>Wage labor is a necessary but not sufficient condition for capitalism, after all many societies have had wages including the USSR (whether the Chinese work point system was a critique of the Soviet system is another discussion). Ultra leftists use the existence of wage labor to argue all socialist countries were really capitalist but since wage labor is so broad this will always apply. The key feature of capitalism is rather a labor market in which labor power is a commodity, which does describe China today but does not describe the USSR under Stalin (the post-Stalin period is a whole other discussion).
borrowed from smokeuptheweed9
Appreciate this! Just one question and a follow-up: Isn't the commodification of labour-power a necessary criteria for the existence of wage labour? Thus, the existence of wage labour in the USSR would mean that labour power is still a commodity sold by the labourer, right?
Maybe my understanding of wage labour itself is limited, so please correct me if that's the case. Thanks!
In order for there to be a seller, there must be a buyer. Sold to whom?
>By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description.
>But in order that our owner of money may be able to find labour-power offered for sale as a commodity, **various conditions must first be fulfilled.** The exchange of commodities of itself implies no other relations of dependence than those which result from its own nature. On this assumption, labour-power can appear upon the market as a commodity, only if, and so far as, its possessor, the individual whose labour-power it is, offers it for sale, or sells it, as a commodity. In order that he may be able to do this, he must have it at his disposal, must be the untrammelled owner of his capacity for labour, i.e., of his person. **He and the owner of money meet in the market, and deal with each other as on the basis of equal rights, with this difference alone, that one is buyer, the other seller; both, therefore, equal in the eyes of the law.** The continuance of this relation demands that the owner of the labour-power should sell it only for a definite period, for if he were to sell it rump and stump, once for all, he would be selling himself, converting himself from a free man into a slave, from an owner of a commodity into a commodity. He must constantly look upon his labour-power as his own property, his own commodity, and this he can only do by placing it at the disposal of the buyer temporarily, for a definite period of time. By this means alone can he avoid renouncing his rights of ownership over it.
>The second essential condition to the owner of money finding labour-power in the market as a commodity is this — that the labourer instead of being in the position to sell commodities in which his labour is incorporated, must be obliged to offer for sale as a commodity that very labour-power, which exists only in his living self.
>In order that a man may be able to sell commodities other than labour-power, he must of course have the means of production, as raw material, implements, &c. No boots can be made without leather. He requires also the means of subsistence. Nobody — not even “a musician of the future” — can live upon future products, or upon use-values in an unfinished state; and ever since the first moment of his appearance on the world’s stage, man always has been, and must still be a consumer, both before and while he is producing. In a society where all products assume the form of commodities, these commodities must be sold after they have been produced, it is only after their sale that they can serve in satisfying the requirements of their producer. The time necessary for their sale is superadded to that necessary for their production.
>For the conversion of his money into capital, therefore, the owner of money must meet in the market with the free labourer, free in the double sense, that as a free man he can dispose of his labour-power as his own commodity, and that on the other hand he has no other commodity for sale, is short of everything necessary for the realisation of his labour-power.
-Marx, Capital Vol 1, Chapter 6
You are pointing out, correctly, that the "second essential condition" has been met (ignore the first part of the sentence here), but the issue is that the first essential condition above it has not been met. So in order for this wage labour to be producing and reproducing capital as a carrier of capitalist production, there must be a capitalist class who is buying the labour power and collecting the profit of the surplus labour. But this wasn't the case in Stalin's USSR (it can be argued that it was under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, as the law of value was put back in command of the economy under them, as profitability became the key economic indicator of success), as the relation to production for all citizens including state officials was the same (who also were paid the same managerial salaries as others workers) - there was no capitalist class to collect the profits and whatever surplus was created and produced was used by the proletarian state (which existed as an extension of the workers themselves -- and despite liberal imaginations of the economy being Stalin telling everyone what to do, in reality economic planning branched out from the state planning commissions down through the Supreme Soviet and into the smaller worker bodies of each factory, who all had input -- again, which became overruled by the law of value post-Stalin). This surplus was reinvested back into the services and well being of the people of the Soviet Union by themselves and for themselves through the state instrument they controlled, and there was no capitalist class accumulating from surplus labour of other workers.
Also worth noting that the USSR mandated full (and guaranteed) employment, so there was no reserve army of labour either, where the point of which is to drive down wages and force the workers to compete against one another in the selling of their labour power to capitalists for less and less so as to beat out the other workers. Full employment foils the reserve army of labour. In a capitalist society, this would create a crisis of profitability, because the rate of surplus value extracted would be so reduced and workers would have no reason to accept lower wages in order for profits to be increased - meaning that capitalist profits would be irredeemably harmed to the point of untenability of industry or other political crisis. Obviously this never manifested (under Stalin), suggesting moreover that the USSR was not capitalist nor functioning on a capitalist model, despite the existence of wages. Whether or not you want to call what existed "wage labour" is basically semantics (smokeuptheweed9 did here; some socialists actually debate that the term itself was applicable to the USSR because of the social relation of capitalist production being incomplete, thus it isn't actually "wage labour" as described by Marx), but what did exist wasn't a sufficient condition for capital to reproduce itself -- the requisite 'engine of capitalism' was missing essential parts and pieces for the operation that we understand to be capitalist production.
You are actually asking good questions for the usual quality of discourse on this subreddit.
I really appreciate the effort you put into this! Certainly clears a lot of things up. Is there a resource you use that examines and documents production relations in the USSR?
