Was the Soviet Union really 'state capitalist'?

[Unclebananahead]

Should the FSU have really been called 'Soviet Inc.' or 'Soviet LLC.'?

Did the ruling strata truly constitute a new capitalist class? Or were they instead a degenerative sect of autocrats deriving privilege from presiding over a planned socialistic economy? Or were they something else entirely?

My own answer to the question is the second one (degenerative autocrats). If they were truly capitalists, then why were the imperialists so threatened by them? The way things were done, the way the economy was run, must have different enough to pose a threat of 'being an example of a successful alternative.' And I state here that I regard it successful in having survived (for as long as it did anyhow) in spite of considerable adversity, and Stalin's brutal, paranoid autocracy and the repressive political culture he established.

But whether the Soviet Union was perfect or not is not the question. Rather the question is whether or not it was practicing capitalism, or something different. Please explain why or why not.

[ComradeOm]

I don't like the term 'state capitalist' for three reasons:

1) A simple wariness of calling a society in which there were no capitalists 'capitalist'. Whatever the position of the bureaucrats, it was not analogous to that of capitalists 'normal' in bourgeois societies


2) The phrase is used too loosely and inaccurately. The NEP was state capitalism, Nazi Germany was state capitalist and the war economies of the West were state capitalist. These were all market economies in which the state played a major directing role. This was the original meaning of the phrase and one that does not fit the Stalinist economy


3) Following on from the above, it seems to be overly narrowminded and lazy to pigeon-hole the USSR as capitalist, or some variant thereof, as if the only alternative is socialism. The Soviet Union was, IMO, something new and something that does not easily fit pre-Stalin definitions or categories

So yeah, I'd go for "something else entirely". But that's just my opinion and not something for which there is a right/wrong answer


If they were truly capitalists, then why were the imperialists so threatened by them?Why did the "imperialists" war with Hitler? Imperialists, almost by definition, are driven into conflict and competition with both themselves and others

[Gustav HK]

Under Khruschev and Brezhnjev state capitalism was built.

The managers of the individual enterprise got a lot more power, and they could keep a big part of the profits.
The enterprises began to buy and sell the means of production to and from each other, and instead of focusing on the profit of the whole country, the revisionists began to focus on the profit of the individual enterprise.

http://www.oneparty.co.uk/html/book/ussrmenu.html

[Jose Gracchus]

No. The mature USSR was a class society of a new type that was not typified by either Marx-Engels and the First International radicals, or the politics of the Second International.

The Soviet ruling class encrusted during the 1920s, and by the 1930s the formation was largely complete. The Soviet state from 1918-1923 was a society in transition where some revolutionary processes and forces were still operative, the class dynamics were still fluid, and the increasingly dictatorial strata, though reimposing the relations of alienated labor, had not yet formed a ruling class.

One of the best works on this process I'd recommend would be Simon Pirani's The Russian Revolution in Retreat, 1920-24: Soviet workers and the new communist elite.

[Marxach-Léinínach]

"State capitalism" is how I'd describe Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy. For all the many, many faults of the USSR from Khrushchov onwards, I don't think it quite merits the "social-fascist" characterisation that Mao and Hoxha gave it. The way I see it, it was socialist under Lenin and Stalin (and Khrushchov but he spent his whole reign doing his best to undermine it though) but from the Kosygin reforms onward it was basically just a radical social democracy.

[Dimentio]

Should the FSU have really been called 'Soviet Inc.' or 'Soviet LLC.'?

Did the ruling strata truly constitute a new capitalist class? Or were they instead a degenerative sect of autocrats deriving privilege from presiding over a planned socialistic economy? Or were they something else entirely?

My own answer to the question is the second one (degenerative autocrats). If they were truly capitalists, then why were the imperialists so threatened by them? The way things were done, the way the economy was run, must have different enough to pose a threat of 'being an example of a successful alternative.' And I state here that I regard it successful in having survived (for as long as it did anyhow) in spite of considerable adversity, and Stalin's brutal, paranoid autocracy and the repressive political culture he established.

But whether the Soviet Union was perfect or not is not the question. Rather the question is whether or not it was practicing capitalism, or something different. Please explain why or why not.

Actually, different groups of imperialists have been threatened by one another for ages. WWI and WWII were both mainly fought between capitalist states.

[Hit The North]

"A society of a new type" - but what type? From the vantage point of today, it would be accurate to describe the fSU as a transitional form of society, given it is now defunct and has been replaced by "normal" bourgeois capitalism. It seems obvious that the fSU, in its seventy years of existence, took up the historical mission of the bourgeoisie in developing and modernising the forces of production, the bureaucracy pushing through an industrial revolution that transformed a largely agricultural economy and transformed millions of peasants into millions of proletarians, ripe for exploitation. This went so far until the contradictions - the chief one being an inability to develop further without integrating into the global economy - created the conditions whereby the bureaucracy could proceed no further without transforming state property into private property and opening up the SU to the laws of world capitalism.

[robbo203]

Should the FSU have really been called 'Soviet Inc.' or 'Soviet LLC.'?

Did the ruling strata truly constitute a new capitalist class? Or were they instead a degenerative sect of autocrats deriving privilege from presiding over a planned socialistic economy? Or were they something else entirely?

My own answer to the question is the second one (degenerative autocrats). If they were truly capitalists, then why were the imperialists so threatened by them? The way things were done, the way the economy was run, must have different enough to pose a threat of 'being an example of a successful alternative.' And I state here that I regard it successful in having survived (for as long as it did anyhow) in spite of considerable adversity, and Stalin's brutal, paranoid autocracy and the repressive political culture he established.

But whether the Soviet Union was perfect or not is not the question. Rather the question is whether or not it was practicing capitalism, or something different. Please explain why or why not.


The ruling state-party elite in the Soviet union was indeed a capitalist class though the form in which it asserted its class ownership over the means of production was certainly different from conventional capitalism (based on de jure legal entitlement). Class ownership in this instance was exercised in a de facto sense rather than a de jure sense via the partystate elite's control of the state machine which made all the important decisions in the economy concerning the distribution of the social product and so on. In fact, the idea of ownership is inspearable from the idea of ultimate control and this is precisely what the party-state elite exercised - ultimate control over, and therefore ownership of, the means of production

This class ownership took a collective form rather than an individual form and bears comnparison with the position of the Catholic Church in feudal society. The Chruch was a major landowner throughout Europe and many monastries were not only places of learning but hives of industry as well., Who owned the immense wealth of the Church? Well, individual clerics did not have legal entitlement and, needless to say, the question of inheirtance didnt arise given the (presumed) operation of the vow of chastity. Yet somebody owned all this wealth and it certainly wasnt the lay congregations. It was in fact the Church hierarchy who effectively owned it.

