A question for Marxist-Leninists and believers in the vanguard party...

[godlessfilthycommiedog]

How do you prevent the bureaucratization of the means of production? How do you make sure that the revolution does not turn into a dictatorship where the workers are not in control of the means of production and there is no progress towards socialism?

[norwegianwood90]

Democratically-run workers' councils should (at least hypothetically, anyway) remove incentives for bureaucratization of the MoP. Representatives should earn no more than the average worker they represent. Representatives should also be able to be recalled at any point in time by a majority decision.

I would love for any other comrades to elaborate upon this, since I'm not terribly knowledgeable on the topic. :)

[Rooster]

For Trotsky, bureaucracy begins when the there isn't enough stuff in the stores. In other words, it begins when the productive levels aren't high enough to achieve socialism. To quote Trotters:


The basis of bureaucratic rule is the poverty of society in objects of consumption, with the resulting struggle of each against all. When there is enough goods in a store, the purchasers can come whenever they want to. When there is little goods, the purchasers are compelled to stand in line. When the lines are very long, it is necessary to appoint a policeman to keep order. Such is the starting point of the power of the Soviet bureaucracy. It “knows” who is to get something and how has to wait.

[Ostrinski]

You establish an ever expanding dictatorship of the proletariat. In a word, to prevent bureaucratic development you must prevent the conditions that necessitate a bureaucracy from seeing the light of day.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

^^^

Remove the politics from the revolution. In other words, remove all elements of a political coup from the revolution. So don't follow the model of the Russian Revolution, for example. Don't construct a state. Don't rule on behalf of the working class. Don't rule by decree of the state and if you do have to form some sort of apparatus to crush class enemies, engage in trade etc., then don't go to the trouble of establishing an entire political system beneath you and your politburo to 'keep law and order within Socialism'. It won't lead to Socialism.

Abolish. Destroy. Burn down to the fucking ground, but don't fucking replace with bureaucratic structures! Socialism is not an alternative to Capitalism, for that implies that Socialism is not the successor to Capitalism which, as students of history from a materialist standpoint, we know the latter to be true.

[Ostrinski]

Abolish. Destroy. Burn down to the fucking groundI smell reformism....

edit: No but in all seriousness I completely agree with you.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I'm so reformist I want to bring about Socialism by entering Parliament...and starting the fucking party there!:lol:

[Geiseric]

A state is necessary as long as an army is necessary. An army is necessary as long as there are crazy ass tsarists and people like winston churchill trying to kill your ass and who are trying to restore Tzarism. what would of happened if there wasn't an organized red army?

As for the degeneration, the Bureaucracy should have been purged, in the way that Lenin did it when he was still in politics. Untill there was help coming from outside of russia, the Bureaucracy was in a position of power over the scarce resources that were left over from the war. That may of been why they ruined comintern, who knows?

However the purges that were directed against those on the left opposition and against those who defied the bureaucracy in any way pretty much ruined the political situation on a worldwide scale. Nazism was allowed to rise because the KPD was dealt with in a jokingly manner, and Stalin said many times that he didn't want to "alter the politics of other nations." which meant that he was against proletarian internationalism.

[Amal]

How do you prevent the bureaucratization of the means of production? How do you make sure that the revolution does not turn into a dictatorship where the workers are not in control of the means of production and there is no progress towards socialism?
Destroy the petty-bourgeoisie class and the root of all evil will be eliminated.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

A state is necessary as long as an army is necessary. An army is necessary as long as there are crazy ass tsarists and people like winston churchill trying to kill your ass and who are trying to restore Tzarism. what would of happened if there wasn't an organized red army?

As for the degeneration, the Bureaucracy should have been purged, in the way that Lenin did it when he was still in politics. Untill there was help coming from outside of russia, the Bureaucracy was in a position of power over the scarce resources that were left over from the war. That may of been why they ruined comintern, who knows?

However the purges that were directed against those on the left opposition and against those who defied the bureaucracy in any way pretty much ruined the political situation on a worldwide scale. Nazism was allowed to rise because the KPD was dealt with in a jokingly manner, and Stalin said many times that he didn't want to "alter the politics of other nations." which meant that he was against proletarian internationalism.

Surely you'd need a bureaucracy loyal to you to purge a bureaucracy? Unless you just want to do it extra-judicially via the security services...but then surely if you're going to be meticulous you still need a bureaucracy.

The bureaucracy doesn't just come about. It is as a result of specific political conditions; namely when a small cadre rule on behalf of the masses. If the masses rule themselves, participate in the political process and self-govern, then surely there's a) no need for a large bureaucracy and b) no way a bureaucracy could get over-powerful.

