Eastern Europe countries

[parallax]

Where any of the countries in Eastern Europe socialist during the 1950s - 1970s? If so, when did they stop being socialist? I think the soviet union stopped being socialist in 1953, when capitalism was restored. I'm not sure what I think about East Europe though. Thanks!

[RedKobra]

Depending on what sort of "socialist" you are Belarus might count. The state allegedly maintains the vast majority of factories. I'm no expert though.

[Tim Cornelis]

If we define socialism as a post-capitalist mode of production, then categorically no. The establishment of a communist mode of production would require a revolution that transforms the social relationships of production and a revolutionary dictatorship. This cannot be imposed from above by an occupation force of a regime which itself has undergone no such transformation. Communism, the first phase, ("socialism"), would already have established common ownership and therefore labour would be immediately social through freely associated labour. Commodity production cannot arise, and certainly not generalised commodity production. The entirety of Eastern Europe was capitalist.

[Kill all the fetuses!]

If we define socialism as a post-capitalist mode of production, then categorically no. The establishment of a communist mode of production would require a revolution that transforms the social relationships of production and a revolutionary dictatorship. This cannot be imposed from above by an occupation force of a regime which itself has undergone no such transformation. Communism, the first phase, ("socialism"), would already have established common ownership and therefore labour would be immediately social through freely associated labour. Commodity production cannot arise, and certainly not generalised commodity production. The entirety of Eastern Europe was capitalist.

Tim, I wonder how exactly do you go about defining capitalism? As a system of generalised commodity production?

EDIT: Geez, where the fuck all these tankies started coming from as of late?

[parallax]

If we define socialism as a post-capitalist mode of production, then categorically no. The establishment of a communist mode of production would require a revolution that transforms the social relationships of production and a revolutionary dictatorship. This cannot be imposed from above by an occupation force of a regime which itself has undergone no such transformation. Communism, the first phase, ("socialism"), would already have established common ownership and therefore labour would be immediately social through freely associated labour. Commodity production cannot arise, and certainly not generalised commodity production. The entirety of Eastern Europe was capitalist.

How do you have capitalism if there are no capitalists?

[Gepetto]

If so, when did they stop being socialist? I think the soviet union stopped being socialist in 1953, when capitalism was restored.
So, you think that death of Joseph Stalin caused a sudden change in mode of production?

[newdayrising]

How do you have capitalism if there are no capitalists?
So the "capitalists" appeared in 1953? How did it happen exactly and how does the mode of production in eastern Europe in, say, 1960 differs from what they had in, say, 1950? What exactly happened in 1953 that made them not socialist anymore?

[Blake's Baby]

More to the point, how do you have capitalists if there's no capitalism? For capitalists to suddenly appear, there must have been capitalism to engender them.

[Tim Cornelis]

How do you have capitalism if there are no capitalists?

Indeed, as someone already suggested, this position falls in on itself when you argue that capitalism is restored in 1953. The argument, as ill informed as it is repeated by Stalinists, relies on the argument that the means of production were nationalised and therefore the bourgeois class was abolished. There was no privatisation in 1953 so apparently you do conceive of a capitalism without capitalists. Of course, this argument itself is inaccurate. Nationalisation does not abolish capitalist relations of production.

https://libcom.org/library/socialism-marx-early-bolshevism-chattopadhyay

Engels argued that if the state were to take over the means of production capitalism would still be. He differentiated between salaried employees of the capitalists (e.g. non-owning CEOs) and the actual capitalists with legal ownership over means of production. To me, capitalists are the personification of capital, to more or less quote Marx, and so those that control and command capital are the capitalists.

Labour-power was bought and sold on a labour market in the USSR. Surplus value was extracted from this labour and reinvested in other commodities, or capital. This capital was commanded and controlled at different levels by persons, it's only secondary by whom, but it's clear then that capitalists did exist in the USSR.

It's just plainly absurd that a mode of production can change as a result of a very subtle policy change in the leadership. This subtle change being the ceasing of subsiding the buying and selling of means of production. Crucially, it implies that the workers in the USSR did not exercise any political power as the leadership determined the course of the country. So if the workers were disempowered how could there have been socialism or a workers' state? So either the workers did not have power and there was no workers' state, let alone socialism, or the workers did have power and voted out the socialist mode of production in the USSR, but also in every other 'socialist country' -- in which case we need to find some new life goal.

You'd expect that if the workers were suddenly stripped of power and capitalism was reintroduced that they'd rose up. To make a social revolution undone you'd need a counter-revolution.


Tim, I wonder how exactly do you go about defining capitalism? As a system of generalised commodity production?

It's more complex than one sentence, but if I had to choose on it'd be something like private ownership, as in the separation of labour from the means of production. This has all sorts of implications for the mode of production overall, as it 'causes' (due to the particular level of productive development) competition of capitals, the social relationship of capital itself, etc.

[RedKobra]

Interesting stuff Tim. I have a question based on the assumption that the SU was State-Capitalist.

Capitalism is driven by the need for growth, and as we know from Marx, eventually Capitalists realise that no amount of new machinery is going to create the surplus they need so they attack the very people creating the surplus, the workers by reducing pay & conditions, longer hours, unpaid over time, redundancies.etc

My question is the SU didn't seem to do this. Yes it worked people hard and extracted as much surplus as it could but it also gave people jobs, affordable homes, affordable cars, free health care, free education from kindergarten all the way up to laboratory. How was the SU able to avoid the trap the "Western" Capital falls into?