In the Soviet Union the same kind of situation applied . Some among the nomenklatura became extreme wealthy in their own right. Reg Bishop a supporter of the regime wrote a book in the 1940s (when Stalin was in power ) called Soviet Millionaires. For Bishop it was a matter of pride that the Soviet Union could boast of having such individuals

That the the basis of the Soviet economy was a capitalist one can hardly be denied. Its core characteristic was generalised wage labour and as every marxist knows "capital presupposes wage-labour and wage-labour presupposes capital. They mutually condition one another; they mutually bring each other into existence". (K Marx, Wage Labour and Capital)

The fact that oy is the state that primarily oversees and regulates the wage labour-capital relation is immaterial. If I might quote Engels here

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. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution (Socialism : Utopian and Scientific)

The last refuge of those who would seek to deny the plain fact that the Soviet Union was a state capitalist economy is in the assertion that there were no private entrepeneurial capitalists in the Soviet Union. But, as we have seen, this does not at all mean that there was a not a capitalist class as such however different its form may have been to what prevailed in the West

[Comrade_Stalin]

The ruling state-party elite in the Soviet union was indeed a capitalist class though the form in which it asserted its class ownership over the means of production was certainly different from conventional capitalism (based on de jure legal entitlement). Class ownership in this instance was exercised in a de facto sense rather than a de jure sense via the partystate elite's control of the state machine which made all the important decisions in the economy concerning the distribution of the social product and so on. In fact, the idea of ownership is inspearable from the idea of ultimate control and this is precisely what the party-state elite exercised - ultimate control over, and therefore ownership of, the means of production.

Wow, I don’t know how we will counter a argument so full of holes that we should be shooting at air. Your entire point is to say that the only good system is a leaderless one. This makes your entire debate an Ayn Rand fan one. Where collective and individual are one in the same, and State ownership is the same as private ownership, which is the same one that Ayn Rand makes.



This class ownership took a collective form rather than an individual form and bears comnparison with the position of the Catholic Church in feudal society. The Chruch was a major landowner throughout Europe and many monastries were not only places of learning but hives of industry as well., Who owned the immense wealth of the Church? Well, individual clerics did not have legal entitlement and, needless to say, the question of inheirtance didnt arise given the (presumed) operation of the vow of chastity. Yet somebody owned all this wealth and it certainly wasnt the lay congregations. It was in fact the Church hierarchy who effectively owned it.

The Catholic Church WAS not a state, and only has as much power as the United Nations does today. This is to say that Capitalist are doing the right things, and we communist are doing the wrong things. But why we are on the topic let talk about what the Catholic Church was during feudal society. It not a state as it does not have the monopoly of violence, or it would not need to call on the kings of Europe for support during the Crusades, or to kill it enemy. No it was what we call today a PMC , Private Military Company. Not all PMC are mercenary, some provided support in one form or another. In this case controlling the masses from taking the land around them, as there are too few knights to take them all on.




In the Soviet Union the same kind of situation applied . Some among the nomenklatura became extreme wealthy in their own right. Reg Bishop a supporter of the regime wrote a book in the 1940s (when Stalin was in power ) called Soviet Millionaires. For Bishop it was a matter of pride that the Soviet Union could boast of having such individuals

That the the basis of the Soviet economy was a capitalist one can hardly be denied. Its core characteristic was generalised wage labour and as every marxist knows "capital presupposes wage-labour and wage-labour presupposes capital. They mutually condition one another; they mutually bring each other into existence". (K Marx, Wage Labour and Capital)

The fact that oy is the state that primarily oversees and regulates the wage labour-capital relation is immaterial. If I might quote Engels here

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. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution (Socialism : Utopian and Scientific)
The last refuge of those who would seek to deny the plain fact that the Soviet Union was a state capitalist economy is in the assertion that there were no private entrepeneurial capitalists in the Soviet Union. But, as we have seen, this does not at all mean that there was a not a capitalist class as such however different its form may have been to what prevailed in the West

This comes to the final point in this were you try to use Engels and Marx to make yourself sound right. If you take the time out to read Marx and Engels they cannot stop talking about this new type of state born from the old one when it nationalizes the means of production. They call this new state the “administration of things”. They also do not talk about the differences in pay, but in how they are paid. The capitals are paid only for owning thing, they do not have to do any work to get paid, only prove that they own something. The workers on the other hand most give up time in order to be paid.

[RedTrackWorker]

If they were truly capitalists, then why were the imperialists so threatened by them?

What is it about, say, the relationship between the U.S., Britain, and Russia during and right after WW2 that makes you think they were "so threatened"? Is it Churchill talking about how Stalin is nothing like Trotsky and he can work with Stalin? Is it the Yalta conference, where they divide the world up amongst themselves? With Stalin deciding from on high the lives of not just the USSR put the conquered nations?
The antagonism is that of imperialist competitors.
And of course I'll plug, for those who do not know, the League's book-length analysis of Stalinism, available online to read:
The Life and Death of Stalinism (http://www.lrp-cofi.org/book/index.html).

[IronEastBloc]

What is it about, say, the relationship between the U.S., Britain, and Russia during and right after WW2 that makes you think they were "so threatened"? Is it Churchill talking about how Stalin is nothing like Trotsky and he can work with Stalin? Is it the Yalta conference, where they divide the world up amongst themselves? With Stalin deciding from on high the lives of not just the USSR put the conquered nations?
The antagonism is that of imperialist competitors.
And of course I'll plug, for those who do not know, the League's book-length analysis of Stalinism, available online to read:
The Life and Death of Stalinism (http://www.lrp-cofi.org/book/index.html).

