Left Communist view on the Dissolution of the USSR

[Remus Bleys]

Okay, so since the USSR is to be capitalist, why did it dissolve? Why was it replaced by another capitalist state?

Why did the other Eastern Bloc states dissolve around the same time, as well as China following the reforms of Deng? Why did it happen all at the same decade?

What is the Left Communist (well, specifically Bordigist) view on this?

[Blake's Baby]

I was wondering why there were 93 views and no answers. Then I read the question.

I don't think there are any Bordigists on RevLeft, and I'm not sure I've ever read anything specifically. But, the British and French Empires are gone, why not the Russian?


International Communist Party (Il Communista) - http://www.pcint.org/

International Communist Party (Il Partito) - http://www.international-communist-party.org/
(http://www.international-communist-party.org/)
International Communist Party (Il Programma) - http://www.partitocomunistainternazi...124&Itemid=156 (http://www.partitocomunistainternazionale.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=124&Itemid=156)

n+1 - http://www.quinterna.org/lingue/english/0_english.htm

Maybe you can find something on one of them?

[erupt]

Okay, so since the USSR is to be capitalist, why did it dissolve? Why was it replaced by another capitalist state?

Why did the other Eastern Bloc states dissolve around the same time, as well as China following the reforms of Deng? Why did it happen all at the same decade?

What is the Left Communist (well, specifically Bordigist) view on this?

It dissolved because their facade of socialism could not be maintained any longer; thus, what replaced it is what the ruling class figured would be sustainable in the long run, state-wise.

The Eastern Bloc dissolved simultaneously because of their omnipresent economic dependence on the USSR. They had trade relations for years, and then the powerhouse of the group vanished, leaving the other, more dependent state's economies up in the air, so to speak.

As far as reformist China, the ruling class had seen what worked for the ruling class in the crumbling Soviet Union, and simply took advantage inside their own state. Thus, everything happened at once, kind of like the domino effect.

As far as the Left communist view, I adhere to no tendency or doctrine, so I can't begin to answer anything concerning that tendency. As far as Bordigism in particular, the same answer applies.

[reb]

Some of their stuff is on sinistra.net and some of it is in poorly translated English here http://www.sinistra.net/lib/app/alen/alphaen.html

I did a quick look but I don't think there's much. You might have more chance if you can speak any other languages. I can have a look later and see if there's anything worth translating but not right now.

[RedMaterialist]

Interesting question. Since it is the first time in history that a super-power just 'dissolved,' you would have thought somebody could have explained it by now. Especially since it happened overnight.

There were these two historically minded guys, named Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels who had this theory, that a "state" exists only for the purpose of suppressing a class of people, such as patriarchal states, asiatic states, slave states, feudal states, capitalist states, and, oddly enough, a state called a dictatorship of the proletariat. Once there is no longer any class left to suppress the state would collapse, dissolve or, as they said, wither away and die. A Mr. Stalin decided to kill off as many capitalists, big and small, as he could get his hands on. He pretty much, along with his more fanatical working class friends, suppressed the capitalist classes into non-existence.

Sound familiar?

As to Eastern Europe. In 1914 and 1941 a military power known as Germany, along with some Eastern European friends invaded Russia and the Soviet Union, killing, who knows? maybe 20-40 million Russians. This really pissed off the Russians. They decided in 1945 to put East Germany and Eastern Europe into prison. Then, when the Soviet Union dissolved, the prisoners escaped.

[Tim Cornelis]

Interesting question. Since it is the first time in history that a super-power just 'dissolved,' you would have thought somebody could have explained it by now. Especially since it happened overnight.

There were these two historically minded guys, named Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels who had this theory, that a "state" exists only for the purpose of suppressing a class of people, such as patriarchal states, asiatic states, slave states, feudal states, capitalist states, and, oddly enough, a state called a dictatorship of the proletariat. Once there is no longer any class left to suppress the state would collapse, dissolve or, as they said, wither away and die. A Mr. Stalin decided to kill off as many capitalists, big and small, as he could get his hands on. He pretty much, along with his more fanatical working class friends, suppressed the capitalist classes into non-existence.

Sound familiar?

As to Eastern Europe. In 1914 and 1941 a military power known as Germany, along with some Eastern European friends invaded Russia and the Soviet Union, killing, who knows? maybe 20-40 million Russians. This really pissed off the Russians. They decided in 1945 to put East Germany and Eastern Europe into prison. Then, when the Soviet Union dissolved, the prisoners escaped.

This is detached from reality, also known as delusional. Stalin and such killed off 'capitalists' but not the social relationships, or the relations of production, of class society. On the one hand you have the owners and controllers of means of production wielding decision-making power, employing wage-labourers to produce commodities and subtract surplus value from them (the party-state, ruling class, and capitalist class all the same), on the other hand you have the working class dispossessed and confronting the objective conditions of their labour as alien property tied to the owning class and having surplus value extorted from them (the Soviet proletariat and exploited class).

Antagonistic class relations did not disappear, and hence the state was still necessitated.


The issue of labor discipline lay at the very heart of the antagonistic relationship between the Soviet elite and its work force. That "discipline" was slack in Soviet factories has long been noted by Western and Soviet commentators alike: high labor turnover; absenteeism, closely tied to heavy drinking on and off the job; and, more importantly, a highly irregular pace of work, with periods of intensive labor (usually involving forced overtime) interspersed with countless opportunities for time wasting, slow work, and a general disregard for production quality.

http://libcom.org/history/labor-discipline-decline-soviet-system-don-filtzer

Moreover, the process of the withering away of the state is wholly different than the collapse of a state as the Soviet Union. The withering away of the state consists of a central network or federation of workers' councils and workers' associations gradually loses its coercive features (such as levying taxes and using a workers' militia). The workers' councils and workers' associations would remain intact, albeit in a solidified, consolidated, and matured form, but without the coercive features. The workers' state is a semi-state because its structure is the nucleus of a stateless society. This process of withering away is gradual as the counter-revolutionaries become weaker the need for workers' militias becomes disproportionately smaller, as the economic problems decrease with maturation, so do coercive features in economic conduct (e.g. taxing). If we look at the Soviet Union we see this was absolutely not the case, not even with immense mental gymnastic can we even as much as remotely spot anything resembling the withering away of the state. It was a highly bureaucratised, militarised state governed from above without the military becoming obsolete, without taxes becoming obsolete, without coercion becoming obsolete, without top-down legislation becoming obsolete, etc.

So we have a state structure the same as the modern bourgeois state, but even bigger in volume than Western states, with antagonistic class and labour relations. Moreover, the foreign threat to the USSR, or an isolated workers' region, would be sufficient to keep the state intact. Your hypothesis cannot explain why the state collapsed. Again, it's detached from reality.

EDIT: Moreover, the state didn't implode by itself, there was popular resistance. Workers took to the streets against the Soviet regime and its satellite states and to demand liberal democracy throughout Eastern Europe by the hundreds of thousands. This cannot be explained by your hypothesis (in fact it's a contradiction of it).

EDIT II:


MOSCOW — A weeklong strike by Soviet coal miners demanding better supplies of food, safer working conditions, more housing and an environmental cleanup around their mines in western Siberia grew to about 100,000 workers on Sunday and threatened to turn into a general strike there.

This doesn't sound like the absence of class antagonisms to me.

http://articles.latimes.com/1989-07-17/news/mn-2909_1_soviet-russia


It dissolved because their facade of socialism could not be maintained any longer; thus, what replaced it is what the ruling class figured would be sustainable in the long run, state-wise.

That's certainly not a left-communist analysis because it is idealist.

[Remus Bleys]

Well, I was just wondering if their were Bordigist views in particular, but any Left Communist explanation would suffice.

Can we please not make this thread about redshifted's inane "theories"?

[Tim Cornelis]

Well, I was just wondering if their were Bordigist views in particular, but any Left Communist explanation would suffice.

Can we please not make this thread about redshifted's inane "theories"?

I linked, in the other comment, to a work by Don Filtzer on the relation of labour discipline to the collapse of the USSR. Don Filtzer is an anti-Stalinist Marxist, I don't know if, and doubt he is, a left-communist though. Even if he is a left-communist, there's nothing about the analysis what makes it left communist.

http://libcom.org/history/labor-discipline-decline-soviet-system-don-filtzer

[RedMaterialist]

This is detached from reality, also known as delusional. Stalin and such killed off 'capitalists' but not the social relationships, or the relations of production, of class society.

I don't know. I think killing off an entire class of people is a pretty effective type of class suppression. It was pretty radical, not wholly unjustified, but very effective.

It is true that social and class relations of production still existed, the relations of the dictating working class, carried out by the Soviet bureaucracy, which after about 1980 began to wither, almost literally, from old age.

[Tim Cornelis]

I don't know. I think killing off an entire class of people is a pretty effective type of class suppression. It was pretty radical, not wholly unjustified, but very effective.

That's idealism in essence. Capitalism is not something ingrained in mentality, but in objective conditions. Hence, the killing of 'capitalists' is meaningless if you fail to overturn the class relations -- which he didn't. There was no cooperative, freely associated labour and no common ownership of productive resources. Rather there was state-owned, management-controlled wage-labour (that is, class relations and antagonisms).


It is true that social and class relations of production still existed, the relations of the dictating working class, carried out by the Soviet bureaucracy, which after about 1980 began to wither, almost literally, from old age.

That sounds implausible. It's also and still incompatible with workers protesting and striking against the regime.

[RedMaterialist]

I linked, in the other comment, to a work by Don Filtzer on the relation of labour discipline to the collapse of the USSR. Don Filtzer is an anti-Stalinist Marxist, I don't know if, and doubt he is, a left-communist though. Even if he is a left-communist, there's nothing about the analysis what makes it left communist.

http://libcom.org/history/labor-discipline-decline-soviet-system-don-filtzer

The first two sentences of this article talk about the "slack...discipline" in Soviet industry (emphasis added.)

What is this but an admission that the so-called "ruling elite" had no means of enforcing workplace regulations against the working class? What Filtzer describes is a state in which no class dominated and ruled the working class, not even its own bureaucracy. The Soviet state was on its way to a rapid dissolution not because its workers were drunk (as disgustingly portrayed in the propaganda picture at the head of Filtzer's article) but because there was no police or army to enforce labor discipline.

Filtzer is a Marxist and allows his name to be associated with this kind of anti-working class propaganda?

[RedMaterialist]

That's idealism in essence. Capitalism is not something ingrained in mentality, but in objective conditions. Hence, the killing of 'capitalists' is meaningless if you fail to overturn the class relations -- which he didn't.

If a class ceases to exist then the relations of that class also cease to exist. With the one added condition: the proletariat is the last suppressing class in history and therefore the last class in history.


There was no cooperative, freely associated labour and no common ownership of productive resources. Rather there was state-owned, management-controlled wage-labour (that is, class relations and antagonisms).


There could not have been any "freely associated labor;" that is why it was a dictatorship. Marx did not use the word dictatorship to describe a classless, liberated society. It is true that the wage-labor was state owned and controlled but that is only saying that the wage-labor relation was an economic relation...not necessarily a class relation. If the state owns and manages an economic relation on behalf of the working class and the working class, as a class, finally emerges as the sole remaining social class, then the state necessarily dissolves. Wage labor might even continue to exist in the form of labor-note payment in the society created after the dissolution of the state (as in the Gotha Programme.)

[reb]

The first two sentences of this article talk about the "slack...discipline" in Soviet industry (emphasis added.)

What is this but an admission that the so-called "ruling elite" had no means of enforcing workplace regulations against the working class? What Filtzer describes is a state in which no class dominated and ruled the working class, not even its own bureaucracy. The Soviet state was on its way to a rapid dissolution not because its workers were drunk (as disgustingly portrayed in the propaganda picture at the head of Filtzer's article) but because there was no police or army to enforce labor discipline.

Filtzer is a Marxist and allows his name to be associated with this kind of anti-working class propaganda?

What? Yes, there was. They party tried to attempt a coup with the army. There were a multitude of reasons as to why the USSR fell to bits but to argue that it just withered away, a quote by Engels not Marx, is nonsense as all the functions and institutions of the state persisted right up to the very end, even if they were effectively paralyzed. One of the reasons as to why it broke up the way it did was because of the soviet unions own policies towards nationalities within it's own borders. This exasperated the political instability caused by the long crisis of capitalism that existed in the form of stagnation. The botched attempts at the state trying to maintain itself and the party attempting a coup, nationalist movements breaking off from the USSR only made things worse. A bunch of state bureaucrats decided to break it up and replace it with a form of capitalist state that better suited the more liberalized economy that the world had begun to enter 10-20 years previously.

[reb]

If a class ceases to exist then the relations of that class also cease to exist. With the one added condition: the proletariat is the last suppressing class in history and therefore the last class in history.

But the proletarian class can not exist outside of capitalism because it is a creation of capitalism. Unless you think that you can have slaves without masters.


There could not have been any "freely associated labor;" that is why it was a dictatorship. Marx did not use the word dictatorship to describe a classless, liberated society. It is true that the wage-labor was state owned and controlled but that is only saying that the wage-labor relation was an economic relation...not necessarily a class relation. If the state owns and manages an economic relation on behalf of the working class and the working class, as a class, finally emerges as the sole remaining social class, then the state necessarily dissolves. Wage labor might even continue to exist in the form of labor-note payment in the society created after the dissolution of the state (as in the Gotha Programme.)

States and classes don't just dissolve on their own with no human action. What mechanisms are you proposing that lead to the ending of class society and the state? Did they just slowly rot away without conscious human agency automatically?

[reb]

To Remus, you might want to look at this article. http://www.international-communist-party.org/CommLeft/CL05.htm#RUSSIA

[Blake's Baby]

What?...

Hi reb, you've not been here very long... meet redshifted. He believes that Engels' 'withering away of the state' actually occurred in the Soviet Union between 1980 and 1991. It didn't collapse; it just... ceased, as there was no material basis for its continued existence.

From my experience, it's not worth discussing with redshifted as nothing you say (literally, nothing) will be taken on or thought about in any way.

And I realise that talking about someone like this is incredibly rude, but it's more important, I think, to warn you about the psychedelic minefield you're about to enter. It's a place where reason does not apply.

[RedMaterialist]

But the proletarian class can not exist outside of capitalism because it is a creation of capitalism. Unless you think that you can have slaves without masters.

The proletariat certainly is a creation of the capitalist class. Just as the capitalist was created by the feudal landlord and the small town burghers, and the slave owner by the patriarch. But, capitalism destroyed feudalism and slave owners destroyed the patriarchy.

And now, as Marx predicted, the proletariat will destroy capitalism and it will do so by means of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Once the capitalist class is completely destroyed (world wide) then the proletariat will control society until the final class and the final state disappears.




States and classes don't just dissolve on their own with no human action. What mechanisms are you proposing that lead to the ending of class society and the state? Did they just slowly rot away without conscious human agency automatically?

States and classes have never just dissolved on their own. They end through violent and bloody war and revolution. Tsarist Russia, feudalist France, imperial China (i'm not sure what kind of economic system they had, maybe 'asiatic/egypitan' , as Marx called it,) the Roman Empire.

Has any state in history as powerful as the Soviet Union simply dissolved?
And new classes arise through new types of exploitation: the family, slavery, feudalim, capitalism, socialism (the DOP) and, finally, the first non-exploitative society, communism.

I believe this is what Marx meant when he said communism is the riddle of history solved and that it knows it is the solution. Is this crazy? If so, it was the crazy prediction of a genius. As far as I can tell there is almost nothing Marx predicted that has not come true.

[RedMaterialist]

Hi reb, you've not been here very long... meet redshifted. He believes that Engels' 'withering away of the state' actually occurred in the Soviet Union between 1980 and 1991. It didn't collapse; it just... ceased, as there was no material basis for its continued existence.

From my experience, it's not worth discussing with redshifted as nothing you say (literally, nothing) will be taken on or thought about in any way.

And I realise that talking about someone like this is incredibly rude, but it's more important, I think, to warn you about the psychedelic minefield you're about to enter. It's a place where reason does not apply.

Bourgeois reason does not apply. Besides, why don't you answer the original question? Why did the SU dissolve?

[Remus Bleys]

Bourgeois reason does not apply. Besides, why don't you answer the original question? Why did the SU dissolve?