[Tim Cornelis]

Interesting stuff Tim. I have a question based on the assumption that the SU was State-Capitalist.

Capitalism is driven by the need for growth, and as we know from Marx, eventually Capitalists realise that no amount of new machinery is going to create the surplus they need so they attack the very people creating the surplus, the workers by reducing pay & conditions, longer hours, unpaid over time, redundancies.etc

My question is the SU didn't seem to do this.

Except for unemployment, it did.

"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.
Lower wage levels were not the only indicator of poverty. (After all, money has only limited value in a rationed "access" economy.) Equally important were wretched housing conditions, especially in industrial complexes outside established cities: overcrowded, sometimes unheated barracks, or even pits in the ground ("zemlyanki"). For ideological reasons, the Soviet government had destroyed any private housing market, that otherwise might have taken some of the slack. Government food supplies were often scant (requiring much waiting in lines) and sometimes rotten; private food suppliers had been wiped out by Collectivization. Local public transport was crowded and unreliable, if it existed at all."

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

Workers' salaries were slashed and individual consumption and needs was merely residual (see also Paresh Chattopadhyay's The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience).


Yes it worked people hard and extracted as much surplus as it could but it also gave people jobs, affordable homes, affordable cars, free health care, free education from kindergarten all the way up to laboratory. How was the SU able to avoid the trap the "Western" Capital falls into?

Sounds a suspicious amount like Western social-democratic welfare states.

[Blake's Baby]

Exactly - it didn't 'avoid the trap', it bankrupted itself trying to fulfill the conflicting demands of keeping the population happy and trying to out-compete the west. The Soviet economy was hiddeously 'inefficient' by western economic standards and hopelessly unresponsive to actual needs (though arguably it did better for a lot of people than some western economies) - so it neither worked as a 'command' economy nor a 'free-market' economy.

In the end all the social-democratic states had to re-structure their economies after the early 1970s in response to the economic pressures in the world economy after the end of the post-war boom. The USSR was particularly bad at this restructuring, which is why the economy collapsed in the late 1980s.

[parallax]

I'm seeing a lot of formulas being repeated and tendencies being baited but no helpful responses to the question. :mad:

[Kill all the fetuses!]

Labour-power was bought and sold on a labour market in the USSR. Surplus value was extracted from this labour and reinvested in other commodities, or capital. This capital was commanded and controlled at different levels by persons, it's only secondary by whom, but it's clear then that capitalists did exist in the USSR.

It's more complex than one sentence, but if I had to choose on it'd be something like private ownership, as in the separation of labour from the means of production. This has all sorts of implications for the mode of production overall, as it 'causes' (due to the particular level of productive development) competition of capitals, the social relationship of capital itself, etc.

Tim, I am curious as to how nuanced your "state-capitalism" analysis actually is and how can it withstand criticism. Let's have a go.

Well, as with regards to the definition of capitalism, I hope we can agree with the most basic orthodox Marxist definition that it simply is a society organised through the law of value, i.e. if there is no Value, then you obviously don't have commodities, wage-labour as commodity, money, surplus-value... and you don't have generalised commodity production. Which means you don't have capitalism. So the basic question with regards to the nature of the USSR is: did Value actually exist in the USSR?

I think we can also agree that a mode of production is primarily defined by the way surplus-labour is extracted. Now, it often times seems to me the case that people conflate surplus-labour with surplus-value. The former is universal, while the later is specific to capitalism. You can clearly show how the USSR was exploitative (in the most general sense of the term), but it in and of itself doesn't make it capitalism. I am not sure if you aren't doing the same thing with your talk about alienation etc.

So the question is: to what extent did commodity-form exist in the USSR? And I might argue that there wasn't a commodity-form: there was no market of competing capitals and there were no decisions being made in the sphere of production based on Value. In other words, the production wasn't regulated by the law of value, but was planned, however inefficiently. It didn't really matter how much labour-time got into a product - prices weren't determined by labour-time, but by the central plan, it didn't even matter whether products satisfied social needs, i.e. if they were use-values; they were, in essence, pre-validated before they even entered "the market". In the same sense, labour was neither free (people couldn't choose their occupation and couldn't move freely) nor were their compensation based on the sort of labour their performed or the time spent in production. So if there was no commodity-form in the USSR, then labour-power couldn't take a commodity form as well in that it couldn't be exchanged for other commodities. So it might be argued that their compensation weren't wages in any meaningful sense, but something like ration-cards or pensions. Furthermore, if there were no commodity-form, then capital couldn't exist as well. If that is the case, then "state-capitalism" argument is simply untenable.

Now I am sure you are familiar with these basic criticisms, so I am just wondering how do you work them out, because from your post it seems that you presuppose the very thing your analysis ought to prove - the existence of Value.

[STALINwasntSTALLIN]

EDIT: Geez, where the fuck all these tankies started coming from as of late?

That is because we are everywhere.



BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

gvObIj7MKXY

[STALINwasntSTALLIN]

Where any of the countries in Eastern Europe socialist during the 1950s - 1970s? If so, when did they stop being socialist? I think the soviet union stopped being socialist in 1953, when capitalism was restored. I'm not sure what I think about East Europe though. Thanks!

