Working class during Khrushchev-Brezhnev era was not the owner of the means of produc

[Delenda Carthago]

The working class in the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period was no longer the owner of the means of production


The restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union (1953-1990).
The working class in the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period was no longer the owner of the means of production
a. Socialist production relations were replaced with capitalist production relations
It is known that “no matter what the economic forms of production are, the workers and the means of production remain always its factors” and that “for production to take place they must unite” (K. Marx). The essence of this relation in the production process, that is, the essence of the production relations is determined by the ownership relations - the form of ownership is the essential and the main feature of the production relations – which social class has the ownership of the means of production and how the union of the producers with the means of production is realized and this is precisely what distinguishes the different epochs of social organization: “the particular way that this union is realized distinguishes the different economic epochs of social structure” (K. Marx): slave-owning, feudal, capitalist and socialist-communist system (ownership is here a historical-economic, not a legal, category).
After the victorious October armed uprising, and the complete smashing of the bourgeois state machinery, the working class of Russia took the political power, established the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and, over the next years, proceeded gradually to all the necessary revolutionary changes in the sphere of economy, the socialization of all means of production abolishing the capitalist relations of production and thus making the new socialist-communist relations of production.
Upon the establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the working class became the dominant class in the socialist Soviet Union not only politically but also economically: it became the owner of the means of production. As a social class, it possessed and controlled the means of production through the Dictatorship of the Proletariat guided by the communist party: “the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is complete only if it is led by one party, the Communist Party, which does not and cannot share power with other parties” (Stalin).
In this way, the separation of the direct producers, i.e. of the working class, from the means of production was terminated – a characteristic feature of the capitalist mode of production and the proletariat – and the historically last form of exploitation, the capitalist, was eliminated.
The abolition of the capitalist ownership (private-state) in the means of production eliminated the antagonistic contradiction between production forces and production relations.
In contrast, the overthrow of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat after the death-assassination of Joseph Stalin (March 1953) and its replacement with the dictatorship of the emerging bourgeois class not only resulted in the loss of power from the working class – it was not any more the dominant class in the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period – but also in the loss of control over the means of production; the working class was not any more the owner of the means of production which hitherto controlled and possessed as a class through the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
A few years later, in the 22nd Congress of CPSU (1961), even the soviet revisionists themselves admitted that there was neither a state of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in the Soviet Union after 1953 nor a communist party and that these had been replaced by, respectively, the “all people’s state”, that is, the dictatorship of the new bourgeoisie, and the “all people’s party”, that is, a bourgeois social democratic type of party.
The fact that the working class in the Soviet Union of the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period had lost its historical mission as a leading social force and that, moreover, had been permanently removed from the management of the economy, and, therefore, was not any more the owner of the means of production is reflected in the following:
First, in the overthrow of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat - through which the working classowned the means of production – and its replacement with the dictatorship of the new bourgeoisie, that is, from the change of the state’s class character: transformed from a state of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to “all people’s state”, i.e. the dictatorship of the new bourgeoisie.
Second, in the change of its party’s class character: from a revolutionary communist party – that expressed, defended its interests and led the Dictatorship of the Proletariat – it became an “all people’s party”, that is, a bourgeois social democratic type of party, which no longer was guided by the worldview of the proletariat, the revolutionary Marxism, i.e. Leninism-Stalinism but by the bourgeois ideological-political current of the Khrushchevian revisionism. This party was on the forefront of the capitalist reforms that eliminated socialism-communism and brought about the restoration of the capitalist production relations.
Third, in the loss of control over the means of production that obviously deprived the working class of the capacity to “have a say” in the state and in the economy, that is, in the control and management of the production
Fourth, in the industrial units where, according to the 1965 reforms, only the manager decided what would be produced, determined the wages and, in addition, how many workers would be hired and how many would be fired, leaving the working class as simple production force, like in the traditional capitalism of the western countries
Fifth, in the appropriation and distribution of the social product which the working class also did not influence in the least.
In the process of capitalist restoration, the overthrow of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and its replacement with the “all people’s state” was unavoidably accompanied with the elimination of the socialist-communist production relations and their replacement with capitalist ones. The change in the class character of the state was the cause of the complete change in the content of the property relations – the most important element of the production relations – that is to say, the transformation of socialist to capitalist ownership that preceded the change of the other elements of the production relations like the distribution, the exchange relations etc. which were also converted from socialist-communist to capitalist relations. It could not happen otherwise since the character and the content of ownership is dependent on and determined by the state’s character (in this case by the “all people’s state”).
Of course, the state property in the economy of the Soviet Union for a number of reasons that are beyond the scope of the article was not divided in smaller parts but it retained its form. However, the content of this property had radically changed: it had lost the socialist-communist character and it was transformed to state-capitalist property.
1. The capitalist character of the state enterprises and cooperatives
1.1 State enterprises
During the Leninist-Stalinist period (1917-1953), especially after the construction of the economic foundation of the socialist-communist society, the state property constituted of the two forms of socialist-communist property (state and collective/cooperative). It was the dominant and the most advanced form of property in the socialist economy of the Soviet Union to the level of which the collective/cooperative property was developing so that they will be finally merged in the unified communist property through the tractor stations. The latter were abolished by the bourgeois-socialdemocratic CPSU in 1958 and as a consequence not only the merging of these two forms of property was cancelled but their content was radically altered.
The state enterprises were socialist because they constituted collective social property of the working class that controlled and managed through the Dictatorship of the Proletariat under the guidance of the communist party. It was the presence of the state of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat which determined the socialist character of the state enterprises because, as it is known, state property is not by itself socialist (due to belonging to the state) but because it is in the hands of the state of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, thus, in the hands of the working class.
Precisely for this reason, the state property in socialism-communism has a completely opposite social content and orientation than state property in the capitalist and revisionist countries being in the hands of the exploiting bourgeoisie. It is obvious that the bourgeois nationalization has nothing in common with the socialist nationalization of the means of production carried out by the state of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and results in the abolition of capitalist exploitation.
For as long as the capitalists remain the ruling class, state property is a form of capitalist property, a state monopoly property, in which exploitation of workers prevails: “as long as the proprietor classes stay in power, nationalization does not amount to elimination of exploitation but only to the change of its form” (Fr. Engels), because the bourgeois state is still the state of the capitalists, the defender of capitalist exploitative system.
The course of Soviet Union in the path of socialism-communism was halted when the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was overthrown and replaced by the bourgeois “all people’s state” resulting in the loss of the control-property of the state enterprises from the working class.