I made it pretty clear this thread was for left communists.
Fuck off.

[RedMaterialist]

What? Yes, there was. They party tried to attempt a coup with the army.

The most pathetic coup in recorded history


all the functions and institutions of the state persisted right up to the very end, even if they were effectively paralyzed.

The state was paralyzed...and withered away and died.



One of the reasons as to why it broke up the way it did was because of the soviet unions own policies towards nationalities within it's own borders.

Those policies, after Stalin, obviously were a lot different than the current govt's policy toward Chechnya. Chechen suppression mostly ended with WWII. After the new Russian govt took over, the active suppression of the chechens' was re-started.


A bunch of state bureaucrats decided to break it up

Surely, the first time in history a super-power has been destroyed by a bunch of bureaucrats.

[RedMaterialist]

I made it pretty clear this thread was for left communists.
Fuck off.

What the hell does left communism have to do with the collapse of the SU?

[Remus Bleys]

What the hell does left communism have to do with the collapse of the SU?

You clearly haven't bothered to even read the title.
I am pretty sure this constitutes trolling then.

[Brotto Rühle]

redshifted...bro...you have no idea what a state actually is, so your best bet is to go quietly, and just stop. Oh, here's a great article for you to read:

Karl Marx and The State (http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/alternatives-to-capital/karl-marx-the-state.html)

[Rss]

I was kinda interested of this thread first, but then most posts degenerated into "stupid stalinist-mugabeist, read this link".

[Tim Cornelis]

*sigh*.



If a class ceases to exist then the relations of that class also cease to exist. With the one added condition: the proletariat is the last suppressing class in history and therefore the last class in history.

A class doesn't cease to exist because you kill them, a class ceases to exist because the social relationship of that particular class ceases to be. This did not occur. I've already explained why and you have not replied to that. There can't be one class. If there's this local bakery and I kill the owner and take it over, I killed 'the capitalist', but if I take it over and continue to hire wage-labourers to produce commodities then the same relations of production persist. It's absolute bollocks to then declare that there are no longer any capitalists in the bakery because I killed the previous one.


There could not have been any "freely associated labor;" that is why it was a dictatorship. Marx did not use the word dictatorship to describe a classless, liberated society. It is true that the wage-labor was state owned and controlled but that is only saying that the wage-labor relation was an economic relation...not necessarily a class relation. If the state owns and manages an economic relation on behalf of the working class and the working class, as a class, finally emerges as the sole remaining social class, then the state necessarily dissolves. Wage labor might even continue to exist in the form of labor-note payment in the society created after the dissolution of the state (as in the Gotha Programme.)

*sigh*

My god...

First of all (I can't believe I need to keep telling socialists this) wage-labour has nothing to do with 'wages' per se. Wikipedia:

Wage labour (or wage labor in American English) is the socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer, where the worker sells their labour under a formal or informal employment contract.

It's not a means of remuneration, it's relationship of production.

1) Associated labour is necessarily the relations of production of socialism because it lacks class dynamics.
2) Wage-labour necessarily implies class relations because you have the workers subject to the owners of capital.
3) This makes absolutely no sense whatsover: "If the state owns and manages an economic relation on behalf of the working class and the working class, as a class, finally emerges as the sole remaining social class, then the state necessarily dissolves." But then if the state employs the working class, then the working class is subject to a ruling class, and they are not the sole remaining social class. It's absolutely preposterous. It's preposterous to insist that a society where workers lack decision-making power in both politics and economics, are wage-labourers, are dispossessed, are alienated from the productive resources and its products, is not a class society!

The only way class relations are destroyed is when there is associated labour: workers or producers join an association of equals rather than sell their labour-power to an employer. The Soviet Union was based on wage-labour, workers selling their labour-power to an employer, the state. Hence the existence of class society and class antagonisms.



The proletariat certainly is a creation of the capitalist class. Just as the capitalist was created by the feudal landlord and the small town burghers, and the slave owner by the patriarch. But, capitalism destroyed feudalism and slave owners destroyed the patriarchy.

And now, as Marx predicted, the proletariat will destroy capitalism and it will do so by means of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Once the capitalist class is completely destroyed (world wide) then the proletariat will control society until the final class and the final state disappears.

This seems to suggest you believe Marx to have been some Blanquist-substitutionist: an elite assumes power in the name of the working class and as soon as this elite has conquered the world only then will workers be granted powers.


States and classes have never just dissolved on their own. They end through violent and bloody war and revolution. Tsarist Russia, feudalist France, imperial China (i'm not sure what kind of economic system they had, maybe 'asiatic/egypitan' , as Marx called it,) the Roman Empire.

There was considerable working class resistance against the Soviet state and it was overthrown. Hence we speak of the 1989 revolutions, not of the '1989 magic withering away of the state for no apparent reason.'


Has any state in history as powerful as the Soviet Union simply dissolved?
And new classes arise through new types of exploitation: the family, slavery, feudalim, capitalism, socialism (the DOP) and, finally, the first non-exploitative society, communism.

So you then insist that exploitation of the working class by some elite persists into socialism, i.e. class society?


I believe this is what Marx meant when he said communism is the riddle of history solved and that it knows it is the solution. Is this crazy? If so, it was the crazy prediction of a genius. As far as I can tell there is almost nothing Marx predicted that has not come true.

Well given your absolute shit understanding and misreading of Marx I'd mot take this statement seriously.


The first two sentences of this article talk about the "slack...discipline" in Soviet industry (emphasis added.)

What is this but an admission that the so-called "ruling elite" had no means of enforcing workplace regulations against the working class? What Filtzer describes is a state in which no class dominated and ruled the working class, not even its own bureaucracy. The Soviet state was on its way to a rapid dissolution not because its workers were drunk (as disgustingly portrayed in the propaganda picture at the head of Filtzer's article) but because there was no police or army to enforce labor discipline.

Filtzer is a Marxist and allows his name to be associated with this kind of anti-working class propaganda?

Oh my god... It's mind boggling. So we have an elite wielding power over the working class, you admit so much, but this is not a class society because, in your delusional world view, there was no police or army to enforce labour discipline! It's absolutely unbelievable. You have an absolute shit understanding of Marxism to be frank.


I was kinda interested of this thread first, but then most posts degenerated into "stupid stalinist-mugabeist, read this link".

That seems fair to be though.

------------------

EDIT I:

I'm being way too bothered by this, but the hypothesis makes no sense on so many fronts.

So:

- Why wasn't there a police or army (which is not true, but let's ignore it)? If the need to enforce labour discipline arises out of class antagonisms, as redshifted has admitted, then why would the state liquidate this feature? The only way to explain this is some mystical unexplained process. The state does not wither away because of social conditions apparently. It makes no sense. Redshifted can't explain the causality how the state collapsed, he can't describe the actual process, he merely postulates that since there were no class antagonisms (against all evidence to the contrary) the state must have just collapsed or withered away without explaining or being able to explain how this came to be.

- The state didn't even collapse. It was not as if the Soviet state disintegrated with a short period of classlessness before the re-emergence of a bourgeois state from the vacuum of political power that the stateless socialist society had left. No, the Soviet state just underwent rapid and extreme liberalisation, a political makeover.

Simply nothing about this hypothesis holds, absolutely nothing. And it annoys me someone can believe otherwise way more than it should.

---------

EDIT II:

Collapse of "communism" in Poland:


A wave of strikes hit Poland in April and May 1988, and a second wave began on 15 August 1988 when a strike broke out at the July Manifesto coal mine in Jastrzębie-Zdrój, the workers demanding the re-legalisation of Solidarity. Over the next few days sixteen other mines went on strike followed by a number of shipyards, including on 22 August the Gdansk Shipyard famous as the epicentre of the 1980 industrial unrest that spawned Solidarity.[15] On 31 August 1988 Lech Walesa, the leader of Solidarity, was invited to Warsaw by the Communist authorities who had finally agreed to talks.[16] On 18 January 1989 at a stormy session of the Tenth Plenary Session of the ruling Communist Party, General Jaruzelski managed to get party backing for formal negotiations with Solidarity leading to its future legalisation – although this was achieved only by threatening the resignation of the entire Communist Party leadership if thwarted.[17] On 6 February 1989 formal Round Table discussions began in the Hall of Columns in Warsaw. On 4 April 1989 the historic Round Table Agreement was signed legalising Solidarity and setting up partly free parliamentary elections to be held on 4 June 1989 (incidentally, the day following the midnight crackdown on Chinese protesters in Tiananmen Square). A political earthquake followed. The victory of Solidarity surpassed all predictions. Solidarity candidates captured all the seats they were allowed to compete for in the Sejm, while in the Senate they captured 99 out of the 100 available seats (with the one remaining seat taken by an independent candidate). At the same time, many prominent Communist candidates failed to gain even the minimum number of votes required to capture the seats that were reserved for them.

On 15 August 1989, the Communists' two longtime coalition partners, the United People's Party (ZSL) and the Democratic Party (SD), broke their alliance with the PZPR and announced their support for Solidarity. The last Communist Prime Minister of Poland, General Czeslaw Kiszczak, said he would resign to allow a non-Communist to form an administration.[18] As Solidarity was the only other political grouping that could possibly form a government virtually assured that a Solidarity member would become prime minister. On 19 August 1989 in a stunning watershed moment Tadeusz Mazowiecki, an anti-Communist editor, Solidarity supporter, and devout Catholic, was nominated as Prime Minister of Poland – and the Soviet Union voiced no protest, despite calls from hard-line Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu for the Warsaw Pact to intervene militarily to 'save socialism' as it had in Prague in 1968.[19] Five days later, on 24 August 1989, Poland's Parliament ended more than 40 years of one-party rule by making Mazowiecki the country's first non-Communist Prime Minister since the early postwar years. In a tense Parliament, Mr. Mazowiecki got 378 votes, with 4 against and 41 abstentions.[20] On 13 September 1989 a new non-Communist government was approved by parliament, the first of its kind in the former Eastern Bloc.[21] On 17 November 1989 the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, Polish founder of the Cheka and symbol of Communist oppression, was torn down in Bank Square, Warsaw.[22] On 29 December 1989 the Sejm amended the constitution to change the official name of the country from the People's Republic of Poland to the Republic of Poland. The communist Polish United Workers' Party dissolved itself on 29 January 1990, and transformed into Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland.[23]

In 1990, Jaruzelski resigned as Poland's president and was succeeded by Wałęsa, who won the 1990 presidential elections[23] held in two rounds on 25 November and 9 December. Wałęsa's inauguration as president on 21 December 1990 is thought by many to be the formal end of the Communist People's Republic of Poland and the beginning of the modern Republic of Poland. The Warsaw Pact was dissolved on 1 July 1991. On 27 October 1991 the first entirely free Polish parliamentary elections since the 1920s took place. This completed Poland's transition from Communist Party rule to a Western-style liberal democratic political system. The last Russian troops left Poland on 18 September 1993.[23]

- No collapse or withering away of the state, but rather a transformation of the state.
- Class antagonisms existed as exemplified by strike actions and popularity of Solidarity trade union.

[erupt]

I don't mean to be rude, but I think there should be more Left Communist replies rather than some debate concerning the dissolution of the USSR.

Concerning my reply and me not being a Left Communist, my apologies to the creator of the thread; I only attempted to add in a constructive manner.

[freecommunist]

I think left communists come to the view it was simply a change from one type of capitalism to another, if we saw something worth while defending like say Stalinists or trots then maybe it would be more important.
From time to time capitalist nations re-adjust themselves, you can see that with what as been going on in North Africa and the Middle East. As has already been said empires come and go.

[Hit The North]

The Eastern Bloc dissolved simultaneously because of their omnipresent economic dependence on the USSR. They had trade relations for years, and then the powerhouse of the group vanished, leaving the other, more dependent state's economies up in the air, so to speak.





As to Eastern Europe. In 1914 and 1941 a military power known as Germany, along with some Eastern European friends invaded Russia and the Soviet Union, killing, who knows? maybe 20-40 million Russians. This really pissed off the Russians. They decided in 1945 to put East Germany and Eastern Europe into prison. Then, when the Soviet Union dissolved, the prisoners escaped.

These are basic factual errors. As this Time Line (http://home.ku.edu.tr/~mbaker/Hist440/Hist440EEcollapsetimeline.html) clearly shows, the Eastern European states went first, leaving the USSR as the last lonely guest at the party. The fact is that as soon as the USSR relaxed its grip on these European States their people ran as fast as they could towards independence. Without Russian tanks to guard them, these states could no longer put down rebellion - and some lacked the will, anyway.

Why the USSR went down the course of Perestroika (restructuring) and Glasnost (openess) was, as ever, largely determined by the material conditions and political conditions. The economy was moribund and needed stimulating and so required restructuring; whilst openess was an ideological gambit to win support for these changes - really a limited and unconvincing ploy to fix the democratic deficit that soviet citizens felt keenly.

Anyway, for his troubles, Gorbachev got a Nobel Peace Prize and Russia and Eastern Europe got neo-Liberalism. So at least Gorby got the last laugh :(

I'm not a left-communist, but they view these nations to have been state capitalist. Therefore, I doubt they see the collapse of these systems as representing a change in the mode of production; but rather a change in the mode of exploitation, with a corresponding change in the relations of political rule.

[Blake's Baby]

Well, yeah. When the Soviet Union collapsed, nothing fundamantally changed in the economy. There was capitalism before and capitalist after. The political forms changed, but even many of the actors remained the same.

It was extremely difficult for the USSR to keep up, economically, with the USA. The world economic crisis that unfolded from the late '60s dealt the Soviet Bloc a serious blow; the Western Bloc responded to the crisis by beginning economic restructuring (starting with Pinochet's neo-liberal reforms in Chile), but the Soviet Bloc was both hideously inefficient from a capitalist point view and had a very top-heavy bureaucracy which was extremely unresponsive.

There was also massive military expenditure in the Soviet Union; one estimate that I've seen suggests that up to 40% of GNP was going towards the military budget in the 1980s. Because the USA's economy was far larger, to keep up militarily (including the space race and responding to the - largely faked - 'Star Wars' programme) meant a much higher proportion of the USSR's GNP needed to go towards the military.

Because of this, though the Soviet Union showed growth rates higher than the Western Bloc for much of the period after the war, much of that wealth was not being re-invested productively. The military and bureaucracy were a massive drain on resources. Gorbachev's attempts at reform were a strategy for making Russian capitalism more efficient, though they were pretty ineffective.

In the end, the economic crisis that the West had started to deal with in 1971 engulfed the Soviet economy in the late 1980s. The state was basically bankrupt, and the bureaucracy eventually responded my transforming itself into 'private' capitalists.

[RedMaterialist]

A class doesn't cease to exist because you kill them, a class ceases to exist because the social relationship of that particular class ceases to be. This did not occur. I've already explained why and you have not replied to that. There can't be one class. If there's this local bakery and I kill the owner and take it over, I killed 'the capitalist', but if I take it over and continue to hire wage-labourers to produce commodities then the same relations of production persist. It's absolute bollocks to then declare that there are no longer any capitalists in the bakery because I killed the previous one.


And those same class relations of production can only continue to exist because of the coercive power of the state, and that class suppression is the only reason for the existence of the state.

In your case of the bakery it is not about one individual killing an individual baker (Oddly enough, this kind of individualist thinking is typical of the competitive struggle of capitalism.) That kind of property anarchy is specifically prohibited and severely punished to protect the interests of capitalist production.

It is really about the class of bakery workers taking over the bakeries, first on a regional basis then nationally. The Communist Party provided the structure for the management of the bakeries in the form of the bureaucracy. The petit-bourgeois bakery owners, of course, opposed this and were suppressed by the state, i.e. the state functioned as a state. This suppression slowly led to the
disappearance of the capitalists as a functioning, suppressing class. They reappeared, of course, like the living dead, after 1989 (hence, zombie capitalism in Russia.)

It is usually argued that the state bureaucracy became a suppressing class vis a vis the workers. If it was a suppressing class, it was comically inefficient. One of the articles (by an East London professor) posted above argues that the reason the Soviet Union collapsed was that the bakery workers came to work drunk, skipped work, and didnt care about the bread they produced and were able to change jobs at will. Also, the author notes that there was a labor shortage. What kind of worker suppression is this? You can get drunk at work and there is always a shortage of workers. This is not worker suppression, this is indirect control of the relations of production by the working class.

