The argument that 'Socialist' countries weren't really socialist doesn't hold up

[valdek]

The argument that China, Russia, Cuba etc weren’t ‘Socialist’ but actually ‘State Capitalist’ (because the workers didn’t own the means of production, a minority party was oppressing the masses or whatever and every other characteristic you might use to describe a truly socialist society) does not satisfy me when arguing for socialism or defending it.
I simply get the response from the antagonist [or capitalist, rightist etc] saying ‘Well yeah sure.. but why should I believe that any future attempt at a socialist society on implementation and practice won’t end up in corruption & a state capitalist society just like China, Russia, Cuba and every other attempt at socialism.’
Further, I find that the socialist response that ‘it wasn’t socialist’ is similar or the same to a free market/laissez faire proponent who will say that the system in practice today isn’t actually ‘capitalism’ (with various variations to their argument saying it’s a mix of socialism and capitalism or whatever etc etc...) and that real ‘free market capitalism’ would be a much better/effective/[insert positive adjective here] system.

Some further enlightenment would be amazing :) - maybe I just need to read a little more because I am definitely a 'beginner' Leftist..If you can think of any glaring reading suggestions that would be great to..

[dernier combat]

Further, I find that the socialist response that ‘it wasn’t socialist’ is similar or the same to a free market/laissez faire proponent who will say that the system in practice today isn’t actually ‘capitalism’ (with various variations to their argument saying it’s a mix of socialism and capitalism or whatever etc etc...) and that real ‘free market capitalism’ would be a much better/effective/[insert positive adjective here] system.
Odd you should say that. Looking at Russia, after the initial consolidation of power by the Bolsheviks (and increasing at a more rapid rate around the time of Uncle Jo), there were still vestiges of workers' self-management and self-government left over from the very early days of what started out a working class revolt, but by this time the organs of workers' power were rendered largely useless and all they ever would be were vestiges. The ruling coordinator class' (and the bureaucracy which would develop from it) initial creation was a by-product of Bolshevik attempts to get munitions factories among others up and running under their direction for wartime production during the civil war. It should be clear that such a mode of production is not socialist (i.e. democratically worker-managed).

Capitalism is the system of utilization of privately-owned means of production to create a profit. And that's exactly what we have today. If anyone thinks the nationalization of utilities are telltale signs we have commie traitors in our government, feel free to kick them in the pants for being so god-dammed thick.

The difference between claims that "actually existing socialism" was not socialist and that the current dominant mode of production in society is not capitalist is that, whilst the former's position is based off analyses of historical class struggles, the latter is just a conservative's incoherent ramblings based purely off half-baked conspiracy theories and a total misconception of socialism.

As a side note, there is no such thing as a free market. Market competition, which capitalists speak so highly about, inevitably leads to monopolisation and weaker competitors going out of business. Besides, a "real free market" - if such a thing could ever exist - would only increase the benefits of those who profit from it.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Tell them to look at Capitalism in the western world up until WW1. By anyone's standards, it was a horror show for anybody in the working class, which then very clearly made up an overwhelming majority of the population.

Capitalism is still shit, but the point does stand that often the first attempt at implementing an ideology doesn't end up too well and can be wrecked by saboteurs or by naivety/wrong implementation.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

Its worth noting that only one or two main and influential organizational models have been tried and tested for the implementing of socialism, those being the models based on Leninist and Maoist principles, perhaps we can say as extensions to Marxist theory (bar anarcho-syndicalist methods as used in Spain, which I don't regard as a failure on the same scale). With that in mind and the recognition of its failure to hand the means of production over to the working class, we can look at different methods, such as anarchism or left-communism. I disagree with the Trotskyist line personally but it is also worth noting that Trotsky made well thought out arguments as to why these revolutions failed and has managed to convince a large proportion of the left that Leninist principles can still be used to realize socialism.

Anyway, the point is that only a certain set of methods were tested. There is nothing wrong with analyzing these states and concluding that they weren't socialist, we just look at other methods for the organization of society, or refer to orthodox ones, or revise other methods. That is much more productive and progressive than saying that socialism did exist for the abstract reasons you mentioned.

For argument's sake, although it is besides the point of the discussion, the reason I don't consider those anarcho-syndicalist methods as a failure on the same scale of Leninist or Maoist methods is because anarchists in Spain did manage to organize small sections of society very democratically.

[syndicat]

i wouldn't say those countries were "state capitalist." I would say they had a bureaucratic mode of production, since there wasn't private ownership of means of production, was often forms of centralized state planning, etc.

I would simply poijnt out that the workers directly running production is a necessary condition for an authentic socialism. And that this didn't happen in the socalled "socialist" countries because of the state socialist approach of a party running a state, and how this tends to empower a bureaucratic class through the state and party structures.

[Rooster]

If these states follow the ideas of Lenin and Lenin said that in a socialist society, there would be no state, then how come they had very large and controlling (political) state apparatuses?

[Kamos]

Simple answer: vanguardism. Leninists and many other commies realise that a post-revolutionary society cannot be achieved by snapping one's fingers, and that the seemingly oxymoronic "communist state" is necessary. Such a state might resemble a bourgeois state if we don't look at it carefully, but as long as the leader doesn't betray the principles of the communism and the state works for the majority, not the minority, there is nothing wrong in it. Some would say it's a necessary evil.

[ArrowLance]

Socialism is not incompatible with a state apparatus. Many socialists don't even believe that socialism naturally leads to the dissolution of the state! When we look at past (or present) communist experiments we most certainly find a state, but we in most cases also find a system of socialistic practices and an overreaching communist ideal. That isn't to say that the communist ideal was ever made material, or even began to ossify, but that it is certain that these experiments could be called 'communist states' even if only by the standards of the contemporary connotations of communism.

It is lazy to simply dismiss those experiments as a communist even if they did not follow the path that you personally feel was the correct one for that nation.

[syndicat]

Socialism is not incompatible with a state apparatus. Many socialists don't even believe that socialism naturally leads to the dissolution of the state! When we look at past (or present) communist experiments we most certainly find a state, but we in most cases also find a system of socialistic practices and an overreaching communist ideal. That isn't to say that the communist ideal was ever made material, or even began to ossify, but that it is certain that these experiments could be called 'communist states' even if only by the standards of the contemporary connotations of communism.



what you don't realize is that the burden of proof is on you as to why anyone should support that statist version of socalled "socialism." why should the working class fight a revolution to only end up subordinate to a new boss class?