The change of the state’s class character radically altered the content of the enterprises in the economy of the Soviet Union: from socialist they were transformed to capitalist enterprises since it is the state’s character that determines the character of state enterprises, in this case the bourgeois “all people’s state” , that is, the dictatorship of the new bourgeoisie.
The anti-Marxist claim made by the Khrushchevian revisionists, that socialism was allegedly preserved in the Soviet Union after 1953 due to presence of state enterprises, does not have any basis because it was precisely the new state, i.e. the bourgeois “all people’s state” that determined the capitalist character of the state enterprises during that period. If one accepts this false and totally baseless claim, then one is obliged to regard as “socialist” state enterprises of the western capitalist countries or to regard as “socialist” even the “Bismarckian kind nationalizations” or to call socialist “the institutions like the Royal Maritime Company or the Royal Porcelain Manufacture” (Fr. Engels: “Anti-Dühring”, 1877).
Besides the fact that the character of the state enterprises is primarily determined by the character of the political power, that is, by which class has the political power and the corresponding class state, the capitalist character of the state enterprises is also reflected in how they function and the purpose of the production. The state enterprises of the Krushchevian period were fully autonomous commodity producers that worked on the basis of complete economic self-sufficiency (= «Chosrastschot» = «Wirtschaftliche Rechnungsfuehrung») guided by private-financial criteria (Profit-Efficiency) and had profit as their exclusive purpose. More accurately, the purpose of the state enterprises was the maximization of profit, like in the traditional capitalism of the western countries, and not, any more, the satisfaction of society’s ever increasing needs. The profit maximization, pursued through the price increases, was admitted by the soviet revisionists themselves: “there are enterprises the directors of which do not see only the reduction of expenses as the source of profit but also the illegal determination of prices. The directors of enterprises who set higher prices in their own orders, place their own private-business interests above those of the whole society and, in this way, they cause damage to the state” (“Soviet Science”, 8/1969).
So, after the launch of the capitalist reforms, the large enterprises of various branches in the economy of the Soviet Union and the other revisionist countries that could increase their profit not through the increase of production and the decrease of expenses but through the increase of prices “in the example of the capitalist monopolies” (O. Lange) ended up to that point correctly predicted, already from 1957, by the world famous Polish revisionist economist Oscar Lange: “in the case of the larger enterprises, it is feared that they will come to an agreement among themselves and set high prices. If this happens then the enterprise will lose its socialist character and we will have a syndicated monopoly. Every enterprise, or group of enterprises, in an agreement among themselves, would be de facto owners of the means of production and not managers of the total social product and would pursue to extract the maximum profits through the determination of prices favorable to them. In this case, production would not serve the best possible fulfillment of the whole society and the driving force of production would be the pursue of profit by these individual enterprises, of their staff or the united enterprises and this would have nothing in common with socialism” (O. Lange) (our underlining)
This development was observed, and openly confirmed and admitted after published articles in the revisionist press: “our experience shows a dangerous trend for arbitrary determination of prices” («Voprosi Ekonomikii», 6/1970) “the producer dictates the prices… and often maintains shortages of special goods to increase pressure on the consumer” («Ekonomicheskije Nauki», 11/1971).
Besides, one of basic goals of the capitalist reform of 1965 was, among other things, the establishment in various branches of the economy of the Soviet Union of large monopolistic enterprises and complexes, monopolistic unions that took the form of combines, trusts and cartels or as it was often mentioned “one combine, one trust” in «Verordnung ueber den sozialistischen staatlichen Produktionsbetrieb» (4 October 1965) and permanently repeated later in various other publications «Organizacija Upravlenija Promishljenih Objedihjenjij», p. 16, Kiev 1980), etc
1.2 Cooperatives
The cooperative and collective farm property was the second and less advanced form of the socialist-communist economy of the Soviet Union at its socialist stage in the Leninist-Stalinist period (1917-1953).
Cooperatives in socialism is not of course a new phenomenon since they also exist in capitalism where they have, however, a completely different character: they represent a capitalist form of economy, because the means of production belong to the capitalists who control the economy and exploit the farmers while, at the same time, constitute the politically dominant class organized in the bourgeois state: “in the capitalist state, cooperatives are no doubt collective capitalist institutions” (Lenin: “On Cooperation”, 1923).
What determined the socialist character of the cooperatives in the Soviet Union of Lenin-Stalin was the working class rule, i.e. the presence of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat the state of which owned the basic means of production. In connection to this, Lenin pointed out: “the system of civilized cooperators, given social ownership of the means of production, given the class victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, the system of civilized cooperators is precisely the system of socialism” (Lenin: “On Cooperation”, 1923) “under our system, cooperative enterprises differ from the private-capitalist enterprises because they are collective enterprises, but do not differ from socialist enterprises if the land on which they are situated and means of production belong to the state, i.e., the working-class” (Lenin: “On Cooperation”, 1923)
Therefore, the element that determines the character (capitalist or socialist) of the cooperative property is the class nature of the state.
Following the prevalence of the Khrushchevian revisionist counter-revolution the overthrow of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and its replacement with the “all people’s state” in the Soviet Union, the working class and the peasants lost the power, while at the same time the character of the cooperatives changed: from a socialist form of property, cooperative property became a capitalist one, the cooperatives were converted to a capitalist form of economy and operated, too, as individual autonomous commodity producers, as the state enterprises, on the basis of complete economic self-sufficiency and guided by the private-financial criteria of Profit-Efficiency.
Besides the presence of state and cooperative capitalist property in the economy of the Soviet Union, the capitalist reforms paved the path to the development of a private capitalist sector in agriculture, small industry, services, in different professions etc. Next to the state-cooperative sector, the emerging private sector became an important part of the economy thanks to the financial support from the state (laws, credits, etc). The development of the private sector was such that the small capitalist property was formally recognized in various articles of the new Brezhnev constitution (1977). This capitalist property took much larger dimensions since: “small production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale” (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XXV, pp.173 and 189).
The private capitalist sector under the form of “auxiliary household of the collective farmers” and “workers and employees” – terms that the Krushchevian-Brezhnevites used to conceal the private capitalist businesses in agriculture, in small industry and elsewhere – was under constant expansion and development, achieving an increasingly bigger contribution in the production of agricultural goods: “according to 1970 data, 38% of all vegetables, 35% of meat and 53% of eggs were produced in the auxiliary households of the Soviet Union” (Political Economy, v. 5, p. 310, Athens 1980). According to “Liternaturnaja Gazeta” (11/5/1977), the private capitalist sector includes 3.6 million hectares of arable land which produce 31% of dairy products, 59% of potatoes etc. Towards the middle 1970’s, the arable land increased to 7.5 million hectares yielding the 64% of potatoes, 42% of meat, 40% of milk, 65% of eggs, 20% of woolen of the total production. What must be noted is the constant increase of the volume of production coming from the private capitalist sector at the expense of the production coming from the cooperatives.
In the 1977 constitution – the constitution of the capitalist restoration – despite the abundant “socialist” demagogy, it was openly formulated and, for the first time, legally established that the “soviet” state of that period was not the Dictatorship of the Proletariat but the bourgeois “all people’s state”, i.e. the dictatorship of the new bourgeoisie. In addition, all the capitalist reforms were legally ascertained including (article 16) the capitalist principles of “economic autonomy and initiative of the enterprises” (p. 47), of the “economic self-sufficiency” (p. 48), the “profit, cost and other economic levers and incentives (p.48).
Apart from the establishment of state and cooperative property as forms of capitalist property in various articles of the new bourgeois constitution, the right to forms of private capitalist property was also established (articles 13 and 17) using phrases such as “supplementary part of land”, “parts of land provided the state and the collective farms according to the law on the supplementary household for tree and vegetable growing” (p. 46), “private labor in the sphere of small industry, agriculture, services… and other forms of labor activity” (p. 48) which doesn’t include only small pieces of land but it constitutes a large private sector of the economy.


