this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2026
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Public ownership was the principal aspect of the soviet economy. The existence of commodity production does not mean an economy is not socialist, it just means it has not completed the transition from capitalism to communism. The soviet economy was not based on commodity production and the profit motive, but a social plan and the fulfillment of need.
The post mid-1920s govt expanded the development of capital, made medium-sized business possible and killed many of the most important theorists and revolutionaries. Then there was a reaction to that mid 1950s which culminated in the USSR completely abandoning the international struggle. The period between 1945-1970 cemented freaking patriotism as a "revolutionary doctrine" and perverted the memory and meaning of revolution as a result of the development of national-capitalism, i.e. trade with other nations and a central party of bureaucrat managers subordinating the worker and ripping the effort out of their hands. The USSR became the devil child of the reformist tendency adorned with the horns of the New Deal and futurist Italy, I would go as far as to call it the wet dream of the MSPD parliamentarian.
Socialism should build communism. This however was decades-long, and in its last decades largely unmoving, social democracy.
The NEP was a strategic move to expand the level of development of the productive forces. It was still socialist, but made significant submissions to capital to do so. It also paid off tremendously, as soviet power was solidified in the 1930s. Today, the PRC takes heavy inspiration from the NEP for its own Socialist Market Economy, which is why it is surpassing the entire capitalist world today.
Khrushchev's declaration that "class struggle is over" in the USSR was revisionist, correct, but the USSR maintained their internationalism. Support for Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Algeria, Palestine, and many more liberation movements still persisted in the USSR, including funding and arming resistance groups. The fact that the USSR post-World War II did not have any interest in open war does not mean they abandoned the internationalist struggle.
To the end, however, the USSR was still socialist. Private ownership was never the principal aspect of its economy, and the working classes were in control of the state until it was coup'd at the end. There were flaws and problems with soviet socialism, because it was real, and thus faced real problems and real struggles. The problems in the CPSU and government towards the end did not mean the USSR was no longer socialist, or that it's destruction was inevitable; up to the very end it could have been saved from its murder at the hands of the Yeltsin faction.