[Niccolò Rossi]

The argument that China, Russia, Cuba etc weren’t ‘Socialist’ but actually ‘State Capitalist’ (because the workers didn’t own the means of production, a minority party was oppressing the masses or whatever and every other characteristic you might use to describe a truly socialist society) does not satisfy me when arguing for socialism or defending it.

The analysis of the so-called 'socialist states' as being capitalist is not just some trump card to be used in arguments. Furthermore, it's validity is not determined by it's effectiveness in winning said arguments.


I simply get the response from the antagonist [or capitalist, rightist etc] saying ‘Well yeah sure.. but why should I believe that any future attempt at a socialist society on implementation and practice won’t end up in corruption & a state capitalist society just like China, Russia, Cuba and every other attempt at socialism.’

Maybe you should try answering them when they ask this question.


Further, I find that the socialist response that ‘it wasn’t socialist’ is similar or the same to a free market/laissez faire proponent who will say that the system in practice today isn’t actually ‘capitalism’ (with various variations to their argument saying it’s a mix of socialism and capitalism or whatever etc etc...) and that real ‘free market capitalism’ would be a much better/effective/[insert positive adjective here] system.

So?

Nic.

[Lyev]

Well I do not think that the former Soviet Union was socialist: who controlled the means of production and what was their relationship with the working class? However, I do not think the alternatives that people put forth (the two main ones are state-capitalism or 'deformed' workers' state) are completely coherent either. The position that my organisation holds is the orthodox Trotskyist position that Trotsky generally argued for in The Revolution Betrayed. I'm not 100% sure, but I think this argument is based on quite shakey foundations. That is, Trotsky's vulgar conception of what 'socialism' is (as a distinct 'stage' from fully-fledged communism). Basically, nationalised industry controlled by workers, and these workers control the state.

This is perhaps sometimes where anarchists can get one-up over Trotskyists and the like: The antagonism between boss and worker that defines what a 'proletarian' is, and how the boss expropriates surplus value from that worker etc. etc. -- the underlying class relationship -- becomes a very confused concept when these same workers control the bourgeois state. (I might be confused here, by the way; as I say, I am not completely sure.) How can the subordinate social class be at the very same the ruling one?

I don't think when Marx says the working class needs, as a prerequisite for socialist revolution, to "conquer political power" when "organised as the ruling class" he meant the proletariat should take over the state as it's hitherto existed in capitalist society. He also exchanges the phrase "political power" with "state power" (i.e., the proletariat organised as the ruling class). When Marx refers to 'the state', in that famous passage in The Manifesto of the Communist Party, he means it is as the proletariat organised as the ruling class; not that the workers should conquer the bourgeois state machinery and "wield it for their own purpose". He goes onto say, after this that "[t]he political instrument of their enslavement cannot serve as the political instrument of their emancipation".

But anyway, onto state capitalism (I rambled a lot just now, but it is just about pertinent). How can capitalism exist without a capitalist class? Did the higher echelons of the party -- the bureaucratic clique -- constitute that class? No, I think that is quite dubious. What was so unique about the relationship between the bureaucracy and the means of production, including the working class, that makes what existed in the fSU a distinct mode of production separate from the capitalism/capitalism that preceded it?

[graymouser]

Trotsky's analysis held that the USSR remained stuck in a transitional form between capitalism and socialism, and from there the state degenerated under the bureaucracy but that this did not mean the formation of a new social class as the ruling class. A workers' state has certain advantages (you still see some of them in today's Cuba such as the excellent health care there) but the economic form remains one that cannot persevere in a single country forever.

I think the fall of the Soviet Union is a really interesting case study in why state capitalist analysis is unsound. A number of works have been written on it, but the stand-out fact for me is that the economic privileges of the bureaucracy worked in kind of an unexpected way. The bureaucrats actually had money but they couldn't use it as capital, and they wound up constructing a fairly extensive shadow economy in the USSR based on this private hoarding. It was this second economy that created a material basis for capitalist restoration.

As I see it, the second economy was only possible because the bureaucracy, while they had a monopolized function in terms of production and distribution, did not form a social class. Their accumulation as individuals did not have a sound relation to the transitional economy, and as such eventually they had to privatize the economy in order to transform themselves into a class. The remnants of what should have been a workers' state were blown away. In each case, we've seen different roads to the same thing: a nascent capitalist class forming that has to do away with the nationalization, the state monopoly on foreign trade, and the central planning in order to grow on its own as a class. I think that trend argues fairly strongly against state capitalist theories, and also "third class" theories such as bureaucratic collectivism.

[Queercommie Girl]

Trotsky's analysis held that the USSR remained stuck in a transitional form between capitalism and socialism, and from there the state degenerated under the bureaucracy but that this did not mean the formation of a new social class as the ruling class. A workers' state has certain advantages (you still see some of them in today's Cuba such as the excellent health care there) but the economic form remains one that cannot persevere in a single country forever.

I think the fall of the Soviet Union is a really interesting case study in why state capitalist analysis is unsound. A number of works have been written on it, but the stand-out fact for me is that the economic privileges of the bureaucracy worked in kind of an unexpected way. The bureaucrats actually had money but they couldn't use it as capital, and they wound up constructing a fairly extensive shadow economy in the USSR based on this private hoarding. It was this second economy that created a material basis for capitalist restoration.

As I see it, the second economy was only possible because the bureaucracy, while they had a monopolized function in terms of production and distribution, did not form a social class. Their accumulation as individuals did not have a sound relation to the transitional economy, and as such eventually they had to privatize the economy in order to transform themselves into a class. The remnants of what should have been a workers' state were blown away. In each case, we've seen different roads to the same thing: a nascent capitalist class forming that has to do away with the nationalization, the state monopoly on foreign trade, and the central planning in order to grow on its own as a class. I think that trend argues fairly strongly against state capitalist theories, and also "third class" theories such as bureaucratic collectivism.

Unfortunately the majority of "Trotskyists" in the West today no longer follow Trotsky's own analysis.

[Rafiq]

I simply get the response from the antagonist [or capitalist, rightist etc] saying ‘Well yeah sure.. but why should I believe that any future attempt at a socialist society on implementation and practice won’t end up in corruption & a state capitalist society just like China, Russia, Cuba and every other attempt at socialism.’



Hold up, are you kidding?

