The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union -- Lessons for Socialists
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 พ.ค. 2024
- The Russian Revolution in 1917 brought the Bolsheviks to power. For the first time in history the working class seized and held state power. What was the experience of the Soviet Union? How did it change global politics in the 20th century? What did socialism achieve and what caused the Soviet Union to fall in 1991?
In Part 1, we explore the socialist revolution that brought the Soviet Union into existence and the civil war that immediately followed. Millions died defending the new country, defeating the counter-revolution but then facing the enormous task of rebuilding a nation devastated by war.
Watch the NEW video edition of “The Real Story” on BreakThrough News!
In the first part of this series, Brian is joined by Carlos Martinez, author of “The End of the Beginning: Lessons of the Soviet Collapse,” co-founder of the No Cold War Campaign, and editor of the political analysis site Invent-The-Future.org.
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History from a communist prospective is a much more honest telling of history. I want to see someone tell the history of the entire planet over the last 400 years with a map that shows year by year what happened in each region and between them. That is what socialists/communists need.
History makes so much more sense from a Marxist perspective. I finally understood the reason behind the Napoleonic wars because my communist Cuban history professor side-tracked a bit to talk about it lol
yea, it's a lot better than keep hearing the other side is evil.
(Earthlings history) The state of things today is quite telling (frustrated greedy perverts).
@@DataJYdocs lmao so true
@@Flash.904 That's how I feel about the US history too. What was the overall analysis of the Napoleonic Wars?
Lessons to learn not to be ignored
well thats an uncommon for western youtube point of view, thank you for bringing it up
Would love to see a Dispatches conversation between Rania and Gabriel Rockhill. He is brilliant Leftist that doesn't get enough exposure. He is a Communist historian and is very knowledgeable about the CIA and it's infiltration into the Western Left. He also had the best description and analysis of Fascism that I've seen. Please get him on your channel. I promise you won't be disappointed!
Don‘t know anything that could be done better about this talk.
Commenting to try and bookmark this for myself
@@Yet.Another.Rapper.KiG.V2 Oh...are you doing research into how best to troll commies?
@@fun_ghoul No, because I am a communist, if you had a good faith discussion with me you would see that clearly. I don't know how we've been bumping into each other on further and further leftward spaces for years and you seem to think I was a liberal just because we disagreed on one issue that I can't even remember what about. I'm a Marxist-Leninist, I have been for over a year, and even before that I had a greater understanding of socialism and history than most Western "leftists" that were my peers.
You seem like a hostile person, and I won't criticize how you want to live your life, but I just hope you know you end up with a lot of friendly fire with this approach and mindset. You and I probably agree on 95%+ of issues, can you not see that? Is that not enough to suck it up and call each other comrades?
@@Yet.Another.Rapper.KiG.V2 Liberal.
Carlos is a great communicator. I really appreciate his take. Excellent discussion
A very intelligent discourse by the two gentlemen.
And glad to see Carlos Martinez! He is awesome and I really enjoyed his book.
Really great points here, just by reading at a cursory glance of the USSR, it was all GULAGs and political repression. It actually achieved great strides for the progress for humanity.
I once had a conversation about the USSR with a friend who is skeptical about socialism. Who, in response to all the aspirations of the USSR, said: Those are unrealistic goals, the entire thing is so romantic and idealistic. To which my thought was that it was this element of romanticism that's attractive to me. Too much realism and cynicism is lamentable.
Material realism, is what Socialism is to me. Real material outcomes. Reality, not idealism. Facts not romanticism.
Workers are exploited & the excess of the value of their labor if taken from them; as that is the only way that the ownership class can glean their profits.
@@danintheoutback1
You misunderstand me. The cashless, stateless, and classless society is certainly utopian, but I can not image that in practice. The romanticism I refer to is the phenomenon where the people unify, overthrow capital, and work on a glorious future together. Like the USSR, at least in the earlier years.
@@the1onlynoob Yugopnik made a video on this mindset
th-cam.com/video/z56TD0qrQx8/w-d-xo.html
The idea that any attempt at a more equitable society with less exploitation is utopian is quite deliberately a mainstay in western popular media.
Dear Breakthrough News comrades,
please include in the video description, the links to the other 2 episodes of this USSR series.
