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#15181527
Ivan_R wrote:I doubt such a phenomenon as "true marxism" is possible somewhere outside of Marx's works.


I agree with you. "True Marxism" is an utopia. The hope to have abundance is unrealisable. It is firstly unrealisable in capitalism because there happens to be always new wants and secondly in a planning system because of its inefficiency.

I recently read "The Revolution Betrayed" of Leon Trotsky (1936 in exile), a radical criticism of Stalinism. I found it very interesting and precursory of many ideas present in Volensky's "Nomenklatura". But he did not leave the hope of abundance, where I cannot follow him. He also thought that a dictatorship could mutate in a full democracy by itself when it has realised its job (preparation of socialism). That is also utopian.
#15181532
Monti wrote:
I agree with you. "True Marxism" is an utopia. The hope to have abundance is unrealisable. It is firstly unrealisable in capitalism because there happens to be always new wants and secondly in a planning system because of its inefficiency.



Oh, c'mon -- this is simply a matter of *phrasing*.

Obviously the world of technology and consumer culture isn't what it was 100 years ago, but to say that 'abundance is unrealizable' is to ignore that capitalism inherently goes to *overproduction*, for any given *particular* good or service. Capitalism encourages the investment of sufficient capital to anticipate profit-yielding *consumer demand* -- production is then ramped-up according to a rough *estimate* of how many units *may* be necessary to produce, for projected sales.

If individual *households* can plan internally over what their non-valuated resources are for, then certainly *society* can do the same, over the whole, as corporations and governments do internally, currently, as well.


Monti wrote:
I recently read "The Revolution Betrayed" of Leon Trotsky (1936 in exile), a radical criticism of Stalinism. I found it very interesting and precursory of many ideas present in Volensky's "Nomenklatura". But he did not leave the hope of abundance, where I cannot follow him. He also thought that a dictatorship could mutate in a full democracy by itself when it has realised its job (preparation of socialism). That is also utopian.
#15181544
Existence of surproduction crises does not mean that we are in affluence; it only means that supply exceeds demand; the cause of this phenomenon is the weakness of demand, for instance because uncertainty encourages people to save. We are very far from affluence, today in rich countries.
Technology will go on progressing. It will open new fields. Consumers will be appealed by the new opportunities. A planning system is unable to manage these situations.
#15181553
Monti wrote:
Existence of surproduction crises does not mean that we are in affluence; it only means that supply exceeds demand; the cause of this phenomenon is the weakness of demand, for instance because uncertainty encourages people to save. We are very far from affluence, today in rich countries.
Technology will go on progressing. It will open new fields. Consumers will be appealed by the new opportunities. A planning system is unable to manage these situations.



What is *this*, your 'Ten Commandments' -- ? Was this handed down to you from above, on stone tablets -- ?

Here's the problem with capitalism: It encourages using corporate savings to leverage *debt*, thus leading to overleveraged cash, and a huge overhang of debt, all for zero actual productive activity, meaning production of goods and services (commodities).

Other trillions go to sit inactively in offshore accounts, just to evade taxation.



A global saving glut (also GSG,[1][2] cash hoarding,[3][4][5][6][7][8] dead cash,[9] dead money,[10] glut of excess intended saving,[11] or shortfall of investment intentions)[11] is a situation in which desired saving[notes 1] exceeds desired investment.[12] By 2005 Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, expressed concern about the "significant increase in the global supply of saving" and its implications for monetary policies, particularly in the United States. Although Bernanke's analyses focused on events in 2003 to 2007 that led to the 2007–2009 financial crisis, regarding GSG countries and the United States, excessive saving by the non-financial corporate sector (NFCS) is an ongoing phenomenon, affecting many countries.[13][14][15][16] Bernanke's global saving glut (GSG) hypothesis[17][18] argued that increased capital inflows to the United States from GSG countries[notes 2] were an important reason that U.S. longer-term interest rates from 2003 to 2007 were lower than expected.[12]



