this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
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Isn't that what USSR was, dictatorship?
No, the soviet union was democtatic. It was even dissolved through a vote. The soviet union had a more comprehensive and complex system of democracy than liberal democracy.
Illegally though, most of citizens voted against in a referendum that was just ignored.
Yep, that's also true. My point was more along the lines of Michael Parenti's, where the so-called totalitarian USSR never seemed to need blood to overturn it. Can definitely see how it would be counter-productive to use it as a point, though.
Good question. No. It was not. Please read about it. There is plenty of writing about the political structure of the USSR, its constitutional documents, its legal and court systems, etc. It is imminently possible for you to learn about it if you're curious
Dictatorship of the proletariat is democracy for the people
There was no dictatorship of the proletariat. Trotsky prevented labor unions from going on strike. War communism was forcing workers to labor as slaves. The new economic policy sent managers bourgeois back to run the factories.
It was a top down dictatorship. Not a bottom up dictatorship of the proletariat. It was supposed to be all the power to the soviets. The soviets ended up being a tool for the politburo.
This is remarkably liberal. In times of existential war, strict control and competent planning was necessary. The NEP was strictly necessary going from barely out of feudalism to a somewhat developed industrial base upon which economic planning can actually function properly. The system of soviet democracy waa far better at letting workers run society, and the wealthiest in the USSR were only about ten times as wealthy as the poorest (as compared to the thousands to millions under Tsarism and now capitalism).
The USSR was a dictatorship of the proletariat, through and through. There is no fantasy version of socialism that can ever exist without needing to deal with existing conditions, obstacles, and barriers.
And at what point is it no longer a "dictatorship of the proletariat"? Do you really think, say, the Soviet leaders were looking out "for the proletariat"? Is Kim Jong-Un doing so because the country's official name contains the word "people"?
The working class saw a doubling of life expectancy, reduced working hours, tripled literacy rates, cheap or free housing, free, high quality healthcare and education, and the gap between the top and bottom of society was around ten times, as opposed to thousands to millions. The structure of society in socialist countries is fashioned so that the working class is the prime beneficiary. Having "people" in the name of the country makes no difference on structure, be it the PRC, DPRK, or otherwise, what matters is the structure of society.
If the defense for a NK-style society is that it "at least benefits the working class" I suppose even trickle-down isn't that bad.. whether class exists as a concept or not means nothing if you have to live like in NK..
The truth is that as long as you have a structure that allows a group of people to control and steer society - be it a "Proletarian dictatorship designed to benefit the workers" or otherwise - those people are gonna shape it in a way where it benefits themselves. It's a reasonable assessment that the main issue of the Soviet Union was Stalin's insanity and forcing certain policies (collectivisation) too fast, but the truth of the matter is that a new class simply emerged: the political, the ones that might not be traditionally rich but benefit in other ways. The working class was never the main beneficiary of the Soviet Union.. at the end of a day a dictatorship is just a dictatorship and it's never for the people. I'm in no way against socialism or enacting various socialist or socialist-adjacent fiscal policies but that doesn't mean that all just magically become good when the working class dubiously "benefits".
And how much has those same parameters improved in capitalist societies? China didn't become rich and influential until they started transitioning into s capitalist class society. No shit that working class conditions improved compared to (almost) literally being serfs
Comparing socialism to trickle-down economics is a false-equivalence. Trickle-down was a lie sold to the working class to justify lower taxes and safety nets, nothing trickles down. Socialist economies like the PRC, USSR, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, etc have had the opposite experience to varying degrees, an uplifting of the working class.
It is absolutely not a reasonable assessment of the USSR that relies on Stalin simply being "insane." He was paranoid towards his later years, sure, but he was never "insane." Further, Stalin was neither an absolute leader, nor was he a bad leader. The USSR was run collectively, from top to bottom, Stalin merely had the most individual influence. The structure of the USSR required lots of input from every part of the system. Further, under Stalin, life expectancy doubled, literacy rates tripled, healthcare and education was free and high quality, housing was cheap or even free, unemployment was practically 0, and the USSR went from feudalism to a developed economy that defeated the Nazis.
The idea of a "political class" is absurd. There were administrators and government officials, yes, but the top of soviet society was about ten times wealthier than the bottom. This numbers in the thousands to millions in Tsarism and capitalism. You have a fundamentally flawed view of socialism.
As for China, adopting market reforms does not mean transitioning to capitalism. They always had classes, even the DPRK has special economic zones like Rason that have limited private property. In China, the large firms and key industries are publicly owned, they have a socialist market economy and are in the primary stage of socialism.
