That declassified document you posted doesn’t say a whole lot. Basically boils down to “we gave them a phone call”. If that’s all the proof there is for collaboration, then your evidence is pathetic.
Secondly, you notice that blue line going up almost vertically? I’ve already lined out my definition of ownership, there’s also a second one, namely that you own something if the sovereign legally recognizes you as the owner. What happened was that the Communist party went from controlling the means of production without accountability (de facto owning them), to being the recognized owner of the means of production (de jure owning them). The graph you posted just tracks the latter, that’s why it looks like the Soviet Union had low wealth inequality.
If you took care to actually read the graph, you would see it says “income inequality”. How income (i.e. regular earnings, NOT amount of property owned) relates to formal ownership of something is beyond me. Additionally:
What happened was that the Communist party went from controlling the means of production without accountability (de facto owning them), to being the recognized owner of the means of production (de jure owning them)
I don’t even know what to say. Are you not aware that in 1991 the USSR was dissolved? How exactly would the communist party achieve formal ownership of means of production in 1991 if the system was discarded in favour of capitalism? What happened is kinda exactly the opposite: means of production went from formal ownership by the state, to formal and de-facto ownership by private owners over the following 5-10 years (the “vertical” line you talk about).
I’m under the impression that you have done 0 reading on the topic of actual worker representation, which you haven’t rebuked and haven’t given any sources too, and you’re pulling stuff out of your ass from hearsay, because your comment literally makes no sense whatsoever
The people who took over the government of Russia were the same people who ran the communist party of the USSR. For example the first president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin. That’s how they were able to steal all the stuff.
Ok, so why if they already de-facto controlled everything, did they have comparably much lower INCOME. What stopped them from having higher INCOME? Why do you refuse to answer to that?
Ohhh, so now we bounce from your misunderstanding and conflation of wealth and income which now you conveniently forget about, and jump to “actually, money didn’t mean anything, so it doesn’t matter that income inequality was low”. Good to see you keep making up stuff on the spot.
If you had bothered to read my first comment, you’d have seen that highest wages were given not to party members but to highly trained professionals of the intelligentsia such as university professors or researchers (many of the latter in military projects). If wages were used as an incentive for these people, then how come money wasn’t real and didn’t mean anything? Then they would have paid those professionals the same!
Your point of “access to goods and services in the USSR through non-monetary means” has a bit of merit though, but it actually backfires to your agenda. Food basics, energy, heating, housing, basic clothing items, public transit and even housing were astonishingly low-priced, with housing costing about 3% of monthly family unit income, and with metro tickets in Moscow not changing price between 1940s and 1980. Healthcare was free to everyone, education was completely free to the highest level for everyone, and there was universal access to such important services. Those things actually work in the opposite direction that you mean: the poorer people were heavily subsidized in comparison to capitalist states. It’s especially relevant to rural areas, with tens of millions of formerly rural people being forced to abandon their hometowns after the deterioration or outright closure of formerly state-subsidized services (e.g. Moscow metropolitan area has grown by 6mn people over the past 30 years whereas the total population of Russia has shrunk by a few million).
Every single measurement of inequality has grown since the dismantling of the soviet state: reduction in life expectancy over the 90s and 2000s leading to above ten million premature deaths, lower childbirth rates, destruction of the public pension system, dismantling of public healthcare and education, removal of basic services in rural areas that have forced migrations of millions to cities, crime rates skyrocketed… What argument will you make up on-the-spot now?
You explained it perfectly well: you have as an axiom based on no sources provided yet (I.e. hearsay) that the “owning class” of the USSR owned the state property de facto, and so inequalily was perpetuated. Not through income, conveniently, as I already provided data contradicting that, so you shift to saying money was worthless.
I have explained and given you numbers and evidence on how access to many goods and services was subsidized to the working class and stopped being so after the transition to capitalism, which again contradicts your initial assertion that it was also capitalism and a class society with an owning class and a working class. Now, answer my proposition: given how universal access was I such things and how it stopped being the case, why did the “owning class” previously grant the working class access to such healthcare, education, housing, foodstuffs, energy, public transit, infrastructure, sports facilities, and even holiday resorts?
given how universal access was I such things and how it stopped being the case, why did the “owning class” previously grant the working class access to such healthcare, education, housing, foodstuffs, energy, public transit, infrastructure, sports facilities, and even holiday resorts?
Based on the personal accounts of a relative who visited the Soviet Union close to its collapse, the answer is that the working class didn’t have access to such things. One thing the Soviet Union had was hotels were you could only stay if you could pay with Western currency. People needing to line up for basic goods.