Since the 2000s

When the equity market bubble burst, in the early 2000s, companies in many industrial countries cut down on borrowing funds to finance their capital expenditures. They began running financial surpluses that they lent to other sectors of the economy.[14]

In 2003–2004 the non-financial corporate sector in member nations of the Group of Seven (G-7) held $US 1.3 trillion of corporate excess saving.[notes 3][14]

By 2011 Statistics Canada reported that Canadian business were "sitting on more than $583 billion in Canadian currency and deposits, and more than $276 billion in foreign currency".[27]

During and after the Great Recession of the late 2000s levels of economic[28] and policy uncertainty rose dramatically contributing to the depth of the recession and the weakness of the following recovery with[29][30] many corporations globally avoided investments and increased their cash holdings, in what has been called "liquidity hoarding",[31] "cash hoarding" or "dead cash".[5][6][7]

Cash kings

In March 2013 Moody's Investors Service published their report entitled Cash Pile Grows 10% to $1.45 Trillion; Overseas Holdings Continue to Expand in their Global Credit Research series, in which they examined companies they rate in the US non-financial corporate sector (NFCS). According to their report, by the end of 2012 the US NFCS held "$1.45 trillion in cash," 10% more than in 2001. At the end of 2011, US NFCS held $1.32 trillion in cash which was already a record level.[32] "Of the $1.32 trillion for all the rated companies, Moody's estimates that $840 billion, or 58% of the total cash, is held overseas."[32]

By the end of 2012 Apple, Microsoft, Google, Pfizer, and Cisco, "cash kings", as Moody's called them, held $347 billion at the end of 2012 compared to $278 billion in 2011.[32]

At the end of 2012 Ford Motor Company's cash balance was $22.9 billion and was listed as ten on the list of U.S. non-financial corporation sector's top ten cash kings by Moody's Investors Service in their March 2013 annual report on Global Credit Research.[32][33]



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




The corporate debt bubble is the large increase in corporate bonds, excluding that of financial institutions, following the financial crisis of 2007–08. Global corporate debt rose from 84% of gross world product in 2009 to 92% in 2019, or about $72 trillion.[1][2] In the world's eight largest economies—the United States, China, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany—total corporate debt was about $51 trillion in 2019, compared to $34 trillion in 2009.[3] Excluding debt held by financial institutions—which trade debt as mortgages, student loans, and other instruments—the debt owed by non-financial companies in early March 2020 was $13 trillion worldwide, of which about $9.6 trillion was in the U.S.[4]

The corporate bond market historically centered in the United States.[5] The U.S. Federal Reserve noted in November 2019 that leveraged loans, corporate bonds made to companies with poor credit histories or large amounts of existing debt, were the fastest growing asset class, increasing in size by 14.6% in 2018 alone.[6] Total U.S. corporate debt in November 2019 reached a record 47% of the entire U.S. economy.[7][5] However, corporate borrowing expanded worldwide under the low interest rates of the Great Recession. Two-thirds of global growth in corporate debt occurred in developing countries, in particular China. The value of outstanding Chinese non-financial corporate bonds increased from $69 billion in 2007 to $2 trillion in 2017.[5] In December 2019, Moody's Analytics described Chinese corporate debt as the "biggest threat" to the global economy.[8]



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



---



Price of Offshore: Revisited (2012–2014)

A notable study on the financial effect was Price of Offshore: Revisited in 2012–2014, by former McKinsey & Company chief economist James S. Henry.[121][122][123] Henry did the study for the Tax Justice Network (TJN), and as part of his analysis, chronicled the history of past financial estimates by various organisations.[118][31]

Henry used mainly global banking data from various regulatory sources to estimate that:[122][123]

i. USD 21 to 32 trillion of global assets (over 20% of global wealth) "has been invested virtually tax-free [..] in more than 80 offshore secrecy jurisdictions";[124]

ii. USD 190 to 255 billion in annual tax revenues are lost due to i. above;

iii. USD 7.3 to 9.3 trillion is represented by individuals from a subset of 139 "low to middle income" countries for which data is available;

iv. These figures only include "financial assets" and do not include assets such as Real Estate, precious metals etc.