This was so amazing and in depth. It really put into focus the foundations of many of the issues we face today, their root causes, and the fragility of consistent change in a capitalist driven world. Loved every minute of this, definitely will check out the book!
10:10 so the war was the issue ?
I grew up reading Russian classics.One of the greatest contibutions of the Russians to the world is in the area of literature.
Really excellent session on this subject full of fresh insights into the positive aspects of the Soviet Union's history. Congrats to Carlos and the interviewer.
Hell yes I can't wait for the next episode. Please do it SOOOOOOON! Anyways. Love you very much, and appreciate you greatly. Please, don't stop.
Wow, this was like a free college lecture (only more honest and insightful). Thank you for creating such content that is not only accessible and interesting but could be shared with and appeal to most anyone.
Will need to listen to this two or three times to get it all in but can only give one thumbs up.
It would be very useful to have data on USSR before and after the revolution so that we can argue with others using fact, not opinion.
What facts do you need ?
Amazing episode, looking forward to the next ones!
Thanks for this. I look forward to the next segment.
Thank you! Very educational! Keep it up!
Glad to see a series on this! I'm currently reading Roger Keeran's and Thomas Kenny's book 'Socialism Betrayed', which is very good. I'll read Carlos' book in the near future.
11:09 what separates it from a coup ?
just ordered Carlos's book. Thanks for this series.
Excellent start to your series. I wonder if you could post a reading list of essential works on socialism, maybe your "top ten" list, as I'm sure there are many many worthwhile books on the subject. Keep up the good work.
You must not start from the October revolution..... You must start with the beginning of the Boljewiek party. Under what kind circumstances it was formed, who where the leaders and what where the thinking and where they came from, who financed them, what was the influence of foreign powers on the bolsewiek party and so on and so on. Because also then mistakes where made that had influenced the future of the sovjet union.
Is that an intentional misspelling?
This is great content. Brian, for the next one please adjust your mic input gain up a bit to match it with the volume of the guest speaker, you are a little on the quiet side, so if I adjust my volume for that then the guest's volume is booming.
This is a really great interview and it’s the more nuanced explanation of Russian history and culture I’ve been looking for.
You made it pretty hard to find the follow up parts to it though!!! Where is part 2 and 3?
Great job both of you - thanks!
Saddest part of this is how Cuban Americans tend to back the far right & the people I know have zero clue that the US destabilised their country
Very accurate and in-depth dissection of hidden sides of the Soviet Union collapse.
So incredibly thankful for this show!!
This is unbelievably good! Keep going
Thanks for the content, truly interesting stuff. A little technical feedback, the audio mix on this is really low. Especially the host's audio compared to the guest.
If you could please tie up in a common link of the series would immensely help and mention it in the descriptions of each part would further simplify the connects and sequence.Great learnings which is a must not just for socialists but for anyone seriously into understanding a seminal part of human development story. 🙏From India gratefully
Absolutely brilliant talk! Loved it! Definitely gotta get that book.
Extremely good video! Merry Christmas!
this was really, really good. thank you both very much. absolutely a crucial topic & always will be! red salute!
I perceive the Revolution of 1917 in Russia as a tremendous achievement. For the first time in man's history has there been such a natural overthrow of perhaps the greatest empire in the East. Lenin and Troskey were idealists, naive and passionate and rocked Capitalism to its foundation. My love and respect is to my spiritual motherland where people took on the monolith and galvanised the Red Army to create the magnificent combat of fascism. We lost nearly 25 million lives in the great war and that alone belies the resilience of people and loyalty to freewill and land mark of human evolution. God bless the Soviet and the progress goes on.
Such a beautiful discussion. Loved it.
beautifully done!! thanks you two for going to the trouble!!
Thanks for this interview. I added the book to reading list.
USSR was undermined from abroad. It wasn't the system that failed.
and China brilliantly saw those failures and learned from them
The system didn't even failed in any way. The USSR maybe wasn't better than the US or a few countries in Europe, but it was definitely better than the rest of the countries of the world. It sure was 10x better than any latin american country. A complete success.
@@JamieDigitalArt true. a Chinese scholar actually said USSR was under cold war setting and never had a chance to reform, or fix the problems within. China adopted the USSR's five year plan.
