"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...
On 22 Nov 2014 01:15:15 -0400, Mike Spencer
wrote:


Ed Huntress writes:

But no one has a case for the USSR not being "Communist." That is
a
political party name, and they were the ones who defined it. As
for
lower-case "communist," they never even came close.

I knew a Czech blacksmith who (in 1982) opined, "There is no
communism, only state-capitalism."

Well, they never came close to the standard definition of
"communism,"
and whether they were truly socialist depends on which definition
you
use, too.

"State capitalism" is a pejorative (usually) that has several
different meanings, but the Soviet Union and their client states
fit
the core definition: state ownership, with individual enterprises
operated along capitalist lines, including accounting for capital,
materials, sales, operating costs, and profits, with business-like
management structure.

China fits a different version of "state capitalism," but most
economists agree that it fits the general definition, too. In
China's
case, there is a combination of state and private ownership
(today),
but with heavy-handed state control of all enterprise.

--
Ed Huntress

Lenin imposed rigorous communism after the Bolsheviki took over but
quickly found that the untested theories of Marx and Bakunin weren't
practical.
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/war_communism.htm
"War Communism was a disaster. In all areas, the economic strength of
Russia fell below the 1914 level. Peasant farmers only grew for
themselves, as they knew that any extra would be taken by the state."

That is the fundamental flaw, the bounty the takers "deserve" from the
makers vanishes as the makers become takers too. Then totalitarian
control inexorably follows to force all but the most clever takers
(nomenclatura) to work harder.

Naturally the socialist ideologues couldn't accept that they were
wrong:
"How did the people react to War Communism? Within the cities, many
were convinced that their leaders were right and the failings being
experienced were the fault of the Whites and international
capitalists."

Marx himself expected the State to initially control the transition to
pure communism.
http://revolutionaryanarchist.wordpr...unin-vs-marx/v
"Though he thought Marx was a sincere revolutionary, Bakunin believed
that the application of the Marxist system would necessarily lead to
the replacement of one repression (capitalist) by another (state
socialist)."

State-controlled socialism was an integral step in the Marxist
dialectic progression, not a deviation from it. Lenin converted to
state capitalism in his New Economic Policy to recover from the abject
failure of doctrinal communism. Stalin initially continued it until it
too fell apart under the inept management of bureaucracy that
inevitably valued their own plush jobs over the welfare of the masses.

-Lev Bronshtein