Henry's credibility and the depth of this analysis meant that the report attracted international attention.[121][125][126] The TJN supplemented his report with another report on the consequences of the analysis in terms of global inequality and lost revenues to developing economies.[127] The report was criticised by a 2013 report funded by Jersey Finance (a lobby group for the financial services sector in Jersey), and written by two U.S. academics, Richard Morriss and Andrew Gordon.[120] In 2014, the TJN issued a report responding to these criticisms.[128][129]

The Hidden Wealth of Nations (2015)

In 2015, French tax economist Gabriel Zucman published The Hidden Wealth of Nations which used global national accounts data to calculate the quantum of net foreign asset positions of rich countries which are unreported because there are located in tax havens. Zucman estimated that circa 8–10% of the global financial wealth of households, or over US$7.6 trillion, was held in tax havens.[18][20][130][31]

Zucman followed up his 2015 book with several co-authored papers that focused on corporate use of tax havens, titled The Missing Profits of Nations (2016–2018),[14][15] and The Exorbitant Tax Privilege (2018),[88][89] which showed that corporations, shield over US$250 billion per annum from taxes. Zucman showed that almost half of these are U.S. corporations,[131] and that it was the driver of how U.S. corporations built up offshore cash deposits of US$1 to 2 trillion since 2004.[132] Zucman's (et alia) analysis showed that global GDP figures were materially distorted by multinational BEPS flows.[133][31]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven
#15181557
ckaihatsu wrote:
If individual *households* can plan internally over what their non-valuated resources are for, then certainly *society* can do the same, over the whole, as corporations and governments do internally, currently, as well.



Monti wrote:
A planning system is unable to manage these situations.



Here's from that other thread:


ckaihatsu wrote:
Fortunately I'm not a Stalinist, and so I don't advocate any kind of bureaucratic elitism -- a separatist specialized professional administrative elite that purportedly makes the right economic 'blueprint' for all of society.


ckaihatsu wrote:
I can simply counterpose, to your 'capitalist circuit', the political economy of 'a landscape of piles of stuff', meaning that *everything* could be in 'the commons', for workers to *replenish* local piles of stuff, with their labor, or not, depending on how all of society consciously *decides* to use stuff from all of the piles in socially constructive ways.

This post-capitalist approach replaces the capitalist 'hands-off' market mechanism, with a mass-conscious 'hands-on' *social* mechanism, so that nothing is ever again 'accidental' or a 'market failure'.



viewtopic.php?p=15181515#p15181515
#15181650
Monti wrote:I agree with you. "True Marxism" is an utopia. The hope to have abundance is unrealisable. It is firstly unrealisable in capitalism because there happens to be always new wants and secondly in a planning system because of its inefficiency.
I recently read "The Revolution Betrayed" of Leon Trotsky (1936 in exile), a radical criticism of Stalinism. I found it very interesting and precursory of many ideas present in Volensky's "Nomenklatura". But he did not leave the hope of abundance, where I cannot follow him. He also thought that a dictatorship could mutate in a full democracy by itself when it has realised its job (preparation of socialism). That is also utopian.


Exactly, that was an utopia too. Which is still cannot be nor abandoned, nor even conceived to be unfullfilled:

Richard Brautigan wrote:I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace
.


However, it is not all you can infer from that book. IMHO, there is some tendency for the Western left-winged thinkers to hope any of such utopias are possible in the nearest future. And if there were some failures in approaching those ideals, that was because you cannot expect anything good from such countries like Russia, China, etc. :)
In my view, that experience deserves much more attention. Trotsky does not just describe some utopia. He makes certain attempts to analyze what might have gone wrong. And it is not only about ‘abundance’, it is about ‘possibilities’ and, even more fundamental, about what is now called ‘’’’’’subjective well-being’’’’’’.

