Tony Cliff

[Ostrinski]

There seems to be a lot of hate and/or dismissal of this guy from pretty much anyone other than the Cliffist Trotskyist variety like the SWP (UK), ISO, IST. I always wondered why that was? The Orthotrots see it as a deviation from defense of the Soviet Union, but what about the other state capitalist theorists such as anarchists, left communists, and impossiblists? Is there a fundamental difference between the state capitalist theories?

[Grenzer]

I haven't looked into it much, but his theory of state capitalism is widely condemned as being superficial and shallow. I believe he basically considered the Soviet Union to be capitalist because it sold goods on the world market; it was basically just theoretical justification for not supporting the Soviets. Not to mention that some Cliffites have essentially use it to embrace imperialism in the name of "opposing Soviet state capitalism". It is unsurprising that the other tendencies which accept the theory of state capitalism would condemn them.

[Blake's Baby]

From the Left Comm point of view, the problem is reversed. He may have said that the USSR was state-cap, but that didn't stop the IS from supporting the North Vietnamese, the SWP from supporting Iran in the First Gulf War or Iraq in the Second and Third Gulf Wars (flipping sides there from Saddam Hussein being an American puppet to a glorious anti-imperialist), etc etc. Can't think of a single instance where the SWP didn't line up with the Soviet Union or its allies (with the possible exception of Afghanistan 1979, I really can't remember what its position was).

So, despite a formally correct (or, let's say, as I think Ghost Bebel is right that Cliff's 'state cap' critique was quite weak, formally 'more' correct) orientation to the SU, it didn't stop the Cliffites supporting the Stalinist regimes in practice.

I think maybe I can speak as an Anarchist here too (I was one for 20 years), the main problems with the SWP were not in terms of theory (except what with them being Trots and defending the suppression of Kronstadt, lying about the Makhnovites etc) but in practice, swamping local initiatives to take control away from the members and give it to SWP dominated committees, and activist burnout - impressing inexperienced activists, who seek to join, then spend 2 years selling papers and leave the organisation totally demoralised and rejecting revolutionary politics.

[BOZG]

From the Left Comm point of view, the problem is reversed. He may have said that the USSR was state-cap, but that didn't stop the IS from supporting the North Vietnamese, the SWP from supporting Iran in the First Gulf War or Iraq in the Second and Third Gulf Wars (flipping sides there from Saddam Hussein being an American puppet to a glorious anti-imperialist), etc etc. Can't think of a single instance where the SWP didn't line up with the Soviet Union or its allies (with the possible exception of Afghanistan 1979, I really can't remember what its position was).

So, despite a formally correct (or, let's say, as I think Ghost Bebel is right that Cliff's 'state cap' critique was quite weak, formally 'more' correct) orientation to the SU, it didn't stop the Cliffites supporting the Stalinist regimes in practice.

Actually, the Korean War is an instance where they took a neutral position, despite there being no significant difference in the nature of the two wars. The difference was that there was a certain revulsion to the North Korean and Chinese regimes among liberals and the middle class so it was unpopular to take a position of defending NK. This wasn't the case during the Vietnam War where the SWP would chant "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh" on demonstrations.

However I think it's incorrect to claim that they lined up with the Soviet Union and its allies. That was merely a coincidence rather than a conscious defense of the Soviet states and their allies.

[Devrim]

There was quite a reasonable article (http://libcom.org/library/what-was-the-ussr-aufheben-1) on different theories of state capitalism in Aufheben magazine. Here is what it says about Cliff's version:


Cliff and the neo-Trotskyist theory of the USSR as state capitalist

Perhaps rather ironically, Tony Cliff was originally sent to Britain by the leadership of the Fourth International in an effort to head off any potential support within the British Section for the theory that Eastern Europe and the USSR were in any way state capitalist. As it turned out, it was not Gerry Healey, Ted Grant or any of the other leading figures of the British Revolutionary Communist Party35 (http://libcom.org/library/what-was-the-ussr-aufheben-1#footnote35_elwidzz) at that time who came to adopt the theory of state capitalism but none other than Cliff himself.
Yet in coming to the viewpoint that it was not only Eastern Europe that was state capitalist but also the USSR, Tony Cliff was determined not to follow in the footsteps of so many former Trotskyists who, having rejected Trotsky's theory of Russia as a degenerated workers' state, had come to reject Trotsky and even Marxism itself. Instead, Cliff was committed to developing a state capitalist theory of the USSR which remained firmly within both the Trotskyist and orthodox Marxist tradition. Against those who argued that the theory of the USSR as a degenerated workers' state was central to Trotsky's Marxism, Cliff replied by arguing that not only were there numerous examples in Trotsky's own writings where he indicated serious doubts concerning his conclusion that the USSR was a degenerated workers' state but that towards the end of his life Trotsky had shown signs of moving away from such conclusions altogether. Indeed, Cliff sought to claim that had Trotsky lived then he too would have eventually come round to the conclusion that the USSR had become state capitalist, and certainly would not have dogmatically defended a position that flew in the face of all the evidence as his loyal followers in the leadership of the Fourth International had done.
Cliff originally presented his rather heretical ideas in 1948 in the form of a duplicated discussion document entitled The Nature of Stalinist Russia. After several editions and accompanying amendments and additions, this text now takes the form of a book entitled State Capitalism in Russia which provides us with a definitive statement of Cliff's position.
Cliff devoted much of the first third of State Capitalism in Russia to presenting a mass of evidence with which he sought to show both the exploitative and repressive nature of the USSR. Yet, as powerful an indictment of the Stalinist regime as this may have been, the evidence Cliff presented was far from sufficient to convince his opponents within either the Revolutionary Communist Party or the broader Fourth International. For orthodox Trotskyists such evidence could simply be taken to confirm the extent of the degeneration of the Soviet Union and did little to refute the persistence of Russia as essentially a workers' state. As Cliff himself recognized, it was necessary to demonstrate that the apparent exploitative and repressive character of the Soviet Union necessarily arose, not from the degeneration of the Soviet Union as a workers' state but rather from the fact that under Stalin the USSR had ceased to be a workers' state and had become state capitalist. Yet to do this Cliff had first of all to clarify what he meant by 'state capitalism' and how such a conception was not only compatible with, but rooted within the orthodox Marxist tradition.
For orthodox Marxism, capitalism had been defined as a class society dominated by generalized commodity exchange which arises from the private ownership of the means of production. On the basis of such a definition it would appear, at least at first sight, that the notion of state capitalism in the absolute sense was a contradiction in terms. If all of the means of production are nationalized, the capitalist class expropriated and the law of value and the market replaced by state allocation and planning, then it would appear that capitalism must have been, by definition, abolished. If it was accepted that, for the most part, the Russian Revolution had led to the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production, then it would seem clear that, from a Marxist point of view, capitalism in any form could not exist in the USSR. (And of course this is the common objection we find advanced against all theories of state capitalism in the USSR.)
However, as Cliff was keen to point out, it had also been central to orthodox Marxism that the capitalist mode of production was transitory. Capitalism was merely a phase in human history whose very development would eventually undermine its own basis. As capitalism repeatedly revolutionized methods of production it advanced the forces of production to an unprecedented degree. Yet in advancing the forces of production capitalism was obliged to increasingly socialize production as production was carried out on an ever larger and more complex scale. The more social the production process became the more it came into conflict with the private appropriation of the wealth that it produced. As a result capitalism was obliged to negate its very own basis in the private ownership of production and in doing so it prepared the way for socialism.
As we have noted before, already by the end of the nineteenth century most Marxists had come to the view that the classical stage of free competitive capitalism, that had been described and analysed by Marx in the 1860s, had given way to the final stages of the capitalist era. The growth of huge cartels and monopolies and the increasing economic role of the state was seen as negating the market and the operation of the law of value. At the same time the emergence of joint stock companies and the nationalization of key industries meant the replacement of individual capitalist ownership of the means of production by collective forms of ownership which implied the further negation of private property. Indeed, as Engels argued, the development of both monopoly and state capitalism was leading to the point that the capitalist class was superfluous to the production process itself. Capital no longer needed the capitalist. As Engels himself states:

[T]he conversion of the great organizations for production and communication into joint-stock companies and state property show that for this purpose the bourgeoisie can be dispensed with. All the social functions of the capitalists are now carried out by salaried employees. The capitalist has no longer any social activity save the pocketing of revenues, the clipping of coupons and gambling on the stock exchange, where different capitalists fleece each other of their capital. Just as at first the capitalist mode of production displaced the workers, so now it displaces the capitalists, relegating them, just as it did the workers, to the superfluous population, even if in the first instance not to the industrial reserve army.
But neither the conversion into joint stock companies nor into state property deprives the productive forces of their character as capital. In the case of joint stock companies this is obvious. And the modern state, too, is only the organization with which bourgeois society provides itself in order to maintain the general external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against encroachments either by workers or by individual capitalists. The modern state, whatever its form, is an essentially capitalist machine; it is the state of capitalists, the ideal collective body of all capitalists. The more productive forces it takes over as its property, the more it becomes the real collective body of all capitalists, the more citizens it exploits. The workers remain wage earners, proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not abolished; it is rather pushed to an extreme. But at this extreme it is transformed into its opposite. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but it contains within itself the formal means, the key to the solution. (Engels, Anti-Dühring, p. 330)
So for the old orthodoxy of the Second International it was undoubtedly accepted that there was an inherent tendency towards state capitalism. Indeed it was this tendency which was seen as laying the basis for socialism. Yet it had also been central for both Lenin and the new Bolshevik orthodoxy. Not only did the increasing negation of private property and the law of value indicate the ripeness for socialism, but the fusion of the state and capital within state capitalism explained the increasing imperialist rivalries that had led to the First World War. As the competitive struggle between capital and capital became at the same time a struggle between imperialist states, imperialist war became inevitable. As Bukharin remarks in Imperialism and the World Economy, which provided the theoretical basis for Lenin's theory of imperialism:

When competition has finally reached its highest stage, when it has become competition between state capitalist trusts, then the use of state power, and the possibilities connected with it play a very large part. The state apparatus has always served as a tool in the hands of the ruling classes of its country, and it has always acted as the their "defender and protector" in the world market; at no time, however, did it have the colossal importance that it has in the epoch of finance capital and imperialist politics. With the formation of state capitalist trusts competition is being almost entirely shifted onto foreign countries; obviously the organs of the struggle that is to be waged abroad, primarily state power, must therefore grow tremendously... If state power is generally growing in significance the growth of its military organization, the army and the navy, is particularly striking. The struggle between state capitalist trusts is decided in the first place by the relation between their military forces, for military power of the country is the last resort of the struggling "national" groups of capitalists. (Bukharin, p. 124)
So it could not be doubted that the notion that capitalism was developing towards state capitalism, such that its very basis within both the law of value and private property was increasingly becoming negated, was clearly rooted within orthodox Marxism. The question then was whether state capitalism in an absolute sense was possible. Could it not be the case that after a certain point quantity would be transformed into quality? Was it not the case that once the principle means of production had been nationalized and the last major capitalist expropriated capitalism had necessarily been objectively abolished? And was this not the case for Russia following the October revolution?
To counter this contention, that could all too easily be advanced by his Trotskyist critics, Cliff argued that the qualitative shift from capitalism to the transition to socialism could not be simply calculated from the 'percentage' of state ownership of the means of production. It was a transition that was necessarily politically determined. As we have seen, the tendency towards state capitalism was a result of the growing contradiction between the increasingly social forms of production and the private appropriation of wealth. Collective, and ultimately state ownership of the means of production were a means to reconcile this contradiction while at the same time preserving private appropriation of wealth and with it private property. Thus the tendency towards state capitalism involved the partial negation of private property on the basis of private property itself.
So at the limit, state capitalism could be seen as the 'partial negation of capitalism on the basis of capitalism itself'. So long as the state economy was run to exploit the working class in the interests of an exploitative class then the economy remained state capitalist. However, if the working class seized power and ran the state economy in the interests of the people as whole then state capitalism would give way to a workers' state and the transition to socialism could begin. Thus state capitalism was a turning point, it was the final swan song of capitalism, but once the working class seized the state it would be the basis for the transition to socialism.
However, it could be objected that many revolutionary Marxists, including Trotsky himself, had explicitly denied that capitalism could reach the limit of state capitalism. Indeed, against the reformists in the Second International, who had argued that capitalism would naturally evolve into state capitalism which could then be simply taken over by democratically capturing the state, revolutionary Marxists had argued that, while there was a tendency towards state capitalism, it could never be fully realized in practice due to the rivalries between capitalists and by the very threat of expropriation of the state by the working class.
Cliff countered this by arguing that such arguments had only applied to the case of the evolution of traditional capitalism into state capitalism. In Russia there had been a revolution, that had expropriated the capitalist class and introduced a workers' state, and then a counter-revolution, which had restored capitalism in the form of state capitalism run in the interests of a new bureaucratic class. For Cliff, the Russian Revolution had created a workers' state, but, isolated by the failure of socialist revolutions elsewhere in Europe, the workers' state had degenerated. With the degeneration of the workers' state the bureaucracy increasingly became separated from the working class until, with Stalin's ascendancy, it was able to constitute itself as a new exploitative class and seize state power. With the bureaucracy's seizure of power the workers' state was over-turned and state capitalism was restored to Russia.
This periodization of post-revolutionary era in Russia not only allowed Cliff to overcome the objection that Trotsky had denied the possibility of bourgeois society fully realizing the tendency towards state capitalism, but also allowed him to accept most of Trotsky's analysis of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. Cliff only had to part ways with Trotsky for the analysis of the ten years following 1928, where Trotsky maintained that the USSR has remained a degenerated workers' state while Cliff argued that it had become state capitalist. Yet, as we shall see, this periodization, despite all its advantages for Cliff's credibility as a Trotskyist, was to prove an important weak point in his theory. But before looking at the weak points of Cliff's theory of state capitalism we must first examine more closely what Cliff saw as the nature of state capitalism in Stalin's Russia.
As we have seen, although Cliff uncritically defended the orthodox Marxist definition of capitalism, he was able to counter the objections that the USSR could not be in any sense capitalist because there was neither the law of value nor private property, by arguing that state capitalism was the 'partial negation of capitalism on the basis of capitalism itself'. So what did he mean by 'the partial negation of capitalism'? Clearly capitalism could not be completely negated otherwise it would not be capitalism; so in what sense is the negation of capitalism partial? With Cliff the meaning of the partial negation of capitalism becomes most evident in terms of the law of value.
Following Marx, Cliff argued that under capitalism there is a two-fold division of labour. First of all there is the division of labour that arises between capitalist enterprises which is regulated by the law of value that operates through the 'anarchy of the market'. Secondly there is the division of labour that arises within each capitalist enterprise which is directly determined by the rational and conscious dictates of the capitalists or their managers. Of course the second division of labour is subordinated to the law of value insofar as the capitalist enterprise has to compete on the market. However, the law of value appears as external to it.
For Cliff the USSR acted as if it was simply one huge capitalist enterprise. As such the law of value no longer operated within the USSR, it had been negated with the nationalization of production and the introduction of comprehensive state planning. But, insofar as the USSR was obliged to compete both economically and politically within the capitalist world system it became subordinated to the law of value like any capitalist enterprise. In this sense, for Cliff, the law of value was only 'partially negated on the basis of the law of value itself'.
Yet, if neither market nor the law of value operated within the USSR this implied that products were not really bought and sold within the USSR as commodities, they were simply allocated and transferred in accordance with administrative prices. If this was true then it also implied that labour-power was not really a commodity; a conclusion that Cliff was forced to accept. Indeed, as Cliff argued, if labour-power was to be a commodity then the worker had to be free to sell it periodically to the highest bidder. If the worker could only sell his ability to work once and for all then he was little different from a slave since in effect he sold himself not his labour-power. Yet in the USSR the worker could only sell his labour-power to one employer, the state. Hence the worker was not free to sell to the highest bidder and labour-power was not really a commodity.
The flaws in Cliff's theory of state capitalism

At first sight Cliff provides a convincing theory of state capitalism in the USSR which not only remains firmly within the broad orthodox Marxist tradition, but also preserves much of Trotsky's contribution to this tradition. As the post-war era unfolded leaving the Stalinist bureaucracy more firmly entrenched than ever, Cliff's analysis of the USSR became increasingly attractive. Without the problems facing orthodox Trotskyist groupings following the apparent failure of Trotsky's predictions of the fall of the Stalinist bureaucracy, Cliff, under the slogan of 'neither Washington nor Moscow', was in a perfect position to attract supporters with the revival of interest in Leninism and Trotskyism of the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, with the International Socialists Group, which then became the Socialist Workers' Party, Cliff has been able to build one of the largest Leninist groupings in Britain whose most distinctive feature has been its refusal to takes sides in the Cold War.36 (http://libcom.org/library/what-was-the-ussr-aufheben-1#footnote36_29zzn5s)
However, despite the attractiveness of Cliff's theory of state capitalism in the USSR, on close inspection we find his theory has vital weaknesses which have been seized on by more orthodox Trotskyists. Indeed, these weaknesses are so serious that many have concluded that Cliff's theory is fatally flawed. This opinion has even been recognized within the SWP itself and has resulted in various attempts to reconstruct Cliff's original theory.37 (http://libcom.org/library/what-was-the-ussr-aufheben-1#footnote37_f0q579r) As we shall argue, these flaws in Cliff's theory arise to a large extent from his determination to avoid critical confrontation with both Trotsky and the broader orthodox Marxist tradition.
There are three main flaws within Cliff's theory of state capitalism in the USSR. The first concerns Cliff's insistence that the final ascendancy of Stalin, and with this the introduction of the first five year plan, marked a counter-revolution which overthrew the workers' state established by the October revolution and turned Russia over to state capitalism. The issue of when the USSR became state capitalist is clearly a sensitive one for Trotskyists since, if Cliff is unable to hold the line at 1928, then what is to stop the date of the defeat of the revolution being pushed right back to 1917? Lenin and Trotsky would then be seen as leading a revolution that simply introduced state capitalism into Russia! Such fears were clear expressed by Ted Grant in his response to Cliff's original presentation of his theory in The Nature of Stalinist Russia. Then Ted Grant warned:

If comrade Cliff's thesis is correct, that state capitalism exists in Russia today, then he cannot avoid the conclusion that state capitalism has been in existence since the Russian Revolution and the function of the Revolution itself was to introduce this state capitalist system of society. For despite his tortuous efforts to draw a line between the economic basis of Russian society before the year 1928 and after, the economic basis of Russian society has in fact remained unchanged. (Ted Grant, The Unbroken Thread, p. 199)
The first line of attack that has been taken by orthodox Trotskyists has been to argue that if there had been a counter-revolution against, rather than from within, the revolution itself, which restored Russia to capitalism, then the workers' state would have to have been violently smashed. Any attempt to argue for a gradual and peaceful restoration of capitalism would, as Trotsky himself had said, simply be 'running backwards the film of revisionism'.38 (http://libcom.org/library/what-was-the-ussr-aufheben-1#footnote38_mlasxzb) Yet, despite the expulsions of Trotsky and the United and Left Oppositions in 1928, the leadership of the Party and the state remained largely intact. Indeed there seems more of a continuity within the state before 1928 and afterwards rather than any sharp break that would indicate a counter-revolution, let alone any violent coup d'état or violent counter-revolutionary action.
Cliff attempted to counter this line of attack by arguing that while it is necessary for a proletarian revolution to smash the bourgeois state in order to construct a new revolutionary proletarian state, it is not necessarily the case that a counter-revolution has to smash an existing workers' state.39 (http://libcom.org/library/what-was-the-ussr-aufheben-1#footnote39_6nnaz0i) The example Cliff used was that of the army. In order to create a workers' state the bourgeois standing army has to be transformed into a workers' militia. But any such transformation inevitably would be resisted by the officer corp. Such resistance would have to be violently crushed. In contrast, the officers of a workers' militia may become increasingly independent to the point at which they become part of the bureaucracy thereby transforming the workers' militia into a bourgeois standing army. Such a process, in which a workers' militia becomes transformed into a standing army, does not necessarily meet any concerted resistance, and as a consequence may occur gradually.
Yet such an argument by itself fails to pin the counter-revolutionary break on 1928. Indeed, Cliff's example would seem to imply that the counter-revolution was brought about by Trotsky himself when he took charge of re-organizing the Red Army in 1918 on the lines of a conventional standing army! The only overt political indication Cliff is able to present for the bureaucratic counter-revolution is the Moscow show trials and purges, which he claims were:


the civil war of the bureaucracy against the masses, a war in which only one side was armed and organized. They witnessed the consummation of the bureaucracy's total liberation from popular control. (State Capitalism in Russia, p. 195)
Yet the Moscow show trials occurred in the 1930s, not in 1928.
What was crucial about 1928 was that it was the year that marked the beginning of the first five year plan and the bureaucracy's commitment to the rapid industrialization of Russia. For Cliff, by adopting the overriding imperative of industrializing Russia, regardless of the human cost this would involve, the Soviet bureaucracy had taken on the historic role of the bourgeoisie. In adopting both the economic and historic functions of the bourgeoisie the bureaucracy had transformed itself into an exploitative class. Whereas before 1928 the bureaucracy had simply been a privileged layer within a degenerated workers' state that was able to gain more than its fair share of the nation's wealth, after 1928 the bureaucracy became the state capitalists who collectively exploited the working class.
Of course, it was not difficult for Cliff to show that there had been a sharp decrease in the material conditions of the working class following the introduction of the first five year plan as the bureaucracy sought to make the proletariat pay the huge costs of the policy of rapid industrialization. However, Cliff's argument that this sharp decrease in material conditions of the working class represented a qualitative shift towards the exploitation of the working class by the bureaucracy was far from convincing. If anything Cliff's attempts to show a qualitative shift in social relations of production only serve to indicate that bureaucratic exploitation of the working class had existed before 1928.
Yet perhaps more devastating to the credibility of Cliff's line of argument among Trotskyists was that by suggesting that with the imposition of the policy of rapid industrialization the bureaucracy had finally transformed itself into an exploitative class, and in doing so transformed Russia from a degenerated workers' state into state capitalism, Cliff was in effect attacking Trotsky! Had it not been the main criticism advanced by Trotsky and the Left Opposition against Stalin that he had not industrialized soon enough?! Was not the central plank of Trotsky's understanding of the Russian Revolution that the productive forces had to be advanced as fast as possible if there was to be any hope of socialism? If this was so, was not Cliff accusing Trotsky of advocating state capitalism?! Ultimately Cliff is unable to circumvent Trotsky's intrinsic complicity with Stalin. As a consequence, the failure to break with Trotskyism led to this vital flaw in Cliff's theory of state capitalism in Russia.
Yet this is not all. Cliff's failure to critically confront orthodox Marxism opened up another even more important weakness in his theory of state capitalism which has been seized upon by his more orthodox Trotskyist critics. This weakness stemmed from Cliff's denial of the operation of the law of value within the USSR.
As we have seen, for Cliff the USSR was constituted as if it was one huge capitalist enterprise. As such there could be no operation of the law of value internal to the USSR. However, as Marx pointed out, it is only through the operation of the law of value that any capitalist enterprise is constrained to act as capital. If there was no law of value internal to the state economy of the USSR what made it act as if it was a capitalist enterprise? The answer was the Soviet Union's relation to world capitalism. It was through the competitive political and economic relation to the rest of the capitalist world that the Soviet Union was subordinated to the law of value, and it was through this subordination to the law of value that the capitalist nature of the USSR became expressed.
However, as Cliff recognized, the Soviet Union, with its huge natural resources, had become largely self-sufficient. Foreign trade with the rest of the world was minimal compared with the amount produced and consumed within Russia itself. As a result Cliff could not argue that the international law of value imposed itself on the Russian economy through the necessity to compete on the world market. Instead, Cliff had to argue that the law of value imposed itself indirectly on the USSR through the necessity to compete politically with the major capitalist and imperialist powers. In order to keep up with the arms race, particularly with the emergence of the Cold War with the USA, the USSR had to accumulate huge amounts of military hardware. This drive for military accumulation led the drive for accumulation elsewhere in the Russian economy. Indeed, this military competition could be seen to spur capital accumulation, and with it the exploitation of the working class, just as much, if not more so, than any economic competition from the world market could have done.40 (http://libcom.org/library/what-was-the-ussr-aufheben-1#footnote40_4z8txwi)
However, as Cliff's Trotskyist critics point out, for Marx the law of value does not impose itself through 'competition' as such, but through the competitive exchange of commodities. Indeed, it is only through the exchange of commodities that value is formed, and hence it is only through such exchange that the law of value can come to impose itself. Military accumulation is not directly an accumulation of values but an accumulation of use-values. In a capitalist economy such an accumulation can become part of the overall process of the accumulation of value, and hence of capital, insofar as it guarantees the accumulation of capital in the future by protecting or else extending foreign markets. However, in itself military accumulation is simply an accumulation of things, not capital. So in capitalist countries military spending suppresses value and the law of value temporarily in order to extend it later. Given that the Soviet Union did not seek to expand value production through the conquest of new markets, military production meant the permanent suppression of value and the law of value in that it was simply the production of use-values required to defend a system based on the production of use-values.
For the more sophisticated Trotskyists, Cliff's attempt to invoke military competition as the means through which the USSR was subordinated to the law of value exposed the fundamental theoretical weakness of Cliff's theory of state capitalism in Russia. The argument put forward by Cliff that under state capitalism 'the accumulation of value turns into its opposite the accumulation of use-values' is nothing but a sophistry which strips away the specific social forms that are essential to define a particular mode of production such as capitalism. As they correctly point out, capital is not a thing but a social relation that gives rise to specific social forms. The fact that military hardware is accumulated is in no way the same thing as the accumulation of capital. Without the production of commodities there can be no value and without value there can be no accumulation of capital. But Cliff argues there is no production of commodities in the USSR, particularly not in the military industries, since nothing is produced for a market, thus there can be neither value nor capital.
This point can be further pressed home once Cliff's critics turn to the question of labour-power. For Marx the specific nature of any mode of production was determined by both the manner and forms through which the dominant class are able to extract surplus-labour from the direct producers. Within the capitalist mode of production surplus-labour is extracted from the direct producers by the purchase of the worker's labour-power as a commodity. As a consequence, surplus-labour is expropriated in the form of surplus-value which is the difference between the value of labour-power (i.e. the costs of reproducing the worker's ability to work) and the value the worker creates through working. However, for Cliff, labour-power was not a commodity in the USSR and was not therefore really sold. But if labour-power was not a commodity it could not have a value, and hence any surplus-labour extracted could not take the form of surplus-value. If surplus-labour did not take the form of surplus-value how could the USSR be in any sense capitalist in strict Marxist terms?!
The third fatal flaw in Cliff's theory of state capitalism in Russia, and one that arises from his commitment to orthodox Marxism, is the view that state capitalism is the highest stage of capitalism. As we have seen, it is central for Cliff that state capitalism was the highest stage of capitalism since it was from this premise that he could claim that state capitalism was at the point of transition from capitalism to socialism. But if state capitalism is the highest stage of capitalism, and if it is accepted that the USSR is state capitalist, then this would seem to imply that, in some fundamental sense, the USSR should be in advance of Western capitalism. Of course, this may have seemed reasonable in the late 1940s. After all, under Stalin the USSR had made an unprecedented leap forward with the rapid industrialization of Russia, and it seemed that the Soviet Union was set to out-perform most of capitalist economies in the West in the post-war era. However, in the following decades the economic stagnation and economic waste of the 'Soviet system' became increasingly apparent, culminating with the collapse of the USSR in 1990. This, combined with the globalization of capital, which has seriously undermined the efficacy of state intervention in Western capitalism, has meant that the notion that capitalism is tending towards state capitalism is now far less convincing than it was fifty years ago. As we shall see in the next issue, although Cliff did develop a theory to explain the economic stagnation in the Soviet Union it proved insufficient to explain the final crisis and collapse of the USSR. This point has been taken up with relish by Cliff's more orthodox critics, who now feel vindicated that the Stalinist system has proved ephemeral and, as Trotsky predicted, capitalism has been restored, albeit after some delay.
So, despite its practical appeal during the post-war era, Cliff's theory of state capitalism in Russia was theoretically, at least for orthodox Trotskyists, fatally flawed. Indeed, for the more sophisticated Trotskyists Cliff's theory is usually dismissed with little more ado, and then presented as an example of the weakness of all theories of state capitalism. But Cliff's theory of state capitalism in the USSR is by no means the original or foremost one, although it is perhaps the most well known. In the next issue we shall begin by considering other theories of state capitalism in the USSR that have arisen amongst the left communists before turning to examine Ticktin's efforts to go beyond both the theory of Russia as a degenerated workers' state and state capitalist theories.


