Stalinism? [Archive]

Nevsky

22nd April 2013, 18:48

Nice to see that there are still people willing to learn from multiple perspectives, I like your approach. "Stalinism" is very complex and twisted topic to talk about, both outside and within the communist movement. There is a lot of propaganda from all sorts of interest groups which surround the Stalin-period of the USSR. At times, different propaganda currents even contradict themselves. For example, the liberal propaganda trys to paint him as anti-semitic, totalitarian mass murderer in order to make him look like a second Hitler. On the other hand the fascist propaganda portrays him as vile jew, part of the " "jewish world conspiracy", mass murderer of his own people. The communists opposed to him adopt the liberal propaganda about the "totalitarian" nature of "Stalinism" and try to create a contrast between themselves i.e. the "nice" communists and Stalin, the "evil" communist.

All these naive views on Stalin disregard historical reality and Stalin's important achievements for the USSR. Stalin was actually very similar to the roman leader Augustus. An absolutely ruthless personality but an extraordinarily gifted statesman who successfully lead his country through a difficult period. When Lenin died and Stalin came to power, both the internal and external political situation of the USSR was very dangerous for the new socialist state. It was surrounded by hostile capitalist or fascist nations while internal civil war like conditions threatened it, too. Stalin is to blamed for having created a jacobinian terror apparatus to eliminate both threats. Now Stalin himself was not the sadistic monster, the propaganda portrays him as. In fact, some of the more bloodthirsty secret police men were executed because of their crimes (Nikolai Yezhoh e.g.). Stalin's ruthless methods ultimately helped the USSR to survive the hitlerite extermination war and to wipe the national socialist scum out. The soviet state never really managed to outgrow the established authoritarian power structure, though.

"Stalinism" is a term that I wouldn't use. It is mostly a liberal propaganda term made up for the sake of putting socialist states in a bad light. Stalin was a marxist-leninist. He was opposed to the more left leaning communists (like Trotsky) and the so called "right-wing deviation" (Bukharin), sort of a centrist within the leninist political spectrum. Here you can find the official ideology of Stalin's state in his own words: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm;
Stalin's take on leninism: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/index.htm

Among his great achievements are:

- The rapid industrialization and overall modernization of the USSR
- Massive increase of life expectancy and literacy rates of the soviet citizens
- Victory over Nazi Germany in WW2
- The construction of a well functioning socialist economy which proved to be stable and prosperous during the days of crisis within the capitalist world
- making important national culture and traditions accessible for formerly underpriviledged people
- The soviet constitution of 1936, the most progressive one the world had ever seen: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/12/05.htm

Obviously, there is a lot more to say about Stalin than I can in one post. Deutscher's biography is a good source. I'd also check out Domenico Losurdo's book on Stalin. Another valuable source is Anna Louise Strong's The Stalin Era: http://leninist.biz/en/0000/ALS00000/index.html
I'd also check out some interviews with Stalin, this is a great one with H.G. Wells: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1934/07/23.htm

Blake's Baby

22nd April 2013, 19:58

... Stalin, the "evil" communist...

No, that's rubbish. Stalin wasn't a 'communist'. He was the leader of a capitalist and imperialist country. He wasn't an 'evil communist' due to not being a communist.

Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist

22nd April 2013, 20:09

No, that's rubbish. Stalin wasn't a 'communist'. He was the leader of a capitalist and imperialist country. He wasn't an 'evil communist' due to not being a communist.

Can we avoid one liners in the learning section please?

Comrade #138672

22nd April 2013, 20:25

MarxArchist

22nd April 2013, 20:29

A combination of the Russian Bolsheviks mentality during and immediately after 1917, including Lenin and Trotsky, material condition's in Russia, the world war and the paranoia caused by the USA's stance post WW2. Some Marxists predicted both a Stalinist type environment and the eventual failure of the USSR (Kautsky being the most prominent and hated). Much of the same would have happened with Trotsky in power. Key word here- in power.

TheGodlessUtopian

22nd April 2013, 20:30

For a Marxist-Leninist perspective of Stalin see here: "Another View of Stalin" (http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Ludo%20Martens/index.html)

LuÃs Henrique

22nd April 2013, 21:01

I don't think it matters much whether Stalin himself was "good" or "evil". The USSR wasn't only about Stalin. He was "just" the face of the USSR. I don't think any other dictator could have acted much differently. Otherwise we would have to accept the Great Man Theory, which contradicts Historical Materialism.

Well, no. The Great Man theory is that great men (or women) determine the path of history. But evidently individuals are important, and different individuals would pursue different courses of actions, make different coalitions, and, within the limits of material possibilities, achieve different results. And that doesn't contradict historical materialism at all.

Luís Henrique

Nevsky

22nd April 2013, 21:07

No, that's rubbish. Stalin wasn't a 'communist'. He was the leader of a capitalist and imperialist country. He wasn't an 'evil communist' due to not being a communist.

Well interesting. Can you back this up? Why should someone who is not a convinced communist and "the leader of a capitalist and imperialist country" write dozens of articles and books about marxist theory, the construction of socialism, the disagreements of the different revolutionary marxist tendencies and so on? And I guess five-year plans are a capitalist way of running the economy now.

Akshay!

22nd April 2013, 21:17

I think I should clarify something - although I'd like to know what you think about Stalin, more important than that are your reasons to have that particular opinion. Saying "Stalin was a brutal and bad man" and "Stalin wasn't a communist" might be completely true and accurate but doesn't provide enough analysis to understand him.

I should stress I'm not against any opinion. I'm trying to understand Stalin. As I said earlier, all kinds of diverse perspectives from Anarchist to Stalinist to Leninist to Marxist to whatever are welcome as long as you provide some facts, some analysis.

Whether or not Nevsky is correct, his analysis was pretty detailed. Similarly, I'd like to read the opinion of an anti-Stalinist communist with some specific reasons to support that opinion.

And thanks for that link @GodlessUtopian. I'll check it out.

Finally,

Can we avoid one liners in the learning section please?

This.

Rafiq

22nd April 2013, 21:47

Personally preferable to that scoundrel Trotsky, but at the end of the day he was the symbolic leader of a bourgeois (I am not a "state capitalist theorist") state which did its best to at the same time retain the gains of the October revolution while sustaining a functional state. Obviously a catastrophic failure, in the end. His "policies" did not coincide with his personality but with the degeneration of the october revolution (as a result of capital's hegemony).

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

Akshay!

22nd April 2013, 22:18

Personally preferable to that scoundrel Trotsky

Just out of curiosity, why was he preferable to Trotsky?

Much of the same would have happened with Trotsky in power. Key word here- in power.

Why?

responsible for the deaths of millions.

Who exactly did he kill and why?

Captain Ahab

22nd April 2013, 22:27

Who exactly did he kill and why?
http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/events/terror/cc-1917.jpg

Comrade Alex

22nd April 2013, 22:37

Stalin was a controversial man no doubt
He killed around 7 million people purged most of the original Bolsheviks and in his conflict with Trotsky created an inoperable divide in Marxism
However he industrialized the soviet union ,and defeated the Nazis
As a man he was a revolutionary but I think he stopped bieng a revolutionary once he got some real power
Stalin the man of steel

Akshay!

22nd April 2013, 22:38

Who exactly did he kill and why?
[IMGttp://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/events/terror/cc-1917.jpg[/IMG]

That doesn't really answer the second half of the question.

Nevsky

22nd April 2013, 23:14

Some people make it sound as if Stalin himself went to all of the 7, 10, 40, 60 or whatever million people and smashed their heads in with a baseball bat. Most of the people killed during Stalin's time were executed on the orders of people like Beria, Yezhov and other NKVDs or "people's commissioners". As I said, Stalin is to be blamed for having set in motion the terror as a mean of dealing with the internal conflicts and the external threats. Many innocent people and genuine communists died because of this but not all the trials were just show. Some people were released as there was no evidence against them, others who were actually nazi collaborators were justly executed. The whole terror-period needs to be put into the right historical context in order to be fully understood. It wasn't an inbuilt feature of "stalinism" but the product of a very complicated, dangerous and contradictory time.

It was the same Stalin who said that "[e]arlier, the bourgeoisie presented themselves as liberal, they were for bourgeois democratic freedom and in that way gained popularity with the people. [...] I think that you, the representatives of communist and democratic parties must pick up this banner and carry it forward if you want to gain the majority of the people. There is nobody else to raise it" (Speech at 19th congress of the CPSU:http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1952/10/14.htm) (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1952/10/14.htm)

Stalin's powerful political position of "General Secretary" was abolished by the same congress in 1952 and reestablished only by the khruschevites one year after Stalin died. I am convinced that we would have seen a different Stalin in a less paranoia provoking political environment. Unfortunately, the given circumstances paved the way for the "rough georgian" to shine through mostly.

Blake's Baby

23rd April 2013, 00:07

Well interesting. ... I guess five-year plans are a capitalist way of running the economy now.

Yes.

There is no 'economy' is communist society. Did you not know that? Perhaps you could read some Marx and Engels and then you'd have a grounding in what Marxism actually is, so you wouldn't mistake a brutal and inefficient capitalist dictatorship for 'communism'.

you o know that communist society is classless and communal, right? You do know that in communist society there is no more state, right? You do know that communist society is global, right?

Conversely, you do know that wage labour and commodity production, both of which existed in the Soviet Union, are the defining factors of capitalism, right? Ergo, the Soviet Union was a capitalist state, and Stalin was the leader of a capitalist state.

Some people make it sound as if Stalin himself went to all of the 7, 10, 40, 60 or whatever million people and smashed their heads in with a baseball bat. Most of the people killed during Stalin's time were executed on the orders of people like Beria, Yezhov and other NKVDs or "people's commissioners"...

Well, I said he was the head of the government that presided over that. I have no idea if he personally murdered anyone, or just signed the orders to have them killed.

I hope that if you don't blame Stalin for what went on under his government, you don't blame Hitler for the deaths of 12 million people during the Holocaust, because Hitler didn't do it personally, it was just the bad underlings, I'm sure you think Hitler was alright really, and just misunderstood. Anyway, how can Hitler be personally responsible, isn't that 'Great Man of History' theory again - that's your argument, isn't it?

Captain Ahab

23rd April 2013, 00:14

Nevsky is displaying typical Stalinist double logic. When Stalin does something "good" he is completely responsible and the feat should be credited to him. When Stalin does something "bad" Stalin had no control whatsoever over what happened and it was the fault of everyone under him. Stalinists want to have their cake and eat it too.

Blake's Baby

23rd April 2013, 00:30

No, comrade, they want your cake. And if you don't give them the cake, your family is disappeared to GULAG and you're put on trial for being a Trotsky-Fascist before they shoot you in the head.

And then blame someone else, while they eat your cake.

Akshay!

23rd April 2013, 00:32

you o know that communist society is classless and communal, right? You do know that in communist society there is no more state, right? You do know that communist society is global, right?

Conversely, you do know that wage labour and commodity production, both of which existed in the Soviet Union, are the defining factors of capitalism, right? Ergo, the Soviet Union was a capitalist state, and Stalin was the leader of a capitalist state.

According to that definition (which I can accept) no country has ever been communist or can ever be communist because a "country" cannot exist outside this planet (where capitalism is the dominant system). But how's that a criticism of Stalin? How was Lenin the head of a communist state? (I'm not saying he wasn't. I'm just trying to show that if we accept this definition, nobody can be the head of a communist "state" - which means that this is just a description not a criticism.)

No, comrade, they want your cake. And if you don't give them the cake, your family is disappeared to GULAG and you're put on trial for being a Trotsky-Fascist before they shoot you in the head.

And then blame someone else, while they eat your cake.

lol.

Blake's Baby

23rd April 2013, 00:38

According to that definition (which I can accept) no country has ever been communist or can ever be communist because a "country" cannot exist outside this planet (where capitalism is the dominant system)...

Exactly.

... But how's that a criticism of Stalin? ...

Who says it's a criticism of Stalin? I think he made a perfectly acceptable capitalist and imperialist political leader, arguably no worse than Hitler and certainly more successful than Mussolini.

What I was criticising was the idea that he was a 'communist' capitalist and imperialist political leader.

... How was Lenin the head of a communist state? (I'm not saying he wasn't. I'm just trying to show that if we accept this definition, nobody can be the head of a communist "state" - which means that this is just a description not a criticism.)...

Yes. Lenin was not head of a 'communist' state, but I'm not aware that he pretended he was.

Akshay!

23rd April 2013, 00:44

I think he made a perfectly acceptable capitalist and imperialist political leader, arguably no worse than Hitler and certainly more successful than Mussolini.

Is it fair to compare Stalin to fascists?

Who says it's a criticism of Stalin?

Then what exactly is your criticism of Stalin and Stalinism? How is it different from any of the other -isms?

Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist

23rd April 2013, 00:48

Let's compare the content of the pro-Stalin and Anti-Stalin factions in this thread

Pro Stalin

Nice to see that there are still people willing to learn from multiple perspectives, I like your approach. "Stalinism" is very complex and twisted topic to talk about, both outside and within the communist movement. There is a lot of propaganda from all sorts of interest groups which surround the Stalin-period of the USSR. At times, different propaganda currents even contradict themselves. For example, the liberal propaganda trys to paint him as anti-semitic, totalitarian mass murderer in order to make him look like a second Hitler. On the other hand the fascist propaganda portrays him as vile jew, part of the " "jewish world conspiracy", mass murderer of his own people. The communists opposed to him adopt the liberal propaganda about the "totalitarian" nature of "Stalinism" and try to create a contrast between themselves i.e. the "nice" communists and Stalin, the "evil" communist.

All these naive views on Stalin disregard historical reality and Stalin's important achievements for the USSR. Stalin was actually very similar to the roman leader Augustus. An absolutely ruthless personality but an extraordinarily gifted statesman who successfully lead his country through a difficult period. When Lenin died and Stalin came to power, both the internal and external political situation of the USSR was very dangerous for the new socialist state. It was surrounded by hostile capitalist or fascist nations while internal civil war like conditions threatened it, too. Stalin is to blamed for having created a jacobinian terror apparatus to eliminate both threats. Now Stalin himself was not the sadistic monster, the propaganda portrays him as. In fact, some of the more bloodthirsty secret police men were executed because of their crimes (Nikolai Yezhoh e.g.). Stalin's ruthless methods ultimately helped the USSR to survive the hitlerite extermination war and to wipe the national socialist scum out. The soviet state never really managed to outgrow the established authoritarian power structure, though.

"Stalinism" is a term that I wouldn't use. It is mostly a liberal propaganda term made up for the sake of putting socialist states in a bad light. Stalin was a marxist-leninist. He was opposed to the more left leaning communists (like Trotsky) and the so called "right-wing deviation" (Bukharin), sort of a centrist within the leninist political spectrum. Here you can find the official ideology of Stalin's state in his own words: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm;
Stalin's take on leninism: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/index.htm

Among his great achievements are:

- The rapid industrialization and overall modernization of the USSR
- Massive increase of life expectancy and literacy rates of the soviet citizens
- Victory over Nazi Germany in WW2
- The construction of a well functioning socialist economy which proved to be stable and prosperous during the days of crisis within the capitalist world
- making important national culture and traditions accessible for formerly underpriviledged people
- The soviet constitution of 1936, the most progressive one the world had ever seen: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/12/05.htm

Obviously, there is a lot more to say about Stalin than I can in one post. Deutscher's biography is a good source. I'd also check out Domenico Losurdo's book on Stalin. Another valuable source is Anna Louise Strong's The Stalin Era: http://leninist.biz/en/0000/ALS00000/index.html
I'd also check out some interviews with Stalin, this is a great one with H.G. Wells: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1934/07/23.htm

Anti Stalin

There were no positive aspects, he was a brutal and paranoid man that was at the head of a state-capitalist government that was responsible for the deaths of millions. His rule is the single worst thing to happen to the communist movement in the last 100 years, because it has meant that the term 'communist' is associated with a disgusting prison-camp society and not the liberation of humanity.

That's from the perspective of a Marxist. Specifically, a Left Communist.

No, that's rubbish. Stalin wasn't a 'communist'. He was the leader of a capitalist and imperialist country. He wasn't an 'evil communist' due to not being a communist.

No, comrade, they want your cake. And if you don't give them the cake, your family is disappeared to GULAG and you're put on trial for being a Trotsky-Fascist before they shoot you in the head.

And then blame someone else, while they eat your cake.

We can see here that Comrade Nesky has provided a rigorous defense of Stalin based on facts and sources, while in the typical "Anti Stalinist" fashion, Comrade Blake has resorted to irrational smears typical to the argumentative style of a child.

If one wishes to critize Stalin, fine, do it in a Marxist fashion and base it in facts. This sort of "Anti-Stalinism" only demonstrates the intellectual poverty on the behalf of some.

But of course, we need to ask ourselves, why does it matter? Stalin and Trotsky are dead. The fact that we feel the need to revive the debates of the 20's just to justify to ourselves all of these useless divisions within the Communist movement is endemic to the problems of the modern left.

Bostana

23rd April 2013, 00:49

Eh, should have figured this would turn into a shit storm in a matter of minutes.

