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/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

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 No.478977

The Soviets should have reduced the work-day
to 7h by 1965
to 6h by 1975
to 5h by 1985
and finally
to 4h by 1995

4 consequences:

1 The Soviet economy would have been forced to invest into labor-saving/productivity-enhancing technology like crazy to make up for the shrinking per-person labor-inputs. It would have eclipsed the west in industrial power.

2 There is no 90s dissolution/collapse because a shorter work-day means more time to politically organize and make reforms that work.

3 the soviet union would have become an attractive destination for labor, the bottom 40% of the capitalist sphere would have tried to move to the Soviet Union, because they weren't getting much in terms of capitalist luxuries anyway and as soviet citizens would have had a similar life-style with a lot more free time. Less work also means it's easier to raise children for the indigenous soviet population, and by the year 2000 the Soviet Union would have counted half a billion citizens.

4 Incidentally it would have saved social democracy in the west, because the shrinking labor-pool would have maintained the political leverage of western workers, even in the face of industrial offshoring.
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 No.478979

Nice alt history. How do you think sports would be affected?
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 No.478981

>>478979
Interesting question.
If people work less they probably are less tired, and retain more drive to engage in sporty activities. So i guess sports would become a more prominent leasure activity.
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 No.478985

This still wouldn't resolve the class conflict in the Soviet Union. If you can't resolve that you're still gonna end up with traitorous bureaucrats ready to sell the whole country out when they see an opportunity to become wealthy by selling off state infrastructure.
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 No.478987

>>478985
>This still wouldn't resolve the class conflict in the Soviet Union.
>If you can't resolve that you're still gonna end up with traitorous bureaucrats ready to sell the whole country out
The Soviets didn't have class conflict in the marxist sense. You mean the technical and managerial strata dissociating from the proletariat. Fixing that, would have required additional political reforms.
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 No.478988

File: 1708427656290.jpg ( 28.56 KB , 354x499 , Class Theory and History.jpg )

>>478987
>The Soviets didn't have class conflict in the marxist sense.
In a "Marxist sense", yes they did. They had one class of people who produced the surplus, and another class of people who appropriated it and decided what to do with it. Their interests didn't always align, sometimes a decision made by a surplus appropriator benefited the appropriator at the expense of the surplus producer. That is class conflict.
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 No.478990

>>478977

>Less work equals stronger economy

WRONG. More refined forces of production means less socially necessary work hours per day. Either work harder and smarter or use better tools
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 No.478993

>>478988
>Their interests didn't always align, sometimes a decision made by a surplus appropriator benefited the appropriator at the expense of the surplus producer.
The Soviets did manage to allocate surplus on behalf of the proles reasonably well, given their constraints. Lets say it was very imperfect socialism.
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 No.478994

>>478990
Ok but there is no way you can fit all that into the character limit for a thread title.
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 No.479042

>>478993
>The Soviets did manage to allocate surplus on behalf of the proles reasonably well
If you give somebody else the exclusive right to allocate resources on your behalf why do you ever expect them to do what's in your best interest?
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 No.479044

>>479042
Soviet type ML systems which are sometimes called leadership democracies, did work, they allocated resources on behalf of the proletariat. They had a bunch of other problems, but they weren't extractive. Wealth inequality was extremely low in the Soviet Union.

If you're going to complain about the Soviets, maybe find something else, because resource allocation was sort off alright.
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 No.479045

>>479044
>If you're going to complain about the Soviets, maybe find something else, because resource allocation was sort off alright.
How can I find more information without just taking your word for it?

>leadership democracies, did work, they allocated resources on behalf of the proletariat

What is stopping the leaders from abusing their position to enrich themselves?
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 No.479046

>>479044
>Soviet type ML systems which are sometimes called leadership democracies
Only by rulers who want to continue the self-serving liberal tradition of inverting the meaning of democracy to mean its exact opposite. Rule of the few is not rule by the people.
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 No.479056

>>479045
If you want data about the Soviets, a good place to start is the sources in the footnotes of the book: Towards a new socialism by Paul Cockshott and Allin Cotrell

>What is stopping the leaders from abusing their position to enrich themselves?

The Soviets understood the Soviet model as a holding pattern to wait until imperial capitalism had run it's course. Higher stage Socialism had to wait until capitalist countries became less aggressive as a result of imperialism getting frustrated.

Imperial capitalism is an economic model that requires conquering to keep going. The Soviets thought if they used their military might to undermine the conquering, imperial capitalism would go away. They were correct in a way. The Soviets completely undid the colonial empire mechanism. They however miscalculated about how long it would take for the alternative imperial mechanisms to be broken. They also made political and economic errors.

To answer your question the ML system used anti corruption purges to prevent abuse of state positions for self enrichment. It was very politically disruptive, but it did work.

>>479046
You are correct Sortition democracy is the bug-fix the Soviets should have applied.
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 No.479070

>>479056
>Towards a new socialism by Paul Cockshott and Allin Cotrell
I'll put it another way, do you have any sources that are not marxist authors cherry picking footnotes to stroke their confirmation bias? People on this board unironically think the holodomor was a hoax and gulags were summer camps there is no end to the delusions marxists have about the USSR.

>The Soviets understood the Soviet model as a holding pattern to wait until imperial capitalism had run it's course.

Why? They ruled half of the planet with an iron fist what was stopping them from achieving "higher stage socialism" within their own borders? Then the USSR would be the one tearing down the berlin wall to allow in all starving citizens of failed capitalism instead of the other way around.

>the ML system used anti corruption purges to prevent abuse of state positions for self enrichment

Who is doing the purging? By electing a leader to control the distribution of resources the people have already given up their power.
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 No.479075

>>479070
>the holodomor hoax
The holodomor narrative appears to originate in Nazi war propaganda and then later it got picked up by cold war propaganda. The default assumption is that nazis and cold warriors are liars, because most of what they said turned out to be lies. I did not investigate much, but i only found facts that support there having been a famine, not a politically motivated plot to starve people on purpose.

You appear to be complaining that we don't unquestionably accept ruling ideology narratives. That is very odd, why would we ? We're not the ruling class. Also Anti-communist biases are very common, so you have to account for the fact that the Soviet Union is being misrepresented most of the time.

Lately the holodomor narrative has been picked up again as a talking point in the propaganda battle for the Ukraine war, by the people who are arming and funding neo-nazi groups no less. That makes it look like some kind of propaganda narrative, that is lying around, and gets reused from time to time. That pattern is very suspicious, very few truths behave that way.

If you want to accuse the Soviets of intentionally starving people, the burden is on you to make the case for it. There is no expectation that we have to believe your story at face value. You haven't made a case for this assertion at all, you only have accused us of not sharing your opinion.
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 No.479077

>>479070
>People on this board unironically think the holodomor was a hoax
AKA People Who Read.

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