Devrim

[Devrim]

Actually, the Korean War is an instance where they took a neutral position, despite there being no significant difference in the nature of the two wars. The difference was that there was a certain revulsion to the North Korean and Chinese regimes among liberals and the middle class so it was unpopular to take a position of defending NK. This wasn't the case during the Vietnam War where the SWP would chant "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh" on demonstrations.

You are right that in the Korean War the Cliff current didn't take side (though personally I would say an internationalist, not a neutral position). I am not sure that the reasoning behind it was exactly how you explained it though. At the time of the Korean War I think the Cliff group was still in the process of defining itself from Orthodox Trotskyism, and followed where their theory led them. By the time of Vietnam, and the massive demonstrations against it, they decided opportunistically that they couldn't follow what would be their logical position.


However I think it's incorrect to claim that they lined up with the Soviet Union and its allies. That was merely a coincidence rather than a conscious defense of the Soviet states and their allies.

I agree with this. They had no hesitation about backing the Afghan rebels in 1979.

Devrim

[BOZG]

You are right that in the Korean War the Cliff current didn't take side (though personally I would say an internationalist, not a neutral position). I am not sure that the reasoning behind it was exactly how you explained it though. At the time of the Korean War I think the Cliff group was still in the process of defining itself from Orthodox Trotskyism, and followed where their theory led them. By the time of Vietnam, and the massive demonstrations against it, they decided opportunistically that they couldn't follow what would be their logical position.

A neutral position in the Trotskyist sense!

I'll admit that I'm relying on my memory of a secondhand source so maybe you're right in saying that their reasoning was more "honest" but the point still stands of course that they took an entirely opportunistic approach towards Vietnam.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I agree with his general framework, but some of his specifics are now not up to date because, well he was using a lot of information that was from the USSR or Stalinist sources for his critique. And so there have been some developments since he was doing his original writing on Lenin as well as the development of State Capitalism.

There are organizational issues with the SWP and the ISO was kicked out of the IST and we have moved away from some of the assumtions and practices we inhereted, as well as just changes based on our own experiences, but generally share the same political point of view. But while we support Cliff's "State Capitalist" formulation officially, there there isn't really a meaningful difference between that view of state capitalism and some practically analogous views: several prominent organizers have parallel but different explainations of Russia and the so-called worker states.

[Blake's Baby]

...

However I think it's incorrect to claim that they lined up with the Soviet Union and its allies. That was merely a coincidence rather than a conscious defense of the Soviet states and their allies.

I didn't 'claim' that they lined up with the Soviet Union and its allies, so it's incorrect to 'claim' that I did say that - of course, you didn't 'claim' that I had, you just impilied it.

I said that I couldn't think of any instances that they hadn't, and specifically mentioned that I didn't know their position on the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. I think, if you look at conflicts after the Korean War (when they weren't even the IS, lot alone the SWP, and as Devrim has said still in the process of breaking from official Trotskyism) you'll find that the vast majority of the time, they lined up behind whoever the USA was opposing and therefore defended whoever the USSR was supporting. I don't think this is a 'coincidence'. It probably goes along with some sort of 'national-democratic' argument, at a guess.

[BOZG]

I didn't 'claim' that they lined up with the Soviet Union and its allies, so it's incorrect to 'claim' that I did say that - of course, you didn't 'claim' that I had, you just impilied it.

I said that I couldn't think of any instances that they hadn't, and specifically mentioned that I didn't know their position on the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. I think, if you look at conflicts after the Korean War (when they weren't even the IS, lot alone the SWP, and as Devrim has said still in the process of breaking from official Trotskyism) you'll find that the vast majority of the time, they lined up behind whoever the USA was opposing and therefore defended whoever the USSR was supporting. I don't think this is a 'coincidence'. It probably goes along with some sort of 'national-democratic' argument, at a guess.

You're splitting hairs here!

I still think it is coincidental. Opportunists often end up with the same position and the Soviets weren't strangers to opportunism either. It is partly of course the natural position for Trotskyists to take if you accept the general position of Trotskyism - it just, unfortunately for them, contradicts their own theory on state capitalism. Though their position on Vietnam shows how loosely they stick to their positions when they risk being sidelined.

[Blake's Baby]

No, I'm not.

My interpretation of the policy of the SWP (and the IS before it) is that it relies on 'national-democratic' logic. As the majority of such movements since WWII were supported by the Soviet Union (as 'anti-Imperialist') the the majority of the time the SWP would support the same people as the Soviet Union, though in a few cases (where the Russians were acting directly as an imperialist power, eg Afghanistan) the SWP might oppose them. But in general the SWP position has been support for the USSR's proxies, even when (as in the case of Vietnam) it goes against their own theory.

I'm not aware that they critiqued Trotskyism's support for the Soviet Union in WWII, for example, which would for Left Communists be a class line. That's how we let Trotsky off, but not Trotskyism. As Trotskyists, they support defence of the Soviet Union as a valid position. That makes them part of the bourgeois camp.

[BOZG]

I meant splitting hairs in the claim vs imply thing.

For me, lining up with someone implies a conscious political decision and policy to do so.

[Blake's Baby]

I wouldn't call it splitting hairs, I'd call it being clear. As we seem to have different understandings of the word 'claim', and the term 'lining up with', I think it's pretty important to be clear what we're talking about.

[Ostrinski]

For the anti-Cliff state capitalist theorists, who do you all think has the best analysis of state capitalism in Stalinist states and what work best outlines?

[blake 3:17]

I thoroughly enjoyed Cliff's autobiography. It's a very endearing and a bit of a tragicomedy.

About half of it is available here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/2000/wtw/index.htm

State Capitalist or Deformed Workers State? Who gives a flying fuck?

[Blake's Baby]

Those of us who think it's important not to defend it and its allies. Those of us who think it's important whether or not it was a gain for a humanity or a fucking shambolic travesty. Those of us who want to understand how a revolution can turn into a counter-revolution.

If you don't think those questions are important, good luck to you.

[Hit The North]

My interpretation of the policy of the SWP (and the IS before it) is that it relies on 'national-democratic' logic. As the majority of such movements since WWII were supported by the Soviet Union (as 'anti-Imperialist') the the majority of the time the SWP would support the same people as the Soviet Union, though in a few cases (where the Russians were acting directly as an imperialist power, eg Afghanistan) the SWP might oppose them. But in general the SWP position has been support for the USSR's proxies, even when (as in the case of Vietnam) it goes against their own theory.


Well I'm afraid that your interpretation rests on the peculiar logic of the cold war: that all struggles were proxies of one or the other camps. That by extension, to oppose the American imperialist slaughter of the Vietnamese people is to support the USSR and their imperialist ambitions. This seems a peculiar argument from a 'Left Communist' as it supposes that an independent working class line cannot exist between these immense powers. However, Cliff and co always held out for that possibility and this is why support for struggles against imperialist aggression (which is undeniably what the Vietnam war was about) is phrased as 'unconditional but critical'.

Another problem with your interpretation of the politics of the IS at this time is accuracy. The fact is that the IS and the SWP always supposed that Russia's foreign policy was imperialistic. There was not a time when the SWP took seriously Russia's claims to be anti-imperialist.


But in general the SWP position has been support for the USSR's proxies, even when (as in the case of Vietnam) it goes against their own theory.
Which theory is this? The theory of state capitalism means there is no requirement to defend the USSR in its chess game with the USA. In fact the theory demands that the SWP see the international situation as a polarization between two rival imperialisms and therefore to see neither camp as more progressive than the other or more friendly to the workers of the world.

The slogan, 'Neither Washington Nor Moscow, But International Socialism' wasn't only a strap-line, it was a formulation of where revolutionaries should position themselves in the international struggles that open up in the era of the cold war. Now the SWP may not have always applied this properly, but I don't see how you can argue with its basic orientation unless you're a Stalinist.

Meanwhile the entire revolutionary Left in the West opposed American slaughter in South Asia (sometimes for different reasons) so why was the IS's support for US withdrawal more opportunistic than any others?

[Blake's Baby]

Well I'm afraid that your interpretation rests on the peculiar logic of the cold war: that all struggles were proxies of one or the other camps. That by extension, to oppose the American imperialist slaughter of the Vietnamese people is to support the USSR and their imperialist ambitions. This seems a peculiar argument from a 'Left Communist' as it supposes that an independent working class line cannot exist between these immense powers. However, Cliff and co always held out for that possibility and this is why support for struggles against imperialist aggression (which is undeniably what the Vietnam war was about) is phrased as 'unconditional but critical'...

The vast majority of confrontations in the 1940s-1960s (and many in the 1970s and later) were were between proxies of the two camps. Not all, and I never said all, but the wars in Vietnam from the end of WWII onwards were all part of the imperialist manoeuvrings of France, Russia, USA and later China.


...Another problem with your interpretation of the politics of the IS at this time is accuracy. The fact is that the IS and the SWP always supposed that Russia's foreign policy was imperialistic. There was not a time when the SWP took seriously Russia's claims to be anti-imperialist...

I'm afraid you misunderstood what I was saying there, which means I wasn't very clear, so sorry for that; I meant that the USSR's policy was support for 'anti-Imperialist' movements, not that the SWP necessarily took those claims seriously; however, it still supported the 'anti-Imperialist' movements, whatever it thought of them.


...Which theory is this? The theory of state capitalism means there is no requirement to defend the USSR in its chess game with the USA. In fact the theory demands that the SWP see the international situation as a polarization between two rival imperialisms and therefore to see neither camp as more progressive than the other or more friendly to the workers of the world.