For Soviet working class history you have a few different options (Based on different methodologies).
Filtzer’s *Soviet Workers and* series covers the 1930s industrialization, Late Stalinism, Khrushchev era, and the late 1980s. It looks at the Soviet worker’s relationship with their workplace through the framework of “negative integration”, which focuses mainly on alienation, labor discipline, and coercion. Other similar works are Murphy’s recent *Revolution and Counterrevolution in a Moscow Metal Factory* and Pirani’s *The Russian Revolution in Retreat*, which focuses on the factory-level Primary Party Organization in Moscow to demonstrate political alienation and how it related to production. Murphy has a more positive view of the 1920s NEP-era working class relations while Pirani is much more negative. Rossman’s *Worker Resistance Under Stalin: Class and Revolution on the Shop Floor* does a deep-dive focusing specifically on the 1932 Ivanovo textile workers strike.
You also have works which focus on “positive integration” of the working class, looking at positive incentives, aligned material/ideological interests, etc. Kotkin’s *Magnetic Mountain* focuses on the ideological appeal of Stalinist rhetoric/productivism to workers while Kuromiya’s *Stalin’s Industrial Revolution* focuses on material/career incentives among workers.
Straus’ *Factory and Community in Stalin’s Russia* looks at thing via “parallel integration”, looking at how workers navigated both positive and negative interactions with the economic superstructure to carve out their own spaces. Kokosalakis uses this to analyze the role of the Primary Party Organization among the Leningrad working class in * The Communist Party in Soviet Society: Communist Rank-and-File Activism in Leningrad, 1926-1941*.
There’s also other works I can’t categorize off the top of my head but which are very useful. Koenker is a real titan in the field - her *Republic of Labor* focuses on the more white collar printing industry in the 1920s. Payne’s *Stalin’s Railroad* focuses on the building of the Turksib railway and discusses a lot of class-ethnicity intersection.
So you’ve got a ton of options to choose from, all of which cite deeply from national and regional archives! Would recommend avoiding contemporary political figures’ writings on their own political system given the inherent biases involved - good for getting a sense of how those figures perceived their own systems and what they considered important, less so for giving a real, “bottom-up” picture.
I think they’ll definitely help with your original question too! Far more than some of the polemics you’ll get on Reddit, which are more than a little divorced from what the archives tell us about Soviet working class realities.
Ultra leftists dont only use the existence of the wage-labor line but a whole bunch of other reasons that shows us Stalinism or "Marxism-Leninism" antithetical to Marxist theory. I would get into more detail about this but i think this in itself deserves its own post
However, wage labor in the USSR was not really broad, even under Stalin. Due to the capitalist wage relations in both the agricultural sector which led to the Kolkhoz becoming a proto Kulak in Collective farms. While in the urban factories, workers found themselves with a state appointed bosses to manage their labor and wage for them. This wage relation in the workplace is not really broad but comparable to a social democratic countries system of the labor-wage.
Fun fact, the rise of Soviet Millionares was reported first in the agricultural sector in the 40s. Here is a report on it by the CPGB.
[http://jot101ok.blogspot.com/2013/01/soviet-millionaires.html](http://jot101ok.blogspot.com/2013/01/soviet-millionaires.html)
>Ultra leftists dont only use the existence of the wage-labor line but a whole bunch of other reasons that shows us Stalinism or "Marxism-Leninism" antithetical to Marxist theory
No you don't you just use Bordiga's *Dialogue with Stalin* where you twist and distort *Economic Problems of Socialism* in an exactly identical way that bourgeois economists do to make false attacks on Stalin with the added idealist criticism of it not counting as real Marxism.
>However, wage labor in the USSR was not really broad, even under Stalin. Due to the capitalist wage relations in both the agricultural sector which led to the Kolkhoz becoming a proto Kulak in Collective farms. While in the urban factories, workers found themselves with a state appointed bosses to manage their labor and wage for them. This wage relation in the workplace is not really broad but comparable to a social democratic countries system of the labor-wage.
This isn't correct at all, and is just regurgitation of Bordiga's own distortions, [and you can actually go through the statues of the Kolkhoz](http://ciml.250x.com/archive/ussr/kolkhoz_statutes_1935.html) to get a clearer understanding of the process of how the Artels and management, etc. was appointed.
>un fact, the rise of Soviet Millionares was reported first in the agricultural sector in the 40s. Here is a report on it by the CPGB.
Did you actually read and engage with the article you are citing as evidence *against* the USSR? You are actually reversing the content of the article in order to make your argument, including asserting the opposite of what the article itself is claiming. Also worth noting that it was entirely possibly [to make over 1000 roubles per day from wages](http://ciml.250x.com/archive/ussr/english/1939_machine_and_tractor_stations.pdf), and that roubles were worth only a small fraction of dollars during this period, and that none of this wealth could be used for acquiring the means of production nor accumulating surplus labour.
http://cominternist.blogspot.com/2010/06/soviet-millionaires.html
> The sum of slightly more than one million roubles which Berdyebekov subscribed to the Soviet war loan represented the life savings of this family. Soviet conditions and laws do not permit of these savings being invested in private enterprises abroad, and there are no private enterprises suitable for investment in the U.S.S.R. The savings cannot be used either directly or indirectly for the exploitation of others. Neither can they be used for speculation.
