I'm pretty critical of it, but yeah, partially. People, especially in the cities really did internalise it and of course the material conditions did naturally lead to a more communitarian society. But people were still selfish sometimes, corruption was a problem, and there were real issues with achieving the same result in rural areas, especially collective farms. With the final generation of Soviet Children, who'd never seen war and whose parents hadn't seen it, it did seem to finally be taking root.
This is something I think about a lot. We're materialists. We know that the economic relations of society do impact peoples' ideology, identity, beliefs, values, etc. Capitalist economic relations give us the kind of people we see today all around the global north. And socialist economic relations will change the superstructure and I think will create "new people".
But the USSR and especially China built/are building socialism gradually. A lot of the old capitalist conditions still exist (like the money form). It feels very un-materialist to think you can just create "new" people in the superstructure without more radical changes to the base. I think China's approach to building socialism makes total sense but how do you change hearts and minds if so much of the old capitalist forms remain? It feels like a chicken-and-egg problem that I genuinely don't have an answer to, but I hope someone else has maybe figured out.
Yeah, this is my critique, they tried to build the superstructure of New Soviet Man before the base was there.
They were just too optimistic, not about people, but about where their system was. Declaring things like that they had attained the first stage of Socialism in 1970. Bukharin asked for "Socialism at a snails pace", and even though more radical voices took over and made things progress more rapidly, that's all they could accomplish.
We forget, I think, that New Capitalist Man was also created, and it took 500 years to do so.
Did it work?
I'm pretty critical of it, but yeah, partially. People, especially in the cities really did internalise it and of course the material conditions did naturally lead to a more communitarian society. But people were still selfish sometimes, corruption was a problem, and there were real issues with achieving the same result in rural areas, especially collective farms. With the final generation of Soviet Children, who'd never seen war and whose parents hadn't seen it, it did seem to finally be taking root.
This is something I think about a lot. We're materialists. We know that the economic relations of society do impact peoples' ideology, identity, beliefs, values, etc. Capitalist economic relations give us the kind of people we see today all around the global north. And socialist economic relations will change the superstructure and I think will create "new people".
But the USSR and especially China built/are building socialism gradually. A lot of the old capitalist conditions still exist (like the money form). It feels very un-materialist to think you can just create "new" people in the superstructure without more radical changes to the base. I think China's approach to building socialism makes total sense but how do you change hearts and minds if so much of the old capitalist forms remain? It feels like a chicken-and-egg problem that I genuinely don't have an answer to, but I hope someone else has maybe figured out.
Yeah, this is my critique, they tried to build the superstructure of New Soviet Man before the base was there.
They were just too optimistic, not about people, but about where their system was. Declaring things like that they had attained the first stage of Socialism in 1970. Bukharin asked for "Socialism at a snails pace", and even though more radical voices took over and made things progress more rapidly, that's all they could accomplish.
We forget, I think, that New Capitalist Man was also created, and it took 500 years to do so.