Non-modes of production

[JPSartre12]

Comrades, I've had some interesting discussions recently regarding the idea of 'bureaucratic collectivism', the theoretical non-mode of production that existed under the Soviet Union, and I was wondering if there are any people here on Revleft that subscribe to it.

What is the theoretical grounding on which the Soviet Union could be considered a "non-mode" of production? Specifically, how does this relate to the dialectic of historical process? I've heard that it represents the "half-way point" between the economic and political revolutions of the two-stage revolution, but I do not see how that would make it a "non-mode" of production.

Yes, the Soviet Union was bureaucratic and collectivist, but what the academic foundation of bureaucratic collectivism as a theory? Do you think that it is possible to have a "non-mode" of production? Why or why not?

As a bit of a purist when it comes to the dialectical materialism and historicism, I have a very hard time agreeing that there can be any "non-mode". What are you thoughts on the issue?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

As I understand it, bureaucratic collectivism is not usually understood as a non-mode of production. The theory of bureaucratic collectivism was first outlined by Rizzi, a pseudo-fascist who thought that the Soviet Union was similar to fascist Italy, but is chiefly associated with the Shachtmanite current of Trotskyism. It doesn't seem to be a very well-developed theory, to be honest - as Mandel complained once, Shachtman, Draper and other proponents never give an account of the laws of this alleged new phase in social development. Furthermore, the existence of this new form of class society would effectively relegate socialism to a mere moral preference at odds with the objective demands of the economy, a sort of utopianism that runs contrary to the objective historical development.

"Non-modes of production" are a curious thing, and I admit that, having read a few articles discussing them, I still don't know what they are. I suspect that many groups use them to avoid "taking sides" in the debate about the class nature of the Soviet Union.

[The Idler]

Not a big fan of it tbh. Pretty sure it wasn't the case in the USSR, given the existence of wage-labor etc. Even theoretically it existing at all is pretty dubious. I believe Critique journal propound it, and Weekly Worker sympathise enough to reprint some stuff.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

It's the same bullshit that the likes of Sweezy used when talking of the phase in between feudalism and capitalism, in order to justify their own ideological bent.

Although tbh the Soviet Union is a more cut and dry case - it was a state, there was foreign trade (ergo currency), there were at many points during its existence (capitalist) class structures and also profit, even if much profit was internal and didn't lead directly to capital accumulation. It bore all the hallmarks of capitalism.

[Sotionov]

Non-mode of production? That's like saying "non-shape of an object".

[Dave B]

I get the impression that it could be generally categorised as ‘non egalitarian’ or ‘hierarchal' exploitative production but not based on the private ownership of property (as in principally the means of production).

Thus that anyway includes the new/ managerial/ co-ordinating/ bureaucratic (caste) or class theories of Rizzi, Milovan Đilas, Burnham, Parecon, ‘Trotsky’ etc etc.

Actually it may have had a sort of historical precedent in the way the Catholic church operated with its monastic production enterprises, in continental Europe, up until the middle of the 18th century.

In England Henry VIII privatised it in the 16th century.

Lafargue made that kind of analysis in passing before it reappeared in its more modern and state capitalist ‘forms.

[As Lafargue introduces the subject; Feudal landed property or means of production was ‘entailed’ by progenitor etc etc. ie it couldn’t be sold but it was still inherited.]

But ‘differently’ the church owned means of production couldn’t formally be inherited and there was a ‘nominal’ meritocracy in rising up the ranks to be become bishop, cardinal or pope or whatever; to obtain the relative material benefits of being a member of a ‘catholic’ nomenklatura.

I don’t think that the catholic (bureaucratic caste?) church system with its nepotism, criteria of meritocracy and Machiavellian political intrigues was that different to Bolshevik state capitalism.

[The English monastic system of production must have already been organised in such a 'business' like way to make it compatible with private bourgeois production as upon privatisation it was snapped up pretty fast, with borrowed money from merchants, as going economic concerns.]

Maybe Henry VIII having the hots for Anne Boleyn triggered the capitalist revolution?

Anyway;




Paul Lafargue; The Evolution of Property, CHAPTER IV, Feudal Property





Landed property, under the feudal system, was anything but free; not only was it burdened with obligations, but it belonged to the family collectively; the owner could not dispose of it at pleasure; he was only the usufructuary possessor whose mission it was to transmit his estates to his descendants.

The Church estates, likewise, bore this character; they were the property of the Church, the great Catholic family; the abbots, monks, and priests who occupied the lands were merely the administrators – the very faithless administrators – of them.

In order to claim immunity from impositions, the French clergy, down to the time of the revolution, pretended that ecclesiastical possessions ought not to be considered as ordinary property; that it was nobody’s property (res nullius), because it was sacred, religious property (res sacræ, res religiosæ).