In a capitalist society these workers would be fired immediately, and since there is always a labor excess of supply (unemployment) there would be no work and the worker and his family would starve. That is bourgeois class suppression of the working class.

It simply cannot be argued that a state exists for any other reason than to enforce the relations of class rule. The working class is, or will be, the last class in history to live off the suppression of another class. Once this situation is reached the state will have no raison d'etre and will by necessity collapse, wither away, dissolve, petrify, paralyze, die off. Use any word you like for the world-historic end of class-suppression.

A massive world super-power like the Soviet Union does not simply disappear overnight because it had trouble paying its bills, or because its people were fed up with the bureaucracy, or because the "facade" of socialism or the "facade" of the free market had fallen off. If this were the case, the United States would have withered away and died many times, starting in 1929.

If Hitler had captured Leningrad, Moscow or Stalingrad the Soviet Union would have ended in a bloody catastrophe. No one would be wondering today about why the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

[RedMaterialist]

The state was basically bankrupt, and the bureaucracy eventually responded my transforming itself into 'private' capitalists.

What evidence do you have that the Soviet Union was "basically bankrupt," that is, unable to pay its bills?

[Hit The North]

A massive world super-power like the Soviet Union does not simply disappear overnight because it had trouble paying its bills, or because its people were fed up with the bureaucracy, or because the "facade" of socialism or the "facade" of the free market had fallen off. If this were the case, the United States would have withered away and died many times, starting in 1929.


The problem here is that you are confusing the form with the content. The Soviet Union didn't "disappear overnight"; it retooled and rebranded. State property was transformed into private property and the oligarchy of bureaucrats transformed themselves into an oligarchy of private capitalists.

[Five Year Plan]

These are basic factual errors. As this Time Line (http://home.ku.edu.tr/~mbaker/Hist440/Hist440EEcollapsetimeline.html) clearly shows, the Eastern European states went first, leaving the USSR as the last lonely guest at the party. The fact is that as soon as the USSR relaxed its grip on these European States their people ran as fast as they could towards independence. Without Russian tanks to guard them, these states could no longer put down rebellion - and some lacked the will, anyway.

Why the USSR went down the course of Perestroika (restructuring) and Glasnost (openess) was, as ever, largely determined by the material conditions and political conditions. The economy was moribund and needed stimulating and so required restructuring; whilst openess was an ideological gambit to win support for these changes - really a limited and unconvincing ploy to fix the democratic deficit that soviet citizens felt keenly.

Anyway, for his troubles, Gorbachev got a Nobel Peace Prize and Russia and Eastern Europe got neo-Liberalism. So at least Gorby got the last laugh :(

I'm not a left-communist, but they view these nations to have been state capitalist. Therefore, I doubt they see the collapse of these systems as representing a change in the mode of production; but rather a change in the mode of exploitation, with a corresponding change in the relations of political rule.

All of this is certainly true, including the last paragraph. But what I would be curious to hear is what the OP asked about: a specifically "left communist" theory about the collapse of the state form of capitalism in these countries. What was it that made this form of capitalism "moribund," as you say, or unstable in some way? Or were the causes purely political and not economic at all, from their perspective? I obviously have my own understanding of all this, but lest I be yelled for not being a left-com, and instructed to read some tangentially related MHI link being spammed throughout the forum, I'll keep mum about my own ideas, and see what the left-coms have to say.

[Tim Cornelis]

And those same class relations of production can only continue to exist because of the coercive power of the state, and that class suppression is the only reason for the existence of the state.

In your case of the bakery it is not about one individual killing an individual baker (Oddly enough, this kind of individualist thinking is typical of the competitive struggle of capitalism.) That kind of property anarchy is specifically prohibited and severely punished to protect the interests of capitalist production.

It is really about the class of bakery workers taking over the bakeries, first on a regional basis then nationally. The Communist Party provided the structure for the management of the bakeries in the form of the bureaucracy. The petit-bourgeois bakery owners, of course, opposed this and were suppressed by the state, i.e. the state functioned as a state. This suppression slowly led to the
disappearance of the capitalists as a functioning, suppressing class. They reappeared, of course, like the living dead, after 1989 (hence, zombie capitalism in Russia.)

None of this happened, it's an ahistorical and illusory account. What happened was that in 1917 some workers took over the bakery. The former owners and some loyal workers -- the whites -- sought to de-expropriate it. The Bolsheviks took over the bakery and imposed harsh discipline and one-man management, stripping the workers of decision-making power. The Bolsheviks defeated the whites and continued to operate the bakery under its management, leaving the workers disenfranchised and disempowered. It thereby became the functional bourgeoisie. To protect its class rule over the proletariat it deployed force, coercion, propaganda, social control, and suppression. Labour discipline was solidified in law but not effectively applied, strikes were suppressed, and so forth.


It is usually argued that the state bureaucracy became a suppressing class vis a vis the workers. If it was a suppressing class, it was comically inefficient. One of the articles (by an East London professor) posted above argues that the reason the Soviet Union collapsed was that the bakery workers came to work drunk, skipped work, and didnt care about the bread they produced and were able to change jobs at will. Also, the author notes that there was a labor shortage. What kind of worker suppression is this? You can get drunk at work and there is always a shortage of workers. This is not worker suppression, this is indirect control of the relations of production by the working class.

Strawman. You interject "suppressing" because it suits your argument, but that's not what's being argued. On the one hand you have the owners and controllers of means of production wielding decision-making power, employing wage-labourers to produce commodities and subtract surplus value from them (the party-state, ruling class, and capitalist class all the same), on the other hand you have the working class dispossessed and confronting the objective conditions of their labour as alien property tied to the owning class and having surplus value extorted from them (the Soviet proletariat and exploited class).

The ruling class, the party-state, evidently needed to protect its class rule through suppression and it did. Through various laws it imposed labour discipline, but it was not quite effective.* This does not change the objective class relations of society however.

*=http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/labor-discip.html

This restated the 1930 and 1932 penalties for quitting and absenteeism (mandatory firing, blacklisting, and loss of social benefits, eg housing, food rations, and social insurance). Managers who failed to obey and enforce these laws were subject to dismissal and criminal prosecution.
On 8 January 1939, the government made clear that an unauthorized lateness of 20 minutes (or taking a break 20 minutes too long, or leaving 20 minutes early) counted as absenteeism, grounds for mandatory dismissal (Pravda, 9 Jan 1939). Transportation breakdowns (a common event) were no excuse; a doctor's certificate was required, and doctors who gave certificates too easily themselves faced prosecution and prison.


In a capitalist society these workers would be fired immediately, and since there is always a labor excess of supply (unemployment) there would be no work and the worker and his family would starve. That is bourgeois class suppression of the working class.

Laughable. Absolutely laughable. I can't even begin to explain. You completely change the meaning of words to suit your arguments. Bourgeois class suppression would be (aggressive) policies to undermine class struggle waged by workers. Your definition is absolutely bollocks.


It simply cannot be argued that a state exists for any other reason than to enforce the relations of class rule.

Yes it can and most anthropologists and sociologists do.


The working class is, or will be, the last class in history to live off the suppression of another class. Once this situation is reached the state will have no raison d'etre and will by necessity collapse, wither away, dissolve, petrify, paralyze, die off. Use any word you like for the world-historic end of class-suppression.

EXPLAIN THIS PROCESS. You treat it as if it's a mystical process. It just somehow happens. Explain how not why.


A massive world super-power like the Soviet Union does not simply disappear overnight because it had trouble paying its bills,

Strawman and petitio principii.

---------------------------------------------------

Soviet Union:

- Not a semi-state, and hence no basis for its withering away
- Class rule and class antagonisms and hence no basis for the state withering away
- Did not collapse, it was transformed.

Your hypothesis is absolute shit. Evidence that completely and utterly destroys your hypthosesis:

- High military expenditure (demonstrating the need to fend off foreign enemies, and hence not allowing the withering away of the state)
- Workers striking and protesting against Soviet rule (demonstrating that class antagonisms existed and that the State did not collapse of itself)
- The absence of an intermediate period of statelessness, but rather the state being transformed (demonstrating the state neither collapsed, as in Albania or Somalia, nor withered away).

There is no argument in favour of your hypothesis, none whatsoever.


If the Soviet state had withered away it would have gone as follows:

Workers possessed all decision-making power, and no group of people ruled over them. The workers would have had workers' councils to manage political affairs, and workers' associations to manage economic affairs. The productive resources would be social property. (None of this was the case in the USSR). After the Russian Civil War, the counter-revolutionaries would have been defeated. In the 1930s the remainder of the capitalists were purged, and the coercive features of the workers' semi-state could then be relaxed. Now, the only class enemies were external and the military was kept up for that sole purpose. For whatever reason, the workers decided to abolish the military by 1990. Now, the state had withered away. Soviet society was stateless, classless, based on cooperative and freely associated labour and common property of productive resources. The imperialist forces could now freely invade and re-impose bourgeois rule.

This is what would've happened if the Soviet state had actually withered away. NONE of it happened.

Again, your hypothesis is absolutely bollocks.

It feels like I'm discussing with Karl Pilkington over here for crying out loud.

[Remus Bleys]

All of this is certainly true, including the last paragraph. But what I would be curious to hear is what the OP asked about: a specifically "left communist" theory about the collapse of the state form of capitalism in these countries. What was it that made this form of capitalism "moribund," as you say, or unstable in some way? Or were the causes purely political and not economic at all, from their perspective? I obviously have my own understanding of all this, but lest I be yelled for not being a left-com, and instructed to read some tangentially related MHI link being spammed throughout the forum, I'll keep mum about my own ideas, and see what the left-coms have to say.
That was actually the point of the thread, was a better response to trotskyists (such as yourself) on why the ussr dissolved.
Unfortunately, redshifted has redshitted all over this thread.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

So this is like the 10th thread redshifted has ruined with this bullshit. Can everyone just agree to ignore her/him? I've never seen anyone agree with them, they've never posted anything other than speculation to back up their claims, I think its safe to say everyone who posts here knows that this theory is 100% wrong. I don't see a need to continually argue with them.

[RedMaterialist]

The problem here is that you are confusing the form with the content. The Soviet Union didn't "disappear overnight"; it retooled and rebranded. State property was transformed into private property and the oligarchy of bureaucrats transformed themselves into an oligarchy of private capitalists.

I disagree that the Soviet Union simply renamed itself as the Russian Federation. I think most historians would agree that the Soviet state "collapsed," or otherwise fundamentally ceased existence. The question is why it happened.

State property was taken over by bureaucrats, but only after the "collapse."

[RedMaterialist]

. The imperialist forces could now freely invade and re-impose bourgeois rule.



Aren't you one of the ones who believe the Soviet Union was state-capitalist? Why would the capitalists need to invade and re-impose capitalism? By 1990 the Soviets had developed ICBM nuclear missiles. Nobody was going to invade the Soviet Union.

By the way, "bullocks" is not an argument. Neither is 100 point bold type.

If the Left Communists don't want to hear why the Soviet Union collapsed then they shouldnt ask why the Soviet Union dissolved.

[RedMaterialist]

So this is like the 10th thread redshifted has ruined with this bullshit. Can everyone just agree to ignore her/him? I've never seen anyone agree with them, they've never posted anything other than speculation to back up their claims, I think its safe to say everyone who posts here knows that this theory is 100% wrong. I don't see a need to continually argue with them.

Ten threads ruined? Bit exaggerated don't you think? The problem is that every few weeks or so a new person comes on who doesnt know that discussing the collapse of the soviet union may expose them to new ideas. Then the old left communists, anti-leninists and anti-stalinists anti-Soviet, state-capitalists get their panties all bunched up. I really don't give a fuck.

[helot]

Aren't you one of the ones who believe the Soviet Union was state-capitalist? Why would the capitalists need to invade and re-impose capitalism? By 1990 the Soviets had developed ICBM nuclear missiles. Nobody was going to invade the Soviet Union.

By the way, "bullocks" is not an argument. Neither is 100 point bold type.

If the Left Communists don't want to hear why the Soviet Union collapsed then they shouldnt ask why the Soviet Union dissolved.


You just completely misrepresented Tim Cornelis' post. The bit you quoted was from a hypothetical situation in which the workers were in direct control. It was not a description of how the USSR was but more an alternate reality, an if "the workers possessed all decision-making power"

[RedMaterialist]

The real question the left communists cannot answer is why did the Soviet Capitalist State collapse? They contend the Soviet Union was actually a capitalist state. They say the Soviet Capitalist State went bankrupt, even though the Soviet Union never defaulted on any debt. They say the Soviet Capitalist State became corrupt, but when has corruption ever harmed a capitalist? They say the Soviet Capitalist State lost the support of the working class, but when has a capitalist ever worried about the support of the working class?

In order to explain the collapse of the SU you first have to abandon your illusions about the Soviet Union being "capitalist." Then you can begin to make a class analysis of the collapse.

Get over it. I am right. And so was Marx, Engels and Lenin.

[RedMaterialist]

You just completely misrepresented Tim Cornelis' post. The bit you quoted was from a hypothetical situation in which the workers were in direct control. It was not a description of how the USSR was but more an alternate reality, an if "the workers possessed all decision-making power"

What bit did I quote? Workers did not directly possess all decision making power. That would have been impossible. Large scale, macroeconomic decisions were made by the state as foreseen by Marx:

"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible." (The Communist Manifesto.

[helot]

What bit did I quote? Workers did not directly possess all decision making power. That would have been impossible. Large scale, macroeconomic decisions were made by the state as foreseen by Marx:

"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible." (The Communist Manifesto.


This is the post where you misrepresented Tim's point http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2683641&postcount=38

Btw, i don't give a toss what Marx said. It's irrelevant to my point.

[Remus Bleys]

Ten threads ruined? Bit exaggerated don't you think? The problem is that every few weeks or so a new person comes on who doesnt know that discussing the collapse of the soviet union may expose them to new ideas. Then the old left communists, anti-leninists and anti-stalinists anti-Soviet, state-capitalists get their panties all bunched up. I really don't give a fuck.
I'm not knew. This was supposed to be a serious discussion with a specific goal. I specified left communism to avoid trotskyists telling me how it was degenerated worker's state.... because I had a specific question about a specific tendency.

Actually, I was in your last thread with this bullshit. So I clearly know that you believe the USSR to "wither away." At first it was funny, cuz me and my friends would just read your bullshit and laugh. At this point, it's annoying.
PS: I'm not anti-lenin.

[Remus Bleys]

The real question the left communists cannot answer is why did the Soviet Capitalist State collapse? They contend the Soviet Union was actually a capitalist state. They say the Soviet Capitalist State went bankrupt, even though the Soviet Union never defaulted on any debt. They say the Soviet Capitalist State became corrupt, but when has corruption ever harmed a capitalist? They say the Soviet Capitalist State lost the support of the working class, but when has a capitalist ever worried about the support of the working class?
You're clearly not reading the thread. Many answers have been provided.


In order to explain the collapse of the SU you first have to abandon your illusions about the Soviet Union being "capitalist." Then you can begin to make a class analysis of the collapse.:laugh:


Get over it. I am right. And so was Marx, Engels and Lenin.LOOK GUISE! THE NEXT VI LENIN!

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

A DotP "withering away" looks very different from "state collapse". State collapse is what happened in the USSR because there were different factions who wanted different things, and few of the factions which wanted to preserve the USSR in some form really had any significant street power. Gorby wanted to make the USSR into some giant liberal social democracy but he couldn't compete with nationalists both in and outside of the bureaucracy.

States other than the USSR have collapsed before. The Russian state effectively collapsed in 1917, well before the Bolsheviks actually took over most of the country. Capitalist relations held before and after this state collapse. The state in the Congo collapsed too, as did the Mexican state in 1910 and the Libyan state in 2011. The state of China collapsed in the 1910s. When the state withers away, it literally just ceases to exist because people no longer have an incentive to participate in the state. This is why no new state emerges, and is also why there is no great social upheaval. It just happens because the state is no longer necessary. The state was clearly still necessary in 1991, hence the fact that the Russian, Kazakh, Ukranian, Uzbek (etc) bureaucrats all struggled to set their own up so as to preserve the systems of production while opening them up to liberal competition and free market profit motive.

