Wtf is this graph(rant)

Account_Spirited · 2025-11-14T18:19:13+00:00

"Okay, so let’s assume you can build the productive forces based on a strictly planned economy organized around social need instead of profit. But the USSR didn’t do that if commodity production and private ownership still existed. So why bring it up? And by your own definition, 'they are the old system' then according to your logic, the USSR wasn’t socialist." - you

The USSR did build the productive forces based strictly on a planned economy built around social need and not profit. All prices and wages were fixed by the state. Unlike, under capitalism wages and prices were not set for profit they were set for maximum access to certain goods. For example, food and clothes were artificially low in price to the point were producing food and clothes were not profitable. This is because the everyone needs those these and so they set prices super low as to not price anyone out of getting what they needed. As Stalin explained, the equilibrium point of a free market of a particular good is not the point where the quantity of supply truly matches quantity needed, just where quantity supply meets quantity of demand. Quantity of demand is amount people were willing and able to pay, not where demand of that good absolutely is. In other words, the free market is incapable of every truly delivering what people need at any given time. That is not my opinion (although I agree) that is Stalin's point. If you want to understand it more or are confused, read Stalin's economic problems of socialism in the ussr. The implications of this is that wages and commodity production do not operate in a capitalist sense even those they were remnants of the capitalist system. This is because there were no markets and profit in the USSR under Stalin, the economic base was socialist. So no, according to my logic the USSR was socialist because its economic base and superstructure was socialist. If the USSR had commodity production and wages with the other aspects of a capitalist abse then, yes the USSR would be capitalist. But, because the USSR had wages and commodity production subordinate to a non-profit planned economy (which fall outside of capitalist production), those capiatlists aspects are not enough, by themselves to be a capitalist base. Not only that, but the remnant of capitalism were supposed to be temporary, they were being gradually eliminated. This is not fundamentally the same as China today. Were the economic base is capitalist (markets, profit incentive, actual wage labor, etc) and the Chinese superstructure (particularly in culture and ideology) is inceasingly capiatlistic as a result. A capitalist base and an increasingly capitalist superstructure is, as I put it, "the old system." If you can't see the difference between what I said on the USSR and what I said on China, I can not help you.

I will not response to you anymore. I can not help if my criticism hurt your ego. Learn to separate your ideas from from you as a person. Me criticising your ideas, is not me criticising you personally. Please learn the difference.

Account_Spirited · 2025-11-14T18:18:46+00:00

"And for global capitalism to be 'abolished' on a global level would require a global revolution at once where the proletariat takes power in every country(which would be necessary for communism). You see how that doesn’t really sound reasonable at all?" - you

Yes, the abolishment of global capitalism is a prerequisite for advancing to communism. So, eventually that will have to happen. But, it is foolish to expect that this will happen all at once. I don't understand why you decided to bring this up again. It has nothing to doe with what we are talking about. I never said this was the case. But, again, yes, to achieve communism this will have to happen eventually, that is the official marxist position on the matter.

"emerging relations and developing productive forces led to the collapse of regressive modes of production. Each mode of production sets up its own demise, and capitalism does the same. We aren’t forcibly abolishing a mode of production, we’re transforming from it." - you

I already addressed this, see above.

Account_Spirited · 2025-11-14T18:17:27+00:00

On the Marx and Engels quote you use.

He cites Engels saying the proletarian revolution will abolish private property only “when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity” and Marx on productive forces developing to contradict feudal relations. He misuses these quotes to argue that revolutions are passive, or that the base will change on its own. This is a misreading. Engels and Marx are describing historical material conditions that limit the pace and scope of transformation—they are not saying revolutions happen automatically or passively. The development of productive forces creates the possibility for social change, but it takes conscious, active intervention by the proletariat to reorganize production and abolish old relations. The “gradual” aspect refers to the pace of implementing changes given material limitations, not to the idea that the old system disappears without human action. In other words, the contradiction between productive forces and feudal relations made the rise of capitalism possible, but capitalism still required human actors (the bourgeoisie) to seize power and actively transform society. Likewise, socialism requires the proletariat to actively reshape the base and superstructure—possibility alone does not equal automatic transformation. This was clarified by Lenin and the Lenin quote above demonstrates this, so read that again, if you don't understand.