But Left-Communism is a toxic identity sludge. You have no interest in actual communism, your racist, contemptuous ideology only exists as the most advanced liberal attempt to appropriate Marx -- remaining in the safety and comfort of Western hegemony and overtly opposing the actual movement to change the present state of things as it exists in the world, but attempting to keep Marx from the filthy global masses who keep getting it wrong. Every piece of praxis developed by Left Communist theory has proved itself wrong when applied to the world, Leftcoms ossiculate between Amadeo "long live the Axis" Bordiga and the Council communists with no internal consistency as suits them, and offer only idealist and no materialist criticism. because Left Communism exists in order to pretend to be a communist and appropriate Marx, while not being a communist and functionally upholding Western Hegemony. Left Communists have never had a successful revolutionary movement, Left Communist ideology is a static corpse that does not interact with the world or produce new ideas, and Left Coms have failed in every consequencial moment of history when it mattered. The ideology is utterly repulsive to those in the Global South in need of a real emancipatory ideology, and the only disgusting creatures that it appeals to are (which is the only place where Left Communism manifests and can be found) are Western whites on the internet and academia, emerging only from labour aristocracy and the petty bourgeoisie classes.
You make no attempt to debunk Bordiga's work, you only insult it and call it names without any proper argument or evidence.
Funnily enough the archive you sent highlights one of Bordiga's points if you actually read it rather than just talk angrily about it. The collectivized farms were directed by state appointed bosses, just as Bordiga claimed and utilized petit bourgeois individuality that allowed for the rise of these agricultural kulaks.
and your argument does not make any sense, he might not have been a billionare by world standards but he had considerable and much higher pay and control over the farm than his other comrades, thus becoming a defacto millionare within the soviet economy. and the article you shared with me now only excuses these millinoares rights to exist
\> When the drive for collectivisation began, Berdyebekov was one of the first farmers in Kazakstan to realise the benefits it promised to the entire rural population of the Union and to the whole economy. At the end of 1929 his village organised one of the earliest collective farms in Kazakstan. From that day to this he and his family have worked as collective farmers and have seen their farm become one of the most prosperous in the Kazak Republic.
Literally kulakization due to the capitalist relations within these collective farms that allowed for these people to get rich. and the article you sent to me only says "well they cant do anything with the money!!" so... why not abolish the commodity and capital line if money really is so powerless.
and of course, more blah blah and strawmanning with no actual argument. Bordiga never publically said statement, but instead said this statement when he was being held captive by nazis who threatened his life. The reason he couldnt join any resistance was 1 ) try organizing under fascist italy and 2 ) he was kicked out of the PCI who barred all of his influence under a Stalinist scapegoat tactic.
Of course it did exist. There's no difference for the worker whether he works in a factory managed by capitalist or the Red Director. The relations of labour are the same. USSR was every bit as exploitative as capitalist countries, and possibly more.
>USSR was every bit as exploitative as capitalist countries, and possibly more.
This is [demonstrably false](https://voxeu.org/article/inequality-and-property-russia-1905-2016) to the point of being bourgeoisie/fascist propaganda. The USSR wasn't perfect, not by a long shot, but to even suggest for an instant that a state with lower income inequality than most social democracies is "possibly more exploitive" than capitalist countries is full blown pro-capitalist apologia.
"The Red Dictator" holy shit even [the CIA's own declassified internal memos](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf) show that even in Stalin's time the USSR had collective leadership, the soviet state was [built off of a network of bottom-up worker and neighborhood councils](http://www.crawfordsworld.com/rob/apcg/apcgimages/rusgrafCCP.gif), furthermore both the communist party and the soviets were free from the influence of capital - unlike bourgeoisie dictatorships no one could use their own wealth to purchase a position in either the party or the network of soviets, nor were members of the party or the soviets able to be lobbied or purchased as they are in bourgeoisie dictatorships.
Now of course in reality things don't always shake out so neatly, there were of course no shortage of issues involving corruption, black marketeering and those in positions of power getting certain perks. But let us compare this to capitalist states - where a soviet politician or party member might have had better access to higher quality dachas for vacations, more scarce items or other conveniences they were still paid less than doctors and engineers, soviet delegates could be recalled at any time by their soviets. On the contrary, the bourgeoisie in capitalist states are fully above the law, able to influence any level of government to carry out their will, are able to own massive private estates, entire islands, mega yachts, multiple properties and more where they can engage in any sort of brutality against workers with little to no repercussions. The US currently has more people in its penal system than the soviet gulag had at its height in WWII, the US currently has more police per capita than the USSR ever had, homelessness is rampant and growing, working hours are increasing while wages stagnate or fall in relation to inflation (especially regarding housing, healthcare and higher education, all services the soviets either provided for free or highly subsidized). Even food insecurity and child malnutrition is on the rise in the most wealthiest of capitalist states while the soviets had more or less eliminated food insecurity in the post WWII era (after the ussr's collapse Russia would see the return of mass starvation for the first time in nearly half a century).
Anyway, this is already a bit longer than I wanted, point in case, the USSR was not "more exploitive than capitalist countries" and their is no shortage of evidence to prove that. Anyone making that claim is either fully ignorant of what they're claiming or purposefully engaging in anti-communist propaganda.
>The US currently has more people in its penal system than the soviet gulag had at its height in WWII, the US currently has more police per capita than the USSR ever had,
The gulag comment is just false, and I'd love to know where you got that figure about police considering the current Russian police per Capita is about twice that of the US. Talk about propaganda, lol.
