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Mar 30 8 tweets 3 min read Read on X
🧵The CIA feared the USSR could reach communism because they were reducing hours at the workday. Image
In "The Economic Problems Socialism USSR", Stalin gave an argument for how the USSR would reach Communism. He proposed doubling living standards, and reducing the hours of labor in the USSR. Image
Image
Starting in 1956, the USSR begun reducing the total hours of labor, which had a deadline to meet by 1968. If this plan was successful, hours of labor would have went from 48 hours a week, to 30 hours a week, and the minimum wage would have went from 250 to more than 600 rubles.
In 1961, the CIA was worried as how the USSR could be reducing the workday, without reducing its efforts in the cold war. They originally believed that if the USSR reduced work hours, then it would be harder for the USSR to maintain their military.
What the CIA found though was different, the USSR was able to solve many problems by reducing the hours worked in the USSR. They were able to tap into a large reserve of labor. Image
The soviets forcing managers to reduce labor time in return forced them to introduce more/new technology, and more advanced production measures. Increasing output in light and heavy industry was achieved by increasing employment.
The reduction of labor hours in the USSR actually did what Marx predicted it would in volume 1 of capital. The density of the workday could be increased by reducing the workday. You could produce more by working less. The USSR proved Marx theory to be true 101. Image
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More from @RTSG_Main

Jun 20
THREAD🧵:

Israel, not Iran, has been the largest destabilizing force in the history of the Middle East since 1948.

The recent unprovoked attacks on Iran are just the latest violation of regional stability.

This is a list of Israeli wars and destabilizing actions in the region.Image
1947–1949: Nakba (Palestinian Catastrophe)

16,000+ Palestinians killed and 700,000+ Palestinians forcibly expelled or fled during the 1948 war.

Over 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed.

Marked the start of the Israeli policy of demographic engineering through ethnic cleansing.Image
1948: First Arab-Israeli War

Following the UN partition plan and Israel’s declaration, Arab states entered the war to stop the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Israel’s actions in mass displacement, a permanent refugee crisis, and armistice lines (not recognized borders).Image
Read 24 tweets
Jun 5
🧵 MEGA DEBUNK:

Volkvulture has submitted a response debunking professional liar and pseudo-intellectual @Soothlayer—who claims nobody will debate him, despite blocking everyone who challenges him.

We will address the liar’s pseudo claims one by one. Image
Claim 1: "V. Vulture’s article tries to reframe American history as a latent socialist “civilization.” It’s loaded with idealism, settler nostalgia, and Duginist language dressed up as Marxism. If you have the article, ill be going paragraph by paragraph and unpacking the grift"

Response: From the first paragraph, the article in question not only isn’t trying to say that America is an ‘idealized’ or perfectly imagined ‘civilization’ but is pushing back on the tendencies in American socialist ‘historiography’ from the ‘progressive left’ and ‘bourgeois academia’ both. Not only is America not “inherently good”, it’s also not “inherently evil” nor a historical “aberration” or exception.
Claim 2: "Volk opens by calling both socialism and America “unbounded dreams”

Response: Not only does Volk not “call” American & socialism this, it’s a quote that Volk is
criticizing from the historian ‘Daniel Bell’. Daniel Bell was notoriously a self-proclaimed SPA ‘socialist’ in his youth and later became a hardened anti-communist ‘liberal’ historical revisionist & anti-communist sociologist in academia. Volk writes explicitly against the anti-Bolshevik & New Left historiography that tries to downplay American socialist history. The article also shows US socialist and democratic history’s significance within and for Marxism as being no less than any other great national revolutionary socialist and democratic tradition.

Volk’s writing directly says “socialism as it actually exists is neither unbounded, nor a dream”, and then says that “Our nation was more than dreamt of” and finally “Socialism and America are not dreams.” Blatant bad faith mischaracterization by Soothliar of the writing in question.
Read 19 tweets
Mar 15
🧵 On the Gold Standard.

1/4 The reason we believe it is so important to study the gold standard is that since the United States abandoned it in 1971, labor hours have not decreased and have instead remained stagnant.

This was a deliberate attack on the working class. Image
2/3 Unions have also capitulated to this reality, instead focusing on demanding higher wages—which will ultimately be eroded by inflation. This ability to erode wages and extend work hours is a hidden feature of the fiat dollar system. Bourgeois economists call it "full employment."Image
Image
3/4 Due to the hidden power of fiat currency, wages can increase, but inflation can increase faster. This is why Marx ultimately concluded that workers could "rob" capitalists by shortening work hours:

"If the laborer uses his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist."Image
Read 4 tweets
Mar 10
🧵Quotes from Nick Land (@xenocosmography) that are similar to Karl Marx. Image
Image
1: Accelerating accumulation as the definition of capital:

Land: “Among [accelerationism’s] predictions is the expectation that you’ll be too slow to deal with it coherently.”

Marx: “Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, …”
2: Capital as a process headed to a final crisis:

Land: “[The] deep problem of acceleration is transcendental [that] describes an absolute horizon – and one that is closing in.”

Marx: “As soon as labour in the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of wealth, labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value. The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the few, for the development of the general powers of the human head. With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the direct, material production process is stripped of the form of penury and antithesis.”
Read 11 tweets
Dec 23, 2024
🧵 How the Bolshevik revolution turned Russia into a Chess superpower. Image
In an earlier thread, we explained how the Communist Revolution led to a radical reduction in working hours, giving millions of people ample free time to engage in various activities, including sports. One sport in particular—chess—eventually became a staple of Soviet society.

Chess was typically an upper-class activity. Despite this, Soviet society, once an impoverished nation with a massive peasantry class, not only industrialized but also went on to dominate the 20th century in chess.
Read 7 tweets
Dec 15, 2024
🧵 How Soviet Workers benefited from the shortest working day in the world: Image
The Soviet Constitution of 1936, also known as the "Stalin Constitution," was approved by the Eighth Congress of Soviets and became law on December 5, 1936.

The right of citizens of the Soviet Union to rest and leisure is promised in Article 119 of the Constitution of the USSR Image
For its time, the Soviet Union had the shortest working day in the world.

A minimum of two weeks' vacation with full pay was also guaranteed.

Employees in healthcare, engineering, technical fields, & scientific research were often entitled to 1 month or more of paid vacation. Image
Read 13 tweets

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