But to the question. The issue of Stalin, on this site at least, is very controversial. You have Marxist-Leninists that are willing to defend him to the core, and, well, everybody else who try to expose him for a brutal dictator. You're right to not believe everything you hear from the U.S. government. But, in Stalin's case it's hard to cover up all the evil he did. He put people in gulags (labor camps) where they would worked to death. After Lenin and Trotsky and the Soviet government removed the anti-sodomy laws placed by the csars, and made abortion legal, Stalin removed this. He put gays in these gulags and also made abortion illegal. In this case Stalin is reactionary. Stalin practiced capital punishment! Capital fucking punishment! Marx and Engels and every communist in history spoke out against capital punishment. It was called barbaric and un-justifiable by any nation that claims to be civilized. Not only this but Stalin also managed to single handily put up an image of communism to the world they came out as mass murders and tyrants. Stalin was no doubt a brutal dictator.

I like to think as Stalin as I do most marxist-leninist revolutionaries, starts with good intentions. But when put in a place of power becomes corrupt and evil.

Old Bolshie

23rd April 2013, 00:50

What were his crimes?

I'm pretty sure that you will receive all kind of answers depending of each one ideological perspective, so I'll try to focus on a leninist one:

- He abandoned the primacy of collective leadership which was one of the principles that Lenin never gave up until the end of his life and reinstated autocracy in Russia. In this process Stalin mass murdered a lot of people. Some people like to say that Lenin is also responsible for mass killings but there are fundamental differences: Lenin killed reactionaries during a Civil War to defend the triumph of the revolution. Stalin killed communists during a peace time period to defend the triumph of his autocracy.

- Suppressed all kind of opposition and democratic within the Bolshevik Party. Democratic centralism was another cornerstone of Lenin's legacy buried by Stalin. The Congress which was the most important political body of the party hierarchy was emptied of political relevance.

- Gave up from the international struggle by implementing the doctrine of "Socialism in One Country" as official state policy and emptying the Comintern.

- Brought back old tzarist laws and prejudices like antisemitism.

- Personality cult.

- Literally destroyed the old guard of the Bolshevik party who were known as the "Old Bolsheviks". All of them close friends and trusted people of Lenin despite the divergences some of them had with Lenin. This was needed to consolidate his absolute power.

- The rise of USSR as an imperialistic power which is consolidate after the II World War.

What were the positive aspects?

His leadership also has good aspects like defeating the Nazis and industrializing USSR but I must say that any other leader would have accomplish the same things. In fact, Stalin obstructed the war effort when he purged the Red Army just before the war and dismissed the alerts regarding the Nazi invasion. The increased importance of women's role in soviet society and the literacy boom are also positive aspects of his legacy.

DDR

23rd April 2013, 00:51

But of course, we need to ask ourselves, why does it matter? Stalin and Trotsky are dead. The fact that we feel the need to revive the debates of the 20's just to justify to ourselves all of these useless divisions within the Communist movement is endemic to the problems of the modern left.

The best thing that anyone had said in this thread.

I hope that if you don't blame Stalin for what went on under his government, you don't blame Hitler for the deaths of 12 million people during the Holocaust, because Hitler didn't do it personally, it was just the bad underlings, I'm sure you think Hitler was alright really, and just misunderstood. Anyway, how can Hitler be personally responsible, isn't that 'Great Man of History' theory again - that's your argument, isn't it?

Reductio ad Hitlerium? It's too early for Godwin, it's just page one :P

Anyhow, to the OP, one of the best reads one can get in the subject is "Stalin: History and critic of a black legend" by Domenico Losurdo, an italian marxist. IDK if it's on the internet for free in english (it does in spanish thou).

Blake's Baby

23rd April 2013, 00:57

...
Reductio ad Hitlerium? It's too early for Godwin, it's just page one ...

You do realise that Godwin was a US 'Right-Libertarian' who was pissed off that people compared his ideology to fascism, don't you? Invoking Godwin's Law is tantamount to saying 'hey I admit I'm defending fascism, but all I've got left is the assertion that your comparison is invalid'.

Is it fair to compare Stalin to fascists?...

No that's very good point, Mussolini was responsible for far fewer deaths than Stalin was.

Then what exactly is your criticism of Stalin and Stalinism? How is it different from any of the other -isms?

I don't understand what you mean. My criticism of Stalin is in outline no different to my criticism of Hitler. Both were murderous dictators responsible for the deaths of millions, both were imperialist capitalist politicians who presied over foul and brutal regimes. What makes the rule of stalin particularly unfortunate for communists is, he did while pretending to be one of us.

Bostana

23rd April 2013, 01:03

Among his great achievements are:
- The rapid industrialization and overall modernization of the USSR
I'll admit. Stalin did this. But in such a brutal manner. The 5 year plan was so cruel. People died in large numbers. I think (this is an estimation I heard) Over 50,00 people died in total out of all his 5 year plans. He did these plans mainly to create a soviet economy that would rival that of all capitalist countries (especially the U.S')

- Massive increase of life expectancy and literacy rates of the soviet citizens
True. He brought in advance medical equipment of the time. I will not argue with this

- Victory over Nazi Germany in WW2
Yes. After trusting Hitler, after receiving so many warnings that Hitler was going to invade, after he purged and killed soviet top generals which probably been able to create a defensive strategy against the Nazi forces and not allow Germany to go so deep in the USSR and kill so many people

- The soviet constitution of 1936, the most progressive one the world had ever seen:

This constitution contradicts Marxism. Besides the U.S. constitution says freedom of speech to all citizens. But they were only referring to the white rich male landowners. Stalin created, basically, a type of caste system where that of the upper class were well off while the poor had nothing. But since he screamed democracy people bought into it.

DDR

23rd April 2013, 01:07

You do realise that Godwin was a US 'Right-Libertarian' who was pissed off that people compared his ideology to fascism, don't you? Invoking Godwin's Law is tantamount to saying 'hey I admit I'm defending fascism, but all I've got left is the assertion that your comparison is invalid'.

No that's very good point, Mussolini was responsible for far fewer deaths than Stalin was.

I don't understand what you mean. My criticism of Stalin is in outline no different to my criticism of Hitler. Both were murderous dictators responsible for the deaths of millions, both were imperialist capitalist politicians who presied over foul and brutal regimes. What makes the rule of stalin particularly unfortunate for communists is, he did while pretending to be one of us.

If that's the best you can do, please stay away or at least don't call us, ml, fash.

Blake's Baby

23rd April 2013, 01:11

Ah, well, if you think that I'm implying that you're a racist because you're a Stalinist, then that was not my intention. But, if you think I was implying that you're a supporter of mass murderers because you're a Stalinist, then no I'm not implying, it I'm directly stating it.

I don't really care about the reasons for the mass murder you support, it was more the ballpark numbers I was equating.

Akshay!

23rd April 2013, 01:14

I'm pretty sure that you will receive all kind of answers depending of each one ideological perspective, so I'll try to focus on a leninist one

Interesting analysis. I have a couple of questions though.

- Gave up from the international struggle by implementing the doctrine of "Socialism in One Country" as official state policy and emptying the Comintern.

I've read this elsewhere too, but I was wondering - wasn't it a bit dangerous for USSR to try to spread the revolution, considering the possible consequences - for example, reactions from the western imperialist countries?

1) Gave up from the international struggle by implementing the doctrine of "Socialism in One Country" as official state policy and emptying the Comintern.
2) The rise of USSR as an imperialistic power which is consolidate after the II World War.

Aren't these two things contradictory?

I think he made a perfectly acceptable capitalist and imperialist political leader, arguably no worse than Hitler and certainly more successful than Mussolini.

No that's very good point, Mussolini was responsible for far fewer deaths than Stalin was.

Again, do you not see Any difference between Fascism and Stalinism? I'm a bit surprised because this is the first time I've heard this comparison.

I'll admit. Stalin did this. But in such a brutal manner. The 5 year plan was so cruel. People died in large numbers. I think (this is an estimation I heard) Over 50,00 people died in total out of all his 5 year plans. He did these plans mainly to create a soviet economy that would rival that of all capitalist countries (especially the U.S')

So, was it out of necessity/circumstances or was there an alternative way?

Blake's Baby

23rd April 2013, 01:20

...
Aren't these two things contradictory?...

Only if you think the USSR embdied the world revolution. If it didn't - if the USSR gave up on the revolution and intead became another imperialist state like Germany or Italy or France or Britain, then they aren't contradictory at all.

You have to realise that for many of us the USSR was another capitalist power. You can't treat it as a special category. well, obviously you can, but you can't expect we will.

...
Again, do you not see Any difference between Fascism and Stalinism? I'm a bit surprised because this is the first time I've heard this comparison.
...

Differences in detail, not in type.

Bostana

23rd April 2013, 01:28

So, was it out of necessity/circumstances or was there an alternative way?
A capitalist would see it as necessary to torture humans with labor in order to make sure their economy stays on top of the rest of the world's. If the Soviet Union was the dictatorship of the Proletariat that its leaders claimed it was. Then it would be more focused on taking care of the people rather than that of economics.

Old Bolshie

23rd April 2013, 01:34

I've read this elsewhere too, but I was wondering - wasn't it a bit dangerous for USSR to try to spread the revolution, considering the possible consequences - for example, reactions from the western imperialist countries?

With or without the aim of spreading the revolution the USSR was always in danger. Didn't the USSR ended up being invaded despite Socialism in One Country? In fact, USSR was more in danger isolated and committed to the SIOC. Hence the need to spread the revolution.

Until SIOC became the main state policy USSR remained committed to the international struggle and nothing else happened since the end of the civil war.

Aren't these two things contradictory?

I don't see how, on the contrary. Why you think it's contradictory?

Akshay!

23rd April 2013, 01:52

A capitalist would see it as necessary to torture humans with labor in order to make sure their economy stays on top of the rest of the world's.

I meant, wasn't it necessary to industrialize USSR. Would it win WW2 if it hadn't been industrialized?

Only if you think the USSR embdied the world revolution. If it didn't - if the USSR gave up on the revolution and intead became another imperialist state like Germany or Italy or France or Britain, then they aren't contradictory at all.

You have to realise that for many of us the USSR was another capitalist power. You can't treat it as a special category. well, obviously you can, but you can't expect we will.

Again, do you not see Any difference between Fascism and Stalinism? I'm a bit surprised because this is the first time I've heard this comparison.

Differences in detail, not in type.

I know the following question might seem totally unrelated to this discussion, but by what process do you suggest the world should become communist? I mean can you describe the stages in brief?

btw, yeah, I do think there was a difference between USSR and other imperialist countries.

I don't see how, on the contrary. Why you think it's contradictory?

One could interpret the first one as blaming USSR for not spreading socialism to other countries, while the other one for doing the opposite.

Blake's Baby

23rd April 2013, 01:58

...
btw, yeah, I do think there was a difference between USSR and other imperialist countries.

One could interpret the first one as blaming USSR for not spreading socialism to other countries, while the other one for doing the opposite.

Only if, as you, but not many of us, do you equate 'the Soviet Union' with 'socialism'. It's a contradiction for you but not for us, because in short, you see a difference between the Soviet Union and other capitalist states. The contradiction only exists if you think there was a difference. We don't. The Soviet Union was a capitalist state that had stopped being a gain for the working class either in Russia or the rest of the world, and had become another imperialist power. Contradiction solved.

So... how does the world become communist? Through the expropriation of the capitalists, the progressive wresting of the world economy from the capitalists to the control of the working class, and the abolition of property.

The revolution will start - somewhere. Somewhere will be the first place to come under the control of the working class, and not be recuperated (many places may be recuperated before the revolution 'sticks'). The revolution will spread; if it doesn't there's no option for the revolutionary territory but to be recuperated. There will be a world civil war, or world revolution if you will, that I hope will last not very long but I fear it will be long and very very destrcutive. But eventually, either the working class will have won or the bourgeoisie will have destroyed the world to stop them. During the phase of the world civil war the proletariat of the revolutioanry territories will administer the economy on the basis of 1-providing for the people of the revolutionary territories; 2-resisting the capitalist encirclement and militarily defeating the capitalist nations; 3-supporting the revolutionary movements in the as-yet-unrevolutionary territories.

When the working class has taken political and economic control of the planet, when all property and political power is in its hand, then the real construction of socialist society can begin.

Old Bolshie

23rd April 2013, 02:05

One could interpret the first one as blaming USSR for not spreading socialism to other countries, while the other one for doing the opposite.

But how being an imperialist power is spreading socialism to other countries? If it's imperialist it can't be socialist in first place.

There is also a difference between imposing a state capitalist mode of production under the direction of one party totally submitted to a foreign country like it happen in Eastern Europe post WW II and an actual revolution.

Akshay!

23rd April 2013, 02:13

Only if, as you, but not many of us, do you equate 'the Soviet Union' with 'socialism'. It's a contradiction for you but not for us, because in short, you see a difference between the Soviet Union and other capitalist states. The contradiction only exists if you think there was a difference. We don't. The Soviet Union was a capitalist state that had stopped being a gain for the working class either in Russia or the rest of the world, and had become another imperialist power. Contradiction solved.

I Don't have to "equate" USSR with socialism to say that there was a difference between US-like capitalist countries and USSR. I also think that there was a difference between US and Nazi Germany - that doesn't mean that the latter is somehow socialist. Complete non-sequitur!

The revolution will start - somewhere. Somewhere will be the first place to come under the control of the working class, and not be recuperated

Why on earth would that "somewhere" not be attacked by the rest of the world? Specially the dominant imperialist powers of the world? Can you cite any historical examples of this happening?

Bostana

23rd April 2013, 02:13

I meant, wasn't it necessary to industrialize USSR. Would it win WW2 if it hadn't been industrialized?

Yeah but you must realize. Stalin didn't do this for economical advantage over the west. Even if it meant the death of thousands. I don't know if it would have one WW2 or not. But the reason why Nazis got so far into Russia was because Stalin liquidated his generals who probably could have formed a defense strategy against the invaders. Not because of industrial development.

Blake's Baby

23rd April 2013, 02:17

I Don't have to "equate" USSR with socialism to say that there was a difference between US-like capitalist countries and USSR. I also think that there was a difference between US and Nazi Germany - that doesn't mean that the latter is somehow socialist. Complete non-sequitur!...

You think there were differences in detail, or in type?

If the USSR wasn't spreading 'socialism' and was instead spreading 'the imperialist power of the USSR', what is the contradiction that you see?

...
Why on earth would that "somewhere" not be attacked by the rest of the world? ...

Why do you think it won't be? Whoever suggested such a thing?

...Specially the dominant imperialist powers of the world? Can you cite any historical examples of this happening?

Why? It's your conception, not mine. I think it's very unlikely. Why do you think it's not?

Akshay!

23rd April 2013, 02:33

You think there were differences in detail, or in type?
If the USSR wasn't spreading 'socialism' and was instead spreading 'the imperialist power of the USSR', what is the contradiction that you see?

There were differences in the social systems. USSR's system wasn't the same as US's, and certainly not the same as Germany's. You could say that they were all imperialist, but that doesn't mean they're all the same.

So... how does the world become communist? Through the expropriation of the capitalists, the progressive wresting of the world economy from the capitalists to the control of the working class, and the abolition of property.

The revolution will start - somewhere. Somewhere will be the first place to come under the control of the working class, and not be recuperated (many places may be recuperated before the revolution 'sticks'). The revolution will spread; if it doesn't there's no option for the revolutionary territory but to be recuperated. There will be a world civil war, or world revolution if you will, that I hope will last not very long but I fear it will be long and very very destrcutive. But eventually, either the working class will have won or the bourgeoisie will have destroyed the world to stop them. During the phase of the world civil war the proletariat of the revolutioanry territories will administer the economy on the basis of 1-providing for the people of the revolutionary territories; 2-resisting the capitalist encirclement and militarily defeating the capitalist nations; 3-supporting the revolutionary movements in the as-yet-unrevolutionary territories.

Why do you think it won't be? Whoever suggested such a thing?
Why? It's your conception, not mine. I think it's very unlikely. Why do you think it's not?

You said that it's possible that such a process could actually make the whole world communist. But if you admit that this "somewhere" would be attacked by all these powerful capitalist/imperialist countries then how can this process possibly succeed. Let's say that "somewhere" is Sri Lanka. Now are you saying that Sri Lanka (let's assume 100% of the people in it believe in communism) can defeat US, UK, Germany, France, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Japan, India, and a hundred other countries all at once?

Also what kind of system would this place have between the time that it's capitalist and before it becomes communist (if it ever does)?

MarxArchist

23rd April 2013, 02:45

Why?

Because of the nature of centralized power in a nation that's being attacked from all sides by NAZI's, capitalists and within the country by counterrevolutionaries. There was no way a free and equal socialist society with strong democratic principles could have emerged out of Russia with NAZI's then subsequently capitalists attacking from all sides. Material conditions set the stage for hard economic times and authoritarianism but the path the Russian Bolsheviks chose to take from the start was rather authoritarian because the Russian population wasn't ready for socialism. The same bullshit happened in China with Mao for many of the same reasons. Destine to fail and destine to be authoritarian. Destine to do capitalism's job under the name of 'socialism'. They had to dispossess people or force them out of old ways of surviving and into the state capitalist system. This wasn't done with flowers and candy.

Marxist-Leninists will accuse me of spouting the Menshevik line or the 'renegade' Kautsky line but I simply don't have any illusions concerning what went on. Without a revolution in advanced capitalist nations at the time Russian Bolsheviks had to force 'socialism' on an economically isolated Russia without proper material conditions in times of war and subsequent extreem counter revolution. Of course they were authoritarian. Of course they were paranoid. Of course anyone deemed to be a threat was killed. The dog was backed up against a fence. It bit.