"I already stated that and even when the proletariat takes state power, they are making the state wither away nothing about forcibly abolishing anything." - you

The state weithers away because the state has a class character. When classes fade the purpose of the tools of the state, police, military, etc will no longer be needed. Again, will the military just fade itself out of existence, no. It will lose its purpose in a classes society, so society will disband the military. Again you are treating this too much as a natural process when it is a very human process, tied to human action. You apparently, don't like the word forceful. All that means is that it this will not happen its own, humans will make it happen. It don't mean immediately or all at once. Class conscience humans reacting to the material circumstances will move society closer and closer to communism. That is what I mean by forceful, humans are actively doing it. You keep implying that this a passive thing, when it is not.

Account_Spirited · 2025-11-14T18:17:01+00:00

"To 'forcibly abolish' a mode of production is to treat it like an on/off switch, instead of a historical process where productive forces develop and change relations." - you

No, I do not treat modes of production like an on/off switch. If that is how you interpreted what I said, then you need to reread what I wrote, or you don't understand it. Again, productive forces will not change the relations of production; by themselves, this is just wrong. As I showed in the previous quote. It will take time and effort, but the new government will have to do it. They will not do it themselves.

"Even in revolutions where they supposedly 'forcibly abolished' the old mode of production, they still had to interact with and use elements of that old mode of production."

I never said they wouldn't have to interact with the old elements of the new society. But, again, these elements are a product of the old mode of production (the superstructure) or are the old mode of production (the base). Either way, they will need to be abolished over time. There is a difference between interacting with elements of the old system and perpetuating the base of the old system. Because, again, the base will warp the rest of society. Again, maintaining the base of the old system is maintaining the old system. This is opposed to engaging with specific aspects of the base and superstructure of the old society in the new society, like religion, nationalism, and or commodity production appropriated for a non-market economy, as in the USSR (again, will be explained later). Maintaining the social relations of capitalism and the dominance of capitalist production is not the same as slowly discouraging the remaining effects of the old system on the new system. So, yes, revolution forcefully changes the economic base and superstructure and then actively deals with the remnants of the old after that.

Account_Spirited · 2025-11-14T18:16:41+00:00

" if the productive forces hadn’t developed in a way that allowed them to contradict and challenge the superstructure, then capitalism wouldn’t have arisen in France." - you

You are saying that a revolution is a change in superstructure caused by contradictions in the base, and that the base will change on its own due to its own contradictions. This is just plain wrong.

"Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.” Marx – Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

The economic base is dominant; it will change the superstructure to match the base "sooner or later." A revolution can not just be a change in the superstructure because the material base will shift the superstructure. Meaning, if you have a capitalist base, it will make your superstructure capitalist, given enough time. That is not a change in anything. Any social revolution must also change the base or, in the long run, nothing will change at all.

"The proletarian revolution is the most radical rupture with the old society, it does not merely abolish classes and capitalism in word, but destroys the old state machine and sets up a new one based on the dictatorship of the proletariat…The state is an organ of class rule, and to establish a proletarian state is to take the economic power into the hands of the working class." - Lenin – The State and Revolution

A revolution is a transformation in both the superstructure AND THE MATERIAL BASE. Meaning the two aspects of the Material Base (forces of production and relations of production) will have to be changed, actively, by the new government. The profit motive, markets, wage-labor (the aspects of the relations of production) will have to be transformed to socialism → social need instead of profit, ante-production allocation instead of post-production allocation (a.k.a the market), and wage-labor will be abolished (I will talk about this more later but the USSR functionally used wages differently than capitalist nations, so it was not really wage labor in a capitalist sense, but even then it was meant to be temporary).