There was one socialist country in Eastern Europe after Stalin's death. That was Hoxha's Albania. Hoxha wisely saw through the revisionist tricks of Khrushchev and maintained a socialist country until his death in 1985.

[STALINwasntSTALLIN]

So, you think that death of Joseph Stalin caused a sudden change in mode of production?

No, but the Russian Revolution was much more than an economic revolution. As Stalin once put it:

The October Revolution cannot be regarded merely as a revolution in the sphere of economic and social-political relations. It is at the same time a revolution in the minds, a revolution in the ideology, of the working class.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1927/11/06.htm

As such, when Stalin died and the Khrushchevite revisionists came to power this zeitgeist of revolution came to an end. The spirit of revolution died in the Soviet Union and only Hoxha was left to carry on the fight against revisionists.

[parallax]

There was one socialist country in Eastern Europe after Stalin's death. That was Hoxha's Albania. Hoxha wisely saw through the revisionist tricks of Khrushchev and maintained a socialist country until his death in 1985.

None of Eastern Europe after 1955 was socialist, except Albania?

[Tim Cornelis]

Ugh, I can't bare all this nonsense about "evil revisionism!". It's so blatantly ridiculous and detached from Marxism.

====

I think it's often linearly assumed, such as by Preobrazhensky, that monopoly negates competition. This was the basis of the argument state ownership and control over the economy was socialist, and later used as indication of socially non-viably non-mode of production. Planning of production, including administrative pricing, is and was counter-posed to the spontaneous law of value. But I think it's a wrong assumption. Dialectically, I'd argue, monopoly increases competition.

Marx's law of value is not concerned with the exact determination of individual commodities but with the input and output of the entire economy and whether their value is determined by the socially necessary labour-time. This is the law of value. (Hence also why surplus value can potentially be higher in some capital-intensive industries in comparison to labour-intensive ones). Of course, this is extremely difficult to prove empirically.

Competition, to Marx, is the relation of capital to itself. For competition of capitals to exist means for singular capitals to confront each other, or interaction in other words. It is not necessary that this takes the form in a perfectly competitive market but can take place in a monopolised market as well -- content, not form, matters.

In the link I cited above it's clear that Soviet enterprises were run autonomously by their managers as "managers, desperate for additional workers, would hire them without too rigid an examination of their past [contrary to regime directives]".. Workers sold their labour-power to separate state enterprises, not the state itself, and "when workers got fed up with conditions at one site, they were free to quit and go look for something better" and when this was restricted I still don't see how they were bound to an individual capitalist.

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

Separate enterprises in the USSR bought labour-power, and were therefore based on wage-labour. This labour-power was directed to the production of goods which were exchanged for currency, and included means of production. Labour was executed privately. Singular capitals interacted with each other in the USSR through the exchange of commodities. So-called "socialist competition" or "socialist emulation" was designed to facilitate this. Surplus value was then realised and reinvested in purchasing commodities to realise and expand future surplus value -- capital.

So as far as I can tell there was wage-labour, generalised commodity production and by extension a market and markets, competition of capitals, and of course capital, from which we can infer that the law of value was operative (although not empirically prove it).

[Kill all the fetuses!]

Tim, I think you are doing the same thing again - you are simply presupposing law of value and then jumping to the conclusion that the USSR was state-capitalist. I don't really see how anything you said substantiates your claims.

Monopolies or cartels in certain industries wouldn't negate the law of value? Sure, absolutely, that's quite self-evident. But one single monopoly of the entire country? I think it's quite evident that the law of value ceases to exist, because there is nobody and nothing to enforce it! If you are the ruler of all the means of production, you clearly can choose not to abide by any laws - you can produce everything and anything regardless of how much "socially-necessary labour time" it takes, there's nobody to discipline you on that - that's precisely my point. Law of value is something that is enforced upon you by competition, but in absence of it, you can choose not to abide by it. You are still restricted by the amount of labour-time you have in the country, but that labour-time doesn't take the form of a commodity.

Take for instance, the "socially-necessary" part of the "socially-necessary labour time". The defective shit that was being produced in the USSR was clearly not "socially-necessary", that aspect was decided prior to production, it was pre-validated before it reached the consumers who ought to decide whether it's socially necessary. Stuff was produced and it had to be consumed, there was no law of value to discipline the State as to what, how and why ought to be produced.

Whether there were autonomous business units in the USSR, I think, is quite irrelevant - I could cite sources showing the opposite. I could cite stories of my relatives as well. But so what if they were autonomous? They still acted on pre-determined quotas, pre-determined wages and pre-determined prices.

You can clearly show that there was that much labour-time in the USSR and some of it was taken and used by the State in this or that way. True. But that merely shows that the workers didn't control the surplus-labour, which is true for any class society. What it doesn't show is that that surplus-labour took the form of surplus-value and that's something that you merely assume and that's the point I am challenging you on.

EDIT: When I say that you presuppose existence of value, I pretty much mean this:

"So as far as I can tell there was wage-labour, generalised commodity production and by extension a market and markets, competition of capitals, and of course capital, from which we can infer that the law of value was operative (although not empirically prove it)."

