Conditions Necessary before Communism

[indya]

From what I can understand of Marx, he believes that a fully capitalist state is needed before the revolution to socialism then communism takes place. Is this a correct interpretation? If this is true, would places like Nepal be ready for a communist revolution? I know that Russia certainly wouldn't have qualified as a capitalist state (more feudal probably), so therefore, wouldn't have been ready for communism under Marx's theory. How about the other countries which have made an attempt at communism? Have they been 'ready'? What are the other necessary conditions before communism?

[Savior]

From what i gather, Places like the U.S and Japan with high levels of Blue collar workers and Industry would be ready.

[maskerade]

I think that is a fair intepretation of Marx. however, Marx was not a prophet of communism, and his word shouldn't be taken as gospel. There is no single blueprint for revolution and the construction of a communist society; Marx's theory has evolved and changed, and critiquing revolutions from the basis of writings from the 19th century is doing a huge disserve to revolutionaries in places like Nepal who are fighting for a better living and a better future. We should always be critical in our support, I feel, but to dismiss their attempts because they do not meet 'the criteria' doesn't do anyone any good.

[communard71]

I'm not sure anyone is “dismissing” the Nepalese attempts at revolution/reform because their country doesn’t fit the prototypical Marxian designation for an industrialized country ready for revolution. I think the conditions necessary for revolution depend on many factors, but one factor seems very important to me: how much popular support is there for revolution among the people? Committed revolutionaries can only go so far, they need people who are active supporters or, as has happened most often in revolutionary history, people who are ready to support revolutionary ideology due to conditions on the ground, i.e.- their lives suck because they are poor, oppressed, etc. I think Marx was right in thinking that countries with huge populations of organized workers seem more likely to pose a serious threat to the international Capitalist system, but those countries are also more likely to have a highly efficient, well equipped, and politically motivated military/police machine, capable of crushing revolutionary tendencies. Maybe that’s why revolutions have been more successful in countries like Russia, Cuba, China,1870s Paris etc. In the end, the Capitalist military organization must be inefficient or unmotivated for revolutionaries to take control, or at least, the revolutionaries need a large base of the population from which they may draw their own military cadres, i.e., the Russian Civil War.

[red cat]

From what I can understand of Marx, he believes that a fully capitalist state is needed before the revolution to socialism then communism takes place. Is this a correct interpretation? If this is true, would places like Nepal be ready for a communist revolution? I know that Russia certainly wouldn't have qualified as a capitalist state (more feudal probably), so therefore, wouldn't have been ready for communism under Marx's theory. How about the other countries which have made an attempt at communism? Have they been 'ready'? What are the other necessary conditions before communism?

This point of classical Marxism is invalid today due to the policy of imperialism creating a labour aristocracy in its strongholds. Presently, the most underdeveloped and oppressed colonies have become epicenters of the world revolution. In fact, revolutions in these colonies are necessary for revolutions to occur in the imperialist countries. Without the formerly imperialist capital concentrating oppression on the headquarters of imperialism, a big part of the first and second world working class will not be immersed into the situation that should prompt it to declare revolutionary war.

[Widerstand]

This point of classical Marxism is invalid today due to the policy of imperialism creating a labour aristocracy in its strongholds. Presently, the most underdeveloped and oppressed colonies have become epicenters of the world revolution. In fact, revolutions in these colonies are necessary for revolutions to occur in the imperialist countries. Without the formerly imperialist capital concentrating oppression on the headquarters of imperialism, a big part of the first and second world working class will not be immersed into the situation that should prompt it to declare revolutionary war.

Wohoo, Third Worldism at it's best!

[communard71]

Wohoo, Third Worldism at it's best!
:lol:

[maskerade]

Wohoo, Third Worldism at it's best!

Lenin said similiar things in his 1917 'Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism'.

Most mainstream marxist scholars acknowledge the same thing; the developed western nations, although inequal, can still spend capital on their working class in order to keep them complacent.

[Widerstand]

Lenin said similiar things in his 1917 'Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism'.

Most mainstream marxist scholars acknowledge the same thing; the developed western nations, although inequal, can still spend capital on their working class in order to keep them complacent.

And this is the same as assuming an antagonist role between first and third world on the justification that "revolution can't happen in the first world", how?

[Victus Mortuum]

The only reason conditions are better in the 'first world' is because the worker's fought long and hard for some basic protections within the system (which are now coming to bite them in the ass). I have yet to hear a good argument for why a capitalist, or the class as a whole would just willy nilly hand over some of their profit to workers.

Lenin's theory of imperialism (how the service capitalist states fight over client capitalist states (markets, that is)) =\= labor aristocracy (though he certainly connected the two together, which is where I think he goes wrong).

[maskerade]

And this is the same as assuming an antagonist role between first and third world on the justification that "revolution can't happen in the first world", how?

When did I say that it was?

[Widerstand]

When did I say that it was?

Oh sorry, it seemed you wanted to give an explanation for red cat's position.

[Outinleftfield]

"Labor aristocracy" is only a relative position. In the end no capitalist is going to pay out the full product of someone's labor, unless it is by mistake and this would quickly be corrected with a pay-cut or firing. No capitalist is going to want to hire somebody who doesn't make them money. So even if workers in the first world are "bribed" then they're being bribed with less than what was stolen from them and would still gain from a revolution.

"Labor aristocracy" exists but it is a false class conscious among workers, many in the US that call themselves "middle-class" or "white collar" or "urban professionals" that supposes that they are well-off, even for the most sought after professionals even thinking of themselves at the top when in reality the nature of their relation to the means of production means that even if they are getting more of what they produce compared to other workers they are still being stolen from by the capitalists.

Socialism will only happen in the first world if this false class consciousness is exposed and dealt with.

Economic disasters and the growing gap between rich and poor in much of the first world, especially the United States helps.

[scourge007]

From what i gather, Places like the U.S and Japan with high levels of Blue collar workers and Industry would be ready.
I'm surprised Japan hasn't had a revolution yet. From what I've read about working conditions in Japan , they'd probably welcome communism.

[Zanthorus]

The 'Labour Aristocracy' theory assumes that there is a correlation between poor living conditions and class consciousness, in fact the opposite is the case. The members of the Communist League were by and large not the poorest sections of the working-class, but the skilled workers, artisans and master-craftsmen. The poor working-class was politically pacified by decades of unemployment or underemployment and fought for minimal economic demands rather than revolutionary political demands. Raphael Samuel notes in his work The Lost World of British Communism, that the social basis of the Communist Party of Great Britain during it's heyday was precisely the "workers' aristocracy", the educated sections of the working-class who were usually complained about by their employers as being unusually high in scientific knowledge. The basis for class-consciousness in the Marxist view is alienation and dispossession from the means of production. Apart from that, what makes the working-class revolutionary is not that it is pauperised by capitalist society, but that it is educated and organised. The opposite view which is implicit in the theory of the 'Labour aristocracy' is that of Bakunin and Wietling who considered Communism as coming about of the result of those elements of society which were the furthest away from the corrupting influence of the state and bourgeois culture (Bakunin even explicitly says that the social base of Marxism is the 'labour aristocracy', the educated workers who will, according to Bakunin, merely instigate a new form of class society with their revolution, in contrast to the purity of the poverty stricken lumpenproletariat and peasantry, whose revolution will produce an anarchist society). I am aware that both Marx and Engels talked about the aristocracy of Labour, but they were wrong. In particular, the sections of the TUC which Engels designates as part of the 'labour aristocracy' were actually some of the most militant sections of the working-class during the twentieth century.

[S.Artesian]

Lenin said similiar things in his 1917 'Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism'.

Most mainstream marxist scholars acknowledge the same thing; the developed western nations, although inequal, can still spend capital on their working class in order to keep them complacent.

First, Lenin was wrong.

Second, I don't know who those "most mainstream marxist scholars" are, but if that's what they are saying, then they haven't been paying attention to what's been going on in the world for some 30 years-- with the attack on workers' wages, benefits, employment levels; with the "offshoring" and capital flight; with the "export of industry;" with the transfer of wealth up the social ladder; with the growing inequality within advanced capitalist countries.

You might to tell the Cameron, Sarkozy, Berlusconi, Rodriguez-Zapatero, Lenihan, Boehner , etc etc etc. what those mainstream marxists are saying. Maybe they'll change their austerity plans, their attacks on migrant laborers, the dismantling of educational and social services... etc

Another point: Russia was a capitalist country, as was Mexico, as was Argentina, Bolivia,-- the capitalism was uneven and combined with archaic elements in its development, but still the limitation to the economy and the welfare of the population was the organization of production based on private property. Those elements that were less than "fully capitalist" i.e. the relations of landed, agricultural labor, became so in their production of commodities for exchange in the world markets.

As for number of industrial, manufacturing workers-- those numbers have declined dramatically in the US with the amplification of the productivity of labor. The number have declined also in Japan. In fact the numbers have declined pretty much everywhere, including China where the numbers of industrial workers peaked in 1998 [I think].

[Black Sheep]

The level of concentration of capitali is a difficulty factor, not a prerequisite.
High concentration -> Difficult revolution, easier building of socialism
Low concentration -> Easier revolution, difficult building of socialism

[Comrade1]

From what i gather, Places like the U.S and Japan with high levels of Blue collar workers and Industry would be ready.
Yup

[Savior]

Yup
How likely is a Revolt in the U.S, Europe or Japan?

[Savior]

I'm surprised Japan hasn't had a revolution yet. From what I've read about working conditions in Japan , they'd probably welcome communism.
Could it start there?

[Comrade1]

How likely is a Revolt in the U.S, Europe or Japan?
Well, I know where I am in Amerika people are PISSED off, but the problem is no one here realizes their is an alternative to capitalism.

[Sixiang]

Well, I know where I am in Amerika people are PISSED off, but the problem is no one here realizes their is an alternative to capitalism.
Same here. Most Americans seem antagonist towards leftism because they have been told for decades by McCarthyist capitalists that communism is bad. I think that Americans are obsessed with the idea of ownership and property. They love the idea of making lots of money, buying fancy and expensive things, and owning stuff. David Harvey pointed out that 68% of U.S. households are home owners, while only 22% are in Switzerland. It's this cultural obsession with owning yourself and being your own master and what not, so Americans try to get rich and buy things. They don't like the idea of having to share their things. At least, they think that socialism means that they're going to lose all of their money and their pretty personal possessions, so they don't like anything that has to do with socialism.

They also seem to associate it with what they call "dictatorships." As in, when they here those words "socialism" "communism", etc. they tend to immediately think of Stalin and Castro and they say "that's bad. Those people have no rights." You only need to turn on a television to see that the American media is obsessed to no end with having lots of nice possessions. Look at music videos on MTV, reality television, and so forth. It's everywhere. It permeates American culture.

To Americans, freedom means the freedom to get rich as hell. Americans seem to dream more about being "rock stars" and what not as opposed to dreaming of being investment bankers... Americans do seem to despise Wall Street, but they don't really want to do anything about it. They think that that is what the government is for. They want the government to take care of their problems, but they also turn around and hate the government for taking away all of their money. And yes, most Americans just simply don't know anything outside of how things are for them. I cannot tell you how many times I've heard people say "Well that's just the way things are, so deal with it." It's become this excuse for allowing capitalism to continue. Also, they only hear about socialism from people that despise it. They usually don't hear it from the people that actually support it.