The USSR wasn't an empire, and that's where your ignorant analysis lies; Yalta did create empire amongst the British and Americans, yes, but places like Poland and Romania weren't ruled from Moscow by Russians of whom extracted the resources of those locations; no, in fact, the politicians in Moscow gave much to those regions that fell into the USSR, and many of these places were fully functioning republics, hence why many of them lasted even after the USSR fell (not for long, maybe, but last they did nonetheless).

you're just trying to compare western imperialism and it's intentions to that of Stalin and the USSR; nice try but I see through your bullshit. If I remember, Poland, Romania, East Germany, North Korea, etc. were rebuilt after the war with Soviet aid and materials. capitalist imperialist powers like Britain and the US left the Phillippines, India, Indonesia, Africa, etc. high and dry and impoverished after they lost those colonies. There's a reason why the Marshall Plan only rebuilt Europe and Japan--they didn't want to waste any war dollars on those "coloreds" of the third world.

[robbo203]

Wow, I don’t know how we will counter a argument so full of holes that we should be shooting at air. Your entire point is to say that the only good system is a leaderless one. This makes your entire debate an Ayn Rand fan one. Where collective and individual are one in the same, and State ownership is the same as private ownership, which is the same one that Ayn Rand makes.

.

Really? Do tell us! Where precisely did Ayn Rand make this curious point? References please.
I dont actually say state ownership is the same as private ownership. I actually said they are different forms of class ownership. Not a very careful reader are you?



The Catholic Church WAS not a state, and only has as much power as the United Nations does today. This is to say that Capitalist are doing the right things, and we communist are doing the wrong things. But why we are on the topic let talk about what the Catholic Church was during feudal society. It not a state as it does not have the monopoly of violence, or it would not need to call on the kings of Europe for support during the Crusades, or to kill it enemy. No it was what we call today a PMC , Private Military Company. Not all PMC are mercenary, some provided support in one form or another. In this case controlling the masses from taking the land around them, as there are too few knights to take them all on.

.


Whether or not the Catholic Church was a de facto state is not germane to the subject which is about the nature of ownership. Perhaps you might care to directly address the points I made in my previous post rather than meandering aimlessly past them



This comes to the final point in this were you try to use Engels and Marx to make yourself sound right. If you take the time out to read Marx and Engels they cannot stop talking about this new type of state born from the old one when it nationalizes the means of production. They call this new state the “administration of things”. They also do not talk about the differences in pay, but in how they are paid. The capitals are paid only for owning thing, they do not have to do any work to get paid, only prove that they own something. The workers on the other hand most give up time in order to be paid.

Communism is a stateless society. You are confusing the transitional period that M & E advocated with communism. They certainly did not identity state ownership with socialism or communism and the quote I posted from Engels quite obviously demonstrates that on the contrary state ownerships is linked with capitalism with the state being the "national capitalist"

[Burn A Flag]

Well, I think degenerate worker's state is an appropriate term for the USSR under Stalin. I think post Stalin was State Capitalist though.

[RedTrackWorker]

The USSR wasn't an empire, and that's where your ignorant analysis lies; Yalta did create empire amongst the British and Americans, yes, but places like Poland and Romania weren't ruled from Moscow by Russians of whom extracted the resources of those locations; no, in fact, the politicians in Moscow gave much to those regions that fell into the USSR, and many of these places were fully functioning republics, hence why many of them lasted even after the USSR fell (not for long, maybe, but last they did nonetheless).

you're just trying to compare western imperialism and it's intentions to that of Stalin and the USSR; nice try but I see through your bullshit. If I remember, Poland, Romania, East Germany, North Korea, etc. were rebuilt after the war with Soviet aid and materials. capitalist imperialist powers like Britain and the US left the Phillippines, India, Indonesia, Africa, etc. high and dry and impoverished after they lost those colonies. There's a reason why the Marshall Plan only rebuilt Europe and Japan--they didn't want to waste any war dollars on those "coloreds" of the third world.

If anyone is interested, the book has a whole section refuting this:
Chapter 6 (http://www.lrp-cofi.org/book/chapter6_postwarworld.pdf), see section 3, "Stalinist Imperilaism." Despite IronEastBloc's assertions, one can see the USSR stripped Eastern Europe and part of China of their factories, dismantling them and shipping them back home. They had unequal trade relationships with the "satellites." They moved populations around to weaken resistance to Russian-domination (how terrible to claim this as socialism!).
When Russia was challenged by working-class rebellion at various times, the U.S., also fearing a working-class challenge to Stalinism, decreased their pressure on Russia. For instance, in response to workers' struggle in Poland in 1976, Carter sent aid to the Polish regime and his ambassador to the UN said:

My feeling is that as the Russians begin to evolve, they’re going to have more problems rather than less. The fact that we are helping them deal with these few dissenters right now will prepare them down the road to deal with a massive generation of dissent which is probably not ten years off in the Soviet Union..
So IronEastBloc, since I am ignorant and full of bullshit, tell me why Carter helped Stalinist Poland contain working-class rebellion and dissent, but that Carter and Stalinism represent two antagonistic social systems?

[Unclebananahead]

Don't 'state capitalism' & 'degenerated worker's state' as concepts have actual substantive differences? Or is it just an argument over semantics? Perhaps we could get these terms defined a little more clearly in this thread, and proceed from there.

[Comrade_Stalin]

Don't 'state capitalism' & 'degenerated worker's state' as concepts have actual substantive differences? Or is it just an argument over semantics? Perhaps we could get these terms defined a little more clearly in this thread, and proceed from there.

There two terms to mean the samething. There is no differences between them. They have the same use to say that the USSR is not communist or capitalist.

[Comrade_Stalin]

Really? Do tell us! Where precisely did Ayn Rand make this curious point? References please.
I dont actually say state ownership is the same as private ownership. I actually said they are different forms of class ownership. Not a very careful reader are you?"




That fraud collapsed in the 1940’s, in the aftermath of World War II. It is too obvious, too easily demonstrable that fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory—that both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state—that both are socialistic, in theory, in practice, and in the explicit statements of their leaders—that under both systems, the poor are enslaved and the rich are expropriated in favor of a ruling clique—that fascism is not the product of the political “right,” but of the “left”—that the basic issue is not “rich versus poor,” but man versus the state, or: individual rights versus totalitarian government—which means: capitalism versus socialism.
http://cultureofreason.org/style/img/capitalismtheunknownideal.jpg (http://www.aynrandbookstore.com/prodinfo.asp?number=AR11B) “‘Extremism,’ or The Art of Smearing,”
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (http://www.aynrandbookstore.com/prodinfo.asp?number=AR11B), 180.




Are you sure you can read your own word? Above is the point that main Ayn Rand make, is to prove to us, that the only reason we use nationalization, is to privatization later, for those in power.