Respond to him "Yeah, they didn't fucking start out with Socialism, or even give it a chance, so whatever fucking corrupted wasn't a result from Socialism"

And ask him "Why do you think it'll end up with corruption, or more corruption than capitalism"?

Ugh, there's more, but I'm lazy to type, This is such an easy argument though. (You could also add that even if they did attempt socialism, they were confounded into one state and eventually the World of Capitalism converted them back to it. Socialism in one country can't work)

[Queercommie Girl]

The position that my organisation holds is the orthodox Trotskyist position that Trotsky generally argued for in The Revolution Betrayed. I'm not 100% sure, but I think this argument is based on quite shakey foundations. That is, Trotsky's vulgar conception of what 'socialism' is (as a distinct 'stage' from fully-fledged communism). Basically, nationalised industry controlled by workers, and these workers control the state.


Peter Taafe is much wiser on this issue than you are.

Your point here basically proves what I've been thinking for a while - the CWI rank-and-file is no way as solid analytically as the CWI core.

This is one reason I think it is probably a good thing that I am not actually a member of the CWI, despite critically supporting your organisation on many issues.

Some CWI rank-and-file members are no better than third-campists, left communists and anarchists.

To use a Maoist term, the majority of so-called "Trotskyists" in the West today are like those self-proclaimed "Maoists" in China that fully support Deng Xiaoping, they are revisionists with respect to Orthodox Trotskyism.

This is why I do not label myself as a "Trotskyist", despite agreeing with many of Trotsky's ideas.

[Thirsty Crow]

And what exactly is wrong with Lyev's view?

Rambling about revisionism does not constitute a coherent argument, y'know.

Btw., I'd recommend Paresh Chattopadhyay's analysis as a good source explaining in detail wha it is possible to apply the term "state capitalist": http://www.revleft.com/vb/marxian-concept-capital-t148199/index.html?t=148199&highlight=Marxian+Concept+Capital

[Queercommie Girl]

And what exactly is wrong with Lyev's view?

Rambling about revisionism does not constitute a coherent argument, y'know.

Btw., I'd recommend Paresh Chattopadhyay's analysis as a good source explaining in detail wha it is possible to apply the term "state capitalist": http://www.revleft.com/vb/marxian-concept-capital-t148199/index.html?t=148199&highlight=Marxian+Concept+Capital

I don't accept the doctrine of "state-capitalism" (in this kind of context, the same term has been used in other contexts, which is a different matter).

Revisionism is a sound critique because it rests on the basic idea that our world today isn't fundamentally different from our world in Lenin's and Trotsky's time.

If "state-capitalism" made sense, Trotsky would have applied such a concept back in his day.

Political experience counts, I do not trust what a few rank-and-file members' views (who have been influenced by many Western ideas on political issues) more than I trust what the leading core of a long-standing organisation, or indeed what Trotsky himself have thought.

Nor do I trust the source you suggested, since the guy doesn't even seem to think the October Revolution had any kind of socialist character.

And no I don't have a high opinion of left communism in general. I agree with Lenin that left communism is essentially an "infantile disorder".

[RedSunRising]

You cant generalize about them at all.

[Jose Gracchus]

Iseul: So you'll elect not to engage his claims, positions, and evidence at all because he reaches doctrinally intolerable conclusions?

As for my own view, I would have to say there are good argument for both the "degenerated workers' state" and "state capitalist" theories, as well as "third system" theories. My opinion is that "Leninism in practice" does not constitute a distinct mode of production, or a thorough challenge to the capitalist MOP. Modes of production should rightfully be seen as epochal and necessarily containing, possible transitional forms and dead-ends. "Leninism in practice" should be seen as one of those dead-ends that had peculiar origins, peculiar history, peculiar features, but ultimately went nowhere and returned to conventional capitalism. The only escape from this conclusion, as I see it, is rank idealism or "Great Man"-ism - y'know, this version where this or that bad decision maker or bad ideas infiltrated the workers' state and somehow bloodlessly brought it down. Or the idea that a "workers' state" could remain merely "degenerated" for near sixty years. That said, I think there are clear departures, both juridically and materially, from conventional capitalism. I think these also have something to do with the failure to accomplish Bordiga's criteria for the successful construction of modern capitalism throughout the less developed parts of the world, by the late 1800s.

Basic facts remain, however: the working class - those who sell labor power - were unable to seize real control for themselves as a class of social production. The Russian Revolution necessarily raised this prospect: I think a genuine form of possible transitional society existing from late 1917 to mid-late 1918. The working class' mass organizations managed to overthrow the central institutions of the old capitalist state, progressively expropriate the capitalist class via factory committees, and propose means of organizing social production for the working class. However, many historical tendencies at the time rapidly lead to the consolidation of a dictatorship and state in the bourgeois sense. All parties other than the Bolsheviks were basically repressed. The economy was run top-down in service of the war. Following the war, the working class and radical peasantry attempted to reinvigorate the revolutionary gains of 1917 and 1918, but the Bolshevik leadership used repression against party dissidents and the workers, and restored capitalism as well as regularized the war dictatorship with the party ban and NEP. The party originally still had much working-class content, and although the managers, bureaucrats, and commissars did not form a 'class' and were left with the juridical legacy of workers' bottom-up expropriations, they did reinstate the rule of capital. Sallied with this legacy, the party form which once had been an instrument of the working-class could choose only one of two paths, to abandon the course they had already taken, or complete the tasks which are usually left to the bourgeoisie. It chose the latter, used repression and primitive accumulation via forced collectivization, forced labor, and plunging working class living standards through the vehicle of the national property in order to advance to a modern industrial power. Once this extensive growth process was completed [and which the national property form inherited from the workers' revolution could still play a useful role, in times of forced industrialization, total war, and war reconstruction], the coercive "planned" economy became increasingly a fetter on the expansion of production. Various "market socialist" reforms and measures were progressively introduced: straight directive planning was replaced with profit indicators and the rights of managers' over their enterprise. By the late 70s, many bureaucrats wanted out of the plan-fetish charade for more rationalized capitalism.

Looking backward, I think the USSR was, for the most part, a peculiar historical instance of the capitalist mode of production -- a system of generalized commodity production where the working-class remains under the conditions of wage labor. Because it used the old Marxist movement to propagate itself and to defend itself internationally, it exhibited peculiar juridical and ideological superstructure. Its ruling class is peculiar because it evolved from the wreckage of a workers' revolution, terrible civil war, and the leadership of workers' organizations, but it progressively transformed itself due to its material relations to the means of production, and to the working-class. Obviously in 2011 its not too hard to see this social formation was definitely capable of transforming itself into run-of-the-mill capitalists indistinguishable from their centuries-uninterrupted cousins in Great Britain.