China never forget the 156 programs that USSR provided to assist China industrialize. the fallout between USSR China was unforturnate. Breshnev mended the relations and visited China before his death,
@@willengel2458 The fallout between USSR and PRC was by design. The US imperialists were succesful in their geopolitical game.
@@JamieDigitalArt Yes, but however it wouldn't be possible for the USSR to move more towards a market setting because they have tensions with the US. The moment they opened themselves, the US took and outside forces (and within) took the chance to rip them apart. The USSR was too much of a threat. They would of loved to get rid of two socialist giants and obviously they pitted China against the USSR (and of course Khrushchev was an idiot). Also another thing is that the communist party allowed in Russian nationalists, liberals, and orthodox Christians. The party also didn't fundamentally believe in communism anymore. Gorbachev wanted to move the soviet union more towards social democracy like the Nordic model. Obviously western imperialist powers never intended for them to go in that direction.
BT rules!
Am no Socialist but I really want to learn about Soviet Union, both the pros and cons. Unfortunately most of what I have access to is propaganda. I want to start from scratch. This discussion is good but its not for someone like me who wants to start from the beginning.
Look up Aleksey Safronov's videos on Soviet economy.
Thank you. I have long desired this project you are presenting. As a teenager in the 60's I was blessed with adults who had traveled to USSR & who returned with positive reviews. These views were debunked with narratives that anything visitors saw was fake, full supermarkets were only for show, etc. I was aware as we learned from teach-ins about Vietnam war that USA was lying about the war. So, I knew our "news" was lying, but by how much? Then the cold war ramped up & USA narrative became impenetrable. Suddenly USSR collapsed! Good news because arms race was over, bad news because wtf happened? Now, perhaps I can get a grip on the episode called the USSR & begin to hear from & read the work of serious researchers on this topic. Thank you, again.
I’m digging this series ☮️
Great discussion!
Very interesting stuff thank you
No 1930s Depression, but Stalinist purges and the Great Terror
The USSR socialist experiment failed BUT the Chinese one is SUCCEEDING!!!!
When they started to use the bits of socialism they like and exploiting capitalism for it's riches lining the pockets of their wealthy.. yes, successful but not much equality going around i'm afraid. But crack on if fantasy is your thing.
In China, National Socialism, not communism.
@@user-gf4gz1bm4e Are you serious? And have you lived in China?
USSR became an industrially advanced country in 2 decades, while it took imperialist countries 2 centuries, despite exploiting natural resources and labor in colonies around the world.
Thank you for this. Thank you for all your work
Excellent topic and discussion
the education from ignorant to literacy was a leap beyond anything we had seen! i have always maintained that when illiteracy is low the best way is to change it is through austerity.
There is a lot of confusion about democracy and dictatorship. The point is that in a class divided society (and every country in the world is class divided, which included the Soviet Union) you can not have democracy without dictatorship (and vice-versa). In Western capitalist countries the capitalist dictatorship is subtle and the myth is spread that there is universal democracy and that the state is impartial and stands above classes and is there for the benefit of everyone. The reason why the Soviet Union was able to make such remarkable progress in a relatively short time was because of the Dictatorship by the Proletariat which meant democracy for the many and dictatorship for the few. For an understanding of how this worked in practice I recommend the book: Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan. If you read that with an open mind you'll find it extremely illuminating. I believe it's available from that well know dictatorial company Amazon.
excellent, thank you
I am from Uganda and I went to the USSR to study just before it broke up, but even then it was quite obvious to me that the USSR was no backward country and in some respects matched or beat the West. Let's take consumer goods as an example: the Soviets didn't make cars that were as attractive and luxurious as those made in the West and their clothes weren't as fashionable and appealing as Western designs. As a guitarist I had the impression that Soviet made guitars were of much poorer quality. Having said that, the Soviets did in many other instances manufacture what in my opinion were decent products eg watches, cameras, electronic equipment(radio-cassette players, hi-fi, cameras, tvs, fridges). I saw little difference here with their western counterparts.
yes, but the west didn't only make luxurious cars. there are brands such as BMW and Mercedes, but there are also brands like Honda, Toyota, Ford, Chevy which make cars that average people can afford. the biggest problem inside the USSR was the lack of commodity diversity.
@@fdjw88 depends on the commodity.
