State capitalism and proletarian dictatorship

[Captain Red]

According to Engels state capitalism was the final stage of capitalism so does that mean that proletarian dictatorship is suppose to be state capitalistic, seeing how you still have capitalism when you have proletarian dictatorship?

[Geiseric]

All capitalism is state capitalism since the state is a tool of class oppression. If there is no private ownership and if the state invested in things based on their use value, capitalism doesn't exist. Since exchange value determines what is necessary to extract surplus value, public ownership would determine the economy based on real use value. Supply and demand can serve the proletariat or the bourgeoisie. Of our serves the working class we have a workers state. If it serves the bourgeois we have a bourgeois state.

[Skyhilist]

I'm not an Engels expert, but I think what he may have been referring to is the transition between capitalism and communism. For example, if revolution is occurring or has occurred in only one place, the proletariat is establishing a class dictatorship there according to marxists. While the proletariat may have control, things such as reliance on international markets to import and export goods will likely still exist (autarky is pretty impossible), therefore such a state should still be considered capitalism (although it's a transitionary type of capitalism known as DoTP), so it'd make sense that Engels might refer to it as "state capitalism" (although I've never personally heard of him doing that). This is different likely from when some radicals refer to places like the USSR as "state capitalist", because these people usually don't mean that the USSR was a transitionary type of capitalism, but rather that the USSR functioned just like regular capitalism but with a centralized, autocratic state controlling industries (instead of workers directly) and therefore serving as the bourgeois class.

[Fourth Internationalist]

All capitalism is state capitalism since the state is a tool of class oppression. If there is no private ownership and if the state invested in things based on their use value, capitalism doesn't exist. Since exchange value determines what is necessary to extract surplus value, public ownership would determine the economy based on real use value. Supply and demand can serve the proletariat or the bourgeoisie. Of our serves the working class we have a workers state. If it serves the bourgeois we have a bourgeois state.

No, not all capitalism is state capitalism. While all forms of capitalism rely on the existence of a bourgeois state, not all forms of capitalism are state capitalist, distinct from more traditional forms of capitalism.

[tuwix]

According to Engels state capitalism was the final stage of capitalism so does that mean that proletarian dictatorship is suppose to be state capitalistic, seeing how you still have capitalism when you have proletarian dictatorship?

Can you quote such Engel's statement? It seems unlikely to me he stated something like that...

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Can you quote such Engel's statement? It seems unlikely to me he stated something like that...
In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Part III, Historical Materialism, Engels concludes that the final stage of capitalism will be state capitalism.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm




II. Capitalist Revolution — transformation of industry, at first be means of simple cooperation and manufacture. Concentration of the means of production, hitherto scattered, into great workshops. As a consequence,their transformation from individual to social means of production — atransformation which does not, on the whole, affect the form of exchange.The old forms of appropriation remain in force. The capitalist appears.In his capacity as owner of the means of production, he also appropriates the products and turns them into commodities. Production has become a social act. Exchange and appropriation continue to be individual acts,the acts of individuals. The social product is appropriated by the individual capitalist. Fundamental contradiction, whence arise all the contradictions in which our present-day society moves, and which modern industry brings to light.


A. Severance of the producer from the means of production. Condemnation of the worker to wage-labor for life. Antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.


B. Growing predominance and increasing effectiveness of the laws governing the production of commodities. Unbridled competition. Contradiction between socialized organization in the individual factory and social anarchy in the production as a whole.


C. On the one hand, perfecting of machinery, made by competition compulsory for each individual manufacturer, and complemented by a constantly growing displacement of laborers. Industrial reserve-army. On the other hand, unlimited extension of production, also compulsory under competition,for every manufacturer. On both sides, unheard-of development of productive forces, excess of supply over demand, over-production and products — excess there, of laborers, without employment and without means of existence.But these two levers of production and of social well-being are unable to work together, because the capitalist form of production prevents the productive forces from working and the products from circulating, unless they are first turned into capital — which their very superabundance prevents.The contradiction has grown into an absurdity. The mode of production rises in rebellion against the form of exchange.


D. Partial recognition of the social character of the productive forces forced upon the capitalists themselves. Taking over of the great institutions for production and communication, first by joint-stock companies,later in by trusts, then by the State. The bourgeoisie demonstrated to be a superfluous class. All its social functions are now performed by salaried employees.

