Shouldn't the dictatorship of the proletariat have been disbanded after the revolution was successful?
Why were the people not free to self organize into communes of their own design that best reflects their values?
this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2024
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At what point do you think Marxists believe the DotP is to be ended? Moreover, what do you think a DotP is? People weren't allowed to dissolve government into small communes because they were invaded by more than 14 Capitalist countries, and in addition the Soviets were Marxists and not Anarchists, they wanted full public ownership and central planning as the goal.
Sooner the Soviets I guess. A shame there was no peace to see what could have been.
Same as it ever was.
The USSR never had a single year of peace, in its entire existence. Following the revolution was a brutal civil war in which 14+ nations (including the US) landed troops to try to stop the republic. Even after the reds won against the whites, they had years of intrigues against them, then rising fascism, which a lot of historians see as a continuous conflict in eastern europe from the years between the twe world wars.
Stalin presciently stated that "we have 10 years to industrialize in the time it took capitalist nations 50+ years, or we're toast". Then you have operation barbarossa and the nazi onslaught, with its scorched earth policy and genocidal onslaught of the USSR, the eastern front of ww2 being the bloodiest conflict in history, with the soviets saving the world from fascism.
Then you have the US atom bombing civilians as a warning to the soviets, and 60 years of a cold war arms race, and too many other threats and incursions to count.
The USSR wouldn't have lasted a single year if they disarmed and followed that advice, and europe would probably be all speaking german now if it weren't for Stalin.
Appreciate the reply m'dude.
Shouldn’t the dictatorship of the proletariat have been disbanded after the revolution was successful?
This question doesn't even make sense. The dictatorship of the proletariat doesn't start until the revolution is successful. When the revolution succeeds it replaces the pre-existing dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with the new dictatorship of the proletariat. These are definitional. The fact that you asked the question means you are missing some critical pieces of information that will make it quite literally impossible for you to analyze anything about history, communist theory, revolutionary politics, and left organizing.
Why were the people not free to self organize into communes of their own design that best reflects their values?
You are describing libertarianism. Under current global conditions, people self-organizing into collectives creates warlords which reproduces feudalism which reproduces capitalism. People self-organizing into communes that best reflect their values is quite literally how we got to where we are today. Prehistoric human communities formed around shared values and splintered along values misalignment. They formed and disbanded and reformed. And eventually the technologies for hoarding became available (generally agriculture) and then conquest became a viable strategy for survival. Those conditions haven't really changed yet. The point of a socialist transition to communism is actually to collectively organizing human activity to bring about the conditions whereby conquest is no longer a viable strategy for survival. That requires significant reorganization of production and distribution. So far, we've seen it takes longer than a century to pull that off.
Maybe next life then. Appreciate your efforts.
Definitely next life. Remember that the Europeans built their cultures for a few thousand years before setting sail to expand through conquest. That was about 550 years ago. If a life time is 100 years, then it took five and a half lifetimes to get here via global conquest. It will take multiple lifetimes to reverse this and several more to reverse it permanently.
This is the project we're all here for. You and me and all our comrades.
The USSR was the first attempt. It was an experiment. We have a ton to learn from it. China, Korea, Vietnam, and Laos are other experiments. We have a lot to learn from them and they all learn from each other and they all learn from the USSR experiment. The number of capitalist experiments is easily a hundred and they've been in operating for a couple centuries. The number of communist experiments is less than 10 and none have made it to a century yet.
We are at the middle of the beginning of the process.
For starters, "Gulag" just means "prison." Of course prisons existed in the USSR, and some had rather brutal conditions. Others, however, did not, and treated prisoners better to much better than your average American prison. Nobody is saying the Gulags never existed, perhaps they mean your specific interpretation of the conditions of gulags and the extent to which they were used. Edit 1
As for Stalin himself, it's fair to say he committed a fair degree of errors in judgement, had reactionary social views such as his view of homosexuality, was frequently paranoid, and so forth. At the same time, it is equally fair to understand that Stalin has been the subject of countless lies, exaggerations, myths, and other degrees of Cold War propaganda we learn as fact despite evidence to the contrary, especially following the opening of the Soviet Archives. Moreover, it is necessary to acknowledge the vital role he played in governing the worlds first Socialist State, and building the foundations of this rapid improvement on the utter squalor of the Tsarist regime.
Should Stalin be idolized? I don't think so, as I believe that can get in the way of accurate analysis. Should Stalin be villianized and made a scapegoat to brush the Red Scare under the rug? I don't believe so, either. The USSR came with countless benefits, from a doubling of life expectancy to free healthcare to near 100% literacy rates (better than the modern US), and more. These benefits were formed under Stalin, and as such we must do our absolute best to separate fact from fiction. If we accept and push purely the accepted bourgeois narrative regarding the real experience of AES states, then we cannot learn from them properly and sort out what worked and what did not.
Basically, Stalin was neither a perfect saint devoid of mistakes nor a unique monster that should be especially condemned. He was the leader of the USSR, but did not have absolute control, and in addition was in many ways less monstrous than contemporary leaders such as Hitler and Churchill. Correct contextualization is important. I highly recommend the short, 8 minute article "Tankies" by Roderic Day, hosted over on Red Sails. For more in-depth reading, Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend by Domenico Losurdo is a good historical critique of Stalin that focuses on taking a critical stance towards Stalin and contextualizes him.
Edit 1: seeing your other two comments, I am now entirely certain that this is the case.
As always, I have a book that I wish to quote from, but I cannot choose which parts, so I'll just point to Russian Justice if anyone is interested.
For a shorter read see Chapter 14 in This Soviet World
Excellent work, comrade 🫡
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From what I understand, people who were sent to Gulag mostly were Nazis, bourgeoisie (basically people like the UnitedHealthcare CEO) and counter-revolutionaries.
I'm not saying it was the best way to seize resources from the rich and prevent counter-revolution. Some of the things he did were good, and some were bad.
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