Any anarchist or socdem critique of the USSR. I don't think there's actually much in-depth stuff about this because it amounts to "told you so". Within Marxist theory I guess the Frankfurt school would be worth a look. (Yes, the exact one chuds think rules the world, if only. That is, it's where "Cultural Marxism" points at while ignoring every single thing the Frankfurt school is actually saying.)
barsoap
joined 2 years ago
Not every situation can be solved via “convincing.”
Well, you need to convince the KGB to stop enforcing the bosses' commands, taking away the bosses' power, as that is where the necessity for OSHA to have power even arises. Of course, enforcement of power is all the KGB is there for so you have to convince power-hungry authoritarians to stop doing what they do and retire. It'd be in their own interest, but their neuroses doesn't let them see it.
We can talk about the need to coerce to get rid of the KGB to bring about a system that is free from the KGB, we can talk about the need of defences against the resurgence of a KGB while the very notion of ordering people about is not relegated to the history books, but we do not need to even entertain the idea of power being necessary in actually realised socialism as it would be a contradiction in terms.
That's not how quotas were set in the USSR. An analysis of how implementation came to differ from those kinds of ideal descriptions might be in order. Right-out mandatory if you want to call yourself a materialist.
power, whatever you want to call it to compel
"to compel". That's power. Authority is more like "to convince".
This is necessary,
No.
as people will work in their own interests and may want to cut corners
It is not in the interest of workers to cut corners. That interest is coming from somewhere else. That is why OSHA needs power. Without those external interests, all that OSHA needs to do is convince that certain practices are beneficial to the worker's own self-interest. If they are any good at their job, they will be very convincing, they will have much authority.
This is the fundamental stuff that Marx, and by extension many Marxists, miss in their analysis. That's why the revolution failed: Because it was not, systemically, beneficial to the worker, because it was the exchange of one boot for another boot. Advances such as healthcare? Goddammit SocDems caused Germany to introduce universal public healthcare under Monarchism. "We need the dictatorship of the vanguard to introduce these advances" is not an argument, it never has been necessary and with the likes of OSHA: The USSR was not great, not terrible. Bosses could override safety concerns because higher-ups want production quota, and they did. The reason it wasn't terrible is because the people engineering factories cared about that stuff, and worked it into the design.
The same misappreciation btw also extends to histography: "The peasant has no class consciousness". Peasant revolt after constant peasant revolt attested in history would beg to differ.
See, you go on to prove my exact point, that QA workers and safety workers need the authority to stop production. You recognize this necessary authority, but then undermine it by saying it’s the “will of the workers.” If you don’t recognize it as authority, then it can be gone against, meaning you have to recognize it as authority. Managers don’t just do reports, otherwise they wouldn’t exist.
You're doing the Engels thing. "See, subordinate, you give authority to Bob from safety. Thus, you accept authority, thus, I get to tell you what to do, and I'm telling you to increase production by 200%, skirting safety protocols if need be". It doesn't work like that. Authority, like respect, is earned. A king is not an authority on bootmaking no matter how much power he wields. (Well he could actually be a hobby bootmaker but you get my point).
Proper managers just do reports. Not always the written kind. They're not saying "do this, do that", they're saying "X needs Y, can you supply it, please contact them", they're saying "have a look at this procedure what do you think of it". They're keeping an eye on everything, produce a larger picture and communicate their insights to anyone who should know, or is asking. Their authority comes from good analysis.
OSHA has power because it is punishable to not do what they say, they have authority.
You're still equating power and authority. And not just in the "eh those terms have some overlap and speech can get fuzzy", but in your thinking itself, you're not making crucial distinctions: OSHA would not need any power if bosses did not have power over workers, its authority as people knowledgable in matters of work safety is plenty to make the workers listen to them. You do not need to threaten a machinist for them to not put their dick in a vice. You do need to threaten bosses who threaten machinists so that they put their dick in a vice. The necessity to threaten the boss with gulag does only arise because the boss is given the power to threaten the worker with gulag.
Your admission that there needs to be management is an admission of authority’s necessity in controlled contexts. To trust the bootmaking factory to be safe, have controlled QA, to be practicing safe environmental practices, all aspects of mass industry require at some level administration and management. The QA worker must have a backed authority to halt production of boots with toxic materials, the safety workers must have the authority to ensure proper lock-out tag-out is followed, the maintenance workers must be able to have authority to halt production to fix machinery.
Doing all of that is in the interest of the workers themselves. Not being hindered by capital or threat of gulag to implement it, they will. The task of a manager is to analyse to give reports, not to direct. The safety worker has authority because people want to be safe.
If you have an actual look of how worplace safety is implemented in countries that actually have a good track record then you'll see the best numbers in those where the shop floor council has the power to stop everything if need be, interest of the bosses be damned, like Germany. Next up are countries where there's an independent public body with that authority, like the US (OSHA). Bottom of the barrel are those where workplace safety is left to the whims of capital or the local party secretary.
Marxists simply claim that the USSR was the world’s first Socialist state
Only according to Marx' definition so that's a nothingburger.
What needs to change is the method of ownership and direction, rather than being at the whim and for the profits of few individuals, production can be owned and run by all for all.
