Where does the idea of the Soviet Nomenklatura as the new exploiting class come from

[campesino]

I always felt that the idea of the nomenklatura, as the new exploiting class, was 1950's capitalist propaganda. So I want to know from where or who the idea originated from.

[Let's Get Free]

The nomenklatura was a replacement by and large of the private capitalist class with a newly emergent state capitalist class - the tiny minority of top level apparatchiks who effectively controlled the state and therefore collectively, as a class - rather than as private individuals - exerted de facto ownership of the means of production. This tiny class which emerged under Bolshevik rule came to exercise more or less complete control over the disposal the economic surplus and that is precisely what constitutes it as a class in Marxian terms. Its relation to the means of production was radically different to the non-owning Russian working class

[hetz]

Marx famously said that:


"The specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus-labour is pumped out of direct producers, determines the relationship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself and, in turn, reacts upon it as a determining element. Upon this, however, is founded the entire formation of the economic community which grows up out of the production relations themselves, thereby simultaneously its specific political form. It is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers — a relation always naturally corresponding to a definite stage in the development of the methods of labour and thereby its social productivity — which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure and with it the political form of the relation of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the corresponding specific form of the state. This does not prevent the same economic basis — the same from the standpoint of its main conditions — due to innumerable different empirical circumstances, natural environment, racial relations, external historical influences, etc. from showing infinite variations and gradations in appearance, which can be ascertained only by analysis of the empirically given circumstances.Now if I understood Marx right, and if what you're saying was true, than the Soviet society was in essence not much different than any other capitalist one.

I don't think so though, as the nomenklatura did not appropriate the economic surplus, as it, as far as I'm aware, couldn't have done that. What instruments did they have at their disposal for that to be possible?

[Let's Get Free]

The nomenklatura did indeed expropriate surplus value. Some among the nomenklatura became extremely wealthy in their own right. Reg Bishop a supporter of the regime wrote a book in the 1940s (when Stalin was in power ) called Soviet Millionaires. For Bishop it was a matter of pride that the Soviet Union could boast of having such individuals

[hetz]

The nomenklatura did indeed expropriate surplus value.
But how? How did that happen? What instruments made that possible?
How did these "Soviet millionaires" get their millions?

[Ostrinski]

The bureaucracy might have been managers of capital, but they were certainly not accumulators. All surpluses of wealth were reinvested into industry and the maintenance of the regime. To call the bureaucrats in the Soviet Union capitalists is to give too much credit to the Soviet system and neglects to acknowledge that it was a quite inefficient and even pitiful system and that every last flake of wealth was needed to maintain it.

In Marxism we understand the capitalist class as a class of private accumulators who extract the wealth created by the labor of the workers for the purpose of becoming wealthier and investing in new means of becoming wealthier. Something like this could not be afforded in the Soviet Union.

The bureaucracy cannot be considered to be a class because because they did not hold a unique relationship to the means of production. We must remember how incredibly large the Stalinist bureaucracy was and that in fact there was a deficit of how many positions needed to be filled and how many people were regularly able to be employed to these positions. Anyone who wanted a bureaucratic position could work their way into one, in other words. Conversely, one could be a bureaucrat one day and be stripped of their position the next and be pushed into the ranks of the rest of society. Doesn't sound like any capitalist system I'm familiar with.

[Ostrinski]

The nomenklatura did indeed expropriate surplus value. Some among the nomenklatura became extremely wealthy in their own right. Reg Bishop a supporter of the regime wrote a book in the 1940s (when Stalin was in power ) called Soviet Millionaires. For Bishop it was a matter of pride that the Soviet Union could boast of having such individualsSkimming off the top is not capital accumulation in the proper sense.

[Let's Get Free]

If I may quote Engels:

"The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine—the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers—proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head.”

[Ostrinski]

What's that from?

[Let's Get Free]

It's from "Socialism, Utopian and Scientific."

[hetz]

So you're saying that the USSR was basically no different from the "modern" (state) capitalist state of that time, for example Germany?
Or was it perhaps something like a perfected, highest form of a modern state capitalist state?

[l'Enfermé]

Mmm. When comparing the Soviet Union with capitalist societies, though, you must also keep in mind that the law of value did not function in the SU, there was no wage labour and money, in the sense that Marx and even bourgeois economists described it, didn't exist either. There was no market. Et cetera et cetera.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

The USSR was undeveloped Socialism, "Primitive Socialist Accumulation", a workers'-State-capitalism if you will. What we really are criticizing if we discuss the "bureaucracy" is the division of labor. But the division of labor is a practical necessity at certain stages of the development of the productive forces of labor, and it certainly was in 1917 Russia. The failure of 20th century Socialism was that it never changed the division of labor, made a step further towards communism, once the objective conditions existed for a change in the organization of production, of the division of labor, i.e. computer technology.

[Let's Get Free]

Mmm. When comparing the Soviet Union with capitalist societies, though, you must also keep in mind that the law of value did not function in the SU, there was no wage labour and money, in the sense that Marx and even bourgeois economists described it, didn't exist either. There was no market. Et cetera et cetera.

The USSR did not have an effective market for commodities or capital,true, but the market is only one part of capitalism, it is not synonymous with the entire system. What the USSR did have was a managerial bureaucracy over the working class. And the USSR did indeed have generalized wage labor. Where there is generalized wage labor, you have capitalism. This is why Marx argued in Value Price and Profit that instead of the conservative motto of a fair days wage for a fair days work workers should inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword "abolition of the wages system"

[Let's Get Free]

The failure of 20th century Socialism was that it never changed the division of labor, made a step further towards communism, once the objective conditions existed for a change in the organization of production, of the division of labor, i.e. computer technology.

The downfall of the Leninist mode of production in the 20th century "socialist" states occurred because it accomplished the changes in social relationships which were demanded by circumstances, i.e., it industrialized the means of production. The "historical role" of the Leninist regime had been completed, and it fell to a system which is better suited for carrying out the next "task".

[l'Enfermé]

The downfall of the Leninist mode of production in the 20th century "socialist" states occurred because it accomplished the changes in social relationships which were demanded by circumstances, i.e., it industrialized the means of production. The "historical role" of the Leninist regime had been completed, and it fell to a system which is better suited for carrying out the next "task".
What's a "Leninist mode of production" or a "Leninist regime"? :confused:

[Let's Get Free]

State-run capitalism.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

:thumbdown:

[hetz]

State-run capitalism.
Lenin said they had it in 1918, I guess the NEP falls under that too.
But did the profound changes that came later not change the nature of that society, was it still "state-run capitalism"?

[Let's Get Free]

But did the profound changes that came later not change the nature of that society, was it still "state-run capitalism"?