MarxArchist

23rd April 2013, 03:43

I think Stalin was just the most obvious expression of this authoritarianism but if we look at what it took for capital to accumulate and then industrialize many more deaths can be attributed to the rise of capitalism and the maintenance of capitalism. As far as materially - Russia went through that process in fast forward but instead of a naturally progressing working class fighting capital, gaining consciousness, overthrowing capitalism and then being able to run production on their own Russian Bolsheviks took the job of both capitalist and political power via the state in order to "guide" progress. Authoritarianism was almost necessary for an isolated Russia to achieve any sort of socialistic goals. Which it did but it wasn't socialism proper.

Blake's Baby

23rd April 2013, 09:45

There were differences in the social systems. USSR's system wasn't the same as US's, and certainly not the same as Germany's. You could say that they were all imperialist, but that doesn't mean they're all the same...

Well, I don't know what you think you're arguing against, because I've already said that there were differences - of detail, not of type. So you'll have to construct some strawmen elsewhere.

...
You said that it's possible that such a process could actually make the whole world communist...

No, you asked how the world could become communist and I outlined the only possibility for it becoming so.

... But if you admit that this "somewhere" would be attacked by all these powerful capitalist/imperialist countries then how can this process possibly succeed...

'Admit'? I don't 'admit' it, I very loudly state it to anyone who thinks anything other will happen.

LISTEN! The capitalists will not allow the world civil war to happen without a fight! They will, perhaps, seek to destroy the whole human race rather than give up their power. They will fight tooth and nail to defeat the revolution. The working class needs to be aware that hardship and horror await during the revolution!

As to 'how it can possibly succeed'... you're the one that asks 'by what process do you suggest the world should become communist?' - now what I'm actually answering is 'by what process do you suggest the world can become communist?' because there's no choice about it here, the world will become communist - if it ever does - through world proletarian revolution. But you're asking about process.

What if it doesn't work? you ask. If it doesn't work what happens last time happens next time. The first state or states to fall to the working class are recuperated into capitalism, as the Soviet Union was. But the point of the question posits that it does work, and asks about the process.

...Let's say that "somewhere" is Sri Lanka. Now are you saying that Sri Lanka (let's assume 100% of the people in it believe in communism) can defeat US, UK, Germany, France, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Japan, India, and a hundred other countries all at once?

Why not use the example of Russia, as that's the only real example we have?

Could the Soviet Republic defeat Germany, Britain, France, Austria, Japan, the USA, Serbia, Canada, Romania, etc, as well as its own internal enemies in the White armies? If so, how?

The first country to fall to the revolution will be subjected to attack by the capitalist powers, as I've already stated several times. You've even quoted me as saying "...During the phase of the world civil war the proletariat of the revolutioanry territories will administer the economy on the basis of 1-providing for the people of the revolutionary territories; 2-resisting the capitalist encirclement and militarily defeating the capitalist nations; 3-supporting the revolutionary movements in the as-yet-unrevolutionary territories..."

It is only by "....3-supporting the revolutionary movements in the as-yet-unrevolutionary territories..." that the proletariat in the new revolutionary territories will be able to extend the revolution to the belligerant capitalist countries. One reason that the British and other Interventionist armies in Russia were not able to do more was the threat of revolt at home - the Seattle and Winnipeg General Strikes, 'Red Clydeside' etc forced the bourgeoisies of the Interventionist countries onto the back foot. They didn't want to destroy the revolution in Russia only to lose power to 'Bolshevists' at home.

...Also what kind of system would this place have between the time that it's capitalist and before it becomes communist (if it ever does)?

It's a truncated and deformed capitalism.

"...During the phase of the world civil war the proletariat of the revolutioanry territories will administer the economy on the basis of 1-providing for the people of the revolutionary territories; 2-resisting the capitalist encirclement and militarily defeating the capitalist nations; 3-supporting the revolutionary movements in the as-yet-unrevolutionary territories..."

That 'administer[ation of] the economy' isn't communism as there is no recognition of the principle of '... to each according to his need'. It's still a question of classes (this is 'the dictatorship of the proletariat'), property (no 'free access' here), states (quite literally competing to the death) and state power (used against internal enemies).

As capitalism is a worold system, it can only be destroyed when the proletariat controls it; you can't 'cure' a bit of the world of capitalism, you have to do it all in one go, which means that you have to control it all. The transformation must begin with what is (capitalist society) and move towards what is not (communist society). So, communist society comes after the revolution has succeeded.

Nevsky

23rd April 2013, 10:05

Yes.

There is no 'economy' is communist society. Did you not know that? Perhaps you could read some Marx and Engels and then you'd have a grounding in what Marxism actually is, so you wouldn't mistake a brutal and inefficient capitalist dictatorship for 'communism'.

you o know that communist society is classless and communal, right? You do know that in communist society there is no more state, right? You do know that communist society is global, right?

Conversely, you do know that wage labour and commodity production, both of which existed in the Soviet Union, are the defining factors of capitalism, right? Ergo, the Soviet Union was a capitalist state, and Stalin was the leader of a capitalist state.

Well, I said he was the head of the government that presided over that. I have no idea if he personally murdered anyone, or just signed the orders to have them killed.

I hope that if you don't blame Stalin for what went on under his government, you don't blame Hitler for the deaths of 12 million people during the Holocaust, because Hitler didn't do it personally, it was just the bad underlings, I'm sure you think Hitler was alright really, and just misunderstood. Anyway, how can Hitler be personally responsible, isn't that 'Great Man of History' theory again - that's your argument, isn't it?

You are systematically ignoring my main arguments and trying to treat me like some kind of "stalinist" noob who doesn't know marxism but only follows his dear leader. Do I really have to inform you that full communism doesn't happen over night? That an actually existing state has an actually existing economy which must be handled correctly to pave the way for true socialism? "The state is not “abolished,” it withers away." (Engels, Ant-Dühring).

Are you seriously making the Hitler comparison? Hitler was a nazi. His goal was the systematical extermination of a "race" he considered "inferior". Hitler's ideology was a radicalization of european chauvinist, imperialist and genocidal thought. Stalin was a marxist and helped creating and managing the first socialist state the world had ever seen. I don't follow any great man theories in history. I don't follow a cult of Stalin. It could have been any marxist "bad guy" who took the harshest decisions in a harsh time. Decisions in the interest of the USSR as a socialist state; not for the sake of exterminating people in a "race war". Would you compare Robespierre to Hitler, too? As he made use of "la grande terreur" to fortify the revolution? There is a difference between fascist criminal, social darwinist mentality and "Realpolitik".

DarkPast

23rd April 2013, 11:31

Among his great achievements are:

- The rapid industrialization and overall modernization of the USSR

Also achieved in capitalist countries, such as South Korea.

- Massive increase of life expectancy and literacy rates of the soviet citizens Ditto.

It's remarkable how arguments such as these remind me of the old saying about how Mussolini "made the trains run on time".

- Victory over Nazi Germany in WW2Ditto.

And aside from this, Stalin's leadership ability was highly dubious to say the least - purging his best officers, the humiliating war with Finland, the disaster that was Barbarossa, the joint Soviet-Nazi invasion of Poland...

- The construction of a well functioning socialist economy which proved to be stable and prosperous during the days of crisis within the capitalist worldSoviet famine of 1932-33. 'Nuff said. Unless, of course, you believe the famine was not a result of economic policy, but a deliberate act of genocide.
And then there's the matter of how those workers who fled to the USSR were treated (hint: it wasn't good. There was a topic on immigration to the USSR recently that gives some insight into this matter).

- making important national culture and traditions accessible for formerly underpriviledged peopleAlso achieved in capitalist countries.

- The soviet constitution of 1936, the most progressive one the world had ever seen: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/12/05.htmWho cares? According to all modern first world constitutions, people are equal regardless of race, nationality, gender etc. But that doesn't mean it's true in real life.

revoltordie

23rd April 2013, 12:20

the development of industry in the ussr follows the rule of capital accumulation. it can not be considered anything other than a bourgeois country because that was the mode of production that prevailed.

the difference is that you had this group of people who got to power through a proletarian revolution so they had to pay lip service to this. this gives to us the idea that now in socialism you have wage-labor and the law of value and class.

leading to the 1936 constitution, which just like any other bourgeois constitution says one thing but in real life something else happens.

#FF0000

23rd April 2013, 12:28

Stalin's leadership ability was highly dubious to say the least Not even. I was literally just talking to a friend about this and they made the (very correct) point that the thing that the best thing Stalin did was to step back and leave the war to his generals. The German marshals were pretty much beholden to Hitler's orders, which meant they had to stick to his shitty plans, like, say, pulling his tanks away from Stalingrad to take the Caucases, or focusing on a shitty propaganda victory like Stalingrad at all in the first place, instead of focusing entirely on the Caucasus

The best thing Stalin could've done in WW2 was to keep hiding away in his dacha for the rest of the war.

I've got to get to bed for now but I think we'd be better off talking about Stalin's shitty ideas instead of just the chaotic state of the USSR (which is a result of a number of factors beyond Stalin's incompetence). For example, the aberration of "socialism in one country" and the absurdity of the whole Third Period/Social Fascism thing.

Marxist-Leninists will accuse me of spouting the Menshevik line or the 'renegade' Kautsky line but I simply don't have any illusions concerning what went on. Without a revolution in advanced capitalist nations at the time Russian Bolsheviks had to force 'socialism' on an economically isolated Russia without proper material conditions in times of war and subsequent extreem counter revolution. Of course they were authoritarian. Of course they were paranoid. Of course anyone deemed to be a threat was killed. The dog was backed up against a fence. It bit.

I'd say that the USSR would've had far more of a chance without the absolute devastation of the Civil War, which had brought about such destruction that Russia was less industrialized than it was even before the revolution.

LuÃs Henrique

23rd April 2013, 13:05

Stalinists, of course, love the comparison between Stalin and Hitler: it gives them legitimate ground to defend their idol.

So, yes, Stalin was better than Hitler. He at least did not seek to exterminate whole sets of people, based in racialist pseudo-science.

That said, there is not much that remains in Stalin's "plus" list:

He industrialised the Soviet Union... yes, in the process causing enourmous disproportionalities between the production of productive goods and consumer goods - at the demise of the Union, Soviet industry had not yet recovered from these mistakes. It remained to the end a militarised economy that was able to build bombs capable of destroying the planet several times, but that wasn't able to assemble properly functioning cloth washing machines, or to put butter on the tables of all citizens.

And he defeated Nazism... in the most difficult way, first allowing Germany to empower its economy by furnishing them raw materials, harming the combative capabilities of the Red Army with his crazed purges, ignoring the glaring signs of an iminent German invasion, etc. (And, since we are attributing evil things to his underlings, lets also remember that the key operation, that allowed the SU to resist the first impact of the invasion and survive to fight again another day, the transference of Soviet industry to the East of the Urals, was Khruschev's deed, not Stalin's.)

And these are the pluses.

On the negative side, he exterminated communists and communism in the Soviet Union, and deeply and gravely discredited it worldwide.

He also managed to hinder the Soviet agriculture for decades, with his foolish support for Lysenko's pseudoscience. When Gorbachev finally gave it up, Soviet agriculture hadn't yet fully recovered from Stalin's misguided "collectivisation".

Luís Henrique

Akshay!

23rd April 2013, 17:40

Why not use the example of Russia, as that's the only real example we have?

Could the Soviet Republic defeat Germany, Britain, France, Austria, Japan, the USA, Serbia, Canada, Romania, etc, as well as its own internal enemies in the White armies? If so, how?

First you say that Soviet Union was a capitalist and imperialist country, you compare it to Germany, Italy, and US, compare Stalin to Hitler and even say that Stalin was worse than Mussolini. After all that, you suddenly turn around and say that "no, but Soviet Union could defeat the whole world and make everyone communist." You can't have the chicken and eat it. This is exactly what I wanted to show by asking the question about "how do you suggest the world would become communist". To make your second argument (with which I don't have any problem) you first have to acknowledge that Germany and USSR were fundamentally different (which does not necessarily imply that USSR was "socialist").

Stalinists, of course, love the comparison between Stalin and Hitler: it gives them legitimate ground to defend their idol.

So, yes, Stalin was better than Hitler. He at least did not seek to exterminate whole sets of people, based in racialist pseudo-science.

I totally agree with you, but the only guy in this thread who compared Stalin to Hitler was Blake (who is not really a Stalinist). Nevsky only responded to him.

He industrialised the Soviet Union... yes, in the process causing enourmous disproportionalities between the production of productive goods and consumer goods - at the demise of the Union, Soviet industry had not yet recovered from these mistakes. It remained to the end a militarised economy that was able to build bombs capable of destroying the planet several times, but that wasn't able to assemble properly functioning cloth washing machines, or to put butter on the tables of all citizens.

Was there any alternative to industrialization? Would it be possible to defeat Nazi Germany in WW2 without it?

LuÃs Henrique

23rd April 2013, 18:06

I totally agree with you, but the only guy in this thread who compared Stalin to Hitler was Blake (who is not really a Stalinist). Nevsky only responded to him.

Indeed. It is a bad tactical mistake for anti-Stalinists to compare Stalin to Hitler. That's the point.

Was there any alternative to industrialization? Would it be possible to defeat Nazi Germany in WW2 without it?

I don't think there was alternative to industrialisation; but the way the Soviet Union was industrialised was deeply mistaken. Instead of creating a mass market for the industrial production, artificial objectives were fixed, leading to a severely ill-balanced economy, under the pretense of a "planned economy".

Luís Henrique

FionnagÃ¡in

23rd April 2013, 18:16

Hitler was a violently paranoid anti-working class brute with silly facial hair. Stalin was a violently paranoid anti-working class brute with silly facial hair. The comparison suggests itself regardless of tactical propriety.

TheRedAnarchist23

23rd April 2013, 18:31

I think stalinism is the natural evolution of state socialism.
It is only natural that after you give a party that much power, there is going to be a dictator.
Stalinism has more in common with fascism than with socialism.

MarxArchist

23rd April 2013, 18:52

I'd say that the USSR would've had far more of a chance without the absolute devastation of the Civil War, which had brought about such destruction that Russia was less industrialized than it was even before the revolution.

And if capitalists left them alone BUT at a certain point Russia would've needed a global system in order to actually be communist and capital wasn't about to let Russia spread "socialism" because they understood what was at stake. Spreading "socialism" to less advanced nations ended up being the way Russia sustained itself economically. Somewhat how the US spreads capitalism to less advanced nations with, lets say, a sort of lopsided economic arrangement.

Trying to force socialism from the top down on nations without the proper material conditions is the problem. Anyhow, I'll go as far as to put forth a sort of conspiracy theory- I think capitalists put Hitler in power to attack Russia/communists. In order to weaken or destroy the communist threat in the west and in eastern Europe. I mean, capitalists (banks, industrialists) put him in power or funded his rise to power. Not sure if it matters now but my point is capital made it it's "life's mission" to stop communism. Even if Russia had managed to provide material abundance with worker control I think it was doomed without revolutions in the strongest capitalist nations- the western bloc. I don't see communism arising from the ashes of nuclear war or from perverted "socialist" states. I also don't see communism arising without global capitalism being gone. This is why, today, having learned from history, I think Marxists should focus all attention on the most advanced capitalist nations.

Lucretia

23rd April 2013, 19:03

Akshay!

23rd April 2013, 19:17

Of course Stalin wasn't single-handedly responsible for every single victim of the purge. But then again, he was the party that was most responsible for the shape it took. Even scholars who point to structural factors behind the Great Purges, like John Arch Getty, concede this.

Last week, when I asked Getty these same questions he said (and I'm paraphrasing) that "Stalin was a bad man, but a lot of his crimes are exaggerated." He also responded with a clear "No" when I asked whether there was a Fundamental difference between Trotsky and Stalin (I, personally, am still agnostic about this question). He said there were differences but not fundamental. I should add one more thing here - Getty is completely against Anarchism. He says "it's a good idea but cannot work" (needless to say I disagree with him on that) and doesn't think Communism can be achieved until "technology has been sufficiently advanced." Lastly, when I asked what kind of system does he support? He said "Scandinavian socialism" (which I don't think has much to do with "socialism").

Hitler was a violently paranoid anti-working class brute with silly facial hair. Stalin was a violently paranoid anti-working class brute with silly facial hair. The comparison suggests itself regardless of tactical propriety.

This is probably the most stupid response in this whole thread. Congrats!

Lucretia

23rd April 2013, 19:27

Last week, when I asked Getty these same questions he said (and I'm paraphrasing) that "Stalin was a bad man, but a lot of his crimes are exaggerated." He also responded with a clear "No" when I asked whether there was a Fundamental difference between Trotsky and Stalin (I, personally, am still agnostic about this question). He said there were differences but not fundamental. I should add one more thing here - Getty is completely against Anarchism ("it's a good idea but cannot work") and doesn't think Communism can be achieved until "technology has been sufficiently advanced." Lastly, when I asked what kind of system does he support? He said "Scandinavian socialism" (which I don't think has much to do with "socialism").

Getty's personal opinions on the stuff he works on, and his actual peer-reviewed work as a scholar should be disentangled. The fact that I cited his very important and rather high quality work on the Great Purges does not mean I think we should listen to his advice for how to go about launching the revolution. He's a historian, and not even a Marxist one. He's certainly no revolutionist. It's hardly surprising that he takes the view of Trotsky that he does: both, in his mind, represent fanatical revolutionists who by virtue of their utopian ideals were bound to embark on recklessly violent crusades at the helm of the Soviet state. Like most other critics who don't really understand the Marxian tradition, Getty fails to distinguish between the authentic tradition of socialism from the bottom up and socialism as a repressive state ideology used to justify exploitation by a ruling class. To him, they are both "grand narratives" that should be rejected, in his postmodernist-pragmatist ideology. And the best we can do is to retreat into mending the system at the margins ("social democracy.")