Keep in mind that I live in a rather conservative part of the country, so I mostly hear their point of view on things. I don't know how Americans all across the nation think about these things.

[Savior]

Same here. Most Americans seem antagonist towards leftism because they have been told for decades by McCarthyist capitalists that communism is bad. I think that Americans are obsessed with the idea of ownership and property. They love the idea of making lots of money, buying fancy and expensive things, and owning stuff. David Harvey pointed out that 68% of U.S. households are home owners, while only 22% are in Switzerland. It's this cultural obsession with owning yourself and being your own master and what not, so Americans try to get rich and buy things. They don't like the idea of having to share their things. At least, they think that socialism means that they're going to lose all of their money and their pretty personal possessions, so they don't like anything that has to do with socialism.

They also seem to associate it with what they call "dictatorships." As in, when they here those words "socialism" "communism", etc. they tend to immediately think of Stalin and Castro and they say "that's bad. Those people have no rights." You only need to turn on a television to see that the American media is obsessed to no end with having lots of nice possessions. Look at music videos on MTV, reality television, and so forth. It's everywhere. It permeates American culture.

To Americans, freedom means the freedom to get rich as hell. Americans seem to dream more about being "rock stars" and what not as opposed to dreaming of being investment bankers... Americans do seem to despise Wall Street, but they don't really want to do anything about it. They think that that is what the government is for. They want the government to take care of their problems, but they also turn around and hate the government for taking away all of their money. And yes, most Americans just simply don't know anything outside of how things are for them. I cannot tell you how many times I've heard people say "Well that's just the way things are, so deal with it." It's become this excuse for allowing capitalism to continue. Also, they only hear about socialism from people that despise it. They usually don't hear it from the people that actually support it.

Keep in mind that I live in a rather conservative part of the country, so I mostly hear their point of view on things. I don't know how Americans all across the nation think about these things.

I live in one of the most conservative Parts of the u.s (wyoming). Most people work for the energy companies. Anyway, We were talking about poltics with some kids in one of my classes, and they asked me about communism. I told them, and they agreed with everything i said. One kid even asked to borrow my copy of the Communist manifesto, and now hes reading up on it. I think that they newer generation (mine) is seeing the injustices and seeing that we are right, and capitalism must be destroyed.

[Savior]

Well, I know where I am in Amerika people are PISSED off, but the problem is no one here realizes their is an alternative to capitalism.
Same here, But as i said in my post above, They are starting to gain at least the younger Americans are, a class concoiusness (didnt spell that correctly).

[Kiev Communard]

The 'Labour Aristocracy' theory assumes that there is a correlation between poor living conditions and class consciousness, in fact the opposite is the case. The members of the Communist League were by and large not the poorest sections of the working-class, but the skilled workers, artisans and master-craftsmen. The poor working-class was politically pacified by decades of unemployment or underemployment and fought for minimal economic demands rather than revolutionary political demands. Raphael Samuel notes in his work The Lost World of British Communism, that the social basis of the Communist Party of Great Britain during it's heyday was precisely the "workers' aristocracy", the educated sections of the working-class who were usually complained about by their employers as being unusually high in scientific knowledge. The basis for class-consciousness in the Marxist view is alienation and dispossession from the means of production. Apart from that, what makes the working-class revolutionary is not that it is pauperised by capitalist society, but that it is educated and organised. The opposite view which is implicit in the theory of the 'Labour aristocracy' is that of Bakunin and Wietling who considered Communism as coming about of the result of those elements of society which were the furthest away from the corrupting influence of the state and bourgeois culture (Bakunin even explicitly says that the social base of Marxism is the 'labour aristocracy', the educated workers who will, according to Bakunin, merely instigate a new form of class society with their revolution, in contrast to the purity of the poverty stricken lumpenproletariat and peasantry, whose revolution will produce an anarchist society). I am aware that both Marx and Engels talked about the aristocracy of Labour, but they were wrong. In particular, the sections of the TUC which Engels designates as part of the 'labour aristocracy' were actually some of the most militant sections of the working-class during the twentieth century.

Well, there are certain elements among the skilled workers who pride themselves on being "skilled and higher-valued", looking disdainfully on the unskilled workers, students and welfare recipients as "lazy scroungers", but these are mostly those who work at the same status as "self-employed" (that is, not in the large collectives; "Joe the Plumber"-style types), not the unionised employees of large engineering enterprises, for instance. In fact, the most reactionary elements (politically and culturally) of the modern Ukrainian working class, so to speak, are white-collar office employees ("office plancton", as they are known among wider strata of proletariat). They are both unskilled and permeated with thoroughly petty bourgeois mentality, dreaming of becoming managers themselves and following American-style consumerist lifestyle.

[robbo203]

From what I can understand of Marx, he believes that a fully capitalist state is needed before the revolution to socialism then communism takes place. Is this a correct interpretation? If this is true, would places like Nepal be ready for a communist revolution? I know that Russia certainly wouldn't have qualified as a capitalist state (more feudal probably), so therefore, wouldn't have been ready for communism under Marx's theory. How about the other countries which have made an attempt at communism? Have they been 'ready'? What are the other necessary conditions before communism?


I think it is generally understood that there are two basic preconditions for a successful communist revolution

1) There needs to be a relatively developed technological infrastructure to produce enough to satisfy our needs without having to rely on market rationing

2) There needs to be a significant majority of the population who want a communist society and understand what it entails - a moneyless wageless stateless commonwealth based on common ownership of the means of production

The first of these preconditions was met some time around the early 20th century if you are looking at production from a global viewpoint.

The second of these preconditions has yet to be met anywhere and until it is met there can be no communist transformation of society

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I think it is generally understood that there are two basic preconditions for a successful communist revolution

1) There needs to be a relatively developed technological infrastructure to produce enough to satisfy our needs without having to rely on market rationing

2) There needs to be a significant majority of the population who want a communist society and understand what it entails - a moneyless wageless stateless commonwealth based on common ownership of the means of production

The first of these preconditions was met some time around the early 20th century if you are looking at production from a global viewpoint.

The second of these preconditions has yet to be met anywhere and until it is met there can be no communist transformation of society

Majorities aren't the motor of History, and waiting for them is just a piss-poor excuse to wait forever. The secret is to really begin.

[robbo203]

Majorities aren't the motor of History, and waiting for them is just a piss-poor excuse to wait forever. The secret is to really begin.

To begin what? Nobody is saying you can't begin advocating and struggling for communism now even if support for communism may be small. What I am saying is that you cannot have a communist society unless and until a majority want it. If you think otherwise you are frankly deluded.

[S.Artesian]

To begin what? Nobody is saying you can't begin advocating and struggling for communism now even if support for communism may be small. What I am saying is that you cannot have a communist society unless and until a majority want it. If you think otherwise you are frankly deluded.

Right, and you can't have a communist society without a successful revolution, and such revolutions rarely and barely have the support of the majority.

[robbo203]

Right, and you can't have a communist society without a successful revolution, and such revolutions rarely and barely have the support of the majority.

Depends what you mean by a revolution. I define a revolution as a fundamental change in the socio economic basis of society. You have just agreed that a communist society (which entails such a fundamental change) has to have majority support and understanding. Ergo, a successful communist revolution cannot be carried out by a minority

[S.Artesian]

Depends what you mean by a revolution. I define a revolution as a fundamental change in the socio economic basis of society. You have just agreed that a communist society (which entails such a fundamental change) has to have majority support and understanding. Ergo, a successful communist revolution cannot be carried out by a minority


Please, no word games. Sophistry is such a waste of time. The Russian Revolution of October 1917, when the MRC of the Petrograd Soviet, organized, led, and staffed by Bolsheviks, overthrew the PRG, was the proletariat seizing power. It was probably not supported by an absolute majority of the Russian population. Who cares? Does that mean the Bolsheviks should have waited until a nationwide referendum said "we agree with you, time to overthrow Kerensky"?

The fact of the matter is that there is no such thing as a communist revolution since revolutions are class struggles, creating, imposing new, or not so new, relations of production. There are no classes in communist society, and the proletariat is most definitely a class.

There is no communism that can be achieved prior to overthrowing the bourgeoisie by the proletariat. Communism is the result, the product, of the new production relations. It is not the agent of the revolution itself.

[robbo203]

Please, no word games. Sophistry is such a waste of time. The Russian Revolution of October 1917, when the MRC of the Petrograd Soviet, organized, led, and staffed by Bolsheviks, overthrew the PRG, was the proletariat seizing power. It was probably not supported by an absolute majority of the Russian population. Who cares? Does that mean the Bolsheviks should have waited until a nationwide referendum said "we agree with you, time to overthrow Kerensky"?

The fact of the matter is that there is no such thing as a communist revolution since revolutions are class struggles, creating, imposing new, or not so new, relations of production. There are no classes in communist society, and the proletariat is most definitely a class.

There is no communism that can be achieved prior to overthrowing the bourgeoisie by the proletariat. Communism is the result, the product, of the new production relations. It is not the agent of the revolution itself.


Amusing. First you lecture me about not engaging word games and then proceed to do just that

The Bolshevik revolution was not a communist revolution. Communism was not established as a result. What was established as a result was a system of state-run capitalism. Ergo the Bolshevilk revolution was a capitalist revolution.

Yes it was carried out by workers. So what? Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan came to power on the back of mass support from workers in landslide election wins. Does that make them venerable protagonists of proletarian struggle? Of course not.

There is a good quote from Marx worth posting here

If the proletariat destroys the political rule of the bourgeosie, that will only be a temporary victory, only an element in the service of the bourgeois revolution itself, as in 1794, so long as in the course of history, in its movement, the material conditions are not yet created which make necessary the abolition of the bourgeois mode of production and thus the definitive overthrow of bourgeois political rule ("Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality" , 1847 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/10/31.htm

Tha could have been said of Russia 1917


By the way while it is quite true to say that "there is no communism that can be achieved prior to overthrowing the bourgeoisie by the proletariat" it is misleading to say "Communism is the result, the product, of the new production relations". Rather communism is defined in terms of these new production relations


You then introduce one of the daftest arguments Ive heard on this site for a while .There is no such thing as a communist revolution, you say, "since revolutions are class struggles, creating, imposing new, or not so new, relations of production. There are no classes in communist society, and the proletariat is most definitely a class."

If there is no such thing as a communist revolution then how on earth is communism to come about? A wave of the magic wand perhaps? I think even you will agree that communism entails the imposition or creation of a new relations of production. Who then is going to impose or create these new relations if not the working class? Ah, let me guess. A syndicate of pixies and hobgoblins?

[S.Artesian]

Amusing. First you lecture me about not engaging word games and then proceed to do just that

The only reason you think I'm playing a game is because you don't have the slightest clue what the words mean, or what you are talking about.


The Bolshevik revolution was not a communist revolution. Communism was not established as a result. What was established as a result was a system of state-run capitalism. Ergo the Bolshevilk revolution was a capitalist revolution.The Bolshevik revolution was a proletarian revolution that expropriated the bourgeoisie in an economy of intense uneven and combined development. There was no way it could be a communist revolution, since communism requires a level of development without conflict between means and relations of production.