To be continued with: b. In the commodity economy of the Soviet Union, labor power had been anew converted to commodity.


http://anasintaxi-en.blogspot.com/2011/09/working-class-in-khrushchev-brezhnev.html

[Rafiq]

Assassination of Stalin? What is this crap?

[Ismail]

Assassination of Stalin? What is this crap?Actually Molotov in his memoirs asserts that Beria said to him and others that he "saved them all" from Stalin.

Hoxha believed that Stalin was poisoned with the knowledge of Khrushchev. Hoxha also wrote in The Khrushchevites, "Dimitrov, Gottwald and Bierut, all died in Moscow. What a coincidence! The three of them were comrades of the great Stalin!" When Hoxha went to Moscow in 1960 and notably denouncing Khrushchev he was afraid of leaving via plane lest an "accident" occur and refused to eat any of the food given to him, especially when he found out that the room he was staying in (he was attending the international meeting of communist parties) was bugged.

As a note this group that AttackGr copy-pasted from is the pro-Hoxha party in Greece. They're probably most notable for criticizing Ludo Martens' Another View of Stalin as a fundamentally anti-Stalin work. See: http://anasintaxi-en.blogspot.com/2008/04/concerning-certain-distortions-of.html

[Geiseric]

Ohh... poor stalin... It would be so delightfully ironic if he himself was purged.

[Ismail]

Ohh... poor stalin... It would be so delightfully ironic if he himself was purged.Being slowly poisoned to death and losing consciousness isn't exactly being "purged."

[Tommy4ever]

There is a genuinely very strong theory that Stalin was deliberately killed.

[Rafiq]

Actually Molotov in his memoirs asserts that Beria said to him and others that he "saved them all" from Stalin.

Hoxha believed that Stalin was poisoned with the knowledge of Khrushchev. Hoxha also wrote in The Khrushchevites, "Dimitrov, Gottwald and Bierut, all died in Moscow. What a coincidence! The three of them were comrades of the great Stalin!" When Hoxha went to Moscow in 1960 and notably denouncing Khrushchev he was afraid of leaving via plane lest an "accident" occur and refused to eat any of the food given to him, especially when he found out that the room he was staying in (he was attending the international meeting of communist parties) was bugged.

As a note this group that AttackGr copy-pasted from is the pro-Hoxha party in Greece. They're probably most notable for criticizing Ludo Martens' Another View of Stalin as a fundamentally anti-Stalin work. See: http://anasintaxi-en.blogspot.com/2008/04/concerning-certain-distortions-of.html

Wow, I suppose Stalin could have been killed, after all. Speaking of Beria, though, (I'm not trolling, this is actually something I have always wondered) What did Stalin have to say about him being a rapist and a pedophile? Is that part of the reason Stalin was going to get rid of him? I've just always wondered... I knew Stalin needed him for the war and all but what about after that?

[RED DAVE]

Upon the establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the working class became the dominant class in the socialist Soviet Union not only politically but also economically: it became the owner of the means of production. As a social class, it possessed and controlled the means of production through the Dictatorship of the Proletariat guided by the communist party: “the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is complete only if it is led by one party, the Communist Party, which does not and cannot share power with other parties” (Stalin).Frankly, if I want a fantasy, I far prefer "Shrek IV."

RED DAVE

[o well this is ok I guess]

Frankly, if I want a fantasy, I far prefer "Shrek IV."

RED DAVE Shrek IV sucked, man.
Land Before Time was the best ever.

[scarletghoul]

Great article, thanks for posting

[Yuppie Grinder]

Implying that the means of economic production was commonly owned under Stalinism?

[Sir Comradical]

So wait, the working class owned the means of production under Stalin?

Wow.

[scarletghoul]

yes.

[the desire to rebel]

Can someone please tell me how did the workers control the means of production under either Stalin or Lenin?

Lenin himself said that in the society the bolsheviks were building the state would own the means of production, so yeah, there is a huge difference between workers control and state bureaucracy.

"Socialism is nothing but state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people" (That´s Lenin´s btw)

[Seth]

They weren't under anyone else either.


Frankly, if I want a fantasy, I far prefer "Shrek IV."

RED DAVE

Funny, I thought you preferred "The Revolution Betrayed" like somehow Stalin changed anything, other than NEP like he was supposed to.

[Seth]

Beria was a very slimy character so it wouldn't surprise me.

[Die Neue Zeit]

For all the speculation, Beria after WWII was simply not in an organizational position to either orchestrate or hasten Stalin's death.

[Ismail]

"Socialism is nothing but state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people" (That´s Lenin´s btw)It doesn't help that this quote does not seem to exist in Lenin's Collected Works, or the translation given by the left-communists is so different from the edition in the Collected Works.

It also doesn't help that the best sources for it are Wikiquotes, Tony Cliff and Paul Mattick.

In any case Lenin spoke of the positive role of state-capitalism during the NEP period. This was before the USSR could begin the construction of socialism. It is different from the meaning adopted with the restoration of capitalism in the 1960's where the proletarian dictatorship was liquidated in favor of the reestablished dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

Under Lenin and Stalin the workers controlled the means of production through the vanguard and through the trade unions which had tasks completely unique to them, as day-to-day administrators of factories and workplaces in cooperation with managers. The state itself was ruled by the dictatorship of the proletariat, which was expressed not only through the vanguard but also by the soviets, which were the form in which the proletarian dictatorship was exercised on an administrative level under Russian conditions. Production in the USSR was to the benefit of the people and up until the 1950's greater steps were made to consolidate the gains of the construction of socialism in the main which would allow for the transition to the higher stage of socialism, i.e. communism. One of these which was to be carried out was the gradual replacement of commodities with products-exchange in the relations between town and country (which was abandoned after Stalin died.)

Here's an article discussing products-exchange from 1953: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv13n1/smolin.htm

Here's a short article on what socialism is: http://ml-review.ca/aml/CLASSES/Course8-CL.htm

[the desire to rebel]

In any case Lenin spoke of the positive role of state-capitalism during the NEP period. This was before the USSR could begin the construction of socialism. It is different from the meaning adopted with the restoration of capitalism in the 1960's where the proletarian dictatorship was liquidated in favor of the reestablished dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.



Well, the NEP was implemented on April of 1921, by then the revolution was almost dead: the soviets had been pretty much rendered useless, the bolshevik party had crushed the Kronstadt rebellion, and the red army had destroyed the Makhnovist revolution.

Now, most libertarian socialists agree that what Lenin said was pretty different with what Lenin actually did (I am mainly referring to the april thesis & state and revolution), and by this I mean implementing state capitalism, destruction of the worker councils, establishing a new bureaucracy and dictatorship of the bolshevik party while months ago he was shouting "all power to the soviets".

I think that if we look at the facts we get to the conclusion that Lenin´s dictatorship of the proletariat (which actually ment dictatorship of the party over the proletariat) was nothing like the one Marx wrote about, actually Marx was not an authoritarian and he opposed state socialism.

[Ismail]

Marx did not live to see the dictatorship of the proletariat in action except in the very limited form of the Paris Commune. In Stalin's words Marx envisioned a "democratic republic," not the soviet form of organization which was built up under the unique conditions of Russia. It was Lenin who outlined the necessity of the vanguard and elaborated upon the role of the state.

Engels, of course, wrote "On Authority" in response to the Bakuninists and other "anti-authoritarian" currents within the First International: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm

A mechanical interpretation of the existence of "worker councils" with the dictatorship of the proletariat gets us nowhere. Having "councils" no more gets anyone closer to proletarian dictatorship anymore than the "power" of trade unions did, which is why Lenin condemned both those who fetishized councils and those who fetishized trade unions. In Yugoslavia the existence of "councils," as in Venezuela and other capitalist states, were little more than a demagogic and social-democratic way in which the worker exercised "influence" without either promoting a collective attitude or actually exercising proletarian rule. Of course you probably presuppose the abolition of a state and reject the proletarian dictatorship to begin with, but as Lenin noted that would just make you an ultra-leftist.