I hope I didn't contribute to this thread just getting further sidetracked ...

[RedMaterialist]

States other than the USSR have collapsed before. The Russian state effectively collapsed in 1917,


There were the February and October revolutions of 1917. If there had been a comparable revolution in 1989 then one could argue the Soviet state had been overthrown.



The state in the Congo collapsed too, as did the Mexican state in 1910 and the Libyan state in 2011. The state of China collapsed in the 1910s.

In 1960 Belgium had agreed to grant elections to the Belgian Congo, but white Belgians protested. The Congolese began killing the whites. The Belgian Congo then collapsed, and Lumumba was elected. Four years later he was assassinated by the CIA, and Mobutu was installed as dictator. The Mexican revolution lasted from 1910-1920. There was the Chinese Revolution of 1910-12. The Libyan state under Qaddafi was destroyed by NATO.

[/QUOTE]

[RedMaterialist]

You're clearly not reading the thread. Many answers have been provided.

:laugh:

LOOK GUISE! THE NEXT VI LENIN!

Oh, not at all. Just a low level faceless soviet bureaucrat in the next proletariat dictatorship.

In fact, I think I will change my name to minorsovietbureaucrat

[emilianozapata]

The USSR was a miserable tyranny that portrayed it self as communism when it really wasn't at all. It served to satisfy the anti-communist rhetoric that western countries were using at the time and discredit communism as an evil ideology.

[Dave B]

You could look at it another way particularly if you refer back to 1905 RSDLP, and thus Bolshevik/Menshevik, ‘predictive’ theory on the nature of the impending revolutionary overthrow of the feudal Tsarist regime.

It is worth bearing in mind that this ‘Marxist theory’ about feudal revolutions was essentially fatalistic and inevitable and empirically a matter ‘history repeating itself’.

And that any differences would be superficial and just the same essential process dressed up in different garb or costumes.

Thus from the almost prophetic opening in;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm

The empirically derived historical theory on the overthrow of feudal regimes is fairly straightforward and was reasonably well sumarised by Stalin of all people in 1905.

Complete with the ‘nuanced’, but as things turned out important, difference between the Menshevik and Bolshevik position.

The theory went that after the initial collapse of the (Tsarist) feudal regime there would be a “Provisional Revolutionary Government” which would inevitably and ultimately have to institute a state and ‘political system’ compatible with capitalism.

Wills, wants and other wishes would have, ultimately, little to do with it.

The function of ‘Marxists’ who understood all this kind of thing was to make the best of it and oil the wheels of this inevitable historical unfolding of pre-ordained events.

The paragon, ultimate objective and final historical destiny of the ‘ideal’ political system of bourgeois capitalism, that faced Russia, was ‘demonstrably’ that which was found in the most developed capitalist counties [B]eg Britain, Switzerland, Belgium and France.

Something that the Russian Marxists much appreciated as they were the kind of places that they could hang out in and agitate for the next stage ie socialism/communism.

It was well understood however that the passage from the overthrow of feudalism to liberal bourgeois democracy had in the past been a somewhat ‘victim strewn detour’ complete with feudal backsliding as the political victorious capitalist class engaged in compromise agreements and mutual alliances of convenience with the former ruling feudal class etc.

So the object was for the Russian Marxists to attempt to fast track towards the inevitable conclusion of the process ie the kind of democratic constituent assembly system of the advanced bourgeois capitalism.

An ambitious goal without at the time any real precedent.

According to the Bolsheviks, and Stalin, that goal was going to be achieved by their active involvement in the Provisional Revolutionary Government in order to guarantee, as the only effective guarantors, the convocation of a constituent assembly; “the victory of the [bourgeois] revolution”.

“After the victory of the revolution”, the bourgeois/capitalist revolution, with its Zurich political liberties,the Marxists would step down and of course not involve and disgrace themselves, ‘like Louis Blanc’ in participating in the government of capitalism.

As Stalin rhetorically asked;

“Who is arguing against this?”

Well nobody at the time.

See page 147;

http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/PRG05.html



However the Mensheviks suspected that if the Bolsheviks entered into the Provisional Revolutionary Government and the ‘Marble Halls of Power’ they might decide that they liked it, and remain there.

-----------------

Returning to dry Marxist historical theory and;

“Men making their own history, but not as they please”

Provisional Revolutionary Governments will do in the end what Provisional Revolutionary Governments must do and introduce bourgeois political democracy.

There are no theoretical limitations on time scale.

The last Russian Provisional Revolutionary Government was Bolshevik one, which merely lasted from 1917 to 1989; and thus ultimately fulfilled its, at least, theoretical, political destiny.

Thus general Marxist theory is rescued from the neo Leninist abyss.

Economically, as far as the workers of the soviet union were concerned, post Stalin era, and popular support for state capitalism etc.

By 1989 they had probably consciously reached the position that Bukharin had predicted 70 years earlier.

In other words that they would be better as ‘Free' wage workers under democratic bourgeois capitalism than the industrial ‘serfdom’ of ‘state capitalism’; that even for Bukarin in 1920 had its historical precedents.



State capitalism …………. increasing the power of capitalism, has, of course, greatly weakened the working class. Under State capitalism the workers became the white slaves of the capitalist State. They were deprived of the right to strike; they were mobilized and militarized; everyone who raised his voice against the war was hauled before the courts and sentenced as a traitor. In many countries the workers were deprived of all freedom of movement, being forbidden to transfer from one enterprise to another. ' Free' wage workers were reduced to serfdom; they were doomed to perish on the battlefields, not on behalf of their own cause but on behalf of that of their enemies. They were doomed to work themselves to death, not for their own sake or for that of their comrades or their children, but for the sake of their oppressors.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1920/abc/04.htm


The attractions of bourgeois private capitalism over state capitalism for the some sections of the ruling class in Russia in 1989 is best left for themselves.

there is something of interest from Ruhle below;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1924/revolution.htm

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

There were the February and October revolutions of 1917. If there had been a comparable revolution in 1989 then one could argue the Soviet state had been overthrown.


I think you're overlooking the parallels. When the Bolsheviks won the Russian state had essentially ceased to function in most of the Russian Empire. Bolshevik control didn't extend much farther than the areas around Moscow and St Petersburg, and they needed to refocus their efforts on reconquering and rebuilding the Russian state.



In 1960 Belgium had agreed to grant elections to the Belgian Congo, but white Belgians protested. The Congolese began killing the whites. The Belgian Congo then collapsed, and Lumumba was elected. Four years later he was assassinated by the CIA, and Mobutu was installed as dictator. The Mexican revolution lasted from 1910-1920. There was the Chinese Revolution of 1910-12. The Libyan state under Qaddafi was destroyed by NATO.

The Congolese state has collapsed a number of times, but in every case there was a parallel between the way that the Congolese state lost effective control over territory and lost the ability to defend itself from internal and external enemies. That happened with the fall of Lumumba AND the fall of Mobutu (and nearly happened recently to Kabila). I don't see how you disprove my fundamental claim. The Mexican Revolution was from 1910-1920, but the Mexican STATE collapsed in 1910 - that's what made space for the revolution. During the Mexican revolution, there was effectively no real state. The Chinese state collapsed over a number of years from the time of the Chinese revolution to the 20s where most of the country was run by warlords.

[Geiseric]

The Bolsheviks were elected all through Russia, they were overthrown via a coup in the caucuses and in the urals by the mensheviks and cadets, and by the czechoslovak legion, which is what started the civil war. But left coms will be left coms and will quote bukharin, who was against ending involvement in WW1.

[Blake's Baby]

Actually, I agree with Lenin on Brest-Litovsk, and I think the Russian Left Communists were wrong.

For the same reason as I think defence of the Soviet Union in WWII was wrong.

[RedMaterialist]

I think you're overlooking the parallels. When the Bolsheviks won the Russian state had essentially ceased to function in most of the Russian Empire. Bolshevik control didn't extend much farther than the areas around Moscow and St Petersburg, and they needed to refocus their efforts on reconquering and rebuilding the Russian state.



I agree the russian, congo, mexican, chinese states all collapsed. But i contend that all fell as the result of either a violent revolution or intervention from the outside. I don't see a revolution or invasion in the 1989 Soviet Union.

[RedMaterialist]

Actually, I agree with Lenin on Brest-Litovsk, and I think the Russian Left Communists were wrong.

For the same reason as I think defence of the Soviet Union in WWII was wrong.

Yikes! So the Russian people should just have let Hitler walk into Moscow?

[Remus Bleys]

Yikes! So the Russian people should just have let Hitler walk into Moscow?
Jesus Fucking Christ.
ITT: OP asks for bordigist and left comm view on dissolution of ussr specifically, gets poorly translated italian, paragraph of decent info, and hand waving about "empires have fallen before." Well, yes, of course. But I want the specific thread about the dissolution of the ussr.
Meanwhile, redshitted posts about how the USSR withered away (showing how fucking illiterate he is) and tries to turn this into MOLOTOV-RIBBENTROP type thread.

I see the trotskyists have posted in here, so, I have a question. If the USSR wasn't capitalist, and was progressive - why did it fail?

[RedMaterialist]

Jesus Fucking Christ.
ITT: OP asks for bordigist and left comm view on dissolution of ussr specifically, gets poorly translated italian, paragraph of decent info, and hand waving about "empires have fallen before." Well, yes, of course. But I want the specific thread about the dissolution of the ussr.
Meanwhile, redshitted posts about how the USSR withered away (showing how fucking illiterate he is) and tries to turn this into MOLOTOV-RIBBENTROP type thread.

I see the trotskyists have posted in here, so, I have a question. If the USSR wasn't capitalist, and was progressive - why did it fail?

hey, i'm not the one who said the USSR should not have been defended in WWII

[Remus Bleys]

hey, i'm not the one who said the USSR should not have been defended in WWII
fucking don't turn it into that thread.

[Art Vandelay]

I see the trotskyists have posted in here, so, I have a question. If the USSR wasn't capitalist, and was progressive - why did it fail?

The premise behind the theory of the 'degenerated worker's state' is that the USSR bore the hallmarks of a society in transition. The October Revolution established a nationalized planned economy; which was made up of a Bolshevik political monopoly, which they sought to combine with an economic democracy. Due to the prevailing material conditions, this obviously never came to fruition, outside of limited and isolated instances throughout the early years of the revolution.

Trotsky viewed the zigzags in policy to be reflective of this lack of economic democracy and the further separation of the party from genuine Bolshevism. Capital as described by Marx is something quite specific and the relationship to the means of production of the beauracratic strata of the USSR, was not the same as the traditional relationship of the bourgeoisie; they represented a section of the working class alienated from its class roots, which was caught up in the social vacuum which existed due to the further de-politicization of the working class, following the civil war, and the remaining elements of Tsarism.

The argument is essentially that due to the fact that a Nationalized Planned Economy had been established, what was required to re-establish the genuine dictatorship of the proletariat, was a political, rather than social, revolution; that ultimately there were two possible courses for the USSR to take: (1) political revolution to overthrow the Stalinist beaucracy, or (2) reintegration of the USSR into the global capitalist system. Now if you want to have a discussion about when this reintegration took place, I think that's a very interesting topic, but I don't see how one can deny the existence of a degenerated workers state (even if in unorthodox sense), as it is the only logically consistent analysis.

[Tim Cornelis]

The real question the left communists cannot answer is why did the Soviet Capitalist State collapse? They contend the Soviet Union was actually a capitalist state. They say the Soviet Capitalist State went bankrupt, even though the Soviet Union never defaulted on any debt. They say the Soviet Capitalist State became corrupt, but when has corruption ever harmed a capitalist? They say the Soviet Capitalist State lost the support of the working class, but when has a capitalist ever worried about the support of the working class?

In order to explain the collapse of the SU you first have to abandon your illusions about the Soviet Union being "capitalist." Then you can begin to make a class analysis of the collapse.

Get over it. I am right. And so was Marx, Engels and Lenin.


What bit did I quote? Workers did not directly possess all decision making power. That would have been impossible. Large scale, macroeconomic decisions were made by the state as foreseen by Marx:

"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible." (The Communist Manifesto.


Aren't you one of the ones who believe the Soviet Union was state-capitalist? Why would the capitalists need to invade and re-impose capitalism? By 1990 the Soviets had developed ICBM nuclear missiles. Nobody was going to invade the Soviet Union.

By the way, "bullocks" is not an argument. Neither is 100 point bold type.

If the Left Communists don't want to hear why the Soviet Union collapsed then they shouldnt ask why the Soviet Union dissolved.

Jesus Christ, please tell me you're playing stupid. You're not even responding to my points. Either you're trolling or you're too proud to admit you were wrong.

[Dave B]

I see the trotskyists have posted in here, so, I have a question. If the USSR wasn't capitalist, and was progressive - why did it fail? from an anti state capitalist theory Trotskyists;

Ernest Mandel

The Roots of the Present Crisis
in the Soviet Economy

(1991)



http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1991/xx/sovecon.html

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

The Bolsheviks were elected all through Russia, they were overthrown via a coup in the caucuses and in the urals by the mensheviks and cadets, and by the czechoslovak legion, which is what started the civil war. But left coms will be left coms and will quote bukharin, who was against ending involvement in WW1.

That may be true but I don't see how that's relevant to anyone's point. I don't think anyone is disputing whether or not the Bolsheviks won the Duma elections, the dispute is whether or not states can collapse outside of the "withering away of the state" since redshifted seems to think that state collapse is the same thing as the state "withering away"


I agree the russian, congo, mexican, chinese states all collapsed. But i contend that all fell as the result of either a violent revolution or intervention from the outside. I don't see a revolution or invasion in the 1989 Soviet Union.

The revolutions in those countries occurred after state collapse - or more precisely, state collapse made space for particular groups in society to organize a new state.

[Old Bolshie]

Some people here seem to think that just because the state is taken by a new group of people and changes its designation that is enough to say that the state collapsed. It isn't.

For instance, did the Tzarist state really collapsed after the October Revolution? According to Lenin himself, it didn't, as the soviets merely "slightly anointed (it) with soviet oil".

The Bolsheviks ended up ignoring the most important lesson of the Paris Commune according to Marx: the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.Ironically, Lenin gives a great emphasis to this lesson in his work "The State and Revolution".

[Queen Mab]

The collapse of the USSR was simply the national bureaucracies of the different republics seizing autonomy from Moscow. No different to what happened in the collapse of Austria-Hungary or other multiethnic empires.

[Five Year Plan]

I am seeing a lot of nodding that the 89-91 revolutions were just the supplanting of one capitalist regime with another. What I would still like to hear is a left-communist view about why the state form of capitalism collapsed and was replaced by bourgeois capitalism. Why the need to replace one type with another?

[Queen Mab]

I am seeing a lot of nodding that the 89-91 revolutions were just the supplanting of one capitalist regime with another. What I would still like to hear is a left-communist view about why the state form of capitalism collapsed and was replaced by bourgeois capitalism. Why the need to replace one type with another?

Same reason Keynesian welfare-state capitalism collapsed and was replaced by neoliberalism at around the same time.

[Blake's Baby]

I am seeing a lot of nodding that the 89-91 revolutions were just the supplanting of one capitalist regime with another. What I would still like to hear is a left-communist view about why the state form of capitalism collapsed and was replaced by bourgeois capitalism. Why the need to replace one type with another?

It didn't. 'State capitalism' doesn't mean the Soviet Bloc in opposition to 'bourgeois capitalism'. It's all bourgeois capitalism. Nationalisation isn't a different form of capitalism, it's just a different tactic. Most of the West had nationalised industry in the 1970s too. The state divested itself of those nationalise industries in the 1980s as a (neo-liberal) response to the crisis, but the USSR didn't; it kept up with its heavily statised economy.

But that doesn't make it more 'state capitalist' than the West: state capitalism is the economic form of the imperialist epoch, when states of whatever hue massively intervene in their economies. In the 19th century, for example, the Brtish government accounted for about 3% of economic activity. In the relatively statised capitalisms of Germany and Russia in the last 19th century (more heavily statised as a tactic for catching up with the more established capitalisms) it was higher, but for Britiain in the 20th century, it was around 40%. In other words, the British state was 13 times more significant an economic actor in the 20th than in the 19th century. State capitalism was persued by all states in the 20th - I'd see it as being an unavoidable consequence of the dynamics of the imperialist epoch.