Given the uneven and combined development, the problematic for the Russian workers was how to manage the uneven and combined development until such time as revolution spread to the more advanced countries, where technical inputs without the necessary production for value could alleviate the conflict.

The Bolshevik revolution was hardly a capitalist revolution as no capitalist class took power, but on the contrary had its power, its property, its organization broken, shattered, defeated.

If you want to argue that the Bolsheviks and/or the bureaucracy were already a new class of capitalists, then you need to show their organization of and as capitalists in the economy, reproducing capitalist production relations, prior to the revolution of October 1917. Classes don't spring out of the sky or the ground fully grown. So where were those state capitalists, as a class, reproducing state capitalist relations of production, and state capitalist commodities prior to 1917.

Don't understand those words? Too bad, those are just the way Marxists define class. You have a better definition, one that can explain history better than Marx? Let's hear those words.


Yes it was carried out by workers. So what? Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan came to power on the back of mass support from workers in landslide election wins. Does that make them venerable protagonists of proletarian struggle? Of course not. Thatcher and Reagan did not come to power on the back of mass support from workers in landslide election wins. They came to power after strike waves had been contained and broken by... their social democratic, and enlightened bourgeois predecessors. You think Carter and Callaghan didn't set the stage with their attacks on workers?



There is a good quote from Marx worth posting here

If the proletariat destroys the political rule of the bourgeosie, that will only be a temporary victory, only an element in the service of the bourgeois revolution itself, as in 1794, so long as in the course of history, in its movement, the material conditions are not yet created which make necessary the abolition of the bourgeois mode of production and thus the definitive overthrow of bourgeois political rule ("Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality" , 1847 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/10/31.htm

Tha could have been said of Russia 1917Yeah, but it wasn't, it was said in 1847 at the beginning of the revolutions that saw the proletariat retreat from expropriation of the property of the bourgeoisie, retreat from its independence from the bourgeoisie-- neither of which occurred in 1917. Now I know historical materialism isn't your strong suit, but you can find out what you need to know by situating Marx's comments in 1847 in its historical context, and then actually looking at what took place in 1917.



By the way while it is quite true to say that "there is no communism that can be achieved prior to overthrowing the bourgeoisie by the proletariat" it is misleading to say "Communism is the result, the product, of the new production relations". Rather communism is defined in terms of these new production relationsAnd the practical significance of your distinction is.... what? The issue is that there is no, and can be no such thing as a communist revolution overthrowing the bourgeoisie as the bourgeoisie do not create communism as its "negation," it produces the proletariat as its potential negation.
Capital does not create communism as its negation it produces wage-labor which can only be expropriated through social production as its negation.




If there is no such thing as a communist revolution then how on earth is communism to come about? A wave of the magic wand perhaps? I think even you will agree that communism entails the imposition or creation of a new relations of production. Who then is going to impose or create these new relations if not the working class? Ah, let me guess. A syndicate of pixies and hobgoblins? Communism comes about as a result of the proletariat's revolution, seizing the means of production, expropriating the bourgeoisie collectively as a class and as individuals through the expropriation of their property and the destruction of their organizations.

The collective effort of the proletariat in reorganizing production for use and need is the process by which a) the proletariat effectively does away with itself as the proletariat b) creates the material conditions, the amplification of productivity that allows, supports communism.

[robbo203]

The Bolshevik revolution was a proletarian revolution that expropriated the bourgeoisie in an economy of intense uneven and combined development. There was no way it could be a communist revolution, since communism requires a level of development without conflict between means and relations of production. If you don't understand that, try reading Marx..

I understand that very well. And because it could not have been a communist revolution, perforce it had to be a capitalist revolution



The Bolshevik revolution was hardly a capitalist revolution as no capitalist class took power, but on the contrary had its power, its property, its organization broken, shattered, defeated...

The capitalists dont actually have to take power for it to be a capitalist revolution. If capitalism is the outcome as was the case with the Bolshevik then that makes it a capitalist revolution. The party-state elite emerged as the finctional equivalent of the erstwhile private capitalists whose property, power and organisation you say had been broken



If you want to argue that the Bolsheviks and/or the bureaucracy were already a new class of capitalists, then you need to show their organization of and as capitalists in the economy, reproducing capitalist production relations, prior to the revolution of October 1917. Classes don't spring out of the sky or the ground fully grown. So where were those state capitalists, as a class, reproducing state capitalist relations of production, and state capitalist commodities prior to 1917. ...

I dont follow this argument at all. The Bolsheviks obviously could not effect their programme of state capitalism until they had control of the state. But what was certaionly clear is that they intended to embark on such a programme


You're an idiot. Thatcher and Reagan did not come to power on the back of mass support from workers in landslide election wins. They came to power after strike waves had been contained and broken by... their social democratic, and enlightened bourgeois predecessors. Carter and Callaghan didn't set the stage with their attacks on workers?...

Im afraid the only idiot here is you here and a deluded idiot at that. Of course Thatcher won a landslide victory with mass working class support. In 1983 the Tories won 397 seats to Labour's 209. Are you denying this? I couldnt care a toss if Callaghan set the stage with his attacks on the workers. The simple point Im making and which are you are seemingly rejecting by calling me an idiot is that the workers turned their backs on Labour and voted in Thatcher en masse




Yeah, but it wasn't, it was said in 1847 at the beginning of the revolutions that saw the proletariat retreat from expropriation of the property of the bourgeoisie, retreat from its independence from the bourgeoisie-- neither of which occurred in 1917. Now I know historical materialism isn't your strong suit, and what really constitutes class and class struggle seems to elude you, but you can find out what you need to know by situating Marx's comments in 1847 in its historical context, and then actually looking at what took place in 1917.?...

I am looking at what took place in 1917 in hardheaded fashion and seeing what happened and assuredly communism was not established nor could it have been. Capitalism was the only option available to the Bolsheviks. Only dreamers like you with your head in the clouds think otherwise





I know I'm repeating myself, but you're an idiot. Communism comes about as a result of the proletariat's revolution, seizing the means of production, expropriating the bourgeoisie collectively as a class and as individuals through the expropriation of their property and the destruction of their organizations.

The collective effort of the proletariat in reorganizing production for use and need is the process by which a) the proletariat effectively does away with itself as the proletariat b) creates the material conditions, the amplification of productivity that allows, supports communism.

In other words this revolution which establishes communism is a communist revolution and that my little friend is the point I was trying to impress on you when you made your silly little comment that The there is no such thing as a communist revolution since revolutions are class struggles, a comment which incidentally you contradict yourself by saying above There was no way it could be a communist revolution, since communism requires a level of development without conflict between means and relations of production

[S.Artesian]

I understand that very well. And because it could not have been a communist revolution, perforce it had to be a capitalist revolution

No, you don't understand it very well because you don't understand the determining factor of the revolution which was uneven and combined development. Those factors made the bourgeoisie and a bourgeois revolution impossible. Those factors made a "classic capitalism" in Russia impossible as Russia, with all its peculiarities was already capitalist, already part and parcel of capitalism; a capitalism which could not overcome the limits of private property.

You simply don't get capitalist revolutions without capitalists owning the means of production privately and at the same time as a class, socially. That is one of the important manifestations of the conflict, the antagonism at the heart of capital between its organization as private property, and its method of realization of value, which requires social production.



The capitalists dont actually have to take power for it to be a capitalist revolution. If capitalism is the outcome as was the case with the Bolshevik then that makes it a capitalist revolution. The party-state elite emerged as the finctional equivalent of the erstwhile private capitalists whose property, power and organisation you say had been broken

Your argument is loaded, but loaded with blanks. "If capitalism was the outcome as was the case with the Bolshevik...." Excuse me, you are assuming what you need to prove-- that capitalism was the outcome of the Bolshevik revolution-- and we're not talking about the outcome in 1991 or 1992, we're talking 1917.



That's rich, the capitalists don't actually have to take power for there to be a capitalist revolution. First off, you can point to "modifications" where the industrial capitalists share power in the state apparatus with the agricultural capitalists-- i.e. Bismarcks' Junker capitalists, but you can't point a capitalist revolution without capitalists period; without their ability to own the means of production and purchase labor power with money, unless you assume, again, what needs to be proven.

Secondly, the taking of power for the capitalists does not mean that they themselves reserve all aspects of government to themselves. The taking of power means that all aspects of government are organized to protect that capitalist property. Now all those who think the state can substitute itself for a class, "detached" from that class, detached from the specific form of property of that class, need to look, and think, again, because whether it's Bismarck's Junker capitalism, Mussolini's corporatism, Peron's justicialistismo, what these variations on a theme do is organize and integrate all aspects of the social order around preserving that social wage relation for the benefit of private accumulation.

Most importantly, none of these, not Bismarck's Junkerism, not Mussolini's corporatism, not Peron's justicialismo, amounted to a revolution. Not one of them expropriated the property of the bourgeois class as a class.

That principle of preserving the wage relation for the benefit of private accumulation did not function in the fSU.

Thirdly, your argument is that the Russian Revolution was capitalist in 1917-- not that the civil war, the militarization of labor, the NEP, the expulsion of Trotsky, the five year plans, the show trials etc. amounted to a counterrevolution-- but that at its core the Russian Revolution was capitalist.

So despite the fact that organs of dual power were created, and those organs took power, the revolution was at core capitalist. So where is the capitalist class in this revolution? It's one thing to say, and I don't agree with you, that it isn't necessary for the capitalists to take power in a capitalist revolution. But it's another thing to say the class opposed to capitalism, that consciously opposes its class power to the class power of the bourgeoisie and the landowners etc, could clearly, at its greatest moment, only create what it had in fact overthrown.

Doesn't mean the bureaucracy wasn't brutal, stupid, vicious, oppressive, etc etc etc. It does mean the bureaucracy was not a class.

Functional equivalent is the definition of an analogy, an analogous organ or limb or instrument. I have no problem with stating that the bureaucracy acted as an equivalent of a bourgeoisie, and transmitted the impulse to capitalist restoration. It was not in and of itself a class. It had no essential, unique, determining relation to the means of production.

It's not just me saying that the power and the property of the bourgeoisie and the landowners what shattered, expropriated, it's the historical record.


I dont follow this argument at all. The Bolsheviks obviously could not effect their programme of state capitalism until they had control of the state. But what was certaionly clear is that they intended to embark on such a programme

Really, and what constitutes the program of state capitalism? The state acting as analogously to what private capitalism had to do in its pursuit of value? In its accumulation of value?

But the means of production in the fSU weren't expanded and accumulated for the sake of accumulation, for the purposes of exchange, for the aggrandizement of wage-labor in order to facilitate the further aggrandizement of wage-labor. For that to occur you need a class that, as individuals, can own the means of production; buy and sell the components that make up commodity production-- the constant and variable portions of capital. So where is the accumulation of the means of production to solely augment further accumulation?