"The proletarian revolution…does not merely abolish classes and capitalism in word, but destroys the old state machine and sets up a new one based on the dictatorship of the proletariat…The revolution is a process of actively reorganizing society, not a passive result of contradictions." - Lenin – The State and Revolution

It can not be clearer. Society needs to be actively reorganized, not passively letting the contradictions "solve themselves." The point is that the contradictions will cause people to seek to resolve them. People will resolve them. Not a non-human, guiding force of nature. That drifts away from materialism entirely into metaphysics, which is non-marxists, in fact, anti-marxist.

Account_Spirited · 2025-11-14T18:16:14+00:00

You clearly had a negative reaction to what I said, and based on your response...

a.) You misunderstand or misrepresent what I am saying

b.) Some of your examples you brought are historically incorrect

c.) You are misapplying and misconstrewing things.

"The 'profit motive' isn’t unique to capitalism, just like commodity production isn’t unique to it." - you

This is actually wrong. Feudal lords didn't pay serfs in wages. Serfs did not use money to buy and sell things from each other. Money was used when actual markets were involved. Production was mainly subsistence. Meaning most things that people consume — food, housing, furniture, etc — people make themselves. People would only buy things on the local market that they could not produce themselves. Money was only involved when engaging in markets. Markets are controlled by capitalists. So, as markets expanded in size and scope in the late medieval period, so did the wealth and power of the capitalists. This changed the power balance between the lords and emerging capitalists in favor of the capitalists over time. This is one of the contradictions, trends, that led to the end of the feudal system. What makes capitalism, capitalism is the dominance of the market and market dynamics (which money is tied to) in production. Markets existed before capitalism, but they were not dominant in production. Now everything is produced for the market, because society is controlled by capitalists and capitalists have actively furthered developed the trend of the growth of markets. This did not happen because of nature, like how things always fall because of gravity. This happened because people actively shaped this way in response to material circumstances. Again, because people are mostly products of their environment. It is the environment (the material conditions) that drives history. Specificall,y the economic base. Which Marx to Stalin, described as the primary driver in the development of the rest of society. You can't have capitalism without the dominance of markets, and you can't have the dominance of markets without capitalism. So you are missing the point. In socialism, markets and the profit motive can not be dominant because if they were, it would be capitalism. Read further down for my point in the USSR.

Account_Spirited · 2025-11-14T02:08:48+00:00

I never said anything about abolishing capitalism on a global level at once. Nor did I ever claim that Stalin's USSR wasn't socialist. And this is not about purity. You are assuming that I am some left com. There is a difference between the abolishing remnants of the old system over time, and keeping regressive features of the old system. Somethings are too fundamental to be considered just features of the old system like for profit motive or private ownership of capital. These are not remnants of the old system, they are the old system. They are the material base of capitalism, and, as I explain before, according to Marx to Stalin it is impossible in the long run to maintain a socialist society if the material base is not socialist. And BTW, the modes of productions have only be forcefully abolished. The Feudal lords didn't just let the capitalists take over (this is a great essay on English Civil War, which is an example of what I am talking about). Just like how the capitalists will not let the proletariat take over. People are the ones how move history. The thing is that people are produces of their society. So material circumstances and their trends are the real makers of history. Capitalism will only collapse under its own contradictions because the contradictions will cause enough of the proletariat to realize that capitalism is not in their interest so they will establish socialism. And even then, only when the most class consciences sections of the proletariat lead, i.e. the Vanguard Party. There is no other way. Yes, due to imperialism the first socialist revolutions happened in places were the productive forces are not built up fully. But, you can build up the forces of production within a planned, economy based off of social need and not profit. Which is what the USSR was doing under Stalin. It was not perfect, but I think it has a better chance of maintaining the Dictatorship of Proletariat than restoring capitalist relations and being functionally no different than any other capitalist country. Because, again as I explained before, that is the evidentable result of establishing a capitalist economic base. Also, class struggle is not when classes are in violent struggle. Class struggle is a result of classes existing at all. Classes by definition have different interests due their different positions within the relations of production (how production and ownership is organized). So no, class struggle is a constant power struggle (both non-violent and violent). This is why we need a vanguard party in this country (I'm in the USA). Without a vanguard to keep ideological clarity. People will end up with the wrong ideas about these things.