As far as I'm aware, there were no "profound changes."

[hetz]

As far as I'm aware, there were no "profound changes."
No profound changes between, say, 1926 and 1936?

[l'Enfermé]

Where there is generalized wage labor, you have capitalism.
I have never actually heard of anyone using the phrase "generalized wage labour", comrade.

But no, there was no wage labour in the USSR, "generalized" or not. The fact is, while Soviet workers were indeed alienated from the products of their labour, they did not sell their labour-power. Obviously, and everyone knows this, workers were, formally, paid wages. These, however, did not amount to real wages, like those in capitalist society. They were more like pensions really. Comrade, as always, I recommend Hillel Ticktin's analysis of the Soviet Union and its mode of production. He is an excellent Marxist expert on Soviet political economy.

[hetz]

Comrade, as always, I recommend Hillel Ticktin's analysis of the Soviet Union and its mode of production.
Is he the guy who characterized the USSR as a "non-mode of production".
Sounds interesting...

[l'Enfermé]

Is he the guy who characterized the USSR as a "non-mode of production".
Sounds interesting...
Yes. There are a few selected articles on his wikipedia page, which one might find useful to introduce oneself to Ticktin's line of thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillel_Ticktin

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

For Bishop it was a matter of pride that the Soviet Union could boast of having such individuals
I know a Maoist who is proud of the fact that there are billionaires in China. Never mind that such wealth can only be accumulated by individuals by exploitation.

[hetz]

Never mind that such wealth can only be accumulated by individuals by exploitation.
Yes, if you consider bribery and corruption among the high level bureaucracy ( I'm talking about the USSR ) as exploitation.

[Ostrinski]

I have never actually heard of anyone using the phrase "generalized wage labour", comrade.

But no, there was no wage labour in the USSR, "generalized" or not. The fact is, while Soviet workers were indeed alienated from the products of their labour, they did not sell their labour-power. Obviously, and everyone knows this, workers were, formally, paid wages. These, however, did not amount to real wages, like those in capitalist society. They were more like pensions really. Comrade, as always, I recommend Hillel Ticktin's analysis of the Soviet Union and its mode of production. He is an excellent Marxist expert on Soviet political economy.He probably meant generalized commodity production, of which didn't exist in the Soviet Union.

Generalized commodity production (the very defining element of the capitalist mode of production that makes it unique), or systematic production of goods for the sole purpose of exchange, necessitates a commodity market. How the fuck can you have an economy of systematic production for exchange without an apparatus for that exchange?

Saying capitalism can exist without a market is like saying that the human body can exist without the heart, the body's means of ensuring blood circulation throughout the body.

All levels of the Soviet economy were administered bureaucratically, though inefficiently and poorly and with shitty results. Still, while not properly planned for human need by and for direct producers, the Soviet economy was still arranged in such a way that the tempo and nature of economic and infrastructural development and material production were manipulated by its administrators.

If the bourgeoisie had this kind of administrative control they would manipulate it so as to raise prices and cut wages to the farthest extent while still making sales and keeping the employed productive. And they would do this without any regard or consideration for the health and functioning of the system (something that the capitalists are unable to do and something that is unable to be addressed under capitalism as Marx right pointed out with his 'anarchy in production' concept).

If the Soviet bureaucrats hadn't made every cautious consideration possible then their system would have collapsed. It was a highly inefficient system afterall. If these bureaucrats were truly enterprising capitalists then their interests would have been with the disintegration of the Soviet system so as to make it possible to become wealthy through investment in production and capital accumulation. Something not so different than 1991 when the Soviet Union's liquidators were all handed large estates, positions as bankers and financiers, etc.

[Ostrinski]

Yes, if you consider bribery and corruption among the high level bureaucracy ( I'm talking about the USSR ) as exploitation.Bribery and corruption were rife within the bureaucracy, absolutely. That's one of the points we're trying to make in fact. These things also exist in any number of capitalist nations. They are exploitative in the casual sense of one caste of society having privilege while another doesn't, but not exploitation by the scientific Marxist standard of political economy i.e. extraction of surplus value or value of unpaid labor.

[Let's Get Free]

In basic terms, Capitalism is defined as an economic environment comprising basically of two sets of people, owners and workers, with the owners exploiting the workers. If we look at the Soviet Union the state largely owned the means of production but who owned state property? Certainly not the workers. It was a tiny section of the population - the nomenklatura, the bosses of state firms, the military top brass - who basically controlled the state and who therefore collectively as a class owned the property of the state

The Soviet capitalist class collectively exploited the Soviet workers and created one of the most unequal capitalist societies on the face of the earth. There was always inequality from the the beginning but under Stalin in the 1930s the old Boshevik policy of wage leveling was completely abandoned while Stalin himself railed against the "evil of equality". The Soviet fat cats pocketed surplus value collectively as a class not just through the camouflage of bloated salaries but arguably more significantly via a huge array of perks. They even had their own private shops stocking western goodies from which ordinary Russian workers were barred entry.

[Grenzer]

Except that the bureaucrats weren't the owners, and even if they were, they could not be considered a class in the Marxist sense. They never organized production for their individual and cohesive social accumulation. I don't really see how you can have capitalism without a capitalist class.

One might speak about a Soviet "capitalist class", but then they would be throwing Marxism out the window and instead embracing a moralistic, arbitrary system of classification to provide for a bullshit ideological narrative.

As Stalin admitted, the law of value certainly did operate in the Soviet Union; just not to a significant degree. I think profit was one of 20 or so factors; so it was definitely still there, just not dominant.

[Let's Get Free]

Let's clear all this up once and for all. If workers remain wage workers, the capitalist relation is not done away with. You still have capitalism.

Now transfer this observation to the USSR. Did workers in the USSR work for a wage? Of course they did. Hence there is capitalism. Do capitalists employ workers through capitalist enterprises? Again of course. Its not (in the main) private individuals capitalists that did this, it is the state acting as Engels put it as the "national capitalist" that does. Was there commodity production? Of course. There was buying, selling and exchange, with production only taking place when it was viable to do so. 'Socialist' Russia continued to trade according to the dictates of international capital and, like every other capitalist, state, was prepared to go to war to defend its economic interests.

[Blake's Baby]

I have never actually heard of anyone using the phrase "generalized wage labour", comrade...

That's because you don't bother to read anything that isn't written by DNZ or Mike McNair.

I use it almost every day. possibly an exageration but I have used it dozens and dozens of times on RevLeft.

Q: 'What is capitalism?'
A: 'Generalised wage labour and commodity production.'

Standard answer to the question that I have supplied on quite literally dozens of occassions.