Im afraid the only idiot here is you here and a deluded idiot at that. Of course Thatcher won a landslide victory with mass working class support. In 1983 the Tories won 397 seats to Labour's 209. Are you denying this? I couldnt care a toss if Callaghan set the stage with his attacks on the workers. The simple point Im making and which are you are seemingly rejecting by calling me an idiot is that the workers turned their backs on Labour and voted in Thatcher en masse

I'm denying that the Thatcher or the Reagan landslide was due to mass workers working class support for Thatcher or Reagan. Mass petit-bourgeois support in these nations of shopkeepers, bankers, and commercial landlords? Without a doubt. Mass working class support, not hardly. Some working class support? No doubt. Hell, white autoworkers who had moved to Detroit from the South started KKK chapters, so what?


I am looking at what took place in 1917 in hardheaded fashion and seeing what happened and assuredly communism was not established nor could it have been. Capitalism was the only option available to the Bolsheviks. Only dreamers like you with your head in the clouds think otherwise

Only option was a capitalist revolution in 1917? Then why did it not occur? Why did the capitalist line up behind the Tsar, then Kerensky, then Kornilov, and then the White Army?

Why were the capitalists unable to make their own capitalist revolution. What conditions prevented the capitalists from making their own revolution, and made only the expropriation of the capitalists the option for "capitalism"?


In other words this revolution which establishes communism is a communist revolution and that my little friend is the point I was trying to impress on you when you made your silly little comment that The there is no such thing as a communist revolution since revolutions are class struggles, a comment which incidentally you contradict yourself by saying above There was no way it could be a communist revolution, since communism requires a level of development without conflict between means and relations of production

I don't mean to burst your bubble. Those things I said do not contradict each other. There is no such thing as communist revolution if you mean a class war that establishes communism. There is a proletarian revolution, which can resolve the conflict between labor and the conditions of labor, between producer and property by seizing the means of production which are encapsulated and constrained by capital. That very constraint indicates that the means of production have not developed enough, have not been freed from the boundaries of private property, and thus, there is no communism at the moment of revolution.

There's this little thing, this intermediation called time. It takes time. Communism is the result of that expenditure, in reality, creation of unalienated time.

As I stated before, the proletariat makes its revolution as the proletariat-- only in expressing itself most consciously as that specific class can it begin the process of doing away with itself as a class. Takes a bit of effort, you know. Might even include a few mistakes, an even a retreat here or there.

[scourge007]

Could it start there?
It's possible. They had the Japanese Red Army in the past. Sure they disbanded in 2001 , but it proves the Japanese people could accept communism.

[robbo203]

No, you don't understand it very well because you don't understand the determining factor of the revolution which was uneven and combined development. Those factors made the bourgeoisie and a bourgeois revolution impossible. Those factors made a "classic capitalism" in Russia impossible as Russia, with all its peculiarities was already capitalist, already part and parcel of capitalism; a capitalism which could not overcome the limits of private property.

You simply don't get capitalist revolutions without capitalists owning the means of production privately and at the same time as a class, socially. That is one of the important manifestations of the conflict, the antagonism at the heart of capital between its organization as private property, and its method of realization of value, which requires social production..

This is terribly coinfused and tangential to what I was saying anyway. There certainly was a capitalist class in Russia and capitalist rerlations oif production mainly confined to urban centres. However, the capitalist class in Russia was too weak to effect a capitalist revolution itself. That fell primarily to the Bolsheviks to do. As Lenin said state capitalism would be a step forward. It was a different route to the development of capitalism than envisaged by the Russian bourgeoise but it was capitalism neverthless





Your argument is loaded, but loaded with blanks. "If capitalism was the outcome as was the case with the Bolshevik...." Excuse me, you are assuming what you need to prove-- that capitalism was the outcome of the Bolshevik revolution-- and we're not talking about the outcome in 1991 or 1992, we're talking 1917.

..

Yes indeed capitalism was the outcome of 1917 or to be more precise, the road was cleared for capitalist development so it was an entrenchment and consolidation of capitalism vis a vis pre capitalist social formations that we are talking of here. If you deny this then we have a different definition of capitalism, I equate capitalism with generalised wage labour - the classic Marxian definition - and of course capitalism can take many forms




That's rich, the capitalists don't actually have to take power for there to be a capitalist revolution. First off, you can point to "modifications" where the industrial capitalists share power in the state apparatus with the agricultural capitalists-- i.e. Bismarcks' Junker capitalists, but you can't point a capitalist revolution without capitalists period; without their ability to own the means of production and purchase labor power with money, unless you assume, again, what needs to be proven...

I am not assuming anything . I am observing what happens. There are plenty of "revolutions" carried out primarily by peasants or workers which by breaking pre capitalist power structures paved the way to development of capitalism




Most importantly, none of these, not Bismarck's Junkerism, not Mussolini's corporatism, not Peron's justicialismo, amounted to a revolution. Not one of them expropriated the property of the bourgeois class as a class.

Exproproation of property of the bougeois does not at all mean that are necessarily no longer talking about capitalism anymore. Nationalisation is a well known device that has often been used by avowedly capitalist states to the benefit of the local capitalism as these capitalist state see it



That principle of preserving the wage relation for the benefit of private accumulation did not function in the fSU.


It does not have to in order to qualify as capitalist. You can theoretically eliminate all private capitalists and still have capitalism expressed as generalised wage labour. Hence Engels comment

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. Socialism Utopian and Scientific



Thirdly, your argument is that the Russian Revolution was capitalist in 1917-- not that the civil war, the militarization of labor, the NEP, the expulsion of Trotsky, the five year plans, the show trials etc. amounted to a counterrevolution-- but that at its core the Russian Revolution was capitalist.
...

Yes thats right. Essentially the Russian revolution was a capitalist one . Its ultimate end was to clear away pre capitalist social relations and to faciliate capitalism in the particular form of state capitalism



So despite the fact that organs of dual power were created, and those organs took power, the revolution was at core capitalist. So where is the capitalist class in this revolution? It's one thing to say, and I don't agree with you, that it isn't necessary for the capitalists to take power in a capitalist revolution. But it's another thing to say the class opposed to capitalism, that consciously opposes its class power to the class power of the bourgeoisie and the landowners etc, could clearly, at its greatest moment, only create what it had in fact overthrown.
...


But it didnt oppose capitalism per se, it opposed private capitalism. Read your Lenin. Lenin was constantly banging on in his spats with his left wing opponents but how the enemy was not state capitalism but the petty capitalist. State capitalism for him was thebest thing since sliced bread. He even redefined "socialism" to equate with state capitalism




Functional equivalent is the definition of an analogy, an analogous organ or limb or instrument. I have no problem with stating that the bureaucracy acted as an equivalent of a bourgeoisie, and transmitted the impulse to capitalist restoration. It was not in and of itself a class. It had no essential, unique, determining relation to the means of production.

...

It did . It exerted ultimate control over the means of production and therefore de facto class ownership. Ultimate control and ownership amount to the same thing.




Really, and what constitutes the program of state capitalism? The state acting as analogously to what private capitalism had to do in its pursuit of value? In its accumulation of value?

But the means of production in the fSU weren't expanded and accumulated for the sake of accumulation, for the purposes of exchange, for the aggrandizement of wage-labor in order to facilitate the further aggrandizement of wage-labor. For that to occur you need a class that, as individuals, can own the means of production; buy and sell the components that make up commodity production-- the constant and variable portions of capital. So where is the accumulation of the means of production to solely augment further accumulation?
...

Where do you think it was? How do you imagine Russia's industrialisation was financed if not of massive capital accumulation and at huge cost to the russian working class if I might say so.



I'm denying that the Thatcher or the Reagan landslide was due to mass workers working class support for Thatcher or Reagan. Mass petit-bourgeois support in these nations of shopkeepers, bankers, and commercial landlords? Without a doubt. Mass working class support, not hardly. Some working class support? No doubt. Hell, white autoworkers who had moved to Detroit from the South started KKK chapters, so what?
...

Come of it. For starters how many bankers commercial landslords and commercial landlords do you think there are in the population as a whole? And secondly, most of the workers who work in say the banking industry are workers obviously in the sense that they are obliged to sell their labour power to the capitalists. You seem to entertain of a narrow workerist definition of working class as blue collar workers so beloved by bourgeois sociologists



Only option was a capitalist revolution in 1917? Then why did it not occur? Why did the capitalist line up behind the Tsar, then Kerensky, then Kornilov, and then the White Army?
...

Its not unheard of for differences of opinion or interests to emerge within the ranks of the capitalist class, you know. The "capitalists" are not some monolithic bloc




I don't mean to burst your bubble. Those things I said do not contradict each other. There is no such thing as communist revolution if you mean a class war that establishes communism. There is a proletarian revolution, which can resolve the conflict between labor and the conditions of labor, between producer and property by seizing the means of production which are encapsulated and constrained by capital. That very constraint indicates that the means of production have not developed enough, have not been freed from the boundaries of private property, and thus, there is no communism at the moment of revolution.

As I stated before, the proletariat makes its revolution as the proletariat-- only in expressing itself most consciously as that specific class can it begin the process of doing away with itself as a class. Takes a bit of effort, you know. Might even include a few mistakes, an even a retreat here or there.

The process of doing away with itself as a class begins reflectively and a long before the revolution to do away with classes is effected. Your interpretation of history is dogmatic and mechanical. It effectively eliminates the key role of communist consaciousness which drives the communiust revolution. Of course communist consciousness does not come out of thin air. its springs ultimately from material conditions but it is neverthless pivotal in a revolution that establishes communism

Here's Engels again in the introduction to Marx's Class struggle in France

The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for [with body and soul]. The history of the last fifty years has taught us that. But in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long, persistent work is required, and it is just this work which we are now pursuing, and with a success which drives the enemy to despair

And yes you did contradict your by talking about a communist revolutionand then denying there can be such a thing

[S.Artesian]

Saying it's so, doesn't make it so. All you have done is make assertions without providing a shred of analysis.

While Lenin and others talked about state capitalism, there was no state capitalism that dispossessed and eliminated the bourgeoisie-- not in Germany, the UK, the US-- not anywhere.

Your claim amounts to that because development of industry and elimination of handicraft and petty production has historically been necessary and essential components of the reproduction of capital, the development of industry and elimination of petty producers in Russia must have been capitalist. Therefore the revolution in Russia was capitalist.

As I said before, it's a circular argument, a little hermetic loop that has a slight problem with the reality of the class struggle and the civil war, which you dismiss as disagreements among a non-monolithic capitalist class.

[robbo203]

Saying it's so, doesn't make it so. All you have done is make assertions without providing a shred of analysis.

While Lenin and others talked about state capitalism, there was no state capitalism that dispossessed and eliminated the bourgeoisie-- not in Germany, the UK, the US-- not anywhere.

Your claim amounts to that because development of industry and elimination of handicraft and petty production has historically been necessary and essential components of the reproduction of capital, the development of industry and elimination of petty producers in Russia must have been capitalist. Therefore the revolution in Russia was capitalist.

As I said before, it's a circular argument, a little hermetic loop that has a slight problem with the reality of the class struggle and the civil war, which you dismiss as disagreements among a non-monolithic capitalist class.