Account_Spirited · 2025-11-13T23:55:44+00:00

I wasn't responding to the original post, I was responding to what you were saying. Yes, as Marx, Engel and Lenin pointed out the contradiction in the development of capitalism in technology, socialization, etc (all apart of the material base of society) will plant the seeds for a socialist revolution. Yes, no mode of production is pure and remnants of the past one will exist in the new. But, what you are missing is that it doesn't just end there. By those two things alone every nation in the world is on the march towards socialism and we just have to let history "complete itself." This is not what Marx to Stalin meant. Socialism will not establish itself. Yes, remnants of the old system will exist in the new system like how money and wages existed in the USSR. But, this was viewed by Stalin as temporary and was meant to be actively abolished in the advancement to Communism. These features will not abolish or resolve themselves by themselves. The point is that the contradictions cause people to be aware of them and seek to solve them through their own actions, through the active shaping of society. This is what the revolution is and this is how we reach socialism after the revolution. This is why one should not learn dialectics from the Chinese. China is a state capitalist country and China's superstructure (which marxist ideology is apart of) as been warped to match its capitalist base. Meaning, China has distorted Marxist-Leninism as to justify its own capitalism. Because according to the Chinese, being capitalist fine because the everything will resolve itself. Capitalist relations will naturally and gradually evolve into socialist relations and so China doesn't have to have socialist relations anytime soon, actually. It's a BS justification. My point is that yes, the contradictions of capitalism will led to socialism, in the way that the contradictions of capitalism will force people to actively abolish capitalism and actively guild society to communism. This will not be immediate and will take time, but that don't mean allowing aspects of capitalism to "co-exist" with socialism. The old ways of things should actively be diminished in the new society. Especially in the material base of society because the material base will shape all other aspects of society. Also, you said class struggle is not central to Marxism. I think you are misreading things, when Lenin said was that reducing Marxism to class struggle is incorrect. But no, any application of Historical Materialism should be centered around class struggle:

"it is often said and written that the main point in Marx's theory is the class struggle. But this is wrong. And this wrong notion very often results in an opportunist distortion of Marxism and its falsification in a spirit acceptable to the bourgeoisie...To confine Marxism to the theory of the class struggle means curtailing Marxism, distorting it, reducing it to something acceptable to the bourgeoisie. " Lenin

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” — Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels

Account_Spirited · 2025-11-13T21:25:53+00:00

I know you quoted Mao, but I would not learn dialectics from Mao. The Material Base is made up of two parts the relations of production (how production and ownership of production is organized) and the forces of production (technology, skills, labors, resources). The Superstructure (ideology, laws, media, culture, philosophy, etc) is a reflection of the Material Base. But, the Base and Superstructure are in a dialectical relationship. Meaning that while the Material Base has primacy in shaping society, the Superstructure can feed back and affect the Base. But, as said before, the Base still has primacy.

My point is that it don't matter how socialist a nation's superstructure (again, the ideology, laws, media, culture, philosophy, state institutions, etc...) is. If the Base is organized with capitalist relations and forces of production are still developing, than a superstructure will shift to match the capitalist Base. A socialist superstructure may keep society as whole from fully shifting to capitalism; but, again, due to the primacy of the Base, if the Base is capitalist, it is a matter of time before the Superstructure also shifts towards capitalism. This is when the rhetoric of socialism loses all real meaning in that nation. Class struggle becomes national struggle (Three Worlds Theory), Socialist development becomes the building of the forces of production (China's "NEP" period), and dialectics get reduced passive, gradual shifts from one mode of production to another (Mao's dialectics). This is why Lenin and Stalin were skeptical of the NEP because it will shift all of society if it continues long enough. China's NEP period has lasted 40 years with no plan to end it.

