While yes, a socialist country would have other priorities but let's also not forget that the USSR wasn't socialist. Before Stalin it had the potential to be sometime in the future but that got sidelined at best.
Workers had no control over the means of production. Those were owned by the party which was just another form of bourgeoisie rule. A good example of that was the insane amount of nepotism in the party leading to appointment of friends and relatives with no competency who went against the wishes of the workers. Trofim Lysenko for example was appointed by Stalin and his policies forced farmers to basically kill their crops leading to mass famines in the USSR and those that didn't were declared fascists, traitors or something along those lines.
It's not socialist if the workers lack any control.
Planned by the party, not the workers. Workers lacked any voice in the party, it was no different than any other authoritarian rule in that aspect.
I grew up in the USSR, nearby farms were controlled by a kolhoos which was headed by someone important in the party, the farmers had no say in what was to be produced or to who their produce goes to, only the party decided that. The same control existed for every other industry, party gave the orders with no input from a single worker, commonly even going against workers in their orders.
I would love a system where workers actually controlled the means of production but the USSR was not that.
I never said a direct democracy is needed but worker control of the means of production is, in the USSR workers did not have that. Pretty much all meaningful elections in the USSR were held within the party by the party, not by the workers. The party was a bourgeoisie ruling class with vastly different class interests which is why the USSR was not socialist.
If you read your own source you will find that soviet democracy pretty much fell in 1921 and with the death of Lenin it was gone. Which was my original statement that with Stalin any hope for socialism was gone. So my point of it being bourgeoisie rule stands.
I did but that section definitely does not reflect what life was for a worker in the USSR after Stalin so I'm curious when he participated in that election.
I did not say that capitalists were in power what I said was that the party was in power. There aren't just 2 options, a monarchy for example is commonly neither capitalist nor socialist.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
What I wrote was that workers did not control the means of production, the party did. Having symbolic elections does not give workers any control.
You should find a local political group that actually takes part in local politics, that actually has a chance of bringing about socialist policy. Political book clubs are largely useless and only good for mutual mental masturbation.
Are you saying that if the bolshevik party had 1% workers in it it would count as socialist even though the party had different class interests to the workers and workers had no control over the means of production? If the party was controlled by the workers there would be no need to violently put down mass worker protests.
The assumption was made based on how insufferable some of your ad hominems were and contact with other people who talk like that. Work in effective local politics groups tends to mellow people like this out and makes them less pedantic.
The Wikipedia article you started with had this info. The party was more interested with remaining in power and benefitting it's members than the working class after Lenin. They banned any dissenting voice and cracked down on the working class. They became closer to a royal family in a monarchy with Stalin. And I do repeat that the workers had no control of the means of production after 1924, potentially even after 1921.
Are you being purposely optuse or bad faith? The elections were symbolic with no effect on production as I already said and provided sources for. It's not socialism if workers have no control over the means of production.
During those elections you were voting for local party picks that all had the same instructions from the party. Who won had no effect on how things were run. The high ups in the party controlled how the means of production were used, not the workers. As you may recall from your own link factions in the party were banned meaning dissent got you ousted.
Elections that don't give workers any control over the means of production are meaningless and not socialism. How many times do I have to repeat this?
Onshoring the EV supply chain to Europe would cut the emissions of producing a battery by 37% compared to a China-controlled supply chain, according to new analysis by Transport & Environment (T&E). This carbon saving rises to over 60% when renewable electricity is used. Producing Europe’s demand for battery cells and...
Ya know what would reduce carbon even more and pretty much eliminate microplastics: Rail. Like all the problems with pollution from transit are mostly solved like 200 years ago with trains and trams, why do people insist on reinventing the wheel?
The money used to maintain car infrastructure could be used to build all rail ever. Rail is both insanely cheap to build and maintain compared to asphalt roads. If every larger city builds a tram network in the next 5 or so years instead of doing endless road maintenance that will have more impact than any investment in electric vehicles ever could in the same timeframe.
Also electric vehicle adoption is far slower than building public transit as only very wealthy countries have any chance of mass adopting while everyone else will keep buying 10 year old ICE cars. So any chance of electric cars being a solution is pretty much null. It's fine to develop them but any government investment has to go to more effective solutions, like building a rail network to replace air travel.
People who live away from all settlements make up maybe up to 5% of population if being generous and they can all roll coal and it would still be a net win if the vast majority of people take a tram or train instead of a car or plane.
Also people living in the middle of nowhere have no infrastructure to recharge their cars anyway if they need to drive outside the car's range so it's not like electric cars help them.
You are not living in reality if you think electric vehicle adoption can be fast enough to have any effect on climate change. Building a proper electric train and tram network on the other hand is doable in a short timeframe while being cheaper.
Wait, so you want government investment to focus on electric cars even though it won't have an impact on climate change? I want that investment in rail because rail is most likely to have the largest impact while being doable in a short term for the vast majority of the population. Electric vehicle adoption has zero chance to reach a point where it would have an impact.
I get that your an American that car companies have propagandised to oblivion but public transit works and it works better than electric cars for most people. If you are a farmer living 200km from any other human you aren't using an electric vehicle anyways.
Oh yea, shipping by water is obviously more efficient but creating waterways everywhere is quite a lot harder and expensive than building rail. I'm mostly addressing transit for humans but for ships nuclear may be a better option for pollution but that's not something I have looked into.