You are pretty much saying "law of value existed, from which we can infer that it existed". Wage-labour, generalised commodity production etc. presuppose the existence of value, they merely express it. You can't prove the law of value by pointing out to the commodity-form, because that's literally circular reasoning. Your starting point can't be generalised commodity production or wage-labour, because that's exactly what you have to prove in order for "state-capitalism" argument to stand.

[Tim Cornelis]

Tim, I think you are doing the same thing again - you are simply presupposing law of value and then jumping to the conclusion that the USSR was state-capitalist. I don't really see how anything you said substantiates your claims.

Monopolies or cartels in certain industries wouldn't negate the law of value? Sure, absolutely, that's quite self-evident. But one single monopoly of the entire country? I think it's quite evident that the law of value ceases to exist, because there is nobody and nothing to enforce it! If you are the ruler of all the means of production, you clearly can choose not to abide by any laws - you can produce everything and anything regardless of how much "socially-necessary labour time" it takes, there's nobody to discipline you on that - that's precisely my point. Law of value is something that is enforced upon you by competition, but in absence of it, you can choose not to abide by it. You are still restricted by the amount of labour-time you have in the country, but that labour-time doesn't take the form of a commodity.

Take for instance, the "socially-necessary" part of the "socially-necessary labour time". The defective shit that was being produced in the USSR was clearly not "socially-necessary", that aspect was decided prior to production, it was pre-validated before it reached the consumers who ought to decide whether it's socially necessary. Stuff was produced and it had to be consumed, there was no law of value to discipline the State as to what, how and why ought to be produced.

Whether there were autonomous business units in the USSR, I think, is quite irrelevant - I could cite sources showing the opposite. I could cite stories of my relatives as well. But so what if they were autonomous? They still acted on pre-determined quotas, pre-determined wages and pre-determined prices.

You can clearly show that there was that much labour-time in the USSR and some of it was taken and used by the State in this or that way. True. But that merely shows that the workers didn't control the surplus-labour, which is true for any class society. What it doesn't show is that that surplus-labour took the form of surplus-value and that's something that you merely assume and that's the point I am challenging you on.

EDIT: When I say that you presuppose existence of value, I pretty much mean this:

"So as far as I can tell there was wage-labour, generalised commodity production and by extension a market and markets, competition of capitals, and of course capital, from which we can infer that the law of value was operative (although not empirically prove it)."

You are pretty much saying "law of value existed, from which we can infer that it existed". Wage-labour, generalised commodity production etc. presuppose the existence of value, they merely express it. You can't prove the law of value by pointing out to the commodity-form, because that's literally circular reasoning. Your starting point can't be generalised commodity production or wage-labour, because that's exactly what you have to prove in order for "state-capitalism" argument to stand.

The problem seems to be that you think the law of value emerges (somehow) and then 'causes' commodity production etc. whereas I think the law of value emerges as a consequence of labour being indirectly social. The indirectly social character of labour is a result of labour being executed privately within reciprocally independent businesses and enterprises. The commodity-form arises because this is how the social character of labour is established. The law of value then regulates this social labour. To me it seems absolutely crucial to establish that wage-labour, generalised commodity production, etc. existed. You obviously disagree and I invite you to explain what is wrong with the reasoning in this paragraph. To me it seems circular reasoning to reject that commodity production existed when it can quite simply be verified because the law of value supposedly wasn't operative.

You claim that production targets were established and there was no feedback from consumers that would dictate this. Now, of course, in liberal-capitalism businesses are unaware of the exact demand by consumers, and determine what is to be produced ex ante as well, so there's no difference in that regard. The difference, you claim, is that "there was no law of value to discipline the State as to what, how and why ought to be produced." But I think you overestimate the 'planning' aspect of Soviet command economies, infamously they were 'planned economies without plans' and they had to continually adjust and readjust their plans. If there was too much produced, the plan would be readjusted accordingly. Demand still determines if it's socially necessary. Although I'm not too familiar with the exact details of that. But the profitability of separate enterprises was most definitely taken into account. From the Great Soviet Encyclopedia: "[Profit-and-Loss Accounting is] the system of economic relations, arising in the process of socialist reproduction, between society as a whole and its various production links (enterprises and associations), as well as between the individual subdivisions themselves, in the context of the socially necessary expenditure of labor and allocation of the enterprises’ net income". Interestingly, this further affirms that the social character of labour was indirectly social and therefore had to be expressed via commodity exchange accounting via profits and losses. Initially, relatively less profitable enterprises were held afloat in service of capital accumulation and this was offset by the mobilisation strategy for economic growth, but as the rates of return on this mobilisation of resources slowed down, the subsequent Soviet leaders were compelled to implemented economic reforms to try and reverse economic growth slowdowns, stagnation, and ultimately decline -- and I would certainly regard that as the law of value imposing itself.

I'm also interested in knowing if you think that labour in the USSR was directly social and if not, how come there was no commodity production? And maybe how come Engels and Marx saw the concentration of capital resulting in state ownership and a "national capitalist", did they contradict their own theory of value?

[Ismail]

As far as the "Stalinist" viewpoint goes, the issue is whether there exists the dictatorship of the proletariat of the dictatorship of a new bourgeoisie, the whole "state ownership" versus "private ownership" thing is secondary. Lenin noted that small-scale commodity production daily engenders capitalism, but no one (well certainly no "Stalinist" or Trot) would argue that the bourgeoisie seized state power when the NEP was introduced, since the commanding heights of the economy remained in the hands of the proletarian state and any new bourgeois elements ("Nepmen," etc.) which did appear were relatively restrained in how much economic and especially political power they had over society.

