That fallacy only holds when it’s a retroactive and also incorrect claim of category error. This is neither retroactive nor incorrect. The USSR is not communist by any definition, not now, or before it existed, either. Marx himself wouldn’t have been a fan.
To oversimplify, there are three criteria for communism:
The state must be abolished. That means no government, no class of rulers, no individual or group with a monopoly claim on force to achieve their ends. People self-manage and organise their affairs and business by common agreement and consent based on mutual aid and co-operation.
Classes must be abolished. There can be no class distinctions remaining; specifically, no owners who can exploit workers. All are workers, and all commonly own all materially productive components of society. Nothing is privately owned by individuals (meaning nothing is gatekept for the purposes of gaining materially from doing so), but is democratically organised on the basis of need.
Money itself must be abolished. Once democracy has prevailed over the economy, the common ownership of the means of production has been achieved, and thus everyone has reached the stage where they can freely consume what they need and want without worry of whether they can “afford” it, money will be seen as the arbitrary constraint that it is, and cease to be useful, and disappear completely.
None of these things happened under the USSR. If Marx were a teacher and the USSR his student, they would get a failing grade.
Dude… definitions exist. Sometimes things don’t meet them. Are you gonna deny that? Does “no true scotsman” just mean “any claim that a thing is not a true example of some category” to you? Is a bicycle a true example of a sandwich? Is a Frenchman living in Paris a true Scotsman?
Did the USSR meet even one of those standards? Answer this if you only answer one.
Yes, but they also had a dogmatic and limited view of the theories they adapted. This inevitably led to corruption and revisionism.
Ah, so they weren’t true Scotsmen?
That fallacy only holds when it’s a retroactive and also incorrect claim of category error. This is neither retroactive nor incorrect. The USSR is not communist by any definition, not now, or before it existed, either. Marx himself wouldn’t have been a fan.
To oversimplify, there are three criteria for communism:
The state must be abolished. That means no government, no class of rulers, no individual or group with a monopoly claim on force to achieve their ends. People self-manage and organise their affairs and business by common agreement and consent based on mutual aid and co-operation.
Classes must be abolished. There can be no class distinctions remaining; specifically, no owners who can exploit workers. All are workers, and all commonly own all materially productive components of society. Nothing is privately owned by individuals (meaning nothing is gatekept for the purposes of gaining materially from doing so), but is democratically organised on the basis of need.
Money itself must be abolished. Once democracy has prevailed over the economy, the common ownership of the means of production has been achieved, and thus everyone has reached the stage where they can freely consume what they need and want without worry of whether they can “afford” it, money will be seen as the arbitrary constraint that it is, and cease to be useful, and disappear completely.
None of these things happened under the USSR. If Marx were a teacher and the USSR his student, they would get a failing grade.
No true “no true Scotsman fallacy” fallacy?
We have to go deeper!
Well? You not gonna acknowledge that definitions exist?
Dude… definitions exist. Sometimes things don’t meet them. Are you gonna deny that? Does “no true scotsman” just mean “any claim that a thing is not a true example of some category” to you? Is a bicycle a true example of a sandwich? Is a Frenchman living in Paris a true Scotsman?
Did the USSR meet even one of those standards? Answer this if you only answer one.
Much like the kleptocratic-fascist China and North Korea is a republic by name only. Read up on your fallacies