The same point you made here when you said "The ruling state-party elite in the Soviet union was indeed a capitalist class " meaning that the whole point of Stalin's nationalization was to privatize it later for members of the party.



Whether or not the Catholic Church was a de facto state is not germane to the subject which is about the nature of ownership. Perhaps you might care to directly address the points I made in my previous post rather than meandering aimlessly past them



No it does matter. What you are trying to do again is say that private ownership is the same as public ownership. You are first tring to say that the Catholic Church was a state or public power. Then you point to the fact that this public power act like any other private form of ownership. First off, the Catholic Church is a PMC, that help keep private ownership alive. Why do they do this, will it because they are one of them. The reason WHY the workers of the Catholic Church see no profit, is not because it is a State, but because it is private ownership, not by one person, but a group of people.




Communism is a stateless society. You are confusing the transitional period that M & E advocated with communism. They certainly did not identity state ownership with socialism or communism and the quote I posted from Engels quite obviously demonstrates that on the contrary state ownerships is linked with capitalism with the state being the "national capitalist"

The state they use is not the common "monopoly of violence" we use today, but the defense system that keeps private ownership alive. It fact they can't stop talking about taking over these defense systems and using them against private ownership, which is your "transitional period". After that point they point to a new defense system, to protect the “administration of things”. Ther not very clear in my mind on what this new defense system will look like, only that it will have "armed men".

[Devrim]

Don't 'state capitalism' & 'degenerated worker's state' as concepts have actual substantive differences? Or is it just an argument over semantics? Perhaps we could get these terms defined a little more clearly in this thread, and proceed from there.


There two terms to mean the samething. There is no differences between them. They have the same use to say that the USSR is not communist or capitalist.

Perhaps one of the most important differences on a practical political level related to the idea of 'defence of the Soviet Union'. If you believed that the USSR was a 'workers' state', however degenerated after 1941 you supported the allies in WWII, in the name of the defence of the workers state. If you believed that it was (state) capitalist, then the Second World War was an inter-imperialist conflict which workers had no interest in supporting either side in.

The same conflict came up in 1953 in Trotskyism with the Korean War. Seeing the USSr and its satellites as 'state capitalist', the group around Tony Cliff, later the UK SWP refused to take a side in the war. The official CPS and the rest of Trotskyism of course backed the North.

Devrim

[Die Neue Zeit]

This class ownership took a collective form rather than an individual form and bears comnparison with the position of the Catholic Church in feudal society. The Chruch was a major landowner throughout Europe and many monastries were not only places of learning but hives of industry as well., Who owned the immense wealth of the Church? Well, individual clerics did not have legal entitlement and, needless to say, the question of inheirtance didnt arise given the (presumed) operation of the vow of chastity. Yet somebody owned all this wealth and it certainly wasnt the lay congregations. It was in fact the Church hierarchy who effectively owned it.

Interesting that you bring up some comparison to the RCC, which then implies comparing the RCC's ownership to the ownership of the feudal nobilities.


The Catholic Church WAS not a state, and only has as much power as the United Nations does today. This is to say that Capitalist are doing the right things, and we communist are doing the wrong things. But why we are on the topic let talk about what the Catholic Church was during feudal society. It not a state as it does not have the monopoly of violence, or it would not need to call on the kings of Europe for support during the Crusades, or to kill it enemy. No it was what we call today a PMC , Private Military Company. Not all PMC are mercenary, some provided support in one form or another. In this case controlling the masses from taking the land around them, as there are too few knights to take them all on.

I would probably put the Catholic Church of the period somewhere in between a multinational corporation and the Soviet bureaucracy. Its ownership spanned multiple feudal states, but there was no individual ownership (not even "shareholders" legally above the Vatican bureaucracy).

[syndicat]

the soviet union was clearly a class system. the top dominating class, the ruliing class, was made up of generals, industry managers, elite planners at Gosplan, political apparatchiks. they had incomes maybe 4 times that of the average worker. the working class was excluded from the decision-making process. it was a system of class domination and exploitation.

but I don't think it was capitalist. it was not a system based on private accumulation of wealth by individual capital owners.

the bureaucratic class also exists in advanced capitalism but as a subordinate class. their class position is based on relative monopoliztion of decision-making authority and key kinds of expertise in management of industries and the society. within capitalism this class is subordinate to the plutocratic elite but in the USSR a class of this sort was the top class.

the revolution from above in late '80s to early '90s was a move by the Russian bureaucratic class to dump the prevaling system and move to an overtly capitalist system, with privatization of property...often illegally. the working class got screwed in this process because the old bureaucratic ruling class had a kind of deal with the working class whereby the latter didn't have to work too hard and got certain subsidized commodities.

[RedTrackWorker]

the soviet union was clearly a class system. the top dominating class, the ruliing class, was made up of generals, industry managers, elite planners at Gosplan, political apparatchiks. they had incomes maybe 4 times that of the average worker. the working class was excluded from the decision-making process. it was a system of class domination and exploitation.

but I don't think it was capitalist. it was not a system based on private accumulation of wealth by individual capital owners.

the bureaucratic class also exists in advanced capitalism but as a subordinate class. their class position is based on relative monopoliztion of decision-making authority and key kinds of expertise in management of industries and the society. within capitalism this class is subordinate to the plutocratic elite but in the USSR a class of this sort was the top class.

the revolution from above in late '80s to early '90s was a move by the Russian bureaucratic class to dump the prevaling system and move to an overtly capitalist system, with privatization of property...often illegally. the working class got screwed in this process because the old bureaucratic ruling class had a kind of deal with the working class whereby the latter didn't have to work too hard and got certain subsidized commodities.

This is partly an indirect response to Devrim as well. Someone asked what's the importance of the distinction between Stalinist systems as state capitalist or as deformed workers' state or as a new/different kind of oppressive class society (one example above is syndicat's).
I argued above for a particular theory, which the book calls "statified capitalism" to distinguish it from the various "state" capitalist theories--but of course a label doesn't really distinguish something, it's the content.
Devrim pointed out that the Cliffites used their theory of state capitalism to take no sides in defending Korea from U.S. attack. They also, in response to working-class rebellions against Stalinist systems like in Hungary, emphasized pretty much exclusively democratic demands, rather than demands pointing toward the smashing of the state.
So while the LRP's theoretical analysis of Stalinism may appear theoretically closer to the state capitalists, politically it appears closer to syndicat's view of the Stalinist system: workers' revolution. I have serious theoretical and political differences with the WSA, and specifically, I think their "three-class" theory (that managers are a "class") is well, not even wrong as they say, but on the question of the workers' political attitude toward Stalinist systems, I respect that they stand, at least as I understand it, for the exploited in those systems rising up to smash the state and look with disgust on claimants to the mantle of Marxism that called for the state to smash the workers (the SL tradition with Poland, most of the Stalinists and Maoists with one thing or another).