And then you also have the difference between the urban and non-urban population. While the representative of the first part might think of himself as being poor and desperate, those of the second might think of him as rolling in abundance: not just money, but possibilities of many sorts. The sources of inequality are abundant and cannot be encompassed by any complex theory or model.

The main problem with Russia (as I see it at least) was that people like Stalin could only lean on the urban middle class. And the urban philistine is too smart and flexible. He will follow your utopian thoughts until the very possible end. He will even be ready to abandon what some other would call ‘abundance’. But he will never allow you to strip him from any ‘possibilities’ he is accustomed to.

So here is the weakest point of any possible ‘left-winged’ social change. All of them can only be run by urban left-winged intellectuals. And that is more than comfortable for the modern capitalism. Since all you have to do is to ‘work’ with their ’subjective well-being’.
#15181678
Ivan_R wrote:
Exactly, that was an utopia too. Which is still cannot be nor abandoned, nor even conceived to be unfullfilled:



However, it is not all you can infer from that book. IMHO, there is some tendency for the Western left-winged thinkers to hope any of such utopias are possible in the nearest future. And if there were some failures in approaching those ideals, that was because you cannot expect anything good from such countries like Russia, China, etc. :)
In my view, that experience deserves much more attention. Trotsky does not just describe some utopia. He makes certain attempts to analyze what might have gone wrong. And it is not only about ‘abundance’, it is about ‘possibilities’ and, even more fundamental, about what is now called ‘’’’’’subjective well-being’’’’’’.

And then you also have the difference between the urban and non-urban population. While the representative of the first part might think of himself as being poor and desperate, those of the second might think of him as rolling in abundance: not just money, but possibilities of many sorts. The sources of inequality are abundant and cannot be encompassed by any complex theory or model.

The main problem with Russia (as I see it at least) was that people like Stalin could only lean on the urban middle class. And the urban philistine is too smart and flexible. He will follow your utopian thoughts until the very possible end. He will even be ready to abandon what some other would call ‘abundance’. But he will never allow you to strip him from any ‘possibilities’ he is accustomed to.

So here is the weakest point of any possible ‘left-winged’ social change. All of them can only be run by urban left-winged intellectuals. And that is more than comfortable for the modern capitalism. Since all you have to do is to ‘work’ with their ’subjective well-being’.



'Everyone's bought-off'. Okay, whatever.
#15181679
ckaihatsu wrote:'Everyone's bought-off'. Okay, whatever.

That depends on what suits you best. You can be either 'bought off' by those who control the means of production. Or you may control them yourself as Stalin and Co did that. Tertium non datur.
#15181690
Ivan_R wrote:
That depends on what suits you best. You can be either 'bought off' by those who control the means of production. Or you may control them yourself as Stalin and Co did that. Tertium non datur.



Cynical and proud of it, huh? Yeah, I've *heard* of your kind.

Here are some recent news items:


Thousands of Turkish electricity workers launch wildcat strike wave

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/0 ... k-j10.html


Thai protesters clash with police near Government House

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-paci ... 021-07-18/


Cuban government holds mass rally in Havana

https://www.yahoo.com/news/cuban-govern ... 46599.html


Ex-Israel soldiers demand end to settler violence against Palestinians

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210 ... estinians/
#15181699
Ivan_R wrote:
Pessimistic and NOT proud at all. Rather establishing the fact.

I do not think these news might prove anything. Do you think they do?


Ivan_R wrote:
That depends on what suits you best. You can be either 'bought off' by those who control the means of production. Or you may control them yourself as Stalin and Co did that. Tertium non datur.



Establishing what 'fact', exactly -- ?

