[Malatant of Shadow]

I don't think you understand what "objective" means. Out of the hundreds of friends and family with whom I have discussed the Soviet period at length, every single one has stated that living standards in the Soviet period for the average worker were far higher than they are today.

So what? Do you see anyone arguing that things have improved in today's Russia? Do you not understand that saying things have gotten worse is NOT a defense of the Soviet system? That this is in fact completely irrelevant?

No matter how you parse things, the bottom line is that the Soviet Union was overthrown from within by its own people for failure to deliver on its socialist promise. That should not surprise us, as it was not really a socialist economy.

[Andropov]

Pathetic- this is exactly the opposite of what happened. In 1991, 80% of the population voted for the maintenance of Soviet Socialism. The vast majority of Soviet citizens were deeply patriotic to the regime. These facts are obvious to anyone who has studied the Soviet period at length- your ignorance of them testifies to a total lack of historical knowledge. Where did you learn your Soviet history- Glenn Beck? Pathetic.

The point is that living standards were not only better than they are in Russia today, but in many ways better than they are for the average American worker. The American government does not provide full-paid vacations for its people, for example.

[Vera Politica]

The point is that living standards were not only better than they are in Russia today, but in many ways better than they are for the average American worker. The American government does not provide full-paid vacations for its people, for example.

I agree that the living standards under the Soviet Union (in Russia) were far better than they are in Russia today -- this is, I take it, an objective fact and I am as surprised as you are when people make evident mistakes on this point. Perhaps they are using different metrics to cash-out goodness with respect to living standards, but I suspect that they use these metrics to suit their argument and vacillate it in different contexts.

That being said, I am not sure that the living standards of the Soviet worker was better than the American worker (today). The living standards of American workers are so lavish that it has permitted erroneous 'middle-class' nomenclature which has pervaded American politics (and has been otherwise effective at discouraging class consciousness). I think the Soviet worker was far better of than America's poor, granted, but to make a sweeping comparative statements about each country's respective working class may be misleading and often is.

[Andropov]

I am specifically talking about "working class" Americans, according to the Marxian definition of "working class", which as of 2012 make up a minority of America's population. Globalization has meant national class divisions circa the 19th and early 20th century have spread throughout the globe, with the First World as a bourgeois enclave and the Third World as a proletarian one.

[stsoc]

Stardard of living did rise in Stalinism, but that is irrelevant, because not all people were better off, but milions died of hunger all across the USSR, or died in forced labor camps. General standard of living did rise even more in Nazism, but, of course, not for all people. There's no really point in talking about standard increacing in Nazi Germany, I can't see how could it in any way justify the regime. Likewise with Bolshevism.

[Vera Politica]

I am specifically talking about "working class" Americans, according to the Marxian definition of "working class", which as of 2012 make up a minority of America's population.

I disagree. I would have no idea how to re-classify American society so that only a minority of them turned out to be working class. If this were the case, the classification would be prima facie wrong. The Marxian definition of working class would, in fact, be far more inclusionary in the contemporary context that it was in the 19th century. Modern development has effectively proletarianized most working functions.

[Andropov]

The vast majority of the raw materials and industrial goods inputted into the U.S. economy come from outside, either from China or elsewhere not from the First World, produced and taken from factories and raw material operations, respectively, owned by First World corporations. The exceptions only prove my point- I don't think you will find the living conditions of the average West Virginian coal miner to be at all "lavish".

I'm out of my depth in this discussion, as my knowledge of economics and Marxian economics especially is very weak.

[Malatant of Shadow]

In 1991, 80% of the population voted for the maintenance of Soviet Socialism.

No such vote was ever held. If you claim to the contrary, present a link to the evidence.

On the other hand, Boris Yeltsin in June 1991 won an election to the presidency of the Russian Republic, while Gorbachev's preferred candidate, who would have opposed Russian secession, won only 16% of the vote. That certainly doesn't look like a vote of confidence for the Soviet regime -- which I absolutely refuse to call "socialist," because it bloody well wasn't.

