The Soviet Union was AGAINST Socialism

Russian socializm was a parody of socialism

Russian capitalism now it's a parody of the classic western capitalism

Russian as always all messed up

but in any case, socialism in Russia was better than capitalism now

I can say this because I lived in a socialist society
and now I live in a capitalist society

but I do not understand how you are reasoning about a socialist society
if you never lived in socialist country?

 

Yes Russia was a parody of socialism. No socialist country has ever existed. What country did you live in?

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/03/01.htm

 

We all tend to see the society we were brought up in as superior to society now (often rightly) - but I can't see Russian State capitalism as even a parody of socialism. Who ruled? That's what counts. If it wasn't the working people it wasn't any form of socialism.

 

Trotsky viewed it as a degenerated workers state, which makes sense to me.

 

That's a play with words, in my view. The working class was destroyed by the Intervention, and by the time a new one had developed the Party was firmly in control. Well, it had been a workers' party, and it was certainly degenerate! I think Trotsky had committed so much to it that he couln't step back enough to use that wonderful marxist mind adequately. I don't think we'll be arguing about this when the next revolutionary wave comes - and let's hope it's soon!

 

Intervention?

 

Nineteen capitalist armies, as I recollect, attacked Lenin's Government - including US, British, Japanese, Germans and Czechs (capturing the trans-Sib railway to get home).

 

Capitalism must come first, and be successful, for socialism to be a reality.
If anything, WE are closer to a successful socialist utopia than any other country in history

 

oh, that intervention!

Exactly, which was why Marx was a big fan of the North in the American civil war.

But what Trotsky brilliantly predicted after the 1905 revolution in Russia was that capitalism may be so weak in backward countries that revolutions would happen in which the bourgeois were incapable of playing any progressive role. In which case their best tactic would be to attempt the impossible - socialism in an isolated backward country, in the hope that it might springboard revolutions in advanced countries, who could then help them achieve socialism.

Time and again Trotsky was proved right.

Stalin even tried to make sure all revolutions went capitalist, but it was just hopeless, bur with Stalinism also blocking any move towards socialism, they all ended up having to be Stalinist, against his wishes.