[Amal]

Actually, this OP is just an example that bureaucracy in itself isn't a class but rather some kind of tool. It's dangerous when our enemy class is in control. Actually, as ruler after revolution, we have to learn how to control bureaucracy.

[daft punk]

^^^

Remove the politics from the revolution. In other words, remove all elements of a political coup from the revolution. So don't follow the model of the Russian Revolution, for example. Don't construct a state. Don't rule on behalf of the working class. Don't rule by decree of the state and if you do have to form some sort of apparatus to crush class enemies, engage in trade etc., then don't go to the trouble of establishing an entire political system beneath you and your politburo to 'keep law and order within Socialism'. It won't lead to Socialism.

Abolish. Destroy. Burn down to the fucking ground, but don't fucking replace with bureaucratic structures! Socialism is not an alternative to Capitalism, for that implies that Socialism is not the successor to Capitalism which, as students of history from a materialist standpoint, we know the latter to be true.

So, go straight to stateless communism? Can you cite any historical examples where this has happened, or if not, any where it nearly happened and explain why it failed?

The closest I can think of is Spain where the anarchists leaders refused to take power on principle when they knew they could, and then later went and joined a Stalinist-capitalist government.

And of course the net result was a fascist victory.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

[daft punk]

Surely you'd need a bureaucracy loyal to you to purge a bureaucracy? Unless you just want to do it extra-judicially via the security services...but then surely if you're going to be meticulous you still need a bureaucracy.

The bureaucracy doesn't just come about. It is as a result of specific political conditions; namely when a small cadre rule on behalf of the masses. If the masses rule themselves, participate in the political process and self-govern, then surely there's a) no need for a large bureaucracy and b) no way a bureaucracy could get over-powerful.

The bureaucracy was inherited from the Tsar. It was all the educated people who knew how to administer the country and the economy. The Bolsheviks tried to manage without them but had to bring them back in because they had the expertise. I suggest you read Lenin's speech to congress in 1922:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/mar/27.htm

"The economic power in the hands of the proletarian state of Russia is quite adequate to ensure the transition to communism. What then is lacking? Obviously, what is lacking is culture among the stratum of the Communists who perform administrative functions. If we take Moscow with its 4,700 Communists in responsible positions, and if we take that huge bureaucratic machine, that gigantic heap, we must ask: who is directing whom? I doubt very much whether it can truthfully be said that the Communists are directing that heap. To tell the truth they are not directing, they are being directed. Some thing analogous happened here to what we were told in our history lessons when we were children: sometimes one nation conquers another, the nation that conquers is the conqueror and the nation that is vanquished is the conquered nation. This is simple and intelligible to all. But what happens to the culture of these nations? Here things are not so simple. If the conquering nation is more cultured than the vanquished nation, the former imposes its culture upon the latter; but if the opposite is the case, the vanquished nation imposes its culture upon the conqueror. Has not something like this happened in the capital of the R.S.F.S.R.? Have the 4,700 Communists (nearly a whole army division, and all of them the very best) come under the influence of an alien culture? True, there may be the impression that the vanquished have a high level of culture. But that is not the case at all. Their culture is miserable, insignificant, but it is still at a higher level than ours. Miserable and low as it is, it is higher than that of our responsible Communist administrators, for the latter lack administrative ability. Communists who are put at the head of departments—and sometimes artful saboteurs deliberately put them in these positions in order to use them as a shield—are often fooled. This is a very unpleasant admission to make, or, at any rate, not a very pleasant one; but I think we must admit it, for at present this is the salient problem. I think that this is the political lesson of the past year; and it is around this that the struggle will rage in 1922. Will the responsible Communists of the R.S.F.S.R. and of the Russian Communist Party realise that they cannot administer; that they only imagine they are directing, but are, actually, being directed? If they realise this they will learn, of course; for this business can be learnt. But one must study hard to learn it, and our people are not doing this. They scatter orders and decrees right and left, but the result is quite different from what they want."

The bureaucracy are running rings around the communists. Later, Stalin became the leader of the bureaucracy, they were his power base against socialism.

In this speech Lenin also attacks red tape, and decision making being passed up to the top. Following this logic, naturally he would be opposed to the upper layers continually insisting on making decisions. That was unavoidable in the period 1918-22, ie the civil war and the first year of reconstruction, but should have been avoided after that. However it got worse. Trotsky was warning about the dangers of bureaucracy within the party in the New Course in 1923. Both Lenin and Trotsky emphasised the need to educate the younger layers.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

How do you prevent the bureaucratization of the means of production? How do you make sure that the revolution does not turn into a dictatorship where the workers are not in control of the means of production and there is no progress towards socialism?