The slogan, 'Neither Washington Nor Moscow, But International Socialism' wasn't only a strap-line, it was a formulation of where revolutionaries should position themselves in the international struggles that open up in the era of the cold war. Now the SWP may not have always applied this properly, but I don't see how you can argue with its basic orientation unless you're a Stalinist...

Oh, my argument isn't that the SWP had this theory, theoretically the SWP was if not streets then at least half a street ahead of other Trotskyist groups. It's the failure to apply the theory in practice I object to.


...Meanwhile the entire revolutionary Left in the West opposed American slaughter in South Asia (sometimes for different reasons) so why was the IS's support for US withdrawal more opportunistic than any others?

Well, quite a lot of the liberal left opposed it too, and so did some of the rabid right, so I don't really know what that has to do with anything.

The SWP support for the NVLA/Viet Minh had nothing to do with any real revolutionary potential, the existence of any real proletarian groups, the possibility of workers' power - it was not a class position; it may have been a misplaced humanitarian position - 'killing people is bad' - but it did not conform to the theory that the IS/SWP ostensibly espoused, that is the state capitalist nature of the USSR. The USSR's proxies in Vietnam were supported; the USA's forces and proxies were not supported. This is more 'opportunistic' than other Trotskyist groups who did not have the state capitalist theory of the USSR. They were all wrong because the theory they followed was wrong (that the USSR should be supported). The IS were wrong because they ignored the relatively correct theory that they had (that the USSR should not be supported).

[Hit The North]

The IS were wrong because they ignored the relatively correct theory that they had (that the USSR should not be supported).

But they didn't support the USSR proxy per se, they supported the war movement and the end to imperialist aggression in Vietnam. There's a difference. The IS, as far as I know, had no illusions in Ho Chi Minh and certainly no illusions in the USSR's support. So I don't see how the IS were contravening their own theory. Cliff and co were, like any serious revolutionaries, looking forward to the military defeat of America and the political crisis that could cause across the west. If Russia gleaned any credit out of that defeat so be it, not much could be done about that. But the enemy is at home. The job of the IS, as revolutionaries, was to use these events to attack their own ruling class in an attempt to undermine them and build a case for an alternative. Another dimension was that the Labour government of Wilson supported the USA's slaughter and so here was an opportunity to expose how much Labour was wedded to capital and imperialism.

Further, it was their job to have these arguments where people were and the anti-war movement was centring on the new layers of students in the then expanding university sector which the upper layers of the working class were being pulled into. Alongside this, the IS were also putting their energy into winning support in the industrial struggle and recruiting there. Looking at Cliff's key articles in the late 60s, most are about industrial struggle and few, if any, are about Vietnam.

But, anyway, I would be happy to review definite quotes supporting the notion that Cliff and the IS gave uncritical and fulsome support to either Ho Chi Minh or his allies in the Kremlin.

[Blake's Baby]

... Cliff and co were, like any serious revolutionaries, looking forward to the military defeat of America and the political crisis that could cause across the west...

Surely not. If they thought the military defeat of America would cause a political crisis across the west, then they were idiots. It was the crisis (that is, the onset of the economic crisis and the return of the working class to direct struggle) that caused the defeat, not the other way around.


... The job of the IS, as revolutionaries, was to use these events to attack their own ruling class in an attempt to undermine them and build a case for an alternative...

If they were revolutionaries, their job would have been to oppose the ruling class in the West and in the East, in the North as well as the South.


...
Further, it was their job to have these arguments where people were and the anti-war movement was centring on the new layers of students in the then expanding university sector which the upper layers of the working class were being pulled into...

And I'd suggest a correct slogan would have been 'no war but the class war'.


...
But, anyway, I would be happy to review definite quotes supporting the notion that Cliff and the IS gave uncritical and fulsome support to either Ho Chi Minh or his allies in the Kremlin.

Would it be sectarian of me to say 'oh, how like a Trot' at this juncture? At what point did 'support' become 'uncritical and fulsome support'? Nevertheless, by calling for the military defeat of the US, the IS supported the NVLA and the USSR. Lenin did not call for a 'military defeat' of Russia by Germany, he called on the Russian workers to turn the imperialist war into a civil war. Did IS say the same? No. They picked sides in a bourgeois imperialist war. They failed along with the rest of Trotskyism to apply internationalist principles. They were, and are, a bourgeois party just like all the social-patriot parties, just like all the Stalinist parties, that dragoon the working class behind the flag of this or that national fraction of capital.

[Hit The North]

Surely not. If they thought the military defeat of America would cause a political crisis across the west, then they were idiots. It was the crisis (that is, the onset of the economic crisis and the return of the working class to direct struggle) that caused the defeat, not the other way around.If they were revolutionaries, their job would have been to oppose the ruling class in the West and in the East, in the North as well as the South.


Perhaps I'm mis-speaking on behalf of Cliff and co but it is obvious that a major military defeat would contribute to the unfolding political crisis of the bourgeois state in America.


And I'd suggest a correct slogan would have been 'no war but the class war'.
Hardly original, but I have never met a member of the SWP that would have a problem with that slogan. How do you know the IS didn't use it?


Would it be sectarian of me to say 'oh, how like a Trot' at this juncture? At what point did 'support' become 'uncritical and fulsome support'? Nevertheless, by calling for the military defeat of the US, the IS supported the NVLA and the USSR. No, not sectarian, just leaning on the cold war logic I charged you with earlier. But do me a favour and do this debate a favour and produce the quotes, the headlines, the slogans where the IS called on the working class to support North Vietnam, so that we can be clear that your version of events is not based on a hazy second-hand account but that the IS really called for such support.


Lenin did not call for a 'military defeat' of Russia by Germany, he called on the Russian workers to turn the imperialist war into a civil war. Did IS say the same?

I believe they called on British workers to oppose the government's aid and assistance and moral support for US imperialist aggression. They put energy into building the anti-war movement and propagandised against Washington and Moscow. I doubt their perspective included the possibility of a civil war, though. Hey, but that's realism for you.

Maybe they were wrong and the situation was identical to the first great imperialist war and civil war was possible across Western Europe and the USA? I leave it to you to fantasise on the possibility.


No. They picked sides in a bourgeois imperialist war.

Yeah, they opposed the imperialist aggressors. Do you think this means they were lining up with the Western bourgeoisie who were gung-ho in favour of crushing North Vietnam or with the Western media's lies about the war?

But again, please post the article where the IS sides with the USSR.


They failed along with the rest of Trotskyism to apply internationalist principles. They were, and are, a bourgeois party just like all the social-patriot parties, just like all the Stalinist parties, that dragoon the working class behind the flag of this or that national fraction of capital.
Damn, well this is just depressing. Now that we've written off the Trots as bourgeois this means that the revolutionary forces in the UK are even smaller: the ten Left Coms in Manchester, the three in Glasgow and the twenty in London. Or am I being optimistic with my numbers?

But, whatever, thank god for those guys, because without them the revolutionary tradition would be dead, right? :rolleyes:

[Blake's Baby]

Perhaps I'm mis-speaking on behalf of Cliff and co but it is obvious that a major military defeat would contribute to the unfolding political crisis of the bourgeois state in America...

Are you sure? I'm pretty sure that the military defeat that the USA suffered led to... growing raproachment with China and the election of Jimmy Carter (ooh! I bet Western capitalism was scared!)



...
Hardly original, but I have never met a member of the SWP that would have a problem with that slogan. How do you know the IS didn't use it?...

Pretty sure they never publically used it. Of course, they may have secretly used it. But what would be the point of a secret slogan?


...No, not sectarian, just leaning on the cold war logic I charged you with earlier. But do me a favour and do this debate a favour and produce the quotes, the headlines, the slogans where the IS called on the working class to support North Vietnam, so that we can be clear that your version of events is not based on a hazy second-hand account but that the IS really called for such support.



I believe they called on British workers to oppose the government's aid and assistance and moral support for US imperialist aggression. They put energy into building the anti-war movement and propagandised against Washington and Moscow. I doubt their perspective included the possibility of a civil war, though. Hey, but that's realism for you...

Ah, realism, I love realism, it allows all sorts of grubbiness. You're right that the situation wasn't at all the same. And in that situation the job of revolutionaries is to oppose all the warring factions of the bourgeoisie (even the red bourgeoisie) not call for support for one over the other.



...Maybe they were wrong and the situation was identical to the first great imperialist war and civil war was possible across Western Europe and the USA? I leave it to you to fantasise on the possibility...

Maybe they were just opportunists. They could say something unpopular that was right, and be ignored, or they could say something popular but wrong, and get attention. Decisions decisions.




...
Yeah, they opposed the imperialist aggressors. Do you think this means they were lining up with the Western bourgeoisie who were gung-ho in favour of crushing North Vietnam or with the Western media's lies about the war?

But again, please post the article where the IS sides with the USSR...

Anyone with access to the back catalogue want to take up 'Hit the North' on this?



...Damn, well this is just depressing. Now that we've written off the Trots as bourgeois this means that the revolutionary forces in the UK are even smaller: the ten Left Coms in Manchester, the three in Glasgow and the twenty in London. Or am I being optimistic with my numbers?...

Your numbers were on the low side (I've met more of the UK's Left Comms than that, and I haven't met all of them, but probably pretty accurate for those in organisations, not those like me who are not); but you forgot the Council Communists, internationalist Anarchists and the good old SPGB. They're not bourgeois. They may be wrong, but not bourgeois.



...But, whatever, thank god for those guys, because without them the revolutionary tradition would be dead, right? :rolleyes:

No, the working class constantly produces people who go beyond the narratives they're given and try to make sense of the world, who are driven to understand the history and lessons of the class struggle, who take it upon themselves to become part of the struggle for humanity's future. Sadly, some of them join the SWP, while others find revolutionary organisations, and yet others never find any organisations at all. Not a perfect system, but in my power to change neither capitalist ideological hegemony nor the role of 'the Left' in diverting the energies of sincere militants and activists into futile campaigns on a bourgeois terrain. Sometimes being a revolutionary isn't all about smooching the crowds and eating cake while adoring masses bask on your every word. Hard to believe I know, but - shock horror - sometimes what we say isn't going to be popular.

[Devrim]

State Capitalist or Deformed Workers State? Who gives a flying fuck?

Yes, I can understand how it seems a sort of irrelevance today. For people my age though who came into politics when the Soviet Union still existed it was obviously much more important. Then the Trotskyists believed that huge parts of the world was under the control of workers' states however deformed or degenerated, and that the duty of revolutionaries was to protect them, and side with the Soviet side in any war. If you believed that Russia was another capitalist state the position was obviously very different.

Today, I still think it has some relevance, not just for the oddballs who insist that North Korea is a workers' state, but also to our understanding of what socialism is.

Devrim

[Devrim]

No, not sectarian, just leaning on the cold war logic I charged you with earlier. But do me a favour and do this debate a favour and produce the quotes, the headlines, the slogans where the IS called on the working class to support North Vietnam, so that we can be clear that your version of events is not based on a hazy second-hand account but that the IS really called for such support.

...

But again, please post the article where the IS sides with the USSR.

I presume that you know that this is virtually impossible today. The relevant copies of their publications are not on-line, and I doubt anybody here has an archive of them.

Personally I can't remember it first hand. I was quite young at the time. However, it wouldn't surprise me if they had taken this line though, and every 'second hand account' I have ever heard suggests they did.

Certainly I can remember them coming out with things like this in the 1980s:


we have no choice but to support the Khomeini regime ...it would be wrong to strike...
socialists should not call for the disruption of military supplies to the front… should not support actions which could lead to the collapse of the military effort

If they can come out with this sort of stuff about Iran, would it be really surprising if they had come out with it during the Vietnam war?


Well I'm afraid that your interpretation rests on the peculiar logic of the cold war: that all struggles were proxies of one or the other camps. That by extension, to oppose the American imperialist slaughter of the Vietnamese people is to support the USSR and their imperialist ambitions. This seems a peculiar argument from a 'Left Communist' as it supposes that an independent working class line cannot exist between these immense powers. However, Cliff and co always held out for that possibility and this is why support for struggles against imperialist aggression (which is undeniably what the Vietnam war was about) is phrased as 'unconditional but critical'.

Do you believe that an independent working class line was supporting the Vietnamese state. A vietnamese state that had shown no hesitation in suppressing Trotskyist militants or putting down workers' strikes, and murdering workers, as they did for example in Saigon in 1945?

Devrim

[Hit The North]

Do you believe that an independent working class line was supporting the Vietnamese state.
Devrim

No, but still no one has presented a shred of evidence that this was what the IS were doing in their activism around the anti-war movement.

[Chrome_Fist]

Tony Cliffs version of State-Capitalism is very good, too bad hes a trotskyite

[Blake's Baby]

OK.

Do you believe that calling for the military defeat of the USA (which we all agree they were doing, yes?) equals supporting the North Vietnamese state?

If you don't see it as support, that's an argument we could have, because we would see that as support for the North Vietnamese state; if you do see it as support, what's the argument about?