Trotsky, drawing from Lenin, actually had a good quote on this:

"The proletariat can take power only through its vanguard. In itself the necessity for state power arises from the insufficient cultural level of the masses and their heterogeneity. In the revolutionary vanguard, organised in a party, is crystallised the aspiration of the masses to obtain their freedom. Without the confidence of the class in the vanguard, without support of the vanguard by the class, there can be no talk of the conquest of power. In this sense the proletarian revolution and dictatorship are the work of the whole class, but only under the leadership of the vanguard. The Soviets are the only organised form of the tie between the vanguard and the class. A revolutionary content can be given this form only by the party... the fact that this party subordinates the Soviets politically to its leaders has, in itself, abolished the Soviet system no more than the domination of the conservative majority has abolished the British parliamentary system."
(Leon Trotsky. Stalinism and Bolshevism: Concerning the Historical and Theoretical Roots of the Fourth International. New York: Pioneer Publishers. 1937. p. 22.)

The bands of Makhno were actually antithetical to proletarian revolution, considering that they were entirely based on the peasantry and reflected the interest of certain peasant strata against the proletariat. On Makhno see: http://www.isreview.org/issues/53/makhno.shtml

[Manic Impressive]

how can you say that it was a dictatorship of the proletariat under Lenin when the party only consisted of 500,000 members most of whom could not even vote at the party conference?

"Our central committee has decided to deprive certain categories of party members of the right to vote at the congress of the party. Certainly it is unheard of to limit the right to voting within the party, but the entire party has approved this measure, which is to assure the homogeneous unity of the communists. So that in fact, we have 500,000 members who manage the entire state machine from top to bottom."

Zinoviev report to the first congress of the third international 1920

So we have state capitalism and dictatorship not just for the other 180 million people in Russia but even within the precious vanguard.

[Delenda Carthago]

It doesn't help that this quote does not seem to exist in Lenin's Collected Works, or the translation given by the left-communists is so different from the edition in the Collected Works.

It also doesn't help that the best sources for it are Wikiquotes, Tony Cliff and Paul Mattick.

In any case Lenin spoke of the positive role of state-capitalism during the NEP period. This was before the USSR could begin the construction of socialism. It is different from the meaning adopted with the restoration of capitalism in the 1960's where the proletarian dictatorship was liquidated in favor of the reestablished dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

Under Lenin and Stalin the workers controlled the means of production through the vanguard and through the trade unions which had tasks completely unique to them, as day-to-day administrators of factories and workplaces in cooperation with managers. The state itself was ruled by the dictatorship of the proletariat, which was expressed not only through the vanguard but also by the soviets, which were the form in which the proletarian dictatorship was exercised on an administrative level under Russian conditions. Production in the USSR was to the benefit of the people and up until the 1950's greater steps were made to consolidate the gains of the construction of socialism in the main which would allow for the transition to the higher stage of socialism, i.e. communism. One of these which was to be carried out was the gradual replacement of commodities with products-exchange in the relations between town and country (which was abandoned after Stalin died.)

Here's an article discussing products-exchange from 1953: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv13n1/smolin.htm

Here's a short article on what socialism is: http://ml-review.ca/aml/CLASSES/Course8-CL.htm


Not only the soviets. What the "levers" as Lenin and Stalin described them, between the State and the society were four.
The syndicates(with massive presence by the workers), the soviets, the associations, the Youth Federation, and then the Communist Party. Between all of them, there were more than 20.000.000 participating in the management of the State.

THE PARTY AND THE WORKING CLASS IN THE SYSTEM OF THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1926/01/25.htm)

[Delenda Carthago]

And just to make this clear, since tendecies are more important in here than politics, I am not a...hoxhaist and I dont care about Mao either. I live in a country that is in the close core of EU, I am not looking for answers to a third world movement. I just care about historical restoration.

[Manic Impressive]

Not only the soviets. What the "levers" as Lenin and Stalin described them, between the State and the society were four.
The syndicates(with massive presence by the workers), the soviets, the associations, the Youth Federation, and then the Communist Party. Between all of them, there were more than 20.000.000 participating in the management of the State.

comrade Zinoviev disagrees

p.s. didn't you used to be an anarchist or am I confusing you with someone else?

[Ismail]

At that time the "Democratic Centralist" group and the "Workers' Opposition" were opposing the Leninist line of the Party and worked to disrupt it. It is also true that the ratio of party members to the rest of the population was obviously very low, but this ignores the "transmission belts," such as the trade unions, the youth organizations, various culture and women's organizations, literacy organizations, etc.

As Lenin wrote, "What happens is that the Party, shall we say, absorbs the vanguard of the proletariat, and this vanguard exercises the dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship cannot be exercised or the functions of government performed without a foundation such as the trade unions. These functions, however, have to be performed through the medium of special institutions which are also of a new type, namely, the Soviets. What are the practical conclusions to be drawn from this peculiar situation? They are, on the one hand, that the trade unions are a link between the vanguard and the masses, and by their daily work bring conviction to the masses, the masses of the class which alone is capable of taking us from capitalism to communism. On the other hand, the trade unions are a 'reservoir' of the state power. This is what the trade unions are in the period of transition from capitalism to communism. In general, this transition cannot be achieved without the leadership of that class which is the only class capitalism has trained for large-scale production and which alone is divorced from the interests of the petty proprietor. But the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of that class, because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries) that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of the class. The whole is like an arrangement of cogwheels. Such is the basic mechanism of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and of the essentials of transition from capitalism to communism... we have here a complex arrangement of cogwheels which cannot be a simple one; for the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised by a mass proletarian organisation. It cannot work without a number of 'transmission belts' running from the vanguard to the mass of the advanced class, and from the latter to the mass of the working people. In Russia, this mass is a peasant one." (Source (http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/TUTM20.html))

[Delenda Carthago]

comrade Zinoviev disagrees

p.s. didn't you used to be an anarchist or am I confusing you with someone else?
I dont support anything unconditionaly. I search for answers.

[Manic Impressive]

ah so because they disagreed with Lenin they could not vote? That pretty much seems like a dictatorship of one. Perhaps they had not absorbed enough revolutionary energy?

[Ravachol]

Under Lenin and Stalin the workers controlled the means of production through the vanguard and through the trade unions which had tasks completely unique to them, as day-to-day administrators of factories and workplaces in cooperation with managers.

And today we control our means of production through the elected parliamentary representatives, owning stocks and the works councils! :rolleyes:

[Manic Impressive]

If the SU was state capitalist under Lenin as we've already established, did socialism come under Stalin? how long was the SU socialist in your opinion 25 years? 30?

[Ismail]

And today we control our means of production through the elected parliamentary representatives, owning stocks and the works councils! :rolleyes:Workers in the USSR didn't exercise ownership via "stocks." There weren't "workers' councils" in the USSR either. The Soviets also signified more than mere parliamentary representatives.


did socialism come under Stalin? how long was the SU socialist in your opinion 25 years? 30?Under Stalin the USSR constructed socialism in the main, yes. It was during the First and Second Five-Year Plans.

"We have achieved only the first, the lower phase, of communism. Even this first phase of communism, socialism, is far from being completed, it is built only in the rough.

In our country the parasitic classes, i.e., all and sundry capitalists and little capitalists, have been liquidated. Thanks to this, the exploitation of man by man has been abolished. This is not only a gigantic step forward in the lives of the peoples of our country, but also a gigantic step forward along the road of emancipation of the whole of mankind.

