Is state capitalism neecessary?

[AK]

After seeing this (http://struggle.net/ALDS/transition_economies.gif) graph and remembering how alot of people put the ultimate failure of the USSR and the Eastern Bloc due to state capitalism, I wondered if a state capitalist period is necessary at all, because those people could be right and then socialism could ultimately be itself a failure. So, is a state capitalist period necessary?

EDIT: I'm going on holidays so my replies will probs be a week late.

[Comrade Martin]

After seeing this (http://struggle.net/ALDS/transition_economies.gif) graph and remembering how alot of people put the ultimate failure of the USSR and the Eastern Bloc due to state capitalism, I wondered if a state capitalist period is necessary at all, because those people could be right and then socialism could ultimately be itself a failure. So, is a state capitalist period necessary?

EDIT: I'm going on holidays so my replies will probs be a week late.

My response to this is twofold.

1.) If we are talking about a post-Capitalist revolutionary period in modern day America or France or Japan, State-Capitalism is entirely unnecessary and threatens our objectives severely.

2.) If we are talking about a post-Feudalist revolutionary period in 1917 Russia or 1959 Cuba, where Imperialists need to be kicked out and otherwise defended against, State-Capitalism works great as a means of transitioning towards developed Capitalism. It may, in fact, even be a necessary step in their overall development.

State-Capitalism, as we've seen it appear in history, serves as a transition from Feudalism/Semi-Feudalism to a developed and largely nationally independent Capitalism - not from Capitalism to Communism.

Some people may have ideological reasons to disagree with that assertion, but I'm telling you what actually happened.

That's what Marxists are interested in... Regardless of all the red flags these regimes wrapped themselves in.

The hypothesis popularly adopted by Anarchist-Communists is that the "moneyless gift economy" (or some other variant of workers' self-organization, be it in communes, collectives, etc.) shown in the graph you linked to would be the only economic system to compete with the "Private capitalist sector."

In theory, overthrow of Bourgeois rule may postdate the beginnings of that moneyless gift economy and occur as Marx predicted it, when "the relations of production become a fetter upon the means of production."

We're already seeing that on a small scale with the Internet, which operates on a largely "gift economy" basis. Yes, there are "pay-sites" for everything, but when's the last time you really had to pay for music or porn?

If we want a classless society, we'll have to lay the foundation for it now... Not put it off until we have "state power" and have created a State-Capitalist infrastructure.

We've seen that such a hypothesis has never created Communism... If for that reason alone I ask: why risk it?

Let's try something new.

[Comrade Anarchist]

Not at all the dictatorship of the proletariat is a worthless stage that just breeds bad ideas and bad leaders. State capitalism is not a stage but instead a stopping point on the way to a free egalitarian world. socialism advocates state control and the sharing of the wealth based on the the states running of the economy problem with that is that a state of any kind is inherently oppressive and once in power will go to every end to deny the taking away of or the lessening of that power.

[Die Rote Fahne]

The dictatorship of the proletariat doesn't need to be this idea of state capitalism.

The government at that point is to prevent a counterrevolution and to organize the workers and economy.

It does not have to act as a corporate entity.

[anticap]

I would deny not only that "state-capitalism" is necessary, but that any form of capitalism is. At least, it isn't so necessary that pre-capitalist or early-capitalist societies shouldn't make a move for something better if the opportunity strikes.

The argument for the necessity of an exploitative stage on the way to a non-exploitative future reminds me of the early US abolitionists who offered gradualist arguments for the abolition of slavery; e.g., a target date of 1900 should be set, at which point slavery will be lawfully abolished, with the interim serving as an adjustment period to allow for a gradual downsizing of slavery, so as not to abruptly shake things up. Such arguments may sound good to armchair theorists, but not so much to those doomed to live their lives as exploited peoples during the transition.

