State Capitalism

[Theory&Action]

I'm realizing that I don't have a firm grasp on the term "state capitalism". I frequently see it associated with North Korea and China. My best guess is that it's the use of central planning by the government to maximize the profits of the state.

If I'm anywhere near right with this definition - is there any alternative? I realize that a revolution cannot be limited to one state, the inherent problems with capitalism, and I'm personally against central planning, but I can't see any other options before worldwide partnership. Some states will revolt before others, and those states need resources from other countries (the vast majority of them capitalist). How are they to get those resources without trading for them as a state (or as a people, union, commune, etc.)? For example, would there be a problem with Bolivia selling their huge stores of lithium (which they don't really need at this point) in order to get other necessary resources? Again, I fully realize that this is not an ideal or sustainable situation, but what other choice do early socialist countries have?

[Savage]

From a leftist position, State Capitalism is usually used (by Left Communists and Anarchists) to describe the supposedly socialist states of the 20th century, in which private property in some ways has been juridically abolished or heavily regulated but the capitalist circulation and accumulation of capital continues to exist. It is called 'State' capitalism because the bourgeoisie of these states are heavily entwined with the state apparatus and bureaucracy, many of whom (it is argued) acted in the same way that capitalist entrepreneurs act in western capitalism.

[smk]

From a leftist position, State Capitalism is usually used (by Left Communists and Anarchists) to describe the supposedly socialist states of the 20th century, in which private property in some ways has been juridically abolished or heavily regulated but the capitalist circulation and accumulation of capital continues to exist. It is called 'State' capitalism because the bourgeoisie of these states are heavily entwined with the state apparatus and bureaucracy, many of whom (it is argued) acted in the same way that capitalist entrepreneurs act in western capitalism.

It wasn't that private property was abolished, it was that private property was put into the hands of the government. Capitalism is not only bad because it includes free markets, but it is also bad because it puts the means of production in the hands of a small, ruling, managerial elite. The state owning the means of production isn't much better than some aristocrat or other private individual. wage slavery is wage slavery. the workers were no more free under free market capitalism than they were under state capitalism.
The question of what alternatives are there is a good one. Of course, a simultaneous worldwide revolution is extremely unlikely. However, you don't need a government to trade. Indeed, most trading is done by the factories and communities. These communities are of course run by the workers democratically. If they need supplies from a capitalist country, who is to stop them? I think that you will find that government is unnecessary in most circumstances.

[Savage]

I know that private property wasn't abolished, i said that it was juridically abolished, private property remained economically, both as individual and class property.

[smk]

I know that private property wasn't abolished, i said that it was juridically abolished, private property remained economically, both as individual and class property.

oops. I must have missed that crucial qualifier.

[graymouser]

State capitalism was originally a term derived for Germany during World War I, as the state became quite heavily involved directly as a capitalist in the war industries. It was used in several different ways to describe the economy of the early USSR, but never in a rigorous or systematic fashion. Since then it has been used more or less as a curse word to dismiss any social system that claims to be socialism but isn't liked by anarchists, left communists and heterodox Trots.

The main claim made by state capitalist theorists is that there was still extraction of surplus-value from workers in the USSR and the other economies modeled after it. But no model of this state capitalism makes sense of all the factors of capitalism - the accumulation of capital, the declining rate of profit, the periodic crises, cyclical investments, movement of capital between Department I and Department II, even the very basics of market conditions - don't exist. They just assume that something pretty much called "capitalism" can exist without any of these things, and is still more or less subject to the laws laid out in Marx's Capital. This is without getting into the question of central planning, of course. While orthodox Trotskyists have never shrunk from critiquing the USSR and its Stalinist misleaders, at the same time we've never kidded ourselves that this is a viable theory for understanding the transitional states that existed in the Soviet Union and elsewhere.

[Jimmie Higgins]

It wasn't that private property was abolished, it was that private property was put into the hands of the government. Capitalism is not only bad because it includes free markets, but it is also bad because it puts the means of production in the hands of a small, ruling, managerial elite. The state owning the means of production isn't much better than some aristocrat or other private individual. wage slavery is wage slavery. the workers were no more free under free market capitalism than they were under state capitalism.
The question of what alternatives are there is a good one. Of course, a simultaneous worldwide revolution is extremely unlikely. However, you don't need a government to trade. Indeed, most trading is done by the factories and communities. These communities are of course run by the workers democratically. If they need supplies from a capitalist country, who is to stop them? I think that you will find that government is unnecessary in most circumstances.

