Was The Soviet Union A True Communist Government?

[Aeritai]

Yes I know the title sounds dumb, but please read on what I have to say. Usually when debates about communism pop up, people like to point out that communism is evil and most people use China as an example as a evil communist government. However, there are some people that say China isn't a "true" communist government. Which gave me an idea for this thread, originally I was going have this thread be about rather or not China was a true communist government. But since we had too many China threads, I decided to make this thread about the Soviet Union.

Yes I know the Soviet Union called themselves communist, but were they only communist by name or did they actually follow Marx's ideas in achieving a communist utopia? You may be asking what I mean by saying "true communist." I'm not a communist myself, but when I think about a communist nation, that nation has to follow the ideas of Marx.

What do you think NSG? Was the Soviet Union a true communist government or were they only communist by name and used some elements of capitalism.

In my opinion I think the Soviet Union was a true communist government its early years when Lenin was still in charge. But after he died and Stalin rose into power, the Soviet Union kinda lost its status as a true communist nation. Do note I'm not a communist so my opinion on this might be wrong. If I am feel free to correct me!

[Tinhampton]

No; it had a government.

[Punished UMN]

Yes I know the Soviet Union called themselves communist

You will note that the term "communist" is conspicuously absent from the USSR's name. This was a calculated thing meant to express that the KPSS had not yet achieved communism.

[Punished UMN]

No; it had a government.

In Marxist terms, communism would have a government, it just wouldn't have a state.

[The Reformed American Republic]

I question if a true communist society is even achievable. Communism makes good points against capitalism, but I don't know if it is possible for true communism to be achieved or if it is even desirable. There are other alternatives to the corrupt status quo.

[Aeritai]

Yes I know the Soviet Union called themselves communist

You will note that the term "communist" is conspicuously absent from the USSR's name. This was a calculated thing meant to express that the KPSS had not yet achieved communism.

Ah okay thanks for the information.

[Ifreann]

Marx studied Leninism. Lenin studied Stalinism, Stalinism is Communism.

QED.

[Kubra]

No, and they'd tell you as much. The official teleology of the time was that they were in the process of building socialism, from which communism would then be built. Very stageist.

[Atheris]

No, but it's what any attempt at Marxist communism would ultimately devolve into.

[The Reformed American Republic]

No, but it's what any attempt at Marxist communism would ultimately devolve into.

Agreed. Communists tend to think they have all the right moves and thus disallow various political opinion from being shared.

[Dogmeat]

It's like arguing whether things like card tricks are "real magic."

Obviously they're not, but on the other hand they're the only kind of "magic" that's actually real.

[Western Theram]

no, communism is a classless stateless society wherein money has been abolished completely and workplaces are run like communities where everyone freely takes and gives according to need. there has never been a "communist state" because they state doesn't exist

[Aeritai]

No, but it's what any attempt at Marxist communism would ultimately devolve into.

That seems to be very common when someone installs communism in their nation. They might have good intentions, but once they're in power they start abusing the people.

[Atheris]

no, communism is a classless stateless society wherein money has been abolished completely and workplaces are run like communities where everyone freely takes and gives according to need. there has never been a "communist state" because they state doesn't exist

Semantics, semantics. Note that Aeritai actually never said state; he said nation, which is still wrong by definition (the USSR wasn't a nation, it was an empire), but a nation does not imply a state. I think they meant "government," which does exist in a communist society.

[Aeritai]

no, communism is a classless stateless society wherein money has been abolished completely and workplaces are run like communities where everyone freely takes and gives according to need. there has never been a "communist state" because they state doesn't exist

Semantics, semantics. Note that Aeritai actually never said state; he said nation, which is still wrong by definition (the USSR wasn't a nation, it was an empire), but a nation does not imply a state. I think they meant "government," which does exist in a communist society.

Yeah I meant Government, I'll go ahead and change the title.

[Kubra]

no, communism is a classless stateless society wherein money has been abolished completely and workplaces are run like communities where everyone freely takes and gives according to need. there has never been a "communist state" because they state doesn't exist

Semantics, semantics. Note that Aeritai actually never said state; he said nation, which is still wrong by definition (the USSR wasn't a nation, it was an empire), but a nation does not imply a state. I think they meant "government," which does exist in a communist society.

If you asked them, they were a nation. And anyways the US may have had a little Empire of its own (it's even got some remnants), it may have been an empire from the start of westward expansion, but that it was a nation is not something up to question, is it?
And that aside, once again: the soviet union never called itself a communist society. This is a very basic thing in the understanding of the soviet union's political structure, man. It's got a place in the general malaise of the late period.

[Western Theram]

as far as china goes it isn't even socialist, they haven't been since mao died. what they have is called state capitalism, as Jreg puts it "the trade's free the people aren't"
they are ruled by the "communist party" which is more or less mao's cult of personality

[South Reinkalistan]

People make tonnes of misconceptions about Communism and the USSR.