[l'Enfermé]

That's because you don't bother to read anything that isn't written by DNZ or Mike McNair.
This again? Fine, I'll play ball.

http://i.imgur.com/k9CXi.png
http://i.imgur.com/hY92M.png



I use it almost every day. possibly an exageration but I have used it dozens and dozens of times on RevLeft.

Q: 'What is capitalism?'
A: 'Generalised wage labour and commodity production.'

Standard answer to the question that I have supplied on quite literally dozens of occassions.

Hmm, I never noticed, sorry. I don't remember the use of "generalized wage labour" in any of Marx's economic writings, including all the volumes of Capital. Nor is it present in the writings of Russian Marxists and Marxist economics as far as I remember.

But yeah, as far as wage labour and commodity production, workers didn't receive real wages(real money didn't even exist) in the Soviet Union, nor did they actually sell their labour-power in commodity form, and production for sale/exchange/profit(i.e commodity production) didn't really exist, so according to your definition, the the mode of production in the Soviet Union was not capitalism. I mean you absolutely cannot have commodity production without a market, not even simple commodity production and the market definitely didn't exist - under Khrushchev they tried to introduce it, under Brezhnev also, it was only under Gorbachev that it was successfully introduced and ruling class finally succeeded in transforming itself into a capitalist class.

[Let's Get Free]

Lenin himself acknowledged, promoted, and desired the implementation of state capitalism in Russia. Here are a few quotes from Mr. Lenin.

"State capitalism would be a step forward as compared with the present state of affairs in our Soviet Republic. If in approximately six months’ time state capitalism became established in our Republic, this would be a great success and a sure guarantee that within a year socialism will have gained a permanently firm hold and will have become invincible in this country."

"The state capitalism, which is one of the principal aspects of the New Economic Policy, is, under Soviet power, a form of capitalism that is deliberately permitted and restricted by the working class. Our state capitalism differs essentially from the state capitalism in countries that have bourgeois governments in that the state with us is represented not by the bourgeoisie, but by the proletariat, who has succeeded in winning the full confidence of the peasantry.
Unfortunately, the introduction of state capitalism with us is not proceeding as quickly as we would like it. For example, so far we have not had a single important concession, and without foreign capital to help develop our economy, the latter’s quick rehabilitation is inconceivable."

"our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to
spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting
dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it. Our task is to
hasten this copying even more than Peter hastened the copying of
Western culture by barbarian Russia, and we must not hesitate to use
barbarous methods"

[l'Enfermé]

Aye, take quotes out of context and flat out falsify them. Great job, comrade :)

[Let's Get Free]

Aye, take quotes out of context and flat out falsify them. Great job, comrade :)

Can you put them into context for me?

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

As I understand it a number of party officials became Oligarchs after the collapse of the soviet union. During the first waves of privatization they managed to gain control of state enterprises. Does this suggest anything about their relationship to the means of production before the collapse or is it just a result of normal corruption?

[robbo203]

Let's clear all this up once and for all. If workers remain wage workers, the capitalist relation is not done away with. You still have capitalism.

Now transfer this observation to the USSR. Did workers in the USSR work for a wage? Of course they did. Hence there is capitalism. Do capitalists employ workers through capitalist enterprises? Again of course. Its not (in the main) private individuals capitalists that did this, it is the state acting as Engels put it as the "national capitalist" that does. Was there commodity production? Of course. There was buying, selling and exchange, with production only taking place when it was viable to do so. 'Socialist' Russia continued to trade according to the dictates of international capital and, like every other capitalist, state, was prepared to go to war to defend its economic interests.


I agree with all this . Of course the Soviet Union was essentially a system of state run capitalism. No other description remotely makes sense. Ticktin's "non mode of production" is a non explanation.

Logically, in the absence of common ownership of the means of production there can only be sectional or class ownership. The SU did not have common ownership (communism) and therefore it had to be a class society, by inference. Stalin nonsensically claimed there were only 2 classes in society - the proletariat and the peasants. But the proletariat can only exist in relation to (and hence implies the existence of) a capitalist class.

I wouldn't characterise the "bureaucracy" as such as the Soviet capitalist class because, as someone said, the bureaucracy was quite a sizeable entity and would have included many low level pen pushers who were essentially workers. The "nomenklatura" is more precise as a term. Through their political control of the state they effectively owned the means of production - not as private atomised individuals but collectively as a class - much like the Catholic Church in the Medieval society owned vast tracts of land and means of production - obviously to the exclusion of the laity. Someone had to own that land- it was no "unowned" - and so by inference it had to be the Church hierarchy even if members of the clergy did not possess individual title to such things

The Marxist view of class depends above all on one's de facto relationship to the means of production and not - it must be emphasised - one's de jure relationship. Trotsky and others in the Trotskyist tradition essentially adopted an idealist outlook in analysing the Soviet social structure and concluding there were "no capitalists" there since individuals were not permitted to legally own private capital in their own right (there was of course a substantial black economy in which some members of state capitalist class were implicated and received backhanders etc but thats another matter).

The fact is that all the major economic decisions in the SU were made by a tiny group who decided amongt themselves on the distributuioin of state revenue, the allocation of investment and the priorities of production. If that does not consititute a distinct class then I do not know what does!


Certainly, no one here can pretend that the relation to the means of production of, say, a members of the politburo or the managers of state enterprises, was the same as that of an ordinary worker. That would be absurd. The former had vastly more power and collectively not as individuals, the nomenklatura or state capitalist class systematically skewed the distribution of wealth in their class interests. Indeed, the Soviet Union was an extremely unequal society by any standards and as every Marxist knows the mode of distribution is dependent on the mode of production. In other words, gross inequality of wealth distribution is itself a good indication that we are talking about a class society


John Fleming and John Micklewright in their paper "Income Distribution, Economic Systems and Transition" cite the work of researchers like Morrison who, using data from the 1970s, found that countries like Poland and the Soviet Union had relatively high levels of income inequality, registering gini coefficients of 0.31 in both case, which put them on a par with Canada (0.30) and the USA (0.34) ( http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/eps70.pdf). According to Roy Medvedev (Khrushchev: The Years in Power ,Columbia University Press. 1976, 540), taking into account not only their inflated and (something which is often overlooked ) multiple "salaries" (disguised share of the profits) but also the many payments -in-kind, privileges and numerous perks enjoyed by the Soviet elite (who even had access to their own retail outlets stocking western goods and various other facilities from which the general public was physically excluded) the ratio between low and high earners was more like 1:100.


The notion that capitalism only exists where there are individual capitalist class having legal right to own capital was long ago scotched by Engels but it seems many "Marxists" today are still living in the 18th century!

