I would accept several definitions depending on the context. Here's a few definitions that would cover all these variations of capitalism:
- a society in which some people work and some don't
- a society where money/status exists and drives access to resources ; more often than not, the most necessary and least desired jobs are the least compensated
- a society in which production is not based on reflections from a local community about their needs, but dictated by a third-party (a boss, a State..)
A society that's not capitalist would follow the old anarchist tenet "From each according to their capabilities, to each according to their needs". Arguably, it should be possible to have "State communism" or "Stateless capitalism" but neither form has emerged throughout history (even for a brief period) and these formula are inherently oxymorons. Stateless communism (anarchism) is definitely a thing and has emerged many times throughout history although it's more often than not been crushed bloodily (see also Paris Commune, Ukraine Commune / Makhnovtchina, Spanish revolution, etc).
Apart from the specific forms they take, there's not much difference between working life and political repression under USSR, and that under USA. For more reading on KGB-like political repression in the USA, i recommend to check out COINTELPRO. For more reading on how USSR was not communist, i recommend to read Emma Goldman's fantastic accounts of her time in Russia and her disillusions with the Bolsheviks, one of which is very brief entitled "There is no communism in Russia": https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-there-i...
TLDR: In USSR there was no abolition of property to develop the commons. There was seizure of some forms of private property to become State property instead.
I can't believe I'm even arguing this point. It seems like some weird attempt to rewrite history with a narrative "if something went wrong with communism, its capitalisms fault".
No, the USSR collectivized the entire country, everything was state owned, the state determined what was produced (to the point of murdering citizens who tried to stop them). It was as close to communism as anyone has every gotten and it failed miserably.
Of course there was a free market, at least after the NEP was implemented in 1921. Yes there were taxes, but in the USA too, that doesn't make USSR non-capitalist. It's like if you were to say 2022 China is not capitalist for some reasons: yes it has "communist" in the name, and no billionaires are not 100% above the law (contrary to the USA) but there is still money, class, property, gentrification, and everything else that defines capitalism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy
> I can't believe I'm even arguing this point. It seems like some weird attempt to rewrite history with a narrative "if something went wrong with communism, its capitalisms fault".
Well if you can't believe it, you probably rarely spoke with anarchists. That's the main historical disagreement between anarchists (and anti-authoritarian marxists who are a tiny minority but still exist) and marxist-leninists. The latter claim the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is the road to communism by seizing everything that defines capitalism (State, police, prisons, factories) and placing it under proletarian State governance, while the former consider it's impossible to build communism (freedom and equality for all) with the exploitative tools of capitalism.
I agree with you there's some history rewriting which took place, but it took place about a century ago and it was done by the bolsheviks who erased the memory of the militants who drove the revolution in early 1917 before they seized State power in October and massacred all who disagreed. They were a well-armed minority party who seized State power and applied a dictatorship. They rewrote history and called "counter-revolutionaries" everyone who disagreed, including proper communists who wanted all power to the people. The memories of Emma Goldman, Nestor Makhno, or Volin are really useful to understand the political context of that time, and whatever happened when Lenin and Trotsky (who was chief of the Red Army at that time) had the Communes of Cronstadt and Ukraine massacred in blood.
> No, the USSR collectivized the entire country
That's doubly false. First, social status and private property were never really abolished in the USSR (or rather, were reestablished shortly after being abolished), so you had luxury homes for the cadre of the Party and miserable living conditions for ordinary people. Second, the State nationalized everything, which has nothing to do with collectivization: the Bolsheviks actively repressed the local communities who tried to organize collectivization of land/resources (see also Cronstadt/Makhnovtchina i mentioned earlier).
Maybe give the Emma Goldman link i posted earlier a read? It's really short and you may learn a thing or two about history of that time and place. She's in a unique position because she was an ardent proponent of the 1917 revolution when she was in the USA, but when she was imprisoned and deported from the USA for anti-militarist propaganda, she was confronted with the reality of life under Bolshevik rule and how her anarchist comrades were hunted down by the regime. Her autobiography is a great read, but even the shorter pamphlets are informative.
Yet there's little memory of those massacres and injustices, except for casualties of war who get the whole triumphant nationalist ceremonies to spit on them. Maybe a plaque for the dead workers who built a mountain road/rail, or for the victims of the Commune of Paris/Lyon/wherever. It's very discreet, when it exists at all, when it doesn't fall into the narrative of the State.
I don't know about younger folks, but when i was in school we got told so little about the history and reasons for these people to have died, when talking about it at all (good luck finding a history teacher spending more than 1 hour on the Paris Commune or the Algerian independence War). And we got told exactly zero about the living popular history of our own neighborhood and how people defied those injustices.
Whenever i find a plaque, memorial, carving or whatever remembering the past (and its mistakes) i try to take some time to investigate it, and i often learn something interesting. So much happened right around us, yet we are told/taught so little, and in the cities urban renovation driven by gentrifiers makes sure this history stays hidden and that only advertisement and store fronts remain.
Is that really the environment we want: an efficient, emotionless and pastless business machine? I personally don't want that. I wouldn't go so far as to call you a NIMBY resident, but i certainly encourage you to think or read about popular history, gentrification, and what it means when the latter tries to erase the former.
As a side note, i don't know about the netherlands, but here in France it's common for neonazis to deface the memorials honoring the (jewish or not, but the jewish in particular) victims of nazism. I agree with you it's bothersome in some sense that jewish victims are honored more than other categories of nazism victims (tsigans, cripples, homosexuals, etc), but if the alternative is to make the neonazis who'd like to rewrite history happy, i'm very happy with the current state of things.