[robbo203]

Are you sure you can read your own word? Above is the point that main Ayn Rand make, is to prove to us, that the only reason we use nationalization, is to privatization later, for those in power.

The same point you made here when you said "The ruling state-party elite in the Soviet union was indeed a capitalist class " meaning that the whole point of Stalin's nationalization was to privatize it later for members of the party.".

Im sorry but you've lost me completely here. I dont follow your reasoning at all. Firstly. Ayn Rand isnt making the point you are claiming she is making - that private and state ownership are the same thing. Nor was it ever likely that she would make such a point being a fervant advocate of lasseiz Faire capiitalism and property rights. Think about it - why would she want to say capitalist private ownership is the same thing as state ownership?. What she was actually doing was comparing fascism to "communism" claiming that both are totalitarian. collectivist forms of government. Youve completely missed the point in other words

Secondly I do not hold the view that the ruling state-party elite in the Soviet union was a capitalist class because "Stalin's nationalization was to privatize it later for members of the party". Where did you get such a bizarre idea from? The party state elite is a capitalist class because it exerts de facto ownership of the means of production via its political control of the state. Ownership and ultimate control are inseparable




No it does matter. What you are trying to do again is say that private ownership is the same as public ownership. You are first tring to say that the Catholic Church was a state or public power. Then you point to the fact that this public power act like any other private form of ownership. First off, the Catholic Church is a PMC, that help keep private ownership alive. Why do they do this, will it because they are one of them. The reason WHY the workers of the Catholic Church see no profit, is not because it is a State, but because it is private ownership, not by one person, but a group of people.


Once again you are putting words in my mouth which are not mine.

I did not say private and state ownership are precisely the same thing. De jure legal ownership of capital by individuals is obviously different from the kind of state ownership that existed in the Soviet Union. My point, however, was that they are both different forms of ownership through which class monopoly of the means of production can be asserted

And I did not say the Catholic Church is a state. My argument does not depend on the legal status of the church. The point I was making was that Church property was owned by somebody or some persons. Who? Clearly not the lay congregations. It was actually owned by the Church hierarchy who had no legal entitlement to it as individual clerics but who neverthless as a group exert ultimate control and hence ownership of this property. Just like the Soviet capitalist class did

[Dave B]

When it comes to the so called ‘three class theory’, as it is ‘put’ ie ‘private’ owners of capital, non owners of capital or non ‘private’ owners of capital, ie managers that actually exploit workers (or ‘functioning capitalists’), and workers of course.

Then Karl accepted this into his theory in volume III, calling non ‘private’ owners of capital ie managers, as non ‘private’ owners of capital; profiteers of enterprise.


However he regarded them as a subset of the capitalist class.

As it was then; a factory was often run by a capitalist who was at least a part owner of the capital that he worked with.


So he might own half the factory the rest being owned by money capitalist, or effectively the same thing, a collective of joint stockholders or investors.

Things are now generally different, as they predicted to some extent, and it is rare to have any capitalist enterprise that is operated by someone who owns a significant part of it.

Good exceptions are still easy to find ie Gates of Microsoft etc, it doesn’t matter to the general argument.

Your average CEO today, and ‘functioning capitalist’, however is not a principle private owner of the capital that they work with.

And unlike in Karl’s day there is a clearer separation, as regards discrete human individuals, between the private owners of capital (the shareholders and money capitalists) and the capitalist profiteers of enterprise (‘functioning capitalists’ or the ‘personification of capital’) who actually run the show.


Just to make the point clear, in case it isn’t already, according to Karl’s theory ‘functioning capitalists’ or the ‘personification of capital’ does not have to find itself embodied within the private owners of capital.

Or, you can be a capitalist ie functioning capitalists’ or the ‘personification of capital’ and a member of the capitalist class, ie a Bolshevik, without privately owning capital.

Or just because you are not a ‘private’ owner of capital does not mean, according to Karl, you are not a member of the capitalist class.

(part of the function of the ‘managerial’ class or what they do, can be necessary and useful labour and there are obviously gradations of grey areas as you move down or up the hierarchy).

There are potential areas of conflict between the profiteers of enterprise and the money capitalist & investors etc and undoubtedly the one has the ambition to be the other and fusion still occurs.

Equally, one often tempted to shaft the other ie with the Enron ‘scandal’ etc despite the lures to identify the interests of the ‘profiteers of enterprise’ with the money capitalists with share purchase options etc.

[syndicat]

(part of the function of the ‘managerial’ class or what they do, can be necessary and useful labour and there are obviously gradations of grey areas as you move down or up the hierarchy).



right here we see one of the destructive consequences of the "state capitalism" view: they see bosses as "necessary and useful." and this makes it quite likely that in their conceptions of "socialism" there would still be subordination of workers to these bosses. the bureaucratic class in late capitalism is for the most part the bosses workers deal with day to day.

but this class performs to a large extent a police function...surveillance, discipline. a large part of its activity is NOT "socially necessary" and would not exist in an authentically worker-managed, socialized economic arrangement. those activities that are socially useful can also be combined with the physical doing of the work, so that they would no longer be concentrated into a separate control class, that is, class whose function is control of labor.

as to CEOs, they may not be the biggest owners of the firm's capital or major owners, but they do usually have a significant financial stake. this is why I regard them as part of the captialist class.

the bureaucratic class, on the other hand, includes middle management, and various kinds of experts who directly advise management and have key kinds of knowledge and information that make them critical to, and an influence over, day to day operations of the firm. for example management consultants who are industrial engineers, that is, they design jobs and workflows...always with regard to the priorities of the managers and owners. the priorities of managers and owners in decisions related to concrete control of workers are not identical. that's because managers are concerned about their power, and they may favor methods of tight control that lead to resistance, resentment, and undermine productivity, and thus undermine profits. there have been numerous experiments in forms of worker participation or job enrichment that had a positive payoff for the company by increasing productivity. but they never last...because the managers hate these schemes.

capital presupposes separation into competing capitals. capital is the power to go out into markets for factors of production and obtain everything you need to run a business and produce and sell commodities. and the right and power to then "own" the revenue stream (the product of the labor of the workforce) and thus scarf up a profit from that....thus fulfilling Marx's M-C-M' cycle. a state centralist system where prices are set in advance of markets, and often subsidized for political reasons (e.g. to obtain a more pliant workforce), you don't really have capital in the sense analyzed by Marx.