We, however, have not fully carried out the task of abolishing classes, although the working class of the U.S.S.R. which is in power is no longer a proletariat in the strict sense of the word, and the peasantry, the great bulk of which has joined the collective farms, is no longer the old peasantry.

Both the two classes which exist in the U.S.S.R. are building socialism and come within the system of socialist economy. But although both are in the same system of socialist economy, the working class in its work is bound up with state socialist property (the property of the whole people), while the collective farm peasantry is bound up with cooperative and collective farm property which belongs to individual collective farms and to collective-farm and cooperative associations. This connection with different forms of socialist property primarily determines the different position of these classes. This also determine the somewhat different paths of further development of each of them.

What is common in the development of these two classes is that both are developing in the direction of communism. As this proceeds the difference in their class positions will be gradually obliterated until here too the last remnants of class distinctions finally disappear.

We cannot but realize that this is a long road."
(V.M. Molotov. The Constitution of Socialism: Speech Delivered at the Extraordinary Eighth Congress of Soviets of the U.S.S.R., November 29, 1936. Co-operative Publishing Society of Workers in the U.S.S.R.: Moscow. 1937. pp. 28-29.)

After the death of Stalin revisionist elements within the CPSU began dismantling the policies of Lenin and Stalin. The machine-tractor stations were dissolved in 1958 which significantly increased commodity relations in the countryside. In the 1960's and 70's various "decentralizing" economic measures were taken which established profit as the motivating force of production. The links in my signature go into detail on this point. In the 1960's Enver Hoxha noted that the policies of Khrushchev, Kosygin, Brezhnev, etc. were opening the road for the restoration of capitalism. In 1971 Hoxha noted that the 24th Congress of the CPSU was "the Congress of the restoration of capitalism" and by the 7th Congress of the Party of Labour of Albania in 1976 noted that in the USSR "capitalism has been restored in all fields."

[Savage]

It doesn't help that this quote does not seem to exist in Lenin's Collected Works, or the translation given by the left-communists is so different from the edition in the Collected Works.

It also doesn't help that the best sources for it are Wikiquotes, Tony Cliff and Paul Mattick.

Mattick's citation is of Lenin's 'Toward the Seizure of Power', which is apparently found in the 21st volume of his collected works. I don't know if this can be found on MIA or not.

Anyway, no one should take what Lenin (or any other leader) says about the character of their own regimes as an unquestionable truth, especially not left communists (there seems to be plently of left coms who act like this, despite the implication of our analysis that Lenin ultimately died at the head of the bourgeois state).


Production in the USSR was to the benefit of the peopleSo the USSR wasn't producing exchange values? Who do you mean by 'the people'?

[Ismail]

Mattick's citation is of Lenin's 'Toward the Seizure of Power', which is apparently found in the 21st volume of his collected works. I don't know if this can be found on MIA or not.The 21st volume of Lenin's Collected Works in the 1920's or 30's is probably going to be a whole lot different than the versions brought out in the 60's and 70's which had different translations, various additions, etc. Volume 21 of Lenin's Collected Works (1974 edition) covers August 1914 - December 1915, so yeah.


So the USSR wasn't producing exchange values? Who do you mean by 'the people'?To the benefit of, literally, the overwhelming majority of the USSR's inhabitants.

Stalin explained the status of commodities and the law of value under socialism in his book Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R.: http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/EPS52.html

[Agent Equality]

I find it quite hard to wrap my head around the supposed "fact" that there was socialism under someone...especially under one man.

I always tended to have this weird little idea in my head that socialism was democratic in nature and was supposed to create political, social, and economic equality,

Or is this just my delusional revisionist anti-revolutionary libertarian socialist mind playing tricks on me again? :rolleyes:

Is socialism really just heavy industry under the guidance of a great leader with a cool name, where if I speak out against him or his regime I am to be eliminated or removed from the scene? If so then I don't know why I'm even on this site. I am CLEARLY an enemy of the people and not a socialist in the slightest bit if I don't think that the above definition is what socialism is and should be. I must be purged. Please forgive me comrades.

[Rooster]

We all know that if the working class controlled the means of production then it would have been impossible for capitalists to take control in the way they did, just through a bunch of reforms at government. They would have had to wage massive capital accumulation. Where was the revolution that did this? Was there an invading army? Maybe it was during the first five year plan where the means of production and resources and capital were accumulated into a centralised state with no worker control which allowed it just to be handed over? I could be wrong but.... I'm not sure if worker control through the state is the same as worker control.

[Ismail]

We all know that if the working class controlled the means of production then it would have been impossible for capitalists to take control in the way they did, just through a bunch of reforms at government. They would have had to wage massive capital accumulation. Where was the revolution that did this?In 1966 Enver Hoxha discussed with Zhou Enlai the revisionist takeover the CPSU and how it was able to be carried out, and this conversation is contained in his Selected Works Vol. IV, pp. 39-48. Considering the length I'd advise you to read it here: http://www.enverhoxha.ru/Archive_of_books/English/enver_hoxha_selected_works_volume_IV_eng.pdf

Hoxha noted (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/1969/01/10.htm) the following in 1969:

Under the slogan of the "fight against Stalin's personality cult," or under the pretext of rotation, the Khrushchevite revisionists rode roughshod over the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Seventy per cent of the members of the members of the Central Committee elected at the 19th Congress of the CPSU in 1952 were no longer figuring on the list of the Central Committee members elected at the 22nd Congress in 1961. Sixty per cent of the CC members in 1956 were no longer figuring on the list of the CC members that were elected at the 23rd Congress in 1966. A still greater purge has been carried out in the lower party organs. For instance, during 1963 alone, more than 50 per cent of the members of the party central and regional committees in the Republics of the Soviet Union were relieved of their functions, while in the city and district party committees three quarters of their members were replaced with others. The purge of the revolutionary cadres has been carried out on a large scale also in the State organs, and especially in those of the army and State security.In 1980 Hoxha also noted in his book Eurocommunism is Anti-Communism (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/euroco/env2-1.htm) that: "When Khrushchev began to advocate these theses, the construction of communism in the Soviet Union not only had not begun, but moreover, the construction of socialism was not yet completed. True, the exploiting classes had been eliminated as classes, but there were many remnants of them still existing physically, let alone ideologically. The Second World War had hindered the broad emancipation of relations of production, while the productive forces, which constitute the necessary and indispensable basis for this, had been gravely impaired. The Marxist-Leninist ideology was predominant, but this does not mean that the old ideologies had been completely eradicated from the consciousness of the masses. The Soviet Union had won the war against fascism, but another war, with other means, and no less dangerous, had commenced against it..."

Lenin pointed out to the left-communists that it would be quite some time before workers could be sufficiently educated to take direct control of the means of production. Lenin discussed this question various times. For instance in March 1920 he noted (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/mar/15.htm) among other things:

You know from the debates in the Central Committee that we are not opposed to placing workers at the head, but we say that this question must be settled in the interests of production. We cannot wait. The country is so badly ruined, calamities—famine, cold and general want—have reached such a pitch that we cannot continue like this any longer. No devotion, no self-sacrifice can save us if we do not keep the workers alive, if we do not provide them with bread, if we do not succeed in procuring large quantities of salt, so as to recompense the peasants by properly organised exchange and not with pieces of coloured paper which cannot keep us going for long. The very existence of the power of the workers and peasants, the very existence of Soviet Russia is at stake. With management in the hands of incompetent people, with fuel not delivered in time, with locomotives, steamers and barges standing unrepaired, the very existence of Soviet Russia is at stake....