[Five Year Plan]

Same reason Keynesian welfare-state capitalism collapsed and was replaced by neoliberalism at around the same time.

Keynesianism was premised on redistribution policies that favored a strong social safety net, and the growth of a distinct labor aristocracy. It was enabled by the US position of imperial hegemony following the second world war, and the massive destruction of the European and Asian economies, which allowed the US to monopolize global trade. As people like Kliman have shown, the TRPF caught up in the mid 1970s, and compelled private companies to squeeze the state to privatize public services in order to prop up the sagging rate of profit.

Are you arguing that a similar process was going on in the USSR? How? Which private businesses were pressuring the state to privatize, when there were no private businesses? And does this mean the Soviet economy was just hyper-Keynesian, with an even larger social safety net than the US and other Western states? This is what I mean. I see a bunch of glib answers on this thread, but no real analysis.

Oh, and by your estimation, was FDR a capitalist by virtue of his position within the US state?

[Five Year Plan]

It didn't. 'State capitalism' doesn't mean the Soviet Bloc in opposition to 'bourgeois capitalism'. It's all bourgeois capitalism. Nationalisation isn't a different form of capitalism, it's just a different tactic. Most of the West had nationalised industry in the 1970s too. The state divested itself of those nationalise industries in the 1980s as a (neo-liberal) response to the crisis, but the USSR didn't; it kept up with its heavily statised economy.

But that doesn't make it more 'state capitalist' than the West: state capitalism is the economic form of the imperialist epoch, when states of whatever hue massively intervene in their economies. In the 19th century, for example, the Brtish government accounted for about 3% of economic activity. In the relatively statised capitalisms of Germany and Russia in the last 19th century (more heavily statised as a tactic for catching up with the more established capitalisms) it was higher, but for Britiain in the 20th century, it was around 40%. In other words, the British state was 13 times more significant an economic actor in the 20th than in the 19th century. State capitalism was persued by all states in the 20th - I'd see it as being an unavoidable consequence of the dynamics of the imperialist epoch.

You can quibble over terminology. My point remains: why was there a rapid transformation in the Soviet State, and indeed all Eastern Bloc countries, in the years between 1989-1991? You keep emphasizing sameness with the West, even calling state capitalism "bourgeois capitalism," but we see no massive and sudden transformations in state property holdings, and state personnel, in the West during this period. Why?

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I am seeing a lot of nodding that the 89-91 revolutions were just the supplanting of one capitalist regime with another. What I would still like to hear is a left-communist view about why the state form of capitalism collapsed and was replaced by bourgeois capitalism. Why the need to replace one type with another?

I think that trying to point to "the reason" is ultimately futile - it's like asking why Coke beats out Pepsi in certain markets. I think, obviously, popular dissatisfaction, economic instability, and Western intervention/subversion are all reasons among many, but there's not necessarily a need to point out which (among others) was "primary". The fact of the matter is that capital is loyal to no one party or individual - the replacement of some capitalists with others (not that large numbers of former apparatchiks weren't among the new elites of post-soviet Russia!!!) is profoundly business-as-usual.

In fact, we do see the massive privatization of state-owned capital in the West (and the "third world") throughout the neo-liberal period - that this was particularly dramatic in the Eastern Bloc doesn't make it particularly unusual.

(Note: I'm not a "Left Communist" in the sense that the OP is hoping for answers from, my politics being something closer to autonomist - arguably left communist in a descriptive rather than formal sense)

[Queen Mab]

Are you arguing that a similar process was going on in the USSR?

No, just drawing an analogy. Britain exchanged its form of welfare capitalism for another at the end of the 20th century, causing mass unrest and social destruction. But that doesn't make 60's Britain a socialist society. Likewise with the USSR.

[Geiseric]

Some people here seem to think that just because the state is taken by a new group of people and changes its designation that is enough to say that the state collapsed. It isn't.

For instance, did the Tzarist state really collapsed after the October Revolution? According to Lenin himself, it didn't, as the soviets merely "slightly anointed (it) with soviet oil".

The Bolsheviks ended up ignoring the most important lesson of the Paris Commune according to Marx: the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.Ironically, Lenin gives a great emphasis to this lesson in his work "The State and Revolution".

There was something called a "civil war," so i'd like you to suggest a different course of action other than forming a workers government and army.


That may be true but I don't see how that's relevant to anyone's point. I don't think anyone is disputing whether or not the Bolsheviks won the Duma elections, the dispute is whether or not states can collapse outside of the "withering away of the state" since redshifted seems to think that state collapse is the same thing as the state "withering away"



The revolutions in those countries occurred after state collapse - or more precisely, state collapse made space for particular groups in society to organize a new state.

Wow the bolsheviks won the soviet elections. Way to ignore history! According to you idealists, the russian working class voted for state capitalism instead of the bolsheviks marxist program. I stopped taking left communists seriously a few weeks ago, because this is getting ridiculous. The bolsheviks were voted into the soviets. This was a result of them opposing the first world war, which left communists in Russia did the opposite of, and proposing to nationalize all major industries, and collectivize all of the economy.

You may be economically illiterate and hold the position that the appropiation of surplus value anywhere other than directly into the workers pocket means capitalism. That's what the "state capitalist," hogwash theory relies on. But that economic analyses is non marxian. If the surplus isn't invested for the purpose of profiting off of a privately owned institution, it's not capitalism. Private ownership was illegal in Russia. Thus it wasn't capitalism, but a revolutionary dictatorship in the middle of capitalist countries which had to match them in production so they couldn't be invaded. Nobody in Russia would of been okay with the reintroduction of Czarism, because the workers state was qualitatively different in their appropiation of the surplus value in the economy.

[Five Year Plan]

I think that trying to point to "the reason" is ultimately futile - it's like asking why Coke beats out Pepsi in certain markets. I think, obviously, popular dissatisfaction, economic instability, and Western intervention/subversion are all reasons among many, but there's not necessarily a need to point out which (among others) was "primary".

How did these different factors play out so differently in the Eastern bloc states than they did in the Western capitalist ones? Capitalism is by its nature unstable economically. Why were the Eastern bloc states more unstable (if that is what you are arguing), when instability is endemic to all capitalism? Why was there more popular dissatisfaction in the Eastern bloc states than in the Western capitalist ones, or at the very least a different response to popular dissatisfaction? Why did "Western subversion" lead to rapid privatization of state-own industries, when "Eastern subversion" during the Cold War never led to rapid privatization in the West on the scale or rapidness we see in the Eastern bloc countries in the late 1980s and early 1990s?

What I am trying to get a sense of is the very thing you are trying to skirt: an actual explanation of why things happened when and how they did in the Eastern bloc countries. That's what I thought the thread title was referring to when it asked for a "left communist view," not just a restatement that all these societies were capitalist followed by a shrug.


In fact, we do see the massive privatization of state-owned capital in the West (and the "third world") throughout the neo-liberal period - that this was particularly dramatic in the Eastern Bloc doesn't make it particularly unusual.We do see privatization, and certainly what should be characterized as significant privatization, since the mid 1970s, for the reason I related earlier about the rate of profit. But you're not really answering the question, because you completely ignore dramatic differences of timing and scale. Why didn't the USSR and other Eastern Bloc questions start privatizing gradually in response in the mid 1970s in the way that the United States did? Why was their privatization far, far more comprehensive and rapid, occurring almost entirely during a several year time period in the late 1980s and early 1990s? Why didn't they privatize only a few industries and have an economy that looks something like the Scandinavian economies in the 1970s?

To answer these questions, you have to do more than just slap a capitalist label on everything and pretend that the rest is just irrelevant details we shouldn't hammer out in discussion.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

How did these different factors play out so differently in the Eastern bloc states than they did in the Western capitalist ones? Capitalism is by its nature unstable economically. Why were the Eastern bloc states more unstable (if that is what you are arguing), when instability is endemic to all capitalism?

Well, for one, I don't think the USSR and Eastern Bloc were especially "more unstable" - the West has also been wracked by periodic crises, including the recession of the early 90s. Often these crises have precipitated changing of the political guard, reforms, etc. - while less spectacular than the collapse of the USSR and Eastern Bloc, they haven't been particularly different on a fundamental level.


Why was there more popular dissatisfaction in the Eastern bloc states than in the Western capitalist ones, or at the very least a different response to popular dissatisfaction? Why did "Western subversion" lead to rapid privatization of state-own industries, when "Eastern subversion" during the Cold War never led to rapid privatization in the West on the scale or rapidness we see in the Eastern bloc countries in the late 1980s and early 1990s?

Well, the West "won". Given greater resources, a higher level of industrial development, greater military power, and no legacy of ostensibly communist revolution, it's not particularly surprising that the West won. This doesn't say much about the class-character of the Soviet Union at all. You know, interimperialist conflict, it's a thing.


What I am trying to get a sense of is the very thing you are trying to skirt: an actual explanation of why things happened when and how they did in the Eastern bloc countries. That's what I thought the thread title was referring to when it asked for a "left communist view," not just a restatement that all these societies were capitalist followed by a shrug.

I'm not trying to skirt anything, though I'm not particularly invested in typing out an explanation of Soviet economic stagnation, popular discontent, etc. - ie all the banal nuts-and-bolts of the Soviet collapse. The thing is, the reasons are not exceptional at all - there's not some "actual explanation" that they cloak, because the USSR wasn't exceptional - only particular.


We do see privatization, and certainly what should be characterized as significant privatization, since the mid 1970s, for the reason I related earlier about the rate of profit. But you're not really answering the question, because you completely ignore dramatic differences of timing and scale.

Why didn't the USSR and other Eastern Bloc questions start privatizing gradually in response in the mid 1970s in the way that the United States did? Why was their privatization far, far more comprehensive and rapid, occurring almost entirely during a several year time period in the late 1980s and early 1990s? Why didn't they privatize only a few industries and have an economy that looks something like the Scandinavian economies in the 1970s?

Or, say, like China? I think it's telling that you leave China out of this discussion entirely, since "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" is precisely an example of another response to neo-liberalism that the USSR didn't take.

My point being, it's not that the USSR was "unable" to privatize gradually due to some particular characteristic of being "socialist", but as a particularity of capitalist "management" - for whatever reasons (ideological, expedient, etc.). That this poor management (in capitalist terms) came around and bit them on the ass in a spectacular way is hardly surprising (as demonstrated in all the banalities of Soviet economics leading up to the collapse).


To answer these questions, you have to do more than just slap a capitalist label on everything and pretend that the rest is just irrelevant details we shouldn't hammer out in discussion.

The thing is, you're the one who seems to insist that the "details" are irrelevant - that there is some "real reason" lurking behind them! It's ideological in the worst way! Actually, the "details" (of economic stagnation, popular discontent, etc.) aren't hard to find, and I don't really feel like copy-pasting for you: they're just unremarkable - nothing to differentiate them as of somehow "special" historical significance.

[Old Bolshie]

There was something called a "civil war," so i'd like you to suggest a different course of action other than forming a workers government and army.


There is no problem with a workers government and army. The problem was precisely the lack of a workers government and army in Russia at the time.

[Five Year Plan]

Well, for one, I don't think the USSR and Eastern Bloc were especially "more unstable" - the West has also been wracked by periodic crises, including the recession of the early 90s. Often these crises have precipitated changing of the political guard, reforms, etc. - while less spectacular than the collapse of the USSR and Eastern Bloc, they haven't been particularly different on a fundamental level.



Well, the West "won". Given greater resources, a higher level of industrial development, greater military power, and no legacy of ostensibly communist revolution, it's not particularly surprising that the West won. This doesn't say much about the class-character of the Soviet Union at all. You know, interimperialist conflict, it's a thing.



I'm not trying to skirt anything, though I'm not particularly invested in typing out an explanation of Soviet economic stagnation, popular discontent, etc. - ie all the banal nuts-and-bolts of the Soviet collapse. The thing is, the reasons are not exceptional at all - there's not some "actual explanation" that they cloak, because the USSR wasn't exceptional - only particular.

Or, say, like China? I think it's telling that you leave China out of this discussion entirely, since "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" is precisely an example of another response to neo-liberalism that the USSR didn't take.

My point being, it's not that the USSR was "unable" to privatize gradually due to some particular characteristic of being "socialist", but as a particularity of capitalist "management" - for whatever reasons (ideological, expedient, etc.). That this poor management (in capitalist terms) came around and bit them on the ass in a spectacular way is hardly surprising (as demonstrated in all the banalities of Soviet economics leading up to the collapse).

The thing is, you're the one who seems to insist that the "details" are irrelevant - that there is some "real reason" lurking behind them! It's ideological in the worst way! Actually, the "details" (of economic stagnation, popular discontent, etc.) aren't hard to find, and I don't really feel like copy-pasting for you: they're just unremarkable - nothing to differentiate them as of somehow "special" historical significance.

Capitalism is a global system, and recessions and upswings generally occur globally, with some variation existing among states. It's a pretty striking thing when one half of the capitalist world suddenly overturns the way it structures its property, and privatizes en masse, while there is virtually no meaningful change in the other half. The OP apparently thinks so, and would like a left-communist analysis of why it happened. I understand why the poster would want such a thing.

The problem with your responses is that they are not details at all. They are vague formulations. What caused the decline of the USSR? Stagnation, subversion, "particularities of capitalist management," yadda yadda. You are invoking broad topics here, not providing specific answers that talk about a causal process unfolding through time, as multi-factoral and overdetermined as the causes may have been. There's nothing specific to the analysis that talks about the dynamics of Eastern bloc state as capitalist states. Was there a sudden downturn in the 1980s that affected all their economies at once? Why? What caused this downturn? Saying, "Well, it was capitalism" or referring to some amorphous thing called "particularity of capitalist management" isn't a response, because it doesn't explain why this would happen in all the Eastern bloc countries, but in none of the Western ones. It's a cop-out. If you honestly don't care to answer the question, and are perplexed as to why I or the OP would want an answer, fine. Just don't post in this thread anymore. I doubt anybody will raise any objections.

I'm more than happy to discuss China, but the topic of the thread is the dissolution of the USSR. I don't see how my respecting the wishes of the OP is "funny." Perhaps you can elaborate on why.

Let me give you a reason these issues aren't insignificant. Let's say you're a Soviet worker in 1991. Do you support the privatization of health services? Would it represent a step forward or backward for the working class? I guess if your answer is that it's all just capitalism, and so doesn't matter, then we could say the same about privatization of social security in the United States, and all the neoliberal privatization that has been invoked so far in this thread.

These are not minor details. These raise very important questions about revolutionary strategy that confronted not just the Soviet workers in the early 1990s, but Western workers today.

[Geiseric]

There is no problem with a workers government and army. The problem was precisely the lack of a workers government and army in Russia at the time.

There was a soviet government, if you don't know what that is then you should read a book about history.

[Remus Bleys]

There was a soviet government, if you don't know what that is then you should read a book about history.
What a pretentious remark.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Wow the bolsheviks won the soviet elections. Way to ignore history! According to you idealists, the russian working class voted for state capitalism instead of the bolsheviks marxist program. I stopped taking left communists seriously a few weeks ago, because this is getting ridiculous. The bolsheviks were voted into the soviets. This was a result of them opposing the first world war, which left communists in Russia did the opposite of, and proposing to nationalize all major industries, and collectivize all of the economy.

Dude, what the fuck are you talking about? Where the fuck did I say that "the russian working class voted for state capitalism"? Where have I spoken on that issue in either direction? Where did I deny that the Soviets voted for the Bolshevik party? I know my Russian history. Are you confused? Are you addressing someone else?

I'm not even a "Left Communist"! I don't know who you're debating or what you think I'm saying but I'm very confused. Also I don't think you're using the word "Idealist" properly.



You may be economically illiterate and hold the position that the appropiation of surplus value anywhere other than directly into the workers pocket means capitalism. That's what the "state capitalist," hogwash theory relies on. But that economic analyses is non marxian. If the surplus isn't invested for the purpose of profiting off of a privately owned institution, it's not capitalism. Private ownership was illegal in Russia. Thus it wasn't capitalism, but a revolutionary dictatorship in the middle of capitalist countries which had to match them in production so they couldn't be invaded. Nobody in Russia would of been okay with the reintroduction of Czarism, because the workers state was qualitatively different in their appropiation of the surplus value in the economy.What? Again, you're arguing against nobody. I don't know what this "Economic illiterate" you're talking about but I have neither endorsed nor denied a theory of state capitalism here, or said workers wanted to "reintroduce Czarism". I'm really confused as to where your argument is coming from.