A "capitalist necessitarian" may protest that I've confused issues: that capitalism is necessary in order to achieve the material conditions necessary for communism, whereas the "gradualist abolitionist" was only hoping not to rock the boat too hard; that the one is a scientific argument, while the other was not. But in reality the latter did not believe that society could survive an abrupt change to post-slavery; they were arguing for a chance to prepare society for an influx of former slaves onto the labor market, and for the restructuring of those industries formerly dependent on slave labor. Their argument wasn't merely idealistic or moral, but practical. But try making that case to a young slave, who sees his whole life ahead of him but knows he won't live to see the proposed expiration date for his bondage, and see how far it gets you.

I accept the premise that productive capacity must be built up to a certain level before anything resembling real communism can succeed in the long term, and I even accept that capitalism is an excellent way to achieve that goal; but I still can't tolerate anyone who would tell the peoples of underdeveloped societies that they shouldn't try anyway. If they can accept that their attempt at communism will be a humble one, then no one can deny them, for any reason, least of all one based on a quibble over theory.

[Die Rote Fahne]

I would deny not only that "state-capitalism" is necessary, but that any form of capitalism is. At least, it isn't so necessary that pre-capitalist or early-capitalist societies shouldn't make a move for something better if the opportunity strikes.

The argument for the necessity of an exploitative stage on the way to a non-exploitative future reminds me of the early US abolitionists who offered gradualist arguments for the abolition of slavery; e.g., a target date of 1900 should be set, at which point slavery will be lawfully abolished, with the interim serving as an adjustment period to allow for a gradual downsizing of slavery, so as not to abruptly shake things up. Such arguments may sound good to armchair theorists, but not so much to those doomed to live their lives as exploited peoples during the transition.

A "capitalist necessitarian" may protest that I've confused issues: that capitalism is necessary in order to achieve the material conditions necessary for communism, whereas the "gradualist abolitionist" was only hoping not to rock the boat too hard; that the one is a scientific argument, while the other was not. But in reality the latter did not believe that society could survive an abrupt change to post-slavery; they were arguing for a chance to prepare society for an influx of former slaves onto the labor market, and for the restructuring of those industries formerly dependent on slave labor. Their argument wasn't merely idealistic or moral, but practical. But try making that case to a young slave, who sees his whole life ahead of him but knows he won't live to see the proposed expiration date for his bondage, and see how far it gets you.

I accept the premise that productive capacity must be built up to a certain level before anything resembling real communism can succeed in the long term, and I even accept that capitalism is an excellent way to achieve that goal; but I still can't tolerate anyone who would tell the peoples of underdeveloped societies that they shouldn't try anyway. If they can accept that their attempt at communism will be a humble one, then no one can deny them, for any reason, least of all one based on a quibble over theory.


Fucking right.

[robbo203]

I would deny not only that "state-capitalism" is necessary, but that any form of capitalism is. At least, it isn't so necessary that pre-capitalist or early-capitalist societies shouldn't make a move for something better if the opportunity strikes.

The argument for the necessity of an exploitative stage on the way to a non-exploitative future reminds me of the early US abolitionists who offered gradualist arguments for the abolition of slavery; e.g., a target date of 1900 should be set, at which point slavery will be lawfully abolished, with the interim serving as an adjustment period to allow for a gradual downsizing of slavery, so as not to abruptly shake things up. Such arguments may sound good to armchair theorists, but not so much to those doomed to live their lives as exploited peoples during the transition.

A "capitalist necessitarian" may protest that I've confused issues: that capitalism is necessary in order to achieve the material conditions necessary for communism, whereas the "gradualist abolitionist" was only hoping not to rock the boat too hard; that the one is a scientific argument, while the other was not. But in reality the latter did not believe that society could survive an abrupt change to post-slavery; they were arguing for a chance to prepare society for an influx of former slaves onto the labor market, and for the restructuring of those industries formerly dependent on slave labor. Their argument wasn't merely idealistic or moral, but practical. But try making that case to a young slave, who sees his whole life ahead of him but knows he won't live to see the proposed expiration date for his bondage, and see how far it gets you.

I accept the premise that productive capacity must be built up to a certain level before anything resembling real communism can succeed in the long term, and I even accept that capitalism is an excellent way to achieve that goal; but I still can't tolerate anyone who would tell the peoples of underdeveloped societies that they shouldn't try anyway. If they can accept that their attempt at communism will be a humble one, then no one can deny them, for any reason, least of all one based on a quibble over theory.