Then why did the soviet union collapse if it was so great? Honestly, an entire super power collapsed and you're like: it wasn't THAT bad.
It was pretty damn bad.
Watch TraumaZone by Adam Curtis to see what life was like across the soviet union in the build up to the collapse of the USSR. It was utter misery.
@@aimhigh3701 there were a number of factors too many to list that led to the Soviet collapse. One of them but one of them IMHO was the effectiveness of Western propaganda and the rise Trotskyist-like leaders in the USSR. Looking back am glad it collapsed because it helped unmask the true nature of the corporatist monopoly capitalists that control western governments. The presence of a poweful, stern USSR restrained them
@@aimhigh3701 Adam Curtis is a charlatan
Fantastic!
Where is part 2?
Marvellous ,splendid indeed.
I don´t know if it´s available in english but you should read Domenico Losurdo, "Der westliche Marxismus - Wie er entstand, verschied und auferstehen könnte" - "The western Marxism - How he developed, died and how he could rise again"
Not much info or links on Carlos Martinez
Just a quick technical comment on the audio. The level of Carlos' sound is fine but the interviewer's audio is far too low.
You are right Sir, Brian is on the quiet side, I hope he will adjust his mic gain for the coming parts of this series. Kind regards.
Excellent
OK, this all sounds great, however, they don’t really get into some of the other complaints and issues levied against the Soviet union at the time. For instance, the fights between Trotsky and Stalin, and then supposed purges along with going after Trotsky internationally, etc. the Gulags. Concerns about labor for instance to seven day work week which actually I know there were things about that that we’re actually very positive and it wasn’t necessarily really the way that it’s been portrayed, but there are accusations in there seems to be some evidence for some of these things, such as punishments for missing or being late to your job harsh punishments like supposedly prison sentences or jail time; pressure to work and work overtime and do more or do all you can and you know kind of really stressing the working class pushing that productivity to its max; Increased our supposedly are allegedly again in the research I found it’s hard to see an evidence that shows that the workday was work week was increased to 60 hours but there are these accusations.
Probably the additional glaring problem in the 1930s that is not brought up here in this talk is the what’s supposedly a genocide and a lot of more right and the kind of the accusations thrown about what happened in Ukraine and other farming areas and towns with the peasant communities. so I think that the speakers need to address these issues, and there’s not really an attempt to do so here. I’d really like to see that. And so to also claim and argue that there was no unemployment they had full employment and there was no starvation. 5000 people starved in New York City in the 1930s. Yeah well allegedly hundreds of thousands if not millions of people in particularly in Ukraine are alleged to have starved. And probably another place as well again accusations at the very least. I understand that some of the reasons why that occurred might not have just been the Soviet policy, at the same time there is a record there, and there is a there are certainly questions regarding how the Soviet union dealt with some of these issues.
When the whole discussion is based on false presumptions and claims, you will never get to any working conclusions and will never learn any lessions from mistakes of the past. And there were so many false claims in the first 20 minutes, that I'm not even gonna continue watching.
I.e. before talking about "popular support" of the revolution, perhaps you should read about elections of Uchreditelnoye Sobraniye (which Lenin in his earlier years was very supportive of), which bolsheviks lost completely - and after that they blocked the first convention and announced dissmissal thereof, and then started shooting and suppressing protests in support for Uch.Sob.
Funny enough, in his works pieces before the revolution Lenin was calling himself a "democrat" (just like that, without "social-" prefix), but immediately turned to brutal, dictatorial methods which were condemned even by his former friends from German communist revolutionary groups such as Rosa Luxembourgh.
Bringing peace was also not on bolsheviks' agenda, since Lenin very early in the beginning of WWI started calling for "turning imperialistic war into civil war". But, despite the declared intent and act of usurping power which led to armed resistance - bolsheviks and their apologists still push the story that civil war was started by the "bourgeoius". Furthermore, while Lenin's "peace" in WWI turned out to be total capitulation to Germany on extremely harsh conditions (only so that Lenin could free troops for his war inside the country), he still sent soldiers abroad to fight and die (Finland, Poland). I.e. he did not plan peaceful life which Russian people imagined from bolsheviks deceitful slogans, but replaced fighting for Russia with fighting for communist ideas.