But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with (Socialism, Utopian and Scientific)


The Stalinist myth that there was no wage labour in the Soviet Union which, I see, is still routinely regurgitated as the empty dogma it is, on this forum is absolutely void of all reason and common sense - more so when it is frankly admitted that workers were "alienated from the means of production". It is claimed what workers received was not a wage but something more like a pension. This is a tortuously contrived explanation if ever there was, and utterly unconvincing. For starters, pensions are, in any case, deferred wages as far as the working class is concerned and I cannot see how else, if you are alienated from the means of production, you can gain access to the means of living except by selling your labour power to those who own the means of production which in this case is the state capitalist class in the guise of "the state" or, more proximately speaking, state enterprises. What else can it be that you get other than a wage? Charity? Of course the buying and selling of labour power was heavily regulated but in no way does that detract from the fact that labour power was bought and sold and that, at the end of the day (or week/month in this case), what workers got was unquestionably a wage. As a matter of fact the Soviet system was (of neccesity I would argue) a lot more decentralised than is often allowed for and state enterprise managers had significant leeway in such things as wage bargaining and employment at a local level, notwithstanding the fixing of wage levels centrally.


Perhaps this is what throws some people. They think that because wage levels are (supposedly) centrally fixed , there is no buying and selling of labour power. Wrong. Even if it were true that wage levels were simply fixed by diktat, all that would signifiy is that the Russian workers were faced with a particularly ruthless version of capitalism in which the right of workers to negotiate their pay and conditions was denied them. In no way would it signify that their labour power was not a commodity or that there was "no wage labour"


Much the same can be said of the absurd claim that there was no buying and selling in the SU - no commodity production. Access to goods was unquestionally dependent upon the exchange of money tokens. Just as in the West you could not just turn up at a store and take what you want. You had to pay for it - in roubles. How anyone can argue there was no money in the SU is just plain daft. What they are trying to say I guess is that it is not "real money" just as wages are allegedy not "real wages" in the SU. Soviet money it is claimed did not perform the functions of real money as a means of exchange, a store of value and a unit of account. But it did and that is the point


This is what is known as the "empty husk"argument - that the forms of capitalist relationships existed but not the content . It is a bogus argument and is in any case completely unable to explain why the forms - or husks - of capitalist relationships should exist in the first place if there is no capitalist content to them. Those who promote the "empty husk" argument have been duped into thinking that the superficial differences that undoubtedly did exist between Soviet style capitalism and Western style somehow represented a fundamental systemic difference. It did not.

Saying that the peculiarities of the Soviet system meant that itr not was not particularly reponsive to market forces does NOT mean there was no market for goods. A regulated market , even a very tightly regulated market is STILL a market. You might say it is not a very effective way to run a market economy and for which reason the black market emerged to make up for the defiencies of the official market but is sill a market, deficient of not


Not only were consumer goods bought and sold but so too were capital goods between state enterprises, these transactions being subject to legally binding contracts with state agencies like GOSSNAP acting essentially as intermediaries at the service of the state enterprises. Bettelheim, has quite rightly noted that:
What state capitalist regimes vainly attempt to do in the field of production of the means of production is not to supplant the market by means of the plan but rather to plan market transactions between enterprises. ...Clearly such an economy is not a free market economy , but it is a market economy , albeit one which is moulded and influenced by the constant attentions of the planners


These state enterprises were legally obliged to pursue profit and while there was some difference with the western model of capitalism inasmuch as they could not be closed down if they not realise a profit, they could and often were severely punished if they they failed to make a profit. All profits and losses reverted to the state but in order to ensure the maximum flow of surplus value into the hands of the state - how else could it finance reinvestment, among other things? - the central state , paradoxically having blocked the spontaneous regulation of production by the market "was forced to introduce a similar process itself" (State Capitalism: The Wages system under new management, Buick and Crump 1987 p.90). State enterprises related to each other in the same way as private firms in the West being only concerned with their own narrow competitive interests in the pursuit of profit. As in other capitalist countries this involved holding down costs as far possible in the interests of capital accumulation Indeed, this subordination of consumption to the needs of capital accumulation which is a characteristic of capitalist production took an extreme form in the early years of the SU when it was undergoing rapid industrialisation. One year in particular - 1933 - as Alec Nove has noted, marked the "culmination of the most precipitous peacetime decline in living standards known in recorded history" (Nove A An Economic History of the USSR Allen Lane 1972, p.207)


Finally of course the old discredited claim is wheeled out that the Soviet Union was a centrally planned economy in which the law of value did not operate. In fact, the notion that the economy of the SU was somehow governed by "the Plan" is patently ludicrous. No plan ever devised by the GOSPLAN was ever fulfilled in any meaningful sense. Almost invariably plans were routinely modified midstream to fit in with changing economic circumstanaces and to make it appear as if they were fulfilled. Sometimes plans were not even available at the commencement of the implementation peruiod in quyestion. The so called plans devised by GOSPLAN were little more than a wishlist. They did not so much guide the economy as were guided by it in a manner of speaking.

That aside the claim that SU economy was not subject to the law of value becuase it was not a free market economy in which prices spontaneously adjust through market forces is based on a complete misunderstanding of Marxian economics. Even in a perfectly free market economy prices do not correspond to values, it is only in the long run that price tends to equilibrate around value but in the short run there will always be a divergence between them . As Marx noted:The possibility, therefore, of a quantitative incongruity between price and the magnitude of value, is inherent in the price-form itself (Capital Ch 3 "Money, or the Circulation of Commodities" I: The measure of values). The prices set by Soviet planners were no different in that respect and were ultimately subject to the law of value as in every other capitalist country

[robbo203]

As I understand it a number of party officials became Oligarchs after the collapse of the soviet union. During the first waves of privatization they managed to gain control of state enterprises. Does this suggest anything about their relationship to the means of production before the collapse or is it just a result of normal corruption?

It is the logical outcome of the Leninist theory of the vanguard taking power in advance of socialist majority and hoping naively to direct developments in a socialist direction from that position of power. All that can ever amount to is that you will be obliged to adminster capitalism by default since socialism cannot be imposed downwards on an unknowing and unwilling majority. And we all know what happens when you try to administer capitalism. Even with the best of intentions, you are forced into a position of promoting the interests of capital against those of wage labour. You end up being changed by capitalism rather than having changed capitalism.

This is what happened to the so called Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Like its social democratic counterparts in the West - most notably the German SDP - it became a thoroughly pro-capitalist party in all but name. The old command economy model for running capitalism - state capitalism - had run oiut of steam and sections of the Soviet ruling class were increasingly disenchanted with it. They wanted something more like what prevailed in the West


This is the thesis pioneered by the likes of the Russian New Left dissident Boris Kagarlitsky which been further elaborated by David Kotz (with Fred Weir) in Revolution from Above: Demise of the Soviet System, (Routledge; London 1997). According to Kotz and Weir, the party-state elite, in the wake of Gorbachev's reforms and the deteriorating economic circumstances, opportunistically decided to switch allegiance from the jaded old bureaucratic model to "market capitalism" as a way of preserving and extending their influence and wealth. A key moment in this process was in 1990/91 when the regional elites abandoned Gorbachev in favour of Yeltsin. Correspondingly, there was a widespread defection from Soviet to Republican institutions - most notably in the form of companies redirecting their tax payments to the latter.