I agree with everything you say here, but just to semantically nit-pick...

Wouldn't this...

These communities are of course run by the workers democratically. If they need supplies from a capitalist country, who is to stop them? I think that you will find that government is unnecessary in most circumstances....be contradictory? Communities or workplaces run democratically would imply a government in some form IMO, just a government organized and controlled by a majority class not the capitalists, aristocrats, or managerial elite.

[smk]

State capitalism was originally a term derived for Germany during World War I, as the state became quite heavily involved directly as a capitalist in the war industries. It was used in several different ways to describe the economy of the early USSR, but never in a rigorous or systematic fashion. Since then it has been used more or less as a curse word to dismiss any social system that claims to be socialism but isn't liked by anarchists, left communists and heterodox Trots.

The main claim made by state capitalist theorists is that there was still extraction of surplus-value from workers in the USSR and the other economies modeled after it. But no model of this state capitalism makes sense of all the factors of capitalism - the accumulation of capital, the declining rate of profit, the periodic crises, cyclical investments, movement of capital between Department I and Department II, even the very basics of market conditions - don't exist. They just assume that something pretty much called "capitalism" can exist without any of these things, and is still more or less subject to the laws laid out in Marx's Capital. This is without getting into the question of central planning, of course. While orthodox Trotskyists have never shrunk from critiquing the USSR and its Stalinist misleaders, at the same time we've never kidded ourselves that this is a viable theory for understanding the transitional states that existed in the Soviet Union and elsewhere.

Actually, even as far back as the First International, Bakunin used the term 'state capitalism' to describe his predictions for the outcomes of Marxism.
I don't think that anyone tries to say that state capitalism is akin to capitalism. It is obviously extremely different in qualities from the capitalism we are familiar with. However, it is just a name. The fact is that state capitalism still retains the exploitive properties which all Marxists and Anarchists are against.
Whether or not state capitalism is necessary as a transition, I dont know. Personally, I don't see how the dictatorship of the proletariat can lead to anything but state capitalism. So I guess the question is whether or not the dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary. That debate has torn leftists apart for more than 150 years.

[Spawn of Stalin]

The capitalist sector of the Chinese economy is private, not state capitalism.

[smk]

I agree with everything you say here, but just to semantically nit-pick...

These communities are of course run by the workers democratically. If they need supplies from a capitalist country, who is to stop them? I think that you will find that government is unnecessary in most circumstances.
Wouldn't this...
...be contradictory? Communities or workplaces run democratically would imply a government in some form IMO, just a government organized and controlled by a majority class not the capitalists, aristocrats, or managerial elite.

Democracy doesn't have to be run as it is in most(all?) 'democratic' countries today. The democracy which I speak of is direct democracy without any elements of the 'representative democracy' which we have in the US where politicians are elected to serve their own interests rather than the people's. Democracy in these communes would consist of no elected politicians. Every issue is up to the people and their vote. I don't see any government in that; it's just a way to decide on an action.

[Das war einmal]

It reminds me of libertarians claiming this crisis is not due to capitalism but due to a lack of capitalism. According to them the 'socialist government is to blame'. Calling the USSR 'state capitalist' is false bogus 'cause the primary attribute of capitalism is private property. There can be no capitalism without private property. Thats like calling a spider an insect.

In my ears it sounds like a lame attempt to make it easier for yourself to defend 'true socialism', you just cast all failed attempts a form of 'capitalism' and be done with it. Cause when we would have 'true socialism' there can be no failure or something.

It reminds me of the "No True Scotsman' fallacy: http://www.logicalfallacies.info/presumption/no-true-scotsman/

[Jimmie Higgins]

Democracy doesn't have to be run as it is in most(all?) 'democratic' countries today. The democracy which I speak of is direct democracy without any elements of the 'representative democracy' which we have in the US where politicians are elected to serve their own interests rather than the people's. Democracy in these communes would consist of no elected politicians. Every issue is up to the people and their vote. I don't see any government in that; it's just a way to decide on an action.Yes I agree, but democratic decision making is still a way of people organizing themselves to assert class rule: in this case the rule of the workers, the majority - in other words, real democracy, not Parliamentary capitalist Democracy.