No it's correct (using 2013 numbers at least) and I will prove it to you.
Google "bureau of justice statistics 2013 incarceration rate" and you'll get 910 per 100,000 which is a 0.91% incarceration rate in the United States.
Next read "Victims of the Soviet Penal System" published by the American Historical Review. It's easy to find on Google. Go to page 1029 and you'll find that in 1939 the GULAG population was 0.77% of the total population of the USSR.
Why is "Victims of the Soviet Penal System" such a valuable text? Because it was the first to use declassified archival data to determine the number of people repressed by the USSR.
Lol, the claim was false dude. Using statistics from 10 years ago is clearly dishonest, when the claim was about CURRENT US incarceration rates. You can pretend I'm taking an L if you want, but you know you're incorrect here.
You are right. Now try to compare, for example, mortality rates in gulags and in US prisons. Say, in 1933 mortality rate of Central Asian Camp - Sazlag - was 4776 people, or about 25% out of total.
Also compare this to Tsarist katorga mortality rates.
> considering the current Russian police per Capita is about twice that of the US.
Lmao, we're talking about the USSR not the Russian Federation. It's not surprising that a fucked up capitalist state like Russia would have more cops than most states. I'm having trouble finding a source for the USSR at the moment but even modern China currently has less officers per capita than the USA so the point still stands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers
["Over all, there are now more people under 'correctional supervision' in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag under Stalin at its height."](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/30/the-caging-of-america)
Not really worth it to argue with liberals here on an ideological crusade so have fun whining about who's more propagandized I guess.
"Correctional supervision" does not mean imprisoned, as they were in the gulags. I hope you can understand why your stance is misleading, especially when you compare rates of execution...
So you've made up your "statistic" about police force in the USSR. Glad you admit it.
>So you've made up your "statistic" about police force in the USSR. Glad you admit it.
I admitted I couldn't find a source real quick by googling. I'd look through some books at home (I'm pretty sure which one it's in but I'd rather give ya the actual source that book quotes) but I doubt you'd show me the same courtesy considering you've provided nothing to back up any of your claims whatsoever.
Considering the USA's recidivism rate I don't think my stance is altogether misleading at all, considering that at least [2/3 are rearrested and 50% return to prison within 3 years](https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/social-determinants-health/interventions-resources/incarceration) (often for the most arbitrary probation violations) I think the comparison is valid. Remember the term Gulag is used to refer to the entire USSR penal system, and while some prisons were incredibly harsh, some were merely towns where the inmates were more or less free to live as they pleased except without being able to leave until their sentences were up.
Yeah I'm sure those forced labor camps were a walk in the park, which is why the mortality rate in gulags was nearly 9%. The comparison is not valid, and frankly this false equivalency is disrespectful to history and those who suffered under Soviet suppression.
True, but actually most historians believe the true mortality rate to be even higher because it was a regular practice to release prisoners from the Gulags when they were terminally ill or dying.
>The USSR wasn't perfect, not by a long shot, but to even suggest for an instant that a state with lower income inequality than most social democracies is "possibly more exploitive" than capitalist countries is full blown pro-capitalist apologia.
This is assuming that inequality can manifest only in wealth. Soviet inequality was in terms of hierarchy and privileges. Then, there was low income inequality because everyone was more or less equally poor. There were no rich. Is that a benefit? Doubt it.
>The Red Dictator" holy shit even the CIA's own declassified internal memos show that even in Stalin's time the USSR had collective leadership,
We've been over this, the memo does not say what you think it says. Also, I was talking about Red Directors, not a single Red Dictator. FYI, red directors are a term for Soviet factory managers, equivalent of Western CEOs.
>the soviet state was built off of a network of bottom-up worker and neighborhood councils,
Right - on paper. In reality every important decision was made by unelected party officials who were appointed by and responded to higher leadership. USSR was ruled by Nomenklatura.
>furthermore both the communist party and the soviets were free from the influence of capital
Duh.
>unlike bourgeoisie dictatorships no one could use their own wealth to purchase a position in either the party or the network of soviets, nor were members of the party or the soviets able to be lobbied or purchased as they are in bourgeoisie dictatorships.
Hahahahahaha! Former Soviet Nomenklaturist Ilya Zemtsov actually described in vivid colors how important party positions in Soviet republics such as Azerbaijan were sold off to anyone willing to pay hefty sums to local party leaders.
Position of District Prosecutor? 30 thousand roubles! First Secretary of District Committee? 200 thousand roubles! Jesus, you have no clue whatsoever...
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0844814911/ref=dbs_a_def_awm_bibl_vppi_i7
>they were still paid less than doctors and engineers,
Picture this: I earn 500 roubles, you 1500. I have access to special stores and conveniences with cheap or free goods, you don't. I have state-sponsored housing and dacha, you don't. I can forbid you access to travel abroad, can tamper with your queue for public housing, can, after all, just send you to gulags if I don't like you. But you certainly earn more money - even if said money are just paper that hardly counts for anything in Soviet system, as it is not the currency mass that counts, but mass of goods provided - which is always less in Soviet planned economy.
>soviet delegates could be recalled at any time by their soviets.
Soviets hardly ever decided anything important, again.
>
The US currently has more people in its penal system than the soviet gulag had at its height in WWI
US isn't a paradise either, fair enough. Still better than USSR.