Which brings me to my next point: Getty is a historian of Stalinist Russia, particularly on the state and its evolution at the time. He's not an expert on Trotsky (not to mention, as I noted earlier, social theory or Marxism) and really isn't in a position to make considered professional judgments about whether Trotsky would have been different or not. I'd be surprised if he had anything more than a rudimentary understanding of Trotsky's criticisms of Stalin and how they evolved from the 1920s to the 1930s.

Finally, I've been in email contact with Getty myself, although a while ago, and not for the purpose of asking him what his political views were. Even then, he seemed quite guarded, as though he didn't want his comments taken out of context. So I am surprised that he revealed to an anonymous person on the Internet as much as you claim he did through an email exchange.

Akshay!

23rd April 2013, 19:46

It's hardly surprising that he takes the view of Trotsky that he does: both, in his mind, represent fanatical revolutionists who by virtue of their utopian ideals were bound to embark on recklessly violent crusades at the helm of the Soviet state.

So what's Your view about the differences between Trotsky and Stalin?

Like most other critics who don't really understand the Marxian tradition, Getty fails to distinguish between the authentic tradition of socialism from the bottom up and socialism as a repressive state ideology used to justify exploitation by a ruling class. To him, they are both "grand narratives" that should be rejected, in his postmodernist-pragmatist ideology. And

Yeah, that's why when I asked which biography of Lenin would he recommend, he suggested Robert Service (who is even more anti-communist than Getty and who thinks there was even less difference between Trotsky and Stalin).

So I am surprised that he revealed to an anonymous person on the Internet as much as you claim he did through an email exchange.

What? o_O Why would I email him? His office is in Bunche Hall - which is only 2 minutes away from here (Young Research Library). You can literally go in anytime and ask whatever you want. He loves to answer these kinda questions.

Of course, he won't tell his political views on an e-mail.

Art Vandelay

23rd April 2013, 20:03

Yeah, that's why when I asked which biography of Lenin would he recommend, he suggested Robert Service (who is even more anti-communist than Getty and who thinks there was even less difference between Trotsky and Stalin)

Service's biography of Lenin was horrid (even as far as bourgeois historians go) and I wouldn't really recommend any of his books on the big 3 (Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin).

Blake's Baby

23rd April 2013, 20:13

First you say that Soviet Union was a capitalist and imperialist country, you compare it to Germany, Italy, and US, compare Stalin to Hitler and even say that Stalin was worse than Mussolini. After all that, you suddenly turn around and say that "no, but Soviet Union could defeat the whole world and make everyone communist." ...

Why can't you just read what people have actually written instead of arguing with what you think they've written? I mean, seriously? Because you're manufacturing strawmen fast enough to start a small business.

The Soviet Union was a capitalist and imperialist country. Stalin is comparable to Hitler, and was responsible for deaths of far more people than Mussolini.

The Soviet Union could not defeat the whole world and make everyone communist, you have perhaps mistaken me for an idiot.

...
You can't have the chicken and eat it. This is exactly what I wanted to show by asking the question about "how do you suggest the world would become communist"...

through the world revolution, which must have a starting point. There must be territory that, before any others, has passed into the control of the working class.

... To make your second argument (with which I don't have any problem) you first have to acknowledge that Germany and USSR were fundamentally different (which does not necessarily imply that USSR was "socialist")...

No, I don't.

You have to acknowledge that 'the USSR' is not the same as 'the Soviet Republic'. Go on, try it.

You have to acknowledge that 'the interests of the USSR' are not the same as 'the interests of the working class'. Go on, give it a go.

Having done both of those, re-read what I have wriiten and see if you understand it any better. If you don't, please feel free to ask me about what you don't understand, instead of telling me what you think I've said and arguing against that instead.

...
Was there any alternative to industrialization? Would it be possible to defeat Nazi Germany in WW2 without it?

Wow, teleology-a-go-go! I'm sure Stalin adopted Trotsky's 1920s industrialisation plan because he could see into the future and knew he'd need to defeat Nazi Germany in WWII!

You are systematically ignoring my main arguments and trying to treat me like some kind of "stalinist" noob who doesn't know marxism but only follows his dear leader. Do I really have to inform you that full communism doesn't happen over night? That an actually existing state has an actually existing economy which must be handled correctly to pave the way for true socialism? "The state is not “abolished,” it withers away." (Engels, Ant-Dühring)...

Oh, I quite agree.

There is a state, there is an economy, there are classes, and this means that it's capitalism not socialism. Stalin was the leader of a capitalist country. So was Lenin; but to Lenin's credit, he didn't pretend otherwise.

...Are you seriously making the Hitler comparison? Hitler was a nazi. His goal was the systematical extermination of a "race" he considered "inferior". Hitler's ideology was a radicalization of european chauvinist, imperialist and genocidal thought...

Well, yes, Hitler's mass murder was to an extent ethnically-based. Except his murder of his political opponents, which wasn't. Stalin's mass murder wasn't so much about race. Of course Italian Fascism was no more racially-based than Stalin's policies. But then again, Stalin was resposnible for killing many more than Musslini, so he's not such a good point of comparisn.

... Stalin was a marxist ...

No, he was a mass murderer.

...and helped creating and managing the first socialist state the world had ever seen...

No, he was the dictator of a capitalist country, like Mussolini or Hitler.

...
I don't follow any great man theories in history. I don't follow a cult of Stalin. It could have been any marxist "bad guy" who took the harshest decisions in a harsh time. Decisions in the interest of the USSR as a socialist state; not for the sake of exterminating people in a "race war". Would you compare Robespierre to Hitler, too? As he made use of "la grande terreur" to fortify the revolution? There is a difference between fascist criminal, social darwinist mentality and "Realpolitik".

I'm sure the massive numbers of dead at the hands of the Stalinist regime were very pleased that they died for 'realpolitik'.

Akshay!

23rd April 2013, 20:21

Service's biography of Lenin was horrid (even as far as bourgeois historians go) and I wouldn't really recommend any of his books on the big 3 (Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin).

Yeah. For Stalin and Trotsky, Isaac Deutscher's biographies are still the best. Which biography would you recommend for Lenin? btw, here's an article by Tariq Ali where he criticizes the "Service Industry" - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/oct/31/trotsky-stalin-service-patenaude

Art Vandelay

23rd April 2013, 20:42

Yeah. For Stalin and Trotsky, Isaac Deutscher's biographies are still the best. Which biography would you recommend for Lenin? btw, here's an article by Tariq Ali where he criticizes the "Service Industry" - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/oct/31/trotsky-stalin-service-patenaude

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/806/in-defence-of-leon-trotsky?searched=trotsky&advsearch=allwords&highlight=ajaxSearch_highlight+ajaxSearch_highligh t1

This is a pretty good article by Hillel Ticktin on Service's biography of Trotsky. For Trotsky, the only thing I've read as far as bio's go, was his autobiography 'My Life' which I quite enjoyed. He truly was a great writer. Having said that, my next purchase as far as books go, will probably be the 3 volume bio by Deutscher.

As for Lenin, I'm not entirely sure, since the only biography I've read of his has been Service's. It kinda soured my mouth on any of Service's work. I recognized it for what it was, even at a time when I was staunchly anti-Leninist.

Nevsky

23rd April 2013, 21:52

FionnagÃ¡in

23rd April 2013, 22:33

Why is it wrong? All you've argued so far is that we should approve of the Soviet Union, not that we should consider it non-capitalist.

Durruti's friend

23rd April 2013, 23:03

Alright Blake, so if I get you correctly, Stalin should have abolished the state, the economy (!?), and the classes within one second to be called a true marxist politician?
Wouldn't 30 years be enough for making at least some progress? Like, you know, enabling real workers' control over means of production, or promoting federalism instead of centralization? Some other stalinists had even longer reigns - Hoxha had 40 years, and did nothing on the economic plan.

Why are you so fond of Mussolini as an argument against Stalin? Do you know how many innocent people were killed for no reason by his criminal "camicie nere" thugs on the streets?I must say that it's a historic fact that less people died under Mussolini than under Stalin. The sole number of Stalin's "victims" isn't enough for condemning him, but their political background is. They were mostly communists being shot, or random, mostly apolitical, people dying of hunger caused by failed economic (and quasi-scientific) ideas.

Just to note, I'm not by any means saying that Mussolini was good in any way. I don't believe anyone on this thread says that.

How many victims his senseless imperialist wars caused?Imperialist as in Finland in 1940, or Poland in 1939, together with Hitler?

You continue to say absurd things like the "Soviet Union was a capitalist and imperialist country" without backing that up. Again, what is a non capitalist nation in your eyes? One that corresponds with your utopian ideals? I don't know how someone could possibly come up with the idea that the USSR was capitalist. The USA, the United Kingdom and Germany are capitalist nations. By your logic, the USSR functioned in the same way as the former nations. Please call it "degenerated worker's state" or whatever but "capitalist" is just painfully wrong. Blake is completely right about it, the mode of production was capitalist. There was wage labor, wealth disparity and a large bureaucratic (neo-bourgeois) class. The Soviet Union did differ from western capitalist countries, but only as much as it's capitalism was under state control, and the western one wasn't (at that rate). It's the mode of production that matters, not names and symbolism. Have you read your Marx?

And why do you think communism is utopic?

Nevsky

23rd April 2013, 23:18

And why do you think communism is utopic?

I don't think that and didn't intend to imply it either. I only think it's utopian to call socialist states "capitalist" because they don't reflect the exact conditions of final communist society. We differ in the historical evaluation of the USSR during Stalin's time. Maybe I'm too generous on Stalin as far as "Realpolitik" justifications go but I already named the reasons why I believe that socialist progress was made in the USSR and that Stalin was a proper marxist theorist (I don't blame anyone for disagreeing with Stalin's theories or policies but please spare me the "he was not a marxist, only an evil capitalist dictator" argument). I also don't buy the usual story of Stalin fucking everything up before WW2, "trusting" Hitler and so on. I have to go sleep now, maybe I'll go into detail about WW2 tomorrow. Domenico Losurdo did a great job at analyzing the pre-war situation; not as biased and predictable as Ludo Martens.

Old Bolshie

23rd April 2013, 23:35

Last week, when I asked Getty these same questions he said (and I'm paraphrasing) that "Stalin was a bad man, but a lot of his crimes are exaggerated."

He was probably referring to the claims of Stalin mass murdering 15 or 20 million people like the ones made by Robert Service. We know that's an exaggeration and even Robert Service himself already revised the numbers to a much lower death toll.

However, he was certainly responsible for over a million of deaths which is already a lot of people and what makes it worst for any communist is that most of them were communists (some old comrades of Stalin) who were killed just to consolidate Stalin's absolute power over USSR.

Just to give you an idea, the last Bolshevik Congress (1934) where for the last time it was shown opposition to Stalin (despite the fact that the party was organically already totally submitted to the Secretary General of the party,i.e, Stalin, otherwise he would have been dismissed from his post and the Congress had no political relevance at all) of 1,996 party members presented in the Congress, 1,108 were arrested and about two thirds of those executed within three years.Of the 139 members elected to the Central Committee in the 1934 Congress, 98 would be executed in the purges. This Congress is also known as the Congress of the Condemned.

FionnagÃ¡in

23rd April 2013, 23:49

I don't think that and didn't intend to imply it either. I only think it's utopian to call socialist states "capitalist" because they don't reflect the exact conditions of final communist society. We differ in the historical evaluation of the USSR during Stalin's time. Maybe I'm too generous on Stalin as far as "Realpolitik" justifications go but I already named the reasons why I believe that socialist progress was made in the USSR and that Stalin was a proper marxist theorist (I don't blame anyone for disagreeing with Stalin's theories or policies but please spare me the "he was not a marxist, only an evil capitalist dictator" argument).
That you are uncomfortable with such a criticism does nothing to reduce its power or validity.

TheRedAnarchist23

23rd April 2013, 23:58

I have nothing else to do, soI guess I will join this discussion.

Alright Blake, so if I get you correctly, Stalin should have abolished the state, the economy (!?), and the classes within one second to be called a true marxist politician?

I think that is called blanquism.

He should have turned the entire soviet territory into a utopian hippie commune overnight, instead of preparing for war against the Wehrmacht?

I love how you say "utopian hippie commune". It reveals how radical you are, and how loyal you are to the principles you claim to be your own.
I am very extreme when it comes to following a set of principles. My set of principles, or ideology, defends that all human beings are equal and all should be free. This ideology I am proud to call my own will not change depending on the conditions of the world around. What will change is your loyalty to it, and your commitment to its goals.
If you think that the main goal of your ideology is "utopian hippie communism" in certain situations, then you are not following it. You are making your goals subordinate to what you think is possible. Instead of fighting for the impossible, you choose to change your views to something that is possible. This is counter-revolutionary.

Mussolini's victims died for irrational hate.

And what did Stalin's victims die for?
They died for oposing a regime which they did not agree with. You cannot say that there is a difference in being murdered for oposing a regime and being murdered in a war you did not want to participate in. In both situations you die for something you did not agree with.

You continue to say absurd things like the "Soviet Union was a capitalist and imperialist country" without backing that up.

You seem to be stating that the Soviet Union was a communist country.
There is no logic in saying that.
There is no such a thing as a communist country, and state socialism is impossible.
In the Soviet Union the workers did not have control over the means of production, so there was no communism.
If the workers did not have control over the means of production it is only logical to claim that the bourgeosie must still have it. Thus making the Soviet Union a capitalist country.

You cannot justify the conquest of a nation with "spreading the revolution", because that is not logical. A revolution must always come from the conscious people, not from a country's military. Revolution cannot be spread through conquest. Therefore they conquered other countries for another reason. This reason is the one behind all wars declared by states: imperialism.

A "socialist country" is a paradox, since socialism is a stateless system, and a country always has a state.

Blake's Baby

24th April 2013, 00:00

Alright Blake, so if I get you correctly, Stalin should have abolished the state, the economy (!?), and the classes within one second to be called a true marxist politician? He should have turned the entire soviet territory into a utopian hippie commune overnight, instead of preparing for war against the Wehrmacht? ...

Don't know where you got all that from. I'm a Marxist, I don't believe that magic men can wave wands and change material reality. I leave that kind of stuff to religious hero-worshippers.

...Why are you so fond of Mussolini as an argument against Stalin? Do you know how many innocent people were killed for no reason by his criminal "camicie nere" thugs on the streets? How many victims his senseless imperialist wars caused? Mussolini's victims died for irrational hate...

I'm sorry, you're right. There are obvious differences between Mussolini and Stalin. After all, one was a member of the Socialist Party who used his position in the press to call for support for World War One, and who later in the 1920s became the dictator of his country; while the other... oh, no wait....

Around 300,000 is the death toll usually ascribed to Italian Fascism. Whereas in the Soviet Union, even pro-Stalin figures put the death toll as 3 times that, and the biggest anti-Stalin figures are 60 times that. Did they all die for 'rational' hate?

...
You continue to say absurd things like the "Soviet Union was a capitalist and imperialist country" without backing that up. Again, what is a non capitalist nation in your eyes? One that corresponds with your utopian ideals? ...

A 'non-capitalist nation'? Where did you dream up the idea that such a thing could exist? Are you not a Marxist? Don't you know that the development of the nation-state is bound up with the development of capitalism? Don't you know that the establshment of communist society will see the end of all states? Where does the absurdity of a 'non-capitalist nation' come from?

...
I don't know how someone could possibly come up with the idea that the USSR was capitalist...

I don't know how someone could possibly come up with the idea that it wasn't.

... The USA, the United Kingdom and Germany are capitalist nations. By your logic, the USSR functioned in the same way as the former nations...

By your logic, Germany the USA and the UK function the same way. Do they?

...Please call it "degenerated worker's state" or whatever but "capitalist" is just painfully wrong.

Why? Do you call bourgeois democracies 'degenerate primitive communities'?

If it's capitalist, why not call it capitalist? Why pretend it was something else?

#FF0000

24th April 2013, 09:47

Stalin should have abolished the state, the economy (!?), and the classes within one second to be called a true marxist politician?

Nope. He could have avoided pushing shitty policies like "socialism in one country". He could have also done a whole lot less purging and deifying Lenin. Just throwing out some ideas though.

He should have turned the entire soviet territory into a utopian hippie commune overnight, instead of preparing for war against the Wehrmacht?

Stalin's leadership didn't start at Barbarossa, you know. The Wehrmacht may well have not even been a thing if not for the absurd "Social Fascist" line the comintern was feeding to the KPD.

Mussolini's victims died for irrational hate.

As opposed to Stalin's, who totally didn't die to assuage the irrational paranoia of the party. I mean, come on dude. I don't like comparing folks like that but that argument is weak and you must know it.

You continue to say absurd things like the "Soviet Union was a capitalist and imperialist country" without backing that up. Again, what is a non capitalist nation in your eyes? One that corresponds with your utopian ideals?

The fact that the means of production in the USSR was managed and controlled by the Bolshevik party and the Bolshevik party alone? (I'd say "the state" but the actual state apparatus in the USSR was an absolute unworkable shambles). IIRC even Lenin and Bukharin weren't shy about calling the USSR state capitalist -- they just said that was cool because Socialism is the next step from state capitalism (because state capitalism isn't capitalism when it benefits everyone or something).

