The Soviet Union was never a communist state

>But communism isn't the actions of communists.

It literally is. Are you saying capitalism has nothing to do with the actions of people who have private ownership of the means of production?

Capitalism has nothing to do with what self-professed "capitalist" ideologues do. For example, if you're an ancap shitposting from your mother's basement, you have no impact on the economy or nature of capitalism (except for the bandwith and cheetosh you're consuming.)
If every real capitalist (owner of capital) in the world suddenly decided to collectivize their capital and abolish private property, that would turn capitalism into something else, it wouldn't mean capitalism is now a variant of anarcho-communism.
"Communists" are to communism what ancaps are to capitalism.

If these individuals did not yet own the means of production, would you call their actions capitalism?

>Capitalism has nothing to do with what self-professed "capitalist" ideologues do

But that's not what I said was it?

If you're a Communist revolutionary, and you execute every kulak you encounter in your country, I'm sorry, but that says something about your ideology, whether you like it or not.

it wasn't, it was socialist
the USSR even called it self socialist, not communist

What if you don't?

Well then you aren't much of a Communist are you because being a Communist obviously necessitates violent hatred of class enemies.

C H I D O R I

i don't know much about marx or communism but can somebody please explain to me
how is a communist society supposed to maintain foreign/diplomatic relations?

The tagline of the 'communist' soviets was that "communism is only X years away!"

The Soviet Union was by all accounts, including their own, a socialist country. Not a communist.

Even so, communism is an absolute. For the same reason the US isn't a purely capitalistic society. The US has social institutions. Libraries, schools, etc, etc

I hate when people say the USSR was Communist, it's like saying America's a capitalist democracy or Nazi Germany was a fascist dictatorship.

None of these were pure adherents to their ideology

Bourgeoisie?
On my Veeky Forums?
Rev up those gulags

>REAL communism hasn't been tried yet!
If your ideology is so stupid that not even a small group of intelligent people could adhere to it, maybe it's time to ditch it.

>communist state
This is like saying "six foot dwarf" or "atheistic god", it's an oxymoron on the count that communism is by definition stateless.

Of course it was it was a communist-led state. But no one in the world has ever disputed this.

NO

TRUE
SCOTSMAN
FALLACY

>libraries and schools are socialist.

You cannot wrongly call something a certain term, and then pull "no true scotsman" when it's pointed out that by very definition not that thing.

The Soviets did not describe their state as communist, it is not communist according to any actual communist theory. The people who call it "communist" in reference to it's system of organization are simply wrong. Similar to how if you said a full blooded natural born Peruvian is not a true Scotsman you would be correct.

Yes, it does. A social institution is an institution that belongs "to the people" (i.e. through, or via the government). A public library belongs to the people, and you can influence it's policies depending on who you vote for.

So you're wrong.

>An institution that's owned by the state is common ownership.

Is that you Lenin?

Does not apply, since the Soviet Union did not call itself Communist. It was run by a communist party, which had as it's end goal Communism. But it was not, and did not claim to be, communism (Unlike the true scotsman which did claim to be a Scot)

Certainly doesn't necessitate murder

There are other examples, but it is the most, if not only, commonly applied version of it.

It's just not socialism though. As I hope you now realize.

>Certainly doesn't necessitate murder

And yet that's what has happened every time. You can literally name any actual Communist that has gotten political power and he will invariably either killed people himself or gotten people killed.

Communism is the ultimate dream which Marxists want to achieve. So when a society tries to implement it but fails, they'll say;

>nah m8 it wasn't a utopia so obviously it's not Communism.

It's just special pleading.

With that kind of thinking, nothing is anything unless it's 100%. USA isn't capitalist. Soviet Union isn't communist.

Everything is constructed in shades. There are elements of socialism in US society, such as libraries.

>nothing is anything unless it's 100%.
No, I'm saying socialism has a very specific meaning that is worker control of the means of production. Things like co-ops and credit unions do indeed give a socialist character to an economy.

Things that the state happens to own like libraries, hospitals are not socialist. For all practical purposes they're private entities, the employees there do not democratically operate their work place. The government operates their work place whilst claiming to be representative of "the people". Following this logic the police are socialist, the army is socialist, nuclear weapons are socialist. I hope you can see why this logic is faulty and I strongly encourage you to read some actual socialist literature for more information.

So if you don't kill people you're not a communist, because in order to be your brand of True Communist, you have to kill people, and all the other times, that wasn't Real Communism.

No, but you have to take responsibility for your actions.

I don't care what you say you believe, I care what you do. And in almost every single circumstance that self-professed Communists have gotten more power than they should have, they have either murdered or imprisoned a lot of people that have literally done nothing wrong, or they have actually committed genocide.

Now you can say that this isn't the point of the "idea of Communism", but the idea of Communism obviously isn't relevant when the people who claim to be Communists commit genocide.

I mean, you communists have NO problem pointing this EXACT thing out when it's about capitalists doing insanely corrupt and immoral things, but you refuse to do the same for your own ilk.

>assuming I'm a communist
Man, I can tell this is going to be a productive conversation.
>Well then you aren't much of a Communist are you because being a Communist obviously necessitates violent hatred of class enemies.
Sounds here like your applying an ideological standard to determine how communists should behave.