Oh yeah, and "people wanted peace because millions Russian already died in the war" is an outright lie. Russian total losses in WWI were under 1 million. And the civil war claimed at least the same amount of only soldiers' lives, while the total losses in the civil war time is estimated around 14-18 million people. So, the "imperialistic war" was nothing compared to the calamity of the bolshevik revolution.
"Completely discredited provisional government" - again, in 9 months no government would be able to fix things, especially when bolsheviks continued their sabotage work, undermining authorities and preventing any repairs to the society. Again, that was declared ahead of time - as Lenin stated that Russia must fall so that they can start making their own society on top of the ruins. Hence not only sabotage, but Lenin's call for openly terrorist activities (bombings, murders of government officials and public servants, throwing acid in policemen etc).
And so on and so forth.
And yes, I've read full anthology of Lenin's works. But I have my doubts these two gentlemen did. Or they're intentionally and knowingly lying to the viewers. Too bad. There are some positive and useful aspects in socialism, but until its proponents stop with lies and double-think, it won't get anywhere.
Can 2 of three people vote to take from the third ?
Re 24:30 (impossibility of withering away of the state in capitalist surroundings) - well, bourgeois society did prove capable of developing even in the presence of surrounding feudal societies. Martinez' take seems to avoid the fact that the worker's state described in State and the Revolution is radically democratic, and neither the USSR was nor any modern 'socialist' state is. I don't think it makes sense to claim that Lenin, Marx and Engels couldn't have foreseen the perseverance of adversary capitalist states for some time. It was fairly obvious that this was likely and that the new state they were describing did have to be viable under such conditions, or else it would perish. Socialism was supposed to be a superior competitor to capitalism, not something that can only survive in the absence of capitalist competition.
We all serve...
Everybody prospers...
Nobody gets left behind...
Exploitation is forbidden...
....Thoughts?
Becker has the annoying tendency of pontificating in these interviews, leaving very little space for his guests.
profit is arrived at by need and want to produce the goods capital is needed to start the profit comes after.
wonderful video
The term colonizer is absolutely historically accurate and not a pejorative in any way whatsoever, it’s just a fact. A horrific fact!
two generations already passed away, SOVIET UNION & SOCIALISM/COMMUNISM is still HOT ISSUE... yuri gagarin/russia, said, "long live the communist party long live the ussr..." for west europe writers to keep proving that yuri gagarin was a failure in saying so...
The closest socialism came to success was in Israel between 1948-1978. With the kibbutz and moshav system. Eventually it didn't collapse in total, but has moved to a mix of socialism and capitalism. With capitalism eventually taking the upper hand.
I like most of what you said in this video, but on your vision of socialism, why only “homes for all workers”? Do you want homelessness to continue? Why not #HomesForAll?
The fight against Russia was not toward Socialism,Bolshavism,but against slavic people(and other minoritys in UdSSR)
Marxism & Leninism is the best and Stalin is one the greatest leader we have had, who made history with his 5 years plan, that is why the west hates him and they have been trying to destroy his legacy and his great achievement. Stalin had tried to establish democracy from bottom to top and top to bottom and all the time was fighting with bureaucracy within the socialism system and bureaucrats like Khrushchev
Absolutely Sarah, defeater of the 3rd Reich, liberator of Auswitcz, Sobibor, Belsen and all the other horrid Concentration camps. Meanwhile USA was using nuclear weapons on human civilian beings in Japan - not just for the first time in human history, ever, but twice! Solzenytsen was a bourgoise crybaby fake who never did tell what his offences were in his crybaby books (probably a black marketeer, war profiteering" entrepreneur", or human trafficker or something, using his military rank to lord it over poor Ukrainian girls). Of course, the West doesn't like to peer into what Solzenytsen was there for, just liked to flag him as a 'hero of freedom' as part of the anti soviet mindwash, but they won't exclaim or champion the actual human rights of Julian Assange, the fricking godamn hypocrites.
@@onanysundrymule3144 So no mass executions or famines took place in the USSR? That was all invented by Solzhenitsyn? You do realise that Solzhenitsyn wasn't the only to person to write about Soviet repression, right?