The USA, the United Kingdom and Germany are capitalist nations. By your logic, the USSR functioned in the same way as the former nations.

In some very fundamental ways, yeah, with the party taking the place of the capitalist.

I also don't buy the usual story of Stalin fucking everything up before WW2, "trusting" Hitler and so on. I have to go sleep now, maybe I'll go into detail about WW2 tomorrow

I cannot wait for this.

Nevsky

24th April 2013, 11:09

My my, so many comrades to respond to and so little time...

Blake, I now get that you use the adjective "capitalist" for any state since no state can ever be socialist/communist, is that right? Well I do believe that there can be a socialist state just as I uphold the leninist distinction between a lower phase (the socialists state) and the higher phase of communist society (no state, no classes, no traditional economy). Someone also implied that I would believe that communist states exist. Of course not. But socialist states existed. States where no free markets exists are not capitalist. This is simply an economic fact. And don't take me for a fool please, I don't regard the Soviet Union as a communist worker's paradise. The Stalin regime was more like a authoritarian development dictatorship (sorry if this term doesn't exist in english, couldn't think of a better one).

Stalin famously said: "We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us." History proved him right. The USSR did manage to build a industry strong enough to destroy the nazi aggressors. During the 30s Stalin was neither fooled by Hitler nor did he trust him. It was Hitler who was fooled by Stalin. In fact both Hitler and Goebbles were stunned at how well the soviets prepared for war; not at all what they had expected.

"In the Führerhauptquartier [...] it is openly admitted that the soviet fighting force was underestimated. The bolsheviks put up a greater resistance than we thought but above all, their material means are much larger than we expected." (Goebbels, Diaries, 1. August 1941)

"The Führer is still angry with himself, that he let himself be fooled by the reports form the Soviet Union about the real potential of the bolsheviks. Above all his underestimation of the enemy tank- and airforce caused us a lot of trouble during our military operations. He suffered a lot form that. It was a severe crisis [for the Führer] [...]. " (Goebbels, Diaries, 19. August 1941)

"It was nearly impossible for our spies and trusted people to get inside the Soviet Union. They were not able to provide a precise impression. The bolshevik's strategy was to deceive us from the beginning. We had no idea of a great number of their weapons, above all the heavy weaponry. The exact contrary of France, where we knew almost everything and could not be surprised in any way." (Goebbels, Diaries, 19. August 1941)

"The russian preparation for war was nothing short of extraordinary" (Hitler, Table talk, 10. September 1941)

FionnagÃ¡in

24th April 2013, 11:28

But socialist states existed. States where no free markets exists are not capitalist. This is simply an economic fact.
On which page of Capital would we find this definition?

Willin'

24th April 2013, 11:47

but I'm pretty sure that it can't be that bad

pljtq3UuBZc

LuÃs Henrique

24th April 2013, 12:53

Blake is completely right about it, the mode of production was capitalist. There was wage labor, wealth disparity and a large bureaucratic (neo-bourgeois) class. The Soviet Union did differ from western capitalist countries, but only as much as it's capitalism was under state control, and the western one wasn't (at that rate). It's the mode of production that matters, not names and symbolism. Have you read your Marx?

Which brings us again to the discussion on State capitalism vs Degenerated Workers' State.

At this point, we should be able to recognise that both theories are false.

"State capitalism" is an oxymoron; capitalism requires competition to function, and if it could function without competition - which is implied in the idea of one single capitalist, the State - it would not be a self-contradictory system, and it would be not possible to bring it down.

"Degenerated workers' State" tells nothing about the mode of production. The usual interpretation is that it means some kind of "degenerated" or "malformed" socialism. But the mode of production was clearly capitalist: wage labour, market economy, accumulation of capital, etc. So at most we could talk about a "degenerated workers' State" presiding over a capitalist economy.

Of course, the superstructural juridic regime of private property was missing, making it an even more contradictory system than "normal" capitalism; but this is a different issue. In practice, not only wages, markets, and capital were not abolished: competition wasn't either. Unhappily, this could not be recognised by the party leadership, as it would directly undermine its credibility as rulers - after all, their legitimacy derived from the Revolution, and the stated aim of the Revolution was to abolish capitalism and build socialism. As such task was impossible, the party almost naturally started relabeling whatever it was accomplishing "socialism".

In that, there was no substantial difference between Trotsky and Stalin (Bukharin would have perhaps a better line, being more able to recognise the capitalist nature of the Soviet economy; whether such line would be able to keep the party in power against the disillusioned anger of the masses, is another question). But to say they were equal or even very similar is false; while Trotsky shared much of the voluntarist delusion of the times, it is quite clear that he gave a much heavier weight to the issue of the international revolution, and that he never showed any sign of being intent of dismantling the Bolshevik Party's, or the State's, collective leadership.

Luís Henrique

LuÃs Henrique

24th April 2013, 13:07

Around 300,000 is the death toll usually ascribed to Italian Fascism. Whereas in the Soviet Union, even pro-Stalin figures put the death toll as 3 times that, and the biggest anti-Stalin figures are 60 times that.

Er... the total population subjected to Italian Fascism was also much smaller than that of the Soviet Union. If Mussolini had managed to kill the number of people right-wingers attribute to Stalin... he would have halved the country's population, permanently destroying the Italian economy.

So, for an equivalent level of "wickedness" (whatever that may be), we should expect a death toll about three times as big when comparing Stalinist Soviet Union to Fascist Italy (Soviet population around 140 M vs Italian population around 40 M in the early 20's).

Luís Henrique

kowalskil

24th April 2013, 13:19

On which page of Capital would we find this definition?

Who was the owner of means of production in the USSR?
------------------------------------------------------------------

Ludwik Kowalski (see Wikipedia)

LuÃs Henrique

24th April 2013, 13:27

Who was the owner of means of production in the USSR?

Formally, the State.

Actually, several competing capitals.

Luís Henrique

Per Levy

24th April 2013, 13:51

The soviet constitution of 1936, the most progressive one the world had ever seen

this is something id really would like to know, why is this constitution always brought up as a accomplishment? i mean its a useless piece of paper that never got realized, it was just there.

Invader Zim

24th April 2013, 13:59

Er... the total population subjected to Italian Fascism was also much smaller than that of the Soviet Union. If Mussolini had managed to kill the number of people right-wingers attribute to Stalin... he would have halved the country's population, permanently destroying the Italian economy.

So, for an equivalent level of "wickedness" (whatever that may be), we should expect a death toll about three times as big when comparing Stalinist Soviet Union to Fascist Italy (Soviet population around 140 M vs Italian population around 40 M in the early 20's).

Luís Henrique

Well, even the relatively limited estimates of the Stalinist regime's brutality of 7 million (including the victims the regime deliberately allowed to starve to death rather than impede the industrialization programme and agricultural reforms - because output is apparently more important than millions of lives), would still place Italy's victims at only 5% of Soviet victims. While Italy's population was (based on the statistics you suggest) 28% of the Soviet Unions. So Stalinist brutality, is by this purely statistical reckoning, still around six times higher than that of the Italian fascist regime.

Geiseric

24th April 2013, 19:21

Which brings us again to the discussion on State capitalism vs Degenerated Workers' State.

At this point, we should be able to recognise that both theories are false.

"State capitalism" is an oxymoron; capitalism requires competition to function, and if it could function without competition - which is implied in the idea of one single capitalist, the State - it would not be a self-contradictory system, and it would be not possible to bring it down.

"Degenerated workers' State" tells nothing about the mode of production. The usual interpretation is that it means some kind of "degenerated" or "malformed" socialism. But the mode of production was clearly capitalist: wage labour, market economy, accumulation of capital, etc. So at most we could talk about a "degenerated workers' State" presiding over a capitalist economy.

Of course, the superstructural juridic regime of private property was missing, making it an even more contradictory system than "normal" capitalism; but this is a different issue. In practice, not only wages, markets, and capital were not abolished: competition wasn't either. Unhappily, this could not be recognised by the party leadership, as it would directly undermine its credibility as rulers - after all, their legitimacy derived from the Revolution, and the stated aim of the Revolution was to abolish capitalism and build socialism. As such task was impossible, the party almost naturally started relabeling whatever it was accomplishing "socialism".

In that, there was no substantial difference between Trotsky and Stalin (Bukharin would have perhaps a better line, being more able to recognise the capitalist nature of the Soviet economy; whether such line would be able to keep the party in power against the disillusioned anger of the masses, is another question). But to say they were equal or even very similar is false; while Trotsky shared much of the voluntarist delusion of the times, it is quite clear that he gave a much heavier weight to the issue of the international revolution, and that he never showed any sign of being intent of dismantling the Bolshevik Party's, or the State's, collective leadership.

Luís Henrique

Can i get a fact check on the "there was a market economy" and the "There was accumulation of capital" claims? I know about the "secret stores" and mansions that bureaucrats lived in. but they didn't own the production until the 90s. They couldn't if they wanted to super industrialize, they needed cooperation from the Russian working class which wouldn't tolerate a return to Czarist era property relations.

#FF0000

24th April 2013, 20:04

States where no free markets exists are not capitalist. This is simply an economic fact.

Not really. Even if there wasn't any internal market (there was), the USSR still competed in the global market place and engaged in direct international trading. Like I said, though, even Lenin admitted the USSR was a state capitalist monopoly -- he just argued that it wasn't capitalism when it was done to benefit everyone, which is nonsense.

In fact both Hitler and Goebbles were stunned at how well the soviets prepared for war; not at all what they had expected.
Yeah, I mean, it wouldn't surprise me that Hitler would act as if it wasn't his to lose, given the dude's ego. Stalin flat-out ignored intelligence that explicitly stated Hitler was going to launch Operation Barbarossa with details down to the exact day, and the Russian plan for such an invasion was woefully inadequate in the first place (they expected to simply "push into Germany" as soon as the Germans attacked). Like I said, what gave the USSR the edge over Germany was that 1) Stalin let his generals run the war, as opposed to running it himself and making stupid strategic errors like Hitler did, and 2) there was an endless supply of Russian bodies to throw at Germans. Their manpower was positively overwhelming.

Blake's Baby

24th April 2013, 20:14

Well, even the relatively limited estimates of the Stalinist regime's brutality of 7 million (including the victims the regime deliberately allowed to starve to death rather than impede the industrialization programme and agricultural reforms - because output is apparently more important than millions of lives), would still place Italy's victims at only 5% of Soviet victims. While Italy's population was (based on the statistics you suggest) 28% of the Soviet Unions. So Stalinist brutality, is by this purely statistical reckoning, still around six times higher than that of the Italian fascist regime.

I've heard estimates for the death toll during Stalin's reign of approximately 920,000. Which is about the same percentage as the 300,000 for Mussolini's reign - the two reigns being more or less the same length (1922-1943 = 21 years for Mussolini, 1927-1953 = 26 years for Stalin). So broadly comparable. However, that's from pro-Stalin sources, and the Mussolini figure is from anti-Mussolini sources, so to compare them properly, perhaps anti-Stalin figures (highest of which I've heard is 22 million dead under Stalin's regime) should be used after all.

Akshay!

24th April 2013, 20:15

Why is it wrong? All you've argued so far is that we should approve of the Soviet Union, not that we should consider it non-capitalist.

No, I Never said we should "approve of it". I merely said that we should consider it different from US, Germany, Italy, (and other countries which are being compared to it in this thread), that we shouldn't compare Stalin to Hitler, Mussolini, etc.. and that we should objectively analyze the positive and negative aspects of USSR instead of saying things like "It was a capitalist country! It was the same as Hitler and Mussolini" (and similar nonsense.) All of this doesn't mean that you need to consider it worker's state or socialism or whatever. Obviously not. It simply means that you need to learn from its mistakes, instead of shouting meaningless slogans. And, btw,

Hitler was a violently paranoid anti-working class brute with silly facial hair. Stalin was a violently paranoid anti-working class brute with silly facial hair.

Seriously? This is your argument? :blink:

Blake's Baby

24th April 2013, 20:57

No, I Never said we should "approve of it". I merely said that we should consider it different from US, Germany, Italy, (and other countries which are being compared to it in this thread), that we shouldn't compare Stalin to Hitler, Mussolini, etc...

Why?

You're not actually making an argument, just saying you don't accept ours. You may as well be putting your hands over your ears and shouting 'lalalalala I can't hear you!'

FionnagÃ¡in

24th April 2013, 21:13

No, I Never said we should "approve of it". I merely said that we should consider it different from US, Germany, Italy, (and other countries which are being compared to it in this thread), that we shouldn't compare Stalin to Hitler, Mussolini, etc.. and that we should objectively analyze the positive and negative aspects of USSR instead of saying things like "It was a capitalist country! It was the same as Hitler and Mussolini" (and similar nonsense.) All of this doesn't mean that you need to consider it worker's state or socialism or whatever. Obviously not. It simply means that you need to learn from its mistakes, instead of shouting meaningless slogans.
If that's what you think, why single out the USSR? Why not the European social democracies, or, hell, the New Deal-era US? If you're to going to get behind the position "bourgeois welfare states: actually pretty great!", then you're going to need to do it consistently.

Seriously? This is your argument? :blink:
An observation, not an argument.

Akshay!

24th April 2013, 21:18

If that's what you think, why single out the USSR? Why not the European social democracies, or, hell, the New Deal-era US? If you're to going to get behind the position "bourgeois welfare states: actually pretty great!", then you're going to need to do it consistently.

Why are you comparing one country from the 30s to another country in the 60s?
By this logic, one can "prove" literally anything.

Think about this - Why did those so called "social democracies" come into being? And why have they rolled back to the previous system now? Might it have something to do with the existence of USSR?

Blake's Baby

24th April 2013, 21:24

Of course it did. The western bourgeoisie adopted social democracy for the same reason as Russia adopted social democracy. because in the mid-20th century, Keynesianism was seen as the way to beat the crisis of capitalism. In western Europe and North America, the Keynesian consensus collapsed in the 1970s. In the USSR, it continued to the 1980s, with disastrous consequences all round. Eventually it imploded.

Invader Zim

24th April 2013, 22:37

I've heard estimates for the death toll during Stalin's reign of approximately 920,000. Which is about the same percentage as the 300,000 for Mussolini's reign - the two reigns being more or less the same length (1922-1943 = 21 years for Mussolini, 1927-1953 = 26 years for Stalin). So broadly comparable. However, that's from pro-Stalin sources, and the Mussolini figure is from anti-Mussolini sources, so to compare them properly, perhaps anti-Stalin figures (highest of which I've heard is 22 million dead under Stalin's regime) should be used after all.

Where did you hear that lowestimate? It sounds to me like a misquotation of Getty, Rittersporn, and Zemsko's findings in their initial archival survey published in 1993:

'Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence', The American Historical Review, Vol. 98, No. 4 (Oct., 1993).

In a table, on page 1022, they list the number of deaths they can document based on the data sets they collated during that study, and listed 160,084 camp deaths and 799,455 executions (or aprx. 960,000 deaths). However, as noted to suggest that this is the actual estimate that Getty et. al are suggesting is to cherry-pick the table at the expense of reading the actual article (Stalinists are lazy, dishonest or a combination of the two). What they actually argue is that the document evidence suggests a death count approaching, though by no means certainly, 2.3 million:

"Adding these figures together would produce a total of a little more than 2.3 million, but this can in no way be taken as an exact number. First of all, there is a possible overlap between the numbers given for GULAG camp deaths and "political" executions as well as between the latter and other victims of the 1937-1938 mass purges and perhaps also other categories falling under police jurisdiction. Double-counting would deflate the 2.3 million figure. On the other hand, the 2.3 million does not include several suspected categories of death in custody. It does not include, for example, deaths among deportees during and after the war as well as among categories of exiles other than "kulaks."34 Still, we have some reason to believe that the new numbers for GULAG and prison deaths, executions as well as deaths in peasant exile, are likely to bring us within a much narrower range of error than the estimates proposed by the majority of authors who have written on the subject."

(p. 1024).

And this, of course is based on the work they had done and the assumption that these figures are accurate and complete, which the authors are quick, while standing by them, no means a given. And it also entirely excludes the famine. Basically, this estimate was built on early survey of the archives shortly after historians had been allowed access to some of the documents compiled by the state. It was the very first word on the documents - not the last. And nor was it intended to be (and it is now a 20 years old word). The aim was to lower the order of magnitude (away from the tens of millions and into the low millions), not to give precise figures:

"We cannot stress enough the fact that this is only the first exploration of a huge and complex set of sources; little more than scales, ranges, and main trends of evolution can now be established." p. 1047.

"Scholars and commentators will make use of the data as they choose, and it is not likely that this new information will end the debates. Still, it seems a useful step to present the first available archival evidence on the scale of the Great Terror. Admittedly, our figures are far from being complete and sometimes pose almost as many questions as they answer. They nevertheless give a fairly accurate picture of the orders of magnitude involved and show the possibilities and limits of the data presently available." p. 1019.

However, Stalinist's are employing the table they present as a precise and exhaustive figure of deaths, which it is not and nor is it intended to be; the final word on the subject, which it is not and nor was it intended to be; that the table is the total number of deaths listed in the article, which it is not and nor is it intended to be; and that the article represents cutting edge scholarship, which is it not.

I hope that clears this up a little.