The revolutionary bourgeois took them at their word; they declared that the clergy were not the proprietors of the ecclesiastical estates, which belonged to the Church. Now, the Greek word ecclesia, whence is derived eglise (church), signifies the assembly, the reunion of all the faithful, which is the nation at large; wherefore the estates of the Church are national property. By the help of such subterfuge did the revolutionary bourgeois, like Henry VII. of England, lay hands upon the Church property and distribute amongst themselves the estates which belonged to the poor.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lafargue/1890/property/4-feudal.html

[Sotionov]

I get the impression that it could be generally categorised as ‘non egalitarian’ or ‘hierarchal' exploitative production but not based on the private ownership of property
Which is of no importance. A slave living in Athens with a private owner and a slave living in Sparta with the state being his owner are not in any different situation.

[JPSartre12]

It's the same bullshit that the likes of Sweezy used when talking of the phase in between feudalism and capitalism, in order to justify their own ideological bent.

This is what I think. The idea of an economy being a "non-mode" of production contradicts the very principals of historical materialism.

[Paul Cockshott]

As a bit of a purist when it comes to the dialectical materialism and historicism, I have a very hard time agreeing that there can be any "non-mode". What are you thoughts on the issue?
The idea of a non mode of production is a line the Hillel has been pushing for years, it says more about the limitations of his conceptualisation than it says about the USSR.

[Paul Cockshott]

It bore all the hallmarks of capitalism.

Do you really mean all of the hallmarks or some of the hallmarks.

[helot]

Which is of no importance. A slave living in Athens with a private owner and a slave living in Sparta with the state being his owner are not in any different situation.

The helots of Sparta and the chattel of Athens did differ though. Helots were in many regards quite similar to medieval serfs. I think your general point is valid though. I tend to look on it as the state fulfilling the role of the bourgeoisie due to the weakness of the Russian bourgeoisie.

[jookyle]

I don't know about you but I prefer my papers organized.

[Astarte]

The helot under Sparta was in a much different situation from the slave living in Athens. User helot is correct that helots were a lot like serfs, in that they were an entirely "possessed" and collectively bound community that was forced to pay tribute to Sparta. The difference was that the origins of their bondage rested in the conquest of their city-states.


"The relationship of the Spartans to their Helots - very much a class relationship, of exploiter to exploited - was one of quite extraordinary hostility and suspicion. In [section] III.iv below I draw attention to the remarkable fact that each set of Spartan ephors, upon taking office, made an official declaration of war on their work-force, the Helots, so as to be able to kill any of them without trial and yet avoid incurring religious pollution such acts would otherwise have entailed." De Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, pg. 48

Anyway, the situation of a helot under Sparta rule was in someways better than a slave in Athens as, like the serf, they had more direct autonomy over their own labor power, but conversely, the Spartans collectively would have regarded a helot's life as far less valuable and more expendable than an Athenian would their slave's.

[Sotionov]

I wasn't starting a dispute about history, I was talking about a principle. If easier, just ignore that I mentioned Athens or Sparta.

[Comrade #138672]

I don't get it. How can there be no mode of production? Is it because it can not be described as either capitalist or socialist mode of production? There is no point in-between the two, however unstable it may be?

I think the USSR had a capitalist mode of production.

[Luís Henrique]

The whole concept of mode of production is overrated, I fear.

When young I was a great fan of it, and even tried to do some academic research on it.

Later, in the early 90s, I read Robert Kurz's Collapse of Modernisation, and afterwards some attempts of criticism of it by a few Brazilian scholars. Those criticisms were in average very bad (there was one who denied that contemporary Europe was capitalist, saying there was a "social democrat mode of production" that had superceded capitalism); the best one was by PSDB's leading intellectual, Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira. He attempted his criticism by pointing out that Kurz largely ignored the differences between specific pre-capitalist modes of production, almost as if there were only two different modes of production, "capitalism" and "pre-capitalism". Which, on one level, is true; Kurz does exactly this. But on other level, it is irrelevant: while there certainly were many different pre-capitalist modes of production, and it is part of the work of a historian to understand, describe, and define them, all of them (except, of course, the several varieties of pre-classist "primitive socialism") stand as one against capitalism. If they are of different species, then capitalism is of an altogether different genus, or order.

Rereading a bit of Marx, it strikes me that he apparently never used the phrase in the same sence and with the same amplitude some of his epigons - Sweezy, Hindess, Godelier - have. Particularly, it seems that speaks of two different "capitalist" modes of production - manufacture and industry - quite unlike most other Marxists.

A "non-mode of production" seems a further intellectual aberration to me. A society like the Soviet Union decidedly produced things. It did not live out of thin air. So it must have had a mode of production - capitalist, socialist, somethingelseist. So what is the use of talking about a non-mode of production? To evade the complicated theoretical issues that arise from considering it as either capitalist or socialist or some third kind of mode of production?