...why didn't the USSR change it? Why was everything dictated, top down, by few individuals squirrelling away plenty of money? The corruption problem post-Soviet states have is inherited from the USSR, which normalised profiting off anything that flowed through your station. The higher the station, the greater the profit.
It doubled life expectancy from the 30s to the 70s, over tripled literacy rates to be higher than 99%, ended famine, dramatically lowered wealth disparity while improving median wages
Plenty of states who did that without turning into dictatorships and maybe ask the Ukrainians about famine and who caused it.
democratized the economy,
No they didn't. You're just rattling down a fanboy list I can't be bothered.
It's not even about humanity, it's also the right thing to do from a business perspective: You want your workers to be productive again ASAP, that's worth not just continuing to pay them, but also focussing the collective buzz-bee energy of middle management on finding out what everyone needs and finding ways of providing it so they can actually do work instead of dealing with personal shit. Suddenly have 1000 homeless employees? Get them hotel rooms, find them homes, if need be build apartments. Have the legal department pro-bono the management of their insurance claims. Whatever is necessary, the next useless presentation and the next grand lawsuit you planned can wait. Don't paint your nails while your feet are on fire.
As for management, management needs authority,
It is often said that Anarchists bow, on the matter of boots, to the authority of the bootmaker. But, truth be told: If they make shoddy shoes, no we don't. Good managers don't order people around, they organise. They are servants to the collective project.
every single decision
Strawman. I don't care how the shoemaker affixes the sole, what matters is that it makes sense in the context of the end-product being a shoe that fits. I may not be able to figure out how to construct a good shoe, but I can judge the result by virtue of having feet. It's the same with management. One problem tankies, particularly of the so common Yankee persuasion, have I think is that corporate culture is so utterly broken in America that they can't even imagine working under good management. Thus you get the slave thinking that the only way out is for themselves to become the master, and then history repeats. The master/slave dialectic is already a diagnosis, building onto it, also as inversion, just further neurosis.
Well, since you insist on distorting history,
You can deny the power inversion the Bolsheviks caused all you want, how the selection for council positions was done such that an on-paper bottom-up organisation became in practice a top-down one, but it won't change the actual history. The purpose of the system is what it does and what the Bolshevik counter-revolution did was to put people like Stalin and Beria into power, riding on the back of the easily abusable power relations that Lenin created, which I grant at least had ideals. The same power relations which, after the dissolution of the USSR, allowed banditry to fill the power vacuum.
is what historically has happened in Socialist countries
Specifically in Russia, yes, that indeed happened. Until the Bolsheviks putsched and took power away from the councils. There was a January revolution and an October counter-revolution.
I just want to make sure that Marx is being measured
Originally you wanted to say "Socdems are not socialists", which is how this whole thing started. The point here is that yes, that might be the case, but if you claim that ineffectiveness is something that disqualifies you (because the purpose of a system is what it does) then MLs are even worse off because they're right-out counter-revolutionary. And insofar as modern Marxists don't fall into that category, such as council communists, they're essentially syndicalists. Slightly different theory, same praxis, and definitely "revisionist" in the eyes of MLs.
The strawman in On Authority is Engels completely misrepresenting Anarchist critique of power, in a very comical way: "Oh, you anarchists are complaining that looms force you to pull levers". Ergonomics of levers aside, the critique always was "we don't want you to tell us when to pull the lever and when to take a break". You can make suggestions, you can explain your reasoning, if you do that you have done your job as a manager and things are going to happen like that because they make sense to us, if not, if you demand obedience, then you're a boot in our face and need to fucking go.
No. Classes are social relations to the Means of Production.
If there is hierarchy then there are different social relations to the means of production: A worker does not have the same relation to the means of productions as the central committee, and under hierarchy that difference in relation goes beyond the (unavoidable) division of labour (roughly and bluntly, management/organisation vs. pounding metal), but involves difference in power: To counter the worker's organic power over the means of production (being the ones actually operating stuff) the central committee has to furnish means of rule, such as gulags, propaganda, catch 22s, you name it.
The solution to this conundrum is to see that the power of the workers does not have to be countered. That, if the central committee is willing to actually meet the workers at eye level, to listen, this will be reciprocated by the workers valuing the committee’s input, and broader overview of the situation, and also acknowledge necessities imposed by larger factors, based on trust and common interest. Thus the difference in relation to the means of production loses its power dynamic and management vs. pounding metal is no more of a difference than using a machine vs. repairing it. All are workers. Thus, therefore: To abolish class, you have to abolish hierarchy.
And IDGAF about "misconceptions of Marxism", I'm not a history nerd. Marx was wrong a lot, that's the larger issue, the one actually materially relevant.
Anarchists seek abolition of hierarchy, Marxists seek abolition of classes.
If there is hierarchy, there are classes.
Curiously, btw, you overlooked this:
Something about resilience against something? Necessary preconditions?
It is the self-interest of the bosses to ignore safety concerns. It is not, ever, in the interest of workers to ignore safety concerns.
Thus there exist a configuration of society in which OSHA does not require power, and that is when the self-interest of the workers is not infringed upon by other factors. In other words: Socialism.
Because what else would you define socialism as if not a state of things where worker's self-interest is not infringed upon. How can you claim that anything that infringes on worker's righteous self-interest could ever be socialism. "Socialism is when the interests of the working class is infringed upon, and the more its interests get infringed upon, the more socialist it is", or what?