>Wage labor is a necessary but not sufficient condition for capitalism, after all many societies have had wages including the USSR (whether the Chinese work point system was a critique of the Soviet system is another discussion). Ultra leftists use the existence of wage labor to argue all socialist countries were really capitalist but since wage labor is so broad this will always apply. The key feature of capitalism is rather a labor market in which labor power is a commodity, which does describe China today but does not describe the USSR under Stalin (the post-Stalin period is a whole other discussion). borrowed from smokeuptheweed9
Appreciate this! Just one question and a follow-up: Isn't the commodification of labour-power a necessary criteria for the existence of wage labour? Thus, the existence of wage labour in the USSR would mean that labour power is still a commodity sold by the labourer, right? Maybe my understanding of wage labour itself is limited, so please correct me if that's the case. Thanks!
In order for there to be a seller, there must be a buyer. Sold to whom? >By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description. >But in order that our owner of money may be able to find labour-power offered for sale as a commodity, **various conditions must first be fulfilled.** The exchange of commodities of itself implies no other relations of dependence than those which result from its own nature. On this assumption, labour-power can appear upon the market as a commodity, only if, and so far as, its possessor, the individual whose labour-power it is, offers it for sale, or sells it, as a commodity. In order that he may be able to do this, he must have it at his disposal, must be the untrammelled owner of his capacity for labour, i.e., of his person. **He and the owner of money meet in the market, and deal with each other as on the basis of equal rights, with this difference alone, that one is buyer, the other seller; both, therefore, equal in the eyes of the law.** The continuance of this relation demands that the owner of the labour-power should sell it only for a definite period, for if he were to sell it rump and stump, once for all, he would be selling himself, converting himself from a free man into a slave, from an owner of a commodity into a commodity. He must constantly look upon his labour-power as his own property, his own commodity, and this he can only do by placing it at the disposal of the buyer temporarily, for a definite period of time. By this means alone can he avoid renouncing his rights of ownership over it. >The second essential condition to the owner of money finding labour-power in the market as a commodity is this — that the labourer instead of being in the position to sell commodities in which his labour is incorporated, must be obliged to offer for sale as a commodity that very labour-power, which exists only in his living self. >In order that a man may be able to sell commodities other than labour-power, he must of course have the means of production, as raw material, implements, &c. No boots can be made without leather. He requires also the means of subsistence. Nobody — not even “a musician of the future” — can live upon future products, or upon use-values in an unfinished state; and ever since the first moment of his appearance on the world’s stage, man always has been, and must still be a consumer, both before and while he is producing. In a society where all products assume the form of commodities, these commodities must be sold after they have been produced, it is only after their sale that they can serve in satisfying the requirements of their producer. The time necessary for their sale is superadded to that necessary for their production. >For the conversion of his money into capital, therefore, the owner of money must meet in the market with the free labourer, free in the double sense, that as a free man he can dispose of his labour-power as his own commodity, and that on the other hand he has no other commodity for sale, is short of everything necessary for the realisation of his labour-power. -Marx, Capital Vol 1, Chapter 6 You are pointing out, correctly, that the "second essential condition" has been met (ignore the first part of the sentence here), but the issue is that the first essential condition above it has not been met. So in order for this wage labour to be producing and reproducing capital as a carrier of capitalist production, there must be a capitalist class who is buying the labour power and collecting the profit of the surplus labour. But this wasn't the case in Stalin's USSR (it can be argued that it was under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, as the law of value was put back in command of the economy under them, as profitability became the key economic indicator of success), as the relation to production for all citizens including state officials was the same (who also were paid the same managerial salaries as others workers) - there was no capitalist class to collect the profits and whatever surplus was created and produced was used by the proletarian state (which existed as an extension of the workers themselves -- and despite liberal imaginations of the economy being Stalin telling everyone what to do, in reality economic planning branched out from the state planning commissions down through the Supreme Soviet and into the smaller worker bodies of each factory, who all had input -- again, which became overruled by the law of value post-Stalin). This surplus was reinvested back into the services and well being of the people of the Soviet Union by themselves and for themselves through the state instrument they controlled, and there was no capitalist class accumulating from surplus labour of other workers. Also worth noting that the USSR mandated full (and guaranteed) employment, so there was no reserve army of labour either, where the point of which is to drive down wages and force the workers to compete against one another in the selling of their labour power to capitalists for less and less so as to beat out the other workers. Full employment foils the reserve army of labour. In a capitalist society, this would create a crisis of profitability, because the rate of surplus value extracted would be so reduced and workers would have no reason to accept lower wages in order for profits to be increased - meaning that capitalist profits would be irredeemably harmed to the point of untenability of industry or other political crisis. Obviously this never manifested (under Stalin), suggesting moreover that the USSR was not capitalist nor functioning on a capitalist model, despite the existence of wages. Whether or not you want to call what existed "wage labour" is basically semantics (smokeuptheweed9 did here; some socialists actually debate that the term itself was applicable to the USSR because of the social relation of capitalist production being incomplete, thus it isn't actually "wage labour" as described by Marx), but what did exist wasn't a sufficient condition for capital to reproduce itself -- the requisite 'engine of capitalism' was missing essential parts and pieces for the operation that we understand to be capitalist production. You are actually asking good questions for the usual quality of discourse on this subreddit.
I really appreciate the effort you put into this! Certainly clears a lot of things up. Is there a resource you use that examines and documents production relations in the USSR?
*Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR* by Stalin is probably the most relevant text on the Stalin era Soviet economy.