But its not my argument! I dont say the system that was consolidated by the Bolsheviks was capitalist because it entailed "the development of industry and elimination of petty producers in Russia ". Its your fertile imagination once again working overtime. I said it was capitalist because manifestly the key structural characteristic of capitalism were all there to see - above all generalised wage labour (which necessarily presupposes capital as any Marxist would know).

State capitalism is state capitalism whether or not it seeks to eliminate the traditional bourgeosie. Insofar as it suceeds in doing that what then happens is that the party-state elite emerges as the functional equivalent of the ersthwhile bourgeosie. This old bourgeoisie may have disappeared but the new bourgeoisie - the red bourgeosie - emerge to fill the class vacuum . They do this by asserting de facto class ownership of the means of production via their complete strangelohold oin the state apparatus. It is not only nature that abhors a vauum. So too does capitalism.

[S.Artesian]

This is quite a leap; a new bourgeoisie emerged from the conditions of commodity production. Not only did Marx not foresee this, but we can't find a trace of this new bourgeoisie in the old relations of production, as a class prior to the assumption of power. As is always the case in historical materialist analysis, we need to find the origin of this new class directly in the body of the old economy-- we need to find it's relation to a new organization of labor within the dominant relations of the old organization of labor.

In fact you maintain that there is no new organization of labor, that the generalized relation of wage-labor is maintained intact. So how can a new class emerge? Why, in the terms of historical materialism, would such a new class be even necessary-- if the former social organization of labor was preserved?

How could this new bourgeoisie, based on this same relation to the social organization of labor do what the old bourgeoisie based on the same relation to the social organization of labor could not do?

Let's not hear "that happens all the time in capitalism," because it doesn't. Let's not hear, for example, how FDR's New Deal accomplished what laissez-faire capitalism could not, because first, it did not accomplish anything different, and secondly the New Deal did not bring forth a new class; it did not dispossess the "old bourgeoisie."

So you need to explain how this new bourgeoisie, manifesting the exact same relation to the proletariat, the aggrandizement of its labor-power for the accumulation of value, could do what the old bourgeoisie could not-- seize power based on working class organs; pull Russia out the war; seize and distribute land to the direct rural producers; expropriate the private ownership of the means of production; etc. etc. etc.

You have a new class springing out of itself, by its "de facto" relationship to the means of production, a relationship which it cannot manifest de jure, with property titles, with buying and selling, with money-- so in fact you have a class with no direct relation to the means of production prior to its assumption of power. How is that possible?

How do you get this new bourgeoisie replacing the old bourgeoisie when the relation of the "new bourgeoisie" to the social organization does not even exist prior to the assumption of power?

There simply is no such thing as "state capitalism" without there being a private bourgeoisie

[robbo203]

This is quite a leap; a new bourgeoisie emerged from the conditions of commodity production. Not only did Marx not foresee this, but we can't find a trace of this new bourgeoisie in the old relations of production, as a class prior to the assumption of power. As is always the case in historical materialist analysis, we need to find the origin of this new class directly in the body of the old economy-- we need to find it's relation to a new organization of labor within the dominant relations of the old organization of labor.

In fact you maintain that there is no new organization of labor, that the generalized relation of wage-labor is maintained intact. So how can a new class emerge? Why, in the terms of historical materialism, would such a new class be even necessary-- if the former social organization of labor was preserved?

How could this new bourgeoisie, based on this same relation to the social organization of labor do what the old bourgeoisie based on the same relation to the social organization of labor could not do?

Let's not hear "that happens all the time in capitalism," because it doesn't. Let's not hear, for example, how FDR's New Deal accomplished what laissez-faire capitalism could not, because first, it did not accomplish anything different, and secondly the New Deal did not bring forth a new class; it did not dispossess the "old bourgeoisie."

So you need to explain how this new bourgeoisie, manifesting the exact same relation to the proletariat, the aggrandizement of its labor-power for the accumulation of value, could do what the old bourgeoisie could not-- seize power based on working class organs; pull Russia out the war; seize and distribute land to the direct rural producers; expropriate the private ownership of the means of production; etc. etc. etc.

You have a new class springing out of itself, by its "de facto" relationship to the means of production, a relationship which it cannot manifest de jure, with property titles, with buying and selling, with money-- so in fact you have a class with no direct relation to the means of production prior to its assumption of power. How is that possible?

How do you get this new bourgeoisie replacing the old bourgeoisie when the relation of the "new bourgeoisie" to the social organization does not even exist prior to the assumption of power?

There simply is no such thing as "state capitalism" without there being a private bourgeoisie


Ho Hum here we go again. It is through its complete control of the state apparatus that the state capitalist class - the red bourgeoisie - exercised de facto ownership of means of the production. You ask how is it possible that you have a class with no direct relation to the means of production prior to its assumption of power. It was through its assumption of power that it became a state capitalist class and it was through its assumption of power that it was able to dispossess the old bourgeoisie only to emerge as its replacement in a new form of capitalist society - state capitalism. Geddit?

[S.Artesian]

Ho Hum here we go again. It is through its complete control of the state apparatus that the state capitalist class - the red bourgeoisie - exercised de facto ownership of means of the production. You ask how is it possible that you have a class with no direct relation to the means of production prior to its assumption of power. It was through its assumption of power that it became a state capitalist class and it was through its assumption of power that it was able to dispossess the old bourgeoisie only to emerge as its replacement in a new form of capitalist society - state capitalism. Geddit?

Oh I get it, you don't have any answers and you are simply chasing your tail in a circular argument. How does the state power change the property relations, the social relations of production established in a revolution? And you answer: "Through state power."

When I ask how is it possible for a new bourgeoisie, reproducing an old bourgeoisie, to replace that old bourgeoisie and do the things that old bourgeoisie could not, you say "It's because they are the new bourgeoisie."

When I ask what is this new form of capitalist society that maintains exactly the old social relations of the old form of capitalist society, you say "It's the new form of capitalism."

To "get it" means there has to be an "it"-- an explanation of how this totally new factor entering the class struggle-- a class that

1. doesn't exist in any form prior to the seizure of power

2. and with that seizure of power by a different class directly opposed to the expropriation of its labor power for the production of value, can

3. actually embody and reproduce the social relation of the old class just expropriated and liquidated?

And the answer has to NOT be, "Because they're the new class. Because they have state power." State power is not in and of itself an economic relation.


Now if there can be capitalism without a capitalist class, without what Marx called the personification of capital, the individual capitalists, buying and selling the means of production, buying and selling the products of labor, the time of labor, for the accumulation of value, then we better go back and rebuild everything we know about capital from the ground up-- the commodity, expanded reproduction, valorization, surplus value, profit, rate of profitability.

Why? Because the social relation of capital, the accumulation of value, shows none of those things can exist separate and apart from the ownership, de jure ownership, of the means of production as the private property of the capitalists. None of those categories can be made manifest without markets, without private ownership, without that "old" capitalist class.

Get it?

[robbo203]

Oh I get it, you don't have any answers and you are simply chasing your tail in a circular argument. How does the state power change the property relations, the social relations of production established in a revolution? And you answer: "Through state power."?

No you dont get it. You were asking a quite different question and I answered it. The social relations of production - the wage labour/ capital relationship that defines capitalism - were not established in the course of the Bolshevik revolution. A modern capitalist sector existed in Russia along side a precapitalist sector prior to the Bolsheviks coming to power. The Bolsheviks did not invent or introduce capitalism in Russia - obviously. What they did was essentially to consolidate capitalism and clear away pre capitalist obstacles to its development, the old bourgeoisie not being up to the task. Indeed they had no option but to do this even if some of them might have wanted to go further. The vast majority of the population did not. They had no inkling of socialism or desire for it and the backwardness of Russia at the time precluded any other option but capitalist development albeit along state capitalist lines

What was new - and here is where your lack of attentiveness really shows - was how a new state capitalist class emerged to replace the old Russian bourgeoisie on the "capital" side of the wage labour/capital relation. How they did it was what you asked of me and what i explained to you. They did it through the assumption of state power, through the centralisation of political control over economic decisionmaking in the hands of an elite. The nationalisation of all enterrpises with a workforce larger than ten employees in the early days of Bolshevik rule massively expanded the scope of control exercised by the party/state elite. Their ultimate control over all the important decisions in the economy - and above all, over the distribution of the surplus product - was in fact tantamount to their de facto ownership of the means of production as a ruling class. Ownership IS the same thing as ultimate control. If you "ultimately control" something , make the definitive decisions relating to it, then you own it (and vice versa) whether or not this recognised legally

The state or more precisely those who controlled the state became in the words of Engels the "national capitalist"

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. (Socialism Utopian and Scientific)

Instead of just mechanically and dogmatically invoking Marxist theory - or rather your somewhat bizarre and eccentric interpetation of the same - how about opening up your mind to new ways of looking at things? You know, history is a strange thing. In Ancient Morocco a dynasty of slave kinds was established. You would never have thought it, eh? Like you would never have thought that the Bolsheviks motivated I am sure at least to a degree by thoughts of socialism would go on from there to provide the social basis and the channel through which a party state elite would emerge wierlding power over a state whose insertion within matrix of wage labour/capital relationship - what we call capitalism - could only ever result in this elite reconfiguring itself as a state capitalist class - a red bourgeoisie.

[S.Artesian]

No you dont get it. You were asking a quite different question and I answered it. The social relations of production - the wage labour/ capital relationship that defines capitalism - were not established in the course of the Bolshevik revolution. A modern capitalist sector existed in Russia along side a precapitalist sector prior to the Bolsheviks coming to power. The Bolsheviks did not invent or introduce capitalism in Russia - obviously. What they did was essentially to consolidate capitalism and clear away pre capitalist obstacles to its development, the old bourgeoisie not being up to the task. Indeed they had no option but to do this even if some of them might have wanted to go further. The vast majority of the population did not. They had no inkling of socialism or desire for it and the backwardness of Russia at the time precluded any other option but capitalist development albeit along state capitalist lines

Yeah, I do get it, and you don't pay attention, because as I have emphasized in every post, Russia was indeed capitalist, had a modern capitalist sector with a "modern" proletariat-- which is why calling the Russian Revolution "capitalist" is, to say the least, problematic.

The problem being, as I stated in the previous post in several questions-- why if capitalism already existed, why if the the determining social relation of production between the Bolsheviks and the working class was the same social relation that existed between the bourgeoisie and the working class was a revolution, the Russian Revolution, even necessary?

Why was there even a Russian Revolution? Why weren't the "old bourgeoisie" capable of transforming Russia and the "new bourgeoisie" were, even though this "new bourgeoisie" didn't even exist until the revolution?

If the social relations were the same, what was the historical necessity for the expropriation, and liquidation, of the old bourgeoisie?

So keep going in circles, but don't expect anyone else to think you're moving forward.

[ZeroNowhere]

I really think that this debate is getting needlessly complicated. Now, as Marx pointed out in the 1844 manuscripts, estranged labour is the cause of property and not the other way round. It is, similarly, the specific form in which labour estranges itself that determines the specific form of property. So the ultimate question is: did labour estrange itself in the Soviet Union?

[robbo203]

Yeah, I do get it, and you don't pay attention, because as I have emphasized in every post, Russia was indeed capitalist, had a modern capitalist sector with a "modern" proletariat-- which is why calling the Russian Revolution "capitalist" is, to say the least, problematic.