Earlier revolutions perished because the workers were unable to retain power by means of a firm dictatorship and did not realise that they could not retain power by dictatorship, by force, by coercion alone; power can be maintained only by adopting the whole experience of cultured, technically-equipped, progressive capitalism and by enlisting the services of all these people. When workers undertaking the job of management for the first time adopt an unfriendly attitude towards the expert, the bourgeois, the capitalist who only recently was a director, who raked in millions and oppressed the workers, we say—and no doubt the majority of you also say—that these workers have only just begun to move towards communism. If communism could be built with experts who were not imbued with the bourgeois outlook, that would be very easy; but such communism is a myth. We know that nothing drops from the skies; we know that communism grows out of capitalism and can be built only from its remnants; they are bad remnants, it is true, but there are no others. Whoever dreams of a mythical communism should he driven from every business conference, and only those should be allowed to remain who know how to get things done with the remnants of capitalism. There are tremendous difficulties in the work, but it is fruitful work, and every expert must be treasured as being the only vehicle of technology and culture, without whom there can be nothing, without whom there can be no communism....

Experience tells us that everyone with a knowledge of bourgeois culture, bourgeois science and bourgeois technology must be treasured. Without them we shall be unable to build communism. The working class, as a class, rules; it created Soviet power, holds that power as a class, and can take every supporter of bourgeois interests and fling him out neck and crop. Therein lies the strength of the proletariat. But if we are to build a communist society, let us frankly admit our complete inability to conduct affairs, to be organisers and administrators. We must approach the matter with the greatest caution, bearing in mind that only that proletarian is class-conscious who is able to prepare the bourgeois expert for the forthcoming navigation season and who does not waste his time and energy, more than enough of which is always wasted on corporate management.Stalin himself in his last years concerned himself with Marxist-Leninist propaganda and combating the emerging rightist trends in economics, but obviously Stalin could not single-handedly change the conditions that existed within the USSR, in which insufficient class-consciousness prevailed.

[Savage]

The 21st volume of Lenin's Collected Works in the 1920's or 30's is probably going to be a whole lot different than the versions brought out in the 60's and 70's which had different translations, various additions, etc. Volume 21 of Lenin's Collected Works (1974 edition) covers August 1914 - December 1915, so yeah.

Mattick's citation was from 1937.

[Ismail]

Mattick's citation was from 1937.I'm aware. I haven't been able to find that quote of Lenin's on Google Books, nor Google search (outside of, as I said, Mattick and what have you.)

[aristos]

It still hasn't been explained how the "revisionists" were able to emerge from within a staunchly anti-revisionist party (or were the mass purges in the 30s insufficient?).
We are talking about the very same people singing praises to Great Stalin suddenly demonising him only a short while later.
So either the country during Stalin's reign was not socialist, or it actually is possible to change social relations via a clandestine coup.

[Ismail]

It still hasn't been explained how the "revisionists" were able to emerge from within a staunchly anti-revisionist party (or were the mass purges in the 30s insufficient?).Because the problems of bureaucracy, the problems of class-consciousness, and the problems of socialist construction were still not resolved at the time of Stalin's death. Again, Hoxha mentions this. As for the purges they got rid of internal spies and saboteurs (and, obviously, a whole lot of innocent people), along with getting rid of a great many important revisionists, Trotskyists, etc. within the Party, but that obviously cannot be the basis of a lasting policy on preventing the spread of revisionism.

Stalin in his report to the Eighteenth Congress of the AUCP(b) on March 10, 1939:
"It cannot be said that the purge was not accompanied by grave mistakes. There were unfortunately more mistakes than might have been expected. Undoubtedly, we shall have no further need of resorting to the method of mass purges. Nevertheless, the purge of 1933-36 was unavoidable and its results, on the whole, were beneficial."
(J.V. Stalin. Works Vol. 14. London: Red Star Press Ltd. 1978. p. 401.)


We are talking about the very same people singing praises to Great Stalin suddenly demonising him only a short while later.Uh, yes? What do you think Kautsky and Bernstein did at first in-re Marx and Engels? Hoxha himself pointed out that Khrushchev was one of the foremost praisers of Stalin. In China the phenomenon was known as "raising the red flag to oppose the red flag." Even Gorbachev, who said later on that in the 80's he was already an anti-communist, was praising Lenin to the skies and even took the time to read his Collected Works in detail. Gorbachev didn't propose his "reforms" by saying "Lenin was wrong, he sucked, heil capitalism." He cloaked everything in the need to study Lenin's works on a resolute basis, to firmly apply anti-bureaucratic and anti-dogmatic norms, to consistently apply proletarian democracy in all fields, to "return to Lenin" and other phrases which had rightist contents. As noted Stalin was already faced with rightist economists such as Voznesensky and Varga, who were later praised by the revisionists and rehabilitated. Obviously both economists weren't denouncing Stalin in the same works and articles Stalin himself criticized.

I mean this phenomena is all over. I may not think Mao was a great Marxist-Leninist, but Deng Xiaoping, Hua Guofeng, Liu Shaoqi, and various others obviously didn't attack Mao so long as he was alive. Once Deng took power he basically limited Mao's legacy to the anti-Japanese resistance and civil war and attacked anything that contradicted "market socialism." In Albania you had plenty of individuals who praised communism in words but advanced revisionism in 1987 and onwards, not to mention various individuals in the 1940's-80's who were exposed for their revisionist views.


So either the country during Stalin's reign was not socialist,Why? Because someone can self-servingly praise Stalin yet in private despise him? Most of the Trotskyist Moscow Trials defendants praised Stalin to the skies after the late 20's and early 30's and vowed to break all relations with Trotsky and Trotskyism. Do you really think individuals like Zinoviev, Radek and Rakovsky seriously thought Stalin was a man of genius and other claims they made in Pravda and other papers? Do you really think Bukharin was sincere when he also had to say similar things?

Kaganovich himself noted (http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv1n2/chuyev.htm) that Khrushchev had dabbled in Trotskyism.


or it actually is possible to change social relations via a clandestine coup.Counterrevolutions can happen, yes. Even then it took 30 more years to actually undo all the gains of socialism.

[Savage]

I'm aware. I haven't been able to find that quote of Lenin's on Google Books, nor Google search (outside of, as I said, Mattick and what have you.)

well maybe one of us will bother to read this (http://books.google.com.au/books?id=wGpWgSDJJdMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=lenin+towards+the+seizure+of+power&hl=en&ei=WD6QTvCANrDLmAXZrrQI&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false) in full

[Ismail]

well maybe one of us will bother to read this (http://books.google.com.au/books?id=wGpWgSDJJdMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=lenin+towards+the+seizure+of+power&hl=en&ei=WD6QTvCANrDLmAXZrrQI&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false) in fullEven then it has pages not available for searching or reading. So one of us will have to bother to both read all of it after purchasing it.

And even then it's not from his official Collected Works circa 1920's-30's, so the translation will still be different.

For what it's worth, I tried searching "capitalism" and "socialism" together and got no relevant results. "State capitalism" got zero results. Again this may be due to some of those few damned non-searchable/readable pages, but yeah.

[Volcanicity]

Even then it has pages not available for searching or reading. So one of us will have to bother to both read all of it after purchasing it.