1. That a state cannot be Communist, as Communism is stateless.

2. That Communism can only be seen as valid if it is contained outside of a state.

By themselves, these seem rather reasonable, and in fact are true. Communism exists upon the development of the productive forces to an extent upon the conclusion of class conflict that a society organised so that "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" becomes the main mode of operation.

Necessarily, this presupposes one thing: that there exists a communist society with no internal - and this is the big thing here - external contradictions between classes.

Obviously, from a Marxist perspective, therefore, that means that Communism requires WORLD COMMUNISM. Because otherwise, as was the case with the USSR, there is a direct conflict between the worker-states and the capitalist-states, thus perpetuating the force which generates the concept of the state itself. To this extent, a state can obviously be Communist/Socialist in character, as it is fighting for world communism, without actually operating under communism as it is typically held. To this extent, yes, the USSR was fighting for World Communism and therefore was a "real" Communist society. It cannot be blamed for not being Communist to the very specific extent usually seen as the case.

[Deacarsia]

Yea, the Soviet Union was a communist state.

[Atheris]

Semantics, semantics. Note that Aeritai actually never said state; he said nation, which is still wrong by definition (the USSR wasn't a nation, it was an empire), but a nation does not imply a state. I think they meant "government," which does exist in a communist society.

If you asked them, they were a nation. And anyways the US may have had a little Empire of its own (it's even got some remnants), it may have been an empire from the start of westward expansion, but that it was a nation is not something up to question, is it?

Getting a bit close to a threadjack, but allow me to voice my opinion: the US was still an empire up until about the interwar or WW2. What makes a nation different from an empire is that an empire holds major nations within its boundaries in an unequal balance of power, which the US certainly did with the Amerindians before their integration (which is a controversial term in of itself) in the late 19th to early 20th centuries alongside the Philippines, Hawaii, and Cuba. What makes America a nation and not an empire is that many people from these disparate nations which the US still controls will still consider themselves American unlike how most minorities in the USSR considered themselves a national first and a Soviet second, like Arabs in the British Empire, Poles in the German Empire, or Tibetans in China. Being imperialist doesn't necessarily mean that a country is an empire; there have been non-imperialist empires in history, like Rome during the Pax Romana, and imperialist non-empires like the modern US or South Korea.

[Arisyan]

Well yes and no, it depends. If you mean the final stage of communism proposed by Marx, then no. However, technically it was a "dictatorship of the proletariat" so to speak (though its disputable if the proletariat truly controlled this dictatorship), which is the second stage of the transition to communism proposed by Marx. If Lenin himself had not died, it might have reached the third phase but Stalin threw that idea away, and all of his successors didn't even get close.

So to answer the question: Kind of, but not really.

[Kubra]

If you asked them, they were a nation. And anyways the US may have had a little Empire of its own (it's even got some remnants), it may have been an empire from the start of westward expansion, but that it was a nation is not something up to question, is it?

Getting a bit close to a threadjack, but allow me to voice my opinion: the US was still an empire up until about the interwar or WW2. What makes a nation different from an empire is that an empire holds major nations within its boundaries in an unequal balance of power, which the US certainly did with the Amerindians before their integration (which is a controversial term in of itself) in the late 19th to early 20th centuries alongside the Philippines, Hawaii, and Cuba. What makes America a nation and not an empire is that many people from these disparate nations which the US still controls will still consider themselves American unlike how most minorities in the USSR considered themselves a national first and a Soviet second, like Arabs in the British Empire, Poles in the German Empire, or Tibetans in China. Being imperialist doesn't necessarily mean that a country is an empire; there have been non-imperialist empires in history, like Rome during the Pax Romana, and imperialist non-empires like the modern US or South Korea.

"Most minoroties"? Only the rich ones, the baltic folks. Nobody likes getting robbed. Oh, and the Ukranians, for obvious reasons. Nobody likes getting starved.
The rest, well, in the 1991 referendum it was the southern republics that voted most in favour of the union, more than the russians, since for them it was quite a profitable arrangement to be soviet instead of just themselves.
And back off the threadjack, the fact remains that the soviet union had a particular teleology that excluded them from the status of being "communist". And again, they'd tell you as much.

[The New California Republic]

No. At a certain point they themselves even implicitly acknowledged after the Khrushchev era that the USSR etc wasn't communist, with the "actually existing socialism" euphemism.

[Middle Barael]

This depends on your definition of Communism.

Using Marx’s intended original definition, Communism is the end-game, the final utopian stage of socialism. So obviously the USSR was not Communist by that definition

Using the modern common vernacular definition of Communism, where it’s essentially the same thing as State-Socialism with a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the USSR would be Communist, since the USSR practiced state-socialism with an AuthLeft dictatorship of the proletariat.

[The Marlborough]

No and it never claimed to be. The Soviet government always claimed it was working towards communism through its own version of socialism.