The news items show that not *everyone* is bought-off, because there are daily *struggles* against those who control the means of production.
#15181746
ckaihatsu wrote:Establishing what 'fact', exactly -- ?
It is not wise to regard Bolshevism as an unfortunate exception.

ckaihatsu wrote:The news items show that not *everyone* is bought-off, because there are daily *struggles* against those who control the means of production.
Those are the exceptions proving the rule. The ‘’’’’daily struggles’’’’ are just common ways to channel aggression. Nowadays those sophisticated instruments, which were available to the state (secret) services only, are becoming too affordable. So virtually any capitalist can pinpoint protest leaders and even whole groups and clusters of activists and deal with them in whatever ways s/he would like. Keeping on the simmer….
#15181758
Ivan_R wrote:
It is not wise to regard Bolshevism as an unfortunate exception.



Who's saying that the Bolshevik Revolution was 'unfortunate' -- ?

What was "unfortunate" about it?


Ivan_R wrote:
Those are the exceptions proving the rule. The ‘’’’’daily struggles’’’’ are just common ways to channel aggression. Nowadays those sophisticated instruments, which were available to the state (secret) services only, are becoming too affordable. So virtually any capitalist can pinpoint protest leaders and even whole groups and clusters of activists and deal with them in whatever ways s/he would like. Keeping on the simmer….



Jeez, right now I'm more worried about *you* -- what are *you* doing about any daily struggles?

Remember any of *these*:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_i ... ial_unrest



Contents
1 2020
1.1 Ahmaud Arbery protests, May 8, 2020
1.2 NFAC protests, May 12, 2020
1.3 Breonna Taylor protests, May 26, 2020; jury verdict protests, September 23, 2020
1.4 George Floyd protests, May 26, 2020–ongoing
1.5 George Floyd Square occupied protest, May 26, 2020 – June 20, 2021
1.6 Sean Monterrosa protests, June 5, 2020 – October 2, 2020
1.7 Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, June 8, 2020 – July 1, 2020
1.8 Rayshard Brooks protests, June 12, 2020
1.9 Andrés Guardado protests, June 18, 2020
1.10 Hakim Littleton protests, July 10, 2020
1.11 Colorado Springs protest, August 4, 2020
1.12 Stone Mountain incident, August 15, 2020
1.13 Portland "Back the Blue" Rally, August 22, 2020
1.14 Kenosha unrest and shooting, August 23 and 25, 2020; 2020 American athlete strikes
1.15 Minneapolis false rumors riot, August 26, 2020
1.16 Portland Trump Caravan, August 29, 2020
1.17 Dijon Kizzee protests, August 31, 2020
1.18 Daniel Prude protests, September 2, 2020
1.19 Deon Kay protests, September 2, 2020
1.20 Ricardo Munoz protests, September 13, 2020
1.21 Deja Stallings protests, October 1, 2020
1.22 Jonathan Price protests, October 5, 2020
1.23 Alvin Cole protests, October 7, 2020
1.24 Marcellis Stinnette protests, October 22, 2020
1.25 Walter Wallace Jr. protests, October 26, 2020
1.26 Kevin Peterson Jr. protests, October 30, 2020
1.27 Protests against LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, November 23, 2020
1.28 Red House eviction defense protest, December 8, 2020
1.29 Casey Goodson protests, December 11, 2020
1.30 Bennie Edwards protests, December 11, 2020
1.31 Andre Hill protests, December 24, 2020
1.32 Dolal Idd protests, December 30, 2020
2 2021
2.1 Rochester protests, February 1, 2021
2.2 Manhattan protests, February 12, 2021
2.3 Trial of Derek Chauvin protests, March 7, 2021–June 25, 2021
2.4 Atlanta shooting protests, March 16, 2021
2.5 Daunte Wright protests, April 11, 2021–ongoing
2.6 Adam Toledo protests, April 15, 2021–ongoing
2.7 Ma'Khia Bryant protests, April 20, 2021–ongoing
2.8 Andrew Brown Jr. protests, April 24–ongoing
2.9 David McAtee protests, May 26-ongoing
2.10 Tulsa Race Massacre Anniversary protests, May 31
2.11 Uptown Minneapolis unrest, June 3–ongoing
3 See also
#15181781
Bolshevism is very very "unfortunate". Maybe the worse event of the 20th century.
Bolshevism is not exceptional in a theoretical sense, because it shows a general truth: when the means of production are in the hands of the State, dictatorship is a double problem: it is a problem because it is dictatorship and it is a problem because those who own the State own indirectly the means of production and become a new ruling class. My conclusion is that democracy is a si ne qua non condition for real socialism. Without it, you get Nomenklatura.
My concept of Stalinism is very materialist, because it is connected to the immense cynicism of Stalin. Stalin had the choice: socialism in no country with power in one country versus world revolution. He chose the first. To keep his power, il let the young bureaucracy become a new ruling class devoted to him, but simultaneously, he was their protector.
#15181822
Monti wrote:
Bolshevism is very very "unfortunate". Maybe the worse event of the 20th century.