I think the Bolshevik party was essentially ambiguous, and a collective Bonaparte until the consolidation of Stalinism, which was basically the conversion of the bureaucracy into a peculiar capitalist ruling class, that perceived itself running a system of exploitation under the "law of value," and perceived itself as exploiting workers. The Stalinist economy basically existed to accomplish the tasks that Bordiga lays out as the essential conditions for modern capitalism: accumulate national capital stock, drive the peasants off the land and increase agricultural yields and productivity, and discipline the working class. It hobbled along with its peculiar social contract and ideological pretensions, but all attempts to move away from the 'coercive economy' results in forays toward market socialism. What happened in 89 is this class and its daughter ruling classes in Eastern Europe and elsewhere finally had the opportunity to jettison the ideological and social contract baggage, saddle it on their more conservative and least popular representatives, and convert themselves fully into a modern conventional bourgeoisie. It was not a revolution, nor was it a counter-revolution. China was just able to do this in a far more competent and organized fashion, and gradually transition to a classic bourgeoisie- though it still retains politically, outwardly, the Leninist party-state form.

Workers would need similar means of revolution as they would in conventional capitalist states. You would still want a system of real workers' councils responsible to the base - to the real working class itself - with factory councils taking the initiative in expropriating the Stalinists and to organize social production in the conscious pursuit of the interests and needs of the working class, obviously something very different from the juridical fiction of a "public, planned economy" producing for "needs", but in fact an anarchic system driven by capital concerns and ruled by a ruling class from the top down for the purposes of exploitation.

[Lyev]

Peter Taafe is much wiser on this issue than you are.Gee thanks haha


Your point here basically proves what I've been thinking for a while - the CWI rank-and-file is no way as solid analytically as the CWI core.

This is one reason I think it is probably a good thing that I am not actually a member of the CWI, despite critically supporting your organisation on many issues.

Some CWI rank-and-file members are no better than third-campists, left communists and anarchists.Whilst acknowledging, as most folks do, that the USSR was never really socialist, the main point I wanted to get across was that sometimes the state capitalism (Cliffite or otherwise) and "workers' state" theories aren't that coherent either. I don't know the exact class nature of the fSU, but I don't fully subscribe to either of the former theories as well.

[Thirsty Crow]

If "state-capitalism" made sense, Trotsky would have applied such a concept back in his day.
It seems that you have a very poor notion of an argument's coherency and approximation to truth (political authority as the "last instance" of a theory's verification)


Political experience counts, I do not trust what a few rank-and-file members' views (who have been influenced by many Western ideas on political issues) more than I trust what the leading core of a long-standing organisation, or indeed what Trotsky himself have thought.In other words, you are unable to critically evaluate evidence put forward in favour of a thesis. I thought that it was the arguments themselves that matter, and not "revolutionary prestige".
What a slavish attitude.


Nor do I trust the source you suggested, since the guy doesn't even seem to think the October Revolution had any kind of socialist character.Again, political viewpoints are hardly relevant when it comes to a scientific, rigorous application of Marx's methodological and analytical insights to concrete historical and economic practice. I don't agree with Chattopadhyay's conclusion regarding the character of the October Revolution and the Bolesheviks as a political organization. But the economic analysis does not fall with this thesis.


And no I don't have a high opinion of left communism in general. I agree with Lenin that left communism is essentially an "infantile disorder".
That's too bad.

[Zanthorus]

With regards to Trotsky, he had admitted the theoretical possibility of state-capitalism, however his argument was I believe that with the Russian revolution so recent in history, the nature of the Stalinist regime was still murky and not fundamentally decided in any direction at that point. Elsewhere he had said that if Russia survived the Second World War with the bureaucracy intact, it would be necessary to rethink the nature of the regime (His wife actually later broke with the Fourth International over the issue of the characterisation of 'actually-existing' socialism).

[Savage]

To corroborate the above post, here's some of Trotsky's 'The USSR in the War'

“If however we consider that the present war will provoke, not the revolution but the decline of the proletariat, then there is only one possible outcome to the alternative: the further decomposition of monopolist capital, its fusion with the state and the replacement of democracy, where it still survives, by a totalitarian regime. In these conditions, the proletariat’s inability to seize the leadership of society could lead to the development of a new exploiting class emerging from the Bonapartist and fascist bourgeoisies. In all likelihood this would be a regime of decadence, and would signify the twilight of civilisation. We would reach a similar result should the proletariat of the advanced capitalist countries take power and prove unable to hold on to it, abandoning it, as in the USSR, in the hands of a privileged bureaucracy. We would then be forced to recognise that the new decline into bureaucracy was due, not to one country’s backwardness and capitalist environment, but to the proletariat’s organic inability to become a ruling class. We would then have to establish retrospectively that in its fundamental traits today’s USSR is the precursor of a new regime of exploitation on an international scale.
We have strayed a long way from the terminological controversy on the definition of the Soviet state. But our critics should not protest: only by basing ourselves on the necessary historical perspective can we formulate a correct judgement on such a question as the replacement of one social regime by another. Taken to its conclusion, the historical alternative appears thus: either the Stalinist regime is an awful setback in the process of the transformation of bourgeois society into a socialist society, or else the Stalinist regime is the first step towards a new society of exploitation. If the second forecast proved correct, then of course the bureaucracy would become a new exploiting class. However dire this second perspective may appear, should the world proletariat indeed prove itself unable to carry out the mission entrusted to it by the course of historical development, then we would be forced to recognise that the socialist programme, based on the internal contradictions of capitalist society, has finally turned out to be a Utopia. It goes without saying that we would need a new “minimum programme” to defend the interests of the slaves of the totalitarian bureaucratic society”

To the original post, the following are some theories on capital in the USSR,

http://libcom.org/library/paresh-chattopadhyay-marxian-concept-capital-soviet-experience

http://libcom.org/library/doctrine-bordiga

http://libcom.org/library/murder-bordiga

http://theoryandpractice.org.uk/library/fundamentals-revolutionary-communism-part-1-amadeo-bordiga-1957

http://www.lrp-cofi.org/book/index.html

[Niccolò Rossi]

Revisionism is a sound critique because it rests on the basic idea that our world today isn't fundamentally different from our world in Lenin's and Trotsky's time.