Nevsky

24th April 2013, 23:26

Like I said, what gave the USSR the edge over Germany was that 1) Stalin let his generals run the war, as opposed to running it himself and making stupid strategic errors like Hitler did, and 2) there was an endless supply of Russian bodies to throw at Germans. Their manpower was positively overwhelming.

No, this is partly true but not the whole story. Have you read the Goebbels quotations? He explicitly mentions the unexpected progress of the soviet heavy weaponry. The products of soviet war industry helped win the war most of all. The red army didn't simply throw endless hordes of peasents at the Wehrmacht. They were not as stupid and backward as bourgeois pseudo-historians (and unfortunately some antistalinist comrades) portray them. Also, the quotations are taken from private diaries, it is unaltered Goebbles/Hitler thought. There is no reason for Goebbels to lie to himself.

LuÃs Henrique

25th April 2013, 00:17

Can i get a fact check on the "there was a market economy" and the "There was accumulation of capital" claims?

Well, workers clearly were paid wages, and had to use these wages to buy things in stores, ergo in the market. It was certainly an awfully mismanaged market, with long queues and with the privileged having preferential access to commodities, but it was evidently a market system.

Things get murkier if we look at how companies provided commodities to other companies. In theory, there was a plan according to which the goods should be transferred from the companies that produced them to the companies that used them as means of production (or as office material, etc.) Also in theory, money was used in such transactions merely as accounting instrument, to keep record of the transactions, and not to express value. In practice, the ruble (and similar monetary units) expressed value, and, instead of being a mere "practical" accounting measure, indeed was necessary because the different companies behaved to each others as independent capitals, each seeking its own growth at the expense of the others, the "State monopoly" of means of production being a mere facade for the reproduction of capitalist relations (though a facade that much hampered such relations).

I know about the "secret stores" and mansions that bureaucrats lived in. but they didn't own the production until the 90s. They couldn't if they wanted to super industrialize, they needed cooperation from the Russian working class which wouldn't tolerate a return to Czarist era property relations.

No, the nomenklatura was not composed of private proprietors of means of production.

But, in great part, neither is the modern bourgeoisie. Who owns a company such as General Motors? An enormous mass of stockholders. But while no doubt a huge part of these stockholders are private stockholders (who however do not have actual control over the company, though in theory being the proprietors), another big chunk of the stock is held by other companies, which in turn are also open capital companies, even being possible that, for instance, some of the stock of General Motors is owned by Company X, and that some of the stock of Company X is owned... by General Motors! And, in practice, General Motors behaves as a huge individual capital whose ownership is anything but clear, and that is controled and directed by a group of high functionaries whose share in the company's capital is unrelated to the actual power they exert. Which is to say, capitals are increasingly depersonalised in modern capitalist societies, or rather they increasingly behave as ficticious "personalities" of their own.

So, we should understand that the "individual property of means of production" as a juridical relation is losing importance in modern capitalism, being replaced by much more complex juridical relations based in collective, though by no means less private, ownership of capitals.

Luís Henrique

LuÃs Henrique

25th April 2013, 00:25

Think about this - Why did those so called "social democracies" come into being? And why have they rolled back to the previous system now? Might it have something to do with the existence of USSR?

Yes, of course. Whatever the Soviet Union was (and it was undeniably terrible for the Soviet working class), it remained to its end a fantasy of the western working class, or a nightmare for the western bourgeoisie that led it to be atypically moderate towards the western working class.

Western social democracy was a subproduct of Stalinism.

Once the fantasy was over, we are back to the social question as it posed itself in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Luís Henrique

goalkeeper

25th April 2013, 00:35

For a Marxist-Leninist perspective of Stalin see here: "Another View of Stalin" (http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Ludo%20Martens/index.html)

If Ludo Martens' pile of poo book is the ML perspective then i feel bad. Seriously, this book is ridiculous. Long strings of ibid of a dodgy source. Doubt this would pass undergraduate history

goalkeeper

25th April 2013, 01:11

There seems to be a consensus here among supporters of Stalin that he (or rather the system which he presided over) was good because it resulted in huge industrialisation. The figures are impressive. They are also "admirable", but only in the way that the industrialisation of the German Empire and the British Empire were; that is, while liberating from backwardness, it exacted huge privations upon the working class.

We should be clear about what the impact of this was on the working class of the Soviet Union. The year 1929 saw the reintroduction of one man management in factories, increasing the power of managers over workers and impose greater labour discipline upon the Soviet working class. Managers received the right to fire workers without clearing the decision with factory committees has they had been required to before. In the 1930s managers were granted the ability to dismiss workers, take away their ration cards, or evict them from housing if they were were absent for one day. Managers were also afforded privileges if they were successful such as cars and chauffeurs, better apartments, privileged access to certain shops etc.

So, by all means celebrate Stalin for industrialising the USSR, but lets not pretend this was an endeavour of the proletariat or some sort of proletarian movement. The working class of the Soviet Union was forced to work hard, work faster, work better by either direct coercion or indirect coercion throughout the threat of being fired, losing their ration card, or housing. If you want to argue that it was necessary to behave this way to the workers for the greater good of industrialisation, fine, but you must admit that the drive for industrialisation was not something that originated from within the Soviet working class, but from outside it (which also brings up the issue of creating socialism within the confines of one isolated backward country).

Geiseric

25th April 2013, 02:15

Well, workers clearly were paid wages, and had to use these wages to buy things in stores, ergo in the market. It was certainly an awfully mismanaged market, with long queues and with the privileged having preferential access to commodities, but it was evidently a market system.

Things get murkier if we look at how companies provided commodities to other companies. In theory, there was a plan according to which the goods should be transferred from the companies that produced them to the companies that used them as means of production (or as office material, etc.) Also in theory, money was used in such transactions merely as accounting instrument, to keep record of the transactions, and not to express value. In practice, the ruble (and similar monetary units) expressed value, and, instead of being a mere "practical" accounting measure, indeed was necessary because the different companies behaved to each others as independent capitals, each seeking its own growth at the expense of the others, the "State monopoly" of means of production being a mere facade for the reproduction of capitalist relations (though a facade that much hampered such relations).

No, the nomenklatura was not composed of private proprietors of means of production.

But, in great part, neither is the modern bourgeoisie. Who owns a company such as General Motors? An enormous mass of stockholders. But while no doubt a huge part of these stockholders are private stockholders (who however do not have actual control over the company, though in theory being the proprietors), another big chunk of the stock is held by other companies, which in turn are also open capital companies, even being possible that, for instance, some of the stock of General Motors is owned by Company X, and that some of the stock of Company X is owned... by General Motors! And, in practice, General Motors behaves as a huge individual capital whose ownership is anything but clear, and that is controled and directed by a group of high functionaries whose share in the company's capital is unrelated to the actual power they exert. Which is to say, capitals are increasingly depersonalised in modern capitalist societies, or rather they increasingly behave as ficticious "personalities" of their own.

So, we should understand that the "individual property of means of production" as a juridical relation is losing importance in modern capitalism, being replaced by much more complex juridical relations based in collective, though by no means less private, ownership of capitals.

Luís Henrique

But the individual stockholders in the U.S. get dividends which they reinvest. That is what accumulation of capital is. That did not happen in the USSR; your only source of income was your salary the state payed you. That is not a market. There also wasn't any competition, you're making that up. There was no unemployment or homelessness in the USSR, it seems like a very shitty and noneffective system competition they had.

The idea of industry being controlled by a small clique of government functionaries is correct. However they didn't own it, there's a big difference.

A small side note, the fSU's reliance on the military made complete state control a necessity; they would of been invaded if the government didn't spend half of the GDP on the military, which would of also been impossible in a capitalist country.

Per Levy

25th April 2013, 04:49

The idea of industry being controlled by a small clique of government functionaries is correct. However they didn't own it, there's a big difference.

allright then who owned the means of production in the soviet union? it wasnt the workers, thats for sure. it was the state(hence statecapitalism) and who owned the state? again it wasnt the workers. it was the party bureaucracy.

#FF0000

25th April 2013, 10:01

No, this is partly true but not the whole story. Have you read the Goebbels quotations? He explicitly mentions the unexpected progress of the soviet heavy weaponry. The products of soviet war industry helped win the war most of all. The red army didn't simply throw endless hordes of peasents at the Wehrmacht. They were not as stupid and backward as bourgeois pseudo-historians (and unfortunately some antistalinist comrades) portray them. Also, the quotations are taken from private diaries, it is unaltered Goebbles/Hitler thought. There is no reason for Goebbels to lie to himself.

Oh, yeah I see what you mean now and agree sort of, what with the T-34 being p. much the best thing ever and the easiest to produce thing ever.

That said I don't think all that can go to Stalin -- and surely his mis-steps, including choosing to ignore a spy's report stating that Hitler was on the verge of attacking, would take him down a few pegs either way.

The idea of industry being controlled by a small clique of government functionaries is correct. However they didn't own it, there's a big difference.

Could you explain the difference?

Zostrianos

25th April 2013, 11:05

According to what I've read, most of Mussolini's victims were in Africa. In Italy itself, his government rarely resorted to execution. The total number of death sentences handed out by his court was only about 10. The level of repression and terror used by Italian Fascism has no comparison to that of Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia.

The comparison between Stalin and Hitler is justified I think, regardless of the motivations for their crimes, or the underlying core of their ideologies. Tyrants who terrorize and kill millions of people deserve to be classed together. And people like Stalin (and all the other "communist" dictators) are the reason why Communism is still unpopular today.

To be fair though, Stalin still comes out a little better than Hitler: Hitler killed more people, and he was a racist who sought the deliberate extermination and enslavement of entire peoples. Also the level of terror and savagery in Nazi versus Soviet occupied territories was markedly different. Stalin would apply terror, but do it discretely, sending NKVD agents to arrest people in the middle of the night and have them executed elsewhere. And most of the time, as bad as the NKVD was, they rarely targeted women and children. The Nazis on the other hand would march into a town in broad daylight, and simply start shooting people in the town square, men, women, kids, the elderly - in-your-face, savage terror. Also, Stalin's Gulags were not specifically designed to exterminate people, and most prisoners lived. Nazi camps on the other hand....

LuÃs Henrique

25th April 2013, 13:56

But the individual stockholders in the U.S. get dividends which they reinvest. That is what accumulation of capital is.

Well, no. Or at most, marginally. Dividends are more often a deduction from capitalist accumulation.

Take a company such as Boeing. It has stockholders, be them individuals or other companies. It produces profits, which can be used for accumulation of capital, or else wasted in the luxuries of the ruling class life. How does it manage that? Yearly, it makes a profit; say, for some given year, 1 billion dollars. Such profit must be divided into two parts, one for expanding the company, the other for maintaining the life standards of both stockholders and executive officers. It is the part that does not go to stockholders that is actually the important part of accumulation of capital; it is Boeing's expansion, Boeing's growth, the accumulation of the individual (individual, not because it is owned by one human individual, but as opposed to global capital) capital that we call "Boeing". The dividends are thence deductions from the company's growth. Of course, some stockholders may or may not take their dividends and invest them in other companies, or use them as rent capital, etc., in which case those dividends again become capital, and may accumulate elsewhere. But for the individual company, the dividends are still the part of the profits that is not accumulated.

That did not happen in the USSR; your only source of income was your salary the state payed you. That is not a market.

Of course it is; your labour force is a commodity, it must be sold and bought at the market.

There also wasn't any competition, you're making that up. There was no unemployment or homelessness in the USSR, it seems like a very shitty and noneffective system competition they had.

Of course there was competition, the Soviet companies took a good time defrauding each others. And yes, it was a very shitty and noneffective competition system.

The idea of industry being controlled by a small clique of government functionaries is correct. However they didn't own it, there's a big difference.

No, they didn't juridically own it. Which, together with the extreme inefficiency of the competition system, is what ultimately led to the demise of the Soviet Union and other "working class paradises".

A small side note, the fSU's reliance on the military made complete state control a necessity; they would of been invaded if the government didn't spend half of the GDP on the military, which would of also been impossible in a capitalist country.

However, they finally privatised most of the economy, and were not invaded...

Luís Henrique

LuÃs Henrique

25th April 2013, 14:00

allright then who owned the means of production in the soviet union? it wasnt the workers, thats for sure. it was the state(hence statecapitalism)

Well, this is the narrative. In practice, the State had very little control of the means of production.

Luis Henrique

Blake's Baby

25th April 2013, 15:56

So who did?

LuÃs Henrique

25th April 2013, 17:17

So who did?

Capital gets autonomous, and reproduces regardless of property relations.

Luís Henrique

Blake's Baby

25th April 2013, 17:29

Self replicating money, under no control? Wow, sounds like a capitalist's wet dream.

So, who made the decisions to re-invest the capital, to reproduce it?

LuÃs Henrique

25th April 2013, 18:12

Self replicating money, under no control? Wow, sounds like a capitalist's wet dream.

So, who made the decisions to re-invest the capital, to reproduce it?

Formally, the State. But, of course, its decisions were strongly influenced by the demands of local management. Which in turn reflected the "objective" needs of accumulation.

Luís Henrique

Blake's Baby

26th April 2013, 10:32

Right - local managers. Party members employed by the ministries. State functionaries in the Party.

So... state capitalism, then.

LuÃs Henrique

26th April 2013, 13:08

Right - local managers. Party members employed by the ministries. State functionaries in the Party.

So... state capitalism, then.

Well. You certainly can call a starfish a starfish. But if you think this will give it a spine or a thermonuclear nucleus, then you are deluding yourself.

So, to the substance.

Do you think what you call a "State capitalist" economy consists of several competing capitals, or that it has one single capital, owned by the State, that has no competitors - and, therefore, that a "State capitalist economy" is capitalism without competition and plurality of capitals?

Luís Henrique

Blake's Baby

27th April 2013, 00:07

But if the decisions about re-investment and resource allocation were taken by officials of different ministries (who thus competed for resources) then there were competing capitals.

What makes capitalism capitalism is commodity production through wage labour. Wage labour and commodity production define what makes capitalism different to other economic forms.

LuÃs Henrique

27th April 2013, 12:44

But if the decisions about re-investment and resource allocation were taken by officials of different ministries (who thus competed for resources) then there were competing capitals.

Good. But, if so, in what sence does the formal, juridical property of the means of production even matter? Why "State capitalism" and not just "capitalism" sans phrase? Wasn't in such a case the juridical property form merely a facade that hid the reality of capitalist production?

Who decided what was to be produced, the State and its plans, the bureaucrats and their whims... or the objective needs of the accumulation of capital?

What makes capitalism capitalism is commodity production through wage labour. Wage labour and commodity production define what makes capitalism different to other economic forms.

Not so. What makes capitalism different from other economic forms is capitalist production, ie, the fact that capital has taken hold of production. Generalised wage labour and generalised commodity production are necessary consequences of that (and are impossible under other modes of production, or, better saying, under social formations that are not dominated by the capitalist mode of production), but they are not what defines capitalism.

There was plenty of commodity production and wage labour in feudal or slave-based social formations; they just could not become the general rule.

Luís Henrique

Blake's Baby

27th April 2013, 20:41

LuÃs Henrique

1st May 2013, 16:55

Yes, if you like the USSR was capitalist. The fact that the particular form that capitalism took in Russia was that the state controlled the economy to a greater extent than, say, the British state did 100 years earlier, means that it was state capitalism, but that isn't different to 'capitalism' in general, it's a sub-set of it, as 'laissez-faire capitalism' is a subset of capitalism.

If we agree that there was competition between different individual capitals, and that it was not the case of the State being the "only capitalist", that's fine.

I fear most people think of "capitalism with only one capitalist" when they say/hear "State capitalism" though.

Yes, small amounts (not 'plenty', but some) of capitalist behaviour (but not capitalism as a system) existed as far back as the antique slave societiesAs far as there was "capitalist behaviour" in pre-capitalist societies, it was non-productive (usurers and merchants). This existed, of course.

What also existed was wage labour in non-capitalist contexts. The slave-owner employing a foreman for a wage was not a capitalist, and was not engaging in "capitalist behaviour" in doing such. The guild artisan who employed hired apprentices in his shop wasn't a capitalist, nor was engaging in "capitalist behaviour" either.

I didn't say that one single workshop making commodities through wage labour made everything capitalist.Good. But you seem to be saying that it made that single workshop a capitalist enterprise, or at least that its owner was engaging in "capitalist behaviour". If so, we certainly disagree.

'Capitalist production' is commodity production using wage labour - 'capital taking hold of production' doesn't mean much. If you mean, 'capital replicating itself through re-investment', then certainly, that is a feature of capitalism.No, it is not. Merchant capital and usurer capital have always done that, in non-capitalist societies. It is of course necessary for capitalism, but by no means sufficient.

But it would still be capitalism, if every single capitalist just took the money and built gold-plated castles with it.If all capitalists wasted their profits in consumption, instead of reinvesting, then they would certainly not be capitalists, and it wouldn't be a capitalist society. But, of course, that's a moot point, because they are capitalists and they reinvest their money in order to accumulate capital. It is not an individual decision, it is how the system functions.

Luís Henrique

Blake's Baby

2nd May 2013, 14:00

...

As far as there was "capitalist behaviour" in pre-capitalist societies, it was non-productive (usurers and merchants). This existed, of course...

No, I'm talking about workshops which produced commodities, manufactured by 'free' waged labour, which existed in small numbers in Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt etc.

...What also existed was wage labour in non-capitalist contexts. The slave-owner employing a foreman for a wage was not a capitalist, and was not engaging in "capitalist behaviour" in doing such. The guild artisan who employed hired apprentices in his shop wasn't a capitalist, nor was engaging in "capitalist behaviour" either...