[tuwix]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm

OK. But where is the DotP there as thread's author suggested?

[PC LOAD LETTER]

OK. But where is the DotP there as thread's author suggested?
I thought you were asking about Engels' saying the final stage of capitalism would be state capitalism, my bad. There's a group dedicated to in-depth discussion on the nature of the dictatorship (http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=932) of the proletariat that the OP would probably like to peruse.

[tuwix]

I thought you were asking about Engels' saying the final stage of capitalism would be state capitalism, my bad. There's a group dedicated to in-depth discussion on the nature of the dictatorship (http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=932) of the proletariat that the OP would probably like to peruse.

I don't think I'd have anything to add except the fact that the DotP in current technical conditions is just direct democracy. :)

[robbo203]

All capitalism is state capitalism since the state is a tool of class oppression. If there is no private ownership and if the state invested in things based on their use value, capitalism doesn't exist. Since exchange value determines what is necessary to extract surplus value, public ownership would determine the economy based on real use value. Supply and demand can serve the proletariat or the bourgeoisie. Of our serves the working class we have a workers state. If it serves the bourgeois we have a bourgeois state.

This is misleading. Not all capitalism is state capitalism. Some capitalism is corporate capitalism for example. Is General Motors or Banco Santander an example of state capitalism? Of course not

More to the point, state ownership is not a negation of private property but a particular form of private property

This is well brought out in Andrew Kliman's talk:


Of course, Marx called for the abolition of private property. But what makes property private, in his view, is not individual ownership, but the separation of the direct producers, workers, from the property they produce. Thus, in the German Ideology, he and Frederick Engels noted that “ancient communal and State ownership … is still accompanied by slavery,” and they referred to the communal ownership of slaves as “communal private property” (emphasis added).

In volume 2 of Capital, Marx wrote, “The social capital is equal to the sum of the individual capitals (including … state capital, in so far as governments employ productive wage-labour in mines, railways, etc. and function as industrial capitalists.” Similarly, in his notes on Adolph Wagner’s critique of Capital, Marx wrote that “[w]here the state itself is a capitalist producer, as in the exploitation of mines, forests, etc., its product is a ‘commodity’ and hence possesses the specific character of every other commodity.”

Most importantly, in volume 1 of Capital, he implicitly addressed the issue of what would happen if the state’s role as capitalist producer expanded to such a point that it completely crowded out other capitalists. He argued that the tendency toward monopoly, the process of centralization of capitals, “would reach its extreme limit … n a given society … only when the entire social capital was united in the hands of either a single capitalist or a single capitalist company.” As Raya Dunayevskaya noted, Marx’s text implies that such a society “would remain capitalist[;] … this extreme development would in no way change the law of motion of that society.”

http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/category/alternatives-to-capital

Kliman also refers to Engels comment as follows


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


Note the emphasis!!!

The further claim that "if the state invested in things based on their use value, capitalism doesn't exist" shows a complete misunderstanding of how state capitalism operates. One might just as well ask if fairies existed. The planning process in state capitalist regimes like the Soviet Union, though carried out in physical terms. did not at all negate the law of value operating in the Soviet Economy. (the physical planning aspect of the Soviet system was in any case a joke as targets were routinely revised to reflect changing economic realities which is hardly an example of economy being "guided" by physical planning)

Ultimately investment had to be paid for and for which reason GOSPLAN's plans had to be converted into money terms. That is why state enterprises were compelled by Soviet law to operate at a profit and could be severely penalized if they did not: to maximise the amount of surplus value wrung form the hides of ghe Russian working class, which surplus value was reinvested as capital by the Soviet capitalist class after taking a cut to fund their own sumptuous parasitic lifestyle

It can never be the case where a state exists - no matter what its form as Engels says - that you can have investment based simply on "use value". Use value will always be subordinate or secondary to exchange value under any kind of state capitalism or modern-day society in which the state is the dominant or even sole allocator of economic resources

As Marx long ago noted "the existence of the state and the existence of slavery are inseparable" (on the The King of Prussia and Social Reform). The existence of the state implies the existence of classes and therefore the exploitation of one class by another. To imagine under these circumstances that the general welfare and needs of the population at large could ever become the overriding preocupation of a state - no matter what its form (and including the so called "workers state" cum labour government - is to succumb to a complete illusion

[Dave B]

The idea or prediction(s) was that, as a trend, the capitalist class would increasingly play a smaller direct part part in the actual production process itself.