The shock therapy of 1992 which heralded a programme of rampant privatisation, provided some in the nomenklatura with a golden opportunity to seize control of much of the economic assets of Russia, using their considerable connections, political patronage and influence to morph into modern-day Russian oligarchs. Indeed, according to one estimate, even today, more than two decades on, 43% of the super rich oligarchs were previously high ranking members of the communist party nomenklatura ("Postcommunist Oligarchs in Russia: Quantitative Analysis Export", Serguey Braguinsky, The Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 52, No. 2. (1 May 2009), pp. 307-349.) . In other parts of what once was the Eastern bloc the proportion is much higher - most notably in Romania. Not that this practice of self aggandizement was a completely new departure. Under Stalin there were huge inequalities between the privileged elite and the general public. but after Stalin, the former were more and more able to capitalise on their position for personal gain, for instance "by teaming up with parallel economy businesses in what became known as the 'Soviet mafia' ("The Rise and Fall of Post-Communist Oligarchs: Legitimate and Illegitimate Children of Praetorian Communism" Serguey Braguinsky, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTINVTCLI/Resources/JUNE7&8PAPERBraguinsky.pdf)

The irony could not be keener. Lenin's so called Vanguard who were supposed to lead the Russian working class towards socialism (communism) were in fact the very ones who did most to ensure that Russia plumped for the kind of corporate version of capitalism that exists there today!

[Let's Get Free]

Very good analysis.

[robbo203]

Lenin himself acknowledged, promoted, and desired the implementation of state capitalism in Russia. Here are a few quotes from Mr. Lenin.
......


"our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to
spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting
dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it. Our task is to
hasten this copying even more than Peter hastened the copying of
Western culture by barbarian Russia, and we must not hesitate to use
barbarous methods"

Do you have a reference for this Lenin quote?

[Let's Get Free]

Do you have a reference for this Lenin quote?

It's from "Left Wing Childishness."

The full quote was actually


While the revolution in Germany is still slow in “coming forth”, our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it. Our task is to hasten this copying even more than Peter hastened the copying of Western culture by barbarian Russia, and we must not hesitate to use barbarous methods in fighting barbarism. If there are anarchists and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries (I recall off-hand the speeches of Karelin and Ghe at the meeting of the Central Executive Committee) who indulge in Narcissus-like reflections and say that it is unbecoming for us revolutionaries to “take lessons” from German imperialism, there is only one thing we can say in reply: the revolution that took these people seriously would perish irrevocably (and deservedly).

[robbo203]

Is he the guy who characterized the USSR as a "non-mode of production".
Sounds interesting...


Im curious about this concept. To me the idea is absurd. A "mode of production" in Marxian parlance is a composite of 2 things:

The forces of production
The relations of production


Clearly, the Soviet Union had "forces of production" at its disposal. Clearly it also exhibited relations of production. Even where everyone in society stands in equal relation to the means of production - where there is common ownership of those means - you still have a "mode of production" which in this case is a communist mode.

Of course, in the SU the relationship to the means of production displayed by a member of the politbureau or a state enterrpise manager was vastly different to that of an ordinary Russian worker and it is precisely the fact that such a differentiation exists that allows us to talk about the existence of a class society. In the SU the capitalist class was not made up of individual private capitalists having legal entitlement to their own capital but rather a small group of top decisionmakiers who effectively and collectively owned the means of production as a class in a de facto sense by virtue of exercising complete control over the disposal of the economic surplus

So I am at a loss to know what Ticktin is driving at with this strange concept of the "non-mode of production". There must be some esoteric sense in which he employs this term which has so far escaped me. Ive tried surfing the internet for an explanation but without luck.

Does anyone have a specific link that provides a direct explanation?

[commieathighnoon]

I will start by saying it is very unfortunate that revolutionaries indulge only tired polemical cut-outs, and virtually never consult the original sources of theory or methodology (Marx, Engels) or of data (empirical economics, scholarly history). As usual, these discussions become a carousel of repeating shop-worn polemics.


The bureaucracy might have been managers of capital, but they were certainly not accumulators. All surpluses of wealth were reinvested into industry and the maintenance of the regime. To call the bureaucrats in the Soviet Union capitalists is to give too much credit to the Soviet system and neglects to acknowledge that it was a quite inefficient and even pitiful system and that every last flake of wealth was needed to maintain it.

"All wealth" was certainly not reinvested in production, or privative appropriation (however it was juridically characterized in official law or ideology--both of which had a non-trivial difference, in terms of operation within the USSR and kin societies--from the conventional bourgeois state and society) in the form of much expanded living standards, opportunities for offspring, freedom from productive or menial labor, could not have existed in the USSR. The existence of the intelligentsia and the elite ipso facto demonstrates that privative appropriation for the purposes of advancement did occur. Nevertheless, it is quite populist and absurd to make "reinvestment" something which undermines the identity of a ruling class. After all, Marx notes the uniqueness of the bourgeoisie thusfar historically in that it is compelled to accumulate--precisely what the bourgeoisie personify is not personalized appropriation for luxury (that would be the pre-capitalist gentry, nobleman, patrician who squandered their exploitative takings on consumption, rather than the self-expansion of productive forces), but rather the obligation to invest and realize expropriated labor-time.


The bureaucracy cannot be considered to be a class because because they did not hold a unique relationship to the means of production. We must remember how incredibly large the Stalinist bureaucracy was and that in fact there was a deficit of how many positions needed to be filled and how many people were regularly able to be employed to these positions. Anyone who wanted a bureaucratic position could work their way into one, in other words. Conversely, one could be a bureaucrat one day and be stripped of their position the next and be pushed into the ranks of the rest of society. Doesn't sound like any capitalist system I'm familiar with.

This is the height of formalism. Simply because the Stalinist elite was formally organized on lines which Weber would describe as "technically" and "rationally" bureaucratic, with the theory being all officials are responsible agents of principals, and dismissable employees at will, the fact is that the Soviet elite did not in fact function in such a way. The USSR's central bureaucratic elite was not like the civil service of the United States State Department writ large.