Obviously the Albanians and Chinese would have had a difficult time arguing the USSR and Co. were capitalist if they had to cite the existence of large private corporations or whatever.

Two good reads on the restoration of capitalism in the USSR:
* http://www.oneparty.co.uk/html/book/ussrmenu.html
* http://www.bannedthought.net/USA/RU/RP/RP7/RU-RP7.pdf

The revisionists in Eastern Europe deposed "Stalinist" leaderships (like those of Rákosi and Chervenkov) and eagerly followed the economic and social policies of the Soviet revisionists. In fact they often went further than them in many ways, thus the "Polish road to socialism" pursued by Gomułka meant mass decollectivization and 80% of the countryside in private hands by the end of the 50s; in Hungary it meant "goulash socialism" and in the GDR "consumer socialism." By the 80s the Dengists as well as the "cautious reformers" (e.g. Andropov) in the USSR were looking towards countries like Hungary for inspiration.

[Tim Cornelis]

I'm not entirely sure how to explicitly articulate this argument, but I'll try (now reading back my last post, there's also a bit of awkward phrasing and incoherence). I think such reasoning relies on an instrumental view of the state. The social position of the members of the political elite was not bourgeois, it is reasoned by the Leninists. Therefore there was no bourgeoisie in the USSR, politics was controlled by the Bolsheviks, representing the proletariat. To me, the state is bourgeois not because it is instrumental to the bourgeoisie but because it is structurally constrained by the law of value. When labour is private, as was the case in the USSR, the law of value imposes itself. Consequently, it being ignored as evidenced by the attempt to suppress commodity production while labour was still executed privately (putting the card before the horse) largely caused the economic collapse of 1921/1922. Thus, the law of value had imposed itself on the Bolsheviks. With the social relationships of production not being subject to transformation toward freely associated labour — which would mean labour becoming directly social — the law of value was not in a process of deconstruction and not being negated. The Soviet state was a bourgeois state because it was structurally constrained by the law of value, not because it was instrumentally used by a formally judicial bourgeoisie.

The argument then goes, as I briefly touched upon, as Preobrazhensky argued, that there was an antagonistic relation between the law of value in private production and planning in state owned businesses (the commanding heights). However, these state owned businesses operated highly autonomously, responsible for the enterprises' profits, hiring and firing, and were therefore not functionally different from formally private businesses. So arguing that the "proletarian state" controlled the commanding heights is an inversion of the materialist method, giving precedence of the superstructure over the base.

[Subversive]

Ugh, I can't bare all this nonsense about "evil revisionism!". It's so blatantly ridiculous and detached from Marxism.
Detached from Marxism? Bah Humbug.
You're just too unwilling to admit that even Marx was a dirty, cheating revisionist!


You know that the institutions, mores, and traditions of various countries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries -- such as America, England, and if I were more familiar with your institutions, I would perhaps also add Holland -- where the workers can attain their goal by peaceful means.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/09/08.htm
I mean, really, how dare he turn his back on the revolution!



Just to note, since I'm new here, this post was obviously stated with a significantly juicy amount of sarcasm.

[Kill all the fetuses!]

To me it seems absolutely crucial to establish that wage-labour, generalised commodity production, etc. existed.

I think your approach is wrong. I am no partisan here, I don't have an a priori political truth that I want to establish. I am interested in understanding the nature of the USSR and the limits of what we can call capitalism. But as long as you can remain intellectually honest, then I am fine.


The indirectly social character of labour is a result of labour being executed privately within reciprocally independent businesses and enterprises. The commodity-form arises because this is how the social character of labour is established. The law of value then regulates this social labour. You obviously disagree and I invite you to explain what is wrong with the reasoning in this paragraph. To me it seems circular reasoning to reject that commodity production existed when it can quite simply be verified because the law of value supposedly wasn't operative.

Okay, Tim, I will engage with you very directly here. Let's go through it very slowly and establish common ground. "Social labour", as a term, is pretty clear and I don't think it's all that relevant to this discussion and there would be no disagreement between us on the definition. However, what is "directly social" and "indirectly social" labour? Directly social labour means that whatever you produce, you produce for consumption - whether yours or your masters. There are no mechanisms that you need to go through in order to qualify the labour-time you've spent as social. There is no "socially-necessary labour time", i.e. there is no Value that could "make" your labour-time - or part of it - socially unnecessary. In other words, there is no market, there is no separation between production and consumption by actions of selling and buying. Your labour is directly social.

Indirectly social labour means that you aren't and can't be sure that your labour will be social before you enter into production - social nature of your labour must be confirmed indirectly, through the market. You might spend your labour-time and later find that there are no buyers of your commodity and so the labour-time that you've spent, the labour-time you thought was social, is, in fact, not such. More importantly though (for this discussion anyway), part of your labour might be "made" socially unnecessary by the law of value, if you spent more labour-time producing things than is socially-necessary, i.e. more labour-time than the average - the socially-necessary labour-time. So in essence, there is an averaging going on - through the law of value - that makes certain labour or rather certain parts of labour-time socially unnecessary. So what gives your labour an indirectly social nature is the fact that you must qualify it as such through the market. The essence of the law of value is that it "punishes" certain production, while "rewarding" other - it controls the production process.