I stress this point because 1) I think people tend to fetishize the concept of a state and see it as existing seperate from society as a whole 2) the liberal view of the state is that it exists separately from society and is a force for arbitrating social conflicts in society (so if business gets out of hand, the state can regulate and so on). If states have their own logic and are not tools for a class to organize society in that class's interests, then it implies that you could actually "reform" the state or "make the state work in your interests" by changing the functionaries or fixing some rules.

If, after a revolution, workers need to organize militias to protect their seized factories and keep counter-revolutionary thugs or reminents of the old regime out of their communities, then this is a class organizing structures in order to promote their class-rule. If workers at various locations build networks or some kind of democratic organs for making decisions, then this is an example of people organizing structures in society to facilitate their class-needs (like being able to produce the things they need in a coordinated and non-exploitative way).

All other ruling classes used states to repress other classes not because that's what states automatically do, but because previous ruling classes needed to exploit other classes and make the majority conform to their class interests (i.e. actually farm the feudal lands or show up for work everyday and pay bills). The working class doesn't need to repress and make other classes produce for them, but it will still need a "state" to promote a new working class way of running society. IMO, some form of real bottom-up democracy is essential for that because it is the best way for large numbers of people to make decisions and have equal say on matters.

Once society is largely under new vastly more democratic modes of production, then many of these structures will no longer be necessary. Militias are an easy example of this, because once the immediate threat of counter-revolution is mostly gone, what's the point of spending the time and energy keeping up a militia. But it's the same for other things as well: if people's basic needs are met, then people don't have to debate over weather they should spend time and energy building either a new hospital or school first: decisions like that could be largely automatic.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

"Conceptually, competition is nothing other than the inner nature of capital, its essential character, appearing in and realized as the reciprocal interaction of many capitals with one another. Capital exists and can only exist as many capitals." - Marx

[Jimmie Higgins]

It reminds me of libertarians claiming this crisis is not due to capitalism but due to a lack of capitalism. According to them the 'socialist government is to blame'.Actually I think the better allegory would be to Stalinists and Maoists who claim that every crime was due to "revisionists" - if only X policies or X induviduals hadn't been around, then everything would have worked great!

State Capitalism is based on a materialist look at production in the USSR and the other so-called socialist counties that followed that model. It is an actual attempt to confront and understand in a marxist way why the USSR failed to achieve a working-class run society and what the nature of the resulting society actually was if not socialist.


Calling the USSR 'state capitalist' is false bogus 'cause the primary attribute of capitalism is private property. There can be no capitalism without private property. Thats like calling a spider an insect. Ironically, this is the EXACT argument made by the Libertarians you cite (just with an opposite take on the end result): the problem with public schools is not that they are under-funded but that they are "socialist" and therfore always fail... if they were private, then they'd be capitalist and always excel.

So according to your distinction between socialism/capitalism in the above quote, parks, highways and the military in the US are not part of the capitalist system?

[Das war einmal]

Actually I think the better allegory would be to Stalinists and Maoists who claim that every crime was due to "revisionists" - if only X policies or X induviduals hadn't been around, then everything would have worked great!

I don't agree with those statements either. The IST in my country however literally claims that it was Stalin who strangled the revolution.


State Capitalism is based on a materialist look at production in the USSR and the other so-called socialist counties that followed that model. It is an actual attempt to confront and understand in a marxist way why the USSR failed to achieve a working-class run society and what the nature of the resulting society actually was if not socialist.

Yes, thats what you get if you take Marxist literature and you lay it next to the situation of the USSR, conclude that this isn't what Marx had in mind and then follow by saying: see they have no workers run society, so it must be capitalist.



Ironically, this is the EXACT argument made by the Libertarians you cite (just with an opposite take on the end result): the problem with public schools is not that they are under-funded but that they are "socialist" and therfore always fail... if they were private, then they'd be capitalist and always excel.

So according to your distinction between socialism/capitalism in the above quote, parks, highways and the military in the US are not part of the capitalist system?

Those things themselves are not capitalist institutions. However most things in the US are private property. And even the military is powered by private arms corporations. It's the sum that makes it a capitalist society.

The problem is that this theory claims that socialist states where in fact capitalist and to prove it it backs it up with far-fetched evidence of details that are also present in the capitalist system. Thats the same bullshit as some people claim that Nazi-Germany was in fact left/socialist because they had things like public healthcare.