[Hit The North]

OK.

Do you believe that calling for the military defeat of the USA (which we all agree they were doing, yes?) equals supporting the North Vietnamese state?


No, not necessarily. It also means what you mean by 'support'.

But I believe that not calling for an American defeat is a betrayal of the international proletariat. And if you fail to oppose the policies of the ruling class, by staying silent, then you are de facto supporting the ruling class.

[Blake's Baby]

The North Vietnamese state was the ruling class. By refusing to support the ruling class, you're supporting the ruling class? Is that what you're saying?

[Devrim]

No, but still no one has presented a shred of evidence that this was what the IS were doing in their activism around the anti-war movement.

As I said, it is a pretty difficult thing to show. If the issues of Socialist Worker from early April 1975 were on line (which apparently talk of 'victory for the revolution'),it would be much easier.

However, most groups commenting on the SWP position do state that the SWP supported the National Liberation Front, and Cliff himself wrote things that certainly to me seem to imply it:


The strength of any anti-imperialist liberation movement is in the masses of workers and peasants mobilised, in their self-activity on the one hand, and the correct choice of the weakest link in the imperialist chain, on the other. Hence the National Liberation Front (NLF) in Vietnam is absolutely right in relying on mass guerilla bands and armies, and harassing the US army and its hangers-on.

It would be possible to create an argument that the NLF was a completely independent South Vietnamese creation with no connection to the North Vietnamese state. The North Vietnamese state saw it differently. In the official history of the war, they stated:


The Liberation Army of South Vietnam is a part of the People’s Army of Vietnam

Devrim

[Hit The North]

The North Vietnamese state was the ruling class. By refusing to support the ruling class, you're supporting the ruling class? Is that what you're saying?

Are you being serious?

[Hit The North]

Devrim, I'm not implying anything, but it would be instructive if you provided links or references to those quotes.

[Devrim]

Devrim, I'm not implying anything, but it would be instructive if you provided links or references to those quotes.

The Cliff quote comes from here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1990/10/struggleme.htm), and the quote from the official history I took of Wiki. It is sourced from: Military History Institute of Vietnam,(2002) Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People's Army of Vietnam, 1954–1975, translated by Merle L. Pribbenow. University Press of Kansas. p. 68. ISBN 0-7006-1175-4 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0700611754).

Devrim

[Hit The North]

It would be possible to create an argument that the NLF was a completely independent South Vietnamese creation with no connection to the North Vietnamese state. The North Vietnamese state saw it differently. In the official history of the war, they stated:


The Liberation Army of South Vietnam is a part of the People’s Army of Vietnam

Devrim

Whatever they claim, it remains true that the NLF did have its origins in the South. So when Cliff is agreeing with the tactics of the NLF, he is not necessarily supporting Ho. It is also worth noting that his support for the tactics of the NLF is on the basis of a broad guerilla struggle which employs wide layers of peasants and workers and he is using this to contrast with the narrow military cast at the root of Nasser's forces.

[Blake's Baby]

Are you being serious?

Yes. Aren't you?

[Lucretia]

I haven't looked into it much, but his theory of state capitalism is widely condemned as being superficial and shallow. I believe he basically considered the Soviet Union to be capitalist because it sold goods on the world market; it was basically just theoretical justification for not supporting the Soviets. Not to mention that some Cliffites have essentially use it to embrace imperialism in the name of "opposing Soviet state capitalism". It is unsurprising that the other tendencies which accept the theory of state capitalism would condemn them.

This is ridiculous. Anybody who has read Cliff's work "State Capitalism in Russia" can easily see by page 3 that his argument far transcends just saying that the USSR sold goods on the world market. Do you usually bother to try to inform yourself about topics before making sweeping claims about them? Or is this a one-off thing?

To make matters worse, you combine this guessing-game analysis with an amateurish attempt at conjuring up the secret motivations that might have lain behind the caricature that exists only in your head. Oy.

[Lord Hargreaves]

OK.

Do you believe that calling for the military defeat of the USA (which we all agree they were doing, yes?) equals supporting the North Vietnamese state?

If you don't see it as support, that's an argument we could have, because we would see that as support for the North Vietnamese state; if you do see it as support, what's the argument about?

So what are you saying, you believe that the working class should have had no position regarding the Vietnam war? :blink:

[blake 3:17]

OMG -- is this hairsplitting of the weirdest kind? "No victory to the NLF, but let's hope the US loses first!" isn't a very good slogan.

I'm curious about Cliff's Permanent Arms Economy and Military Keynesianism. I thoroughly enjoyed Cliff's memoirs, which have a great deal of humour to them, and respect him as a creative Marxist. I think his main mistake -- other than not getting feminism -- was "Bolshevizing" his party.

I've been following the SWP internal squabbles via Q's thread and the reprints from the CPGB and the constant appeal to Leninism, Bolshevism, and democratic centralism are just stupid nuts. They end up meaning NOTHING.

[Blake's Baby]

So what are you saying, you believe that the working class should have had no position regarding the Vietnam war? :blink:

No, where do you get that from?

The working class should have opposed the war - not just the American side in the war.

[robbo203]

This is ridiculous. Anybody who has read Cliff's work "State Capitalism in Russia" can easily see by page 3 that his argument far transcends just saying that the USSR sold goods on the world market. Do you usually bother to try to inform yourself about topics before making sweeping claims about them? Or is this a one-off thing?

To make matters worse, you combine this guessing-game analysis with an amateurish attempt at conjuring up the secret motivations that might have lain behind the caricature that exists only in your head. Oy.

Good point. There is a good introduction to state capitalism as a theory which reveals Grenzers claims to be nonsensical and ill informed

http://wspus.org/in-depth/russia-lenin-and-state-capitalism/

[Red Enemy]

For those seeking another state capitalist theory, I haven't seen it mentioned, but the Marxist-Humanist theory of State Capitalism by Raya Dunayevskaya. Actually, I'd be interested in learning more about the theory myself. I haven't got my hands on a copy of the book, but what is available outside of it has been of more interest and substance than Cliff's anecdotes and statistics.

Now, on to Cliff. Jimmie Higgins, the former International Socialist (Opposition), wrote a relevant piece. It's titled More Years for the Locust: Origins of the SWP (http://www.marxists.org/archive/higgins/1997/locust/). I read it a while back, and I can't be bothered to do it again. It was good and informative, however.

[Luís Henrique]

Do you believe that an independent working class line was supporting the Vietnamese state.

An independent class line is opposing the war efforts of "our own" bourgeois State. For communists in the "West", this would mean opposing either the direct imperialist aggression of the US, France, Australia, etc, or the political support for it from most States in the "free world". Otherwise, a "neutral" position barely conceals a patriotic support for "our own" bourgeoisie and its foreign adventures.

Of course, there is a thin line that divides an actual internationalist position from a "third-worldist" one; that was more clear in the Malvinas War, where the "internationalism" of most of the "Western" left essentially boiled down into cheerleading for the murderous Argentine Junta, instead of effectively fighting against the British war effort or the support other imperialist States gave to it. In Vietnam the line gets quite blurred by two evident facts: that the Vietnamese were a whole lot more able to put up an actual fight against the Americans than the Argentinians against the British, and that actual opposition to imperialist war was much more plausible in '68, when the US had a conscript army, than in '82, when the UK had an essentially professional military.

Luís Henrique

[Lord Hargreaves]

No, where do you get that from?

The working class should have opposed the war - not just the American side in the war.

That doesn't make sense. The US "side" in the war was the war. The US started it and prosecuted it, and the Vietnamese were fighting imperialist aggression against their people. How could Western radicals not have supported the Vietnamese side? It is rather obscene to pretend that there was no moral distinction between the opposing sides.

We don't get to choose the exact composition of anti-imperialist political forces from our comfortable armchairs. The world is never exactly how we'd like it to be. To take a kind of "a plague on both their houses!" position on this seems to me a product of moral narcissism, rather than coming from any concern for the real world.

[Blake's Baby]

And the position of western 'radicals' supporting any brown people going is cultural orientalism, an 'inverted' racism.

North Vietnam was the ally of imperialism - Russian imperialism - and therefore not 'anti-imperialist'. In fact the consistent 'anti-imperialists' were those who oppose both American imperialism (and their South Vietnamese proxies) and Russian imperialism (and their North Vietnamese proxies), and instead support the independence of the working class against both imperialist, bourgeois factions.

[Luís Henrique]

In fact the consistent 'anti-imperialists' were those who oppose both American imperialism (and their South Vietnamese proxies) and Russian imperialism (and their North Vietnamese proxies), and instead support the independence of the working class against both imperialist, bourgeois factions.

Mkay. If you are in the United States, how do you oppose American imperialism? By running anti-recruiting campaigns, aiding and abetting deserters, sabotaging recruitment facilities, striking in factories that produce weapons and ammunition to the front, boycotting military activity, etc. - up to mutiny in the military services. Or isn't this to materially oppose American imperialism?

Now, if you are in the United States, how do you oppose "Russian imperialism"? By circulating pamphlets where you describe the military resistance to American aggression in Vietnam as a proxy of Russian imperialism, and what else?

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

And the position of western 'radicals' supporting any brown people going is cultural orientalism, an 'inverted' racism.

I am what in the United States is described as "brown people", and I take exception to this claim.

Luís Henrique

[Blake's Baby]

Mkay. If you are in the United States, how do you oppose American imperialism? By running anti-recruiting campaigns, aiding and abetting deserters, sabotaging recruitment facilities, striking in factories that produce weapons and ammunition to the front, boycotting military activity, etc. - up to mutiny in the military services. Or isn't this to materially oppose American imperialism?...

Sounds like opposing American imperialism to me, yes.


...Now, if you are in the United States, how do you oppose "Russian imperialism"? By circulating pamphlets where you describe the military resistance to American aggression in Vietnam as a proxy of Russian imperialism, and what else?



Not much else you can do really. Denouncing both sides is a given, but materially it's much easier to directly act agaiinst the bourgeoisie where you are, rather than where you aren't.

What you don't do is send Jane Fonda to pose with NVLA missile batteries and chant 'Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh' when you go on rallies.

In the last Gulf War, for instance, I was part of a group that in practice was much more directed at British imperialism (because that's where we are) but made it quite clear that we regarded Bush, Blair, Saddam and Bin Laden all equally as enemies of the working class - which of coures made us extremely unpopular on demos made up primarily of Palestinian nationalists and leftist supporters of Saddam Hussein.


I am what in the United States is described as "brown people", and I take exception to this claim.

Luís Henrique

On what grounds particularly?

[Luís Henrique]

Sounds like opposing American imperialism to me, yes.

Not much else you can do really. Denouncing both sides is a given, but materially it's much easier to directly act agaiinst the bourgeoisie where you are, rather than where you aren't.

Ah, so you have to admit that we actually cannot "oppose both sides" equally - unless of course we limit our opposition to the closest side to merely verbal opposition.


What you don't do is send Jane Fonda to pose with NVLA missile batteries and chant 'Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh' when you go on rallies.

Indeed, that's quite stupid.

You also should take care that your denounciations of the "other" side don't actually translate into indirect support to the closest side. For instance, the mischaracterisation of North Vietnam as a mere proxy for Russian imperialism in the exact way South Vietnam was a mere proxy for American imperialism is factually wrong (North Vietnam was not a regime set up by Russians, it had no Russian troops fighting in its side, and it was geographically close enough to China that it could not embark in Russian anti-Chinese jingoism as Moscow certainly would have prefered), and tends to reinforce the popular prejudice that "they are all the same shit, so, shit for shit, let's keep with the shit we already know", if not coupled with very noticeable actual opposition to the closest side, as described in my previous post.


In the last Gulf War, for instance, I was part of a group that in practice was much more directed at British imperialism (because that's where we are) but made it quite clear that we regarded Bush, Blair, Saddam and Bin Laden all equally as enemies of the working class - which of coures made us extremely unpopular on demos made up primarily of Palestinian nationalists and leftist supporters of Saddam Hussein.

That's evidently part of the struggle. It doesn't mean that we abstain from taking part on such demonstrations, or that we prop up our own "pure" demonstrations.

Luís Henrique

[Blake's Baby]

Ah, so you have to admit that we actually cannot "oppose both sides" equally - unless of course we limit our opposition to the closest side to merely verbal opposition...

Of course we oppose them equally - we oppose 'our' side, and 'the other' side, to the limit of our ability. That's 'equally'.

What we don't do is verbally or ideologically support 'the other' side just because they're not 'our' side.




...

You also should take care that your denounciations of the "other" side don't actually translate into indirect support to the closest side. For instance, the mischaracterisation of North Vietnam as a mere proxy for Russian imperialism in the exact way South Vietnam was a mere proxy for American imperialism is factually wrong (North Vietnam was not a regime set up by Russians, it had no Russian troops fighting in its side, and it was geographically close enough to China that it could not embark in Russian anti-Chinese jingoism as Moscow certainly would have prefered), and tends to reinforce the popular prejudice that "they are all the same shit, so, shit for shit, let's keep with the shit we already know", if not coupled with very noticeable actual opposition to the closest side, as described in my previous post...

