Ok, I’ll explain why I completely changed my view on Stalin and the Soviet Union.

First, how did the Soviet Union “transited” from state-capitalism to “socialism”? https://twitter.com/SunsetStalin/status/1302084706054348800

In which sense did Stalin declare that the Soviet Union after 1937 was socialist? As Paresth says below, the main theorical basis for these claims was that the state ownership of the means of production configured socialist ownership.

And being social ownership the basis of social relations, the Soviet Union was socialist.

Basically, by expropriating the private capitalist ownership, the Soviet Union created a new form of ownership and then a new society.

This is completely the inverse of the Marxist view. The ownership is a result of social relations.

Then, it comes to the exchange relations. Most of the debate about commodity production regarded the transitional stage to communism. But them Stalin was the first to declare that commodity production was compatible with socialism.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1951/economic-problems/ch03.htm

According to him, it was a result of the contradictory duality of the Soviet Economy: the distinction between state property and collective farm, and the necessity of circulation between them.

And obviously, he differentiates commodity production from capitalism: capitalism is a stage where the commodity production and circulation reached a certain level, and this level isn’t present in the Soviet Union.

And, finally, he talks about the means of production, that according to him couldn’t be considered commodities. The “costs of production” and “prices” were just a metric system of accounting and existed also because of foreign trade.

They had a “form” of commodities but not the content of a commodity. The same happened to almost all capitalist economic category.

Also, Stalin, contrary to the marxist system of equal compensation, supported a system of remuneration according to skills and qualification.

The problem is that these money categories that regulated the Soviet economy, such like money, banks and commodity production aren’t a general abstract formula that develops dialectically. These are particular social forms of social relations attributed to a society.

In other words: things like money, commodity production, banks, wages, etc. can’t be just “technical” stuff, they are the whole form of a set of social relations. All the Stalinist argumentation supporting a socialist USSR is founded on anti-Marxism.

The existence of these categories could be accepted to a transitional stage, while idealizing the future abolition of them. However, Stalin declared that it’s socialism, and then deturpated all the concept of socialism in the name of an opportunist and revisionist line.

This cannot be seen as a minimal error: the whole class analysis in the Soviet Union was deturpated to fit in the interests of the State. We can’t even call that a dictatorship of the proletariat anymore.

Paresth also dedicates a chapter to compare the “progressive” economy of the Soviet Union to the same social relations in capitalism. He demonstrates the error in my arguments: the absence of juridical private property implies that commodity production does not exist.

Marx does say that both sides of an exchange should see each other as private proprietors, but this is for a primitive form of exchange were the private property is the private property of the means of production by the productor.

This is true for primitive exchange where production is an individual process, but as the production starts to be a social process, commodity production loses its private character. Thus, the absence of private ownership doesn’t imply the absence of commodity production.

I decided to make this thread short because it’s just a response to myself of the past, I suggest people to read more about this matter to know a lot more that I didn’t include here.

Material for study this matter:
https://libcom.org/files/the%20marxian%20concept%20of%20capital%20and%20the%20soviet%20experience.pdf
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1951/economic-problems/index.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/
https://revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv4n2/5convers.htm#
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1952/stalin.htm