[Savage]

Just because private property is abolished in name doesn't mean that there's no private relation existing between the means of production and a privileged class. When Marx told of how to sum up communism into one simple sentence, he was speaking of the abolition of private property, which specifically meant the abolition of class property. 'Public' property (fundamentally different from common property) can act in the exact same way as private property, with a private and individual bourgeois relation remaining, hence the stupidity of so many of us that measure a country's 'socialism' based on the percentage figure of GDP produced in the public sector.

[graymouser]

Just because private property is abolished in name doesn't mean that there's no private relation existing between the means of production and a privileged class. When Marx told of how to sum up communism into one simple sentence, he was speaking of the abolition of private property, which specifically meant the abolition of class property. 'Public' property (fundamentally different from common property) can act in the exact same way as private property, with a private and individual bourgeois relation remaining, hence the stupidity of so many of us that measure a country's 'socialism' based on the percentage figure of GDP produced in the public sector.
Who does that? It's a straw man. Trotsky laid out four criteria of a workers' state: nationalization of the means of production in the major industries, central planning of production, a state monopoly on foreign trade, and workers' democracy. Countries with high concentration of state ownership do not automatically become "workers' states" if they do not change the relations of production.

It's worth understanding why the four criteria were decisive. I would argue that central planning is actually more important than a certain level of state ownership, because it means that the state has suppressed the core features of the capitalist system - the anarchy of capitalist production, and so on - and production is not undertaken for the sake of accumulation but for consumption and the development of the productive forces.

[Savage]

Who does that? It's a straw man.
Do you mean who measures the 'socialism' of an economy based on the % of GDP produced in the public sector? Obviously people less intelligent than you. I've heard plenty of people go on like this both on revleft and in the real world, maybe ill start collecting quotes and make a scrapbook for you.


Trotsky laid out four criteria of a workers' state: nationalization of the means of production in the major industries, central planning of production, a state monopoly on foreign trade, and workers' democracy. Countries with high concentration of state ownership do not automatically become "workers' states" if they do not change the relations of production.

So why do you still consider the Soviet Union to be a 'workers' state' whether degenerated or not?

[graymouser]

Do you mean who measures the 'socialism' of an economy based on the % of GDP produced in the public sector? Obviously people less intelligent than you. I've heard plenty of people go on like this both on revleft and in the real world, maybe ill start collecting quotes and make a scrapbook for you.
I know there are tendencies - like the Militant group around Ted Grant - that started labelling countries as "degenerated workers states" primarily on the basis of percentage of nationalized income, but I do think that this argument is flawed and it's certainly not what the bulk of orthodox Trotskyists have ever said.


So why do you still consider the Soviet Union to be a 'workers' state' whether degenerated or not?
Well, I consider that the USSR was a degenerated workers state from some point in the mid to late 1920s until the fire sale of the economy in the early 1990s - certainly not the remnants in 2011. In that period, the commanding heights of the economy were nationalized and centrally planned, with private capital being suppressed. The actual capitalism started in the black and grey markets after Stalin, with people doing things like taxi services for "tips," graft among minor officials and so on up to small-scale handicrafts for profit going on in the early 1980s. The reality is that the Stalinists accumulated money but it didn't act as capital until the restoration of outright capitalism in the '90s.

The "degenerated workers state" was defended by Trotskyists because it was the gains of the October Revolution, however badly run by the Stalinist parasites - a caste atop the means of production - and contained a developing economy with the forms of a proletarian economy. A political revolution would have been needed to give them the content of a healthy workers state, but in reality the removal of these forms was a social catastrophe - whereas state capitalist theory, if it held any validity at all, should have predicted that they would not have made a significant difference.

[graymouser]