If "state-capitalism" made sense, Trotsky would have applied such a concept back in his day.

And yet times have changed. And I say this from the perspective of Trotsky himself.

Trotsky acknowledged that the world war would have had a decisive effect on the fate of the degenerated workers state in Russia - either the destruction of the last remnants of the workers' state or the victory of the world socialist revolution. Faced with the result of the war, the strengthening of the 'degenerated workers state' and the expansion of Stalinism into Eastern Europe, the Trotskyist movement as a whole had to revise and expand upon Trotsky's analysis.

Don't forget, the 'deformed' workers states so precious to the 'Orthodox' Trotskyists like the CWI have nothing to do with Trotsky's own analysis. Trotsky was dead and buried years before their discovery by FI leadership. Revisionists indeed.


Nor do I trust the source you suggested, since the guy doesn't even seem to think the October Revolution had any kind of socialist character.What does this even mean? 'Trust' the source? No one is asking you to 'trust' it, they are asking you to engage with it. Hell, maybe you would even be so kind as to critique it rather than just brush it off as not reputable. What a joke.

Nic.

EDIT: Looks like Zanthorus and Menocchio beat me on both points. Good to see others agree I guess.

[mikelepore]

i wouldn't say those countries were "state capitalist." I would say they had a bureaucratic mode of production, since there wasn't private ownership of means of production, was often forms of centralized state planning, etc.

I would simply poijnt out that the workers directly running production is a necessary condition for an authentic socialism. And that this didn't happen in the socalled "socialist" countries

It give me pleasure to be able to say that I agree completely with what you wrote above ....


because of the state socialist approach of a party running a state, and how this tends to empower a bureaucratic class through the state and party structures.

That is where we diverge in opinion. I think the bureaucratic misdirection happened, not because of a fault in states or parties, but because a political system that doesn't permit and encourage open debates, opposition newspapers, and contested elections, and goesn't guarantee the other civil liberties, cannot receive any real input from the will of the people. The tragegy is that the first country that purportedly tried to implement Marx and Engels wasn't one of the countries that had previously received the philosophical heritage of Rousseau, Locke, Mill and Jefferson. There was, in Russia and in China, an inadequate foundation of the political democracy that is a prerequisite for establishing socialism.

[Jose Gracchus]

What? You think the West is ripe for communist revolution because its already imbibed those progressive liberals?

What if "bourgeois democratic" revolution is no longer possible today? Should the international working class do nothing while its more repressed sections stew? Or are you simply saying the revolution must begin in an advanced capitalist democracy?

[Savage]

Perhaps we should also look at what Lenin himself thought on the subject of state capitalism in Russia,


‘’Reality tells us that state capitalism would be a step forward. If in a small space of time we could achieve state capitalism, that would be a victory.’’
"Economically, state capitalism is immeasurably superior to the present system of economy ...the soviet power has nothing terrible to fear from it, for the soviet State is a state in which the power of the workers and the poor is assured"
"If we introduced state capitalism in approximately 6 months' time we would achieve a great success and a sure guarantee that within a year socialism will have gained a permanently firm hold and will have become invincible in our country".There is no, even vaguely fathomable argument to suggest that socialism (from either the understanding of Marx or Lenin) existed in Russia, as for whether it was capitalist or not there are some very good theories (some aforementioned) that I am yet to see adequate critiques for.

[Zanthorus]

Except those Lenin quotes either come from early 1918 when he was defending the not-so-radical economic policies of the time in the faction fight with the Left Communists, or after 1921 when he was defending the implementation of the NEP. I had also gone into the historical context previously in this (http://libcom.org/forums/theory/lenin-acknowledging-intentional-implementation-state-capitalism-ussr-23032011#comment-421234) libcom post (EDIT: Urgh, the link cuts out the bit after the hash, meaning it links just to the thread. My comment is comment #6 in the thread). In addition to what I said there, it's worth noting that the German-Dutch Left's analysis of 'state-capitalism' began with the transition from war communism to the NEP (Which they were against, judging from the documents of their intervention at the third Comintern congress).

Also:


The tragegy is that the first country that purportedly tried to implement Marx and Engels wasn't one of the countries that had previously received the philosophical heritage of Rousseau, Locke, Mill and Jefferson. There was, in Russia and in China, an inadequate foundation of the political democracy that is a prerequisite for establishing socialism.

The Russian revolution failed because the orientals weren't sufficiently imbued with the doctrines of the western enlightenment to understand the value of political freedom? My eurocentrism sense is tingling, and I'm an infantile ultra-leftist. When I start calling people out on eurocentrism, you know you've got to be doing something wrong.

[graymouser]

Don't forget, the 'deformed' workers states so precious to the 'Orthodox' Trotskyists like the CWI have nothing to do with Trotsky's own analysis. Trotsky was dead and buried years before their discovery by FI leadership. Revisionists indeed.
Er...no, that's actually incorrect. Trotsky had laid out this possibility in "The USSR and War" that Poland could be converted by extension of the Soviet army into an economic form similar to the USSR itself, and was clear that this would be a progressive thing despite the bureaucratic character of the Soviet leadership. The deformed workers' state thesis was worked out according to the same basic lines.

The idea that Trotsky was on the cusp of a "state capitalist" thesis is pretty firmly negated by his own consideration of it - he dismissed it as a conflation of fascist and Soviet economics. The idea is an inherently intellectually sloppy one, and no sound description of its economic basis has ever been given.

[Savage]

Yes, I agree that using Lenin's word as an infallible source for things such as this is not a good idea (particularly at this juncture in his life). I don't believe that he ever refered to Russia directly as capitalist, but he stressed the impossibility of socialism in the progressing Russian scenario, which is probably a more concrete point that can be taken from his analysis.

[Savage]

Er...no, that's actually incorrect. Trotsky had laid out this possibility in "The USSR and War" that Poland could be converted by extension of the Soviet army into an economic form similar to the USSR itself, and was clear that this would be a progressive thing despite the bureaucratic character of the Soviet leadership. The deformed workers' state thesis was worked out according to the same basic lines.
In order to consider the 'deformed workers' state' theory a correct continuation of Trotsky's theory you would probably have to ignore the other section of ''The USSR and War'' which was highlighted earlier.


