As long as there is a state, there is a ruling class. The question is which class is in the ruling position - the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. The USSR had democracy - there were voting structures up and down the entire structure of the union. There was no bourgeoisie class before the revisionists under Kruschevi liberalized. The only clas available to rule after the revolution was the working class.
Anarchists like to claim that “ruling class” is a class, but it’s not. It’s a role that a class plays. By removing the bourgeoisie class from the role of ruling class and replacing it with it with the proletariat, the proletariat becomes the ruling class.
There’s more than just those two options, e.g. the nobility (which we don’t have anymore). If you had done some research on the topic, you’d know that a class is a group that shares a common relationship to the means of production. You could perhaps argue that career politicians constitute a sort of “political class”.
The USSR had democracy - there were voting structures up and down the entire structure of the union.
In their worst election (1946), the Bloc of Communists and Non-Partisans received 99.19% of the vote. I don’t know who their opponents were, the other 0.81% of the vote simply went to “against”. Results like this are impossible in a free and fair election.
The communist party of the soviet union was in control of the country, with absolutely no accountability to the proletariat they were supposed to be representing. Were they working class? No, because they did not work. They were a new kind of nobility, with the head of state effectively being a new Tsar.
I know what a class is. Let’s break down the options you provide.
You could perhaps argue that career politicians constitute a sort of “political class”.
Some do, in fact. They have never been very convincing. It takes a very narrow view of what labor is as it is begging the question.
Let’s take manufacturing lumber, for example. Obviously the machinists in the factory producing planks are working with the means of production. Is the woodcutter? They only work with the means of extraction and they extract from nature. They are inputs to production, but are not producing anything, only destroying.
Then there’s the truck driver. The truck is produced by machinists, but the driver doesn’t produce anything. They just move things from place to place. Then there’s the people who manage quantifying the need for lumber and managing the accounting of what it costs to make the lumber and what the best way to distribute the lumber is. These people don’t work with the means of production at all.
No one really believes the above, do they? I’m sure you don’t. The politicians in a Soviet system are laboring - that is to say that they are commiting their human capabilities toward solving problems that need to be solved for society to function. Having never seen a revolutionary Marxist state ever exist, the politicians were like researchers, and again, we would not say researchers are a separate class.
I mean, maybe you would, but you’d be wrong.
The communist party of the soviet union was in control of the country, with absolutely no accountability to the proletariat they were supposed to be representing
Of course, this is just vibes. If you had done your research, you would know that the right to recall was in the constitution of the USSR creating more accountability for politicians that most democracies even today. Before Kruschev and before the war, the recall was used on something like 10% of politicians - unthinkable in the Western democracies of today.
The accountability was absolutely there. But there is some difficulty in speaking of these things because the USSR cannot be analyzed as a single phenomenon but only as a historical process, which I will get to.
Were they working class? No, because they did not work. They were a new kind of nobility, with the head of state effectively being a new Tsar.
I think I have already established that politicians, especially in communist parties, do work. Let me go a little further and start breaking down the history into stages.
Lenin clearly worked. You cannot organize a communist state after a revolution without work. I think this is undeniable. If you want to argue this, go far. There was nothing Tsarist about Lenin’s term in office.
Stalin clearly worked. It is a massive undertaking to prepare for war, especially a war that many did not believe was coming or thought that perhaps there was a way to avoid it by creating alliances. This labor ultimately became all-encompassing because doing anything else would have been enough to end the entire revolutionary project.
Then there was the post-war period. Again, Stalin clearly worked. There was so much to solve far once the Nazis were suppressed but not gone and the West was protecting them. The work of the politicians during each of these 3 period was crucial to the survival of the Soviet system. It was real work, as real as feeding your neighbors.
Then there was the rise of Kruschev. This is when the critique of nobility starts to come into play. Kruschev and his ideological partners believed in liberalism. They believed in rewards for people higher up in society. They believed in empire and the value of extractive occupation. They believed they could collaborate with the empires of the West to co-govern the world. This is the period during which politicians began to pull away from the working class and stratify into a privileged group that focused more on its own enrichment and power management than on the work of maintaining a proletarian revolution.
Stalin died without any property and without any money. He did not enrich himself through his supposed “Tsar-like” powers. Kruschev, despite his liberal leanings, also focused primarily on mass consumerism and not on luxury for politicians. It was Brezhnev that introduced serious forms of luxury to the political elite and that sharpened the contradictions that would ultimately see liberalism undo the entire Soviet project.
But, if you did any research, you would understand that there were distinct periods that could be analyzed, that they could each be compared with the Tsarist regime, that none of them bore any resemblance to the Tsarist regime, and that your claims that were attempts at stating fact could be easily refuted while your claims that were mere interpretations or feelings were only generally shared by liberals and that alternative interpretations exist that come from the successful revolutionary movements in history.