It is interesting that Trotsky did not include anything about internationalism in his four criteria. Though Trotsky spoke against Socialism in one country, it appears he did not fully oppose it if he came up with such a formula to determine a workers state without mentioning the necessity for a world revolution. Marx and Engels did not see any kind of such a "workers state" that could exist within the world market. In other words, the revolution had to establish a world wide workers state or else re-integrate with world capitalism.
You are barking up the wrong tree in criticizing Trotsky here. He had no confidence whatsoever in the ability of an isolated workers' state to survive an extended period in a sea of capitalist hostility, and argued passionately (even though it cost him his position in the Soviet government and eventually his life) against the pseudo-theory of "Socialism in One Country." A workers' state is not socialism, it is the dictatorship of the proletariat in one country that has overthrown capitalism and is attempting to survive until the world revolution. Because of the uneven character of the world revolutionary socialist movement, it is inevitable that some countries will reach the revolution first, and they require an economic form that will allow them to exist while working toward the global revolution. This transitional form between capitalism and socialism was hijacked by the bureaucratic caste and eventually the gains of October were reversed, with catastrophic social consequences. But the theory of this transitional form was inherently temporary and required the world revolution in the long run. Your misinterpretation requires the whole world revolution at one dramatic stroke, which simply could never happen.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Those things themselves are not capitalist institutions.But they are nationalized in the US for the benefit of the collective capitalist class, so they are capitalist institutions. The libertarians claim that the federal reserve is "socialist" big-government, it's not private - it facilitates planning of the economy, does that mean it's not a capitalist institution?

Again, for me, the important thing is not the form that an institution takes, but what its social function is and whose interests it's run in.


And even the military is powered by private arms corporations. It's the sum that makes it a capitalist society.So if these US military contractors didn't make a profit, there'd be no military in the US? What about the cops and prison system? No, IMO, the entire capitalist class needs these state institutions and decided that doing them in a nationalized manner would be more effective and efficient for their aims.


The problem is that this theory claims that socialist states where in fact capitalist and to prove it it backs it up with far-fetched evidence of details that are also present in the capitalist system. Thats the same bullshit as some people claim that Nazi-Germany was in fact left/socialist because they had things like public healthcare.Maybe the problem is when people defend Cuba by saying it's socialist using the evidence of a great public health system. Maybe if socialist were clear that socialism means "worker control of society" rather than trying to pass-off a country with a good public system as socialism, then the right would not be able to claim that Obama is socialist or that Hitler was socialist when they nationalized something.

[Savage]

I know there are tendencies - like the Militant group around Ted Grant - that started labelling countries as "degenerated workers states" primarily on the basis of percentage of nationalized income, but I do think that this argument is flawed and it's certainly not what the bulk of orthodox Trotskyists have ever said.
Fair enough, I was referring primarily to Stalinists anyway.



Well, I consider that the USSR was a degenerated workers state from some point in the mid to late 1920s until the fire sale of the economy in the early 1990s - certainly not the remnants in 2011. In that period, the commanding heights of the economy were nationalized and centrally planned, with private capital being suppressed. The actual capitalism started in the black and grey markets after Stalin, with people doing things like taxi services for "tips," graft among minor officials and so on up to small-scale handicrafts for profit going on in the early 1980s. The reality is that the Stalinists accumulated money but it didn't act as capital until the restoration of outright capitalism in the '90s.

The "degenerated workers state" was defended by Trotskyists because it was the gains of the October Revolution, however badly run by the Stalinist parasites - a caste atop the means of production - and contained a developing economy with the forms of a proletarian economy. A political revolution would have been needed to give them the content of a healthy workers state, but in reality the removal of these forms was a social catastrophe - whereas state capitalist theory, if it held any validity at all, should have predicted that they would not have made a significant difference.
One of my biggest problems with the Trotskyist analysis how you seemingly place little importance workers control and democracy which I would hope to think would be unanimously considered vital amongst leftists. I don't see how you draw the line between 'Degeneration' (considering a complete absence of workers control) and In-existence. In regards to the supposed 'Restoration of Capitalism' the social catastrophe that was the supposed 'marketization' and 'privatization' doesn't discredit the state capitalist theories, Neo-Liberal policies have come at great human costs throughout the past 30 to 40 years, that doesn't mean that keynesianism isn't capitalist.

[Theory&Action]

I just want to say that this trot/left communist debate is very informative.

There is one question that comes to mind - is there a precedent for a socialist state trading for resources with a union or organization within another capitalist country for the mutual benefit of both? Off the top of my head I can think of Venezuela providing free heating oil to certain impoverished populations of the US, but that was more of a PR stunt than a quid pro quo.

Also my original question of Bolivian lithium reserves remains unanswered. Would the Bolivian government at this stage be in the wrong if they decided to sell it off to the highest bidder in order to pay for necessary medicines, fuel, nutrition, etc.? Is dealing with the devil for a short time ever warranted or beneficial?

Please keep this great discussion alive...

[Jose Gracchus]

I think a lot of this angst comes out different perspectives on terminology, definitions, and also, at-times, dogmatic adherence to "canon".

