this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2026
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The... proletariat class? Are you suggesting a working class in Russia didn't exist prior to 1917?
That user is suggesting that the Party administration, by virtue of controlling the means of production was definitionally not proletariat, but in fact the most concentrated group of bourgeois administrators.
Before the Russian Civil War was even over? An incredible feat of administrative enginuity.
The Soviet Bureaucracy was 5.4M people strong by 1920. Even assuming you dismiss the existence of Communes as autonomous self-governing bodies, that's 4% of the total population.
This is what we're describing as highly concentrated bourgeois wealth?
And we're comparing it to King George V who - as a singular person - controlled 37% of the entire national economy through his titles, lands, and equity in various British conglomerates?
No, it's what that commentator was. I'd also assume they meant post-Red Vs. White wars...
I don't know enough about the facts of Soviet Russia, so I'm just soaking up info (I will engage personally more when China or Britain are topics), the 5.4 million bureaucracy by 1920 is a nice statistic.
(You are, of course, comparing Apples to Oranges. How much of the economy the wealthiest person controls doesn't compare in a meaningful way to number of administrators (and also, obviously Imperial Britain was much less equal than the USSR. One would hope that any region post a communist revolution would be more equal and an empire.)
I just hoped to end a communications issue, and thus learn more.
The workers didn't own the means of production!
They literally do.