And even then it's not from his official Collected Works circa 1920's-30's, so the translation will still be different.

For what it's worth, I tried searching "capitalism" and "socialism" together and got no relevant results. "State capitalism" got zero results. Again this may be due to some of those few damned non-searchable/readable pages, but yeah.

The book "Toward the seizure of power" is just a collection of articles and speeches made and written by Lenin between July and November 1917.

The contents of that book can all be found in volumes 25 and 26 at the MIA.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/volume25.htm.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/volume26.htm.

[Ismail]

Thanks to you I found it. Here it is: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/11.htm

Reading it in context changes the impression quite a bit. The quote is also far more accurate in how it's translated.

Compare:

"Socialism is nothing but state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people" (That´s Lenin´s btw)
For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.Lenin is calling on what he envisions to be the future revolutionary democratic republic to take hold of the existing capitalist state monopolies to serve the interests of socialism, in which case they clearly lose their capitalist character as the state which manages them ceases to be a bourgeois state.

[thälmann]

i think what lenin said in this quote is very clear. the proletarian state ownes and controlles the economy for the benefit of the masses. one of the differences to state-monopoly capitalism is that the aim of production is not profit. but in both cases the state controlles the economy.
this quote has nothing to do with lenins opinion towards state-capitalism during a certain trasition period.

regarding the "bourgois state without a bourgoisie": somebody cannot understand it without the context. it does not deny the existence of the proletarian state or its dictatureship. its about existing relicts of the old society, like bourgoise right in some areas and so on...

[the desire to rebel]

How does the "properly translated" quote change a thing?

Lenin was cleary showing his true colors when he wrote it, namely, wanting to take control of the state to benefit their own (the bolshevik´s) interests.

For us to agree on this, we just have to look at the facts, at what really happened between the February revolution and the October revolution.

On February, it was the spontaneity of the masses -that took every party by surprise (including the bolsheviks)- that ultimately made the Tsar abdicate; then the soviets were brought back to life, and blowing between the proletariat was a huge wind of libertarian socialism.

Lenin then made a deviation to the left : he used a more libertarian rhetoric, we just have to look at his slogan "all power to the soviets", and his works during that time, the april thesis and "state and revolution".

This took the old bolshevik guard by surprise, (Stalin included) and at first they opposed Lenin.

One of the reasons was that Lenin had stated before on "What is to be done" that the proletariat could only develop "trade union consciousness" and he was seeming to be contradicting himslef (which he was).

And so, the revolutionary masses found in Lenin a leader, someone that could finally emancipate them, and put the means of productiong in their hands.

On April and May the bolsheviks were a minority but on July and August their numbers increased a lot, because Lenin, being the smart man that he was, knew that in order for his party to take control of the state, he needed popular support,or as Edward Carr states: "the spontaneous inclination of the workers to organize factory committees and to intervene in the management of the factories was inevitably encourage by a revolution with led the workers to believe that the productive machinery of the country belonged to them and could be operated by them at their own discretion and to their own advantage"

So, after the bolsheviks took control of the State, the workers were betrayed: on the third of November, Lenin announced a decree that stated that those workers that were elected, were to be "answerable to the State for the maintenance of the strictest order and discipline and for the protection of property."

And all this was before the civil war had started, and before the NEP.
Just for the fact that a party in control of the state and the means of production, that doesn´t it a "worker´s state".

State capitalism existed long before 1921.

[tir1944]

Yes,for how can there even be capitalism without a state anyway?
:laugh:

[A Marxist Historian]

There is a genuinely very strong theory that Stalin was deliberately killed.

An old longstanding argument. I personally doubt it. Extreme free-floating paranoia was a major component of Stalinist politics, so it is natural that when he died the replacements were all suspecting each other of poisoning him.

And of course Stalin himself thought his Jewish doctors were poisoning him. To Stalin, death by old age had to be a bourgeois conspiracy against him. And he had his suspicions of Beria...

That Molotov claims that Beria hinted he poisoned Stalin proves that ... Molotov didn't like Beria. Molotov is not one of the great truth tellers of our times.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Wow, I suppose Stalin could have been killed, after all. Speaking of Beria, though, (I'm not trolling, this is actually something I have always wondered) What did Stalin have to say about him being a rapist and a pedophile? Is that part of the reason Stalin was going to get rid of him? I've just always wondered... I knew Stalin needed him for the war and all but what about after that?

No, that was Khrushchev claiming that. After K had Beria blown away at a Politburo meeting, K had to come up with stuff like that. I wouldn't take it too seriously, though it might have been true, who knows.

Khrushchev also claimed that Beria had been a British agent since World War One!

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

So wait, the working class owned the means of production under Stalin?

Wow.

Nobody owned the means of production under Stalin. Even Stalin himself didn't own his own dachas. When Stalin died, his daughter didn't inherit a single thing other than the clothes on her back.

Of course, the means of production were under the tight *control* of the Stalinist bureaucracy, but that is a horse of another color.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

For all the speculation, Beria after WWII was simply not in an organizational position to either orchestrate or hasten Stalin's death.

Actually he was. He did *not* get to pick who Stalin's bodyguards were, but he was in position to influence who they were, and several of Stalin's bodyguards were shot afterwards on Beria's orders--conceivably because they knew too much. So yes, it could have been done.

But there's no good evidence that it was done.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

how can you say that it was a dictatorship of the proletariat under Lenin when the party only consisted of 500,000 members most of whom could not even vote at the party conference?

"Our central committee has decided to deprive certain categories of party members of the right to vote at the congress of the party. Certainly it is unheard of to limit the right to voting within the party, but the entire party has approved this measure, which is to assure the homogeneous unity of the communists. So that in fact, we have 500,000 members who manage the entire state machine from top to bottom."

Zinoviev report to the first congress of the third international 1920

So we have state capitalism and dictatorship not just for the other 180 million people in Russia but even within the precious vanguard.

By 1921, the size of the Soviet proletariat was down to about a million and a half. (See E.H. Carr and other objective historians who do the numbers.) And the overwhelming majority of that half million party members were either workers at the bench or workers who had been at the bench during 1917. By "overwhelming" I mean about nine tenths.

The Soviet working class, some six or seven million in 1917, was ground up and destroyed during the Civil War, by starvation, disease, White Guard mass murder and the collapse of industry. Just about all revolutionary-minded workers had joined the party and gone to fight at the front or were running things. Factory workers not in the party were by and large non-revolutionaries who hadn't had much involvement in the revolution and spent the civil war lying low and trying to feed their families.

So yes, for all practical purposes the Bolshevik Party was workers democracy in the USSR at that point. Which is why the destruction of internal party democracy in 1923-24 led so rapidly to Stalin's bureaucratic dictatorship.

I don't know the context of that statement by Zinoviev, but I suspect it has something to do with the call by the Workers Opposition for the purge of non-worker petty bourgeois elements from the party, a call that was adopted by the party leadership. (The "Workers Opposition" being basically trade union bureaucrats who wanted the economy run by the unions instead of by the Soviets.)

And the Soviet Union was indeed the dictatorship of the proletariat over an overwhelmingly primitive and extremely socially backward peasant society, whose local mores often made Texas look like Berkeley. One of the major reasons why Stalin's notion of building "socialism in one country" in Russia turned out so badly.