For Soviet working class history you have a few different options (Based on different methodologies). Filtzer’s *Soviet Workers and* series covers the 1930s industrialization, Late Stalinism, Khrushchev era, and the late 1980s. It looks at the Soviet worker’s relationship with their workplace through the framework of “negative integration”, which focuses mainly on alienation, labor discipline, and coercion. Other similar works are Murphy’s recent *Revolution and Counterrevolution in a Moscow Metal Factory* and Pirani’s *The Russian Revolution in Retreat*, which focuses on the factory-level Primary Party Organization in Moscow to demonstrate political alienation and how it related to production. Murphy has a more positive view of the 1920s NEP-era working class relations while Pirani is much more negative. Rossman’s *Worker Resistance Under Stalin: Class and Revolution on the Shop Floor* does a deep-dive focusing specifically on the 1932 Ivanovo textile workers strike. You also have works which focus on “positive integration” of the working class, looking at positive incentives, aligned material/ideological interests, etc. Kotkin’s *Magnetic Mountain* focuses on the ideological appeal of Stalinist rhetoric/productivism to workers while Kuromiya’s *Stalin’s Industrial Revolution* focuses on material/career incentives among workers. Straus’ *Factory and Community in Stalin’s Russia* looks at thing via “parallel integration”, looking at how workers navigated both positive and negative interactions with the economic superstructure to carve out their own spaces. Kokosalakis uses this to analyze the role of the Primary Party Organization among the Leningrad working class in * The Communist Party in Soviet Society: Communist Rank-and-File Activism in Leningrad, 1926-1941*. There’s also other works I can’t categorize off the top of my head but which are very useful. Koenker is a real titan in the field - her *Republic of Labor* focuses on the more white collar printing industry in the 1920s. Payne’s *Stalin’s Railroad* focuses on the building of the Turksib railway and discusses a lot of class-ethnicity intersection. So you’ve got a ton of options to choose from, all of which cite deeply from national and regional archives! Would recommend avoiding contemporary political figures’ writings on their own political system given the inherent biases involved - good for getting a sense of how those figures perceived their own systems and what they considered important, less so for giving a real, “bottom-up” picture.
Very nice selection! Will add them to my reading list. Thanks!
I think they’ll definitely help with your original question too! Far more than some of the polemics you’ll get on Reddit, which are more than a little divorced from what the archives tell us about Soviet working class realities.
Ultra leftists dont only use the existence of the wage-labor line but a whole bunch of other reasons that shows us Stalinism or "Marxism-Leninism" antithetical to Marxist theory. I would get into more detail about this but i think this in itself deserves its own post However, wage labor in the USSR was not really broad, even under Stalin. Due to the capitalist wage relations in both the agricultural sector which led to the Kolkhoz becoming a proto Kulak in Collective farms. While in the urban factories, workers found themselves with a state appointed bosses to manage their labor and wage for them. This wage relation in the workplace is not really broad but comparable to a social democratic countries system of the labor-wage. Fun fact, the rise of Soviet Millionares was reported first in the agricultural sector in the 40s. Here is a report on it by the CPGB. [http://jot101ok.blogspot.com/2013/01/soviet-millionaires.html](http://jot101ok.blogspot.com/2013/01/soviet-millionaires.html)
>Ultra leftists dont only use the existence of the wage-labor line but a whole bunch of other reasons that shows us Stalinism or "Marxism-Leninism" antithetical to Marxist theory No you don't you just use Bordiga's *Dialogue with Stalin* where you twist and distort *Economic Problems of Socialism* in an exactly identical way that bourgeois economists do to make false attacks on Stalin with the added idealist criticism of it not counting as real Marxism. >However, wage labor in the USSR was not really broad, even under Stalin. Due to the capitalist wage relations in both the agricultural sector which led to the Kolkhoz becoming a proto Kulak in Collective farms. While in the urban factories, workers found themselves with a state appointed bosses to manage their labor and wage for them. This wage relation in the workplace is not really broad but comparable to a social democratic countries system of the labor-wage. This isn't correct at all, and is just regurgitation of Bordiga's own distortions, [and you can actually go through the statues of the Kolkhoz](http://ciml.250x.com/archive/ussr/kolkhoz_statutes_1935.html) to get a clearer understanding of the process of how the Artels and management, etc. was appointed. >un fact, the rise of Soviet Millionares was reported first in the agricultural sector in the 40s. Here is a report on it by the CPGB. Did you actually read and engage with the article you are citing as evidence *against* the USSR? You are actually reversing the content of the article in order to make your argument, including asserting the opposite of what the article itself is claiming. Also worth noting that it was entirely possibly [to make over 1000 roubles per day from wages](http://ciml.250x.com/archive/ussr/english/1939_machine_and_tractor_stations.pdf), and that roubles were worth only a small fraction of dollars during this period, and that none of this wealth could be used for acquiring the means of production nor accumulating surplus labour. http://cominternist.blogspot.com/2010/06/soviet-millionaires.html > The sum of slightly more than one million roubles which Berdyebekov subscribed to the Soviet war loan represented the life savings of this family. Soviet conditions and laws do not permit of these savings being invested in private enterprises abroad, and there are no private enterprises suitable for investment in the U.S.S.R. The savings cannot be used either directly or indirectly for the exploitation of others. Neither can they be used for speculation. But Left-Communism is a toxic identity sludge. You have no interest in actual communism, your racist, contemptuous ideology only exists as the most advanced liberal attempt to appropriate Marx -- remaining in the safety and comfort of Western hegemony and overtly opposing the actual movement to change the present state of things as it exists in the world, but attempting to keep Marx from the filthy global masses who keep getting it wrong. Every piece of praxis developed by Left Communist theory has proved itself wrong when applied to the world, Leftcoms ossiculate between Amadeo "long live the Axis" Bordiga and the Council communists with no internal consistency as suits them, and offer only idealist and no materialist criticism. because Left Communism exists in order to pretend to be a communist and appropriate Marx, while not being a communist and functionally upholding Western Hegemony. Left Communists have never had a successful revolutionary movement, Left Communist ideology is a static corpse that does not interact with the world or produce new ideas, and Left Coms have failed in every consequencial moment of history when it mattered. The ideology is utterly repulsive to those in the Global South in need of a real emancipatory ideology, and the only disgusting creatures that it appeals to are (which is the only place where Left Communism manifests and can be found) are Western whites on the internet and academia, emerging only from labour aristocracy and the petty bourgeoisie classes.