The idea that Trotsky was on the cusp of a "state capitalist" thesis is pretty firmly negated by his own consideration of it - he dismissed it as a conflation of fascist and Soviet economics.The argument isn't necessarily that he was beginning to adopt a state capitalist analysis, but rather that he thought that without an international socialist revolution that the USSR would become a bourgeois class society,

''either the Stalinist regime is an awful setback in the process of the transformation of bourgeois society into a socialist society, or else the Stalinist regime is the first step towards a new society of exploitation. If the second forecast proved correct, then of course the bureaucracy would become a new exploiting class.''



The idea is an inherently intellectually sloppy one, and no sound description of its economic basis has ever been given.Once again, http://libcom.org/library/paresh-chattopadhyay-marxian-concept-capital-soviet-experience

[Born in the USSR]

The USSR:socialism or state capitalism? http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=1405

[Savage]

The USSR:socialism or state capitalism? http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=1405
I'm sorry, I missed that part in this article where you prove that the USSR was part of a stateless world wherein commodity production and wage labor had been abolished, perhaps you could point that part out for me.

[graymouser]

In order to consider the 'deformed workers' state' theory a correct continuation of Trotsky's theory you would probably have to ignore the other section of ''The USSR and War'' which was highlighted earlier.
No, you would actually have to read the entire essay "The USSR and War" to understand what Trotsky actually meant by "new exploiting class." Suffice it to say that it meant something more like what the bureaucratic collectivist group had discussed, and not a variant of state capitalism. Trotsky considered that the "new exploiting class" would mean an entirely new and uncharted type of class society, when what actually happened was that the degenerated and deformed workers' states grew to a level somewhat below industrial capitalism and then stagnated and eventually restored capitalism. This means that the view of a stuck transitional form remained basically correct, although he was wrong on the timeframe for its return to capitalism.

If you read the bureaucratic collectivist analysis, they were arguing that a new class in Marxist terms had arisen, which had transcended capitalism without liberating workers, in all the western societies. In reality capitalism returned to the forefront, which put to bed any such theories.

[Jose Gracchus]

Of course they weren't the classic bourgeoisie, and developed out of the leadership and bureaucracy of a party-state that emerged from an attempted workers' revolution. However, they did exploit a working-class for whom labor power was sold as a commodity. The law of value was acknowledged to be operating in the Stalinist economy. This is part of the capitalist mode of production. Is it a major deviation? Sure. Did it come with a social contract that included some substantial protections for some workers? Yeah. Does that mean a new social form beyond capitalism, or possibly transitioning toward socialism was possible? No.

The "degenerated workers' state" thesis has some meager merits, when it focuses on how the Soviet ruling class diverged from the classic bourgeoisie, and was formed out the wreckage of a workers' revolution. The Red Army in Poland was not carrying out some 'progressive task', but rather realpolitik in collusion with Nazi Germany. By World War II, the USSR had become an imperialist power. The fact is "DWS" is a kind of apologism for the Soviet system, purporting to show how a society which administers ultimately the rule of capital, under a repressive and autocratic bureaucratic apparatus that silences working class struggles and independent organization, could somehow have "transitional" or "progressive" content [read: Trotsky's opportunism required it].

Trotsky didn't want to admit he and Lenin and the rest of the 'ultra-vanguardists,' if you will, smothered workers' democracy in the cradle in 1918 [one can make the argument that the Civil War required suspending the revolution, but that's ultimately the facts -- and they were certainly not prepared to let it back after Wrangel was wrapped up in Nov 1920], and made sure it stayed there in 1921 while silencing party democracy in order to facilitate the NEP, or a restoration of capitalism. The only real working class content of the USSR in the 1920s was the fact its leaders had once upon a time been major figures in real working-class organizations. The working class had been subsequently crushed, so that means nothing.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Looking backward, I think the USSR was, for the most part, a peculiar historical instance of the capitalist mode of production -- a system of generalized commodity production where the working-class remains under the conditions of wage labor.

[...]

I think the Bolshevik party was essentially ambiguous, and a collective Bonaparte until the consolidation of Stalinism, which was basically the conversion of the bureaucracy into a peculiar capitalist ruling class, that perceived itself running a system of exploitation under the "law of value," and perceived itself as exploiting workers. The Stalinist economy basically existed to accomplish the tasks that Bordiga lays out as the essential conditions for modern capitalism: accumulate national capital stock, drive the peasants off the land and increase agricultural yields and productivity, and discipline the working class.


Whilst acknowledging, as most folks do, that the USSR was never really socialist, the main point I wanted to get across was that sometimes the state capitalism (Cliffite or otherwise) and "workers' state" theories aren't that coherent either. I don't know the exact class nature of the fSU, but I don't fully subscribe to either of the former theories as well.


No, you would actually have to read the entire essay "The USSR and War" to understand what Trotsky actually meant by "new exploiting class." Suffice it to say that it meant something more like what the bureaucratic collectivist group had discussed, and not a variant of state capitalism. Trotsky considered that the "new exploiting class" would mean an entirely new and uncharted type of class society, when what actually happened was that the degenerated and deformed workers' states grew to a level somewhat below industrial capitalism and then stagnated and eventually restored capitalism. This means that the view of a stuck transitional form remained basically correct, although he was wrong on the timeframe for its return to capitalism.

If you read the bureaucratic collectivist analysis, they were arguing that a new class in Marxist terms had arisen, which had transcended capitalism without liberating workers, in all the western societies. In reality capitalism returned to the forefront, which put to bed any such theories.


Of course they weren't the classic bourgeoisie, and developed out of the leadership and bureaucracy of a party-state that emerged from an attempted workers' revolution. However, they did exploit a working-class for whom labor power was sold as a commodity. The law of value was acknowledged to be operating in the Stalinist economy. This is part of the capitalist mode of production. Is it a major deviation? Sure. Did it come with a social contract that included some substantial protections for some workers? Yeah. Does that mean a new social form beyond capitalism, or possibly transitioning toward socialism was possible? No.

The "degenerated workers' state" thesis has some meager merits, when it focuses on how the Soviet ruling class diverged from the classic bourgeoisie, and was formed out the wreckage of a workers' revolution. The Red Army in Poland was not carrying out some 'progressive task', but rather realpolitik in collusion with Nazi Germany. By World War II, the USSR had become an imperialist power. The fact is "DWS" is a kind of apologism for the Soviet system, purporting to show how a society which administers ultimately the rule of capital, under a repressive and autocratic bureaucratic apparatus that silences working class struggles and independent organization, could somehow have "transitional" or "progressive" content [read: Trotsky's opportunism required it].