You seem to have an issue with making assumptions while going out of your way to assume and strawman everything. Even the comment at you being American was a jab at you for assuming I'm young though I'm in my 50s, I was hoping you notice that and stop making assumptions.
I said government funding for transit should focus mainly on rail as that would actually reduce pollution. Private entities should obviously be free to develop EVs but I never advocated for the removal of busses, ambulances, firefighters and enviourmental regulations. Where the fuck did you even get that, or are you arguing with someone else?
EV adoption would take far longer than decades since it relies on each person to switch over which will not even start happening in the next decade if you can stop all ICE vehicle production tomorrow. Outside of really rich people most buy used cars that are at least 5 years old, commonly even 10 years. If you want EV mass adoption there needs to be used EVs available for around 5000 to 2000 euros that don't need a new battery before you can use it. That kind of tech doesn't even exist yet.
To fix climate change you don't need to serve literally everyone with EVs, you need to reduce emissions enough and rail would serve the transit needs of more people than EVs ever could so that's where I want government funding for transit to go to. You seem to be more in the camp that we need a perfect solution that serves every person on the planet but EVs can't even do that.
All in all getting rid of carbon credits and taxing all emissions no matter where you are in the world would help even more but this post is about EVs.
It already is, finding a parking spot and then walking through a parking lot is a lot less convenient than walking from the tram stop to the store and it's roughly the same distance. I sold my car after moving to the city because public transit is so much more convenient.
I was in my early 20s when the Soviet occupation collapsed here, the victims here were everyone not high up in the party.
Sure, capitalism fucking sucks but pretending the USSR was anything other than just bourgeoisie rule is delusional. The oligarchs were just called the communist party then.
Estonia but it's not like that was not the case elsewhere in the occupied areas. Russia mostly exported resources out of there to benefit itself which is a large reason how it raised quality of life in Russia itself.
My problem with people citing those metrics is that they are true for Russia itself while ignoring that a large reason for those improvements was colonialism done to the occupied regions. Industrialisation was another thing that improved those metrics but that was hardly unique to the USSR. Some of those regions may have had benefits but here in Estonia it was pretty much all around bad. After the occupation ended the quality of life here improved rapidly.
As far as examples for socialism I'd say the USSR was an all around failure but people still defend it and even Stalin who basically guaranteed it's failure as a socialist project. In the baltic region the word communism is basically poisoned because of the USSR.
In the USSR those improvents were for Russia, not so much for their colonised regions where they exported resources from. Industrialisation also helped but that's not really unique to anything.
I never said the US was better than the USSR, I don't really give a shit about the US. One shit country being slightly better than another one does not make it good.
I like how you characterised it as "some mistakes" . The whole famine business that ravaged the USSR was caused by sheer incompetence. A guy appointed by Stalin to manage agriculture came up with a fun idea of "communist crops won't compete for resources" and forcing farmers to plant crops way too close. I'd say that was one of the greatest mistakes. There was also some killing the gays and some ethnic minorities but I think those were intentional.
I also don't attribute anything to communism, only the USSR, communism hasn't existed. I also attribute being the worst advertisement imaginable for communist to the USSR. They kinda ruined it for everyone else by calling themselves that.
The one boycotted by 6 of the 15 territories? Or the ones that followed in each that led to them declaring independence which in turn led to the collapse of the soviet union?
The baltics were 3 of those boycotting territories and we had similar referendums for independence which, I'm pretty sure, all got over 70% support.
I have seen arch recommended to first time Linux users more times than I can count. It's usually said that installing it is a learning experience. If that's a joke it's a really stupid one.
Last time I installed EndeavourOS I had to connect to the wifi through the terminal. That's a surefire way to get a beginner to stop installing right there so I would not recommend it.
Oh, there are tons of distros where you don't need to use the terminal for anything, even Manjaro, an arch based distro, doesn't need you to ever open the terminal. I was just saying that if adoption is the goal then using the terminal can't be a requirement for a normal user experience.
What I mean is that using the terminal isn't mandatory in Manjaro while Arch and Arch based distros all require it. So for that it's an excellent example.
As for stability it's a bit more stable than Arch itself from my experience but I still has issues. The most stable distro I have used was Pop OS, I didn't have a single issue there for like 3 years straight, I only switched because of a hardware change and Pop OS's Mesa version was unstable on the new hardware.
My central point is still that you will never in a million years get the average computer user to use a terminal.
Yes, they can but an average user never will and for Linux to get any adoption beyond the enthusiast space it also can't be a requirement.
Like it's fine if you believe Linux should never get mass adoption and be a niche desktop OS. All I'm saying is that I want Linux to get mass adoption and for that terminal usage can't be a requirement because your average computer user, who's most advanced computer use is installing an ad blocker on their browser, will never open a terminal.
Capitalist Efficiency ( lemmy.ml ) Englisch
European made batteries could be 60% less carbon intensive than Chinese, researchers urging Europe to support investments ( www.transportenvironment.org ) Englisch
Onshoring the EV supply chain to Europe would cut the emissions of producing a battery by 37% compared to a China-controlled supply chain, according to new analysis by Transport & Environment (T&E). This carbon saving rises to over 60% when renewable electricity is used. Producing Europe’s demand for battery cells and...
Just one more lane ( sh.itjust.works )
Know the difference. ( lemmy.ml )
Found this on the web years ago ( i.imgur.com ) Englisch
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Seen this countless times
me🦊irl ( pawb.social )