Very good question Comrade!
I could write endlessly about this as i have researched this important question myself, i will try to make it short: In Capitalism you have a group of about 20 to 25 humans that are voted (by shareholders, Capital) as the board of directors which choose the President, supervisors and managers of their enterprise. About three times a year these directors fo the board meet and discuss whether or not the people they selected to run the enterprise held up to the directions give, i.e. did they president make enough profits. If he didn't, then they are forced to replace him becaue otherwise Capital (the shareholders who look to grow their investment) stop buying their shares, investing, and their company goes bankrupt.

In Socialism, instead of the shareholders voting for the board of directors, the workers of the enterprise become their own board of directors so that they become producers and appropriators of their surplus at once. Until now this has been difficult to do in underdeveloped countries; where material conditions are difficult, basic needs not yet provided for everyone, economic growth is difficult for obvious reasons. But, nowadays, and especially in western industrialised societies, this worker controlled [communist class structure] socialism is far overdue.

So, in socialism (and seeing as i am a marxist and see great problems in equal economic development through means of a "market"...) instead of using capitalist instruments, there would be a planned economy, a Soviet. For instance, the working people vote for their local/regional bureaucrats who manage production. BUT, here is the important Leninist idea of a planned economy with communist class organisation of production: The proletarians and bureaucrats need to exchange jobs. This is an important part to not create any tensions between the ruling producers of material wealth working class and their subservient planners. It is utmost important that the workers become their own board fo directors that meet about three times a year and discuss production and their needs with the planners which are voted by the working people and rotate production positions. This is an important point (#3 which of course no one after him actually implemented *Stalinism*...) Lenin made in 'State and Revolution' that there needs to be rotation: "Every cook needs to learn to govern the state".

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

I suggest you read Lenin's speech to congress in 1922:


I appreciate your posts here Comrade.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

^^^

Remove the politics from the revolution. In other words, remove all elements of a political coup from the revolution. So don't follow the model of the Russian Revolution, for example. Don't construct a state. Don't rule on behalf of the working class. Don't rule by decree of the state and if you do have to form some sort of apparatus to crush class enemies, engage in trade etc., then don't go to the trouble of establishing an entire political system beneath you and your politburo to 'keep law and order within Socialism'. It won't lead to Socialism.

Abolish. Destroy. Burn down to the fucking ground, but don't fucking replace with bureaucratic structures! Socialism is not an alternative to Capitalism, for that implies that Socialism is not the successor to Capitalism which, as students of history from a materialist standpoint, we know the latter to be true.

So if you do not advocate a planned economy and you do not advocate capitalism... you advocate market socialism? There are really only two ways of distribution: Market exchange or Plan. I know it's a horrible choice, but, there is no other alternative: either you exchange goods, market, or you plan, Plan.

[ckaihatsu]

It's simply a matter of the balance-of-power -- any resorting to a bureaucracy is an admission of weakness of revolution.

Currently both the public *and* private sectors are bureaucracies of *capital* -- for governance and economics, respectively. A revolution doesn't *require* the reactionary, legalistic function of a bureaucracy because it doesn't have the overhead / dead-weight of competing factions of capital.

The degree to which workers *don't* have confidence in their own control of the means of mass production is the degree to which they / we've *compromised* to the market system, allowing its bureaucracy (though ultimately a hands-off, out-of-control direction) to substitute for real, actual mass workers' conscious control of production.

All related organs, like a revolutionary army, productivity goals, and even formalistic sets of rules, are *auxiliary* to actual workers' control, and will *not* be / become bureaucratic as long as workers are self-organized and consciously retain power in their own interests.

(For illustration, consider that in periods of *capitalist* growth there is plenty of "turf" for "everyone" to expropriate, so problems of competition don't even arise -- it's only when the capitalist ruling class experiences *downturns* that they then have to take legalistic steps to mitigate inter-factional conflicts.)

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

A market will always exist. State control of the means of production is just an imperfect to the market. In the end, supply = demand must always be one of the qualifying factors for a stable, growing economy, I think that's obvious.

State planning has been shown to be wildly inefficient due to the state mis-allocating resources, not being able to accurately estimate demand from the centre. Planning, though, can still work. It just has to be revolutionised in its conception, economically democratic, and bottom-up. Surely, if estimates of demand for goods and supply of labour (including skills estimates etc.) are made at a local and regional level, and used to decide on the supply of goods, labour and input of resources at a local level, then it would be impossible for the inaccuracies that we saw in the USSR to occur.

I roll my eyes when people tell me I HAVE to choose between neo-liberal Capitalism and State Planning. Both have been shown to be a mix of unfair, unequal, inefficient and corrupting, so why would we want to choose either again?

