• FluffyPotato
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    1 month ago

    I already checked the book where the quote is from and it doesn’t say when he participated in the election. At least I didn’t find it but I can only assume it was before 1921.

    I guess bourgeoisie does technically refer to a ruling class in a capitalist society but it’s so commonly used to refer to just a ruling class or just who owns the means of production in general conversation that my usage is more colloquial. Like I would also refer to a monarch and the royal family as the bourgeoisie while the society isn’t capitalist.

    • Cowbee@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Read the Thurston quote, he directly states that while criticizing Stalin was a terrible idea, Workers had meaningful participation. Again, find sources, I am down to read, but right now it’s your word vs historical evidence.

      Bourgeoisie only refers to Capitalists in Marxian terms. The aristocracy was not Bourgeoisie, nor were slave owners. Read Marx, it’s clear that you don’t understand Class. If you refer to Monarchs as bourgeoisie then you’ve demonstrated that you haven’t ever read Marx, because a huge amount of his writing is about how the Bourgeoisie differ from the aristocracy.

      Even reading Principles of Communism by Engels could tell you that, and it’s a pamphlet.

      • FluffyPotato
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        1 month ago

        I’m old, I’m not going to reread all of the things I read in my youth. The usage of bourgeoisie has changed colloquially and I don’t really care either, it’s irrelevant to the USSR having worker control after Lenin.

        • Cowbee@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          The usage of Bourgeoisie has not changed colloquially, that’s a deliberate copout. If you are okay to continue misunderstanding Marxism then that’s your choice, but please don’t pretend to know what you’re talking about as it relates to Marxism if you’re going to actively reject reading Marx.

          • FluffyPotato
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            1 month ago

            As I have said I have read enough Marx in my youth and usage of one word does not change a single part of my argument or any point which was that post Lenin in the USSR workers did not own the means of production.

            Also you earlier said that your opinion is supported by historians and I missed that comment then so let me address that: It’s supported by one dissenting opinion on the Wikipedia article. The rest of the article agrees with my statement.

            • Cowbee@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              Misusing such a basic term such as Bourgeoisie reveals a fundamental lack of understanding of both Capitalism and Socialism, and makes everything else you say suspicious. You have repeatedly stated that Workers did not own the Means of Production without backing any of that up.

              It’s backed up by multiple sources, hence why I told you to read the Thurston quote, not just the Sloan quote. The USSR continued to have elections and the workers had control according to historical documents, none of the documents listed stated otherwise.

              Please provide a source, all you’ve revealed thus far is a lack of understanding of Marxism on your part.

              • FluffyPotato
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                1 month ago

                You provided one source which also lists the Thurston and Sloan quotes as a dissenting opinions to the rest of the article. The Wikipedia article itself states that worker councils lost both their power and ability to vote followed by protests by workers which were violently put down.

                Why do I need to provide more sources when the one you provided almost fully agrees with my statement with the exception of one dissenting historian?

                • Cowbee@lemmy.ml
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                  1 month ago

                  The dissent was about efficacy, not the actual presense of a democratic system. Reread the article, lol. Opposition parties were banned, not elections.

                  It does not agree with you, you misread the article. Both modern historians and opened soviet archives back me up. Since when is “Pat Sloan” and “Robert Thurston” a single historian?

                  You’re deeply unserious.

                  • FluffyPotato
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                    1 month ago

                    You know the anarchist group I’m part of had people like you join from time to time that seem more interested in reading, purity testing and just calling other members “bad lefties” instead of taking part in local politics which is our main goal. Calling me unserious while complaining about definitions takes the cake though.

                    You seem to have misread it more. Yes, parties were banned but so were factions in the bolshevik party, elected city soviets and pretty much all groups outside the party. Meaningful elections happened only inside the party, the elections everyone took part in were for show, they gave no control to the workers. It’s all in that source.

                    If you are interested in how elections were run in the USSR this is pretty much how I remember: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_Soviet_Union From what I remember the candidates you could actually vote for were party picks that would do the same thing anyways so your vote was merely symbolic. Over time people cought on to that and voter turnout crashed so hard the party started handing out exotic fruit to people who show up, I got my first orange that way.

                    If you want to know what happened to the worker councils in the USSR read it here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers'_council

                    Pat Sloan probably took part in an election before Stalin, as I previously said, the election process after Lenin was very different. So, yea one dissenting historian.