The problem being, as I stated in the previous post in several questions-- why if capitalism already existed, why if the the determining social relation of production between the Bolsheviks and the working class was the same social relation that existed between the bourgeoisie and the working class was a revolution, the Russian Revolution, even necessary?

Why was there even a Russian Revolution? Why weren't the "old bourgeoisie" capable of transforming Russia and the "new bourgeoisie" were, even though this "new bourgeoisie" didn't even exist until the revolution?

If the social relations were the same, what was the historical necessity for the expropriation, and liquidation, of the old bourgeoisie?

So keep going in circles, but don't expect anyone else to think you're moving forward.

See its like this. You ask me a question. I answer it then you move on to another maintaining all along the pretence that I keep going round in circles. Enough of the grasshopper antics, please.

You last asked how the new state capitalist class came to come into existence post 1917. I explained that to you. They came into being through the seizure of power and the nationalisation of industry which dispossessed the old bourgeoisie and meant control of the economy passed substantially into the hands of a new party state elite. The ultimate control of the economy this elite exercised over the economy - above all over the distribution of the surplus product - was, I argued, tantamount to de facto class ownership. This is what made the party state elite a state capitalist class. Ultimate control is inseparable from ownership - the one implies the other

Now, are you happy with this explanation? If not tell me why not. If you are then lets move on

And move on we do as the next question you pose is why was a Russian revolution even necessary if capitalism was already in existence. Again i thought I had explained this as well. While capitalist relations of production certainly existed in Russia (just as they certainly existed in the towns of Feudal Europe prior to the epoch of bourgeois revolutions) they were hemmed in by the constraints exerted by a pre-capitalist social formation which served as an obstacle to capitalist development . So it was that it needed a capitalist revolution to remove this obstacle.

Rightly or wrongly, Bolsheviks like Lenin felt that the Russian bourgeoisie were too weak and vacillating to carry out what he called "bourgeois democratic revolution", too compromised in their relations with the tsarist aristocacy (a point that you youself incidentally seemed to agree with in a previous post when you asked "Why did the capitalist line up behind the Tsar"). Trotsky thought likewise and this argument underlies his thesis of permanant revolution. Of course the situation was more complex than this and I dont want to give the impression of providing a pat answer. There was also of course the question of workers grievances aggravated by the war which fuelled discontent and feed into support for the Bolsheviks. By no means were the Bolsheviks masters of their own fate in that respect and the image of a disciplined unified party at that time is far from true.

So the mere existence of capitalist relations of production does not in itself nullify the need for a capitalist revolution, The point is that those relations were not at the time socially dominant and to ensure their dominance required a revolution.

[S.Artesian]

See its like this. You ask me a question. I answer it then you move on to another maintaining all along the pretence that I keep going round in circles. Enough of the grasshopper antics, please.

You last asked how the new state capitalist class came to come into existence post 1917. I explained that to you. They came into being through the seizure of power and the nationalisation of industry which dispossessed the old bourgeoisie and meant control of the economy ypassed substantially into the hands of a new party state elite.

No, as I point out in each of your posts, you fail to answer the question. You cannot tell me how that the new state capitalist class came into existence by taking state power without creating a new relation of production. You are claiming that the expropriation of the private property created a new capitalist class that maintained precisely the social relation of production of the old capitalist class. That is non-sensical.

You say that the new state capitalist class came into being post-1917? Your claim from the getgo has been that the Russian Revolution was a capitalist revolution from the getgo-- not that it was a proletarian revolution that became capitalist, but that it was a capitalist revolution as that was the only economic path available.

So if the state capitalist class comes into being after 1917-- when? In 1919? What distinguishes the nationalization of property in 1918 then, before the state capitalist class comes into being from the nationalized property of 1919, 1920, 1921?


The ultimate control of the economy this elite exercised over the economy - above all over the distribution of the surplus product - was, I argued, tantamount to de facto class ownership. This is what made the party state elite a state capitalist class. Ultimate control is inseparable from ownership - the one implies the other

Now, are you happy with this explanation? If not tell me why not. If you are then lets move on

Happiness has nothing to do with it, because... you haven't provided an explanation. You've provided a "description," an analogy.. and as I told you before an analogous organ or limb in biology means something that has a different origin but serves the same or similar function as the limb or organ of some other species.

"One implies the other" "Ultimate control is inseparable"?

Ultimate control of an economy exercised by an elite does not amount to accumulation for the accumulation of value-- which is how Marx repeatedly characterizes capitalism-- "self-valorizing" "a self-valorizing mediation" "production of value for the purpose of the accumulation of value."

If the wage relationship, in and of itself, is enough to define an economy as capitalist, then we need to know why, and how that relation makes that economy capitalist. Marx answers that question too, in that the wage form conceals the inequality of the exchange which produces surplus-value, which is realized as value by the owners of the products in the markets. So where is that surplus-value in the Soviet "state capitalist" production realized as value?

The accumulation of value as and for value does not reappear in the USSR except in the interstices, the holes, the marginalizations that exist as that isolated economy cannot achieve levels of productivity capable of meeting all the needs of the population and eliminating scarcity.

The petty capitalism generated by this process of decay is just that, petty capitalism. Growing, repulsive, corrupt, dangerous, brutal-- petty capitalism. That's what all that "privilege," double-dealing, black-market, activity amounts to in the fSU-- petty capitalism.

It takes massive international forces to crack the dominant forms and mode of the economy and create a dominant capitalism from the rubble.

And finally on this-- there is no such thing as de facto class ownership of the means of production if in fact a class represents, brings forth, and imposes its mode of production. That class ownership is made de jure in the very administration of the economy. Ownership is defined, and preserved by that class, for that class.


And move on we do as the next question you pose is why was a Russian revolution even necessary if capitalism was already in existence. Again i thought I had explained this as well. While capitalist relations of production certainly existed in Russia (just as they certainly existed in the towns of Feudal Europe prior to the epoch of bourgeois revolutions) they were hemmed in by the constraints exerted by a pre-capitalist social formation which served as an obstacle to capitalist development . So it was that it needed a capitalist revolution to remove this obstacle.

I agree that capitalism was constrained--- just as it was constrained in Mexico before, and after, the 1910 revolution which went on [and off] for some 30 years.

Uneven and combined development means exactly that capital is constrained, but the constraint, the integument, is capital itself- in the adaptation of the constraints[archaic forms of landed labor] to the world markets, to becoming units of production in the world markets [as did the plantation, the haciendas etc.]; and the adoption, absorption, of those constraints by capital itself-- [the alliance of capitalists and landowners, the preservation of unevenness through coalition of private properties].

If capital is constrained it is argument, evidence, and proof that capital cannot overcome the constraints, and a revolution that overcomes the constraints has to destroy capital, as that very same Mexican Revolution has proven in its failure.


Rightly or wrongly, Bolsheviks like Lenin felt that the Russian bourgeoisie were too weak and vacillating to carry out what he called "bourgeois democratic revolution", too compromised in their relations with the tsarist aristocacy (a point that you youself incidentally seemed to agree with in a previous post when you asked "Why did the capitalist line up behind the Tsar"). Trotsky thought likewise and this argument underlies his thesis of permanant revolution. Of course the situation was more complex than this and I dont want to give the impression of providing a pat answer. There was also of course the question of workers grievances aggravated by the war which fuelled discontent and feed into support for the Bolsheviks. By no means were the Bolsheviks masters of their own fate in that respect and the image of a disciplined unified party at that time is far from true.


Standard thumbnail sketch of the development of different theories of the future of class struggle in Russia, by the Russian social democrats. So? So what?



So the mere existence of capitalist relations of production does not in itself nullify the need for a capitalist revolution, The point is that those relations were not at the time socially dominant and to ensure their dominance required a revolution.

So here we have it: the capitalist relations of production were not dominant, so there was a need for capitalist revolution. Except.... see above about the real barrier to capitalist dominance.

Your argument basically comes down to the claim that a capitalist revolution was needed in Russia--that a capitalist revolution was necessary to install capitalism as the dominant mode of production.

point 1:The capitalists themselves were incapable of leading, organizing, creating this revolution--

First point: Why? What does that say about the conflict between the means and relations of production if the class that is the repository of those relations of production cannot create the revolution itself? Doesn't that mean that those relations of production themselves are in fact in conflict with the means of production, no matter how meager, how uneven, how combined, how constrained those means of production may be?

point 2: A new class is needed to impose this capitalist relation of production.

Second point: the capitalist relation of production that has already been shown to be so inadequate does not exist separate and apart from that which makes it so inadequate-- private property, private ownership of the means of production. That is the relationship that must be abolished for there to exist even a moment, an opportunity for the actual development of production.

Is there a class capable of abolishing that relationship? Sure there is, it's called the working class.

point 3: Without any prior necessary relationship to the means of production, without even existing as a class prior to the overthrow of the old capitalist class, this new class appears in the taking and exercising of state power and institutes as the dominant relation of production, exactly that relation that could not be installed by pre-existing old bourgeoisie.

Third point: The inability of capital to become the dominant mode of production in Russia is based not simply on the weakness of the Russian bourgeoisie, but a weakness of the Russian bourgeoisie as determined by both the strength and weakness of international capitalism. In fact, the weakness of the Russian bourgeoisie is a reflection of that very weakness, that very inability to overcome the limits to capitalist development which is in capital itself-- that is to say private property.

International capitalism, in its inability to revolutionize pre-existing property relations, to make them over in its own image, makes itself over in their image. While everywhere its intrusions produce the conflict with "archaic" forms of private property, it cannot overthrow those forms and so it adopts them-- thus, for example, US Steel in the 20th century uses the shackled black labor it rents from prisons, from plantations to run its mines, maintain its railroads.

US railroads penetrate Mexico and reduce transportation costs, bringing markets and production into closer proximity. Yet that very development enforces the hacienda system. The agricultural machinery manufacturers of the US become the biggest backers of the near slave-like conditions on the plantations producing hemp for the world market.

The development of railroads, of the penetration of the advanced capital, propels the hacienda to aggrandize more land from the indigenous pueblos, launching the Mexican Revolution which the Mexican bourgeoisie can barely control, and do control only by accommodating the haciendas and maintaining the conditions of below subsistence farming while promising the end of the hacienda in a constitution.

So... the point here: Who can take power in Russia? The old bourgeoisie? No. The workers? They most certainly did. Is it possible for the workers to throw a section of themselves off as their own exploiters, becoming their own bourgeoisie in effect.

The strength and the weakness of the capitalist relationship was international. So the only way that "spin off" could occur is with the massive support of that international capital in organizing the demolition of the property relation that was established in the revolution itself.. and that is exactly what happened in the 1991-1998 period.

[Pravda Soyuz]

Currently, capitalism is going into decay... the U.S. is ready for change. We just need to get the point across and fix the myth that communism is "bad",

[S.Artesian]

I really think that this debate is getting needlessly complicated. Now, as Marx pointed out in the 1844 manuscripts, estranged labour is the cause of property and not the other way round. It is, similarly, the specific form in which labour estranges itself that determines the specific form of property. So the ultimate question is: did labour estrange itself in the Soviet Union?