All in all, you have a very liberal, western view of socialism and socialist history that does not correspond to material reality.
I'm saying that I'd take even a full on trickle-down society if NK is a good society to you solely based on the "working class being more equal".
It absolutely is. Even before he went full on paranoid tens of millions of people starved to death because it was more important to collectivise just for the sake of it rather than taking a pragmatic approach to transition. But hey, that's okay because the working class had more power, right? No one ever has "absolute" power; Stalin was way more powerful than anyone should ever argue for. Hitler also improved the economy of Germany, are we gonna praise him now? And Stalin, the dude that you apparently love, did help defeat the Nazis by sacrificing 20 million young men and being lucky with the weather. But that's surely due to Soviet socialism being great, right?
It is absolutely not absurd to talk of a political class. When a certain group of people get the best houses, the best food, the dachas, the best security, access to the secret phones, yes you have a damn political class.. I have a realistic view of socialism. You have an insanely rose-tinted view of evil regimes that were never the type of socialist they should've been.
Please, China is out-capitalisming basically every capitalist society. They're built up around amassing personal wealth and mass consumption. There's literally nothing socialist about modern-day China except that they have a so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat". And by that I don't mean that it's a bad country - it's thriving more than most Western countries and it's safe, clean, and well-off in most places.
All in all you have the view of a privileged c*** who read Marx once and thinks they're cool but have no experience with totalitarian states
How? You still have 1 person having full power instead of being first among equals?
You don't, though, this is ahistorical. Not only was the politburo a team, but the politburo wasn't all-powerful, merely the central organ. There was a huge deal of local autonomy.
What are you talking about about? Go read a goddamned book about the political structure of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, its many voting structures, its multiple state entities, its levels of power of distribution, and THEN try to argue that 1 person had full power.
It's ridiculous to think that your level of ignorance counts as a political perspective on history.
Stalin was a captain of a team
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf
Counterpoint:
What's the background for this report, who compiled it, what the sources were and so on?
It sounds pretty dubious since it has big ass text at the start saying
It's a top secret report created by the informational gathering apparatus of a global super power/nation state, with all the interest to get an accurate picture of their geopolitical rival, but also with the interest to keep their population not in the know (not it's like the only time in US history). The fact that it fits with other historical accounts of Stalin by e.g Domenico Losurdo.
Funny how you libs always pull out skepticism when it's against the western narrative. Even if it's unvaluated, it's not going to be significantly off. The CIA is pretty good at what they do
Can you point to any of CIA's metainfo about this file? Since I don't think we have anything more than this is some CIA file, but no info about who compiled this info, what they base it on, how has it been evalued (other than at the time it was apparently unevalued) and so on. You don't even know what the CIA thought of this document. We just know they have it.
Do we just take it as true because it's from CIA, even though we have no other information about it or what?
I mean are you against being sceptical of some random ass CIA document with big ass text on top of it about it being "unevaluated information"? Say it ain't so.
I believe this is the page you're looking for. It's very minimal. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp80-00810a006000360009-0
Might as well ask Snowden or a top ranking official
Why do you think they host it?
Do you even know what bias is?
It doesn't sound like you have any of the info that would make this a credible document. CIA hosts a shitload of documents and a lot of them are absolute bunk and directly contradictory. They've collected a lot of reports over all the decades they've been around, that's sorta their job and then they evaluate that information and based on that try to sus out the true information. Unfortunately we have no idea what the CIA itself thought of this info, at the time of release they haven't evalued it. It's almost like finding a book in a library and believing it to be credible because it's a well known library that has that book.
Let me ask it this way: what makes you think that this report is credible, factual and trustworthy?
I already answered above. It fits into the picture of historical accounts of Stalin and of how bias and interests work in regards to a nation state and it's geopolitical competitors.
You're convently ignoring the context in which this document exists and how its content relates to it.
Your try at abstracting something this complex fails. It's more akin having two libraries with two different accounts of history where some books are deliberately hidden (for various reasons, it exists and wasn't destroyed). This is a now a made-public book confirming the other libraries accunt history with their own source
Also:
It sounds like you consider this document good evidence because it already aligns with what you believe in and not on the merits of how the information was gathered, how it was verified or any sort of other merits you'd usually evaluate such information when you want to use it as evidence.
And I don't think CIA was sloppy. But this again hasn't been even evalued by them, as it says on big bold letters right at the start. We have no idea what CIA actually thought of this document since we have basically no info on it. Sorry to say.