Anticap, you make some good points here. Personally, I think the whole idea of state capitalism as a means of facilitaing the arrival of communism was quite unnecessary and with the benefit of hindsight, an unmitigated disaster. Engels statement in Socialism Utopian & Scientific in which he correctly pointed out that state ownership has got nothing to do with socialism (aka communism) and everything to do with capitalism - the workers are still exploited - nevertheless contended that state ownership furnished the "technical conditions" necessary for communism. By this he meant the socialisation of production - making production a more interdependent social process - and the development of large scale production.

It could be argued

1) that capitalism would have led to this anyway as a natural consequence of its tendency towards concentration
2) that the supposed need for large scale production may be exaggerated. Large scale production is often associatied with economies of scale - an argument that would tie in with the point about the need to raise output to make communism viable - but what is often overlooked is that there are also diseconomies of scale. In some cases small is definitely better.

Nevertheless, in the marxian tradition there was a sharp differentiation between state capitalism and socialism. It was Lenin who came along and considerably muddied the waters with his crass redefintion of socialism as state capitalist monopoly run in the interests of the whole people. From then on the whole argument went pear shaped

Finally I think the whole "state capitalist detour" is now a complete irrelevance because the material potential to create and sustain a communist society on a global level has been around for decades and the growing structural waste of capitalism is the biggest single indicator of this potential. If we eliminated all those occupations necessary for the running of capitalist money economy we could at a stroke more than double the amount of manpower and resources for socially useful production. Of course, it is quite true that you cannot have communism in one country but it is equally inconceivable that you could have a large, genuinely communist, movement in one part of the world and not also elsewhere. By the time communism is esablished somewhere it will be more or less on the cards everywhere else

[ckaihatsu]

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I accept the premise that productive capacity must be built up to a certain level before anything resembling real communism can succeed in the long term, and I even accept that capitalism is an excellent way to achieve that goal; but I still can't tolerate anyone who would tell the peoples of underdeveloped societies that they shouldn't try anyway. If they can accept that their attempt at communism will be a humble one, then no one can deny them, for any reason, least of all one based on a quibble over theory.





Finally I think the whole "state capitalist detour" is now a complete irrelevance because the material potential to create and sustain a communist society on a global level has been around for decades and the growing structural waste of capitalism is the biggest single indicator of this potential. If we eliminated all those occupations necessary for the running of capitalist money economy we could at a stroke more than double the amount of manpower and resources for socially useful production.




Of course, it is quite true that you cannot have communism in one country but it is equally inconceivable that you could have a large, genuinely communist, movement in one part of the world and not also elsewhere. By the time communism is esablished somewhere it will be more or less on the cards everywhere else





Trotsky put forward his conception of 'permanent revolution' as an explanation of how socialist revolutions could occur in societies that had not achieved advanced capitalism. Part of his theory is the impossibility of 'socialism in one country' - a view also held by Marx, but not integrated into his conception of permanent revolution. Trotsky's theory also argues, first, that the bourgeoisie in late-developing capitalist countries are incapable of developing the productive forces in such a manner as to achieve the sort of advanced capitalism which will fully develop an industrial proletariat. Second, that the proletariat can and must, therefore, seize social, economic and political power, leading an alliance with the peasantry.




Trotsky believed that a new workers' state would not be able to hold out against the pressures of a hostile capitalist world unless socialist revolutions quickly took hold in other countries as well. This theory was advanced in opposition to the position held by the Stalinist faction within the Bolshevik Party that "socialism in one country" could be built in the Soviet Union.

Trotsky's theory was developed as an alternative to the Social Democratic theory that undeveloped countries must pass through two distinct revolutions. First the Bourgeois Democratic Revolution, which socialists would assist, and at a later stage, the Socialist Revolution with an evolutionary period of capitalist development separating those stages. This is often referred to as the Theory of Stages, the Two Stage Theory or Stagism.