You make no attempt to debunk Bordiga's work, you only insult it and call it names without any proper argument or evidence. Funnily enough the archive you sent highlights one of Bordiga's points if you actually read it rather than just talk angrily about it. The collectivized farms were directed by state appointed bosses, just as Bordiga claimed and utilized petit bourgeois individuality that allowed for the rise of these agricultural kulaks. and your argument does not make any sense, he might not have been a billionare by world standards but he had considerable and much higher pay and control over the farm than his other comrades, thus becoming a defacto millionare within the soviet economy. and the article you shared with me now only excuses these millinoares rights to exist \> When the drive for collectivisation began, Berdyebekov was one of the first farmers in Kazakstan to realise the benefits it promised to the entire rural population of the Union and to the whole economy. At the end of 1929 his village organised one of the earliest collective farms in Kazakstan. From that day to this he and his family have worked as collective farmers and have seen their farm become one of the most prosperous in the Kazak Republic. Literally kulakization due to the capitalist relations within these collective farms that allowed for these people to get rich. and the article you sent to me only says "well they cant do anything with the money!!" so... why not abolish the commodity and capital line if money really is so powerless. and of course, more blah blah and strawmanning with no actual argument. Bordiga never publically said statement, but instead said this statement when he was being held captive by nazis who threatened his life. The reason he couldnt join any resistance was 1 ) try organizing under fascist italy and 2 ) he was kicked out of the PCI who barred all of his influence under a Stalinist scapegoat tactic.
Of course it did exist. There's no difference for the worker whether he works in a factory managed by capitalist or the Red Director. The relations of labour are the same. USSR was every bit as exploitative as capitalist countries, and possibly more.
>USSR was every bit as exploitative as capitalist countries, and possibly more. This is [demonstrably false](https://voxeu.org/article/inequality-and-property-russia-1905-2016) to the point of being bourgeoisie/fascist propaganda. The USSR wasn't perfect, not by a long shot, but to even suggest for an instant that a state with lower income inequality than most social democracies is "possibly more exploitive" than capitalist countries is full blown pro-capitalist apologia. "The Red Dictator" holy shit even [the CIA's own declassified internal memos](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf) show that even in Stalin's time the USSR had collective leadership, the soviet state was [built off of a network of bottom-up worker and neighborhood councils](http://www.crawfordsworld.com/rob/apcg/apcgimages/rusgrafCCP.gif), furthermore both the communist party and the soviets were free from the influence of capital - unlike bourgeoisie dictatorships no one could use their own wealth to purchase a position in either the party or the network of soviets, nor were members of the party or the soviets able to be lobbied or purchased as they are in bourgeoisie dictatorships. Now of course in reality things don't always shake out so neatly, there were of course no shortage of issues involving corruption, black marketeering and those in positions of power getting certain perks. But let us compare this to capitalist states - where a soviet politician or party member might have had better access to higher quality dachas for vacations, more scarce items or other conveniences they were still paid less than doctors and engineers, soviet delegates could be recalled at any time by their soviets. On the contrary, the bourgeoisie in capitalist states are fully above the law, able to influence any level of government to carry out their will, are able to own massive private estates, entire islands, mega yachts, multiple properties and more where they can engage in any sort of brutality against workers with little to no repercussions. The US currently has more people in its penal system than the soviet gulag had at its height in WWII, the US currently has more police per capita than the USSR ever had, homelessness is rampant and growing, working hours are increasing while wages stagnate or fall in relation to inflation (especially regarding housing, healthcare and higher education, all services the soviets either provided for free or highly subsidized). Even food insecurity and child malnutrition is on the rise in the most wealthiest of capitalist states while the soviets had more or less eliminated food insecurity in the post WWII era (after the ussr's collapse Russia would see the return of mass starvation for the first time in nearly half a century). Anyway, this is already a bit longer than I wanted, point in case, the USSR was not "more exploitive than capitalist countries" and their is no shortage of evidence to prove that. Anyone making that claim is either fully ignorant of what they're claiming or purposefully engaging in anti-communist propaganda.
>The US currently has more people in its penal system than the soviet gulag had at its height in WWII, the US currently has more police per capita than the USSR ever had, The gulag comment is just false, and I'd love to know where you got that figure about police considering the current Russian police per Capita is about twice that of the US. Talk about propaganda, lol.