Luís Henrique

[Astarte]

Having read a good amount of Ticktin's essays, the basic idea behind the term "non-mode" is meant to entail that productive forces were wasted to such an extent that there was a kind of zero-net gain in productivity - this is meant to describe the economy during the era of stagnation specifically (I do not believe he refers to the Stalin, or much of the Khrushchev years as a "non-mode") and the contradiction in the mode in which productive energies were being poured in, but again, a significant net gain was not being put out. I agree though that the term "non-mode" is quite lacking, however Ticktin does do a good job of describing the several alleged modes which have been attributed to the USSR and why they have no bearing to its historical reality.

EDIT: Sotionov, sorry, I didn't mean to make it seem like I was jumping down your throat, I am just really interested in ancient history and couldn't resist bringing up De Ste. Croix.

[ckaihatsu]

Here's a taxonomy that is material-historically accurate, and may be helpful for this topic:


[1] History, Macro Micro -- Precision

http://s6.postimage.org/zbpxjshkd/1_History_Macro_Micro_Precision.jpg (http://postimage.org/image/zbpxjshkd/)


[22] History, Macro Micro

http://s6.postimage.org/58kljbt2l/22_History_Macro_Micro.jpg (http://postimage.org/image/58kljbt2l/)

[Paul Cockshott]

Having read a good amount of Ticktin's essays, the basic idea behind the term "non-mode" is meant to entail that productive forces were wasted to such an extent that there was a kind of zero-net gain in productivity - this is meant to describe the economy during the era of stagnation specifically (I do not believe he refers to the Stalin, or much of the Khrushchev years as a "non-mode") and the contradiction in the mode in which productive energies were being poured in, but again, a significant net gain was not being put out. I agree though that the term "non-mode" is quite lacking, however Ticktin does do a good job of describing the several alleged modes which have been attributed to the USSR and why they have no bearing to its historical reality.

Yes but the question you should be asking is what the relations of production and the material circumstances of production were that slowed down the growth of productivity, and what should have been the changes in the relations of production if the growth of productivity was to be reinvigorated. I have never heard Hillel speak of or write on these questions.
But he is not an engineer so perhaps he does not think in terms of fixing things.

[ckaihatsu]

(The following thread contains a complementary topic of discussion.)


Historical necessity

http://www.revleft.com/vb/historical-necessity-t181898/index.html

[CyM]

There is no such thing as non-mode of production. There are only progressive modes and stagnating modes. This is how history moves. A once progressive, revolutionary mode becomes stagnant, a fetter on the development of the means of production. The system enters into crisis and is replaced by a new mode more in harmony with the new means of production.

To banish the stagnant period of a mode of production as a "non-mode" is to think formally instead of dialectically. A system goes through a rise and a fall, you cannot simply think of it only as a fixed thing in its ideal form. For someone to have invented such a theory indicates they have never read the communist manifesto, because this theory is throwing out Marx's historical materialism entirely.

[Luís Henrique]

Having read a good amount of Ticktin's essays, the basic idea behind the term "non-mode" is meant to entail that productive forces were wasted to such an extent that there was a kind of zero-net gain in productivity - this is meant to describe the economy during the era of stagnation specifically (I do not believe he refers to the Stalin, or much of the Khrushchev years as a "non-mode") and the contradiction in the mode in which productive energies were being poured in, but again, a significant net gain was not being put out. I agree though that the term "non-mode" is quite lacking, however Ticktin does do a good job of describing the several alleged modes which have been attributed to the USSR and why they have no bearing to its historical reality.

But in this case there would be only one mode of production, capitalism, as all others - feudalism, slavery, "Asiatic mode of production", primitive socialism, you name it - wasted the productive forces "to such an extent that there was a kind of zero-net gain in productivity".

Luís Henrique

[CyM]

I'm with you on your general point, but that's not entirely true. Primitive communism provided a net gain when it began to settle down and provide a surplus with agricultural. This was the seed of its own destruction, and to further develop it called for the overthrow of the communist constitution.

Slavery too provided a certain surplus, enough to allow Plato and Aristotle to do nothing but think. All human systems have provided surplus and growth of that surplus to sustain growing populations. As soon as that growth stagnates, reaches zero net gain, the system enters into crises and convulsions.

This is the fall of the Roman empire, the bourgeois revolutions, the overthrow of capitalism in the first world war, the collapse of the nationalized planned economy and the bonapartist bureaucracy overseeing it in eastern europe, etc...

The problem with the theory is that it refuses to recognize that decline is a part of all social systems, this is precisely the ABC that marx spoke of in the communist manifesto.

I recommend to anyone thinking of this non-modes crap that has flared up in academia: reread the manifesto.