You mean *Stalinism*.

Here's the policy enabled by the Bolshevik Revolution, which is *laudable*:



• All private property was nationalized by the government.

• All Russian banks were nationalized.

• Private bank accounts were expropriated.

• The properties of the Russian Orthodox Church (including bank accounts) were expropriated.

• All foreign debts were repudiated.

• Control of the factories was given to the soviets.

• Wages were fixed at higher rates than during the war, and a shorter, eight-hour working day was introduced.



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



---


Monti wrote:
Bolshevism is not exceptional in a theoretical sense, because it shows a general truth: when the means of production are in the hands of the State, dictatorship is a double problem: it is a problem because it is dictatorship and it is a problem because those who own the State own indirectly the means of production and become a new ruling class. My conclusion is that democracy is a si ne qua non condition for real socialism. Without it, you get Nomenklatura.
My concept of Stalinism is very materialist, because it is connected to the immense cynicism of Stalin. Stalin had the choice: socialism in no country with power in one country versus world revolution. He chose the first. To keep his power, il let the young bureaucracy become a new ruling class devoted to him, but simultaneously, he was their protector.



Allow me to *parse* that for you:



[Stalinism] is not exceptional in a theoretical sense, because it shows a general truth: when the means of production are in the hands of the State, dictatorship is a double problem: it is a problem because it is dictatorship and it is a problem because those who own the State own indirectly the means of production and become a new ruling class. My conclusion is that democracy is a si ne qua non condition for real socialism. Without it, you get Nomenklatura.
My concept of Stalinism is very materialist, because it is connected to the immense cynicism of Stalin. Stalin had the choice: socialism in no country with power in one country versus world revolution. He chose the first. To keep his power, il let the young bureaucracy become a new ruling class devoted to him, but simultaneously, he was their protector.



There's some academic-type contention over whether the USSR's bureaucracy could really be considered a 'ruling class', or not, because it never expropriated surplus labor value -- rather, it *redistributed* it within the state-collectivist apparatus, which is certainly not the same thing as private-interest profit-making.
#15181855
Some authors (and I think Marx is among them) have distinguished between formal property and effective ownership, meaning that for extraction of surplus value, the second one is more important than the first one. I see likeness between Nomenklaturist mode of production and what Marx labelled "Asiatic mode of production". The State owns the means of production. The wage of labourers is less than their product. The difference, the surplus value, is taken by those who run the State, the military or bureaucratic caste who surrounds the Great Moghul or the party leader.
#15181879
Monti wrote:
Some authors (and I think Marx is among them) have distinguished between formal property and effective ownership, meaning that for extraction of surplus value, the second one is more important than the first one. I see likeness between Nomenklaturist mode of production and what Marx labelled "Asiatic mode of production". The State owns the means of production. The wage of labourers is less than their product. The difference, the surplus value, is taken by those who run the State, the military or bureaucratic caste who surrounds the Great Moghul or the party leader.