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

@Stammer&Tickle

Well, I find the market not only a primitive distribution, destructive and inequal but see its limits. "Die Grenzen des Marktes" 'Boundaries of the market' Rosa Luxemburg. Also, market exchange is killing off our planet, how is the market good for "resource allocation"?! It's most likely the Worst in managing resource distribution and making sure humans remain to enjoy them. Markets are despicable. Do I want a "New Class"? Of course not, but I DO want a co-operative worker controlled economy and not one where workers work against each other. Markets are despicable.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I wasn't talking about the free market. But the allocation of resources requires, quite simply, for supply to equal demand. If supply > demand then there is great and non-sustainable waste in the economy, if supply < demand then your economy is not growing fast enough (hence lack of k), does not have a big enough/skilled enough labour force or does not have access to a large enough amount of/the right amount of natural resources/raw materials.

I feel that in the centrally planned economies of the 20th century, resource allocation was based on what the state decided people needed (in terms of consumption goods) as a base level. It didn't take into account what could be produced (i.e. supply potential) and it didn't take into account what should be produced (i.e. actual demand in the economy for certain goods).

The root of this is (taking the USSR as an example) that the Gosplan, or whichever agency decided production quotas, was bureaucratic, undemocratic and at arms length from the people. In order for planning to work (i.e. for it to fairly AND efficiently allocate resources which are either produced in-house or imported), it must actually take into account the needs of the people. The only way to do this, that I can think of, is to make production and people one and the same; people decide themselves what needs producing and produce it. I don't think it's possible to either infer, or use stated preferences, for a foreign body to understand demand in the economy, and thus produce in a fair and efficient way.

So really, only economic democracy can lead to successful economic planning. The state planning of the 20th century has been shown to be a terrific failure.

[ckaihatsu]

I wasn't talking about the free market. But the allocation of resources requires, quite simply, for supply to equal demand.


In the most generic, organic sense of these terms you're right and no one can argue with you -- any intake of material substances, like food, or use of -- or proximity to -- material things, can all be considered 'consumption' (related to 'demand'), no matter what the economic or political system is. Likewise for 'supply' meaning sheer 'access' or 'availability'.

It's with these generic definitions in mind that I've formulated a communist-type model as an exercise in spelling out the finer points of my politics -- it's at my blog entry.





So really, only economic democracy can lead to successful economic planning. The state planning of the 20th century has been shown to be a terrific failure.


It may be worthwhile to differentiate the basics of how 'supply' and 'demand' are defined and handled under a market system, and how they *could* be handled using economic democracy, or planning.

(Currently supply is just "put out there" using speculative estimations according to availability of financing and predicted consumer demand. Likewise demand is only defined as those transfers of goods and services for people who can provide the required money by which to make those purchases.)

There's no reason -- especially since we now have excellent means of mass communication -- not to simply have everyone put in formal provisioning *requests* as their 'demand', and then to situate a workers-controlled mass production to fulfill that demand directly, without the irrational dependence on the middleman market mechanism.


communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

http://postimage.org/image/35sw8csv8/

[Rooster]

So if you do not advocate a planned economy and you do not advocate capitalism... you advocate market socialism? There are really only two ways of distribution: Market exchange or Plan. I know it's a horrible choice, but, there is no other alternative: either you exchange goods, market, or you plan, Plan.

That's the wrong way to think about. Distribution doesn't matter. Go read Anti-Duhring. You'll enjoy it, trust me. But to get to the point, it's about production and how things are produced, not how they are distributed.

[Blake's Baby]

So, go straight to stateless communism? Can you cite any historical examples where this has happened, or if not, any where it nearly happened and explain why it failed?

The closest I can think of is Spain where the anarchists leaders refused to take power on principle when they knew they could, and then later went and joined a Stalinist-capitalist government.

And of course the net result was a fascist victory.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

Of course not, because as I have to tell you every three days or so, the revolution will be worldwide or it will fail. So it's obviously never happened.

[TrotskistMarx]

Good question, because humans tend to be corrupt and evil. And as you know the populations of Latin America have been victims of very corrupt cleptocracies and even betrayed-revolutions that evolve into oligarchic plutocratic cleptocratic economic models, where a few live like kings earning between 5,000 to 20,000 dollars a month, living in air conditioned houses, eating out at nice restaurants, having lots of fun while the the majority live with around between ZERO DOLLARS AND 600 dollars a month, meaning that only a minority earn above 600 dollars a month in most latin american countries (This is still the case for many Latin American nations today)


.


How do you prevent the bureaucratization of the means of production? How do you make sure that the revolution does not turn into a dictatorship where the workers are not in control of the means of production and there is no progress towards socialism?