Which of course you justify by the actions of communists.

Which you select by whether or not they meet your ideological criteria.

>I mean, you communists have NO problem pointing this EXACT thing out when it's about capitalists doing insanely corrupt and immoral things, but you refuse to do the same for your own ilk.
Ah, so you're simply providing a fair and equal judgement. So it would be fair to say then, that f you're not willing to kill Jews, you're not an anti-communist?

>Sounds here like your applying an ideological standard to determine how communists should behave.

No, I have observed how Communists *have* behaved.

Like I said earlier, name a single famous Communist, and this person is almost always a pathological murderer and a tyrant.

Sartre.

It was a socialist state.

not him but he supported pathological murderers and tyrants.

Sartre.

>Things that the state happens to own like libraries, hospitals are not socialist.

Yes, they are. They are owned by the people, through the government. A society is never 100% one thing or the other, except maybe totalitarian nations.

The soviets themselves called what they had barely socialism, and for some of the early years literally called what they had "state capitalism."
Really now. Primary sources exist for a reason.

Zizek,

Marx

Zizek literally says himself that if he ever got political power he would be a tyrant.

Aw zizek says a lot of things, one time he did try running for office and did actually alright, despite not winning the presidency. That was super weird, or at least is looking back.

>No True Scotsman: The Ideology

please see

>the soviet communist party wasn't *truly* communist
>what is positivism

Don't fall for his strawman bait. He literally starts his """""arguments""""" with
>oh so you're saying.... [proceeds to imply something you never said]

Rosa Luxembourg

Their aim was a communist society but the state was socialist. It's not hard to understand, and if you are just trying to string somebody along then pretending to be a retard is the lowest form of trolling.

Nah, religions were first.
>THAT GUY IS A HERETIC! THAT GUY IS A HERETIC!

And the German communists were claiming that Leninism wasn't even socialist, it was just authoritarian rule in the name of the workers.

The only way to assess a political ideology is by looking at its application.

Your definition of what *true* communism looks like is not real.

You're trying to prove that in math 1+1=3. When in reality 1+1=2, but that's not *true* math for you.

Or, you know, by its definition. By which no society in history was "communist". And by the fact that the USSR claimed to be "socialist", not "communist" (as communism was the goal it tried and failed to achieve).

>what is positivism

How is that related?

That would suggest they were trying.

The US, at every stage in its history, was closer to communism than the USSR ever came. At no point do you see the USSR making any effort whatsoever of giving up the state's central power to distribute it among a series of independent communes.

Even the USSR didn't claim it had achieved communism, only that, somehow, the exact opposite of communism, a fascist totalitarian nationalism, was supposed to one day achieve it. They, of course, never bothered explaining how.

Not that "real" communism could ever work, as a series of communes based on areas of production could never compete on the world stage against the various centralized powers, either economically or militarily, especially in today's interconnected and interdependent world.

If you want to see what communism looks like, pick a random worker-owned IT startup - like the early days of Microsoft or Google, or any of the newer ones that follow that model. It's inevitably dropped, after the company reaches a certain size, because in the end, even actual communism doesn't work beyond very small scales.

>hey are owned by the people, through the government.
They aren't though. The government says they are but for all practical purposes they're not.

Not to mention there's no such thing as "the people". Socialism isn't about "the people" owning stuff, it's about worker control of the means of production.

At first I though you were just mistaken. But you are so thick and stubborn that's it's clear you're just an uneducated dullard.

t. just learned about the word "positivism" today.

> IT startup
It's more that they get megabucks selling out to investors, which is especially important when there's no monetization scheme as it keeps the thing afloat, pays salaries, and puts big bucks in the bank if you sell your shares. I mean for a while, Amazon was not profiting, they kept spending and spending and seeking investors to expand and put into business capital. Once you reach a certain amount of marketability, you need investors if you want to make it big, you can't just gradually earn the capital you need to make it big. You need to seize on opportunity and grow faster than the business could grow without outside investment.

The commie neckbeards are right in the sense that communism is a pipe dream. A classless moneyless stateless society where work is abolished and all people are elevated into some kind of "superhuman" as (((Trotsky))) described it. """"Real"""" communism hasn't been tried the same way the garden of Eden has never been tried before..

That doesn't mean that the Soviet Union wasn't a socialist country striving to become a communist utopia. It was the end goal. Besides socialism is just a transition period to communism. The fact that no socialist state has ever made a transition is proof that marxism is a crackpot ideology

>the garden of Eden has never been tried before..
The garden of Eden has been tried though, dumb goy.

>the Soviet Union was communist
Let my dick meet your lips, fool.

The Soviet Union was a socialist country. Socialism is defined as the transition period to communism so stop being so autistic about that

>communist state

You have a very, very narrow mindset.

>Socialism is defined as the transition period to communism
No it isn't. Socialism is an actual thing that has a proper definition, and existed before Marx. Marx said that you can't go straight from capitalism to communism. You had to go through actual socialism to arrive at actual communism.

for that analogy to make sense, you'd have to assume that the failure of the soviet union is just about as definite as a nutter claiming that they're a wolf

please make a proper argument next time

>fascist
stop throwing this word around if you don't know what it means