We're discussing the account of Stalin and collective leadership vs top down and not the validity of this document. Good try on moving the goal post.
Also It's not good evidence, but a valueable piece of a larger puzzle, where one understands the dynamics of political economy and has to piece it together through these. If you'd read any theory at all, you know history is always written by the dominant class and one has to read through the lines with documents like this.
Sounds like you take the western account of history for granted, and don't engage with different views. It sounds like youre taking Information by diametrically opposed forces at face value. I too would like topics like feminism explained by anti-feminists, anarchism by an anti-anarchist, Marxism by a lib etc. I definitely never engage with what the other side says
You used this document as evidence to support your argument. Of course the credibility and validity of the document is a subject for discussion.
We have no idea who actually wrote this document. Just further pointing out how useless it really is. And believe me I'd be really interested to know the backstory of the document from a historical pov.
I used the document to highlight that even in the CIA there were people thinking Stalin is a captain of a team. I did however also point to Domenico Losurdos to underscore how its fits to existing historical accounts from a Marxist perspective
I agree, It's interesting to think about how a classified top secret document like this exists that basically could've been written by a leftie. To have this many points synthesized it required a bunch of fieldwork to come together like this, even if unevaluated. Another interesting aspect to think about is how it relates to current dominant western narratives in regards to current geopolitical rivals
But it doesn't show that CIA thought that, as I've tried to explain. You're taking a random document we know barely anything about as some official or truly held position CIA had on the matter and that's just not what it shows.
I mean we don't know who wrote it, what they did to arrive to their conclusions, what was their goal, position, experience, anything really. For all we know they based it on random chatter someone heard from a friend of a friend's dog walker. That's what makes it worthless as any sort of evidence. We have a random quote or opinion, basically. To have any sort of weight, you'd need something at least, but now we have nothing.
You're making the mistake that the CIA is one homogeneous blop where everyone thinks the same. Where once something gets evaluated and approved it's their party line. The document fits into the historical account of Stalin seamlessly. Even if it's chatted someone heard from s friend of a friend (and I don't think the CIA works this sloppily), it contains enough valuable information for the CIA to compile this document and to keep it.
CIA collects all sort of hearsay. Then they evaluate it to create coherent and credible information (as far as they know). This is unevalued without any sort of metainfo we might use ourselves to consider the credibility. All it seems to have is to agree with already held sentiment from you. That's all.
If you are being honest to youtself, if this didn't agree with whatever you already believed, you wouldn't give it the time of day for the exact reasons I've mentioned. Nor should you since there's exactly nothing in this document itself that would support it.
I think you forgot to write a reply
This idea would seem to rest on the logic that any given poor person would be less likely to be corrupted by power than a given rich person (presumably due to their experiences being poor). In my experience when you give someone who is used to destitution access to power and resources their instincts are incredibly self serving. Being part of the proletariat does not automatically indicate any amount of empathy, humility, self control, forward thinking, or any other characteristic of a good, fair leader.
Dictatorship of the proletariat doesn't mean "a random worker becomes dictator", it means the workers dictate the rules.
And how does a dictatorship by a particular class meaningfully differentiate itself from a dictatorship by an individual? On a practical level, would the dictatorial class elect their own leaders democratically, have internal struggles to chose the dominant leader based on perceived merits and authority, or expect the collective of the class rule autonomously?
I can intuit this system working with democratic internal elections, but i would struggle to refer to such a system as a “doctatorship”. The proletariet don’t represent a homogeneous group with uniform needs and so would need robust democratic structures for the system to not break down into authoritarianism the first less than perfectly cool leader shows up.
Also, how do you keep the bourgeoisie from just claiming to be proletariat and gaining access to the leadership class over the immediate time frame without inducing cruelty that will earn retaliation? And then again how do you prevent infiltration over the course of generations without committing genocide? I can see maybe just wanting to strip all of the bourgeoisie of their wealth and attempting to integrate into the proletariat, but without strong democratic structures the formerly powerful would trivially coopt the whole system for their gain, or even sabatoge it to prevent others from “getting ahead” or even to exact revenge?
This comment is filled with baked-in assumptions on your part without any evidence of you trying to understand the systems beforehand. Marx used the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" to contrast liberal democracy as the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie." Proletarian democracy depends on the large firms and key industries at minimum being publicly owned, so that the working class controls the economy and what everything else relies on.
You can't "hide" being bourgeoisie, and there's no reason "genocide" is necessary. These are ridiculous notions. Infiltration by opportunists is something that exists, and is why you can get kicked out of any competent party for wrecker behavior or opportinism.