@@Extra-dg7uv Well Sir, you will be both joyous and heartened to hear that I read all 3 volumes of "The Gulag Archipalego" as recently as November 2016, and I made written notes back then which I have here now. I say 'heartened' because most people who already have their 'belief systems' fully in place on this topic, it later transpires, have never actually read any Solzhenitsyn at all, which is mighty curious because they obviously therefore only believe things that they assume to have happened, or have overheard it to have been said that happened ..... etc etc, and then have been left deliberately in that state by jingoistic anti-Soviet propoganda and 'unspoken inuendo' from as far back as the times of the McCarthy house committee on Un-American activities.
In this case however you will clearly therefore be overjoyed to know that I am fully briefed and eagerly up for earnest discussion. Just before we do though, I will just kindly ask you two simple questions; (a) have you actually read any of his works? and (b) if so, then please tell me in which volume and on which page dear old uncle Alexander actually makes any such assertions? I am sincerely curious to know.
Kind regards.
On the contrary: Stalin rose by mechanism of co opting the bureaucrats to undermine the trade unions and the soviets and thereby ensure his dominance of the party. No building top down. He also stands culpable of purging the military of its best and most experienced (from the civil war) officers in the late 1930s that had a negative effect on the Soviets ability to deal with the Fascist invasion and accounts largely for the initial massive defeats of the Soviets.
@@ahmedjooma2880 What's your source(s) for your assertions?
Bet #JRE podcast never has this guy on his show
How many people who watch this channel play “bourgeois?” The group take a shot each time the word is muttered. Hard to get through the first 10 minutes.
Play bourgeois?
The group?
Take a shot?
I’m not sure comparing the state of hunger in the USSR to the US during the 30s is the most advantageous comparison.
I get the Ukrainian famines of the 30s were largely caused by bad harvesting seasons and kulaks being assholes, but to ignore the famines entirely when talking about that is a little silly.
(Willing to be proved wrong)
Surely one can't talk about the causes of the Ukrainian and other famines in the USSR in the early thirties without bringing forward the disastrous results of the collectivisation policy which led to the mass slaughter by the peasants of their livestock and the collapse of grain production. As to the sabotage by kulaks (rich peasants) this is largely stalinist propaganda designed to excuse the disastrous results of the Soviet agricultural policy in the 1930s. Something that the USSR was unable to recover from before its breakup in 1991. That was why the USSR went from being the breadbasket of Eurasia in Tsarist times to importing increasingly massive amounts of grain in the 1970s and 1980s. A process that added greatly to the Soviet economic deficits.
In fact, the anti-kulak policy launched in the late 1920s was highly embarrassing because it turned out the number and power of the kulaks was greatly overestimated by both Stalin and Trotsky's faction. The whole process of the First World War and the Civil War that followed it (with the requisitions of livestock and grain of War Communism') had greatly impoverished the peasantry of all stripes. That was why there were such large scale peasant revolts from 1920-22. Indeed, the land reform had ended the power of the landlords but had left a mass of almost entirely poor farmers to take over the land. These factors (along with workers strikes and Kronstadt) were a key motivation in the Communist Party reversing course in 1921, abandoning War Communism and adopting the New Economic Policy (NEP).
Five successful years of the NEP followed. This put some money into the pockets of farmers but was hardly long enough for a class of rich peasants to emerge - a paranoid fear of significant sections of the Communist Party who had always seen the peasants as an alien proto-bourgeous class that had only temporarily allied with the workers in the revolution for their own selfish interests.
Then in 1925 conflict arose between the peasants and the state over the price it was willing to pay them for their produce. The state was trying to underpay them so as to squeeze extra resources for the towns and cities, and for industry. For two years the peasants withheld much of their grain which inevitably hit them as well as the urban population.
The result of this was that when communist cadres were sent into the countryside in 1927 onwards to find the kulaks and strip them of their wealth they could hardly find any such people. Instead, it became more an exercise of 'find the kulak'. In most villages it turned out there were no kulaks at all! Despite this Stalin ordered fresh raids on villages by cadres and police which ended up arresting and disposessing anyone with a bit more land or a better house, often resulting from extra effort, skill or a better family situation. The outcome was that many of the best farmers in the USSR lost their farms and ended up imprisoned in the slave labour camps of the gulag. This helped further decimate agricultural productivity. Also it became a great opportunity for poorer neighbours to settle scores.