First of all, the actual elite is not identical with the entire "non-working" bureaucratic apparatus. The former was substantially smaller than the latter, occupying .1-1% of the total population, while the entire apparatus exceeded 10%. Not all officials were created equally. While theoretically officials could and did rise-and-fall, the mass of the elite was rooted socially in the descendants of wealthy peasants, relative of the old bourgeoisie, and lowly noble officialdom of the pre-revolutionary society. The apparatus as a whole, and the elite, was not rooted in the working-class, although substantial numbers of the labor aristocracy were elevated during the Stalin period.

Secondly, a conventional bureaucracy is a detached arm of actual centers of power--a wing of the state executive, a department of a business conglomerate. As such, it has clearly defined operational goals, a set and easily defined budget of financial and material resources by which to accomplish it, and the transparency of information which makes it possible to assess these tasks. None of these qualities applied to the Soviet elite. The Soviet elite was a self-perpetuating class of officials, the political government ruled at their behest, and in coherence with their consensus on public policy under constraints set by the struggle between expropriators and producers to realize a social surplus. There was a closed loop of power. Individual post-holders, especially very close to the top, could have rising and falling fortunes, but this no more alikens them to the arbitrary fates of civil servants than the fortunes of court favorites in Ancein Regime France means that the French aristocracy had ceased to exist, or ceased to form the ruling class.

Following your superficial formalism through, one would be forced to conclude firstly that:

a.) there were no ruling classes outside of feudal Europe throughout human history, Marxism therefore lacks the quality of being a universalistic science of human social formation under conditions of forced labor (class society), and like your Kautskyist and reformist forebearers, what is thus called for is a capitulation to Western bourgeois social science, Weberianism, the whole nine-yards. After all, who and what was the ruling class in Ming China under your constraints? What about even under Peter the Great's Russia, given that landed property ownership followed from service to the Tsar, and not the other way around? That no independent lineages of great landed magnates existed independent from the Autocracy?

and, secondly,

b.) the USSR was not a class society, and therefore no rules-of-reproduction governed by the class struggle ultimately determined by the conditions of production and exploitation under which the immediate producers labor are produced. Therefore no Marxist theory of the USSR is produced. Your theory succeeds in illustrating the superficial features of the item to be examined, at the cost of destroying the theoretical basis of your politics: good job. Furthermore, the Marxist theory of the state is also falsified, since the Soviet state existed suspended in a vacuum, free of reference to any base.


Bribery and corruption were rife within the bureaucracy, absolutely. That's one of the points we're trying to make in fact. These things also exist in any number of capitalist nations. They are exploitative in the casual sense of one caste of society having privilege while another doesn't, but not exploitation by the scientific Marxist standard of political economy i.e. extraction of surplus value or value of unpaid labor.

You miss the point entirely. The law in the USSR did not function as a socially actualized formation of procedures and rules by which property-agents conducted business and their personal affairs. Civil society in the proper sense had ceased to exist, or was digested into an extremely deformed state.

As such, the appropriation of goods and services in a way contrary to official declarations doesn't have the same social content as in a conventionally capitalist society. It is ironic that what you wish to take away on one side, namely the analogy of the USSR with a capitalist society, you wish to keep on the other side, namely that "corruption" and "bribery" were mere peripheral phenomena, like in capitalism. Unfortunately for you, these phenomena were not incidentals or marginal features, desired to be eliminated, or excess costs to an otherwise self-contained system of reproduction, as in capitalism. On the contrary, they were wholly generalized and at the heart of how the social order on the ground as it really existed and reproduced itself, actually functioned. The elite systematically denied foreign products for the population, while collectively organizing their importation (bought through the maintenance of foreign currency reserves which had to be maintained by exporting the products of exploited Soviet producers) for their own use. This was not a sporadic phenomena, but generalized and institutionalized. It was obvious to all, with a wink and a nudge. It was under some level of relative control under what was known as the "unity of interests" doctrine through the Brezhnew era, and thus it can be said had all the essence of a class mode of appropriation. The same means were utilized by the departmental and ministerial management to actually realize social production--resources were stolen (either passively, by hiding resources from the official planning account, or actively, through hidden production) and exchanged or recirculated to realize the sectoral production aims of each fragment of the productive apparatus.


He probably meant generalized commodity production, of which didn't exist in the Soviet Union.

Generalized commodity production (the very defining element of the capitalist mode of production that makes it unique), or systematic production of goods for the sole purpose of exchange, necessitates a commodity market. How the fuck can you have an economy of systematic production for exchange without an apparatus for that exchange?

Saying capitalism can exist without a market is like saying that the human body can exist without the heart, the body's means of ensuring blood circulation throughout the body.

Now, I will agree the Soviet ruble did not behave exactly according to capitalist convention during the 1929-1989 period. However, if the system really did not have any role for a universal equivalent, why was it necessary to offer workers a pay-packet which could be generally exchanged for goods, even if those goods were inferior to those commonly on-offer in the West, or subject to shortages? Your argument, if followed through, would suggest that the United States from 1941-1945 was not a capitalist economy, and money did not exist. Your account would literally have us believe the use of the ruble to distribute goods according to labor-contribution was purely arbitrary, and the system could've just as easily distributed or remunerated to producers directly in-kind. That is absurd. It is contrary to all the literature on the use of material incentives to allocate labor, of the use by directors of bonuses and inflated pay contrived through falsified planning revision to encourage production to meet targets, and of the role of endemic suppressed inflation, or the entire practice of Soviet finance in the first place.

The fact is that Ticktin is wrong. His idealized concept of capitalist money shines through in that his analysis also claims that value and money and commodity production are partially negated in modern capitalism--indeed, according to Ticktin, the only chemically pure, real capitalism existed apparently between the 1820s and 1890s. Everything else is a mix of capitalism and...non-capitalism/non-mode. This is a very idealist model. I agree Ticktin's analysis is critical to be examined, but it is hardly the last word. In fact, you only borrow from it opportunistically and theoretically emptily, considering that Ticktin maintains that Russia under Putin today is emphatically not capitalist, but still a "disintegrating Stalinism." Ticktin is theoretically interesting, but ultimately a failed attempt to rescue the theoretical devices of Trotsky from Trotskyism.

The ruble did function in the consumer market and labor market as money, in very similar fashion to the operation of capitalist money under a capitalist total war-mobilized economy. The producer goods sector is a lot more complicated, it is true. Maybe we'll get back to that.


All levels of the Soviet economy were administered bureaucratically, though inefficiently and poorly and with shitty results. Still, while not properly planned for human need by and for direct producers, the Soviet economy was still arranged in such a way that the tempo and nature of economic and infrastructural development and material production were manipulated by its administrators.