"state capitalism" advocates want to paper over the significant differences in the mode of production in USSR versus capitalism because they see, correctly, that the system in the old USSR was a system of class domination and exploitation.


I have serious theoretical and political differences with the WSA, and specifically, I think their "three-class" theory (that managers are a "class") is well, not even wrong as they say, but on the question of the workers' political attitude toward Stalinist systems, I respect that they stand, at least as I understand it, for the exploited in those systems rising up to smash the state and look with disgust on claimants to the mantle of Marxism that called for the state to smash the workers (the SL tradition with Poland, most of the Stalinists and Maoists with one thing or another).

yes, thank you.

[graymouser]

I think that neither the "state capitalist" nor the "degenerate workers state" theory quite holds up, and that we need a "third class" theory, although not exactly the one syndicat is putting forward.

Specifically, the Soviet bureaucracy was not created from a homogeneous social class in pre-revolutionary Russia but an amalgam that existed only because of the conditions of the revolution and the civil war. This group came to power as an unstable group, and required a tremendous amount of violence to consolidate itself as a ruling class. It was able to do so only because of the relative power vacuum - the only resistance as such existed in the ranks of the NEPmen, the kulaks and the Bolshevik Party itself. Until the post-revolution and post-civil war period united them, this bureaucracy was not a class with common objectives or outlook. Managers and bureaucrats in modern society do not have a common goal or any continuity of interest, and neither did their counterparts in Russia until attempts at state planning united them.

The best way to describe this social system is probably "bureaucratic collectivism," a term which was used to describe a number of things in the 20th century. Unfortunately most of the theorizing of the bureaucratic collectivist faction in the 1940s and 1950s (when they were most prolific) tended to focus on the idea that all societies were headed in similar directions, including "democratic" capitalism. This of course did not pan out, and most theorists of bureaucratic collectivism shifted rightward, away from the third campist position that they had held in the earlier period. A handful stuck to it, most notably Hal Draper, and tried to leave a theoretical legacy behind them.

Actual theory of what this class was is thin at best, and I think attempting as syndicat does to compare it to modern management is erroneous. Managers today have more in common with the classical professionals - doctors, lawyers and so on - than with government bureaucrats and so on. The Stalinist bureaucrats had no organization whatsoever before the revolution, but one was crafted for them by Stalin - out of the wreckage of the Communist Party. What you had was a socially disparate group who suddenly had collective interests and similar relations to the means of production. In a situation where the working class is not physically liquidated as a class, the rise of such a grouping is unlikely, although not impossible.

As for the theory of the degenerated workers' state, Trotsky's analysis took a thin concept further than it could really go. The characterization of the USSR as a workers' state relies precisely on the fact of it being governed by a workers' government; once the Soviet government ceased to be such, it stopped being what we could call a workers' state. Moreover, Trotsky's theory was fundamentally a theory of instability, that is, of a ball resting atop a pyramid, falling downward at the least shock; when time took its toll and it turned out that the ball had crushed the pyramid, it disproved Trotsky's theory.

Anyway, the above is not anybody's dogma but simply an attempt to begin to characterize what happened. I don't consider it a key question for future revolutions, as the main stresses that caused the degeneration - the small size of the working class, the degree of its physical destruction, the exigencies of the civil war - are not likely to be present in even vaguely similar ways.

[Dave B]

right here we see one of the destructive consequences of the "state capitalism" view: they see bosses as "necessary and useful." and this makes it quite likely that in their conceptions of "socialism" there would still be subordination of workers to these bosses. the bureaucratic class in late capitalism is for the most part the bosses workers deal with day to day.



Well I never said that; I put forward the theory that part of what some ‘bosses’ or ‘managers’ do can be necessary and useful. And due to the dialectical nature of the problem, in an unusual correct use of the term ie that these ‘bosses’ or ‘managers’ can be both workers and capitalists at the same time.


And the tendency here to define ‘bosses’ or ‘managers’ in some kind of sociological categorory as opposed to an economic one or conflating the two I place those terms in inverted comma’s to denote the subjectivity of those terms.

Actually historically things were a little bit different. As a result of Ricardian and Proudhon theory as well as later Marxist, the capitalist theorists responded by claiming that profits were actually wages of supervision or economically derived from that or whatever.


That was a bit more of a tenable argument at the beginning of the 1800’s as many capitalist directly ran their own factories and were not remote from them and even could survey the capital that they owned.


The ‘Socialist’ theorists just saw that as the fig leaf that it was. However they were not so bigoted and dogmatic as to think that wages of supervision did not exist at all.


And used practical examples of the useful part labour that managers did perform.


And also how with the development of capitalist stock companies the former useful function of the capitalist class could be turned in to unadulterated wage labour and that function proletarianised.

And the actual value of the wages of supervision became more palpable and thus much lower that the gross profit.


(And in the following Karl appears to be separating out the ‘commercial and industrial manager’ from the profit of enterprise manager.)

EG

Capital Vol. III Part V
Division of Profit into Interest and Profit of Enterprise. Interest-Bearing Capital Chapter 23. Interest and Profit of Enterprise






After every crisis there are enough ex-manufacturers in the English factory districts who will supervise, for low wages, what were formerly their own factories in the capacity of managers of the new owners, who are frequently their creditors.5. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=1960218#r5)

In a case known to me, following the crisis of 1868, a bankrupt manufacturer became the paid wage-labourer of his own former labourers. The factory was operated after the bankruptcy of its owner by a labourers' co-operative, and its former owner was employed as manager. — F. E


The wages of management both for the commercial and industrial manager are completely isolated from the profits of enterprise in the co-operative factories of labourers, as well as in capitalist stock companies.

The separation of wages of management from profits of enterprise, purely accidental at other times, is here constant. In a co-operative factory the antagonistic nature of the labour of supervision disappears, because the manager is paid by the labourers instead of representing capital counterposed to them.