1) Not every system of generalized commodity production where the working class remains under the conditions of wage labour is capitalist. "Capitalism" emphasizes certain kinds of asset relations, namely private property relations, and re. wage labour it requires a labour market (even a fully socialized labour market would do, but a labour market nonetheless which the Soviet Union from Stalin to the Interregnum never had).

2) How was the USSR an "imperialist" power in Marxist terms?

3) That being said, there is the imperative for proletarian demographic majorities to transition as quickly as possible into the post-monetary lower phase of the communist mode of production and thus transcend generalized commodity production altogether.

[RED DAVE]

1) Not every system of generalized commodity production where the working class remains under the conditions of wage labour is capitalist. "Capitalism" emphasizes certain kinds of asset relations, namely private property relations, and re. wage labour it requires a labour market (even a fully socialized labour market would do, but a labour market nonetheless which the Soviet Union from Stalin to the Interregnum never had).There certainly was a labor market in the USSR. Although it was limited, workers could leave places or work, emigrate to other parts of the USSR, etc.


2) How was the USSR an "imperialist" power in Marxist terms?Ask the people of Eastern Europe, 1945 to about 1985. In any event imperialism is not a crucial feature of capitalism. Many capitalist countries did not engage in imperialst ventures because they were too weak.


3) That being said, there is the imperative for proletarian demographic majorities to transition as quickly as possible into the post-monetary lower phase of the communist mode of production and thus transcend generalized commodity production altogether.Whatever.

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

There certainly was a labor market in the USSR. Although it was limited, workers could leave places or work, emigrate to other parts of the USSR, etc.

Freedom to choose one's occupation isn't the same thing as having a labour market.


Ask the people of Eastern Europe, 1945 to about 1985. In any event imperialism is not a crucial feature of capitalism. Many capitalist countries did not engage in imperialst ventures because they were too weak.

The Soviets did not systematically export industrial capital, trade capital, or finance capital in between.

[Jose Gracchus]

Modern generalized commodity production is the capitalist mode of production. As I've said, it was a major departure from classical capitalism, and in some senses moved decisively away from it, but that call all be laid down to exogenous factors, rather than the formation a truly distinct mode of production with its own laws of motion of production and class dynamics, to use Marxian terminology.


Freedom to choose one's occupation isn't the same thing as having a labour market.

There was definitely a real labor market. There were incentives in housing, access to goods, and pay for workers to be enticed to this-or-that enterprise. Read "The Marxian Concept of Capital."

Soviet imperialism had a political-ideological, military-strategic and international economic dimension. Much in the pattern, however attenuated, of Western imperialist capitalism, outlaying areas of the Eastern Bloc ended up being more service areas and occupying a low wrong in the "division of labor" among the states. What's important to recall is the Stalinist system was an extreme case of capital accumulation where the total national capital takes on the sine qua non of all economic questions. It is the main factor. Right after WW2, much industrial capital was repatriated to the USSR and the Eastern satellites were obliged to make reparations and impoverishing technological and resource transfers. Later on, the imperialism became less rational [hence Gorbachev et al's moves to simply dump it] and based almost fully on self-defense, military calculus. But that still qualifies.

Furthermore, I don't think Lenin's work on imperialism is the last word on it [I do like Luxembourg's critique and work], and certainly does not encompass all Marxist approaches to it.


The Soviets did not systematically export industrial capital, trade capital, or finance capital in between.

Yes they did. See above.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Modern generalized commodity production is the capitalist mode of production. As I've said, it was a major departure from classical capitalism, and in some senses moved decisively away from it, but that call all be laid down to exogenous factors, rather than the formation a truly distinct mode of production with its own laws of motion of production and class dynamics, to use Marxian terminology.

Marx and early Marxist thinkers coughed up the "Asiatic mode of production" to describe varying systems of petty commodity production not characterized by European feudalism or pervasive chattel slave relations.

A CPGB discussion last year served as a critique of this. Likewise, there are two modern approaches to production relations:

- Generalized commodity mode of production, with the bourgeois-fied/"capitalist" subset (private property and labour markets) and other subsets
- Generalized commodity modes of production, with the bourgeois-fied one being just one mode in the family

[This applies to earlier petty commodity production, too.]


There was definitely a real labor market. There were incentives in housing, access to goods, and pay for workers to be enticed to this-or-that enterprise. Read "The Marxian Concept of Capital."

Link?

[Boris Kagarlitsky said that the Soviet Union lacked consumer markets, labour markets, and capital markets. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCrIg0R5p0A&feature=related)]


Soviet imperialism had a political-ideological, military-strategic and international economic dimension. Much in the pattern, however attenuated, of Western imperialist capitalism, outlaying areas of the Eastern Bloc ended up being more service areas and occupying a low wrong in the "division of labor" among the states. What's important to recall is the Stalinist system was an extreme case of capital accumulation where the total national capital takes on the sine qua non of all economic questions. It is the main factor. Right after WW2, much industrial capital was repatriated to the USSR and the Eastern satellites were obliged to make reparations and impoverishing technological and resource transfers. Later on, the imperialism became less rational [hence Gorbachev et al's moves to simply dump it] and based almost fully on self-defense, military calculus. But that still qualifies.

Furthermore, I don't think Lenin's work on imperialism is the last word on it [I do like Luxembourg's critique and work], and certainly does not encompass all Marxist approaches to it.

I stated earlier that the post-WWII industrial plunder and the Aswan Dam project were the only two notable cases of "imperialism" in the Marxist sense (extension of Soviet economic monopoly and capital export, respectively). After Stalin, practically all the satellite states pursued their own development programs independent of "division of labour" pressures from Khrushchev (just look at the market-leaning Kadar in Hungary), and as a result under Brezhnev the Comecon didn't achieve much in the way of integrated planning.

I also stated that Lenin's work isn't the last work, being based on Hilferding and in turn being based on Kautsky even before Hobson.


Yes they did. See above.

The Aswan Dam Project was the only notable case of capital export (i.e., going out of the Soviet Union).

[Jose Gracchus]

A CPGB discussion last year served as a critique of this. Likewise, there are two modern approaches to production relations:

- Generalized commodity mode of production, with the bourgeois-fied/"capitalist" subset (private property and labour markets) and other subsets
- Generalized commodity modes of production, with the bourgeois-fied one being just one mode in the family

[This applies to earlier petty commodity production, too.]

