Trotskyists: State capitalism or degenerated/deformerd worker's states?

[Weezer]

Degenerated/deformed worker's states theory for me, as the October Revolution and the forming of the USSR were genuinely Marxist, but due to the failure of the revolution in other countries, it became degenerated and reverted to a dictatorship for the proletariat, rather a dictatorship of the proletariat.

[RED DAVE]

Degenerated/deformed worker's states theory for meMakes no sense to me whatsoever. Let's examine the argument.


as the October Revolution and the forming of the USSR were genuinely Marxist, but due to the failure of the revolution in other countries, it became degeneratedOkay. But then what?


and reverted to a dictatorship for the proletariat rather a dictatorship of the proletariat.Say the fuck what?

What is a "dictatorship for the proletariat"? How can a dictatorship be exerted over the proletariat that would be for the proletariat? The proletariat exerts its own "dictatorship," in its own strength and in its own name, and therefore establishes and runs a proletarian state. Only the proletariat can do this.

A dictatorship for the proletariat is the dictatorship of another class: exactly what happened in Russia, China, etc.: state capitalism. This class was the bureaucracy. Eventually, this class was supplanted by the emerging national bourgeoisie: private capitalism, with no resistance by the working class. All that happened was that the proletariat in these countries exchanged one set of masters for another. There was no change in the essential industrial relationships. At no time did the proletariat control the extraction of surplus value.

RED DAVE

[Lyev]

At this point in my study of the debate, I'm inclined, similar to Dave, to go with state capitalist. A few questions or issues that immediately need addressing before we continue though: firstly, what's our definition of state-capitalist and degenerated workers' state? Secondly, at what stage, if at all, was their at least partial worker-control (ownership and control have different meanings, bear in mind) over the means of production? From what I have read, though this may need clarifying (don't bite my head off if I'm wrong), actual expropriation of land and occupation of workplaces and factories was very minimal in 1917 to start with. Thirdly, how are we defining dictatorship of proletariat; we need a concise, concrete definition before we start debating seriously. And last of all, how are we defining capitalism and socialism in general here? I think often the definition of capitalism can be oversimplified in this case, and in similar debates, where we see a (relatively) low level of living standards for the working class in Russia, and therefore apparently capitalism is still intact, obviously this isn't the case. Or on the other hand, I see some people on here, as regards the contention of Soviet worker-control, post short quotes from historians where the rhetoric in said passages really does obfuscate some of the objective facts. So obviously, it's clearly a complicated issue; I'll do a bit more reading and come back and elaborate on this post a bit more.