But estrangement is not a psychological event. It is a social relation of production. The estrangement of labor under capitalism is not separate and apart from its aggrandizement by capitalists; its conversion into value.

[robbo203]

No, as I point out in each of your posts, you fail to answer the question. You cannot tell me how that the new state capitalist class came into existence by taking state power without creating a new relation of production. You are claiming that the expropriation of the private property created a new capitalist class that maintained precisely the social relation of production of the old capitalist class. That is non-sensical.



Then youve misunderstood. It didnt create a new social relation. The wage labour/capital relation continued. What changed was the form of the dominant class. I explained to you clearly how this new state capitalist class emerged - through the nationalisation of industry over which it exerted ultimate control and hence class ownership



You say that the new state capitalist class came into being post-1917? Your claim from the getgo has been that the Russian Revolution was a capitalist revolution from the getgo-- not that it was a proletarian revolution that became capitalist, but that it was a capitalist revolution as that was the only economic path available.


Yes it could only have been a capitalist revolution. Sure it was a capitalist revolution carried out by the proletariat but it was a capitalist revolution nevertheless. It did not seek to overthrow the wage labour /capital relation but to modify it for instance to address the grievances of workers under the old bourgeois system. Some Im sure did think in revolutionary socialist terms but it would be delusional to suppose that the majoritity did and without the majority wanting a socialist alternative to capitalism you cannot have it. By that I mean a real socialist alternative not the state capitalist version of "socialism" (a la Lenin) which was already supplanting the traditional marxian version



So if the state capitalist class comes into being after 1917-- when? In 1919? What distinguishes the nationalization of property in 1918 then, before the state capitalist class comes into being from the nationalized property of 1919, 1920, 1921?


It wouldnt have happened all at once. It would have been an emergent process. Reading Pirani's work on the matter Revolution in Retreat, if I recall correctly, he puts the crystallisation oif a new class at around 1921 after significant centralisation of power had occured and the composition of the party had changed . Not of course that the private capitalists had disappeared from the scene yet. Here for example is Lenin instructing the Russian wage slaves in October 1921 as follows:
Get down to business all of you! You will have capitalists beside you, including foreign capitalists, concessionaires and leaseholders. They will squeeze profits out of you amounting to hundreds per cent; they will enrich themselves, operating alongside of you. Let them, Meanwhile you will learn from them the business of running an economy, and only when you do that will you be able to build up a communist republic. (Collected Works, Vol. 33 page 72).



Ultimate control of an economy exercised by an elite does not amount to accumulation for the accumulation of value-- which is how Marx repeatedly characterizes capitalism-- "self-valorizing" "a self-valorizing mediation" "production of value for the purpose of the accumulation of value."

If the wage relationship, in and of itself, is enough to define an economy as capitalist, then we need to know why, and how that relation makes that economy capitalist. Marx answers that question too, in that the wage form conceals the inequality of the exchange which produces surplus-value, which is realized as value by the owners of the products in the markets. So where is that surplus-value in the Soviet "state capitalist" production realized as value?

First of all you have to realise that Marx's labour theory of value is an abstraction. As he pointed out himself many times in the real world prices will always diverge from values and it is only by accident that they correspond. However the LTV maintains that the sum total of prices must correspond in the end to the sum total of values

In a state capitalist economy just as in a private capitalist economy values and prices will diverge but their sum totals in the end will correspond. In a classical private capitalist economy prices automatically adjust through the interplay of market forces of supply and demand; in a state capitalist economy they are in theory set by the planners (I say "in theory" becuase in reality prices often did not correspond with those that were fixed by the state authorities and there was a good deal of informal price negotiations between state enterprises)

The monetary form of surplus value in the Soviet Uniuon was basically the profits made by state enterprises which was creamed off by the state, all proifits and loosses reverting to the state. As you may know state enterprises were obliged to keep proft and loss accounts and a raft of measures was imposed to induce and cajole them to ensure profitablity. Loss making enterprises did not go under but as sometimes happens in the West they were subsidied. Neverthless , they were penalised in a variety of ways such as via the witholding of bonuses and the downgrading of managerial status.

What I am saying here is that while under state capitalism there was certainly a greater degree of elbow room as far as economic decisions were concerned. it would be utterly mistaken to assume that the planners had carte blanche in their decisionmaking. Withoout the extraction of surplus value from the state enterprises in the form of profits it would not have been possible to embark on the process of capital accumulation and industrialisation.

In reality despite the image that is sometimes presented of the Soviet economy being an essentially planned economy, it was far more decentralised (of necessity I would argue) than is supposed. Plans imposed by Gosplan were little more than rituallistic exercises in wishful thinking and were constantly modified to fit in with changing circumstances. Not a single plan was ever "strictly fulfilled"



The accumulation of value as and for value does not reappear in the USSR except in the interstices, the holes, the marginalizations that exist as that isolated economy cannot achieve levels of productivity capable of meeting all the needs of the population and eliminating scarcity.


If you seriously believe this then pray tell me how you imagine industrialisation of the Soviet economy was financed if not out of surplus value?



The petty capitalism generated by this process of decay is just that, petty capitalism. Growing, repulsive, corrupt, dangerous, brutal-- petty capitalism. That's what all that "privilege," double-dealing, black-market, activity amounts to in the fSU-- petty capitalism. .

No your are misinformed. An awful lot of the kind of activity you are talking about went on not just in the black economy but in the legal economy as well (in some ways there was no cut and dried dividing line between them - state enterprises could and often did resort to illegal forms of commercial credit). There was huge scope for fiddling and backhanders within the legal system itself. The whole system encouraged the distortion of information. For example in the "bargaining stage" of plan setting, between state enterprises and GOSPLAN there was a constant tendency on the part of state enterprises to understate the amount of productive capacity they possessed (so as to avoid higher targets being imposed on them in any subsequent plan and thereby enabling them to more easily obtain bonuses for fulfilling their plan obligations)



And finally on this-- there is no such thing as de facto class ownership of the means of production if in fact a class represents, brings forth, and imposes its mode of production. That class ownership is made de jure in the very administration of the economy. Ownership is defined, and preserved by that class, for that class. .


I dont understand what you mean. Surely from the standpoint of a historical materialist perspctive what matters is the de facto situation . I find it extremely ironic that people ike Trotsky should resort to bourgeois jurisprudence to "prove" the non existence of a state capitalist class on the grounds that there was no legal or de jure entitlement to capital by individuals in the Soviet Union. Actually his argument was quite irrelevant anyway because it confuses the route by which an individual may acquire membership of the capitalist class with the existence of a class itself. To make this clear - in the West for example there is no de jure or legal basis for the existence of a capitalist class, the existence of such a class can only be inferred from a sociological analysis of the de facto situation on the ground. The same procedure should equally apply to the Soviet Uniuon. There too there was no legal basis for the existence of a state capitalist class but such a class can be inferred sociologically




Your argument basically comes down to the claim that a capitalist revolution was needed in Russia--that a capitalist revolution was necessary to install capitalism as the dominant mode of production.

point 1:The capitalists themselves were incapable of leading, organizing, creating this revolution--

First point: Why? What does that say about the conflict between the means and relations of production if the class that is the repository of those relations of production cannot create the revolution itself? Doesn't that mean that those relations of production themselves are in fact in conflict with the means of production, no matter how meager, how uneven, how combined, how constrained those means of production may be?

point 2: A new class is needed to impose this capitalist relation of production.

Second point: the capitalist relation of production that has already been shown to be so inadequate does not exist separate and apart from that which makes it so inadequate-- private property, private ownership of the means of production. That is the relationship that must be abolished for there to exist even a moment, an opportunity for the actual development of production.

Is there a class capable of abolishing that relationship? Sure there is, it's called the working class.

point 3: Without any prior necessary relationship to the means of production, without even existing as a class prior to the overthrow of the old capitalist class, this new class appears in the taking and exercising of state power and institutes as the dominant relation of production, exactly that relation that could not be installed by pre-existing old bourgeoisie.

Third point: The inability of capital to become the dominant mode of production in Russia is based not simply on the weakness of the Russian bourgeoisie, but a weakness of the Russian bourgeoisie as determined by both the strength and weakness of international capitalism. In fact, the weakness of the Russian bourgeoisie is a reflection of that very weakness, that very inability to overcome the limits to capitalist development which is in capital itself-- that is to say private property.

International capitalism, in its inability to revolutionize pre-existing property relations, to make them over in its own image, makes itself over in their image. While everywhere its intrusions produce the conflict with "archaic" forms of private property, it cannot overthrow those forms and so it adopts them-- thus, for example, US Steel in the 20th century uses the shackled black labor it rents from prisons, from plantations to run its mines, maintain its railroads.

US railroads penetrate Mexico and reduce transportation costs, bringing markets and production into closer proximity. Yet that very development enforces the hacienda system. The agricultural machinery manufacturers of the US become the biggest backers of the near slave-like conditions on the plantations producing hemp for the world market.

The development of railroads, of the penetration of the advanced capital, propels the hacienda to aggrandize more land from the indigenous pueblos, launching the Mexican Revolution which the Mexican bourgeoisie can barely control, and do control only by accommodating the haciendas and maintaining the conditions of below subsistence farming while promising the end of the hacienda in a constitution.

So... the point here: Who can take power in Russia? The old bourgeoisie? No. The workers? They most certainly did. Is it possible for the workers to throw a section of themselves off as their own exploiters, becoming their own bourgeoisie in effect.

The strength and the weakness of the capitalist relationship was international. So the only way that "spin off" could occur is with the massive support of that international capital in organizing the demolition of the property relation that was established in the revolution itself.. and that is exactly what happened in the 1991-1998 period.





I will resist dealing with all of the points you raise becuase this post is already in danger of getting longwinded. You are raising all sorts of ideas which lack of time prevents me from considering. There is certainly something in what you say about the relation between the Russian bourgeoisie and international capitalism. My understanding is that one of the reason why the foreign powers invaded Russia in 1918 was because of fears that the country would default on loans made to it. Lenin incidentally had a lot to say about encouraging foreign investment and, apparently, in the Stalin years there quite a bit of foreign involvement in building up the industrial infrastructure including a number of well known American, Italian and German firms. This was seemingly all hushed up during the cold war

[S.Artesian]

Then youve misunderstood. It didnt create a new social relation. The wage labour/capital relation continued. What changed was the form of the dominant class. I explained to you clearly how this new state capitalist class emerged - through the nationalisation of industry over which it exerted ultimate control and hence class ownership

No, I didn't misunderstand. You claim there's a new class created that takes power, abolishing the old class. The new class expropriates the old class's property, introduces a new property relation, and with that restores, expands, and universalizes the old class's social relation of production.

That's the central issue of contention. I don't think the relationship of workers to bureaucrats was the relation of bourgeoisie to proletariat, not that surplus-labor, surplus labor-time didn't exist in the former, but that the relationship of bourgeoisie to proletariat expresses that surplus labor-time as value and that wasn't the relation between bureaucracy and proletariat.