The point is that living standards were not only better than they are in Russia today, but in many ways better than they are for the average American worker. The American government does not provide full-paid vacations for its people, for example.

No, but a lot of employers do. All benefits provided either by the state or by a private employer have a certain value, and so does the buying power of the wages paid. Overall, taking all of this together, the average American worker in 1991, or even today when things have gotten worse (capitalism being what it is), had a far higher standard of living than the average Soviet worker. We go on and on here about how badly our health-care system sucks (and it does), but in 1991 most full-time employees had health insurance paid for by their employers, so for them it didn't suck much at all. (It sucks because there are a lot of people who aren't covered; for those who are, it's fine.) Annual paid vacation was also the norm then, not provided by the government or mandated by law but simply customary for employers and a way to attract workers. So all or nearly all of the benefits guaranteed or mandated by the Soviet state were in fact held by most American workers even though our government didn't mandate them, and meanwhile the amount of PAY American workers received so far exceeded what Russian workers were paid that overall, they enjoyed a much higher standard of living.

And the United States is a capitalist country! We have no pretense here of organizing our economy for the benefit of the workers -- we DON'T -- we organize it for the benefit of the investor class! Granted Russia was, overall, a poorer country, but given that it claimed to be socialist there is absolutely no excuse for Russian workers to have lived, not just worse, but so much worse than their capitalist-exploited counterparts in the West.

And that's why I say that the Soviet claim to be socialist was a lie.

[Andropov]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Uni ... ndum,_1991

Your previous Yeltsin left office in shame, as a figure hated by the Russian population as much as Hitler.

On 31 December 1999, Yeltsin made a surprise announcement of his resignation, leaving the presidency in the hands of his chosen successor, then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Yeltsin left office widely unpopular with the Russian population.[3] By some estimates, his approval ratings when leaving office were as low as 2%.[4]

Perks of Soviet workers that are nonexistant in the West:

-Free, full-paid vacations to high-quality resorts. If you got cancer or another major disease, you would be sent to special "healing resorts".

-Cheap, natural, high-quality food- in the West, to be able to eat "organic" food on a regular basis, one must have an upper-middle class income. Not so in the USSR.

I know many people who would wait in queues to buy the excellent produce, specifically food items such as milk, sausage, kefir, cheese, etc, produced in the USSR today. Like in the West, the food in Russia today is mostly chemical processed bullshit.

-Free high-quality education: the USA had a good education system for many decades, but it has now turned to shit, and only the wealthy have access to private schools which employ intelligent and well-educated teachers.

-Free high-quality public recreation: public pools, the world-famous Palaces of Culture (massive buildings housing everything from musical instruments to theaters), and much more.

John Dewey's impressions of the Palace of Culture he visited on his trip to the USSR;

The other impression I would record came from a non-official visit to a House of Popular Culture. Here was a fine new building in the factory quarter, surrounded by recreation grounds, provided with one large theater, four smaller assembly halls, fifty rooms for club meetings, recreation and games, headquarters for trade unions, costing two million dollars, frequented daily—or rather, nightly—by five thousand persons as a daily average. Built and controlled, perhaps, by the government? No, but by the voluntary efforts of the trade unions, who tax themselves two percent of their wages to afford their collective life these facilities. The House is staffed and managed by its own elected officers. The contrast with the comparative inactivity of our own working men and with the quasi-philanthropic quality of similar enterprises in my own country left a painful impression. It is true that this House—there is already another similar one in Leningrad—has no intrinsic and necessary connection with communistic theory and practice. The like of it might exist in any large modern industrial center. But there is the fact that the like of it does not exist in the other and more highly developed industrial centers. There it is in Leningrad, as it is not there in Chicago or New York...

-Free, high-quality healthcare. Yes, most Americans have insurance, but a huge amount do not.

-A vibrant culture- the USSR was referred to as the most book-hungry nation on the planet. Aside from news and cartoons for children, television programs were usually educational in nature, as well as being entertaining even to this day. The world-famous Soviet cinema and animation was philosophical and multi-layered (the films of Tarkovsky, for example)- compare this to the mind-numbing horseshit of modern American television.