And lets not forget that the Soviet Union isn’t around anymore. Your supposed worker’s paradise collapsed, and the ones at helm got rich in the process.
That declassified document you posted doesn’t say a whole lot. Basically boils down to “we gave them a phone call”. If that’s all the proof there is for collaboration, then your evidence is pathetic.
Secondly, you notice that blue line going up almost vertically? I’ve already lined out my definition of ownership, there’s also a second one, namely that you own something if the sovereign legally recognizes you as the owner. What happened was that the Communist party went from controlling the means of production without accountability (de facto owning them), to being the recognized owner of the means of production (de jure owning them). The graph you posted just tracks the latter, that’s why it looks like the Soviet Union had low wealth inequality.
If you took care to actually read the graph, you would see it says “income inequality”. How income (i.e. regular earnings, NOT amount of property owned) relates to formal ownership of something is beyond me. Additionally:
I don’t even know what to say. Are you not aware that in 1991 the USSR was dissolved? How exactly would the communist party achieve formal ownership of means of production in 1991 if the system was discarded in favour of capitalism? What happened is kinda exactly the opposite: means of production went from formal ownership by the state, to formal and de-facto ownership by private owners over the following 5-10 years (the “vertical” line you talk about).
I’m under the impression that you have done 0 reading on the topic of actual worker representation, which you haven’t rebuked and haven’t given any sources too, and you’re pulling stuff out of your ass from hearsay, because your comment literally makes no sense whatsoever
The people who took over the government of Russia were the same people who ran the communist party of the USSR. For example the first president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin. That’s how they were able to steal all the stuff.
Ok, so why if they already de-facto controlled everything, did they have comparably much lower INCOME. What stopped them from having higher INCOME? Why do you refuse to answer to that?
Nothing, they could probably have written down any number and that would have been their salary.
Because money isn’t real. If you control everything, you don’t need to buy stuff, hence money is literally meaningless.
Ohhh, so now we bounce from your misunderstanding and conflation of wealth and income which now you conveniently forget about, and jump to “actually, money didn’t mean anything, so it doesn’t matter that income inequality was low”. Good to see you keep making up stuff on the spot.
If you had bothered to read my first comment, you’d have seen that highest wages were given not to party members but to highly trained professionals of the intelligentsia such as university professors or researchers (many of the latter in military projects). If wages were used as an incentive for these people, then how come money wasn’t real and didn’t mean anything? Then they would have paid those professionals the same!
Your point of “access to goods and services in the USSR through non-monetary means” has a bit of merit though, but it actually backfires to your agenda. Food basics, energy, heating, housing, basic clothing items, public transit and even housing were astonishingly low-priced, with housing costing about 3% of monthly family unit income, and with metro tickets in Moscow not changing price between 1940s and 1980. Healthcare was free to everyone, education was completely free to the highest level for everyone, and there was universal access to such important services. Those things actually work in the opposite direction that you mean: the poorer people were heavily subsidized in comparison to capitalist states. It’s especially relevant to rural areas, with tens of millions of formerly rural people being forced to abandon their hometowns after the deterioration or outright closure of formerly state-subsidized services (e.g. Moscow metropolitan area has grown by 6mn people over the past 30 years whereas the total population of Russia has shrunk by a few million).
Every single measurement of inequality has grown since the dismantling of the soviet state: reduction in life expectancy over the 90s and 2000s leading to above ten million premature deaths, lower childbirth rates, destruction of the public pension system, dismantling of public healthcare and education, removal of basic services in rural areas that have forced migrations of millions to cities, crime rates skyrocketed… What argument will you make up on-the-spot now?
I suppose I didn’t explain it well enough.
You explained it perfectly well: you have as an axiom based on no sources provided yet (I.e. hearsay) that the “owning class” of the USSR owned the state property de facto, and so inequalily was perpetuated. Not through income, conveniently, as I already provided data contradicting that, so you shift to saying money was worthless.
I have explained and given you numbers and evidence on how access to many goods and services was subsidized to the working class and stopped being so after the transition to capitalism, which again contradicts your initial assertion that it was also capitalism and a class society with an owning class and a working class. Now, answer my proposition: given how universal access was I such things and how it stopped being the case, why did the “owning class” previously grant the working class access to such healthcare, education, housing, foodstuffs, energy, public transit, infrastructure, sports facilities, and even holiday resorts?
Based on the personal accounts of a relative who visited the Soviet Union close to its collapse, the answer is that the working class didn’t have access to such things. One thing the Soviet Union had was hotels were you could only stay if you could pay with Western currency. People needing to line up for basic goods.
And lets not forget that the Soviet Union isn’t around anymore. Your supposed worker’s paradise collapsed, and the ones at helm got rich in the process.