I think I might like to dispute how much the North Vietnemese regime was 'set up' by the Russians. But you are right that there were no Russian combat troops fighting in Vietnam.



...
That's evidently part of the struggle. It doesn't mean that we abstain from taking part on such demonstrations, or that we prop up our own "pure" demonstrations...

Neither of which we did, so what's the problem? We took part in 'anti-war' demos - that were actually 'pro-war, anti-American' demos, on a firmy internationalist basis: 'No War But Class War - Bush Blair Saddam and Bin Laden are all our enemies' was the basis of our interventions.

[Luís Henrique]

On what grounds particularly?

(referring to this



And the position of western 'radicals' supporting any brown people going is cultural orientalism, an 'inverted' racism.

I am what in the United States is described as "brown people", and I take exception to this claim.

previous exchange.)

First, of course, because the mention to "brown people" is itself racist, as well as unrelated to the issue. The left has supported predominantly White Argentina against Britain, so the issue is not one of race, but of the conflict between the centre and the periphery of the imperialist system. And the presumption that all of the centre is White (it isn't, Japan is not White) and all of the periphery is "brown" (it isn't, Eastern Europe is predominantly White, as are Argentina and Uruguay) is, in my opinion, quite bigoted.

Second, because the conflation between the imperialist periphery and things "oriental" is ridiculous; Latin America or Africa aren't "oriental" in any meaningful sence (whereas Japan, of course, is).

Third, because "orientalism" is a mischaracterisation of oriental cultures, particularly Middle Eastern cultures; it has nothing to do with "inverted racism", but it is an intellectual expression of European cultural bigotry against the "non-West".

Fourth, because it seems a scare tactics; people support "national liberation" struggles for very different, even if mistaken, reasons, than "White guilt". And as such, it opens the way to mischaracterise every opposition to racism on the part of White people as "inverted racism".

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Of course we oppose them equally - we oppose 'our' side, and 'the other' side, to the limit of our ability. That's 'equally'.

To me that isn't "equally" at all.


What we don't do is verbally or ideologically support 'the other' side just because they're not 'our' side.

No, we shouldn't do that. On the other hand, the ideological demonisation of the "other" side is an integral part of the closest side war effort; our denounciations of the "other" side, consequently, must be very cautious to avoid supporting such demonisations.


I think I might like to dispute how much the North Vietnemese regime was 'set up' by the Russians.

So to what extent do you think the North Vietnamese regime was set up by the Russians, and how does that compare to the situation of South Vietnam, which was a regime that evidently could not survive without an American life support line?


But you are right that there were no Russian combat troops fighting in Vietnam.

So the presence of Russian troops in Vietnam would be a hard thing to oppose, wouldn't it?


Neither of which we did, so what's the problem? We took part in 'anti-war' demos - that were actually 'pro-war, anti-American' demos, on a firmy internationalist basis: 'No War But Class War - Bush Blair Saddam and Bin Laden are all our enemies' was the basis of our interventions.

That's of course good, to the extent that it didn't divert from the demonstrations' point - that was, I suppose, to oppose the deployment of British troops to Iraq - into an infight about the character of Hussein's regime.

(And what the hell was bin Ladin doing in such discourse? He had nothing to do with Iraq, except in the fantasies and lies of American and British governments - which were a core part of the demonisation of Hussein, Iraq, Muslisms, Arabs, and Iraqis, that, as I wrote before, constitutes an integral part of the closest (British, and of course American) side war effort. And such demonisation is exactly what we need to avoid lest we are to give actual support for the closest side.)

Luís Henrique

[Blake's Baby]

...
First, of course, because the mention to "brown people" is itself racist, as well as unrelated to the issue...

1-it isn't racist, unless you think that I think there is a real 'racial hierarchy' (in which case, it still isn't racist, because I don't think there is any such hierarchy, but if you think I think there is, you might think I'm being racist); to point out the racism in others (inverted or not) is not, in itself, racist;
2-it isn't unrelated to the issue, the issue is whether (predominantly) white radicals in the US in the 1960s gave uncritical support to 'anti-imperialist' (ie pro-Moscow or pro-Beijing) groups in the 'Third World'; they did, and my contention is that much of that lack of criticism was based on a cultural attitude that did see those groups as being 'other', and in this context more 'authentic', and therefore beyond reproach - similar to the notion of the 'noble savage'.



...
The left has supported predominantly White Argentina against Britain, so the issue is not one of race, but of the conflict between the centre and the periphery of the imperialist system. And the presumption that all of the centre is White (it isn't, Japan is not White) and all of the periphery is "brown" (it isn't, Eastern Europe is predominantly White, as are Argentina and Uruguay) is, in my opinion, quite bigoted...

I referred to "western 'radicals'"; perhaps I should have said "Europeanand American 'radicals'". I have little idea what Japanese 'radicals' said about the war in Vietnam. Not sure that the british/Argentinian war in the 1980s has much to do with anything, but there were 'leftist' groups that supported Britain (on the grounds that the 'democratic will' of the Falklanders was to remain British - eg the Militant, fore-runner of the SPEW, part of the CWI) and some that opposed both sides (eg the AWL who regarded both sides as imperialist).


...Second, because the conflation between the imperialist periphery and things "oriental" is ridiculous; Latin America or Africa aren't "oriental" in any meaningful sence (whereas Japan, of course, is)...

Technical term.

From the wiki entry on 'Orientalism':

"Orientalism is a term used by art historians and literary and cultural studies scholars for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Middle Eastern, and East Asian cultures (Eastern cultures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_culture)) by American and European writers, designers and artists. In particular, Orientalist painting, depicting more specifically "the Middle East (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East)",[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism#cite_note-1) was one of the many specialisms of 19th century Academic art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_art).
Since the publication of Edward Said (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Said)'s Orientalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_%28book%29) in 1978, much academic discourse has begun to use the term "Orientalism" to refer to a general patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian and North African societies..."

...and by extension of Said's use, it has come to refer to pretty much any process of 'othering' native peoples or non-western cultures. But in the context of Vietnam, it is even geographically accurate, which it never was even in in the 1800s, when for instance refering to Morocco, which is south-west of Europe. Obviously as a Brit, I reject the term 'Middle East' in the wiki piece when referring to North Africa or the Eastern Med (the use of 'Middle East' is itself a result of 'orientalism'); the former is 'North Africa' and the latter is the Near East.

'Orientalism' in painting wasn't necessarily depicting a 'bad' 'orient'; it was often trying to depict positive images of North Africa, the Near and Middle East. These are still distortions but they don't necessarily have mocking connotations.


...Third, because "orientalism" is a mischaracterisation of oriental cultures, particularly Middle Eastern cultures; it has nothing to do with "inverted racism", but it is an intellectual expression of European cultural bigotry against the "non-West"...

Right, so you know what 'orientalism' means, why exactly are you objecting to my description of the attitudes of those "western 'radicals'" I was referring to as 'orientalism'?


...Fourth, because it seems a scare tactics; people support "national liberation" struggles for very different, even if mistaken, reasons, than "White guilt". And as such, it opens the way to mischaracterise every opposition to racism on the part of White people as "inverted racism"...

1-the war in Vietnam wasn't prosecuted by the US becasue the US was 'racist'; so i don't know why you should conflate support for the NVLA (or any other national liberation struggle) with opposition to racism.
2- I didn't claim that all opposition to US imperialism was a manifestation of 'white guilt'.

However, I believe there was a substantial contribution by American and European (and probably Australian and Canadian too) 'radicals', of precisely the 'white-guilt' based, orientalist, inverted racism that I've been describing. 'The Other' can either be scary or it can, to those who oppose the dominant paradigm, be attractive; whatever is 'othered' is exactly the same, but the perception is different, even though the second is merely a mirror of the first. Neither confronts the reality of the situation, both are distortions based on the culture of whoever is doing the 'othering'.

'All Vietnamese are bastards!', says the White Man, is racial stereotyping.

'No! All Vietnamese are lovely!', says the other White Man, is also racial stereotyping.

[Luís Henrique]

1-it isn't racist, unless you think that I think there is a real 'racial hierarchy' (in which case, it still isn't racist, because I don't think there is any such hierarchy, but if you think I think there is, you might think I'm being racist); to point out the racism in others (inverted or not) is not, in itself, racist;

It seems related to the notion that all the capitalist centre is White, and all the periphery is non-White.


2-it isn't unrelated to the issue, the issue is whether (predominantly) white radicals in the US in the 1960s gave uncritical support to 'anti-imperialist' (ie pro-Moscow or pro-Beijing) groups in the 'Third World'; they did, and my contention is that much of that lack of criticism was based on a cultural attitude that did see those groups as being 'other', and in this context more 'authentic', and therefore beyond reproach - similar to the notion of the 'noble savage'.Well, first not all pro Moscow or pro-Beijing "anti-imperialist" groups were brown, so your choice of words is at best weird.

Of course uncritical support in the capitalist centre for third-world movements may have been related to some version of bon sauvage ideology. But evidently, just like you say the war in Vietnam wasn't prosecuted by the US becasue the US was 'racist', I suppose you understand that those American radicals (and I doubt "predominantly White"; Black radicals at the time had much the same acritical approach) didn't oppose the war because of their bon sauvage ideology, but, rather conversely, they spoused a version of bon sauvage ideology because they opposed the war.


I referred to "western 'radicals'"; perhaps I should have said "Europeanand American 'radicals'".You should have framed the whole issue in its actual terms: the conflict between centre and periphery within the imperialist system. Any other way to frame it (Whites vs "browns", Western vs Eastern, European and American vs non-European and non-American, etc.) fails to address what was actually going on.


I have little idea what Japanese 'radicals' said about the war in Vietnam.Pretty much what "radicals" elsewhere said about it. Why would Japan be different?


Not sure that the british/Argentinian war in the 1980s has much to do with anything,Er - another example of conflict between the imperialist centre and periphery?


but there were 'leftist' groups that supported Britain (on the grounds that the 'democratic will' of the Falklanders was to remain BritishYeah, there are always outliers, and frankly the Argentinian Junta was much less plausible as a bulwark of anti-imperialism than the Vietnamese regime.


and some that opposed both sides (eg the AWL who regarded both sides as imperialist).Which is technically wrong, but so be it.


...and by extension of Said's use, it has come to refer to pretty much any process of 'othering' native peoples or non-western cultures. But in the context of Vietnam, it is even geographically accurate, which it never was even in in the 1800s, when for instance refering to Morocco, which is south-west of Europe. Obviously as a Brit, I reject the term 'Middle East' in the wiki piece when referring to North Africa or the Eastern Med (the use of 'Middle East' is itself a result of 'orientalism'); the former is 'North Africa' and the latter is the Near East.Well, that is technicality in my reckoning.


'Orientalism' in painting wasn't necessarily depicting a 'bad' 'orient'; it was often trying to depict positive images of North Africa, the Near and Middle East. These are still distortions but they don't necessarily have mocking connotations.The difference however is that such "othering", even in its benevolent aspects, never lead to a support of independence or statehood or self-determination for those people. And so it is completely different from the attitude of "American radicals" towards Vietnam. So that's the reason I do what you question in following:


Right, so you know what 'orientalism' means, why exactly are you objecting to my description of the attitudes of those "western 'radicals'" I was referring to as 'orientalism'?
1-the war in Vietnam wasn't prosecuted by the US becasue the US was 'racist'; so i don't know why you should conflate support for the NVLA (or any other national liberation struggle) with opposition to racism.
Evidently the reasons of the war must be found elsewhere, but racism was quite instrumental in the conduction of the war. And so it would be hard to oppose the American war effort without opposing American racism against Vietnamese and Asians in general, because such racism was an integral part of American war effort.


2- I didn't claim that all opposition to US imperialism was a manifestation of 'white guilt'.No, but you certainly gave the impression that you think that all opposition to US imperialism that slid into support for the NV regime was a manifestation of White guilt.


However, I believe there was a substantial contribution by American and European (and probably Australian and Canadian too) 'radicals', of precisely the 'white-guilt' based, orientalist, inverted racism that I've been describing. 'The Other' can either be scary or it can, to those who oppose the dominant paradigm, be attractive; whatever is 'othered' is exactly the same, but the perception is different, even though the second is merely a mirror of the first. Neither confronts the reality of the situation, both are distortions based on the culture of whoever is doing the 'othering'.

'All Vietnamese are bastards!', says the White Man, is racial stereotyping.

'No! All Vietnamese are lovely!', says the other White Man, is also racial stereotyping.Ah, yes, but I can work together with the "All Vietnamese are lovely!" White Man in sabotaging the American war effort in Vietnam; I can't work together with the "'All Vietnamese are bastards!" in either that or in making the point that Ho Chi Mihn was an enemy of the working class.