Now, we could expand, add and qualify what is directly/indirectly social labour, but I think that for the purposes of our discussion it's gonna suffice.

So now the fundamental question is: to what extent was labour in the USSR indirectly social? I would argue that in fact it was directly social. The reason why I would make such claim is that the State was in a position to pre-validate the social nature of production even before it occurred. It decided what ought to be produced prior to the production process and so when production-process was finished, the produce didn't have to go through the market to be established as social - it was established as social before the production even occurred! It didn't matter whether consumers didn't like the broken shit that was being produced - they certainly didn't - but that didn't lead to the changes in production even if they didn't buy that shit. At least there was no independent social law - the law of value - that would force businesses (or rather the State) to correct their production. To an extent production process and production itself was changed, it was not because of the law of value, but because the State decided to make these changes - there was no law imposing itself that forced the state to change the production in order to make it more appealing to consumers, less defective etc.

So ultimately the question is: how can labour be indirectly social when social nature of your production is actually pre-validated by the State plan before the production even occurred. It didn't matter if that production wasn't satisfying to consumers - if they didn't buy that, well, they had no other choice. The State could still produce the same defective shit even if nobody bought it, ever, and there would be no law imposing itself to discipline the state on that. Actually, that's exactly what happened - my history textbooks were full of these stories and pictures.

That's fundamentally different from how capitalism works - or rather how the law of value establishes/imposes itself. And this gets to the second part of your comment. You claim that there is no difference between planning in a corporation and in the USSR. That's certainly not very Marxist of you. "Planning" doesn't exist as an independent entity, as an abstract idea, independent of social circumstances. What gives "planning" its particular character are social relations within which that planning exists. Corporations certainly plan, but they can't pre-validate the social nature of the production, because their planning is subordinate to the law of value. Because at the end of the day whatever they planned to produce, they still have to bring it to the market and establish social nature of the labour-time spent on that production. Then the law of value will impose itself depending of whether consumers see these products as good enough of use-values, depending on whether they produced below or above socially-necessary labour-time etc. Then the corporation will get feedback from the market and see its profit either diminish or grow - the law of value will either discipline or reward that corporation. And that's something that the State of the USSR didn't face - it could keep producing defective shit all it wanted without any external forces disciplining it. And guess what, that's precisely what they did.

I am well familiar with defective nature of the planning itself - my arguments isn't that these plans were perfect, not being readjusted all the time etc etc. I don't think that's relevant at all. That would be relevant only in case you could show these plans were re-adjusted because of the law of value itself. As far as I am concerned the motivation was different. You merely make a claim that "demand still determines if it's socially necessary." Well, but if that was the case, how could the USSR keep producing defective things for decades, how could it keep producing things that nobody ever bought, that were literally useless for anyone? What sort of law of value existed in the USSR if you can have situation like this going on for decades and decades? Demand certainly didn't determine what is socially necessary - the State did. As far as I am concerned your claim is simply wrong on factual grounds.

As with regards to profitability, well, there were periods when it was taken into account and then were periods then it wasn't (as you yourself admit). But the point is that it was the State was decided prices and quotas (and so, to a large degree, profits), there weren't freely competing businesses pushing prices down or up depending on supply and demand, there weren't quality or production fluctuations based on the same factors. That just didn't happen.

But that's really besides the point, because let's be real here: you would still argue the USSR was state capitalist regardless of the existence of autonomous enterprises etc. Or am I wrong?

As with regards to your explanation of the collapse of the USSR, I am sympathetic to the general gist of your explanation, but I think you are too simplistic with your conclusions. Yes, I will grant you that Soviet leaders had to implement reform after reform - culminating in the perestroika and the collapse of the USSR - but that doesn't means it was because of the law of value. The desire or necessity to make your productive forces grow isn't equivalent to the law of value imposing itself. I can't even make sense of this argument. Take, for instance, a hypothetical case, where you are forced to revolutionise your means of production, because you have to develop your military forces not to be consumed by external enemies. Yes, you will make reforms to increase the growth of your economy, but that won't be because "law of value is imposing itself", it will be because of military threats. And last time I checked the law of value doesn't impose itself through military competition. My point merely being that you need to substantiate your argument, because there are many reasons for needing economic growth, the law of value being only one among many.


I'm also interested in knowing if you think that labour in the USSR was directly social and if not, how come there was no commodity production? And maybe how come Engels and Marx saw the concentration of capital resulting in state ownership and a "national capitalist", did they contradict their own theory of value?

I sort of already answered the question above. As with regards to Marx and Engels, it depends on what you mean. If you have a particular quote or argument you want me to address, then I will be happy to do so.

[Subversive]

Not to interrupt the excellent discussion but:

So ultimately the question is: how can labour be indirectly social when social nature of your production is actually pre-validated by the State plan before the production even occurred. It didn't matter if that production wasn't satisfying to consumers - if they didn't buy that, well, they had no other choice. The State could still produce the same defective shit even if nobody bought it, ever, and there would be no law imposing itself to discipline the state on that. Actually, that's exactly what happened - my history textbooks were full of these stories and pictures.
I'd personally like to hear some of these stories and see some of these pictures.
Of course, I'm not supposing you still have your history textbooks, but if the material was so prolific that history books were "full" of them then they should not be too hard to cite and reference, correct?