Marxism, as I see it, has sometimes differing or parallel theories of capital, of capitalism, definitions of "socialism", and the like. When Marx was writing, it seemed fair that society developed productive forces and then the superstructure arising out of the relations therein evolved accordingly. Therefore capitalism is identified with Western capitalist states in stages of economic and political modernization pars para toto. Hence the origin of remarks of "democracy in the bourgeois sense", "dictatorship in the bourgeois sense", etc. There is also the deeper understanding of capitalism and capital from his eponymous work, and this is also identified with the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois state. Now, the problem is encountered in Russia is that the empirical bourgeoisie and capitalism was annihilated, the workers and peasants brought briefly to political power, the market was suppressed, planning of economy based on politically determined needs and directives. (Not necessarily in correct order and very simplistic, I know, stick with me) Sounds good, right?

The problem was that conditions of alienated labor were rapidly reimposed, organs of workers' democracy quashed, the dictatorship of a single party established, the abandonment of the norms of a popular militia and recallable election of all officials, and the establishment of significant antagonistic relations with the peasantry. There was the alienation reminiscent in ways of capitalism, though the industrial bourgeoisie was annihilated, the market partially repressed, the economy subordinated to mass politics in a society where the workers' and peasants' had - at least briefly - came to power. There was "dictatorship in the bourgeois sense." Yet there was the crystallization of a nascent ruling class (or a sui generis formation in analogue of previous ruling classes, "caste" if we must be Orthodox). It was, as Moshe Lewin has said "it was a superstructure suspended in a kind of vacuum, having to re-create its own base" (quoting from pg. 9, The Russian Revolution in Retreat 1920-24: Soviet workers and the new communist elite by Simon Pirani; Pirani is a historian of Russian history and a former Trotskyist).

Even after the major exigencies of the Civil War had dissipated by 1921, the revolution continued to degenerate thereafter. The relative power and influence and remaining activity of independent groups within the party, mass organizations, unions, and - though only briefly and weakly - even soviets, was replaced by a bureaucratic and increasingly privileged layer. The major problems that cause libertarians, "state capitalist" Marxists like Left Coms and Cliffite Trotskyists, and Orthodox Trotskyists have in analyzing the USSR and its degeneration is a common agreement on basic Marxian analysis of history and the synergy between the unfolding logic of capital on one hand and the changing character of society and politics on one hand, but stark disagreement on its implications. Libertarians and Left Coms tend to fixate on the lack of a change in basic labor relations and wage labor, continuing restrictions in political democracy and liberty and a top-down regimentation in the development of the revolutionary state. Some might focus on an insistence on the importance of the continuing commodity character of labor, and certain technical qualities characterizing the logic of capital (despite the annihilation of the bourgeoisie and the increasing at-directed, anti-market planning).

So what was the USSR? Well clearly it was different things in different times. In 1917 the workers' and peasants' successfully mounted a revolution and achieved political party, and began remaking institutions of production and tearing down the old state order, only to be interrupted by a Civil War, the restriction of all political liberties and democracy and even pro-soviet power socialist opposition groups, and a 'forced-march' to nationalization and state-directed production known as war communism. With a resurgence of workers’ organization and activity, there were strong repressions and increasing exclusions of rank-and-file workers in 1920-1922. In the NEP, the regime rapproached with petty merchants, international capital, and the peasantry (including the kulaks). The subsequent policies also strengthened the party-state bureaucracy at the workers’ expense. Though Stalin’s ‘revolution from above’ abolished the many of the property forms that suggested compromises with old-fashioned capitalism, it also led to a physical destruction of much of the original workers’ party (compromises as it was by increasingly serving to serve other class interests, and to be filled by other class elements than the proletarian and poor peasant classes). There was an increase in privileges and luxuries for the ruling class or caste, there was the imposition of increasing terror and open coercion in social life. There was an exclusion of self-management in favor of regimented authoritarian measures in economy.