So while "both" constitute cultural sterotyping, they are politically very different, and the possibility of allying with each is correspondingly very different too.

Luís Henrique

PS: And bin Ladin in Iraq?

[Blake's Baby]

I think your 'centre/periphery' model is itself another form of 'othering'.


...
Of course uncritical support in the capitalist centre for third-world movements may have been related to some version of bon sauvage ideology. But evidently, just like you say the war in Vietnam wasn't prosecuted by the US becasue the US was 'racist', I suppose you understand that those American radicals (and I doubt "predominantly White"; Black radicals at the time had much the same acritical approach) didn't oppose the war because of their bon sauvage ideology, but, rather conversely, they spoused a version of bon sauvage ideology because they opposed the war...

They didn't oppose the war, for the most part. They supported the war; they just opposed the side that seemed likely to win.

'Bin Laden in Iraq'...

There were people on the demos 'against' the Iraq War (ie, for the Iraq War but against America) that called for support for Al Q'aeda. We (in No War But Class War) opposed them as well. I'm aware that Al Q'aeda had nothing to do with the regime in Iraq.

[Luís Henrique]

I think your 'centre/periphery' model is itself another form of 'othering'.

Yeah? How?

Perhaps the distinction between capitalists and proletarians is also a form of "othering"?


There were people on the demos 'against' the Iraq War (ie, for the Iraq War but against America) that called for support for Al Q'aeda.Ugh. That's ugly.


We (in No War But Class War) opposed them as well.As I am sure most of those in the demonstrations, even among those who supported Hussein and his murderous regime.


They didn't oppose the war, for the most part. They supported the war; they just opposed the side that seemed likely to win.Which would be a quite different reason from "orientalism", "noble sauvage ideology", "White guilt", etc.

But the accusation seems petty; the same people "supported the other side" in Granada, for instance, where it would have been necessary to be blind or mad to believe there was a chance of the "other side" winning.

The issue however is not "opposing the war", it is opposing the war effort of the closest side. If you do that, whatever delusions ("Hussein is socialist", "Hussein is as imperialist as Bush", "Iran will hold the sway in Iraq if Hussein is toppled", "Britain shouldn't be acting as a proxy to the USA", who knows what else...) you may hold about each of the sides can be discussed in other circumstances.


I'm aware that Al Q'aeda had nothing to do with the regime in Iraq.Thanks. That was not clear in the previous posts.

And I hope you were able to state that clearly in your interventions in the movement.

Luís Henrique

[Jimmie Higgins]

Of course we oppose them equally - we oppose 'our' side, and 'the other' side, to the limit of our ability. That's 'equally'.

What we don't do is verbally or ideologically support 'the other' side just because they're not 'our' side.I don't think there has ever been a case of support just for the fact that someone was "the other side" in a US conflict - at least not in the IS traddition. We also opposed the USSR in Afganistan despite the opposite dynamic to Vietnam with the US probably directly or indirectly benifiting from the USSR's failure. We opposed Gaddafi and supported the rebellion and then did not support it as it became clear that the lead in the rebellion had been taken by unapologetically pro-US toadies - then we opposed "both" with some small hope that the situation was not closed and a national struggle based on organic power (the population) rather than on support from NATO would develop.

A battle between two rival imperial powers has a different relationship to class struggle than a battle for national liberation from imperialism. The two imperialist armies fight and it's over the domination by one of the other; both national ruling classes try and pitch the war in a way that seems like it's in worker's interests, but there is no aspect of it which will automatically meet any worker's needs. A rebellion against an occupation or against an imperialist power, however, is in the interest of workers, which overlaps in that regard to the intrests (though different in hopes and aims and often tactics) of the local bourgoise. A rebellion which is not being propped up by other powers, is more likely to have to move in a more populist dirrection in order to rally support. This opens the possibility for popular and working class forces to fight in their own intests and the larger rebellion at once. Of course, the more organized and independant the class forces to begin with, the more they may be able to persue a specifically working class vision for post-revolution society and if the rebellion is sucessful, an independant class movement that participated in a popular uprising - without merging into it totally - could come out with a lot of support and credibility as having a liberation orientation. This is what Ho Chi Minh did through French and Japaneese occupation - although what they did with that cred after was self-limited due to the ideology and orientation of those forces.

Anyway I think this is the heart of the disagreement: do broader struggles have an impact on the class struggle? I say yes, it is very much connected, though there is no formula for how they will impact eachother - all that depends on a wide range of factors and circumstances going in and during a rebellion. You may say, yes too, but that it only impacts class movements negativly. Or, I don't know, that these are just totally seperate spheres.

But I think it would be a self-fufilling prophesy to say that social movements or national struggles against imperialist powers or occupation always end up as nationalist struggles of some kind and that the worker's movement always ends up subordinate to those bourgois progressive nationalist politics. It's self-fufilling because as long as there is social and national oppression - of which workers are also a part - then workers will be involved and want to fight against those oppressions. To take an abstaining position - on principle (because there are pleanty of totally valid reasons to abstain on particular questions due to particular factors) - then ceedes this ground to the bourgois nationalists or the CP (back in the day). "No War but the Class War" is a very nice slogan, but it also doesn't mean much if your town is being occupied by Russian or US troops or if you are a worker in an imperialist power who may be drafted in a month.

So for radicals IMO it's a question of how do you relate to the broader numbers of workers who are involved in a national struggle against an occupation or against a form of oppression, connect that to any existing class struggle and grievences, and participate if appropriate without loosing the focus on the ultimate struggle. For the worker's movement in general it's a similar question: if workers are participating and want to fight for liberation from imperialsim or oppression, how does it deal with other foces in society without just becoming their cheerleaders.

This absention position or "class-war only" position, is going to tend to be ultimately correct most of the time (once the dust settles) because uprisings and movements being defeated or (/and then) being co-opted and de-fanged is much more common than actual working class revolutions/mass strikes. This is especially true for the last couple of generations where the "Offical" radical movement of CPs and Maoists placed no importance on class independance and sought to conflate national and class struggles; or there was simply no worker's movement to speak of that had a level of organization and independance to push for its own demands and vision in a major way.

So when our radical and anti-Stalinist tendencies have been small, it's possible to take a "pox on both your houses" position on national liberation struggles. But at some point (hopefully) people with politics like ours (generally) will have more of a hearing and more support from a much more combative working class and then it does become a question if a national or anti-oppression struggle errupts and the class movement has some influence but not enough that there's going to be a likely worker's revolution.


Neither of which we did, so what's the problem? We took part in 'anti-war' demos - that were actually 'pro-war, anti-American' demos, on a firmy internationalist basis: 'No War But Class War - Bush Blair Saddam and Bin Laden are all our enemies' was the basis of our interventions.Well so did we, but we also said that the people in Falluja have every right to defend themselves and should resist with all available means. Saying Bush and Saddam are both our enemies is just propagadistic, which is fine for the situation as it turned out because the resistance never really organized into a national front and the anti-war movement here never got past an initial liberal phase.

But I think this line would have been increasingly difficult to maintain and would loose any rallying or organizing potential if things in the war had developed slightly differently. Since Saddam was out of the picture pretty quick, if a national resistance had developed, then you'd have to say "Bush and the Iraqi Militia are our enemies". Which would still be workable on a propaganda level, but I don't think it's accurate and you would cut yourself off from a whole lot of people who may be supportive of some class politics, but are also just begining to find their way and they don't want to count on a not-yet existing radical worker's movement to stop massive bombings abroad and repression at home, but want to figure out effective ways to fight it. Workers can potentially do this, can potentially have a crippling effect on the war machine and production of the means of war, but if radicals and the worker's movement don't have any strategy of their own, then these radicalizing people will likely then turn to the nationalists (abroad) and some kind of radical liberalism (at home) like the Weathermen Underground tactics or something. If workers can organize and shut down the docks or turn off electricity as a responce to our government waging an unpopular war, then the mass anger around the war has now just revealed a tool that workers can use in other areas of struggle as well. Which is just my main point here: the social struggle potentially impacts the class struggle and the class struggle impacts any social struggle.

One last thing is that I think there is a difference for workers between being under a local national bourgoise after a national liberation struggle and being under a ruler backed or picked by an imperialist power. First, if workers and other popular forces participated in the rebellion, then they are more likely (even if they went the most refomist and collaborationist way possible) to be in a better position after the national struggle both because they have had experience organizing and it would be harder for the new rulers to repress them as much as the old because the new ruling class would likely be weak and still need a coalition and will need to solicit support from various powerful groups in society. A ruler backed by imperial powers though is like a double weight around the neck of workers. If Iraq had a strike-wave or an "Arab Spring" type movement of any size, then they would be faced by regime military which has been trained and equipped by the US, and they would also ultimately fact the US military itself if the Iraqi puppet military couldn't do the job.

The trick for workers is how to maintain the independance of their movement - this goes weather they abstain or participate. The CNT in Spain had a position that all governments were the same, monarchic, bourgois republic, or fascist. But then when faced with a national struggle against fascism, they had to break from their abstentionism because in fact, being able to organize under Republican repression was still much better than being unable to organize while dead in a ditch under fascism. But when they broke from abstention in the national struggle (one where workers and pesants, not the bourgoise were the strongest force!) these abstentionists ended up supporting the Republic! They did not have an orientation or strategy for playing an independant role in such "political" matters and so they were caught off guard and ended up betraying everything they had worked and sacrificed for.

[Blake's Baby]

Yeah? How?

Perhaps the distinction between capitalists and proletarians is also a form of "othering"?


Objectively, class relates to relationship to the means of production. It's a real set of relationships. What do your 'core/periphery' relationships relate to?

There's been a lot of anthropological literature over the last 10 years (I know about it from my own field of archaeology) that criticises core/periphery models. Try checking out critiques of Colin Haselgrove (who began to use the core/periphery model in the 1980s, looking at interactions between the Roman Empire and 'barbarian' Europe) for instance, and work on 'creolisation' by Jane Webste,r for another instance.


...

Thanks. That was not clear in the previous posts.

And I hope you were able to state that clearly in your interventions in the movement...

Probably not as clearly as we could have been. But we weren't handing out massive tomes analysing ever aspect of the war, we had a 400-word leaflet that I think in retrospect was already too long. As far as we were able we laid out the position of opposition to the US and UK governments, the Iraqi government, and any illusions in 'anti-imperialist' groups, pointing out that none of them represented the interests of the working class.

[Luís Henrique]

Objectively, class relates to relationship to the means of production. It's a real set of relationships. What do your 'core/periphery' relationships relate to?

Export or import of capital. Predominance of relative or absolute surplus value. Trade relations between manufactured products vs raw materials, or between high tech and low tech manufactured products.

If it is an instance of "othering" it is of a different quality of "othering" than White/brown, Western/Eastern, Christian/non Christian, etc.


There's been a lot of anthropological literature over the last 10 years (I know about it from my own field of archaeology) that criticises core/periphery models. Try checking out critiques of Colin Haselgrove (who began to use the core/periphery model in the 1980s, looking at interactions between the Roman Empire and 'barbarian' Europe) for instance, and work on 'creolisation' by Jane Webste,r for another instance.Well, the Roman empire certainly had little to do with imperialism in the Marxist understanding, so I don't know how a "core/periphery model" would relate to it (other than the very material fact that the periphery was where slaves were captured, and the centre were they were bought and employed in productive activities).

Nor do I believe in abstract "core/periphery models", for what is worth, either. Concrete analysis of the concrete case, that's the point*.


Probably not as clearly as we could have been. But we weren't handing out massive tomes analysing ever aspect of the war, we had a 400-word leaflet that I think in retrospect was already too long. As far as we were able we laid out the position of opposition to the US and UK governments, the Iraqi government, and any illusions in 'anti-imperialist' groups, pointing out that none of them represented the interests of the working class.Yup, a circumstantiated analysis demands the destruction of much more forest than sloganeering. Which doesn't mean, on the other hand, that sloganeering can't enrich owners of paper plants as much as circumstantiated analysis.

Luís Henrique

*ETA: having read something about Haselgrove, I don't think we are talking about the same thing here.

[Lord Hargreaves]

And the position of western 'radicals' supporting any brown people going is cultural orientalism, an 'inverted' racism.

Ah yes, "inverted" racism, as opposed to the classic, right-way-up racism of not supporting foreigners and their right to run their own country just because their socialism is of a different hue to yours. Congrats on your profoundly stupid comment.


North Vietnam was the ally of imperialism - Russian imperialism - and therefore not 'anti-imperialist'. In fact the consistent 'anti-imperialists' were those who oppose both American imperialism (and their South Vietnamese proxies) and Russian imperialism (and their North Vietnamese proxies), and instead support the independence of the working class against both imperialist, bourgeois factions.