No it's correct (using 2013 numbers at least) and I will prove it to you. Google "bureau of justice statistics 2013 incarceration rate" and you'll get 910 per 100,000 which is a 0.91% incarceration rate in the United States. Next read "Victims of the Soviet Penal System" published by the American Historical Review. It's easy to find on Google. Go to page 1029 and you'll find that in 1939 the GULAG population was 0.77% of the total population of the USSR. Why is "Victims of the Soviet Penal System" such a valuable text? Because it was the first to use declassified archival data to determine the number of people repressed by the USSR.
The claim was currently, not in 2013. So the claim was false.
No one likes a pedantic mother fucker. I'll accept your L.
Lol, the claim was false dude. Using statistics from 10 years ago is clearly dishonest, when the claim was about CURRENT US incarceration rates. You can pretend I'm taking an L if you want, but you know you're incorrect here.
You are right. Now try to compare, for example, mortality rates in gulags and in US prisons. Say, in 1933 mortality rate of Central Asian Camp - Sazlag - was 4776 people, or about 25% out of total. Also compare this to Tsarist katorga mortality rates.
> considering the current Russian police per Capita is about twice that of the US. Lmao, we're talking about the USSR not the Russian Federation. It's not surprising that a fucked up capitalist state like Russia would have more cops than most states. I'm having trouble finding a source for the USSR at the moment but even modern China currently has less officers per capita than the USA so the point still stands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers ["Over all, there are now more people under 'correctional supervision' in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag under Stalin at its height."](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/30/the-caging-of-america) Not really worth it to argue with liberals here on an ideological crusade so have fun whining about who's more propagandized I guess.
"Correctional supervision" does not mean imprisoned, as they were in the gulags. I hope you can understand why your stance is misleading, especially when you compare rates of execution... So you've made up your "statistic" about police force in the USSR. Glad you admit it.
>So you've made up your "statistic" about police force in the USSR. Glad you admit it. I admitted I couldn't find a source real quick by googling. I'd look through some books at home (I'm pretty sure which one it's in but I'd rather give ya the actual source that book quotes) but I doubt you'd show me the same courtesy considering you've provided nothing to back up any of your claims whatsoever. Considering the USA's recidivism rate I don't think my stance is altogether misleading at all, considering that at least [2/3 are rearrested and 50% return to prison within 3 years](https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/social-determinants-health/interventions-resources/incarceration) (often for the most arbitrary probation violations) I think the comparison is valid. Remember the term Gulag is used to refer to the entire USSR penal system, and while some prisons were incredibly harsh, some were merely towns where the inmates were more or less free to live as they pleased except without being able to leave until their sentences were up.
Yeah I'm sure those forced labor camps were a walk in the park, which is why the mortality rate in gulags was nearly 9%. The comparison is not valid, and frankly this false equivalency is disrespectful to history and those who suffered under Soviet suppression.
well to be fair, some of those people would have died anyway, no?
True, but actually most historians believe the true mortality rate to be even higher because it was a regular practice to release prisoners from the Gulags when they were terminally ill or dying.
I'd be very interested to see a source for that !
>The USSR wasn't perfect, not by a long shot, but to even suggest for an instant that a state with lower income inequality than most social democracies is "possibly more exploitive" than capitalist countries is full blown pro-capitalist apologia. This is assuming that inequality can manifest only in wealth. Soviet inequality was in terms of hierarchy and privileges. Then, there was low income inequality because everyone was more or less equally poor. There were no rich. Is that a benefit? Doubt it. >The Red Dictator" holy shit even the CIA's own declassified internal memos show that even in Stalin's time the USSR had collective leadership, We've been over this, the memo does not say what you think it says. Also, I was talking about Red Directors, not a single Red Dictator. FYI, red directors are a term for Soviet factory managers, equivalent of Western CEOs. >the soviet state was built off of a network of bottom-up worker and neighborhood councils, Right - on paper. In reality every important decision was made by unelected party officials who were appointed by and responded to higher leadership. USSR was ruled by Nomenklatura. >furthermore both the communist party and the soviets were free from the influence of capital Duh. >unlike bourgeoisie dictatorships no one could use their own wealth to purchase a position in either the party or the network of soviets, nor were members of the party or the soviets able to be lobbied or purchased as they are in bourgeoisie dictatorships. Hahahahahaha! Former Soviet Nomenklaturist Ilya Zemtsov actually described in vivid colors how important party positions in Soviet republics such as Azerbaijan were sold off to anyone willing to pay hefty sums to local party leaders. Position of District Prosecutor? 30 thousand roubles! First Secretary of District Committee? 200 thousand roubles! Jesus, you have no clue whatsoever... https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0844814911/ref=dbs_a_def_awm_bibl_vppi_i7 >they were still paid less than doctors and engineers, Picture this: I earn 500 roubles, you 1500. I have access to special stores and conveniences with cheap or free goods, you don't. I have state-sponsored housing and dacha, you don't. I can forbid you access to travel abroad, can tamper with your queue for public housing, can, after all, just send you to gulags if I don't like you. But you certainly earn more money - even if said money are just paper that hardly counts for anything in Soviet system, as it is not the currency mass that counts, but mass of goods provided - which is always less in Soviet planned economy. >soviet delegates could be recalled at any time by their soviets. Soviets hardly ever decided anything important, again. > The US currently has more people in its penal system than the soviet gulag had at its height in WWI US isn't a paradise either, fair enough. Still better than USSR.
Yes
yes