Question for Marxist-Leninists

[The Man]

Mr. Tim Finnegan threw up a question today that really stumped me:

What were the internal contradictions within the socialist mode of production, as represented by the USSR, which lead that society to transition to capitalism? That is, after all, the only way such a transition could occur, according to Marxist thought.

How do I argue back to this (Respectfully of course)?

[Ismail]

Although written by a Maoist, I still find this a good read: http://freespace.virgin.net/pep.talk/COLLAPSE..htm

[NoOneIsIllegal]

(I'm not trying to be mean if that sounds that way)
I wish people checked the Groups section more, because you seem to create a handful of threads specifically for Marxist-Leninists.

[Jose Gracchus]

Lone kooks conspiring against socialism as double agents for decades or bumbling fellows compelled to do things objectively anti-socialists, but still must be killed like swine, somehow seize control of the party and introduce 'bad policies'. The idea here is to suggest material factors were not really pertinent in socialism, and there's a voluntarist sense with the "right guys, right ideas" it would be a situation where there could have been an alternate outcome. The fact is, the USSR and PRC evolved in specific ways due to material factors just like any other historical state. The fact should be telling that all the major socialist states were Third World national development/anti-colonial forces, or lagging Powers from the Nineteenth Century who never completed a proper transition to industrial capitalism. The 'socialism' completed the primitive accumulation that other major capitalist powers had; it expelled the peasantry from the land and mechanized agriculture, and eventually subjected the majority of the population to wage labor, it built up heavy industry - it completed the both the 'primitive accumulation of capital' and 'extensive growth' phases of maturing industrial capitalism...then immediately stagnated and progressively degenerated toward straight capitalism in stages, beginning with the Khrushchev-Kosygin reforms and just progressed from there. The time that everyone brags about its living standards it was basically in debt and over the hill already, but it had still all those laurels and sweat of Stalinism to rest itself on: Brezhnev's Stagnation.

[Black Sheep]

Ah, dialectics... :rolleyes:
Rosaaa!

[graymouser]

The problem is, there wasn't a major shift when anti-revisionism wants to say it happened - that is, the change from Stalin to Khrushchov was not catastrophic like the change in the 1990s. Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny's book Socialism Betrayed talks pretty extensively about how the material basis for the new capitalist class built itself during the years post-Stalin; they are what we Trots would call Stalinists (CPUSA) but their analysis was sound when you correct for that. They look at how the second economy grew - particularly under Brezhnev - to the point where it held significant power in Soviet society. They see this as being the material basis for the downfall. And I think that's a very sound economic look at it - the economic forms were eroded and overwhelmed by corruption, the black market and underground production.

I haven't read much materialist analysis of the USSR. Most people simply start off from a disgust with it and stay with that, which is a natural reaction but hardly an analysis.

[S.Artesian]

The problem is, there wasn't a major shift when anti-revisionism wants to say it happened - that is, the change from Stalin to Khrushchov was not catastrophic like the change in the 1990s. Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny's book Socialism Betrayed talks pretty extensively about how the material basis for the new capitalist class built itself during the years post-Stalin; they are what we Trots would call Stalinists (CPUSA) but their analysis was sound when you correct for that. They look at how the second economy grew - particularly under Brezhnev - to the point where it held significant power in Soviet society. They see this as being the material basis for the downfall. And I think that's a very sound economic look at it - the economic forms were eroded and overwhelmed by corruption, the black market and underground production.



That's half the story, and an important half; the other half, the one that IMO drives this "first" half, is the interaction of the fSU in the world markets-- the relatively poor agricultural productivity that drove the bureaucracy into the markets for grain, investment, etc. exchanging oil and gas for the hard currency necessary for the imports.

[RED DAVE]

Although written by a Maoist, I still find this a good read: http://freespace.virgin.net/pep.talk/COLLAPSE..htmJust for openers, I find this in the above:


Revisionism is the denial of the necessity for the proletariat to bring about the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie; it is the denial of the necessity for the proletariat to exercise all-round dictatorship over the bourgeoisie; it is the denial of the necessity of protracted class struggle throughout the entire period of the socialist transformation of society. Revisionism is the form that bourgeois ideology takes on within the ranks of the revolutionaries, its material basis is, and this can hardly be overemphasised, the persistence of capitalist relations of production in society.What this neglects is the question of why such capitalist relations persisted. In the case of Maoism, with the block of four classes, such relations were built in.

Maybe this issue will be addressed.

RED DAVE

[Ocean Seal]

Mr. Tim Finnegan threw up a question today that really stumped me:

What were the internal contradictions within the socialist mode of production, as represented by the USSR, which lead that society to transition to capitalism? That is, after all, the only way such a transition could occur, according to Marxist thought.

How do I argue back to this (Respectfully of course)?
The reason for capitalist restoration was the high end bureaucrats who restored capitalism even when unpopular among the many and the party. Those bureaucrats being Deng and Gorbachev both being capitalists with no concern for the people. I think that Gorbachev even acknowledged that his dream was social democracy in the Soviet Union.

[S.Artesian]

The reason for capitalist restoration was the high end bureaucrats who restored capitalism even when unpopular among the many and the party. Those bureaucrats being Deng and Gorbachev both being capitalists with no concern for the people. I think that Gorbachev even acknowledged that his dream was social democracy in the Soviet Union.


That is not a materialist, economic, historical, class analysis. Individuals acting as individuals or individuals do not change historical formations unless they represent economic forces embodied at the very core of those societies.

[S.Artesian]

(I'm not trying to be mean if that sounds that way)
I wish people checked the Groups section more, because you seem to create a handful of threads specifically for Marxist-Leninists.


The emergence, triumph, degeneration and collapse of the Russian Revolution, the single greatest event in human history is not a discussion simply for groups or tendencies.

[NoOneIsIllegal]

The emergence, triumph, degeneration and collapse of the Russian Revolution, the single greatest event in human history is not a discussion simply for groups or tendencies.
Yes, I'm aware of that. However, he creates a lot of threads, which specifically say in the title for Marxist-Leninists ;)

[S.Artesian]

Yes, I'm aware of that. However, he creates a lot of threads, which specifically say in the title for Marxist-Leninists ;)
Ahhh.......I see. OK.