The NEP was absolutely necessary, because the peasants wanted it. Resistance for too long to the desire of the peasants, which many workers sympathized with, for free trade and a partial return to capitalism, was what led to the alienation for a few months of much of the remaining Russian working class from the regime, leading to peasant insurrections, worker strikes, Kronstadt etc.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

And today we control our means of production through the elected parliamentary representatives, owning stocks and the works councils! :rolleyes:

We do? What are you smoking?

I want some!

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

We all know that if the working class controlled the means of production then it would have been impossible for capitalists to take control in the way they did, just through a bunch of reforms at government. They would have had to wage massive capital accumulation. Where was the revolution that did this? Was there an invading army? Maybe it was during the first five year plan where the means of production and resources and capital were accumulated into a centralised state with no worker control which allowed it just to be handed over? I could be wrong but.... I'm not sure if worker control through the state is the same as worker control.

Obviously, the workers did not control the means of production, any more than individual stockholders control the means of production in a capitalist society.

What matters isn't control, but ownership. Nobody owned the means of production in the USSR, the bureaucrats just administered them, allegedly for the benefit of the Soviet people. In fact they balanced between world capitalism on the one hand, and the Soviet people on the other. Exactly like bureaucrats of trade unions in America, balancing between the bosses and their memberships.

And just like the Chinese bureaucrats now, who respond to worker protests by granting reforms and wage increases while shooting particularly obnoxious Chinese capitalists every now and then, while simultaneously trying to keep world capitalism happy with China.

By the end days of the USSR, a lot of bureaucrats got very tired of this and wanted to actually *own* the means of production, so they decided to go capitalist. The Chinese bureaucrats have gone a good ways in that direction, you have actual capitalists in the party now, although it is still the Politburo not the invisible hand of Adam Smith in charge of China.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Thanks to you I found it. Here it is: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/ichtci/11.htm

Reading it in context changes the impression quite a bit. The quote is also far more accurate in how it's translated.

Compare:
Lenin is calling on what he envisions to be the future revolutionary democratic republic to take hold of the existing capitalist state monopolies to serve the interests of socialism, in which case they clearly lose their capitalist character as the state which manages them ceases to be a bourgeois state.

He wasn't saying anything original here, just repeating Marx and Engels. M and E, when they discussed monopoly, always made the very same point, as to how monopoly capitalism demonstrates that society has evolved to the point that socialism is the order of the day.

Indeed, I recall them pointing out that, technically and legally, a corporation is after all a form of collective ownership, so what do we need capitalism for these days anyway, since even capitalist ownership has become collective?

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

How does the "properly translated" quote change a thing?

Lenin was cleary showing his true colors when he wrote it, namely, wanting to take control of the state to benefit their own (the bolshevik´s) interests.

For us to agree on this, we just have to look at the facts, at what really happened between the February revolution and the October revolution.

On February, it was the spontaneity of the masses -that took every party by surprise (including the bolsheviks)- that ultimately made the Tsar abdicate; then the soviets were brought back to life, and blowing between the proletariat was a huge wind of libertarian socialism.

Lenin then made a deviation to the left : he used a more libertarian rhetoric, we just have to look at his slogan "all power to the soviets", and his works during that time, the april thesis and "state and revolution".

This took the old bolshevik guard by surprise, (Stalin included) and at first they opposed Lenin.

One of the reasons was that Lenin had stated before on "What is to be done" that the proletariat could only develop "trade union consciousness" and he was seeming to be contradicting himslef (which he was).

And so, the revolutionary masses found in Lenin a leader, someone that could finally emancipate them, and put the means of productiong in their hands.

On April and May the bolsheviks were a minority but on July and August their numbers increased a lot, because Lenin, being the smart man that he was, knew that in order for his party to take control of the state, he needed popular support,or as Edward Carr states: "the spontaneous inclination of the workers to organize factory committees and to intervene in the management of the factories was inevitably encourage by a revolution with led the workers to believe that the productive machinery of the country belonged to them and could be operated by them at their own discretion and to their own advantage"

So, after the bolsheviks took control of the State, the workers were betrayed: on the third of November, Lenin announced a decree that stated that those workers that were elected, were to be "answerable to the State for the maintenance of the strictest order and discipline and for the protection of property."

And all this was before the civil war had started, and before the NEP.
Just for the fact that a party in control of the state and the means of production, that doesn´t it a "worker´s state".

State capitalism existed long before 1921.

Indeed look at the facts. Trouble is your facts are all wrong.

Sure, there were plenty of syndicalists who thought as you do, that at each factory the workers should take control of their own factories and run them for their personal benefit, "at their own discretion and to their own personal advantage," as opposed to that of society at large.

But the workers pretty quickly understood that this would not work, and you had to have social planning and ownership on a national scale, in the interests of everybody, not just the economist interests of a particular bunch of workers who happened to be occupying a particular factory.

And that yes, workers elected to run factories and so forth had to be "answerable to the state," the workers state, and had to "protect property," now that the workers owned the means of production. And not just do whatever the hell they liked, no matter what the people needed.

Much of "What Is To Be Done" was much more relevant for when it was written, when most workers still supported the Tsar. Things had changed a lot by 1917, which is why it was a little read work in Russia at the time, as more relevant for countries like say the USA where political consciousness was and is very backward.

But where he said that revolutionaries had to be people's tribunes, not just trade union secretaries, that was very relevant indeed. And workers by and large came to understand that, and syndicalist illusions dissipated.

As to what happened afterwards, see my previous posting.

-M.H.-

[Die Neue Zeit]

Actually he was. He did *not* get to pick who Stalin's bodyguards were, but he was in position to influence who they were, and several of Stalin's bodyguards were shot afterwards on Beria's orders--conceivably because they knew too much. So yes, it could have been done.

But there's no good evidence that it was done.

-M.H.-

Beria was a Deputy Chairman of Sovmin and heading the nuclear weapons project (http://www.revleft.com/vb/dreaming-beria-article-t158272/index.html) since the end of WWII. The head honchos over at the MVD and MGB were already somewhat antagonistic towards him. The success of the fission bomb propelled Beria to rival Bulganin for relative authority over the whole Soviet defense industry, which only served to further weaken his links to the secret police.

[A Marxist Historian]

Beria was a Deputy Chairman of Sovmin and heading the nuclear weapons project (http://www.revleft.com/vb/dreaming-beria-article-t158272/index.html) since the end of WWII. The head honchos over at the MVD and MGB were already somewhat antagonistic towards him. The success of the fission bomb propelled Beria to rival Bulganin for relative authority over the whole Soviet defense industry, which only served to further weaken his links to the secret police.

Yes, he was wearing a lot of hats. But he was still the head of the NKVD, or whatever the name had been changed to at that point (don't think it was KGB yet.) And he did still have input into who was posted as a guard at the dacha, though he didn't get to simply appoint them.

-M.H.-

[Die Neue Zeit]

Beria was no longer the head of the NKVD/MVD by that point. All throughout the post-war Stalin regime he had no formal or actual positions within the MVD or MGB. Things were such that, had Molotov's Committee of Information (KI) been a success instead of a failure (combining the MGB's foreign intelligence service with the GRU), Molotov himself would have had closer ties to the security apparatus than Beria; Beria would have had to rely upon Molotov's subordinates to get fission bomb espionage info.

Meanwhile, Kruglov and Abakumov (SMERSH's head in WWII), respectively, were systematically replacing Beria's men with their own.

The most underrated factor in Beria's own downfall was that many secret police heads below him were supportive of his ouster, including the likes of a demoted Kruglov (from Minister of a GULAG-oriented MVD to a First Deputy Minister of a briefly consolidated MVD).