Without democracy, you simply create a new ruling class. Workers had no say in the Soviet Union, even less than they had in the US back then.
As long as there is a state, there is a ruling class. The question is which class is in the ruling position - the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. The USSR had democracy - there were voting structures up and down the entire structure of the union. There was no bourgeoisie class before the revisionists under Kruschevi liberalized. The only clas available to rule after the revolution was the working class.
Anarchists like to claim that “ruling class” is a class, but it’s not. It’s a role that a class plays. By removing the bourgeoisie class from the role of ruling class and replacing it with it with the proletariat, the proletariat becomes the ruling class.
There’s more than just those two options, e.g. the nobility (which we don’t have anymore). If you had done some research on the topic, you’d know that a class is a group that shares a common relationship to the means of production. You could perhaps argue that career politicians constitute a sort of “political class”.
In their worst election (1946), the Bloc of Communists and Non-Partisans received 99.19% of the vote. I don’t know who their opponents were, the other 0.81% of the vote simply went to “against”. Results like this are impossible in a free and fair election.
The communist party of the soviet union was in control of the country, with absolutely no accountability to the proletariat they were supposed to be representing. Were they working class? No, because they did not work. They were a new kind of nobility, with the head of state effectively being a new Tsar.
I know what a class is. Let’s break down the options you provide.
Some do, in fact. They have never been very convincing. It takes a very narrow view of what labor is as it is begging the question.
Let’s take manufacturing lumber, for example. Obviously the machinists in the factory producing planks are working with the means of production. Is the woodcutter? They only work with the means of extraction and they extract from nature. They are inputs to production, but are not producing anything, only destroying.
Then there’s the truck driver. The truck is produced by machinists, but the driver doesn’t produce anything. They just move things from place to place. Then there’s the people who manage quantifying the need for lumber and managing the accounting of what it costs to make the lumber and what the best way to distribute the lumber is. These people don’t work with the means of production at all.
No one really believes the above, do they? I’m sure you don’t. The politicians in a Soviet system are laboring - that is to say that they are commiting their human capabilities toward solving problems that need to be solved for society to function. Having never seen a revolutionary Marxist state ever exist, the politicians were like researchers, and again, we would not say researchers are a separate class.
I mean, maybe you would, but you’d be wrong.
Of course, this is just vibes. If you had done your research, you would know that the right to recall was in the constitution of the USSR creating more accountability for politicians that most democracies even today. Before Kruschev and before the war, the recall was used on something like 10% of politicians - unthinkable in the Western democracies of today.
The accountability was absolutely there. But there is some difficulty in speaking of these things because the USSR cannot be analyzed as a single phenomenon but only as a historical process, which I will get to.
I think I have already established that politicians, especially in communist parties, do work. Let me go a little further and start breaking down the history into stages.
Lenin clearly worked. You cannot organize a communist state after a revolution without work. I think this is undeniable. If you want to argue this, go far. There was nothing Tsarist about Lenin’s term in office.
Stalin clearly worked. It is a massive undertaking to prepare for war, especially a war that many did not believe was coming or thought that perhaps there was a way to avoid it by creating alliances. This labor ultimately became all-encompassing because doing anything else would have been enough to end the entire revolutionary project.
Then there was the post-war period. Again, Stalin clearly worked. There was so much to solve far once the Nazis were suppressed but not gone and the West was protecting them. The work of the politicians during each of these 3 period was crucial to the survival of the Soviet system. It was real work, as real as feeding your neighbors.
Then there was the rise of Kruschev. This is when the critique of nobility starts to come into play. Kruschev and his ideological partners believed in liberalism. They believed in rewards for people higher up in society. They believed in empire and the value of extractive occupation. They believed they could collaborate with the empires of the West to co-govern the world. This is the period during which politicians began to pull away from the working class and stratify into a privileged group that focused more on its own enrichment and power management than on the work of maintaining a proletarian revolution.
Stalin died without any property and without any money. He did not enrich himself through his supposed “Tsar-like” powers. Kruschev, despite his liberal leanings, also focused primarily on mass consumerism and not on luxury for politicians. It was Brezhnev that introduced serious forms of luxury to the political elite and that sharpened the contradictions that would ultimately see liberalism undo the entire Soviet project.
But, if you did any research, you would understand that there were distinct periods that could be analyzed, that they could each be compared with the Tsarist regime, that none of them bore any resemblance to the Tsarist regime, and that your claims that were attempts at stating fact could be easily refuted while your claims that were mere interpretations or feelings were only generally shared by liberals and that alternative interpretations exist that come from the successful revolutionary movements in history.