Stock companies in general — developed with the credit system — have an increasing tendency to separate this work of management as a function from the ownership of capital, be it self-owned or borrowed.
Just as the development of bourgeois society witnessed a separation of the functions of judges and administrators from land-ownership, whose attributes they were in feudal times.

But since, on the one hand, the mere owner of capital, the money-capitalist, has to face the functioning capitalist, while money-capital itself assumes a social character with the advance of credit, being concentrated in banks and loaned out by them instead of its original owners, and since, on the other hand, the mere manager who has no title whatever to the capital, whether through borrowing it or otherwise, performs all the real functions pertaining to the functioning capitalist as such, only the functionary remains and the capitalist disappears as superfluous from the production process……………..

With the development of co-operation on the part of the labourers, and of stock enterprises on the part of the bourgeoisie, even the last pretext for the confusion of profit of enterprise and wages of management was removed, and profit appeared also in practice as it undeniably appeared in theory, as mere surplus-value, a value for which no equivalent was paid, as realised unpaid labour.

It was then seen that the functioning capitalist really exploits labour, and that the fruit of his exploitation, when working with borrowed capital, was divided into interest and profit of enterprise, a surplus of profit over interest.

On the basis of capitalist production a new swindle develops in stock enterprises with respect to wages of management, in that boards of numerous managers or directors are placed above the actual director, for whom supervision and management serve only as a pretext to plunder the stockholders and amass wealth.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch23.htm#n5 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch23.htm)


Where I work most of the co-ordination of production is carried out by the production planning team who are given orders to fulfil and produce and generate a weekly timetable or schedule for what is going to be produce where and when on each production line etc.


These co-ordinators, even if the don’t enforce the schedule but just generate as a technical solution, so happen to be ‘sociologically’ very working class, almost to the point of stereotype.

I think syndicat is taking the Parecon position on state capitalism and the New Class theories of Milovan Djilas which is supposed to the Holy Book of the pareconista’s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_class (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_class)


Some alleged quotes from Djilas;



Djilas called the Soviet state a `monstrous edifice of state capitalism' that `oppressed and exploited the proletariat'.

Still according to Djilas, Stalin fought `to increase his state capitalist empire and, internally, to reinforce the bureaucracy'. `The Iron Curtain, hegemony over the countries of Eastern Europe and an aggressive political line have become indispensable to him.' Djilas spoke of `the misery of the working class that works for the ``superior'' imperialist interests and the bureaucracy's privileges.' `

Today, the USSR is objectively the most reactionary power.' Stalin `practices state capitalism and is the head and spiritual and political leader of the bureaucratic dictatorship.'

Acting as agent for U.S. imperialism, Djilas continued:

`Some of the Hitlerian theories are identical to Stalin's theories, both from the standpoint of their contents and of the resulting social practice.'



http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Ludo%20Martens/node145.html (http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Ludo%20Martens/node145.html)



Mandel responded to the state capitalist theories Djilas in the article below;

[ to those confused there is nothing unusual about the disciples not having read their own prophets eg with the ‘Maoists’ opposing state capitalism and where in fact the ‘Maoists anti-revisionist’, in opposing state capitalism are in fact the revisionists.]

E. Germain The Theory of "State Capitalism" (June 1951)


http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1951/06/statecap.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1951/06/statecap.htm)


the very last bit always cracks me up;




When Lenin and Trotsky were in power in Russia they never prevented, to our knowledge, the ultra-left communists from defending orally and in writing the theory of state capitalism.


And from Lenin To: L. D. TROTSKY in power jan 1922 discussing their own state capitalist theories and repressing Mensheviks etc



Comrade Trotsky:

I have no doubt that the Mensheviks have now intensified and will go on intensifying their most malicious agitation. I think, therefore, that there is need to intensify surveillance over and reprisals against them. I have already spoken about this with Unschlicht, and request you to find ten minutes or so for a conversation with him not by telephone. As for the substance of the matter—I think I agree with you. I now seem to be developing an urge to write an article on topics close to those you have referred to, but I shall nevertheless be hardly able to do this before a fortnight is out.

Therefore, it would be perhaps extremely useful if you were to join open battle in the press right away, naming this Menshevik, explaining the malicious whiteguard character of his speech, and issuing an impressive call to the Party to pull itself together.

The term "state capitalism" is, in my opinion (and I have repeatedly argued with Bukharin about it), the only theoretically correct and necessary one to make inert Communists realise that the new policy is going forward in earnest. But, of course, such malicious helpmates of the whiteguards, as all Mensheviks are, can pretend that they do not understand that state capitalism in a state with proletarian power can exist only as limited in time and sphere of extension, and conditions of its application, mode of supervision over it, etc.

21/I–22
Lenin

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/jan/21b.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/jan/21b.htm)


.

[Comrade_Stalin]

Im sorry but you've lost me completely here. I dont follow your reasoning at all. Firstly. Ayn Rand isnt making the point you are claiming she is making - that private and state ownership are the same thing. Nor was it ever likely that she would make such a point being a fervant advocate of lasseiz Faire capiitalism and property rights. Think about it - why would she want to say capitalist private ownership is the same thing as state ownership?. What she was actually doing was comparing fascism to "communism" claiming that both are totalitarian. collectivist forms of government. Youve completely missed the point in other words

Secondly I do not hold the view that the ruling state-party elite in the Soviet union was a capitalist class because "Stalin's nationalization was to privatize it later for members of the party". Where did you get such a bizarre idea from? The party state elite is a capitalist class because it exerts de facto ownership of the means of production via its political control of the state. Ownership and ultimate control are inseparable

I can see that Killer Enigma was right when he said.


Labeling the Soviet Union "state capitalist" was too absurd for even Trotsky, who disavowed that line in The Revolution Betrayed (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch09.htm#ch09-1). Although it's pretty easy to disprove the state capitalist argument, it's generally not worth working out all of the proofs because the people who perpetuate the line aren't interested in a serious examination of the USSR; they've made up their mind.


At some level, this question comes down to what you think socialism is. If you think a society only becomes socialist if conditions a-z are met in exactly the forms you conceive them in, then you probably won't think the Soviet Union was socialist, and you'll probably be disappointed by every other people's revolution that ever happens. However, if you actually look at the Soviet Union and nearly every other socialist state prone to the garbage label of "state capitalist," most of these countries actually had some form of worker control of the means of production.