[Malatant of Shadow]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_referendum,_1991

Thanks, but the way that referendum was worded makes it meaningless. It posed what we call in America a "motherhood question" -- "Do you believe in motherhood?" Few are going to answer no.

Perks of Soviet workers that are nonexistant in the West:

-Free, full-paid vacations to high-quality resorts.

Pay was high enough for Americans in 1991 that they didn't need this. They could spend their own money on their vacations and still have a nicer one than was available to Soviet workers. For example, most could afford a trip to a Mexican beach resort like Acapulco. Did Soviet workers get an expense-paid trip to the French Riviera?

If you got cancer or another major disease, you would be sent to special "healing resorts".

If you got cancer or another major disease, you would get good quality medical care at an advanced hospital (one generally better than was available in Russia, although that's not entirely relevant here), paid for by your employer-paid health insurance policy.

Cheap, natural, high-quality food- in the West, to be able to eat "organic" food on a regular basis, one must have an upper-middle class income. Not so in the USSR.

Not so here, either. Organic food does cost more, but not so much for that a person making, say, $50k a year (which is not "upper middle class") can't afford it. In fact, the reason most people don't do this is not because they can't, but because they choose not to -- cheaper food is available, and they don't concern themselves with the dangers of pesticide residues, etc. enough to pay the extra money. They'd rather spend it on something else.

I know many people who would wait in queues to buy the excellent produce, specifically food items such as milk, sausage, kefir, cheese, etc, produced in the USSR today.

Yeah, and they HAD to stand in those lines. Here, they don't have to most of the time.

Free high-quality education: the USA had a good education system for many decades, but it has now turned to shit, and only the wealthy have access to private schools which employ intelligent and well-educated teachers.

An overstatement, but in any case we're talking about 1991.

Free high-quality public recreation: public pools, the world-famous Palaces of Culture (massive buildings housing everything from musical instruments to theaters), and much more.

Fine, but if an American worker chose to pay the price for use of public pools, or the cultural opportunities available here (which are hardly meager even if they're not free), he would still have more money left over afterwards than his Soviet counterpart would after enjoying those opportunities for which he would be charged nothing.

Free, high-quality healthcare. Yes, most Americans have insurance, but a huge amount do not.

We were comparing Soviet workers to American workers in 1991. Workers = people who have full-time jobs. The American worker had it better in terms of health care.

Yes, our health-care system sucks. That doesn't change what I'm saying here.

Look, you're still defending the indefensible, and I'm NOT defending the American capitalist system, which I loathe. But it's extremely telling that that loathsome system paid its workers better, and provided them a better lifestyle, than the Soviet system did, when the Soviet Union claimed to be socialist!

American workers were underpaid and exploited -- that's a feature of capitalism. A large and increasing share of the value their labor produces went into the bank accounts of capitalists, producing increasing disparities of wealth. And yet American workers, despite this, and despite all the government bennies that you described, STILL lived better than their Soviet counterparts. Why?

Part of the reason is simply that the U.S. was a richer country, but that doesn't account for all of it. A lot of it is because the value of what was produced by Soviet workers was ALSO being siphoned away and they were not receiving it. Where did it go? Into the creation of a vast military machine to protect the Communist Party from perceived external threats, and into the creation of a vast internal-security machine to protect it from perceived internal threats, and into supporting a privileged lifestyle for Communist Party members themselves.

And that was all because the Soviet Union was not a democracy. Political power was overly concentrated, and that concentration was used to concentrate economic power, too, the more easily because it had a state-owned economy.

That isn't socialism. It's the antithesis of socialism.

[Rei Murasame]

Far be it from me to ever defend the USSR, but isn't is a bit like apples and oranges to compare the United States to any country in the Eastern Hemisphere like that, when the United States had a 100 year head-start?

[Malatant of Shadow]

Far be it from me to ever defend the USSR, but isn't is a bit like apples and oranges to compare the United States to any country in the Eastern Hemisphere like that, when the United States had a 100 year head-start?

