lugal

As a pirate from the 16th century I am as shocked as you are

Don't worry, the cake will be done when you come home

Polyrule

Edit: sorry, wrong community

Germany here. I consent.

Let's get that straight: Your argument that the USSR didn't have a ruling class was that Khruschev didn't make all the decisions. Capitalism has a ruling class (the owning class) but they don't make the decisions either. It's the market that does in capitalism. Sounds like capitalism doesn't have a ruling class by the criteria you introduced. On the other hand, the USSR had a committee of elitist experts and the union bureaucracy. Which to me sounds more like a ruling class. Maybe try to use some consistency.

My argument – following Simone Weil – is that both liberal capitalist states and bolshevik states are at their core bureaucracy as in the bureaucracy is the ruling class. In liberal democracies, there are 3 bureaucracy: the state bureaucracy, the industrial bureaucracy (think (middle) management) and the worker bureaucracy (unions). All of them are detached from those they are supposed to represent. Bolshevik states, as self proclaimed worker states, unite all these into one, which doesn't change alot. The problem is the vertical power structure within unions and parties and stuff. That's something, I am as convinced as before, most Marxists have no analysis of. I will not repeat the Bakunin quote but I think he nailed it (even tho he wasn't a perfect person over all).

I’d have to read that book

Here you are.

the failure of anarchists of arming the working class

Well, it's not that easy to arm the working class without weapons. Guess who had weapons and decided to side with the republicans instead of supporting the revolutionary socialists? Why no mention to the relationship between the USSR and CNT in your response?

Khruschev didn't decide that the iron in the factory #3 would be used in the steel beam factory #7.

Who do you think makes such decisions in a capitalist context?

Funnily enough, the dictatorial USSR was the only country which assisted the republicans in their civil war against fascism

Even funnier they didn't support the CNT nor POUM.

According to Worshiping Power by Peter Gelderloos, decentralized structures have an advantage in self-defense but a disadvantage beyond their base territory. That's why both the Spanish Civil War and the Makhnovshchina were lost once the popular front strategy were implemented.

But we agree that they were the ruling class? Once everything belongs to the state, it really belongs to those who rule the state.

And there is power structure within parties. Being member of the party doesn't make you an equal to every other member. Many people were not only encouraged but coerced to join the party and do as the higher ups say. Centralism is never democratic.

I'm looking forward to your mental gymnastics on how the Kronstadt rebellion were the bad guys

I love how tankies (and in varying degrees most Marxists) have no analysis of (vertical) power structures. As Bakunin so perfectly predicted:

So the result is: guidance of the great majority of the people by a privileged minority. But this minority, say the Marxists will consist of workers. Certainly, with your permission, of former workers, who however, as soon as they have become representatives or governors of the people, cease to be workers and look down on the whole common workers' world from the height of the state. They will no longer represent the people, but themselves and their pretensions to people's government. Anyone who can doubt this knows nothing of the nature of men.

But don't take it from someone who saw it coming, but from Bookchin who was very sympathetic to the USSR:

That the Russian Soviets were incapable of providing the anatomy for a truly popular democracy is to be ascribed not only to their hierarchical structure, but also to their limited social roots.

The soviets were democratic but the bolsheviks smashed the soviets as soon as they realized they wouldn't infiltrate them and stayed a Soviet Union in name only. Why wouldn't they keep the soviets as a decision making body if the were interested in a democratic government?

I'm talking about bolshevik parties and their bureaucracy becoming the new capitalist or ruling class as Bakunin told Marx would happen

Tbf it's not that anybody saw that coming. Maybe Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta and all the other anarchists but aside from them, nobody could have known it.