This is simply false. The system of production was not allocated from Olympian heights and imposed. This is why Ticktin is theoretically impoverished. He essentially has appropriated the theory of "bureaucratic collectivism" and added the caveat that, unlike the original collectivist theoreticians--who maintained the regime and its domination was total and all-powerful--, rather the domination of the regime was dysfunctional and the failures of labor-process and production (which exist totally abstracted from class, i.e., the USSR is decreed a society outside Marxian analysis) undermined its basis with time.

With this illusion comes the view that the existence of money, prices, and consumer, and labor markets was totally illusory and maintained for unknown reasons, and that production was set from totalitarian heights, if dysfunctionally.

HOW THE SOVIET PRODUCER SECTOR REALLY OPERATED IN PRACTICE:

What really happened was sort of like a super-bureaucratized version of fascist economies where there is official collusion and organization between cartels to set prices. GOSPLAN could not and did not have real information on the real conditions in the economy, so, in a fashion the bureaucratic management was able to exercise a certain degree of what Mike Macnair, when referring to the technical intelligentsia in capitalism, calls "possessory" property rights, or forms of intellectual property right in the form of monopolies of economic information. Yet all members of the ruling class objectively had demands for inputs to justify their economic position, and personal income. So what happened is the management at the base produced production and consumption proposals and they were aggregated as successively higher levels of organization and in repeated iterations based on actual production outcomes. These would finally converge into production targets which the enterprises then made use of generalized industrial barter, shadow ruble transfers, secondary sales and purchases, and negotiation of concealed resources in order to realize, facilitated by networks of so-called "pushers," who were often compared to salesmen in the West. This system in some forms persisted into the 1990s, beside the profit-and-loss-based, convertible ruble economy (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB904110397260803500.html). Using forms of barter (like preferential access to housing, shorter queues or privileged waiting times for luxuries, etc.) and embezzled funds from the planners for extra bonuses, the management would attempt to squeeze the workers to meet the targets. Within each production site there was considerable unplanned labor turnover, which meant planning of labor resources was fictitious. As opposed to conventional capitalism (and again, in some respects similar to a total war mobilized economy from conventional capitalism), while the labor market did exist, it was deformed and distorted in several respects. Like all producer inputs, and indeed most goods in the USSR generally, it was in generalized shortage and subject to a sellers' market, whereas in conventional peacetime capitalism labor and goods are subject to buyers' markets and there is generalized surplus capacity (unemployment and stocked shelves and warehouses). WITHIN each production site, labor was often underemployed and underutilized though, and there was a leading or privileged sector of workers who had access to bonuses and other remuneration in exchange for greater labor inputs. So to an extent there was a labor market and unemployment WITHIN the factory. The slack of the underemployed workers would be used for "storming" and unforeseen production bottlenecks or disjunctions.


If the bourgeoisie had this kind of administrative control they would manipulate it so as to raise prices and cut wages to the farthest extent while still making sales and keeping the employed productive. And they would do this without any regard or consideration for the health and functioning of the system (something that the capitalists are unable to do and something that is unable to be addressed under capitalism as Marx right pointed out with his 'anarchy in production' concept).

Production in the USSR, if anything, existed at a higher abstract degree of "anarchy" than conventional capitalism, where an economy of information relative transparency of exchange actually exist.


If the Soviet bureaucrats hadn't made every cautious consideration possible then their system would have collapsed. It was a highly inefficient system afterall. If these bureaucrats were truly enterprising capitalists then their interests would have been with the disintegration of the Soviet system so as to make it possible to become wealthy through investment in production and capital accumulation. Something not so different than 1991 when the Soviet Union's liquidators were all handed large estates, positions as bankers and financiers, etc.

Who did the handing over here? Your use of the passive voice conceals your lack of theoretical substance.


Mmm. When comparing the Soviet Union with capitalist societies, though, you must also keep in mind that the law of value did not function in the SU, there was no wage labour and money, in the sense that Marx and even bourgeois economists described it, didn't exist either. There was no market. Et cetera et cetera.

[MUCH REPETITION]

See above.


I have never actually heard of anyone using the phrase "generalized wage labour", comrade.

But no, there was no wage labour in the USSR, "generalized" or not. The fact is, while Soviet workers were indeed alienated from the products of their labour, they did not sell their labour-power. Obviously, and everyone knows this, workers were, formally, paid wages. These, however, did not amount to real wages, like those in capitalist society. They were more like pensions really. Comrade, as always, I recommend Hillel Ticktin's analysis of the Soviet Union and its mode of production. He is an excellent Marxist expert on Soviet political economy.



But yeah, as far as wage labour and commodity production, workers didn't receive real wages(real money didn't even exist) in the Soviet Union, nor did they actually sell their labour-power in commodity form, and production for sale/exchange/profit(i.e commodity production) didn't really exist, so according to your definition, the the mode of production in the Soviet Union was not capitalism. I mean you absolutely cannot have commodity production without a market, not even simple commodity production and the market definitely didn't exist - under Khrushchev they tried to introduce it, under Brezhnev also, it was only under Gorbachev that it was successfully introduced and ruling class finally succeeded in transforming itself into a capitalist class.

Not according to Ticktin (as described previously), and of course the entire mechanism you just posited is a complete affront to the categories of Marxist theory. It is completely abstracted from class processes. The elite "succeeded" in "converting itself" to a capitalist class? Yet your theory a la Ticktin is precisely that the elite cannot do this--and Ticktin thus maintains it is not capitalism. In the process of "succeeding," it also completely wrecked its own productivity and enormous amounts of variable and fixed capital were destroyed? How is this success?


Except that the bureaucrats weren't the owners, and even if they were, they could not be considered a class in the Marxist sense. They never organized production for their individual and cohesive social accumulation. I don't really see how you can have capitalism without a capitalist class.

The above is a meaningless Trotskyist addendum to Marx. According to this idiocy, no class societies existed outside of Mediterranean antiquity, Western-Central European feudalism, Japanese feudalism, and modern capitalism. By your definition, there was no class society in Peter the Great's Russia, nor in Ottoman Turkey, nor in Imperial China since the Sung Dynasty at latest, nor in Mughal India, ad nauseum.


One might speak about a Soviet "capitalist class", but then they would be throwing Marxism out the window and instead embracing a moralistic, arbitrary system of classification to provide for a bullshit ideological narrative.

Actually, workers were paid to work, and then forced to work longer than was necessary to reproduce their own social existences, and the difference was expropriated as social surplus. What you are claiming is a state can exist without classes, that Marxism is a failed theory. Well, you're welcome to parrot the bourgeois academy.


As Stalin admitted, the law of value certainly did operate in the Soviet Union; just not to a significant degree. I think profit was one of 20 or so factors; so it was definitely still there, just not dominant.