Yes and no. And anyway, I wasn't the one to start that comparison, Andropov was. In asking whether the Soviet Union was socialist, comparisons with the U.S. aren't fully appropriate since nobody claims we are socialist here. (Or at least, no sane and rational people.)

As to the 100-year head start, at any level of technology there is a plateau that an economy can achieve, so that those with a head start aren't going to be able to preserve that advantage indefinitely. The Soviet Union was a fully industrialized economy by 1991. Most of that had been achieved in the single decade of the 1930s. The U.S.A was a richer country, and that has to be taken into account; still, if the Soviet Union had been socialist as it claimed, even allowing for that, working people there should have had it better than here.

[Rei Murasame]

Yes and no. And anyway, I wasn't the one to start that comparison, Andropov was. In asking whether the Soviet Union was socialist, comparisons with the U.S. aren't fully appropriate since nobody claims we are socialist here. (Or at least, no sane and rational people.)

Pretty much, I don't think anyone said that.

As to the 100-year head start, at any level of technology there is a plateau that an economy can achieve, so that those with a head start aren't going to be able to preserve that advantage indefinitely. The Soviet Union was a fully industrialized economy by 1991. Most of that had been achieved in the single decade of the 1930s. The U.S.A was a richer country, and that has to be taken into account; still, if the Soviet Union had been socialist as it claimed, even allowing for that, working people there should have had it better than here.

But even though they were a poorer country? Could it be that Soviet socialism simply failed to deliver?

[Conscript]

Thanks, but the way that referendum was worded makes it meaningless. It posed what we call in America a "motherhood question" -- "Do you believe in motherhood?" Few are going to answer no.

I don't see anything wrong with the wording, and it was apparently not vague enough since georgia and the baltics boycotted it.

[Malatant of Shadow]

But even though they were a poorer country? Could it be that Soviet socialism simply failed to deliver?

That's exactly what I'm saying, and I'm also positing a reason why: because the government was not accountable to the people, and so the state-owned economy delivered not for the people as a whole, but only for the Communist Party members. Socialism requires democracy. The Soviet Union was not a democracy, and for that reason it also was not socialist. State-owned economy, yes; socialism, no. That potentially socialist means (which is itself not the best one possible) was diverted to non-socialist, even anti-socialist ends.

[Vera Politica]

The vast majority of the raw materials and industrial goods inputted into the U.S. economy come from outside, either from China or elsewhere not from the First World, produced and taken from factories and raw material operations, respectively, owned by First World corporations. The exceptions only prove my point- I don't think you will find the living conditions of the average West Virginian coal miner to be at all "lavish".

I'm out of my depth in this discussion, as my knowledge of economics and Marxian economics especially is very weak.

Where most resources come from is irrelevant when determining class.

Also, the living conditions of a coal miner in West Virginia is relatively good as the starting salary for a miner in that region is about 60 000$ a year -- more than the starting salary of most lawyers or professors, for example (these latter professions some generally think are typical middle class professions. I argue that they are no such thing; they are, today, working class positions -- for the most part, despite the fact that they were historically a part of the bourgeois class but this is only because they typically owned capital). The average wage of a US coal miner is 81 200$ per year. In remote regions in North America, say Northern Quebec, a miner could make anywhere between 120 000$- 160 000$ a year.

Class, in Marxian theory, is determined only by the relations of production, not the type of production one is engaged in. The working class are those without private property that, subsequently, must sell their labor on the market for subsistence. The vast majority of the Western world fits that description. Notice that it has nothing at all to do with the market value of their labor nor with their standard of living. There are many working class people in America with personal property but only a small minority of Americans hold a significant amount of private property, i.e. enough to subsist on. If a worker increased the value of their labor by investing in education, for example, this does not make him or her a part of a separate class. Similarly, if the value of mining labor is inflated, relative to the rest of the world, then this does not make a miner a part of a different class. 'Middle Class' was a useful, cold-war rhetorical device that inhibited class consciousness.

