For one thing, I am not buying the argument it could not happen because of the cold war. Assume the SU had reduced hours of labor by half. In the first place, this would have had no effect on its national security, since it had the largest single stockpile of nuclear weapons on the planet. Further, especially after Hitler got what was coming to him, and with the vast industrial heartland of Europe vulnerable to the Soviet military, no one in their right mind was going to seriously consider fucking with the Soviet Union militarily.

In the second place, the reduction of hours of labor by half in the 1970s would have completely changed class relations in the world market. Just think of it: while the capitalist world in the 1970s was rocked by rampant stagflation and crisis, the Soviet Union would have been reducing hours of labor and progressively freeing its population from work! The political effect of that reduction on the world market would have equaled, if not exceeded, the impact of the Soviet Union going through the Great Depression with rapid industrial expansion and zero unemployment. It would have solidified the superiority of the Soviet mode of production in everyone’s mind.

Moreover, had the Soviet Union reduced hours of labor in the 1970s, just as the people of Vietnam were defeating the US militarily on the battlefields of Southeast Asia, it would have completely demoralized the entire capitalist class. The implications of those two events side by side are staggering.

Thus, it becomes all the more inexplicable why the Soviet authorities never reduced hours of labor once three factors are taken into account:

First, they already knew hours of labor had to be reduced eventually. Second, they were running into problems that, because of planned management, could not be resolved without reducing hours of labor. And, third, a reduction would completely shake up the world market and produce a political crisis in the West.

Someone needs to explain why they never reduced hours, because my only conclusion is that these facts suggest the Soviet mode of production was not socialist, but a form of capital.

This is a good post that goes over most of the reasons why he thinks the reduction of hours is so important:

https://therealmovement.wordpress.com/2016/02/11/its-not-easy-being-the-green-party-but-its-better-than-voting-democrat/

Soviet_Salami posted:

I think it's A Good Thing that the Soviet Union maintained a military-industrial complex on a scale capable of backing anti-colonial struggle rather than trying to impress first world liberals. It didn't work out perfectly, oh well.

i don't disagree, but if impressing first-world liberals also neutralizes cycles of overaccumulation and collapse then that's good too.

babyhueypnewton posted:

a good discussion will eventually start when people are less lazy (i.e., me) but first i think that guy jehu is legitimately mentally ill. he thinks everyone in the world is wrong except him, his interpretations of Marx make no sense, and he constantly blogs despite no one actually caring. i think the left 'blogopshere' attracts a lot of these kinds of people but because the internet has nowhere good to discuss things (except here ofc :blaugh: ) crazy people like that anti-dialectics lady, that dude who makes incoherent charts with 3d graphics, and this paranoid-narcissist guy get attention. alternatively he could just be a regular narcissist and huge loser like that 'maoist' guy and deadken they also get attention.

i feel ya. i've seen him in flamewars on twitter and reddit with communists, and i wish they didn't become exasperated with him so quickly, though. i know no one is eager to uproot what they see as a mountain of bullshit, but for the sake of impressionable minds like mine your help is appreciated.

tears posted:

Those anti dialectics 'essays', and that whole site. That person is a bad person

no that's that lady

swampman posted:

Anyway, with the reduction of work - beside the fact that it's askign people to accept a reduction in their qualities of lifes

like this isnt necessarily true. when workers in the past have been offered more "leisure time" in return for a pay reduction they've reacted favorably

though once again i dont think this is a solution to anything and it would be something to work toward after capitalism or whatever

swampman posted:

Yeah I see your comment ont hat article you linked. A basic misunderstanding of USSR is to look at it as a single entity that existed from kronstadt to chernobyl. When in fact every decade saw a differnt ussr trying new things to survive the capitalist assault. For Jehu to not understand that Khrushchev and Gorbachev were basically traitors to their forefathers of 40 and 70 years prior.. i mean come on.

he's not as curious as i'd like him to be on some subjects. i remember him trashing phil greaves because phil was mad at the nominally socialist YPG for collaborating with NATO, and then he admitted somewhere else that he didn't really know very much about the syrian civil war.

swampman posted:

Anyway, with the reduction of work - beside the fact that it's askign people to accept a reduction in their qualities of lifes - I don't really understand why 20 instead of 40, I think the distinction is ridiculous.. work and leisure are starkly divided under capitalism; leisure the distraction from the irrelevant, irritating, and immoral work people are forced to do to survive... when your labor visibly, directly benefits you and your own people, makes you feel good, out in the country side doing the good work for the good people, so anyway Jehu why not zero hours? http://www.primitivism.com/abolition.htm

one of the things he says a lot is that labor, like every other commodity, becomes more valuable the less of it there is so a reduction of hours correlates directly with an increase in wages. it also forces employers to hire more people, reducing unemployment. i'm not exactly doing him justice here so i'll try to find something more persuasive to link you to.

COINTELBRO posted:

That Jehu guy is just an insane internet addict deadbeat who pretends to know about economics and copypastes from other places, like that dm guy who turned out to be literally schizophrenic. I only know about him because of Twitter but I don't use that sewer anymore, it's full of home-bound saddos like DKWayne and Phil Greaves and "policed" by intersectional idiots. Twitter is a disease

DM is cool even if he doesn't like me

icecrystal posted:

one of the things he says a lot is that labor, like every other commodity, becomes more valuable the less of it there is so a reduction of hours correlates directly with an increase in wages. it also forces employers to hire more people, reducing unemployment. i'm not exactly doing him justice here so i'll try to find something more persuasive to link you to.

surely the increase of purchasing power per labour unit would be canceled out by the fewer commodities being produced