If the workshop owner is producing commodities through waged labour, that is capitalist production, that is capitalist behaviour, yes.

... But you seem to be saying that it made that single workshop a capitalist enterprise, or at least that its owner was engaging in "capitalist behaviour". If so, we certainly disagree...

On what grounds can commodity production through wage labour not be considered capitalist?

...
If all capitalists wasted their profits in consumption, instead of reinvesting, then they would certainly not be capitalists, and it wouldn't be a capitalist society. But, of course, that's a moot point, because they are capitalists and they reinvest their money in order to accumulate capital. It is not an individual decision, it is how the system functions...

Are you saying the problem with capitalism is not the exploitation of the working class, but the facct that capitalists re-invest? Really?

LuÃs Henrique

2nd May 2013, 17:48

If the workshop owner is producing commodities through waged labour, that is capitalist production, that is capitalist behaviour, yes.

Well, we will have to agree to disagree. We evidently have different conceptions of what capitalism is.

On what grounds can commodity production through wage labour not be considered capitalist?

When the means of production at stake do not constitute capital, ie, when they do not constitute a phase in the process M - C ... C' - M'.

Are you saying the problem with capitalism is not the exploitation of the working class, but the facct that capitalists re-invest? Really?

No, of course not.

I am saying that capitalism without accumulation of capital - and, consequently, without reinvestment - cannot exist. The system only functions through expanded reproduction, so the hypothesis of capitalists, as a class, wasting all their profits in luxuries is counterfactual.

Luís Henrique

Blake's Baby

2nd May 2013, 19:47

...

When the means of production at stake do not constitute capital, ie, when they do not constitute a phase in the process M - C ... C' - M'.

...

I am saying that capitalism without accumulation of capital - and, consequently, without reinvestment - cannot exist. The system only functions through expanded reproduction, so the hypothesis of capitalists, as a class, wasting all their profits in luxuries is counterfactual...

So if capitalists stop investing and instead take the money and squander it on luxuries, they cease to be capitalists?

What about if they mostly squander their money on luxuries? What if they only squander a bit of their money on luxuries? How capitalist is capitalist? Is the most capitalist someone who gets no luxuries at all?

FionnagÃ¡in

2nd May 2013, 21:06

I think Luíz is onto something, here. The capitalist isn't defined simply by some passive "relationship to the means of production", as the old Orthodox rote would have us believe, but because of the role he plays in the reproduction of capitalist social relations. The function of the capitalist is to ensure the reproduction of capital, which means ensuring capital can obtain a profit, and that this profit is re-invested as capital. Whatever he skims off the top for himself is incidental to his function as a capitalist, a matter of what capital can permit and of what he can get away with. If he somehow appropriates the entirety of his company's profits and blows it all on luxuries, charitable causes, etc., then, yes, he won't be a capitalist, any more than feudal lords who organised their estates on a wage-basis were capitalists. (Further, competition ensures that very soon he won't even be a company-owner, which is why as Luíz says, we can't really take this very far beyond counter-factuals.)

"The capitalist" is a role which people play, not an identity which they possess, and as the history of the cooperative movement shows, it's quite possible to engage in capitalism without having any particular clique singled out as "the" capitalists.

Blake's Baby

3rd May 2013, 00:38

Geiseric

3rd May 2013, 01:01

Well, I'm Old School. What makes capitalism capitalism is wage labour and commodity production.

That's not old school, you're wrong. Private ownership is what makes capitalism capitalism. Private ownership wasn't legal until the 90's either, which means the USSR wasn't capitalism.

Blake's Baby

3rd May 2013, 01:10

That's not old school, you're wrong. Private ownership is what makes capitalism capitalism. Private ownership wasn't legal until the 90's either, which means the USSR wasn't capitalism.

And here comes the Trotskyist chorus to take up the Stalinist refrain...

Broody, from now on, can we just take it that everytime I post about anything, you put a post afterwards that expresses the view that Stalinist Russia was a glorious gain for the working class and totally not capitalist at all, honest? If we do, you don't have to go to effort of typing it up, and I don't have to go the effort of reading it, which is after all time I'll never get back. that way we might both live more productive lives. Honestly, you're the political equivalent of entropy. Sooner or later you just suck all the energy out of everything, it dies and turns cold and grey.

Geiseric

3rd May 2013, 02:25

And here comes the Trotskyist chorus to take up the Stalinist refrain...

Broody, from now on, can we just take it that everytime I post about anything, you put a post afterwards that expresses the view that Stalinist Russia was a glorious gain for the working class and totally not capitalist at all, honest? If we do, you don't have to go to effort of typing it up, and I don't have to go the effort of reading it, which is after all time I'll never get back. that way we might both live more productive lives. Honestly, you're the political equivalent of entropy. Sooner or later you just suck all the energy out of everything, it dies and turns cold and grey.

You know that's not what i'm saying and you're trying to change the subject. Obviously the eastern bloc was a police state and the fSU had gross, extroardinary inequality between the state bureaucracy and workers, but you've never actually shown any proof of private ownership of the MoP in Russia during the fSU.
The state owned everything, that's all i'm saying, and that means different things from when everything is owned by capitalists. Mostly that the laws of use value prevail over the laws of exchange value; the later is what determines things in capitalist economies and the former is with planned economies such as Cuba, and the fSU had for a long time.

LuÃs Henrique

3rd May 2013, 10:00

So if capitalists stop investing and instead take the money and squander it on luxuries, they cease to be capitalists?

If the capitalists stop investing and instead donate all their property to the workers, then they will cease to be capitalists. If the capitalists decide to squander every thing they own, they will cease to be capitalists.

Squandering everything they own, donating to workers, or not reinvesting, are not capitalist behaviours. Individually, capitalists may sometimes do that. As a class, they simply won't do it.

The same with reinvestment. As Fionnagáin puts it, "competition ensures that" a capitalist who doesn't reinvest "very soon won't even be a company-owner" (and, consequently, not a capitalist). Individual capitalists do such things? Quite certainly, and they are consequently expelled from the bourgeoisie. Can capitalists as a class do it? By no means. This would require an astonishing degree of coordination... that they can't achieve even to ensure and foster their class interests, much less to directly counter such interests!

(And, of course, the superceding of individual capitalists by anonymous bureaucracies of executive officers, responding to assemblies of stockholders, minimises even the risk of individual capitalists neglecting their duties towards capital. If a member of the board starts malfunctioning, he or she is going to be fired - even if this means being "promoted" into an irrelevant position. If the whole board malfunctions, stockholders will sell their papers, putting the company at a crisis.)

What about if they mostly squander their money on luxuries? What if they only squander a bit of their money on luxuries? How capitalist is capitalist? Is the most capitalist someone who gets no luxuries at all?

Capital decides it. If individual capitalist X can't keep up with the concentration of capital, then he is destroyed by competition, and is no longer a capitalist. As long as he is exploiting workers to produce value, and striving to reinvest his capital, he still is a capitalist, engaging in typical capitalist behaviour, albeit possibly not competently enough.

There is no way out of it; "capitalist behaviour", if the phrase makes any sence, means being a functionary of capital, and as such, ensuring the expanded reproduction of capital. That's the reason "capitalism" doesn't come in percentiles: a society is either capitalist, in that capital asserts its dominance over its productive system, or it is not capitalist. Yes, in pre-capitalist societies there are often individual "capitalists", but those don't touch production; they are merchants and usurers, and operate exclusively within the domain of circulation. Yes, in pre-capitalist societies there is often commodity production; this does't make such producers capitalists, because their commodities are sold within the logic of C - M - C, the logic of simple commodity production, which is not capitalist. And yes, in pre-capitalist societies it even happens that commodity production is performed through wage labour; it still isn't capitalist production, as it is simple commodity production (C - M - C, not M - C...C' - M'), and the employers in such cases are not capitalists, but petty-bourgeois, as the mediaeval guild masters for instance were.

Luís Henrique

FionnagÃ¡in

3rd May 2013, 12:29

Well, I'm Old School. What makes capitalism capitalism is wage labour and commodity production.
What are the significance of wage-labour and commodity-production for capital, though? Both wage-labour and commodity-production have been around for thousands of years, and even the use of wage-labour for commodity production goes back to at least the early second millennium. What distinguishes them in capitalism is that they are the production of value, and the significance of value is that it's the organisational logic of the capitalist social relation. In capitalism, then, commodity production isn't a matter of the production of consumable objects, but of the reproduction of capital as a social relation.

That's not old school, you're wrong. Private ownership is what makes capitalism capitalism. Private ownership wasn't legal until the 90's either, which means the USSR wasn't capitalism.
Legally, the British queen owns every inch of land in the United Kingdom. All private ownership is just an indefinite lease, and she's only prevented from taking it back on a whim because of the assumed terms of the lease. Does Britain thus remain a feudal society which merely happens to demonstrate some superficially capitalistic characteristics?

Blake's Baby

4th May 2013, 12:56

What are the significance of wage-labour and commodity-production for capital, though? Both wage-labour and commodity-production have been around for thousands of years, and even the use of wage-labour for commodity production goes back to at least the early second millennium. What distinguishes them in capitalism is that they are the production of value, and the significance of value is that it's the organisational logic of the capitalist social relation. In capitalism, then, commodity production isn't a matter of the production of consumable objects, but of the reproduction of capital as a social relation...

I think what distinguishes them in capitalism is their generalisation throughout the economy. This is why I keep making a distinction (that Luis doesn't seem to accept) between 'capitalist behaviour' and 'capitalism as a system'. 'Capitalism as a system' - which I'd arue has existed for around 500 years in some places, and less in others - is the generalisation of 'capitalist behaviour' which has exited for at least 2,500 years, but only as a tiny part of other economic systems. the contribution of wage-labour to commodity production was tiny in the ancient world, but it did exist. The owners and workers who took part in it were engaged in capitalist behaviour, but they were not operating in a capitalist system.

LuÃs Henrique

4th May 2013, 16:03

I think what distinguishes them in capitalism is their generalisation throughout the economy. This is why I keep making a distinction (that Luis doesn't seem to accept) between 'capitalist behaviour' and 'capitalism as a system'.

Well, whether or not I accept a distinction between 'capitalist behaviour' and 'capitalism as a system', I certainly do not accept your idea that 'capitalist behaviour' consists of hiring workers for a wage. To me, 'capitalist behaviour' means - if it means anything - acting in order to accumulate capital. Capitalism certainly can only become a system after taking hold of production, and this necessarily implies generalised wage labour - but wage labour is much more ancient than capitalism as a system, and in pre-capitalist conditions, it didn't even match 'capitalist behaviour' ('capitalist behaviour' before 'capitalism as a system' being basically merchant and usurer capital, wage labour before 'capitalism as a system' being basically petty-bourgeois workshop production).

'Capitalism as a system' - which I'd arue has existed for around 500 years in some places, and less in othersWith this I am certainly in disagreement; 'capitalism as a system' has nowhere existed before 300 years ago.

- is the generalisation of 'capitalist behaviour' which has exited for at least 2,500 years, but only as a tiny part of other economic systems.With this I am again in disagreement. 'Capitalism as a system' is certainly not the generalisation of 'capitalist behaviour'. What makes the core difference between 'capitalism as a system' and anything else is the production of surplus value. The antediluvian forms of capital, as Marx calls them, have always appropriated value in circulation.

In the conditions of pre-capitalism,

An usurer lends money in expectation of receiving more money in the future. It's merely M - M'; how does a certain amount of money at the date of the loan transforms itself into a bigger amount of money at the date of repayment is not a problem of the "capitalist" usurer, but of his debtor.
A merchant buys commodities he doesn't produce and sells them at a higher price; it is M - C - M'. But the commodity doesn't undergo any actual change (except perhaps in its geographical location) between being bought and sold. Again, the value is not created by the merchant, but by the non-capitalist producers of the commodity.

In the conditions of 'capitalism as a system', however, capital is invested directly in production. The modern capitalist buys commodities, not in order to resell them at a profit, but in order to use them to produce new, different, commodities, that have a greater value in themselves than the original commodities he bought. It is M - C...C' - M', in which the second "C" is a different entity than the first one, and in which the "..." represent the process of production, the only way in which surplus value can be produced.

Of course, in the conditions of 'capitalism as a system', M - M' and M - C - M' can still thrive; but now they are derivated forms of capital, that stem from industrial and agricultural - productive, in a word - capital, logical consequences of it, not its historical pre-conditions.

the contribution of wage-labour to commodity production was tiny in the ancient world, but it did exist. The owners and workers who took part in it were engaged in capitalist behaviour, but they were not operating in a capitalist system.No, you are mistaken. Of course wage labour existed in the ancient (and mediaeval) world, but it did not constitute 'capitalist behaviour', because it was not aimed at the accumulation of capital.

I think you are somehow fetishising "wage labour", which is merely an empty form. Ancient foremen in slave farms or workshops were usually hired for a wage, but while this form is similar to the wage of a modern miner or welder, it recovers a completely different content. The same with modern executive officers in capitalist corporations; they are commonly paid salaries, but this form hides a completely different relation when compared to modern productive labourers. Conversely, banks (or monopsonic companies) can exploit peasants in modern societies without employing wage labour at all, which doesn't make them any less capitalist.

Such position leads, in my opinion, to mistakenly considering artisans, shop owners, and rich peasants "capitalists" or "bourgeois", and, conversely, to mistake middle and even high management personel as "workers".

Luís Henrique

LuÃs Henrique

4th May 2013, 16:19

In fewer words, perhaps it is best to say that,

under pre-capitalist conditions, accumulation of capital and production of commodities are two very different and clearly separate processes, which only come in contact with each other marginally, and in the occasion of operations that entirely remain within the process of circulation; but
under capitalist conditions, accumulation of capital and production of commodities are fused into one process under the direction of the former - and the process of circulation as a whole is subjected to the process of production. Accumulation of capital fundamentally happens in the very process of production, and production of commodities only exists as a distinct phase in the process of accumulation of capital.

Luís Henrique

BTMFPHumanStrike

4th May 2013, 18:46

Didn't read the whole thread because I got work soon, but I don't think there is anything wrong with taking a historical interest in these people. History is fascinating as fuck.

But it should be kept in mind that being interested in a particular aspect of history is not a political position. Stalinism is not only irrelevant to modern day class struggle but it is not even really a thing out side of the internet. Not trying to shit on anyone, just saying what is obvious.

Blake's Baby

4th May 2013, 21:13

...Stalinism is not only irrelevant to modern day class struggle but it is not even really a thing out side of the internet. Not trying to shit on anyone, just saying what is obvious.

Are you serious? Did you go to any Mayday parades? In most countries the Stalinist (and Maoist) parties are the biggest representatives of 'the Left'. Where they are not (as in the UK), the Trotskyist parties (who share many of the attributes of Stalinism) are the biggest. The identification of Stalinism with 'communism' is the second biggest ideological barrier the working class needs to overcome in order to re-appropriate the revolutionary heritage of the workers' movement.

Blake's Baby

4th May 2013, 21:19

There's a lot in your post to come back to Luis, but for the moment, just this:

...
Such position leads, in my opinion, to mistakenly considering artisans, shop owners, and rich peasants "capitalists" or "bourgeois", and, conversely, to mistake middle and even high management personel as "workers".

Luís Henrique

No, artisans, shop owners and rich peasants are only 'capitalists' in this instance if they're deriving the necessaries of life from the wage labour of others. If, on the other hand, they're also working they're by definition 'petit-bourgeois'. But either way, they exist in feudal (and ancient slave) economies.

Capitalists must have existed before capitalism as a system, because otherwise there's no-one to create capitalist society. As capitalist society self-evidently exists, it was created by someone. Therefore, capitalism as behaviour must also have pre-existed caitalism as a system, because it's behaviour as a capitalist that makes someone a capitalist.

FionnagÃ¡in

5th May 2013, 00:59

The identification of Stalinism with 'communism' is the second biggest ideological barrier the working class needs to overcome in order to re-appropriate the revolutionary heritage of the workers' movement.
Is such a re-appropriation necessary, or even desirable? Recall Marx's scathing criticism of the bourgeois revolutionaries who, "just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things [...] anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honoured disguise and borrowed language". Recall, further, his warning that "the revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead in order to arrive at its own content. There the phrase went beyond the content – here the content goes beyond the phrase." This was true in 1852; why not in 2013?

That isn't to say that we don't need to understand the revolutionary wave of 1917-1919 (or any other episode of struggle), or that there's no value in acknowledging the struggles of past generations. But the past cannot be our absolute reference point; with Marx, we "cannot take [our] poetry from the past but only from the future". The working class in revolt possesses, requires and offers no justification in precedent- so why should we?

Vladimir Innit Lenin

5th May 2013, 01:48

With this I am certainly in disagreement; 'capitalism as a system' has nowhere existed before 300 years ago.

What about the Italian merchant city-states in the middle ages? What about Britain? Capitalism - in its mercantile form - certainly did exist in a rather full way in Britain before the 18th century!

With this I am again in disagreement. 'Capitalism as a system' is certainly not the generalisation of 'capitalist behaviour'. What makes the core difference between 'capitalism as a system' and anything else is the production of surplus value. The antediluvian forms of capital, as Marx calls them, have always appropriated value in circulation.