@@patbyrneme007 Thank you for calling out the BS of these tankies! Its utterly outrageous to talk about starvation in America in the 1930s and then deny that there was any in the Soviet Union or just write it off as "kulaks being assholes".
36:30
Excellent analysis one love to the Party for Socialism and Liberation!
The people never had control of the means of production.
Yes they did.
read Engels text "On Authority" and understand why Marxism is NOT about "workplace democracy".
@@marechaltukhachevsky2909Read this text instead Sir;........ Interestingly, Engels wasn't a citizen nor part of the USSR, was never there, nor even contemporaneous with it. Nor indeed was Marx, though the Soviet system was based upon a Marxist economic philosophy.
✔
power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely
The only problem I have with this analysis is that of when and how the advance towards the "commune society" and proletarian democracy was supposed to resume. If the only reason that a centralised state had to be preserved, indeed rebuilt after the partial dismantling of the Russian state in February 1917, was because of civil war and imperialist invasions, then why was it never dismantled once those threats had passed? If the dictatorship of one party was only a conditional necessity, a product of contingency rather than doctrine, why was it impossible ever to redistribute power back to the proletariat as a whole through the unbanning of the other socialist and revolutionary parties which had been suppressed after 1917? If a permanent party dictatorship and a technocracy instead of a democratic communal society isn't the avowed goal, then there should have been some plan or procedure ready pending the achievement of certain specified and publically understood conditions for reversing a _temporary_ unfortunate necessity. What seems to have happened instead is that the period of socialist construction under the technocratic central planning system prepared the ground for a resumption of capitalism rather than a transition to communism which by definition must be a direct democracy without a single dominating party ruling over the proletariat.
Those threats never passed, that’s kind of what the whole Cold War was
I don’t think we’ve come to the end of history. I just think socialism isn’t as good as capitalism. Find God
You harm that swap with his lenin statue😂😂😂
eh?
capitalism unrestrained in misery for many but restrained con work.
While I enjoyed watching the video, I couldn't consider it legit since the lesson took an overall personal approach with feelings, opinions, and out of the realm of reality to be the *"true story."*
*#1* Too many, *"I think,"*
*#2* 37:39 *"The food problem was solved,"* *"everybody ate,"* *"everybody had housing,"* *"everybody received an education,"* *"everybody had access to healthcare,"* *"everybody had access to a cultural life,"* and *"everybody had a job."* Not to mention *"I live in British; we don't have that, even in the U.S., we don't have that."* Seriously?
#3 It fails to account for the perspective of the *USSR member states.*
While the USSR was great for Moscow, its member state did not like being part of a union they felt forced to become a part of, especially when it wasn't doing better than its rivals in terms of *economics,* *liberties, and opportunities.*
I believe in *Karl Marx's theory,* but that is only possible if every single human has a kind heart in caring for and watching over one another. However, we live in a world where some do less but want more and more, while others want more power to be the absolute ruler of all.
Marx's theory has more of a chance in parts of the world, like very small towns or cities where everyone knows each other and works together as, and for the community.
Re 59:37 (national question) - this is true in many ways, but gives a one-sided picture, ignoring the turn towards Russian nationalism already under Stalin.
Long live the CCCP!
A knowledgeable discussion, informative. Would love to enhance my study on soviet era including perspective of capitalists.
By the cringe, you guys are funny ..... keep it comin'!
'By the cringe' - is that an American term?
@@stuartwray6175 If there's a Newcastle in USA then perhaps.
Lenin was top notch ,glad he never had a plantation wedding like justin Beiber and Reese Witherspoon.
It`s a great difference between to theologize and speculate about something, and apply the same far theoretical ideas violently on practice ! (especially if human society is concerned).