I think you're reading this backwards: you seem more interested in taking the opportunity to denounce the USSR than you are with what was happening to the Vietnamese people. Your position has more to do with a kind of heterodox socialist self-absorption than it is with any honest analysis of the war in question.

In fact, I would applaud the USSR's material support for Vietnam as an example of the positive foreign policy they could have conducted elsewhere. You might have seen this too had not already concluded beforehand that the Soviet response was just "imperialism" and so must be completely opposed, regardless of the Vietnamese struggle against the real enemy.

Your position gives the impression that both sides in the war were as bad as each other, and both sides were equally to blame for starting it. This is false. Giving this false impression may not have been your intention, but it is surely something you have to face up to and be responsible for.

[Art Vandelay]

In the last Gulf War, for instance, I was part of a group that in practice was much more directed at British imperialism (because that's where we are) but made it quite clear that we regarded Bush, Blair, Saddam and Bin Laden all equally as enemies of the working class - which of coures made us extremely unpopular on demos made up primarily of Palestinian nationalists and leftist supporters of Saddam Hussein.

Then they weren't leftists.

[Blake's Baby]

Ah yes, "inverted" racism, as opposed to the classic, right-way-up racism of not supporting foreigners and their right to run their own country just because their socialism is of a different hue to yours. Congrats on your profoundly stupid comment...

Thank you, I take that as a complement.

'Socialism of a different hue' is not the issue. There was no 'socialism' for Vietnam. The NVLA and Viet-Minh were not the world revolution, because they were not the international working class, and nor was the Foreign Ministry of the Soviet Union.


...
I think you're reading this backwards: you seem more interested in taking the opportunity to denounce the USSR than you are with what was happening to the Vietnamese people. Your position has more to do with a kind of heterodox socialist self-absorption than it is with any honest analysis of the war in question.

In fact, I would applaud the USSR's material support for Vietnam as an example of the positive foreign policy they could have conducted elsewhere. You might have seen this too had not already concluded beforehand that the Soviet response was just "imperialism" and so must be completely opposed, regardless of the Vietnamese struggle against the real enemy...

The 'real enemy' for the international working class included both the government of the Soviet Union and the the government of the United States. How exactly supporting the proxies of the enemies of the working class is supposed to help the working class is not something I'm capable of wrapping my head around.


...Your position gives the impression that both sides in the war were as bad as each other, and both sides were equally to blame for starting it. This is false. Giving this false impression may not have been your intention, but it is surely something you have to face up to and be responsible for.

The Soviet Union was an enemy of the international working class (and had been such long before US involvement in Vietnam), and should have been opposed as far as possible, as should its proxies. I'm not sure what 'false impression' is being created there.



Then they weren't leftists.


How do you define 'leftist' 9mm? To me, 'leftist' generally means 'left wing of capital' - social democracy masquerading as something revolutionary. So, yes, they were 'leftists'. If you think 'leftist' means revolutionary, then, no, they weren't revolutionaries.

[Luís Henrique]

The 'real enemy' for the international working class included both the government of the Soviet Union and the the government of the United States. How exactly supporting the proxies of the enemies of the working class is supposed to help the working class is not something I'm capable of wrapping my head around.

I see that you haven't answered my post on what constitutes the centre and the periphery of the capitalist international system, and now it seems clear to me why: it appears that you fluctuate between different, and mutually incompatible, concepts of imperialism, without noticing that you aren't always talking about the same object.

First there is a notion that "imperialism is a world system", which apparently precludes any significant conflict between different imperialist entities (if there is one and only one imperialism, how can American imperialism collide with Russian imperialism, which would presuppose a plurality of imperialisms?) Second there is a pre-Marxist, pre-scientific notion of imperialism - implied in your posts about "core and periphery in the ancient world" - that apparently precludes imperialism from being a system of any sort, much less a world system, by conflating any expansionist impulse by bourgeois (or otherwise) States with "imperialism"; under this notion, not only the United States or the Soviet Union would be imperialist, but all bourgeois States, down from them to Bangladesh, Rwanda, Kiribati and Liechtenstein. And thirdly, there is a more conventional notion, that allows you to talk of North Vietnam and South Vietnam being "proxies", respectively, to Russian and American imperialisms, tacitly recognising both the existence of an imperialist centre and an imperialist periphery (North Vietnam was a proxy of Russian imperialism, the Soviet Union wasn't a proxy of North Vietnamese imperialism) and of a plurality of imperialisms (Russian and American imperialisms acting independently from each other, to the point of engaging in military conflict against each other).


The Soviet Union was an enemy of the international working class (and had been such long before US involvement in Vietnam), and should have been opposed as far as possible, as should its proxies. I'm not sure what 'false impression' is being created there.

Yes, in the abstract, the Soviet Union was an enemy of the international working class. But an actual Marxist analysis must go far beyond such abstraction, and situate the Soviet Union within the concrete history of the imperialist system and both inter-State conflicts and class struggle within it. In saying that "North Vietnam was a proxy of Russian imperialism", reality is simplified beyond any recognition. Whatever North Vietnam and the Soviet Union were, the relation between them, as already pointed, was of a completely different nature than the relation between South Vietnam and the United States (indeed, "Soviet imperialism" necessarily was a quite weird kind of imperialism, that, instead of economically exploiting its clients - like theoretically well-behaved imperialisms, like American imperialism, British, French, German, Belgian, Italian imperialisms always did and do - actually banked them, transferring wealth from the "imperialist" centre in Russia to the periphery in Cuba, Angola, Rumania, Lithuania, etc., leading to its quite comical historical collapse in which, instead of its "colonies" proclaiming independence from their "metropolitan centre", the metropolitan centre - the Russian Federation - proclaimed its independence from its burdensome "colonial" system).

Luís Henrique

[Blake's Baby]

Capitalism is a world system, different capitalisms compete. I didn't say 'imperialism is a world system' but all states are imperialist. Why would they not compete? They each have an dynamic to competition, imperialism is the competition of capitalism written on the scale of nations.

There are successful imperialisms, which dominate imperialist blocs, and there are unsuccessful imperialisms, who 'follow' in imperialist blocs, but all do so only as far as they see their interests being upheld. Belgium not only has to follow the US, it also has to (most of the time) follow Germany. Germany doesn't have to follow Belgium, but it does have to follow (most of the time) the US. The US is a 'first order' imperialist power, Germany is a second-order, Belgium is a third-order. But Belgium can sometimes oppose Germany, if it feels it is in its national interest, just as Germany can sometimes oppose the US. Indeed, since the break-up of the Cold-War bloc-system I'd argue that there has been more of dynamic for states to assert their individual interests against their previous bloc-leaders.

[Art Vandelay]

How do you define 'leftist' 9mm? To me, 'leftist' generally means 'left wing of capital' - social democracy masquerading as something revolutionary. So, yes, they were 'leftists'. If you think 'leftist' means revolutionary, then, no, they weren't revolutionaries.

I was using the term to denote revolutionaries, however you're right about the common usage. Perhaps I should specified revolutionaries or pro-revolutionaries.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I haven't been keeping on with this thread but I just wanted to poke in and give a link to a study guide I completed on Tony Cliff's piece of the Deflected Permanent Revolution...

http://www.revleft.com/vb/deflected-permanent-revolution-t177887/index.html?p=2564463#post2564463

As usual I do not endorse or condemn Cliff's views but I thought I should share all the same.

[Luís Henrique]

Capitalism is a world system, different capitalisms compete. I didn't say 'imperialism is a world system' but all states are imperialist. Why would they not compete? They each have an dynamic to competition, imperialism is the competition of capitalism written on the scale of nations.

"Different capitalisms compete"? Are there "different capitalisms"? If "imperialism is the competition of capitalism written on the scale of nations", how isn't imperialism a world system?

And is competition between different capitals merely a dispute of leadership, or does it imply the permanent impulse to destroy and subjugate other capitals?


There are successful imperialisms, which dominate imperialist blocs, and there are unsuccessful imperialisms, who 'follow' in imperialist blocs, but all do so only as far as they see their interests being upheld.So an "unsucessful imperialism" is merely behind successful imperialisms, as in some kind of race? Isn't it ever the case that they are also below successful imperialisms, being even threatened with destruction by the normal workings of the imperialist system?

Is it a mere political competition among States, or is it a struggle between capitals, in which the States, although of course retaining some objectives of their own, basically function as instruments of different capitals?


Belgium not only has to follow the US, it also has to (most of the time) follow Germany. Germany doesn't have to follow Belgium, but it does have to follow (most of the time) the US. The US is a 'first order' imperialist power, Germany is a second-order, Belgium is a third-order. But Belgium can sometimes oppose Germany, if it feels it is in its national interest, just as Germany can sometimes oppose the US.Yes, of course. In any way, we see a system with several layers - and Belgium is by no means even close to the lower levels of such a system. (Is the relation between the US and Belgium in any way similar to the relation between both of them and Rwanda (Paraguay, Sri Lanka, South Africa?))


Indeed, since the break-up of the Cold-War bloc-system I'd argue that there has been more of dynamic for states to assert their individual interests against their previous bloc-leaders.This is a fact, of course; but it is also a fact upon which it is easy to build complete fantasies, some of which dangerous, some merely weird and distracting.

Luís Henrique

[Blake's Baby]

"Different capitalisms compete"? Are there "different capitalisms"? If "imperialism is the competition of capitalism written on the scale of nations", how isn't imperialism a world system?...

Depends really what content you're giving to 'world system' there.

Capitalism is a world sytem; it is an economic form which dominates the planet. Not every interaction that takes place is 'capitalist' but the framework in which interactions take place is capitalist. Economics, the sub-structure (base) of society, dominates the superstructure of society.

There are 'different capitalisms' because capitalism is organised around the nation-state. Sure, there are multi-national companies. Sure, capitalism as an economic structure is global. But in general, the interests of states are those of the larger (most succesful) companies of those states. Thus, different national capitalisms that compete with each other. David Cameron tries to be nice to Qatar so that Qatar will buy some British military equipment. The French government meanwhile is also being nice to Qatar, because they want the contract to go to French companies.




...
And is competition between different capitals merely a dispute of leadership, or does it imply the permanent impulse to destroy and subjugate other capitals?...

War is diplomacy by other means - so diplomacy is war by other means. Is it 'merely' about leadership? No. Is it the 'permanent impulse to destroy ... other capitals?' No. Is it the 'permanent impulse to ... subjugate other capitals?' No. It can be any of these. These are policy decisions. The US bolstered the economies of Western Europe after WWII in order to create a pro-US zone to counter the USSR. Here, imperialist policy was about establishing 'leadership'. In other contexts destruction or direct subjugation might be judged to be more effective. in the end it's about making a profit for 'home capitalism'. Sometimes that can be done by developing new markets, sometimes by taking over competitors, sometimes by destroying them.


...So an "unsucessful imperialism" is merely behind successful imperialisms, as in some kind of race? Isn't it ever the case that they are also below successful imperialisms, being even threatened with destruction by the normal workings of the imperialist system?...

Why 'merely'?

Was German capitalism in 1908 'behind' or 'below' American or British capitalism?

I'd argue they were competing. But what about the Ottoman Empire? I don't know. It certainly had economic, political and military ties to Germany. I don't know how 'dominated' by German or British capitalism it was.

Can states be totally subjugated by another power? Yes. Is that what you're asking?


...Is it a mere political competition among States, or is it a struggle between capitals, in which the States, although of course retaining some objectives of their own, basically function as instruments of different capitals?...

Not really sure what objectives you think states might have apart from being the 'instruments of different capitals'. Care to elaborate on that?


...Yes, of course. In any way, we see a system with several layers - and Belgium is by no means even close to the lower levels of such a system. (Is the relation between the US and Belgium in any way similar to the relation between both of them and Rwanda (Paraguay, Sri Lanka, South Africa?))...

The relationship between Belgium and Rwanda - as a colonial-power/ex-colony relationship - is distinctly not the same as the relationship betweeen Belgium and Paraguay (I think Belgium has far more economic clout), or between Belgium and South Africa (where I would suspect SA is capable of standing up for itself much more successfully than either Paraguay or Rwanda); but none of these relationships is similar to the relationship the US has with Paraguay, SA or Rwanda - or even Belgium. But, beacause Belgium is part of the EU and Eurozone, there is another level of clout that Belgium has, in so far as the rest of the world is scared of the collective power (and cohesion) of the EU, which is obviously a somewhat fluctuating beast.


...This is a fact, of course; but it is also a fact upon which it is easy to build complete fantasies, some of which dangerous, some merely weird and distracting.

OK, but without saying what you think is fantasy and what isn't, it's hard to reply.

[Red Enemy]

For the anti-Cliff state capitalist theorists, who do you all think has the best analysis of state capitalism in Stalinist states and what work best outlines?
Marxist-Humanist Theory of State Capitalism by Dunayevskaya.

I haven't read it, but I've heard good. Her works besides that, on the topic of the USSR being state capitalist, are also good.