Yeah, and that's why I don't mean to quibble -- historically, though, the 'state-collectivization' of labor value has not been nearly as *subtractive* from the economy as private-property / equity capital is, by *expropriating* surplus labor value into private pockets.

This topic has arisen recently on a couple of other threads:


ckaihatsu wrote:
Stalinism, being *nationalization* / de-privatization, would be an incremental *improvement* over 'Wall Street', or the privatization and securitization of anything of value.

Here's the (fairly) current CEO-to-worker pay ratio:


An April 2013 study by Bloomberg finds that large public company CEOs were paid an average of 204 times the compensation of rank-and-file workers in their industries.

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


Under the USSR's Stalinism the bureaucrat-to-worker ratio was *far less* -- somewhere in the single digits or teens -- as I recall. Sorry I don't have the data offhand.



viewtopic.php?p=15181422#p15181422



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Yeah, you're summing-up the paradigmatic international friction of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which led into two world wars, and this difference of nationalist organizing philosophy continues to plague us into the present ('laissez faire' vs. nationalist-corporatism).

But even this 'dichotomy' is something of a red herring anyway, since the early European colonial empires basically used nationalist-corporatism *themselves*, as with the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company.



viewtopic.php?p=15178987#p15178987



---



Wages

Since unemployment was rendered unviable through various acts of legislation, the Soviet worker, in contrast to a Capitalist worker, was more secure economically.[9] In return for working, a Soviet worker would get an individual return in the form of a money wage; however, during the period under the New Economic Policy(1920s), hyperinflation rendered money effectively useless, and wages sometimes occurred through bartering[citation needed]. Money wage in Soviet parlance was not the same as in Capitalist countries.[1] The money wage was set at the top of the administrative system, and it was the same administrative system which also set bonuses. Wages were 80 percent of the average Soviet workers income, with the remaining 20 coming in the form of bonuses. The Soviet wage system tried systematically to make wages more equal; for instance, the relationship between wages was termed "ITRs", a measure of comparing wages across occupations. For engineers and other technical workers ITR was 1.68 in 1955, but had decreased to 1.21 in 1977.[10] Social wages were also an important part of the general standard of living for an average household; it stood at 23.4 percent of income for the average Soviet worker and their family, and at 19.1 percent for the family income of collective farmers. In the period between 1971–81, the social wage grew faster than the money wage; the money wage grew by 45 percent for workers and employees and 72 for workers at collective farms. In contrast, per capita income from social wages increased by 81 percent. Social wage took many forms; it could be improved health, education, transport or food subsidies, which was the responsibility of the state, or the improvement (or introduction) of sanitation and working facilities.[1]

Social benefits

The access to use values by the common Soviet worker was not determined by money wages, but rather by a position in the official hierarchy, access to privilege or the privileged, access to foreign currency, where a person lived, influence and access to the black market. In contrast to capitalist societies, money was not the cornerstone of life – a Soviet person would not come into contact with more use-values by the amount of money he or she had.[1]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_working_class
#15181962
Monti wrote:Bolshevism is very very "unfortunate". Maybe the worse event of the 20th century.

Of course, it is very unfortunate. However, it is not an unfortunate exception. Because it was not just an abstract dictatorship. It was a dictatorship of urbanism. The latter was the result of rapid industrial development at that time, but that is not crucial.
Trotsky did not write that. I am afraid neither of those theorists even realized that. It is easy to think in terms of, say, reduction of disparities in incomes. However, the problem of disparity in possibilities based on plain geography seems to me both fundamental and almost unsolvable. IMHO, it is the main cause of all other disparities.
Any democracy is a dictatorship of urbanism too. So socialism is just not possible.
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