And that could would or was manifest itself by;

A] The capitalist class becoming more and more just shareholders in joint stock companies and handing over the running of industry etc to paid wage workers etc etc

B] that the national capitalist class could achieve the above indulging in state monopoly capitalism; as was sort of going on in Germany at the end of the 19th century. As another economic as well as ‘strategic’ necessity to pool the small capitals of an emergent capitalist nation to compete with the already large (economies of scale) conglomerated capitals of established capitalism.


Either way the working class would end up being ‘technically’ into total ‘control’ of the whole industrial production process.

The capitalist class and state capitalist class would also become more transparently ‘socially’ ‘superfluous’ and parasitic

And thus the appropriation of the means of production would be merely a matter of a conscious or ‘political’ decision.

It leaves open a bit the idea of the actual ‘control’ of the industrial process and exploitation of the workers, and ill gotten gains thereof, falling into the hands of a ‘managerial’, ‘technical’ or ‘intelligentsia class’ that would instead supplant the old and absentee capitalist class.

Eg Burnham etc

You could explore that idea with an analysis of Bolshevik state capitalism; a lot of Russian industrial capital was not only joint stock capital but foreign ‘imperialist’ finance capital as well.

And a lot of those capitalist enterprises in pre Bolshevik Russia were run by foreign, and British, technocratic mangers.

And they weren’t going to fight for their old owners property and went home; or worked for the Bolsheviks.

[reb]

According to Engels state capitalism was the final stage of capitalism so does that mean that proletarian dictatorship is suppose to be state capitalistic, seeing how you still have capitalism when you have proletarian dictatorship?

This is a very simplistic way of putting it and I don't think that it has played out in history quite like that. I'm also not sure if Engels ever really mentioned that the dotp would operate under a capitalist frame work, that seems to be a later back reading over a topic that both Marx and Engels didn't really engage in and both held differing views.

For one, it assumes that with the development of capital bringing all of the productive forces under the state all that is needed is a political revolution. This hasn't been the case historically. Just look towards Russia. Communism isn't about the bringing together of industry into one national capital. The proletarian dictatorship is for one, the ending of capital. It doesn't operate on a capitalist mode of production, it is the active political negation of political power, power that is built upon economic social relations. It is about the circumvention of the bourgeois state by attacking these social relations directly. The dotp is not a state, is it not the result of irresolvable class antagonisms, it is not there to manage capital. Is it there because it is now the thing that can class antagonisms, to end capital. And for this to happen, power has first to be grabbed from capital at the means of production, not at the head of the state.

[Geiseric]

This is a very simplistic way of putting it and I don't think that it has played out in history quite like that. I'm also not sure if Engels ever really mentioned that the dotp would operate under a capitalist frame work, that seems to be a later back reading over a topic that both Marx and Engels didn't really engage in and both held differing views.

For one, it assumes that with the development of capital bringing all of the productive forces under the state all that is needed is a political revolution. This hasn't been the case historically. Just look towards Russia. Communism isn't about the bringing together of industry into one national capital. The proletarian dictatorship is for one, the ending of capital. It doesn't operate on a capitalist mode of production, it is the active political negation of political power, power that is built upon economic social relations. It is about the circumvention of the bourgeois state by attacking these social relations directly. The dotp is not a state, is it not the result of irresolvable class antagonisms, it is not there to manage capital. Is it there because it is now the thing that can class antagonisms, to end capital. And for this to happen, power has first to be grabbed from capital at the means of production, not at the head of the state.

First of what does "ending capital" mean? Also do you more what a "workers state" is? If you think that world capitalism won't necessitate a workers state you are an idealist.

[robbo203]

First of what does "ending capital" mean? Also do you more what a "workers state" is? If you think that world capitalism won't necessitate a workers state you are an idealist.

On the contrary I think it is the protagonists of "workers states" who are the out-and-out idealists in this instance. They dont understand what a state is

A few posts ago ( No.10) I quoted something from Marx which quite nicely sums it up: "the existence of the state and the existence of slavery are inseparable" (on the The King of Prussia and Social Reform). This raises the thorny question - who is going to be enslaved by this workers state of yours?