Though it should be said, the Chinese experience clearly shows how State assets can become the capital of wealthy bureaucrats. My position is that whether or not you live in a Capitalist society depends on the way in which a worker is alienated from the means of production, not strictly whether or not the MoP is private or public. Again, I'm not saying that's what happened or not in Russia in 1917, because you seem to be very confused, or building a VERY elaborate strawman that in no way represents anything I have explicitly or implicitly stated.


Some people here seem to think that just because the state is taken by a new group of people and changes its designation that is enough to say that the state collapsed. It isn't.

For instance, did the Tzarist state really collapsed after the October Revolution? According to Lenin himself, it didn't, as the soviets merely "slightly anointed (it) with soviet oil".

The Bolsheviks ended up ignoring the most important lesson of the Paris Commune according to Marx: the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.Ironically, Lenin gives a great emphasis to this lesson in his work "The State and Revolution".

When I said that the "Tzarist state collapsed", I meant it a sense that was analogous to the "collapse" of the USSR which occurred when the CPSU failed to win elections in 1991 and lost its ability to function as a coherent whole. In both cases the old regime had lost legitimacy on the street, and this left a sizable power vacuum that the incoming rulers struggled for a few years to fill due to the sheer size of Russia/Central Asia and the diversity of its inhabitants.

It's not just that the State "changed hands" in 1917 - once the State "changed hands" when the Bolsheviks won a sizable majority the functional control of the state was greatly reduced as various local military leaders, overlords, nobles and other assorted reactionaries seized power over various mechanisms of the state in their local area, leading to the very bloody civil war. If the Russian revolution was so easy as taking over a fully functioning state with an electoral victory, there wouldn't really have been a civil war, no?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

The collapse of the USSR was simply the national bureaucracies of the different republics seizing autonomy from Moscow. No different to what happened in the collapse of Austria-Hungary or other multiethnic empires.

The parallel with AH is a good one IMO, although AH faced slightly stronger external pressures, what with a massing Italian army to their Southwest trying every few months to climb their way up the alps and into Vienna.

[Blake's Baby]

You can quibble over terminology. My point remains: why was there a rapid transformation in the Soviet State, and indeed all Eastern Bloc countries, in the years between 1989-1991? You keep emphasizing sameness with the West, even calling state capitalism "bourgeois capitalism," but we see no massive and sudden transformations in state property holdings, and state personnel, in the West during this period. Why?

:laugh:

Do you remember the 1970s and '80s in Britain? It doesn't seem like you do.

Steel, coal, shipyards, automotive factories, telecommunications, gas, electricity and water all sold to the private sector. Outsourcing of municipal services (street cleaning etc). In the 1990s, gradual privatisation of health and education services. Literally, in 20 years millions of state-sector jobs lost.

Britain started restructuring in the late 1970s; Thatcher was the first elected 'free-market' leader (after Pinochet, who began the free-market crusade in the early 1970s), and other Western nations quickly followed.

The Soviet Bloc did not restructure. Perestroika was too little too late and as a result the Soviet Union was unable to respond to the changed economic climate. Thus by the late 1980s it was economically collapsing. If it had begun its economic reforms in let's say 1972, instead of the 'stagnation' under Brezhnev, it might perhaps still be around now, like China is, as a rampant capitalist county with a 'communist' party in power, instead of a banana-republic of oil-oligarchs and ex-assassins

[Tim Cornelis]

@Blake's Baby
I don't think that focusing on the correlation of liberalisation around the world has any explanatory power of itself. If we were to apply to scientific method we see that it's not really a hypothesis because it merely points to a correlation of phenomena, but no causal relation is established or even hypothesised.

I will try to reproduce a synopsis of the theory about the crisis of absolute over-accumulation as described in 'The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience' by Paresh Chattopadhyay.

The demise of the Soviet Union can perhaps be understood in terms of capital accumulation. There are two forms of capital accumulation, based on the present methods of production and the revolutionising of the methods of production. If there is no revolutionising of the methods of production, the volume of surplus value, for the purpose of accumulation of capital, requires an increase in the rate of exploitation through an extension of the working day or an increase in the volume of available labour-power deployed (e.g., through means of accumulation by dispossession, primitive accumulation, lower unemployment, or, for example in the instance of Saudi Arabia recently, by utilising women). Absolute over-accumulation of capital occurs when exploitable labour power is insufficient relative to growth of capital. Absolute over-accumulation of capital would, supposedly, be associated with underproduction of commodities.

The rapid industrialisation involved drawing a labour supply from the peasantry as well as natural resources while the methods of production were not revolutionised. From 1928 onwards, mass unemployment had curtailed and reversed in a labour shortage. To increase the volume of surplus value for the accumulation of capital, the working week was extended as was labour productivity, intensity, and discipline. Likewise, women were increasingly employed in wage-labour (which was in part due to the fact that real wages were low, and thence the requirement for multiple sources of income in households).


Workers' living standards declined sharply from 1928 to 1933 by at least half, to a bare subsistence level. Part of this was the disastrous outcome of agricultural Collectivization, but part of it was deliberate policy: to finance the forced industrialization of the First Five-Year Plan (1928-1932) by squeezing the workers with simultaneous pay-cuts and production speed-ups. After 1933, living standards began to recover, but only precariously. For example, by 1937, wages had climbed back to 60% of the 1928 level. Nearly all investment was directed to heavy industry and weapons, rather than consumer goods for working families. Despite a shortage of workers for new industrial projects, fierce repression of independent union activity ensured that wages would remain low.

http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/labor-discip.html

There was a constant downward trend in the growth rates of the USSR from 1937 onwards. The growth rate and reproduction of the Soviet economy was sustained by the “massive quantitative mobilization of productive resources” (p. 68, The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience) as well as the large volume of available labour-power. The rate of growth for constant capital was many fold that of the growth of living labour, “there was no corresponding growth in the productivity of social labour.” (p. 77, The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience). There was spurt of growth of the labour productivity through revolutionising the methods of production. That the methods of production, fixed capital, were notoriously and comparatively outdated and old could be seen as an affirmation or indication of the crisis of absolute over-accumulation. Invention, innovation, diffusion, and incremental improvements were falling or consistently low (p. 73, The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience). Gorbachev noted that “the structure of our production remained unchanged and no longer corresponded to the exigencies of scientific and technological progress.” (p.74, The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience)

The economic stagnation and eventual economic decline could thus be seen as the crisis of absolute over-accumulation. In an effort to correct this, the management of capital had to re-invent itself. The various reforms implemented under the rule of subsequent Soviet dictators, particularly the Liberman reforms and the reforms of the Gorbachev era, (market-oriented reforms) were intended to make capital's management more efficient. The result of political and economic liberalisation in the USSR and its satellite states was that, in the face of relaxed repression of the working class, these workers undertook strike actions and demonstrations to demand civil liberties and democratic elections. Hence, there was not only an economic process of liberalisation, there was likewise a political turnover. The far-reaching liberalisation as spurred by Gorbachev were consolidated and further advanced by electoral democratisation which launched right-wingers to power. This constituted the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in contrast to China where the Communist Party implemented economic liberalisation but managed to hold unto power as the relaxing of repression was less considerable than in the USSR.

I don't know in how far this narrative is accurate, but it sounds plausible.

Incidentally, the parallels between the over-accumulation of capital in the USSR and the situation in the Gulf states is interesting. The economies of the Gulf states are largely sustained by an influx of exploitable labour-power of women on the one hand and migrant workers on the other as well as abundant natural resources. I doubt there the methods of production are being sufficiently revolutionised (which would require empirical research). The methods of production have been revolutionised insofar the tourist sector has developed rapidly. But it'll be interesting to see how fast the economies come crashing down when the migrant workers begin demanding decent workers' rights and if the Gulf States fail to sufficiently revolutionise the methods of production.

[RedMaterialist]

Do you remember the 1970s and '80s in Britain? It doesn't seem like you do.

Steel, coal, shipyards, automotive factories, telecommunications, gas, electricity and water all sold to the private sector. Outsourcing of municipal services (street cleaning etc). In the 1990s, gradual privatisation of health and education services. Literally, in 20 years millions of state-sector jobs lost.



In other words, in Britain the working class was stripped of its power to organize effectively against the capitalist class. Workers were forced to return to the labor market and compete against themselves for jobs. And this made Britain (and other countries) more efficient in the world market, thus causing the SU, which retained its public sector work force, to collapse.



This implies that public workers are lazy and less productive than private sector workers, which, by the way, Margaret Thatcher would agree with.

It would be more accurate to say that privatized workers are more profitable for capitalists than public sector workers, primarily because of lower pay and fewer benefits. The Soviet Union ended up with a lower share of the surplus value of the world economy. One statistic shows the SU going from about a 15% share of the world market in 1970 to less than 5% in 1990.

In effect, capital was withdrawn from the Soviet Union. It was in the position of a company with an entirely unionized work force trying to compete in a non-unionized industry.

But, if the SU was a capitalist enterprise then why did it not just begin to privatize, and fire millions of workers, forcing them to compete on the labor market? Were Soviet bourgeois economists so stupid that they could not see what was happening in Britain and the US? These were the people who defeated Hitler, put the first man in space, and forced the US into a standoff in the Cold War.

And what about Germany and the rest of Western Europe? They are probably the most unionized countries in the world. Their economies are heavily regulated with enormous public welfare programs. By your argument Germany should have collapsed twenty years ago. Instead, it was able to absorb the entire East German economy. And Sweden, with public employment at about 1/3 of the work force, should have collapsed a long time ago.

Why are privatized economies more efficient than public economies, if indeed they are? Marx might call it the fetishism of privatization. In fact, privatizing is a huge fetish in the US.

[Five Year Plan]

:laugh:

Do you remember the 1970s and '80s in Britain? It doesn't seem like you do.


Talk about pretentiousness. You honestly think, in light of the content of my posts in this thread so far, that I am unaware of privatization initiatives that have occurred globally since the 1970s? Not to mention the struggles in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s?


Steel, coal, shipyards, automotive factories, telecommunications, gas, electricity and water all sold to the private sector. Outsourcing of municipal services (street cleaning etc). In the 1990s, gradual privatisation of health and education services. Literally, in 20 years millions of state-sector jobs lost.

Britain started restructuring in the late 1970s; Thatcher was the first elected 'free-market' leader (after Pinochet, who began the free-market crusade in the early 1970s), and other Western nations quickly followed.

The Soviet Bloc did not restructure. Perestroika was too little too late and as a result the Soviet Union was unable to respond to the changed economic climate. Thus by the late 1980s it was economically collapsing. If it had begun its economic reforms in let's say 1972, instead of the 'stagnation' under Brezhnev, it might perhaps still be around now, like China is, as a rampant capitalist county with a 'communist' party in power, instead of a banana-republic of oil-oligarchs and ex-assassinsHere's the problem with this parallel I keep hearing over and over again in this thread. You keep wanting to draw these air-tight parallels between privatization in the Eastern bloc and privatization in the Western capitalist states. As Tim notes above, this has problems.

Why would privatization be a pressing issue in the West? Because the bourgeoisie was pressing the government to shed public services so they might be sold at a profit by capitalist businesses in order to boost rates of growth. This is why radical leftists of all stripes opposed these privatization efforts.

What about in the Eastern bloc? Was the position to take in regards to Soviet privatization strict opposition, as I am guessing you thought it would have been in Britain in the 1980s? Well, according to you, these state enterprises were already operating capitalistically. So what good would opposition to privatization do? I would like clarification from all of you on this issue, and specifically on what your political program would have been in the USSR in the 1980s regarding state ownership of the means or production and how it might have differed from your approach to the neoliberal privatization occurring throughout the West.

We are running up against an obvious problem here that keeps getting buried under the maddening rush to just declare everything capitalist, and everything the same. In the West, privatization was necessary "restructuring" precisely because state enterprises were not operating capitalistically, but instead were barriers to capitalism that needed to be reformed away. In the East, though, your argument was that there was state capitalism in which state enterprises were operating capitalistically.

I'm not saying that your assessment of the East as state capitalist is wrong. I'm saying that if you want to explain the dissolution of the USSR from a left-communist perspective, you need to grapple with the need to be sensitive to the ways that the state-economic relations differed considerably in both the West and the Eastern bloc countries, and how these major differences affect the way we should understand what happened in 1989-1991.

That's a starting point. I'm just surprised that left-coms on this thread have zero interest in acknowledging it as such.

[Blake's Baby]

Germany nearly did collapse 20 years ago, as it tried to absorb the East. But unions don't matter for shit. The German workforce has been losing money since 1971. In Germany, the social partnership meant massive long-term wage-cuts. But German industry is about twice as efficient as British industry - they've got a certain lee-way because of that. Russian industry was really inefficient, compared to Britain let alone Germany. And Sweden with 1/3 population employed by the state? Means nothing (still state capitalism of course); Russia had very close to 100% employed by the state; but what were Swedish wage levels like? How efficient was Swedish capitalism? Britain's biggest employer is still the National Health Service, and we're very far down the road of neo-liberal reforms and 'flexible' labour.

Capitalism basically has two economic policies - spend, as a Keynesian attempt to stimulate growth (in effect, mortgage future generations), or keep a tight money supply and rely on 'entrepreneurs' who will 'innovate' the country out of a recession (which tends to mean, attack wages and living conditions now).

Neither policy works. One was tried in the Soviet Union, and Western Europe until the 1970s. Then Western Europe started to switch to the other policy, in response to the economic crisis.

I'm not a rich man, much of my early research into economics comes from second-hand books, which are cheaper than new ones, but of course, also older. Because of this, when I was researching economics 20 years ago, much of the stuff I was reading was written in the 1960s - at the height of neo-Keynesianism. Keeping a tight monetary policy was at that time completely discredited. No serious economist (ie, not including Milton Friedman) believed that keeping a tight monetary supply would be anything other than a recipe for disaster.

But, of course, what happened in the 1970s was a disaster anyway, a Keynesian disaster; that's when monetarism was re-adopted as a policy. Of course, it didn't cure anything any more than it had in 1929. But that doesn't matter. We're communists. It's not our job to advise capitalists about the best methods for running capitalism.


... I am guessing ...

As is evident, comrade.



...We are running up against an obvious problem here that keeps getting buried under the maddening rush to just declare everything capitalist, and everything the same. In the West, privatization was necessary "restructuring" precisely because state enterprises were not operating capitalistically, but instead were barriers to capitalism that needed to be reformed away. In the East, though, your argument was that there was state capitalism in which state enterprises were operating capitalistically...

No, it was all capitalism. Just some capitalism is more efficient than other capitalism. Screw the workers for everything you can get out of them is what capitalism wants to do, but it has to provide some social safety-net in order to preserve the peace. How much (or rather, little) it can get away with is the calculation it has to make. Different factions of the bourgeoisie see that differently.


...I'm not saying that your assessment of the East as state capitalist is wrong. I'm saying that if you want to explain the dissolution of the USSR from a left-communist perspective, you need to grapple with the need to be sensitive to the ways that the state-economic relations differed considerably in both the West and the Eastern bloc countries, and how these major differences affect the way we should understand what happened in 1989-1991.

That's a starting point. I'm just surprised that left-coms on this thread have zero interest in acknowledging it as such.

No, the starting point is the world crisis that emerged at the end of the 1960s. You can't understand the fall of the Soviet Union without understanding what led up to it. How can you possibly understand any happening in the world if you refuse to put in context?

[Five Year Plan]

Germany nearly did collapse 20 years ago, as it tried to absorb the East. But unions don't matter for shit. The German workforce has been losing money since 1971. In Germany, the social partnership meant massive long-term wage-cuts. But German industry is about twice as efficient as British industry - they've got a certain lee-way because of that. Russian industry was really inefficient, compared to Britain let alone Germany. And Sweden with 1/3 population employed by the state? Means nothing (still state capitalism of course); Russia had very close to 100% employed by the state; but what were Swedish wage levels like? How efficient was Swedish capitalism? Britain's biggest employer is still the National Health Service, and we're very far down the road of neo-liberal reforms and 'flexible' labour.