Furthermore, we wouldn't say that Colombia isn't capitalist because they place tariffs on coffee and reduce profit for the bourgeoisie in this particular industry. We wouldn't say that France isn't capitalist because they provide nationalized health insurance to the people and deny the bourgeoisie the opportunity to make a profit in the insurance industry. These are all capitalist societies in which the state is controlled by and acts in the interests of the bourgeoisie.

Socialism isn't a monolithic program that every state will apply the same way, and although some people on this board will write this disclaimer off as an obvious given that they understand, their rhetoric indicates the opposite. In one socialist state, worker control may manifest itself in the form of soviets that have robust democratic deliberation. In another, worker control may take place primarily through the state. The point is that the state and the means of production are wielded by and in the interests of workers and oppressed nationalities.

On some level I don’t think anything I will say will get thought to you, as your mind is already made up that Stalin’s Soviet Union was "state capitalist". But let try one more time. What Ayn Rand is trying to prove is any nationalization will result in a “privatization”( or government officials earning the profit of others.) which leads to a new class, in you and her case a “state-party elite” class. Therefore her point is the same as your, in which nationalization will never work as it help build new class instead of comb. them all into one. If fact she goes on to say that this “state-party elite” class has always been around because we always had government. You next point was to say that State owned is the same as one big corporation. Those there goals are the same and therefore they are run the same. You try to say that they are both “collectivist” as there is no one single owner. Which would mean that all corporations out there with more than stock holder are public property.



Once again you are putting words in my mouth which are not mine.

I did not say private and state ownership are precisely the same thing. De jure legal ownership of capital by individuals is obviously different from the kind of state ownership that existed in the Soviet Union. My point, however, was that they are both different forms of ownership through which class monopoly of the means of production can be asserted

And I did not say the Catholic Church is a state. My argument does not depend on the legal status of the church. The point I was making was that Church property was owned by somebody or some persons. Who? Clearly not the lay congregations. It was actually owned by the Church hierarchy who had no legal entitlement to it as individual clerics but who neverthless as a group exert ultimate control and hence ownership of this property. Just like the Soviet capitalist class did

“Church property was owned by somebody or some persons”, right because it a corporation. And this is the point that you disprove your self when you say that the Catholic Church corporation(private ownership) is the same as “Soviet capitalist” (public ownership). No different than Ayn Rand, who also point out the very same thing about the Church and tried to say that government is runned the same way. In her mind the church and the State are one in the same thing and have one and the same goals. The same thing you just said

“It was actually owned by the Church hierarchy who had no legal entitlement to it as individual clerics but who neverthless as a group exert ultimate control and hence ownership of this property. Just like the Soviet capitalist class did”

[syndicat]

contrary to graymouser, i didn't say the ruling class in the USSR came out of a class in the previous capitalist system.

a new social arrangement was constructed in the soviet union, beginning with a number of decisions the Bolsheviks took at the very beginning, such as setting up a central planning agency...which was mostly dominated by party stalwarts and trade union bureaucrats (who were also party members) but with some managers and engineers coopted from the old regime.

the old managers and engineers and other "professionals" from the capitalist era were recruited and did continue to play a role in industry for a time. but they were viewed by the party top leadership as unreliable. hence Stalin's proletarinization campaign in 1929, a crash program to put workers, soldiers thru university courses to train them as administrators and engineers and so on. the idea was to create a bureaucratic class that would be loyal to the new organization of a collective bureaucratic class via the party. up to the very end of the USSR, for example, participation in Komsomol was an important way individuals gained the connections for appointments in the industrial and government management.


Actual theory of what this class was is thin at best, and I think attempting as syndicat does to compare it to modern management is erroneous. Managers today have more in common with the classical professionals - doctors, lawyers and so on - than with government bureaucrats and so on. The Stalinist bureaucrats had no organization whatsoever before the revolution, but one was crafted for them by Stalin - out of the wreckage of the Communist Party. What you had was a socially disparate group who suddenly had collective interests and similar relations to the means of production. In a situation where the working class is not physically liquidated as a class, the rise of such a grouping is unlikely, although not impossible.


nope. managers are bosses. to a very large extent they serve a police function....surveillance and discipline of workers, to ensure the priorities of managers and owners (which are not quite the same) are fulfilled.

high-end professionals can also contribute to control over workers through their participation with management in planning and thru definiing the jobs and workflows and helping to control workers in other ways.

a problem with the "bureaucratic collectivism" theory of the schactmanites was precisely that it didn't see this class in terms of its role in social production but only in terms of its domination of the state, as a political layer.

[Dave B]

OK then let us see if we can proceed, with the Trotskyists and Stalinist, from a quote from Lenin at the very end of 1922;

V. I. Lenin Interview With Arthur Ransome

Manchester Guardian Correspondent October 27 - November 5, 1922




Let us proceed further. Is it possible that we are receding to something in the nature of a "feudal dictatorship"? It is utterly impossible, for although slowly, with interruptions, taking steps backward from time to time, we are still making progress along the path of state capitalism, a path that leads us forward to socialism and communism (which is the highest stage of socialism), and certainly not back to feudalism.



http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/nov/05.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/nov/05.htm)

So we have several unanswered questions of the various factions that need addressing.


1] Was Lenin talking Bollocks and had Fanny Kaplan’s head-shot done more damage than was previously thought; and Bolshevik Russia was never state capitalist in the first place?

2] Depending on the answer to question [1] of course; Are the Cliffists correct and did Bolshevik Russia go from state capitalism (through the permanent revolution?) back to state capitalism again?


3] Or was Lenin’s prediction ‘correct’, again depending on the answer to question [1], and Bolshevik Russia went from state capitalism to ‘socialism’ later ; under the guidance of Uncle Joe?

The critical part of course is the;



‘making progress along the path of state capitalism, a path that leads us forward to socialism and communism’


Orthodox Maoists (as opposed to revisionist pseudo Maoists) can I think be left out on this one as they should agree with the Lenin’s position ie;

Mao Tse-tung


THE ONLY ROAD FOR THE TRANSFORMATION OF CAPITALIST INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE September 7, 1953




The transformation of capitalism into socialism is to be accomplished through state capitalism………..…………should first of all have the firm conviction that state capitalism is the only road for the transformation of capitalist industry and commerce and for the gradual completion of the transition to socialism


http://www.marx2mao.com/Mao/TC53.html (http://www.marx2mao.com/Mao/TC53.html)