[Kill all the fetuses!]

Not to interrupt the excellent discussion but:

I'd personally like to hear some of these stories and see some of these pictures.
Of course, I'm not supposing you still have your history textbooks, but if the material was so prolific that history books were "full" of them then they should not be too hard to cite and reference, correct?

I am not sure that's that such a specific claim that would warrant a reference - the defunct nature of production in the USSR, growing over the years, seems to me like an established and widely known fact. Enterprises had targets set in either weight or quantity and they would produce these things, regardless of their usage, because that's not what matter, that wasn't what targets were about. They do anything to meet the targets. I remember how various workers had to throw gasoline by the side of the road in order to meet the target etc.

[Tim Cornelis]

I think your definition of indirectly and directly social labour is inaccurate. Directly social labour is where the coordination of productive activity is established through direct social links, whereas indirectly social labour is when coordination of social labour is established indirectly through exchange of commodities. The fact that Soviet enterprises related to each other via contracts and exchanges establishes that social labour was indirectly social.

RevLeft-user Robbo proposes a system of self-regulating stock control where production is determined by consumption. So if stocks remain full, production is cancelled, if stocks are empty quickly, production is increased. In his system we have common ownership, freely associated labour, no money and currency, free access according to needs, no prices, no barter, no exchange, and yet this system would have the law of value operate, it would, according to your logic (it seems at least), qualify as commodity producing society, value producing society, etc. That seems completely backward.

As for the claim that the USSR kept on producing things that no one ever bought, this is the first I've heard of such a claim. Yes, the quality of goods wasn't good but under conditions of a monopolised market that is not relevant in establishing whether the law of value operated.


"they still have to bring it to the market and establish social nature of the labour-time spent on that production. Then the law of value will impose itself depending of whether consumers see these products as good enough of use-values, depending on whether they produced below or above socially-necessary labour-time etc. Then the corporation will get feedback from the market and see its profit either diminish or grow - the law of value will either discipline or reward that corporation. "

Profit-and-loss accounting was used as a measure of efficiency in the USSR. Enterprises that were less profitable were closed for instance. You may respond that this was the decision of the Soviet government and not forced upon them by the law of value but it would seem to me that the Soviet government was bound by the law of value, force closures or face economic downfall.

True, heavy industry was less profitable than light industry, as Stalin claims, yet was kept afloat in the service of economic growth -- temporarily at least. Ultimately, this was not sustainable and forced the Soviet government's hands to abandon this policy. Another issue, Nazi-Germany demanded a certain fixed price for commodities under the threat of nationalisation. Prices were not regulated by freely competing businesses as you say. I don't think that we can conclude on that basis that capitalism ceased to exist in Nazi-Germany.

And no, if there without autonomous enterprises the law of value could not operate.


I am not sure that's that such a specific claim that would warrant a reference - the defunct nature of production in the USSR, growing over the years, seems to me like an established and widely known fact. Enterprises had targets set in either weight or quantity and they would produce these things, regardless of their usage, because that's not what matter, that wasn't what targets were about. They do anything to meet the targets. I remember how various workers had to throw gasoline by the side of the road in order to meet the target etc.

The general claim is usually more the opposite of what you claim. It is normally claimed that the USSR produced too few consumer goods, not so many that they laid idly in stores, so I think it warrants a source.a

[Subversive]

I am not sure that's that such a specific claim that would warrant a reference - the defunct nature of production in the USSR, growing over the years, seems to me like an established and widely known fact. Enterprises had targets set in either weight or quantity and they would produce these things, regardless of their usage, because that's not what matter, that wasn't what targets were about. They do anything to meet the targets. I remember how various workers had to throw gasoline by the side of the road in order to meet the target etc.
I'm not stating you are wrong, I'm merely asking for evidence to prove your claim.

I have never actually heard this claim before, except from pro-Capitalist nutcases with no understanding of history (and no ability to argue coherently), so I would certainly dispute that it is "widely known". And even if this were true, something which is "widely known" is sometimes also 'widely mistaken'. For example, the belief that humans only use 10% of their brains. It is scientifically known that this is simply not true, but it is 'widely believed' to be a fact.

The fact your claim also indicates that this evidence is widely available and known has me quite shocked seeing as how I have not seen or heard of this evidence before.
As Tim explained, I believe the opposite is usually the claim being made about the USSR, that it under-produced on most consumer goods. Certainly these two claims can co-exist, but I've only ever seen evidence for one of them.

[Tim Cornelis]

I looked it up, and there were loads of unwanted consumer goods in the USSR. It's somewhat different from how KAF sketched it, or how I interpreted it at least. Production of unwanted goods was not continued indefinitely for the sake of production, but adjustment to demand was slow. Based on this information it would seem that the law of value operated and that the Soviet government was bound by this law, but that it operated in a stunted manner because, while Soviet enterprises were reciprocally independent as evidenced by their mutual exchanges, they were restricted as well. On the one hand the Soviet government tried to correct for departures from the socially average necessary labour-time by changing production, on the other hand, the Soviet enterprises (again despite their relative isolation) were nonetheless bound to the Soviet government in terms of production targets and administrative prices.