'Middle class', in Marxian theory, refers to the bourgeois class or the ruling class (it is the historically correct use of the term). The contemporary notion of middle class, I argue, makes no sense at all. I think that, among the working class, there are various important sociological distinctions that reflect cultural (but not economic) distinctions. Certain parts of the working class will approximate bourgeois culture, other parts will approximate blue-collar culture, others approximate an emerging white-collar working culture. But this is all irrelevant. Not only could a blue-collar work make more than a white-collar worker or even an educated professional, but each relates to the mode of production in precisely the same way.

[Andrea_Chenier]

'Middle class', in Marxian theory, refers to the bourgeois class or the ruling class (it is the historically correct use of the term).

I understand what your trying to say with your whole post but if we use "middle class" as term to describe the ruling class, i.e. the owners of the means of production, who would you rank even higher ("middle class" implies that there is a higher class)? How can we apply the marxist terms from the darkest idustrialization chapters to the present day, without creating confusion and while still staying true to Marx' theory?

[Vera Politica]

I understand what your trying to say with your whole post but if we use "middle class" as term to describe the ruling class, i.e. the owners of the means of production, who would you rank even higher ("middle class" implies that there is a higher class)? How can we apply the marxist terms from the darkest idustrialization chapters to the present day, without creating confusion and while still staying true to Marx' theory?

We can quite easily abandon the term "middle class" and use, instead, "capitalist class" or "bourgeoisie" or simply "ruling class" or whatever. Nothing is lost. 'Middle Class', strictly speaking, is not a Marxist term and was used before Marx. In any case, my point is simply that it is used, today, as both an inclusive rhetorical tool and an exclusive one (simultaneously) so that working class people exclude themselves from the working class.

That being said, abandoning middle class entirely is not correct. There is a modern middle class: small business owners who employ others but still work alongside their employees (out of necessity). Marx singled-out this particular class (as the pettit-bourgeoisie) but noted that they were being squeezed into the working class.

[Malatant of Shadow]

Words evolve.

In Marx's time in England, "middle class" referred to the rich without hereditary noble titles. "Upper class" referred to the titled nobility.

In today's America, there are no titled nobility, and "upper class" has come to refer to the rich, while "middle class" refers to those who are relatively well off but not enough so to call them rich.

[Vera Politica]

Words evolve.

In Marx's time in England, "middle class" referred to the rich without hereditary noble titles. "Upper class" referred to the titled nobility.

In today's America, there are no titled nobility, and "upper class" has come to refer to the rich, while "middle class" refers to those who are relatively well off but not enough so to call them rich.

This would be incorrect since this would mean that middle class would be strictly defined in terms of income. There would be two substantial objections to this: (1) middle is not defined in terms of income, as it is used in contemporary sociology and even in American political discourse. Income is only one factor in determining 'middle class' according to modern sociologists; (2) income has nothing to do with class. Class is an economic notion that picks out relationships within a certain mode of production. These relationships are not defined in terms of income but in terms of the where an individual stands in the marketplace. If the individual goes into the marketplace to sell their labor, there is a qualitative difference between that person and another who enters the market to purchase that labor.

That being said, I do not think we need to use 'middle class' in the way it was used in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. What I am saying is that the way it is used today is incorrect and is only a rhetorical device. It does not pick out anything substantial. The unacceptable vagueness of 'middle class' is enough to discard it entirely or to attempt to sharpen it by tying it to cultural and sociological phenomenon rather than to economic phenomenon. I think this would be possible. 'Middle Class' was a clear term in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries precisely because it was synonymous with 'bourgeoisie'. There has been an attempt to re-appropriate the term and try to apply it to a subset of the working class in order to inhibit class consciousness. It was one of the most effective cold war techniques. Middle class, today, should be synonymous with 'pettit-bourgeoisie'. Even Marx thought this since he knew that the bourgeoisie was the effective ruling class in society in the 19th century. Other than small business owners and small landowners there is no class between the bourgeoisie and the working class. There are other classes, however: lumpen proletariat, peasants, landed peasants etc.