Worse yet, as the most vicious and austere qualities of the Stalinist regime abated, often the economy was loosened to allow capitalistic and bureaucratic tendencies yet more power and freedom. The Kosygin reforms following the rise to power of Khrushchev and immediately preceding “de-Stalinization” and the Secret Speech are not the semi-farcical “silent counterrevolution” that Anti-Revisionists claim. Nonetheless, this strengthening of managerial elements and increased independence of enterprises allowed the gradual re-emergence of capitalistic incentives and economic relations. Market reforms and ideology were increasingly adopted within the strongholds of Soviet economic management. To the extent politicized, at-directed, non-market modes of economic investment, allocation, distribution, and production were adopted, this did represent real victories in restraining capital in the Marxian sense. In this sense there is something to the old Orthodox Trotskyist canard of the ‘degenerated workers’ state’. A better way to look at it is while there was a new enemy, perhaps worse (workers’ movements weren’t exactly more successful in the Soviet-inspired states), but that traditional elements of capitalist repression had been eliminated. Clearly this was subjectively a kind of step forward for workers. I do imagine that ideally we could have had something like the anti-Stalinist workers who formed workers’ councils in the Hungarian uprising of 1956 being the leading element in recapturing an alienated public property for workers’ power, without having to go through the motions of repressing capitalism, which had been already eliminated in its traditional form.

With these changes, the Soviet-style states began less and less to resemble failed or diverted revolutions and more authoritarian petty Great Powers with novel bureaucratic regimes legitimized by a kind of radical social democracy, but nothing more than that. The ultimate outcome of the “social contract” tacit in Leninism in power by 1924, as Pirani explains. Initiative and power and access in public and social decision-making was to be ceded to the party; in exchange generally living standards were to go up. Eventually the contradictions in this kind of society boiled over, and many of the privileged elements failed to see any reason to keep up the Cold War model, felt like enriching themselves, or were just themselves enticed by Hayekist ideology. The market reforms became acceleratingly radical until finally traditional capitalism was restored in Russia and its clients. Like the German ruling class before it, the Chinese ruling class has embraced through the state progressive reform and adaptation in order to go along with the tides of capitalism internationally, even if they originated in something else (Junker landed aristocracy, and Bolshevikoid party-state bureaucratic despotism, respectively).

Ultimately, most of us talk past each other, I think. We all try to narrow in on what we think the quintessential quality of socialism versus capitalism is, usually in such a way as to most benefit our sectarian heritage. The fact is, I think the broad revolutionary left agreed that the 19th century innovations in the rise of modern liberalism and the development of capitalism, the introduction of electoral bourgeois democracy and republicanism. All these things seemed to follow an essential logic. It seemed also tempting that simply removing the barriers to free association in the relations of production would part-and-parcel lead to dramatic rolling change in the other institutions of social life. I think that anarchists and other "anti-Leninists" simply choose to identify capitalism in this quasi-19th century sense with "the old way of doing things". They mean that the USSR is a "dictatorship in the bourgeois sense". I don't think this is very helpful. Trotsky contrariwise, was under personal political pressure to avoid noting the troubles prior to 1923. He also I think was laboring under the fair - at the time - belief that the Stalinist regime was some sort of great deviation that could not last. There was a conviction either workers' would move as a class to restore the revolution or the degenerate qualities would overwhelm the revolution's meager surviving gains against old-fashioned capitalism and restore it. Stalinism by virtue of geopolitics came out dramatically ahead, and with a new buffer of satellite states that - while not exploited in the capitalist imperialist sense, apart from overspecialization, and early machine transfers and reparations - helped prop up the Stalinist economy, ideology, and regime. As time went on it seems that with increasing bureaucratization and even introduction of market-type tools in the Soviet economy that this was no brief "wrong turn" kind of institution. Also strange in the Orthodox Trotskyist outlook is the seeming disconnect in Marxian terms between superstructure and base. How is a bureaucratic caste elevated over a "workers'" economy, and especially in such extended fashion? Anti-Revisionists on the far other hand fixate on the most non-revolutionary "palace intrigue" kind of politics between competing cliques. However, the logic of the lines that won out does seem to suggest that intrinsic institutional commitment to suppressing capital and market relations abated with time (and lagging economic performance).

In the end, no one has really synthesized this into a thorough theory of class and politics. So there's a lot of impressionistic looks, and nit-picking of quotes. Clearly things did not end up as they were thought to. I think Marx thought that crude failures or missteps in revolution would probably either fail outright and result in French-style restorations or the waves of workers' revolutions would render premature attempts irrelevant ("fifty years of civil war" to train themselves to rule, I believe he said). History ended up painting a very different picture, though not one at all that renders old theories useless. But there is a need to move forward and to digest all facts, not just those that presuppose our sectarianism.