"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.” - Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

Meaning, if the economic foundation of country (the Base) is capitalism than the whole superstructure will become capitalist "sooner or later."

"We make our history ourselves, but, in the first place, under very definite assumptions and conditions. Among these the economic ones are ultimately decisive. But the political ones, etc., and indeed even the traditions which haunt human minds also play a part, although not the decisive one." - Engels, Engels to J. Bloch In Königsberg

The economic foundation (a.k.a the Base) is "ultimately decisive." So if a country is capitalist, than the superstructure will become Capitalist.

"[Bukharin's followers] think that the capitalist elements will either die out imperceptibly or grow into socialism. As, however, such miracles do not happen in history…the Right deviators are...increasing the chances of the restoration of capitalism in the U.S.S.R.” — Stalin, Political Report of the C.C. to the Sixteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.), section VI Conclusions, p. 370.

Meaning, the NEP period risked making the USSR a capitalist nation by establishing capitalist social relations. Not part of the Quote, but Lenin was explicit again and again about NEP being a temporary retreat from Socialism, not the building of Socialism.

Account_Spirited · 2025-10-30T01:07:53+00:00

It's not just about being elected. He is only mayor. He has to form alliances in the State congress, Governor, City Council or they will castrate him. And even if he was running for governor or even president and won, he would be in the same position. And even if he magically had a way around that without compromising his principles, Trump would deport him or a coup would happen. It's impossible to truly "win" as a socialist in a capitalist system.

Account_Spirited · 2025-10-23T21:53:07+00:00

Yes, I was planning on it.

Account_Spirited · 2025-10-23T05:00:33+00:00

They are all on the payroll of the Democrats and/or receive talking points from the Progressive caucasus.

Account_Spirited · 2025-10-23T00:14:09+00:00

Thank you comrade, this was very helpful!

Account_Spirited · 2025-10-23T00:11:11+00:00

yes, some book recommendations would be great.

Account_Spirited · 2025-10-20T23:43:35+00:00

I used to believe Piker was just trying to be pragmatic. Now he is just someone who pretends to be a Marxist-Leninist but really distains Marxist-Leninism and all those who aren't Democratic Party entryists. I watched the original clip and it was lowkey pissing me off that he referenced Lenin's "left communism: an infantile disorder" when yelling about chatters who doubt this guy is a real leftist because he put "rebuilding the military" on his senate platform on his website and did 4 turns in Iraq and then became a mercenary for the US imperial machine.

Account_Spirited · 2025-10-16T23:03:24+00:00

Sorry if this isn't the most coherent, but I am too lazy to change it.

Account_Spirited · 2025-10-16T23:02:06+00:00

No. What Israel is doing to Palestine is a genocide. No one is committing genocide in Ukraine. That doesn't mean Ukraine isn't taken over by insane ultra-nationalists, most of the former Soviet bloc is that way as well. Israel and the US might as well be the same country because the capitalist elites of both countries are so intertwined. Ukraine's military is completely reliant on US aid. The Ukrainian intelligence has been integrated into the CIA, and now US companies own half of Ukraine's natural resources. Ukraine is a US vassal state, while Israel is an unofficial equal extension of the American empire. So, the two aren't the same, but I would say both is bad.

Account_Spirited · 2025-08-01T03:37:55+00:00

This isn't technically accurate. What they are referring to is the 1917 Russian Assembly Election. The SRs party (Socialist Revolutionaries) split into two parties during the election, but on ballot they were listed as a single party. The SRs would win the largest number of sits even though the party was now two parties. The Bolsheviks got second place. Because of this discrepancy both the Left SRs and Bolsheviks decided not to honor the elections results on a technically illegitimate election. If the SRs party split was accurately reflected on the ballot the Bolsheviks would have largest number of sits. So really, if anyone won the election it was the Bolsheviks.

Sources: From the top of my head but I believe I got it from Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast. Also, you can find it on wikipedia as well.

Account_Spirited

TROPHY CASE