See, this is a real conceptual problem. Ive raised it on this forum countless times and countless times have been met with only evasion and stony silence. It seems there are many on the far Left who will cling like a barnacle to this holy dogma of theirs- the workers state. Nothing must be allowed to disturb the blissful state of religious contemplation of the armchair revolutionary.

The problem is this. If it is the capitalists that need to be suppressed by the workers state how do the capitalists come to be capitalists at all in this workers state? It is basic bedrock Marxism that capital and wage labour are two sides of the coin and that wherever you have a system of generalised wage labour, you have capitalism (and vice versa). The relationship between the capitalists and the wage labourers - the workers - is an inherently exploitative one and it is not possible for capitalists to exist without this implying their exploitation of the working class.

Which brings us back to the question of the so called "workers state". The idea behind this is that, somehow, the working class has taken charge of society and rules in its name. But how is this possible? How? How does the working class which is the (wage) slave or subject (exploited) class in capitalism come at the same time to be the slave owning class in capitalism? How is the exploiting capitalist class enslaved under workers state yet for some strange inexplicable reason - Its dialectics innit, comrade! - is allowed to continue exploiting the working class despite the latter exercising a supposed "dictatorship" over the former. Some dictatorship!!!


Ah , I hear you saying , but the capitalist won't be allowed to exploit the workers. No way Jose! The capitalists will be firmly put in their place. OK so lets look at this.


Capitalists who are not allowed to exploit the workwers are no longer capitalists, by definition. right? They are ex-capitalists. But, of course, if they are ex-capitalists then it follows logiccally that those who are exerting a dictatorship over these ex-capitalists must then be ex-workers. If capitalists and workers are two sides of the same coin, then ex -capitalists and ex-workers must be two side of another coin. Makes sense , yes?

This , no doubt , will prompt a further response. You cant just make the capitalists , ex capitalists straight off, cry the advocates of the workers state. Thats "idealistic " they say. It takes time, they say. Actually, this is the attitude of the slave trying to negotiate with with the slave owner the terms and conditions of his release over a period of time. It is certainly not the attitude of the revolutionary. In fact, the workers state which has - by default if not design - to administer capitalism in the meantime will inevitably become just another capitalist state. The time that the workers state to get rid of capitalism will be the time that it takes to come round to accommodating itself to capitalism. After all, capitalism can only be run in the interests oif the capitalists and not the workers. To operate such a system, the workers state - so called - will be obliged the betray the workers in whose names it rules

So what are we left with? We are left with a pile of useless ideas that make absolutely no sense at all, however you look at it. Strictly speaking, if they are avoid the charge that the workers state will become just another capitalist state, the advocates of this concept are - or should be - the advocates of an ex-workers state. Or to put it differently what they are trying to say is that you can have a state in a classless society. That is, in a society in which there are no longer workers and capitalists but only ex workers and ex capitalists i.e. classless people.


This, of course, is a complete departure from a fundamental definitional axiom of Marxian theory - that the state is essentially a class institution . That is, the institutional tool by which one class supppresses another.

In fact, as Ive argued elsewhere, the proponents of a workers state are actually employing a liberal concept of the state which simply defines the state as a body that arrogates to itself a monopoly of coercive power. Its the same kind of argument you hear anarcho-capitalists making and Ive had my fair share of debating with anarcho-capitalists. These anarcho capitalists deny the existence of classes and hold a contractural view of society in which we exist as atomised individuals and voluntarily engage in trade on the basis of what we perceive to be our mutual interest. They have no conception of class in this idealised schema of theirs. The Leviathan of the State (as it is called) has no roots in class relations of production - its origins are altogether mysterious (like the sea monster to which the term, Leviathan refers) - and manifests in some unfortunate tendency in human nature towards "statism ". Statism in this view of things is like original sin to which we are all prone and which must be rationally combatted and contained in a so called free market.I would argue that the protagonists of the workers state are giving credence to precisely this sort of idealistic nonsense. They too are implying you can have a state without classes


As a worker, I am totally opposed to the idea of a workers state. To be a worker is not a badge of honour - it is the mark of a slave - and if there is anything honourable that we can do, it would be to cast off our status as slaves, overthow and get rid of the odious class institution of the state and become free human beings in our own right