Capitalism basically has two economic policies - spend, as a Keynesian attempt to stimulate growth (in effect, mortgage future generations), or keep a tight money supply and rely on 'entrepreneurs' who will 'innovate' the country out of a recession (which tends to mean, attack wages and living conditions now).

Neither policy works. One was tried in the Soviet Union, and Western Europe until the 1970s. Then Western Europe started to switch to the other policy, in response to the economic crisis.

I'm not a rich man, much of my early research into economics comes from second-hand books, which are cheaper than new ones, but of course, also older. Because of this, when I was researching economics 20 years ago, much of the stuff I was reading was written in the 1960s - at the height of neo-Keynesianism. Keeping a tight monetary policy was at that time completely discredited. No serious economist (ie, not including Milton Friedman) believed that keeping a tight monetary supply would be anything other than a recipe for disaster.

But, of course, what happened in the 1970s was a disaster anyway, a Keynesian disaster; that's when monetarism was re-adopted as a policy. Of course, it didn't cure anything any more than it had in 1929. But that doesn't matter. We're communists. It's not our job to advise capitalists about the best methods for running capitalism.



As is evident, comrade.




No, it was all capitalism. Just some capitalism is more efficient than other capitalism. Screw the workers for everything you can get out of them is what capitalism wants to do, but it has to provide some social safety-net in order to preserve the peace. How much (or rather, little) it can get away with is the calculation it has to make. Different factions of the bourgeoisie see that differently.



No, the starting point is the world crisis that emerged at the end of the 1960s. You can't understand the fall of the Soviet Union without understanding what led up to it. How can you possibly understand any happening in the world if you refuse to put in context?

You are refusing to answer simple questions, Blake, then ridiculing the fact that your unwillingness to answer them is leading me to have to guess what your answers would be. You can clarify this once and for all: should the efforts of neoliberal privatization of state services occurring throughout the 1970s to the present day be opposed? Should Bechtel be opposed when it tries to snatch up municipal water systems, to give just one of many possible examples? Were the British workers opposing privatization just morons who couldn't understand that their services were already being provided capitalistically through the state? Is your position on this Western privatization the same as, or different from, the position you would have taken as a worker in regards to state property in the Soviet Union in the 1980s and early 1990s?

[RedMaterialist]

Britain's biggest employer is still the National Health Service, and we're very far down the road of neo-liberal reforms and 'flexible' labour.

So, this means Britain is next up for collapse of the state?

Or do you mean, we're not very far down the neo-liberal road?

[Blake's Baby]

You are refusing to answer simple questions, Blake, then ridiculing the fact that your unwillingness to answer them is leading me to have to guess what your answers would be...

You are refusing to ask questions that don't already contain your own answers.

"Why would privatization be a pressing issue in the West? Because the bourgeoisie was pressing the government to shed public services so they might be sold at a profit by capitalist businesses in order to boost rates of growth. This is why radical leftists of all stripes opposed these privatization efforts.

What about in the Eastern bloc? Was the position to take in regards to Soviet privatization strict opposition, as I am guessing you thought it would have been in Britain in the 1980s? Well, according to you, these state enterprises were already operating capitalistically. So what good would opposition to privatization do? I would like clarification from all of you on this issue, and specifically on what your political program would have been in the USSR in the 1980s regarding state ownership of the means or production and how it might have differed from your approach to the neoliberal privatization occurring throughout the West."

No, and no, not all 'leftists of whatever stripe' opposed privatisation as such. What the Left Communists, and Council Communists, and most of the Anarchists, and most of the Impossiblists, were busy opposing was attacks on the social wage; whether these attacks were as a result of privatisation or not. Sometimes, privatisation is used to attack the workers' conditions; sometimes the workers' conditions are attacked through nationalisation.

In the 1980s, I personally was a teenage Trotskyist; so my view of what should have happened then is rather different to what I think now; but had I these positions then, I would have been massively critical of the campaigns to 'save' nationalised industry, as I am now any calls to re-nationalise the railways (for example).

"In the West, privatization was necessary "restructuring" precisely because state enterprises were not operating capitalistically, but instead were barriers to capitalism that needed to be reformed away. In the East, though, your argument was that there was state capitalism in which state enterprises were operating capitalistically."

Not at all, both West and East were operating capitalistically. But the state enterprises (West and East) tended to be less efficient than private enterprises in the West especially. It's not that they were 'socialism' - they were just rubbish capitalism. You insist on thinking that they have to be one or the other - socialist or capitalist. They were capitalist. Just the most ridiculous, pointless, inefficient, and generally useless bits of the capitalist economy.


...You can clarify this once and for all: should the efforts of neoliberal privatization of state services occurring throughout the 1970s to the present day be opposed? Should Bechtel be opposed when it tries to snatch up municipal water systems, to give just one of many possible examples? Were the British workers opposing privatization just morons who couldn't understand that their services were already being provided capitalistically through the state? Is your position on this Western privatization the same as, or different from, the position you would have taken as a worker in regards to state property in the Soviet Union in the 1980s and early 1990s?

My position is that state property as such is not a gain for the working class. So, no, 'privatisation' as such is not something to be opposed, what is to opposed is an attack on the conditions of the working class. Often, the two go together. But if nationalising a company (eg, the banks in the UK that were taken under state control) is a manoeuvre to attack workers' conditions, that should be opposed as well.


So, this means Britain is next up for collapse of the state?

Or do you mean, we're not very far down the neo-liberal road?

I'm actually not sure you've understood anything you've read here.

Britain has the most deregulated labour market in Western Europe. It savagely attacked working conditions early and hard (from the 1970s, under governments 'right and left'). However, it started from a less strong base than German capitalism, and still has some way to go to reach German levels of efficiency. Germany has a slightly more generous welfare system, but lower wages overall (compared to prices). Germany, because it was in a less dangerous position to start with (even taking into account the absorption of the East, which didn't sit well with German capital for quite some time, hence the wage differentials even after unification, massive destruction of the East's industrial capacity, etc) has been able to preserve the social peace more easily than Britain - but even Germany is far from being a capitalist ideal. Go to the former DDR - parts of it are an industrial wasteland.

[Five Year Plan]

No, and no, not all 'leftists of whatever stripe' opposed privatisation as such. What the Left Communists, and Council Communists, and most of the Anarchists, and most of the Impossiblists, were busy opposing was attacks on the social wage; whether these attacks were as a result of privatisation or not. Sometimes, privatisation is used to attack the workers' conditions; sometimes the workers' conditions are attacked through nationalisation.

Your claim that the meaning of privatization is context-dependent is exactly the point I am making, Blake's Baby. I am puzzled that you fail to see this.

It is not a convincing argument to say, as you and others have basically done, "Well, there was privatization in the West from the 1970s onward in the West, and it was capitalist. And there was massive privatization in the Eastern bloc from 1989-1991 revolutions, and it was capitalist. So it all is just the same thing: privatization in response to failing capitalism." Such an argument presupposes "privatization as such" by collapsing together all the privatization taking place under capitalist societies in the latter part of the twentieth century.

Even if we are on board with the idea that both Western neoliberalism and Eastern-bloc revolutions represented examples of failing capitalism, and that rounds of privatization, some more comprehensive than others, resulted from this failure, we still get no sense of the differences in timing and scale. Any discussion of the dissolution of the USSR, from any perspective, would have to explain why privatization occurred in the USSR and its satellites almost entirely in a several-years time span, and encompassed virtually all of the economy, whereas privatization has been occurring in a markedly different way in Western societies.

As you note, neoliberal privatization in the West has by and large represented an attack on the social wage, fought for by workers, made possible by Western imperialism in the post-war period. Privatization in the East was far more comprehensive, eliminating not only aspects of the economy that might have been comparable to public social services provided either at a cost or at a loss, but also capitalist state activities intended to accumulate.

Throwing your hands up and saying, "It's all capitalist!" is NOT an analysis, much less a left-communist one. It doesn't explain why bureaucrats in the USSR and other Eastern bloc countries would want to privatize not only the "social-wage" aspects of their economy, but also the capital-accumulating industries as well.

[Blake's Baby]

Your claim that the meaning of privatization is context-dependent is exactly the point I am making, Blake's Baby. I am puzzled that you fail to see this.

It is not a convincing argument to say, as you and others have basically done, "Well, there was privatization in the West from the 1970s onward in the West, and it was capitalist. And there was massive privatization in the Eastern bloc from 1989-1991 revolutions, and it was capitalist. So it all is just the same thing: privatization in response to failing capitalism." Such an argument presupposes "privatization as such" by collapsing together all the privatization taking place under capitalist societies in the latter part of the twentieth century...

... as a response to the economic crisis which broke out in the late 1960s - yes, indeed. One phenomenon, handled at different speeds (and more or less ineptly) by different governments.


...Even if we are on board with the idea that both Western neoliberalism and Eastern-bloc revolutions represented examples of failing capitalism, and that rounds of privatization, some more comprehensive than others, resulted from this failure, we still get no sense of the differences in timing and scale...

'Privatisation' isn't 'failing capitalism', it's a response to failing capitalism. It's a tactic for dealing with it. As for timing ans scale, governmetns decided how to administer the economies of their territories in the ways they a) were able and b) thought sensible. The government is there to preserve national capital (Engels); its policy is the policy considered best for national capital, whether that policy is decided in Moscow or London or Beijing or Bonn or Havana is not the issue.


... Any discussion of the dissolution of the USSR, from any perspective, would have to explain why privatization occurred in the USSR and its satellites almost entirely in a several-years time span, and encompassed virtually all of the economy, whereas privatization has been occurring in a markedly different way in Western societies...

But I already explained that several times. The West, starting with Chile, began the 'neoliberal experiment' early and did it relatively slowly. Like coming in to land i a relatively controlled fashion. In the Eastern Bloc it was more like a crash-dive.


...As you note, neoliberal privatization in the West has by and large represented an attack on the social wage, fought for by workers, made possible by Western imperialism in the post-war period. Privatization in the East was far more comprehensive, eliminating not only aspects of the economy that might have been comparable to public social services provided either at a cost or at a loss, but also capitalist state activities intended to accumulate.

Throwing your hands up and saying, "It's all capitalist!" is NOT an analysis, much less a left-communist one. It doesn't explain why bureaucrats in the USSR and other Eastern bloc countries would want to privatize not only the "social-wage" aspects of their economy, but also the capital-accumulating industries as well.

Because state control of the economy is not very efficient. It's useful for some things but retards others. If you can pull off the trick of pretending national capital being administered by the state is a gain for the working class, you can unfortunately fool people for decades into thinking that capitalist exploitation is a somehow a gain, for example. But it's relatively bad at naked accumulation.

[Old Bolshie]

There was a soviet government, if you don't know what that is then you should read a book about history.

And since when the soviet government was a workers government?


When I said that the "Tzarist state collapsed", I meant it a sense that was analogous to the "collapse" of the USSR which occurred when the CPSU failed to win elections in 1991 and lost its ability to function as a coherent whole. In both cases the old regime had lost legitimacy on the street, and this left a sizable power vacuum that the incoming rulers struggled for a few years to fill due to the sheer size of Russia/Central Asia and the diversity of its inhabitants.What lost its legitimacy was not the state but the group of people who controlled the state which in this case was the CPSU.


It's not just that the State "changed hands" in 1917 - once the State "changed hands" when the Bolsheviks won a sizable majority the functional control of the state was greatly reduced as various local military leaders, overlords, nobles and other assorted reactionaries seized power over various mechanisms of the state in their local area, leading to the very bloody civil war. If the Russian revolution was so easy as taking over a fully functioning state with an electoral victory, there wouldn't really have been a civil war, no?


Why it couldn't have been a civil war over the control of the Russian state like it happen after all?

[RedMaterialist]

Britain has the most deregulated labour market in Western Europe. It savagely attacked working conditions early and hard (from the 1970s, under governments 'right and left'). However, it started from a less strong base than German capitalism,

You just said the biggest employer in Britain is the state health program and that too much public sector employment is what destroyed the Soviet state. And that the German state almost collapsed in 1990. You need to try and settle on at least one consistent theory. Your problem is that you are trying to analyze the collapse the of the SU in economic terms rather than class terms.

[Blake's Baby]

You just said the biggest employer in Britain is the state health program and that too much public sector employment is what destroyed the Soviet state...

No I didn't.

Yes, the NHS is the largest employer in Britain.

I didn't say 'too much public sector employment is what destroyed the Soviet state' though.

The Soviet State's inability to deal with the effects of the economic crisis are what provoked its own bureaucracy to re-organise it in such spectacular fashion.


... And that the German state almost collapsed in 1990...

Yes indeed.


... You need to try and settle on at least one consistent theory. Your problem is that you are trying to analyze the collapse the of the SU in economic terms rather than class terms.

Ah, I need to settle on a consistent theory, as long as it's not consistent Marxism, you mean? It's the economy that is in the end the determining factor.

[Five Year Plan]

... as a response to the economic crisis which broke out in the late 1960s - yes, indeed. One phenomenon, handled at different speeds (and more or less ineptly) by different governments.

'Privatisation' isn't 'failing capitalism', it's a response to failing capitalism. It's a tactic for dealing with it. As for timing ans scale, governmetns decided how to administer the economies of their territories in the ways they a) were able and b) thought sensible. The government is there to preserve national capital (Engels); its policy is the policy considered best for national capital, whether that policy is decided in Moscow or London or Beijing or Bonn or Havana is not the issue.

There's no disagreement here. The Soviet Union was prone to crisis. So was Western capitalism. Privatization in both cases were a response to failing capitalism, but privatization took place in very different ways, and affected "nationalized property" in different ways. This takes us back to the point I agreed with you on earlier, which you seem to be forgetting with your sweeping proclamations about privatization being "a response to failing capitalism": to understand any act of privatization (or nationalization), that act has to be viewed in context.

Some acts of nationalization are steps forward in the sense that they are the result of workers forcing the state to take progressive measures aimed at increasing what you earlier called a "social wage" (social security, disability insurance, and state-subsidized single-payer healthcare). Others are the state proactively attempting to suppress progress the workers have already made, and act as net deductions against workers' power. Here I am referring to the nationalizations that occurred in various industries after World War II in the Eastern bloc, which nationalization was used by bureaucrats as a wedge to take back the factories from workers and re-instituted capitalist discipline and accumulation.

In the case of the Soviet Union's dissolution, what needs to be explained isn't the elimination of the first kind of nationalization, which mark some type of gain by workers, and characterizes the neoliberal onslaught in the West. What needs to be explained is the elimination of the second type, the re-privatization of industries that were held by the state for purposes of accumulation.

I think you actually begin to hint at the reason here, though in a way that is still rather vague:


Because state control of the economy is not very efficient. It's useful for some things but retards others.But then you pull back into a formulation that wants to pretend that capitalism is capitalism, and that there are no differences in types:


If you can pull off the trick of pretending national capital being administered by the state is a gain for the working class, you can unfortunately fool people for decades into thinking that capitalist exploitation is a somehow a gain, for example. But it's relatively bad at naked accumulation.Of course capitalism itself, whether nationalized or not, isn't a gain for the working class. Still, I would argue that a totally nationalized economy necessitates concessions to the working class that are not constitutive of capitalism and should be defended, along with a nationalized property form whose content is transformed by a workers' revolution.

But this thread isn't about my opinion. It's about how just waving your hands in the air and declaring everything to be capitalist isn't an "analysis," left-com or otherwise, about the dissolution of the USSR.

[RedMaterialist]

You said the failure of the soviet capitalists to privatize is what caused the collapse of the soviet capitalist state.

And yet, the failure of the british to privatize the national health system, its biggest employer, has not seemed to have had much effect on the stability of the british capitalist state.

[Blake's Baby]

There's no disagreement here. The Soviet Union was prone to crisis. So was Western capitalism. Privatization in both cases were a response to failing capitalism, but privatization took place in very different ways, and affected "nationalized property" in different ways. This takes us back to the point I agreed with you on earlier, which you seem to be forgetting with your sweeping proclamations about privatization being "a response to failing capitalism": to understand any act of privatization (or nationalization), that act has to be viewed in context.