The mediations of value require that the members of a class, individually, personally, be able to act as the class does socially-- with capitalism that is the purchase and disposable of labor-power for money, which itself is a reflection of capital's need to aggrandize labor by and through continuous expulsion of labor from the production process. No such ability existed for the bureaucrats, and no such capability existed for the bureaucracy as a class.

So... no, I don't think the fSU was an economy organized around the accumulation of value, and I do not think that surplus-value as opposed to surplus labor-time accounts for the expansion of the fSU economy.




Yes it could only have been a capitalist revolution. Sure it was a capitalist revolution carried out by the proletariat but it was a capitalist revolution nevertheless. It did not seek to overthrow the wage labour /capital relation but to modify it for instance to address the grievances of workers under the old bourgeois system. Some Im sure did think in revolutionary socialist terms but it would be delusional to suppose that the majoritity did and without the majority wanting a socialist alternative to capitalism you cannot have it. By that I mean a real socialist alternative not the state capitalist version of "socialism" (a la Lenin) which was already supplanting the traditional marxian version


I think a capitalist revolution was impossible in Russia, since Russia was already integrated into capitalism, and that capitalism, for all the reasons I stated in my previous post, that social relation of production was incapable of overcoming its own constraints, which really were its own constraints.



It wouldnt have happened all at once. It would have been an emergent process. Reading Pirani's work on the matter Revolution in Retreat, if I recall correctly, he puts the crystallisation oif a new class at around 1921 after significant centralisation of power had occured and the composition of the party had changed . Not of course that the private capitalists had disappeared from the scene yet. Here for example is Lenin instructing the Russian wage slaves in October 1921 as follows:
Get down to business all of you! You will have capitalists beside you, including foreign capitalists, concessionaires and leaseholders. They will squeeze profits out of you amounting to hundreds per cent; they will enrich themselves, operating alongside of you. Let them, Meanwhile you will learn from them the business of running an economy, and only when you do that will you be able to build up a communist republic. (Collected Works, Vol. 33 page 72).



1.The context of this quote was the hope [futile BTW] that the major capitalist powers would end their isolation of Russia an want to take advantage of the opportunities for investment. Turns out, Trotsky was the one skeptical of this, and argued for "self-help" and with no expectations of foreign capitalist help. Stalin OTOH was as usual flogging for Lenin and cheerfully drumming for the myth of foreign investment. Never happened.

2. This may come as a surprise, but I'm not a real big fan of Lenin's views here [conditioned as they were on the expectations of foreign investment], nor on his comparisons, contrasts, and description of the post revolution economy as "state capitalist." That the state commands surplus labor-time is unquestionable. That a government of workers councils would command, organize, distribute surplus labor-time is also beyond dispute. Surplus labor time is the essential social human characteristic-- history amounts to the mediations of that labor time. The mediations are the specific class relations. The state is not a class in itself.




First of all you have to realise that Marx's labour theory of value is an abstraction. As he pointed out himself many times in the real world prices will always diverge from values and it is only by accident that they correspond. However the LTV maintains that the sum total of prices must correspond in the end to the sum total of values

In a state capitalist economy just as in a private capitalist economy values and prices will diverge but their sum totals in the end will correspond. In a classical private capitalist economy prices automatically adjust through the interplay of market forces of supply and demand; in a state capitalist economy they are in theory set by the planners (I say "in theory" becuase in reality prices often did not correspond with those that were fixed by the state authorities and there was a good deal of informal price negotiations between state enterprises)


Yes, it is an abstraction based on the commonality, the shared aspects, of the thousands, millions, myriad of concrete interactions of the exchanges-- not of object-- but between classes.

Yes value and price almost always diverge, as price functions as a distributive, apportioning mechanism-- awarding portions of the total socially produced surplus in accordance with the market determined socially necessary production. That's what price does. Price serves the law of value, the LTV. It expresses it in its totality, in its divergence from the abstract itself by apportioning profit.

That is not how price functioned in the fSU.



The monetary form of surplus value in the Soviet Uniuon was basically the profits made by state enterprises which was creamed off by the state, all proifits and loosses reverting to the state. As you may know state enterprises were obliged to keep proft and loss accounts and a raft of measures was imposed to induce and cajole them to ensure profitablity. Loss making enterprises did not go under but as sometimes happens in the West they were subsidied. Neverthless , they were penalised in a variety of ways such as via the witholding of bonuses and the downgrading of managerial status.


Yes they were; it was an accounting mechanism and an attempt to provide some sort of basis for evaluating efficiency, productivity. Yes there were penalties to bosses who didn't meet the plan. But what this "accounting principle" did not do was serve to dictate, facilitate the free movement of capital between enterprises; the movement of resources [ "value" as you would call it] from sector to sector as the deviation between price an value functions in a capitalist economy


What I am saying here is that while under state capitalism there was certainly a greater degree of elbow room as far as economic decisions were concerned. it would be utterly mistaken to assume that the planners had carte blanche in their decisionmaking. Withoout the extraction of surplus value from the state enterprises in the form of profits it would not have been possible to embark on the process of capital accumulation and industrialisation.


No, I don't think they had carte-blanche. They had to respond to need more than the accumulation of value, far more, and qualitatively distinct from the simple fact that there has to be some use-value to serve as the donkey, the mule, to carry exchange value through the capitalist economy.

And in fact, the progressive introduction of "incentives" "profit-schemes" within the economy represents moves away from what you call "state capitalism" and I call an "interrupted, and failing, transition economy," and toward a private capitalism, toward the introduction of precisely that capitalist relation of production which you say was 1) inadequate prior to 1917 2) but preserved and maximized by 1917.

This introduction is not "revisionism" or the introduction of state capitalism as the Maoists would have it, but the inherent expression of antagonisms in the fSU economy, the manifestation of real conflicts in the property form introduced by the Russian Revolution, the result of the inability of a revolution in isolation to overcome the legacy of such low levels of labor productivity, and finally [but perhaps most importantly] the pressure of world markets, of international capitalism, a pressure exerted through world market prices for imports and exports , and through the assumption of debt [i.e. Poland].




In reality despite the image that is sometimes presented of the Soviet economy being an essentially planned economy, it was far more decentralised (of necessity I would argue) than is supposed. Plans imposed by Gosplan were little more than rituallistic exercises in wishful thinking and were constantly modified to fit in with changing circumstances. Not a single plan was ever "strictly fulfilled"


I think that is essentially correct, but I don't think that was because the property relations were capitalist. I think that was because the relations were "transitional" and were decaying, as the transition to socialism required international revolution. So while elements of the bureaucracy were a "proto-class" of capitalists, those elements could not coalesce as a class until such time as they could act, individually, as the members of that class-- which is why the state property introduced by 1917 had to be destroyed, had to be collapsed.



If you seriously believe this then pray tell me how you imagine industrialisation of the Soviet economy was financed if not out of surplus value?


Think I answered that.


No your are misinformed. An awful lot of the kind of activity you are talking about went on not just in the black economy but in the legal economy as well (in some ways there was no cut and dried dividing line between them - state enterprises could and often did resort to illegal forms of commercial credit). There was huge scope for fiddling and backhanders within the legal system itself. The whole system encouraged the distortion of information. For example in the "bargaining stage" of plan setting, between state enterprises and GOSPLAN there was a constant tendency on the part of state enterprises to understate the amount of productive capacity they possessed (so as to avoid higher targets being imposed on them in any subsequent plan and thereby enabling them to more easily obtain bonuses for fulfilling their plan obligations)


Yes, OK. There was a huge amount of fiddling, lying, distortion, under-reporting, over-reporting. Absolutely. And the cause? Was the cause/ purpose for the accumulation of value, the appropriation of profit through the dispersal of "fictitious capital," through false claims on value?




I dont understand what you mean. Surely from the standpoint of a historical materialist perspctive what matters is the de facto situation . I find it extremely ironic that people ike Trotsky should resort to bourgeois jurisprudence to "prove" the non existence of a state capitalist class on the grounds that there was no legal or de jure entitlement to capital by individuals in the Soviet Union. Actually his argument was quite irrelevant anyway because it confuses the route by which an individual may acquire membership of the capitalist class with the existence of a class itself. To make this clear - in the West for example there is no de jure or legal basis for the existence of a capitalist class, the existence of such a class can only be inferred from a sociological analysis of the de facto situation on the ground. The same procedure should equally apply to the Soviet Uniuon. There too there was no legal basis for the existence of a state capitalist class but such a class can be inferred sociologically


But in the capitalist countries there is a de jure basis for [I]property relations that define that class, that define the economy. The ownership rights of the members of the class of owners is codified. And the ruling class creates its laws to preserve value. There's nothing de facto about the bourgeoisie being able to own, dispose, purchase, sell, or even abandon its property. Such actions may face some efforts at regulation. But there's nothing de facto about the existence of capital, of capitalism.


Lenin incidentally had a lot to say about encouraging foreign investment and, apparently, in the Stalin years there quite a bit of foreign involvement in building up the industrial infrastructure including a number of well known American, Italian and German firms. This was seemingly all hushed up during the cold war

First Five Year Plan involved high levels of machinery ["capital goods"] imports from the advanced countries. Lenin, as stated earlier, wished it would have happened around the same time as he moved away from his agreement with Trotsky over the need for the militarization of labor. That investment, however, did not appear.

[Thirsty Crow]

Surplus labor time is the essential social human characteristic-- history amounts to the mediations of that labor time. The mediations are the specific class relations. The state is not a class in itself.

But what descriptive term should we use when we encounter the historical phenomenon of a group of people who command social development by means of their command over surplus labour time? What are the concrete consequences for Marxist class analysis arising from the concrete historical relations of poduction in USSR?

[S.Artesian]

But what descriptive term should we use when we encounter the historical phenomenon of a group of people who command social development by means of their command over surplus labour time? What are the concrete consequences for Marxist class analysis arising from the concrete historical relations of poduction in USSR?

Good question. You want the short answer or the long answer?

Short answer: I don't know.

Bit less short answer: I don't know what to call it, but I know what it is not. It is not capitalism. The bureaucracy is not a class. The economy was not organized around the accumulation of value as value.

What are the concrete consequences? I don't know that yet either, except if the bureaucracy is a class that was formed and "optimized" capitalism for Russian conditions on the basis of a proletarian revolution, the consequences for Marxism means.. . Marx's materialist analysis of the relations of classes is pretty much meaningless and we have to start all over again.

Other consequences? Well for one, I think it's pretty important to just have a grasp on the real nature of the fSU, warts and all, and not simply launch a moral criticism that says-- "it was capitalist, state capitalist. It was tweedledee to the bourgeoisie's tweedledum." I think that tosses out some important babies and leaves the dirty bathwater.

I should say I don't buy the deformed worker state ideology, not that the fSU wasn't a deformed worker state, but it's the nature of the deformity that is critical, and that deformity includes the nationalized property-- the property form is not, as Trotsky seems to maintain, "organically" healthy, without contradiction, and free of the deformity that many would like to ascribe solely to the bureaucracy.

Again that is not to say the bureaucracy is a class, it is simply to say that the bureaucracy represents the deformity at the heart of the property form and is not an anomaly, a deformity grafted on to the form of property.

Can I get much clearer than that? Probably not. I've been trying to get more clear on this for 40 years. Again just know what it is not.