It's surprising you say that, because the production of surplus value has existed in many corners of the globe for a greater period than 300 years. As Blake's Baby said, the key here is generalisation. But where, in a sense, you are both wrong, is that capitalism as a social system is not just characterised by the generalisation of wage labour, of the production of surplus value; it is a social system. Therefore, not only must generalised material relations be established (detaching the worker from the means of production; the rise of the 'capitalist', of money and relations therein), but social relationships between classes, divergences between classes, must be firmly and generally established throughout society. Not only this, but this must be reflected within institutions, within legal frameworks, within the political framework. This is why there is quite a strong argument that, though early capitalism may have existed in England in some form by the early 16th Century, in a petty form, it was only the parliament-led revolution of 1688 that truly entrenched bourgeois rule, and thus capitalism as a social system.

In the conditions of pre-capitalism,

An usurer lends money in expectation of receiving more money in the future. It's merely M - M'; how does a certain amount of money at the date of the loan transforms itself into a bigger amount of money at the date of repayment is not a problem of the "capitalist" usurer, but of his debtor.
A merchant buys commodities he doesn't produce and sells them at a higher price; it is M - C - M'. But the commodity doesn't undergo any actual change (except perhaps in its geographical location) between being bought and sold. Again, the value is not created by the merchant, but by the non-capitalist producers of the commodity.

This is an example of petty capitalism, yes. This is very much characterised by what happened in the Italian merchant city-states as early as the 11th century, and in England in the 14th - 16th centuries. I'm not sure i'd call this 'pre-capitalism', it's certainly a form of capitalism proper. Petty capitalism, perhaps?

In the conditions of 'capitalism as a system', however, capital is invested directly in production. The modern capitalist buys commodities, not in order to resell them at a profit, but in order to use them to produce new, different, commodities, that have a greater value in themselves than the original commodities he bought. It is M - C...C' - M', in which the second "C" is a different entity than the first one, and in which the "..." represent the process of production, the only way in which surplus value can be produced.

Indeed, the process you're describing is typical of the guildcrafts that flourished in the early, petty form of capitalism. The capitalist was detached from the production process per se, only funding the guildsmen to produce for them, selling the products for a profit greater than the funding (i.e. a M-C-M process) to new markets.

No, you are mistaken. Of course wage labour existed in the ancient (and mediaeval) world, but it did not constitute 'capitalist behaviour', because it was not aimed at the accumulation of capital.

Wage labour generally didn't exist, because one of the pre-conditions of wage labour is that labour is free to sell itself. Of course, serfdom generally permeated medieval, feudal society, and so wage labour did not exist. Labour services were performed for sure, and extraction occurred, but under the military force and/or other coercion of the feudal nobility, in general.

Such position leads, in my opinion, to mistakenly considering artisans, shop owners, and rich peasants "capitalists" or "bourgeois", and, conversely, to mistake middle and even high management personel as "workers".

Rich peasants certainly represent something of a proto-capitalist class. Looking at England in the 14th century, for example, one can see that, far from richer and poorer peasants having something in common against the nobility, the term 'kulak' or 'wealthy peasant' (or 'yeoman' etc.) tended to refer to peasants whose lifestyles were more akin to minor gentry than merely a wealthier peasant. Indeed, it was commonplace by the 14th century for wealthier peasants in England to be employing their newly-freed (from serfdom) poorer peasant fellows as day wage labourers, and producing on their land, or for the market, for surplus value.

FionnagÃ¡in

5th May 2013, 18:56

Therefore, not only must generalised material relations be established (detaching the worker from the means of production; the rise of the 'capitalist', of money and relations therein), but social relationships between classes, divergences between classes, must be firmly and generally established throughout society.
Wouldn't that imply that a cooperative, lacking a clear or firm distinction of class, is a working case of socialism-in-one-enterprise?

Vladimir Innit Lenin

5th May 2013, 21:30

Wouldn't that imply that a cooperative, lacking a clear or firm distinction of class, is a working case of socialism-in-one-enterprise?

No, only if you are to generalise the transition from feudalism to capitalism as applicable to that of capitalism to...whatever follows next.

Besides, those of us who say that socialism is a social system, like capitalism, feudalism, slavery etc., would see 'socialism-in-one-enterprise' as a meaningless concept, since any mode of production must be generalised across society if it is to be seen as underpinning the social system.

LuÃs Henrique

6th May 2013, 00:25

No, artisans, shop owners and rich peasants are only 'capitalists' in this instance if they're deriving the necessaries of life from the wage labour of others. If, on the other hand, they're also working they're by definition 'petit-bourgeois'. But either way, they exist in feudal (and ancient slave) economies.

Well, you are reasserting your position: that a person is a capitalist if she employs others as wage labourers. That's, in my view, completely false. A person is a capitalist if she derives a livelihood from ensuring accumulation of capital, regardless of employing or not employing wage labourers (though, of course, in the vast majority of cases, those things go together).

Also, I don't know that a petty bourgeois is, by definition, a person that simultaneously employs wage labour and works herself. To me, the definition is very different: a petty bourgeois is a person who owns means of production and engages in the production of commodities, but whose means of production do not constitute capital, ie, are not able, of themselves, to accumulate as capital.

Capitalists must have existed before capitalism as a system, because otherwise there's no-one to create capitalist society.

And so, feudal lords must have existed before feudalism, because otherwise there would be no one to create a feudal society?!

As capitalist society self-evidently exists, it was created by someone. Therefore, capitalism as behaviour must also have pre-existed caitalism as a system, because it's behaviour as a capitalist that makes someone a capitalist.

And what is 'capitalist behaviour'? Again we will disagree, for you are going to insist that it is the employment of wage labour, and I am going to counter that it is the engagement in accumulation of capital.

How about executive officers in modern corporation, who receive salaries? Are they proletarians? Or why not?

Luís Henrique

DoCt SPARTAN

6th May 2013, 00:59

LuÃs Henrique

6th May 2013, 01:09

What about the Italian merchant city-states in the middle ages? What about Britain? Capitalism - in its mercantile form - certainly did exist in a rather full way in Britain before the 18th century!

I am not sure about Britain, or exactly what you are asking about Britain. About the Italian merchant city states in the middle ages, they were feudal societies, albeit atypical ones. Feudal societies were always deeply split between their urban and rural subsistems; usually the rural sector dominated the urban sector, and the urban ruling classes remained far below the rural ones in status, wealth, and political power. In Norhern Italy, the opposite happened, with the urban guilds overtaking and overwhelming the rural lords. This went to the extent that the urban communes effectively disappropriated the rural lords, and became feudal rulers themselves, directly extracting excedents from the peasantry, in the same old-fashioned way the lords did before them. Nowhere in Northern Italian countryside were the relations of production revolutionised, nowhere has wage labour superceded the traditional feudal or guild relations, until way into the 19th century.

The same goes for the urban productive sector. Labour in Northern Italian communes was still feudal traditional guild labour - wage labour, yes, but by no means directly connected to the accumulation of capital.

What was different in the Italian communes (and also what allowed the urban commune to topple the feudal lords and take the role of feudal exploiters to themselves) was that those cities were commercial cities, dominated by commercial capital rather than by guilds. But such commercial capital was based, as usual under pre-capitalist conditions, in long distance trade. Basically, it relied in the incommensurability between the value of European and Asiatic commodities: silk (or pepper, or cynamon) was not produced in Europe, so it was impossible for Europeans to know their value, and consequently what was the "fair" price of silk. But the Northern Italian commercial (and usurer) capital had nothing to do with production: those antediluvian capitalists did not employ artisans or peasants as wage labourers, they merely bought their commodities and sold them (and to the rest of Europe) commodities from the far East.

Which is the reason that the fall of Constantinople ruined those cities, which wouldn't have happened if there was capitalism there.

It's surprising you say that, because the production of surplus value has existed in many corners of the globe for a greater period than 300 years.

Where, for instance?

When a peasant or an artisan produces commodities, they normally produce an excedent too. But an excedent is only surplus value under capitalist relations of production. Under pre-capitalist conditions, it will either take the form of expanded consumption by the artisan or peasant, or the form of rent, which is not surplus value.

As Blake's Baby said, the key here is generalisation. But where, in a sense, you are both wrong, is that capitalism as a social system is not just characterised by the generalisation of wage labour, of the production of surplus value; it is a social system.

It sure is; but it is a social system based on the accumulation of capital through capitalist production. So wherever production is pre-capitalist, you cannot have capitalism.

Therefore, not only must generalised material relations be established (detaching the worker from the means of production; the rise of the 'capitalist', of money and relations therein), but social relationships between classes, divergences between classes, must be firmly and generally established throughout society.

But, of course, "divergences between classes" (ie, the division of society betwee different classes, I guess) is much older than capitalism. Feudal and ancient societies were very classist societies, with little or no remains of pre-classist social relations. But those were pre-capitalist classes, slaves, slave-owners, feudal lords, serfs, and of course the petty-bourgeois.

Not only this, but this must be reflected within institutions, within legal frameworks, within the political framework. This is why there is quite a strong argument that, though early capitalism may have existed in England in some form by the early 16th Century, in a petty form, it was only the parliament-led revolution of 1688 that truly entrenched bourgeois rule, and thus capitalism as a social system.

Well, no. The constitution of England remained firmly feudal up to Cromwell's revolution in the mid 17th century; then it was broken down, and replaced by a legal system that, removing in practice the feudal monopoly of land and legislation, as well as the guild system, allowed for the stratification of the petty bourgeoisie, on one hand, and for commercial and usurer capital to start transforming into agricultural and industrial capital (ie, to take hold of production) on the other.

A truly entrenched bourgeois rule only came into being after the 1832 reforms.

This is an example of petty capitalism, yes. This is very much characterised by what happened in the Italian merchant city-states as early as the 11th century, and in England in the 14th - 16th centuries. I'm not sure i'd call this 'pre-capitalism', it's certainly a form of capitalism proper. Petty capitalism, perhaps?

It is certainly much what happened in Italian merchant cities, as well as in Portugal, Spain, England, France, the Hanseatic league, Switzerland, etc., in the end of the Middle Ages. But it is not "petty-capitalism" nor a form of capitalism proper. It is a late form of feudalism, in which commercial and usurer capital thrived very much, often at the expense of the productive system. But nowhere it implied actual capitalist relations of production, nowhere it translated into surplus value being extracted directly in production by productive capital, etc.

Indeed, the process you're describing is typical of the guildcrafts that flourished in the early, petty form of capitalism. The capitalist was detached from the production process per se, only funding the guildsmen to produce for them, selling the products for a profit greater than the funding (i.e. a M-C-M process) to new markets.

"Detached" is the key word. Capital did not dominate production, which was entirely processed under pre-capitalist (feudal, petty-bourgeois) relations of production. Yes, this an important stage that allowed capital, later, to actually enter and dominate production, but it is not capitalism at all.

Wage labour generally didn't exist, because one of the pre-conditions of wage labour is that labour is free to sell itself. Of course, serfdom generally permeated medieval, feudal society, and so wage labour did not exist. Labour services were performed for sure, and extraction occurred, but under the military force and/or other coercion of the feudal nobility, in general.

Of course wage labour existed. The point however is not that; it is the fact that wage labour, per se, does not constitute capitalist relations of production.

Rich peasants certainly represent something of a proto-capitalist class. Looking at England in the 14th century, for example, one can see that, far from richer and poorer peasants having something in common against the nobility, the term 'kulak' or 'wealthy peasant' (or 'yeoman' etc.) tended to refer to peasants whose lifestyles were more akin to minor gentry than merely a wealthier peasant. Indeed, it was commonplace by the 14th century for wealthier peasants in England to be employing their newly-freed (from serfdom) poorer peasant fellows as day wage labourers, and producing on their land, or for the market, for surplus value.

Well, if they were producing surplus value they evidently were accumulating capital. But were they?

Luís Henrique

LuÃs Henrique

6th May 2013, 01:17

No, only if you are to generalise the transition from feudalism to capitalism as applicable to that of capitalism to...whatever follows next.

Besides, those of us who say that socialism is a social system, like capitalism, feudalism, slavery etc., would see 'socialism-in-one-enterprise' as a meaningless concept, since any mode of production must be generalised across society if it is to be seen as underpinning the social system.

Ah, but that is not the point.

If, as Blake's Baby says, capitalism must have been anticipated by 'capitalist behaviour', and indeed could only be created because there were people behaving as capitalists before capitalism became a 'system', why wouldn't we conclude that a modern co-op is not some kind of 'socialist behaviour' that pre-exists 'socialism as a system', and indeed is the only way to "create" socialism, because otherwise there would no one to "create" socialism?

So, even if a modern co-op isn't "socialism in one enterprise"... why is it not a proto-socialist enterprise, or a "petty socialist" one, only waiting to be "generalised" into a 'system'?

Luís Henrique

Blake's Baby

6th May 2013, 11:22

...

And so, feudal lords must have existed before feudalism, because otherwise there would be no one to create a feudal society?!...

Of course. The landowning equites of Roman society and the barbarian warlords of northern Europe were the classes that gave rise to the feudal lords.

Do you know how Marx posits social classes replacing each other? They develop inside the previous social and economic structure.

Blake's Baby

6th May 2013, 11:28

Sorry, double post.

LuÃs Henrique

6th May 2013, 11:38

Of course. The landowning equites of Roman society and the barbarian warlords of northern Europe were the classes that gave rise to the feudal lords.

And in what consisted the 'feudal behaviour' of the equites?

Do you know how Marx posits social classes replacing each other? They develop inside the previous social and economic structure.

So an actual bourgeoisie developed under feudal social and economic structure? Before direct producers were completely separated from the means of production, and, consequently, before an actual proletariat was created?

How that?

Luís Henrique

Geiseric

6th May 2013, 18:40

Feudalism is different than ancient rome; they didn't really use any money or currency as they did in rome because it would usually be useless outside of the kingdom. They didn't have any currency as well to pay their laborers who were 95% of the time serfs as well. Capitalism is distinct in that it pays wage labor to the proletariat. There was a pre proletariat in rome but there weren't many cities at all in the feudal era and many of the craftsmen were bound to the lord in a Hephaestus kind of crippled way where they would be killed before they could leave. There still wasn't "capitalism" because there weren't enough resources nor enough productivity to really profit. There was only simple primitive wealth accumulation such as raiding, wars, looting, and good harvests as far as I really know until the italian merchant states in the 16th century.

The planned economy existed as a fortress economy where money was only really worth anything inside of the country and through the eastern bloc. Most of the moneys worth if it went by actual capitalist laws would be determined by how much the army and police was worth seeing as the fSU spent about 40% of their GDP on those, and the rest of it on agriculture and other economic projects which were never for capitalist, profit driven, "exchange value" determined commodity production. Those projects were always made in order to employ the entire population, which made their money even more worthless since everybody had a lot of it.

These things are what make the USSR not state capitalism nor regular capitalism. It was run by a bureaucracy which was in itself a contradiction, which had opportunist sections whom realized its own interests; restoring capitalism as the new owning class; as early as the 1930s. But the planned economy needed to be maintained in the mean time or else the working population would very likely overthrow it which almost happened after WW2 in much of the eastern bloc.

FionnagÃ¡in

6th May 2013, 19:28

Feudalism is different than ancient rome; they didn't really use any money or currency as they did in rome because it would usually be useless outside of the kingdom.
Not really. Pre-modern societies were pretty liberal about what currency they used, as along as it was a decent quality. State-issues were more about standardising weights and purities rather than anything else, and some particularly reliable issues, such as the Fiorentini florin and the Dutch guilder were accepted across broad areas.

Blake's Baby

6th May 2013, 19:58

And in what consisted the 'feudal behaviour' of the equites?...

Control of bonded peasants through the colonia system and collection of food-rent through the foederatii system.

...
So an actual bourgeoisie developed under feudal social and economic structure? Before direct producers were completely separated from the means of production, and, consequently, before an actual proletariat was created?...

What do you mean 'before an actual proletariat was created'? Enclosure was happening in England from 1300 onwards - driving peasants off the land, creating a class who had to sell their labour to suvive. Sounds pretty proletarian to me.

These things went hand in hand. The bourgeoisie developed with the proletariat - you could hardly have one without the other.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

7th May 2013, 00:09

Ah, but that is not the point.

If, as Blake's Baby says, capitalism must have been anticipated by 'capitalist behaviour', and indeed could only be created because there were people behaving as capitalists before capitalism became a 'system', why wouldn't we conclude that a modern co-op is not some kind of 'socialist behaviour' that pre-exists 'socialism as a system', and indeed is the only way to "create" socialism, because otherwise there would no one to "create" socialism?

So, even if a modern co-op isn't "socialism in one enterprise"... why is it not a proto-socialist enterprise, or a "petty socialist" one, only waiting to be "generalised" into a 'system'?

Luís Henrique

Because, as I said originally, there is nothing to suggest that the transition between social system always follows any sort of similar path.

In any case i'm not sure what your point is. You would like to suggest that the very real existence of capitalism in Britain in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries was somehow not actually capitalism, or 'bourgeois rule'. So what relevance does this 'socialism in one enterprise' have? Very little. We are not mindreaders, we cannot predict the future. Perhaps one could say the co-operative is a more socially based form of organisation than capital based one, in terms of its slightly more utopian initial ideals but it is a product of its system and must always adjust towards capital to survive. The difference between this and capitalistic behaviour in late, crumbling feudal societies is that, in those societies, the changing form of money and the new accumulation of capital had a direct bearing on the collapse of feudalism. It's difficult to conceive that a co-operative (given that the movement has existed for a long time) will really be seen in 'x' number of years to have had such a corrosive effect on capitalism.