Some acts of nationalization are steps forward in the sense that they are the result of workers forcing the state to take progressive measures aimed at increasing what you earlier called a "social wage" (social security, disability insurance, and state-subsidized single-payer healthcare). Others are the state proactively attempting to suppress progress the workers have already made, and act as net deductions against workers' power. Here I am referring to the nationalizations that occurred in various industries after World War II in the Eastern bloc, which nationalization was used by bureaucrats as a wedge to take back the factories from workers and re-instituted capitalist discipline and accumulation.

In the case of the Soviet Union's dissolution, what needs to be explained isn't the elimination of the first kind of nationalization, which mark some type of gain by workers, and characterizes the neoliberal onslaught in the West. What needs to be explained is the elimination of the second type, the re-privatization of industries that were held by the state for purposes of accumulation.

I think you actually begin to hint at the reason here, though in a way that is still rather vague:

But then you pull back into a formulation that wants to pretend that capitalism is capitalism, and that there are no differences in types:

Of course capitalism itself, whether nationalized or not, isn't a gain for the working class. Still, I would argue that a totally nationalized economy necessitates concessions to the working class that are not constitutive of capitalism and should be defended, along with a nationalized property form whose content is transformed by a workers' revolution.

But this thread isn't about my opinion. It's about how just waving your hands in the air and declaring everything to be capitalist isn't an "analysis," left-com or otherwise, about the dissolution of the USSR.

But everything is capitalist. We've been living in a capitalist world for more than a century. And I agree with you when you say capitalism, nationalised or not, isn't a gain for the working class; but not when you then disagree with yourself and say it is.

I don't even know what specific question you're asking any more. Why did capitalist restructuring in the East look different to the West? Because the forms capitalism had taken were different, so the problems faced by the different governments were different and because the estimations of what could and should be done were different, so the policies pursued (no matter how succesful they may have been) were also different.

[Blake's Baby]

You said the failure of the soviet capitalists to privatize is what caused the collapse of the soviet capitalist state...

No, I don't think I did. Care to quote me?


And yet, the failure of the british to privatize the national health system, its biggest employer, has not seemed to have had much effect on the stability of the british capitalist state.

Yeah, the number of state employees in the UK (less than 10% of population) is really comparable to the number of state employees in the USSR (more than 70%).

That would imply that the UK should be about ten times as stable as the USSR. Which might be about right.

But that's not what I said.

I said that restructuring was a response to the crisis. Different restructuring might have worked - temporarily; different policies altogether might have worked - temporarily.

The economic crisis which broke out in the late 1960s required governments to oversee economic restructuring. Different governments did it at different times, and in different ways. Some were more successful than others. The government of the USSR was particularly inept (mostly, by delaying any discussion of restructuring until 1985, when many of the Western governments had begun years before) and as a result caused its own state to collapse. Many however probably didn't care as they privatised the economy for their own benefit anyway.

[Five Year Plan]

But everything is capitalist. We've been living in a capitalist world for more than a century.

The capitalist mode of production is a diverse and complex economic system, and not everything within a capitalist society is "capitalism." To explain the dissolution of the USSR by saying only it was capitalist makes no sense. The USA is also capitalist, yet the union didn't dissolve. You are confusing the potential starting point of an analysis with the analysis itself.


And I agree with you when you say capitalism, nationalised or not, isn't a gain for the working class; but not when you then disagree with yourself and say it is.

I never said that nationalized capitalism was a gain for the working class. I said it required the state to adopt policies not directly constitutive of capitalist processes, but which were gains for the working class, like a higher level of employment (not full employment in practice, despite what Stalinists might maintain) and universal health care (which is also a gain for workers under western capitalist states, and should be defended).


I don't even know what specific question you're asking any more. Why did capitalist restructuring in the East look different to the West? Because the forms capitalism had taken were different, so the problems faced by the different governments were different and because the estimations of what could and should be done were different, so the policies pursued (no matter how succesful they may have been) were also different.

Thank you for acknowledging this. At one level, yes, capitalism is capitalism and "everything is capitalist," as you said earlier. On a more concrete level, not all capitalisms are created equal. Explaining the dissolution of a union of presumed capitalist states, along with a dramatic overhaul in their governing regimes and in how the state did (or did not) hold property, requires more than just saying the societies were capitalist. That has been my point throughout this thread. And all my questions to you were geared toward hastening this realization.

[Blake's Baby]

The capitalist mode of production is a diverse and complex economic system, and not everything within a capitalist society is "capitalism." To explain the dissolution of the USSR by saying only it was capitalist makes no sense...

OK, if you can show where I said 'the USSR fell apart because it was capitalist' then you win the internet. If you can't, then you have to go back to school and take some comprehension exams.

Until you take the discussion seriously, I don't see any further reason to engage with you.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Blake's Baby is clearly arguing that the USSR failed because it failed to adapt to the changing market, not that it failed because it was Capitalist. Shit I skimmed his posts and I got that.

[Blake's Baby]

Thanks SCM; I'm glad that it's possible to glean what I meant from what I said (which is after all the point of communication); I was beginning to think that I was really bad at explaining myself, but you seem to have grasped it pretty well (and honestly, I didn't think it was a very complicated position).

[RedMaterialist]

Blake's Baby is clearly arguing that the USSR failed because it failed to adapt to the changing market, not that it failed because it was Capitalist. Shit I skimmed his posts and I got that.

It seems pretty clear that he said the soviet capitalists failed because they failed to privatize, "adapt to the changing market."

[RedMaterialist]

Thanks SCM; I'm glad that it's possible to glean what I meant from what I said (which is after all the point of communication); I was beginning to think that I was really bad at explaining myself, but you seem to have grasped it pretty well (and honestly, I didn't think it was a very complicated position).


Your claim is that soviet capitalism collapsed because it did not "restructure" after the economic crisis of the late 60s, whereas western capitalism did restructure and survived the crisis.

First, you should offer some evidence, with sources, of your claim:

1. What was the total percentage of government spending of GDP for soviet capitalism. According to a brief look at google, wiki, etc, the figure for the soviet union is about 19-21 % from 1970-1990; for Britain the figure is around 38-40%

2. What was the percentage of government workers of total workers. For Britain it was, roughly, 20-23 %. I have yet to find a similar number for soviet capitalism.

[Blake's Baby]

It seems pretty clear that he said the soviet capitalists failed because they failed to privatize, "adapt to the changing market."

No, I think it's pretty clear that I said that the Soviet Union failed because it didn't do anything.


..
Britain started restructuring in the late 1970s; Thatcher was the first elected 'free-market' leader (after Pinochet, who began the free-market crusade in the early 1970s), and other Western nations quickly followed.

The Soviet Bloc did not restructure. Perestroika was too little too late and as a result the Soviet Union was unable to respond to the changed economic climate...


... Russian industry was really inefficient, compared to Britain let alone Germany...

Capitalism basically has two economic policies - spend, as a Keynesian attempt to stimulate growth (in effect, mortgage future generations), or keep a tight money supply and rely on 'entrepreneurs' who will 'innovate' the country out of a recession (which tends to mean, attack wages and living conditions now).

Neither policy works. One was tried in the Soviet Union, and Western Europe until the 1970s. Then Western Europe started to switch to the other policy, in response to the economic crisis...

... Screw the workers for everything you can get out of them is what capitalism wants to do, but it has to provide some social safety-net in order to preserve the peace. How much (or rather, little) it can get away with is the calculation it has to make. Different factions of the bourgeoisie see that differently.




...

... both West and East were operating capitalistically. But the state enterprises (West and East) tended to be less efficient than private enterprises in the West especially. It's not that they were 'socialism' - they were just rubbish capitalism... the most ridiculous, pointless, inefficient, and generally useless bits of the capitalist economy.

My position is that state property as such is not a gain for the working class...


... restructuring was a response to the crisis. Different restructuring might have worked - temporarily; different policies altogether might have worked - temporarily.

The economic crisis which broke out in the late 1960s required governments to oversee economic restructuring. Different governments did it at different times, and in different ways. Some were more successful than others. The government of the USSR was particularly inept (mostly, by delaying any discussion of restructuring until 1985, when many of the Western governments had begun years before) and as a result caused its own state to collapse...

It's pretty clear here (as well as all the bits where I've said that both privatisation and nationalisation can be used to attack working conditions) that the answer is not 'privatisation' per se. It's attacking the working class that gets you out of a hole, financially. Making the working class pay for the crisis. The Eastern Bloc was less capable of doing this than the Western Bloc.

[Five Year Plan]

Blake's Baby is clearly arguing that the USSR failed because it failed to adapt to the changing market, not that it failed because it was Capitalist. Shit I skimmed his posts and I got that.

In the absence of any real discussion about how "the market" was changing in a way that required accumulative industries in the Eastern bloc to privatize, his argument really does boil down to a sloganeering statement that the USSR and similar countries were capitalist. Even after extensive probing, the most I've managed to get from him as far as this goes is a vague acknowledgment that state property in accumulative industries was inefficient at "some things." That's an afterthought, not an argument.

[RedMaterialist]

It's pretty clear here (as well as all the bits where I've said that both privatisation and nationalisation can be used to attack working conditions) that the answer is not 'privatisation' per se. It's attacking the working class that gets you out of a hole, financially. Making the working class pay for the crisis. The Eastern Bloc was less capable of doing this than the Western Bloc.

So, the soviet capitalists failed to, or were less capable of, attacking their own working class, but the western capitalists successfully attacked their working class.

What does "attacking the working class mean?"

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

In the absence of any real discussion about how "the market" was changing in a way that required accumulative industries in the Eastern bloc to privatize, his argument really does boil down to a sloganeering statement that the USSR and similar countries were capitalist. Even after extensive probing, the most I've managed to get from him as far as this goes is a vague acknowledgment that state property in accumulative industries was inefficient at "some things." That's an afterthought, not an argument.


So, the soviet capitalists failed to, or were less capable of, attacking their own working class, but the western capitalists successfully attacked their working class.

What does "attacking the working class mean?"

You attack the working class by reducing the amount of value they get in exchange for their labor and increase the amount of surplus value held by capital. The USSR maintained good spending on its armed forces and foreign interventions while food lines increased during the 80s. Soviet bureaucrats noticed that they were running out of ways of growing the economy while maintaining military spending without making their system more competitive and the Soviet workers noticed that their living standards were going down. This reduced the economic incentive of workers to defend the Soviet system against more competitive forms of Capitalism.

If the Soviet system *wasn't* capitalist on some level, then the workers of the USSR wouldn't have been alienated from their means of production and would have had an economic rationale for defending the system. Instead, the USSR had become a very big, very inefficient kind of "social corporation" which neither served the workers or the economic and political elites.

[RedMaterialist]

You attack the working class by reducing the amount of value they get in exchange for their labor and increase the amount of surplus value held by capital. The USSR maintained good spending on its armed forces and foreign interventions while food lines increased during the 80s. Soviet bureaucrats noticed that they were running out of ways of growing the economy while maintaining military spending without making their system more competitive and the Soviet workers noticed that their living standards were going down. This reduced the economic incentive of workers to defend the Soviet system against more competitive forms of Capitalism.

If the Soviet system *wasn't* capitalist on some level, then the workers of the USSR wouldn't have been alienated from their means of production and would have had an economic rationale for defending the system. Instead, the USSR had become a very big, very inefficient kind of "social corporation" which neither served the workers or the economic and political elites.

But, increasing food lines and otherwise reducing workers' standards of living is a very effective way to attack the working class, and maintaining defense spending is very effective in serving the economic elites. Which, according to Blakes Baby, is exactly what the west did during the 70s and 80s.

[Blake's Baby]

But, increasing food lines and otherwise reducing workers' standards of living is a very effective way to attack the working class...

It's only 'effective', from a capitalist point of view, if the caapitalists get some return. The typhoon that hit the Philipenes the other day also 'increased food lines and reduced the workers' standards of living' - doesn't make a good thing from capitalism's point of view. There are things that are both 'bad for the workers' and 'bad for capitalism'. So capitalists 'attacking workers' (to increase 'economic efficiency', ie the amount of surplus labour extracted) is not the same as 'the economy being inefficient, and living standards falling as a result'.

There are many countries where workers have low standards of living; Mali, or Bolivia, or Laos. Mostly, it's because they're 'inefficient' in capitalist terms. But being bad at capitalism doesn't mean 'good at socialism'.


... and maintaining defense spending is very effective in serving the economic elites...

Not really, because social wealth which is put into defence spending is not used to replicate capital. It can be useful as a short-term measure to increase the wealth of some capitalists (eg, those who own arms companies), but only at the expense of other capitalists (eg those who print school-books, or whatever else the government isn't spending money on because it's diverted it into arms spending instead).


... Which, according to Blakes Baby, is exactly what the west did during the 70s and 80s.

Except, obviously, I've just shown how (yet again) you've failed to comprehend what I said.

[RedMaterialist]

It's only 'effective', from a capitalist point of view, if the caapitalists get some return.

So, the western capitalists attacked the working class and recovered from the crisis of the 1960s. The soviet capitalists also attacked the working class but did not recover and the soviet capitalist state collapsed.

And this because the soviet capitalists were less efficient than the western capitalists.

What do you mean by "less efficient?" Lower rate of profit? Lower gross profit? GDP growth? The USSR had about the same growth rate as the US between 1955-1990, and had a better GDP growth than Britain, even after Thatcher was elected.

But, beyond that what was it about the soviet capitalists which made them unable to compete with western capitalists? Not ruthless enough to their workers? Just plain not as smart?

[WilliamGreen]

I was wondering why there were 93 views and no answers. Then I read the question.

I don't think there are any Bordigists on RevLeft, and I'm not sure I've ever read anything specifically. But, the British and French Empires are gone, why not the Russian?



Blake's Baby probably put it best.

The simple truth is that the USSR was very similar in a sense to past empires. When the unifying forces dissolved so did the union.

[RedMaterialist]

It's only 'effective', from a capitalist point of view, if the caapitalists get some return. .

Why were soviet capitalists less efficient in attacking the working class and extracting surplus value than the west? They defeated the western capitalists in the civil war, industrialized the soviet union in 20 yrs, defeated Hitler (a capitalist, I am sure you will agree) and became a world superpower. They did all this by being inefficient capitalists? But the inefficiency began in the 60s?

You mention Mali, Bolivia and Laos. Inefficient capitalist states. We are to expect that those states will suddenly dissolve like the SU? Cuba, Venezuela, Greece, Portugal, Namibia, Egypt, Syria...all inefficient capitalist states which are on the road to dissolution?

Name one world power in history which has dissolved because it was "inefficient."

You are analyzing the collapse of the SU in economic, business (efficiency) terms. Marxian analysis is, essentially, I would suggest, an analysis of class struggle (so to speak.) For instance, it may be true that the French aristocracy of 1789 was inefficient, but the real cause of the destruction of the French Empire was the emergence of the bourgeois class and the revolt of the peasants. The British monarchy did not dissolve because it was inefficient, but because the British bourgeois class, under Cromwell, revolted against it; afterwards the monarchy was replaced in name only.

"The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles," not the history of business inefficiency.

[RedMaterialist]

Blake's Baby probably put it best.

The simple truth is that the USSR was very similar in a sense to past empires. When the unifying forces dissolved so did the union.

You mean like the Roman Empire, destroyed by 300+ yrs of barbarian invasions? Or the French Empire, destroyed by a revolution, or the Russian Empire, destroyed by war and revolution, or the Chinese Empire destroyed by war and revolution, the Third Reich and Japan, destroyed by war, the Incan Empire destroyed by war.

It is true that the USSR dissolved because its "unifying forces" dissolved. The problem is what were those unifying forces. Were they the unifying efficiency of capitalism? The unifying force of capitalism is physical and psychological force and class rule, not efficiency.

[Gambino]

Market only started to change after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Like Hobsbawm said, Capitalism only fears one thing: expropriation.
The end of the Soviet Union meant also the end of capitalism’s fear of expropriation.

Before the fall of the USSR, there were a couple of changes in the economic politics of England and the US, not in the markets but in the equilibrium between social democrats and liberals. The big trade agreements and the deregulation of the banking system started only after the collapse of the USSR.