I'm leaning toward the belief that this does not negate the fundamental defining categories of the capitalist mode of production but it warrants closer inspection and will see if that changes my mind.

[Kill all the fetuses!]

I might make a more elaborate response tomorrow (I am little bit tipsy right now). Before I do so, I want to clarify some points.


I think your definition of indirectly and directly social labour is inaccurate. Directly social labour is where the coordination of productive activity is established through direct social links, whereas indirectly social labour is when coordination of social labour is established indirectly through exchange of commodities.

That seems to me like almost verbatim of what I said, certainly in content it was. Where do you think my definition is inaccurate?


RevLeft-user Robbo proposes a system of self-regulating stock control where production is determined by consumption. So if stocks remain full, production is cancelled, if stocks are empty quickly, production is increased. In his system we have common ownership, freely associated labour, no money and currency, free access according to needs, no prices, no barter, no exchange, and yet this system would have the law of value operate, it would, according to your logic (it seems at least), qualify as commodity producing society, value producing society, etc. That seems completely backward.

I really don't follow. How does "my logic" make such a system commodity- and value-producing system?


And no, if there without autonomous enterprises the law of value could not operate.

So if the State nationalised all the means of production and didn't allow enterprises have any autonomy whatsoever, it wouldn't be state-capitalist? What would it be then?

Ultimately, the question as to whether the USSR was state-capitalist or not, for you is an empirical question, right? If enterprises had some autonomy, then it's capitalism (law of value operates), if it doesn't, then it's not capitalism (law of value can't operate), is this right?


The general claim is usually more the opposite of what you claim. It is normally claimed that the USSR produced too few consumer goods, not so many that they laid idly in stores, so I think it warrants a source.a

I don't think these things are mutually exclusive. But I am relying more on anecdotal evidence rather than rigorous scientific sources so I might as well retract my claim.

[RedKobra]

Excellent back and forth guys, extremely interesting stuff.

[Tim Cornelis]

"Aufheben's final article on the nature of the USSR, arguing that the Soviet Union was in fact a state capitalist system but where the law of value was deformed."

http://libcom.org/library/what-was-ussr-aufheben-part-4

It seems that the idea of the USSR as capitalist with a stunted law of value is not unique. I have actually read the first two parts but never read the conclusion.


I might make a more elaborate response tomorrow (I am little bit tipsy right now). Before I do so, I want to clarify some points.

That seems to me like almost verbatim of what I said, certainly in content it was. Where do you think my definition is inaccurate?

The difference is that it doesn't matter if the person knows prior to 'exchange' of products or not, that's irrelevant or secondary at best.


I really don't follow. How does "my logic" make such a system commodity- and value-producing system?

"Directly social labour means that whatever you produce, you produce for consumption - whether yours or your masters"

Whether the produced goods were consumed is only revealed afterwards, so not everything that is produced is produced for consumption.


So if the State nationalised all the means of production and didn't allow enterprises have any autonomy whatsoever, it wouldn't be state-capitalist? What would it be then?

I'm not sure if that is possible but if it were or it is revealed that the USSR had that I'd opt that it is a socially non-viable formation, a non-viable mutation as a result of a number of historical contingencies, or a non-mode of production.


Ultimately, the question as to whether the USSR was state-capitalist or not, for you is an empirical question, right? If enterprises had some autonomy, then it's capitalism (law of value operates), if it doesn't, then it's not capitalism (law of value can't operate), is this right?

Not necessarily, maybe that was more my assumption at the beginning and perhaps I swayed a little more toward your position.

[Kill all the fetuses!]

Tim, I will come back to you at the weekend; will try to push the argument as far as I can in order to see if we can make some interesting conclusions. As for now, several shorter comments.


"Aufheben's final article on the nature of the USSR, arguing that the Soviet Union was in fact a state capitalist system but where the law of value was deformed."

http://libcom.org/library/what-was-ussr-aufheben-part-4

It seems that the idea of the USSR as capitalist with a stunted law of value is not unique. I have actually read the first two parts but never read the conclusion.

I've read it, it's a fascinating piece, I think more people should read it. One of the things that that essay criticises is precisely what made me to comment on the issue in the first place - they criticise the simplistic and no so simplistic arguments for state-capitalism. In essence, they are saying that all theories of state-capitalism that exist (or rather the major ones) are fundamentally flawed. At the end of the day, they do arrive at the conclusion that the USSR was a state-capitalist society. It's a fascinating and complicated argument, I still have to finally sit down and think through it, but I am sympathetic to it, although I have my reservations. However, it's certainly not the same argument as you make, not even close, I believe.


The difference is that it doesn't matter if the person knows prior to 'exchange' of products or not, that's irrelevant or secondary at best.

I am sorry, I am honestly not really sure what you mean still. Since this a criticism of my argument, could you please try to formulate that criticism, as I care to know?


"Directly social labour means that whatever you produce, you produce for consumption - whether yours or your masters"

Whether the produced goods were consumed is only revealed afterwards, so not everything that is produced is produced for consumption.

As far as I see there is a difference between something being produced for consumption and something being consumed. I mean, you can produce something for consumption, but that something might still not be consumed (defective, expired etc). But that's besides the point, because at the end of the day we agree - I meant to say what you said; there is no disagreement between us on what is directly social or indirectly social labour (I don't think these concepts are particularly complicated anyway).