Complete bullshit to argue about choosing of so called "Socialism-Communism" as a goal we have inspire to, at the 21 century, after so many collapses we experienced with this ideology in all countries where people were unlucky enough to get into that shit - from German "Democratic" republic or Jugoslavia (where things were not so bad) to Cambodia with infamous Pol Pot. That kind of engine just not work, irrespective how one`s try to fix it, in spite of the fact it might seem very lucrative, exploiting such terms as ""equality" and "justice" - very easy exploited as banners. And all efforts to built a "Happy for all " society, where one closed and isolated part of the' "chosen, unblemished" people (and such will emerge in such sort of system automatically !) will decide main goals and conduct others by where and how to go, will lead to the same results. I have lived during that system up to age of 25 in Dream country named Soviet Union. You guys have never lived in system where all "belongs to worker class" and almost everything (from culture and travel abroad to commodity) is oppressed or in lack thanks to the " best and most deserved and merited worker`s class representatives", as it should have been accordingly. Idea of state where everything is super fine going and organized and commanded from high authority governed by twisted ideology is absolute utopia, and what is worse will end with dystopia if being practiced. I must say that all "arguments"" about advantages of Soviet system (the only one "communism/socialism" I experienced personally, but am aware about others) are sham. Starting from "heroical victory" over the Nazi regime (where correlation between casualty of German and Soviet Army was one to four at least, because of Soviet " rulers of working class " considered population mainly as a "meat holding" to achieve political and ideological aims and being afraid to loose their privileged positions ) and spared that "resource" without regret (with this I`m not going to disgrace heroism of many Soviet people during the war - as a fact as my aunt fighting for soviet side) also was killed at the battle front) , to "free, affordable"" livings for Soviet people or "great friendship and brotherhood" amid so called Soviet nationalities and even just common people. Moreover, in a great deal people were more greedy, aggressive, backstabbing - I am sure that more shit comes from common people when they living in scanty conditions (compare criminal and moral situation in Scandinavian countries and Afghanistan for example), or "stable and guaranteed" job.
In every point I can argue my position with confidence ang grounding on my own experience and remembering. One remark: I am living in Latvia, country being occupied by peaceful Soviet Union in almost in it`s hay day, and therefore can tell about my local experience, but as far as I know in Latvian Socialist Republic situation was even fare more better than in many regions of Russia or elsewhere (Latvian, Estonian and Lithuenian Soviet republics were as a sort of show case in Soviet Union). Of course this phenomenon of 20 century should be subject for analytic study etc, but no more practiced ever !!!
PS Naturally, there were some good things in USSR (as in some aspects education system) , but all this fading away when measure with essential.
The failure of the Soviet Union had less to do with communism and more to do with the usual pattern in any country undergoing violent revolution to overthrow one long-entrenched tyranny only to have another one take its place. Democracy is a very fragile political mechanism and in countries with little to no democratic tradition to begin with, it breaks easily. The history of the Latin American republics attests to this: within 20-50 years of their overthrow of Spanish colonial rule in the 19th Century they all degenerated into despotism. The only difference is in the paranoia of the ruling group as to how much violence is unleashed against the people to subdue them. Stalin basically repeated the pattern of Ivan the Terrible, only he had the technology at his disposal to rack up a much higher bodycount than Ivan could have dreamed of.
Some of the Latin American republics have had generational reigns of terror that match any of the worst atrocities of Communist states except in bodycount. And these countries have undergone multiple revolutions and coups d'etat only for one corrupt, murderous autocrat to be replaced with another and another and another. Right-wingers bleating VENEZUELA TEH EEVULZ SOCIALIZMS haven't the first clue about the history of that country or of the entire region for that matter, and their grandfathers were all quite silent about the military juntas that ruled that country in their time. If the Bolsheviks had never been around, it wouldn't have made that much difference. The Czarist regime would still have been overthrown, the Kerensky government would still have made the same mistakes keeping Russia in a war it was wholly ill-equipped to fight and ultimately turned authoritarian if not despotic to secure its control over the empire. Or Russia would have broken up into multiple authoritarian states warring with one another for resources while their populations starved.
Call me paranoid, but this guy comes across as a bit of a lefty.
As I said before, the USSR started going down the drain once their military industrial complex joined together with the conservative establishment within the party.
Then they overthrew Nikita Kruscherov and replaced him with Breznev.
When Kruscherov was in power the USSR economy was booming even after it had lost 27 million citizens during WWII.
Kruscherov cut defense spending, closed down the labor camps, released all political prisoners, cut the size of the military and invested in massive infrastructure projects, science and technology, social programs and the production of consumer goods.
The quality of life for the average Soviet citizen during his rule improved drastically. Food production went up, calory consumption went up.
Was there an issue with antisemitism in the USSR at any point? Not asking in an antagonistic way just asking.
Great leaders ???? Bruh what ?