Link? In any case, ones just moving words and definitions around there, in the schema you give. Was the law of value in play in the USSR? Were the associated producers in control of production? Was the working-class subordinated in a wage-labor relation? Was accumulation of capital not a fundamental characteristic of Soviet policy?

http://libcom.org/library/paresh-chattopadhyay-marxian-concept-capital-soviet-experience

Re: Aswan Dam. So what? They looted Eastern Europe to rebuild their industrial plant? How is that not imperialism? It is the Nazi approach to victory.

[Die Neue Zeit]

A CPGB discussion last year served as a critique of this. Likewise, there are two modern approaches to production relations:

- Generalized commodity mode of production, with the bourgeois-fied/"capitalist" subset (private property and labour markets) and other subsets
- Generalized commodity modes of production, with the bourgeois-fied one being just one mode in the family

[This applies to earlier petty commodity production, too.]

Link?

The Asiatic social formation (http://vimeo.com/6188904) (yes, with Boris Kagarlitsky and Mike Macnair)


In any case, ones just moving words and definitions around there, in the schema you give. Was the law of value in play in the USSR? Were the associated producers in control of production? Was the working-class subordinated in a wage-labor relation? Was accumulation of capital not a fundamental characteristic of Soviet policy?

http://libcom.org/library/paresh-chattopadhyay-marxian-concept-capital-soviet-experience

As I stated before, the term "state capitalism" has been stretched and abused. IMO, the final frontier of "state capitalism" happened in most of the satellite states (I'm even using "Marxist-Leninist" conventions). Going too far means losing the class analysis, going to the inner core while ignoring the outer core, the mantle, and the latter's convection currents.


Re: Aswan Dam. So what? They looted Eastern Europe to rebuild their industrial plant? How is that not imperialism? It is the Nazi approach to victory.

The looting stopped in reaction to the Marshall Plan.

[Savage]

No, you would actually have to read the entire essay "The USSR and War" to understand what Trotsky actually meant by "new exploiting class." Suffice it to say that it meant something more like what the bureaucratic collectivist group had discussed, and not a variant of state capitalism. Trotsky considered that the "new exploiting class" would mean an entirely new and uncharted type of class society, when what actually happened was that the degenerated and deformed workers' states grew to a level somewhat below industrial capitalism and then stagnated and eventually restored capitalism. This means that the view of a stuck transitional form remained basically correct, although he was wrong on the timeframe for its return to capitalism.
So the 'Deformed Workers' State' theory is predicated on Trotsky being wrong? I've always found the Trotskyist analysis quite perplexing, it seems the criteria for a workers' state (albeit degenerated or deformed) is not very exclusive if even you consider class societies to be a form of socialism.

[Born in the USSR]

I'm sorry, I missed that part in this article where you prove that the USSR was part of a stateless world wherein commodity production and wage labor had been abolished, perhaps you could point that part out for me.

You are right,I'd have to write about it and I'll do it in a few days,but now you could have guessed yourself that if in the USSR there was no competition and anarchy of production- these inevitable companions of commodity production - commodity production and wage labor.

[Return to the Source]

This thread is full of morons. The OP who compared those who say the USSR, China, etc. were not socialist to the Ayn Rand libertarians who claim the US isn't capitalist is 100% correct, even to the point that neither group is/will be of any consequence to the systems they espouse.

[Savage]

You are right,I'd have to write about it and I'll do it in a few days,but now you could have guessed yourself that if in the USSR there was no competition and anarchy of production- these inevitable companions of commodity production - commodity production and wage labor.
Bordiga has already dealt with resurrected and tenacious proudhonism, your argument is slightly different to Stalin's line, but none the less has already been covered by Chattophadyay.

[mikelepore]

What? You think the West is ripe for communist revolution because its already imbibed those progressive liberals?

My previous post used the word "prerequisite." I believe that political democracy is probably a prerequisite for socialism. This does not mean that a political democracy is going to enact socialism.


What if "bourgeois democratic" revolution is no longer possible today? Should the international working class do nothing while its more repressed sections stew? Or are you simply saying the revolution must begin in an advanced capitalist democracy?

It's possible for the revolution to occur in a politically repressive society, but then there would have to be the coincidence that the education of the majority of the people has occurred in two areas at the same time -- that they have come to understand what Locke understood about democracy and individual freedom, and they have come to understand what Marx understood about the means of production, and both of these awakenings have occurred at the same time. That is unlikely. It's more likely that the people will have already have acquired political democracy as a background assumption, and then sometime later they come to realize that economic class rule is incompatable with the democracy that they already expect.

[Jose Gracchus]

Locke is some great scholar of democratic theory now? I think that's crap. Locke is pretty regressive politics and one of the orthodox theorists of the bourgeoisie.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Bordiga has already dealt with resurrected and tenacious proudhonism, your argument is slightly different to Stalin's line, but none the less has already been covered by Chattophadyay.

Stalin's line was merely a continuation of the Second International line. I'm critical of the latter, but that doesn't mean that line had no strengths whatsoever.

[RNL]

If socialism in one country is impossible, then what does it mean to say the USSR wasn't socialist? Of course it wasn't; if it's impossible to have socialism in one country, then the USSR (a country) can't have been socialist, or have had any prospect of becoming socialist.

You need some way of dealing with that theoretically.

What happens to a socialist revolution when it's isolated? Is there a positive path and a negative path that it can take? Or is there really just a single, relatively prescribed path of degeneration and eventual reversal?

What does a country on its way to socialism look like if the revolution is not spreading internationally? Is there an optimal sort of 'holding pattern' that we can conceive of?

People fall into the trap of thinking in terms of 'socialist countries' and 'capitalist countries' too easily. Like, "Oh, so Cuba's trying out socialism, let's see how that works for them..." As though the notion of 'national economies' is not largely fictitious. The capitalist mode of production is globally dominant, and any attempt at a socialist path will be subordinated to the laws of global capitalism unless and until it can pose a serious opposition to capitalism as a global system.

[mikelepore]

Locke is some great scholar of democratic theory now? I think that's crap. Locke is pretty regressive politics and one of the orthodox theorists of the bourgeoisie.

Obviously, I was talking about the part in Locke about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and not talking about Locke's nonsensical theory of private property.