Stalin's polemic is apologetic and not to be taken as a face value critique of Soviet political economy. You're right that official numerated ruble profits were not the straightfowardly driving force of the social formation. I have not arrived as a final theoretical determination on the USSR and kin societies. Within the orthodox corpus of Marxist theory, it is clear to me the USSR is most like the type of capitalist mode of production, but it clearly also departs from the usual ideal types specified in significant ways. In any case, the Kautskyist's accounts are theoretically impoverished at best and the result of reading documents spoon-fed to them.

[robbo203]

Commieathighnoon.

You make some very perceptive points in your post and I would concur with your general conclusion viz

Within the orthodox corpus of Marxist theory, it is clear to me the USSR is most like the type of capitalist mode of production, but it clearly also departs from the usual ideal types specified in significant ways.

I think the Leninist/Trotskyist/Stalinist analysis of the class structure of the Soviet Union is very weak (though there are significant variations between them). The idea propounded by Stalin, for example, that there were only two classes in the FSU - a proletariat and a peasantry - is theoretically ridiculous . A proletariat can only exist in relation to a capitalist class whose existence was denied

The characterisation of the capitalist class by Trotskyist theoreticians like Mandel as nothing more than a class of individuals who have legal title to individually owned capital is equally absurd and far too narrow a definition. It is also in my opinion a fundamentally idealist approach to the question of class since it vests primary siginficance in the superstructure rather than the economic base in the sense that it focuses upon merely a de jure conception of ownership rather than a de facto ownership which is the Marxian approach.

In my view, de facto ownership amounts to the same thing as ultimate control - how otherwise would one define it? You "own" something by virture of the fact that you have ultimately the right to dispose of it or use it as you wish. That is self evident

Clearly, in the Soviet Union a tiny elite did exercise "ultimate control over the means of production". It arrogated to itself all the major decisions in the economy in relation to the economic surplus which it appropriated in the name of the state which it completely controlled. As you suggest, this elite was in a position to desively determine, for instance, how much of the surplus it could cream off for its own consumption purposes (though the mechanism it employed for this purpose was different to what it exists in the West), constrained only by the need to accumulate capital through reinvestment (just as in the West) . It ultimately controlled the means of production via its stranglelgold on the state and therefore in de facto terms owned the means of production collectively as a tiny class.


The comparsion I like to use is that of Catholic Church in Medieval Europe which owned vast tracts of land and other substantial means of production . monastries being economic powerhouses in their own right. Individuals clerics did not as far as I am aware have individual title to this wealth but clearly it was owned - it was not "unowned". It was certainly not owned by the laity so, by inference, it must have been institutionally owned by those who exerted ultimate control as a collective group within the Church hierarchy.

The same with the Soviet Union. Those who deny this point put themselves in the unenviable position of trying to square the circle. They cannot possibly contend that the relationship of, say, a member of the politburo to the means of production was in any way the same as that of an ordinary Russian worker. In Marxist theory it is the fact that individuals have different relations to the means of prpduction that enables them to be assigned to different classes. So ipso facto the Soviet Union must have been a class based society


The identification of the Soviet ruling class with the bureaucracy is quite unsatisfactory from that point of view, as you point out, since most "bureaucrats" did not exercise significant control. As an attempt to draw attenton away from the real de facto presence of a collective owning class in the Soviet Union, this seriously begs the question as to why, if such a class did not exist, did the state exist.

In other words, it runs totally counter to a Marxian view of the state as an institutional tool of class coercion, the very existence of which must therefore imply the existence of classes.

[Geiseric]

That's because you don't bother to read anything that isn't written by DNZ or Mike McNair.

I use it almost every day. possibly an exageration but I have used it dozens and dozens of times on RevLeft.

Q: 'What is capitalism?'
A: 'Generalised wage labour and commodity production.'

Standard answer to the question that I have supplied on quite literally dozens of occassions.

So you can have those without private ownership and it's capitalism? That's an incorrect explanation, the aspect of privately owned profit is more important than the other two, and by that logic the USSR was not capitalist. Marx talks about this all the time in Capital, that the stealing of wages in the form of profit is what makes capitalism capitalism...

You can beat around the bush all you want and talk about non marxian concepts such as "de facto control means power means capitalism," but the flow of the money went back into the country as opposed to the accumulation of private capital, meaning it wasn't capitalism.

[Luís Henrique]

Mmm. When comparing the Soviet Union with capitalist societies, though, you must also keep in mind that the law of value did not function in the SU, there was no wage labour and money, in the sense that Marx and even bourgeois economists described it, didn't exist either. There was no market. Et cetera et cetera.

Eh?

Labour in the Soviet Union was wage labour, and commodities were sold and bought at the market. Yes, it was a crippled, imperfect market, but that is a differend issue.

Luís Henrique

[robbo203]

So you can have those without private ownership and it's capitalism?

Yes of course its still capitalism. Individual de jure ownership of capital by private individuals is only one version of capitalism. There are others. Here's Engels spelling it out in black and white:


The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. (Socialism: Utopian and Scientific)



That's an incorrect explanation, the aspect of privately owned profit is more important than the other two, and by that logic the USSR was not capitalist. Marx talks about this all the time in Capital, that the stealing of wages in the form of profit is what makes capitalism capitalism...

In the Soviet Union state enterprises were legally obliged to pursue profit or face stiff penalties if they made a loss. In the Soviet Union the relentless pursuit of capital accumulation out of surplus value ensured in the 1930s, for instance - 1933 to be precise - there occurred what Alex Nove calls the "culmination of the most precipitous peacetime decline in living standards known in recorded history" (Nove A An Economic History of the USSR Allen Lane 1972, p.207)

Not to put too fine a point on it, the FSU possibly outdid their other capitalist rivals in the business of exploiting their own wage slaves!




You can beat around the bush all you want and talk about non marxian concepts such as "de facto control means power means capitalism," but the flow of the money went back into the country as opposed to the accumulation of private capital, meaning it wasn't capitalism.

Its a pretty much meaningless statement to say the flow of money went "back into the country". It certainly didnt end up in the pockets of the Russian working class but no doubt helped to line the pockets of the already filthy rich and obsecenely privileged state capitalist class. Yes , economic inequality in the Soviet Union was in fact comparable to what existed in the West (see for example John Fleming and John Micklewright in their paper "Income Distribution, Economic Systems and Transition" who cite the work of researchers like Morrison who, using data from the 1970s, found that countries like Poland and the Soviet Union had relatively high levels of income inequality, registering gini coefficients of 0.31 in both case, which put them on a par with Canada (0.30) and the USA (0.34) ( http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/eps70.pdf)

Accumulation of private capital by private capitalists or accumulation of state capital by state capitalists?.Really from the point of view of the workers. there is no substantive difference. None at all.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Some interesting arguments in favor of state capitalism theory. Seems like the OP's hypothesis has been fairly well rebutted.