production not direct worker ownership of the means of production?

space0cadet

5y

how would the material conditions in the average worker’s life be improved upon in this system?

i think i went over this a few pages back; but the de commodification of industry (this includes the commodification of jobs, so, full employment), guaranteed education, guaranteed housing.. there are many benefits, just because it is under a state doesn't mean these benefits go away, and the economic factors of production are still massively overhauled.

space0cadet

5y

sacrifice my democracy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_democracy

Nort

5y

to me, that’s the defining quality of socialism.

communal? what specifically are you asking here. if state-ownership is communal to you than the answer is no. I don’t believe that’s direct worker ownership.

direct ownership over the means of production is important to me because 1. it rewards the worker’s their entire value
2. a co-op/market socialist economy is a relatively smooth and stable transition
3. a co-op model gives the worker more purpose. your contribution to the company will reward you for what it’s worth. no more wages. you own a percentage. worker’s can take pride in knowing they’re building something for themselves. generally speaking, the more productive you are, the more profitable their firm becomes, as do you.
4. i don’t understand the benefit of handing the means of production over to the state. why? how can we rely on the state to have our best-interest? it’s like having your parents pay for everything as a child. isn’t the freedom of being an adult and affording everything you need worth something? that’s liberation to me.

Nort

5y

to me, that’s the defining quality of socialism.

communal? what specifically are you asking here. if state-ownership is communal to you than the answer is no. I don’t believe that’s direct worker ownership.

direct ownership over the means of production is important to me because 1. it rewards the worker’s their entire value
2. a co-op/market socialist economy is a relatively smooth and stable transition
3. a co-op model gives the worker more purpose. your contribution to the company will reward you for what it’s worth. no more wages. you own a percentage. worker’s can take pride in knowing they’re building something for themselves. generally speaking, the more productive you are, the more profitable their firm becomes, as do you.
4. i don’t understand the benefit of handing the means of production over to the state. why? how can we rely on the state to have our best-interest? it’s like having your parents pay for everything as a child. isn’t the freedom of being an adult and affording everything you need worth something? that’s liberation to me.

Nort

5y

but why? why must we handle these affairs through the state? wouldn’t a syndicalist/co-op model work better if the goal is to eventually abolish the state (or have it wither away).

Tkken

5y

ive been thinking about something in the vein of your discussion too lately. it seems inevitable that many people will have to relinquish their choice/autonomy when it comes to labour at least temporarily, if we want to navigate all of these crises that capitalism has caused

for example mobilizing people to build infrastructure to deal with ecological collapse, stuff like that

it's still significantly better to live under that system simply because your labour isn't being exploited/used for commodity production, but the appeal of "direct ownership" seems like a fantasy at that point

Nort

5y

why fantasy? i think democratizing the workplace is way more pragmatic than a socialist revolution led by a vanguard party, completely installing a new economic model and government in place of the old one.

space0cadet

5y

i'm confused, because all of this happened under the ussr and under maos china? the state isn't extracting surplus from workers; there are no wages; and the owners owned the means of production in both factories and in agriculture? there is simply central planning which in turns creates the "ownership" (if you like, really want to argue that) of the factories / agriculture to the state

Nort

5y

?

the ussr had state ownership over the means of production? (i don’t know enough about mao’s china)

americana

5y

Because capitalists will reinstall the oppressive state over decentralized anarchist or syndicalism organizations, since the former is able to effectively organize and direct power and violence through the state, unlike stateless political bodies such as the latter.

There must be a transitionary stage between the era of class and of classlessness, it cannot be done away with altogether. Nothing ever simply goes through the “flip switch,” there must be a process that occurs that completes the criteria set by set

Tkken

5y

fantasy because of what @americana pointed out, and also things that are generally in the vein of "we live in a dense, complex system that requires mass mobilization and central planning to navigate"

space0cadet

5y

· edited

the state played a significant role, but no, workers did own a lot of industry and agriculture.

one of the major debates in the USSR was how much power would be held by the government on behalf of the workers (given the government was ostensibly a workers government) and how much would directly be handed to the workers in the form of workers councils or "soviets". You've probably heard the famous Russian slogan вся власть советам (all power to the soviets) - the Bolsheviks believed in doing that eventually but in reality the soviets were never fully empowered and even in industries directly run by soviets the state still played a significant role.

as for the state itself, Emma Goldman writes about this in detail in her book "My Disillusionment in Russia". Essentially it did start off as a noble spirited attempt to create a worker run state, but inevitably bureaucratization set in and the bureaucracy started to become a political class in their own right. So yes soon enough the state became its own separate political force distinct from that of the workers.

mao learned from this bureaucratization and it became a lot more hands off with less state intervention to his detriment. the formation of capitalists stemming from the increasing inequity between communes eventually lead to deng xiaoping coming in opportunistically to appease that burgeoning "capitalist" class which came from richer communes

whole lot more examples, i would suggest to read more history about mao and lenin and how it worked within the country you are criticizing so you can form an accurate and materialist ideology

Nort

5y

wasn’t it lenin himself who broke up the worker councils and unions? (i forget the names of the organizations).

also, you think bureaucratizion is inevitable in a worker’s state? if so, then how does the state “wither away?” you can justify it’s existence forever with this logic. how do we fulfill the promises of socialism this way?