Handing the means of production to the state...

[Neomadmonkey]

So I'm still pretty new to the revolutionary left and I'm still learning so I apologize for any misinterpretations. From my understanding, prior to achieving full communism, Marx initially wanted to put the means of production into the hands of the proletariat run state, but wouldn't this cause more problems than solve? Afterall, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Ideas?

[Q]

Marx and Engels were actually vehemently anti-state. You made a common confusion with Ferdinand Lassalle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Lassalle), the German socialist that stood at the cradle of the German political workers movement. Where Lassalle was very pro-state, Marx strongly disagreed. The capitalist state needed to be destroyed for the working class to seize power, Marx was very clear about this after the experience of the Paris Commune.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Marx and Engels were against the bourgeois state, calling for the smashing of the bourgeois state apparatus and for a transitional, revolutionary proletarian state. The OP asked if Marx thought that the proletarian state would seize the means of production. This is a sore point for all decentralists, market fetishists, self-managers and so on, but he patently did. As Engels puts it in Anti-Duhring:

This rebellion of the productive forces, as they grow more and more powerful, against their quality as capital, this stronger and stronger command that their social character shall be recognised, forces the capitalist class itself to treat them more and more as social productive forces, so far as this is possible under capitalist conditions. The period of industrial high pressure, with its unbounded inflation of credit, not less than the crash itself, by the collapse of great capitalist establishments, tends to bring about that form of the socialisation of great masses of means of production which we meet with in the different kinds of joint-stock companies. Many of these means of production and of communication are, from the outset, so colossal that, like the railways, they exclude all other forms of capitalistic exploitation. At a further stage of evolution this form also becomes insufficient: the official representative of capitalist society — the state — will ultimately have to undertake the direction of production. This necessity for conversion into state property is felt first in the great institutions for intercourse and communication — the post office, the telegraphs, the railways.




If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into joint-stock companies and state property shows how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose. All the social functions of the capitalist are now performed by salaried employees. The capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. At first the capitalist mode of production forces out the workers. Now it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus population, although not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army.


But the transformation, either into joint-stock companies, or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies this is obvious. And the modern state, again, is only the organisation that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the general external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. 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 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 relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.


This solution can only consist in the practical recognition of the social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in the harmonising of the modes of production, appropriation, and exchange with the socialised character of the means of production And this can only come about by society openly and directly taking possession of the productive forces which have outgrown all control except that of society as a whole. The social character of the means of production and of the products today reacts against the producers, periodically disrupts all production and exchange, acts only like a law of nature working blindly, forcibly, destructively. But with the taking over by society of the productive forces, the social character of the means of production and of the products will be utilised by the producers with a perfect understanding of its nature, and instead of being a source of disturbance and periodical collapse, will become the most powerful lever of production itself.


Active social forces work exactly like natural forces: blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand, and reckon with them. But when once we understand them, when once we grasp their action, their direction, their effects, it depends only upon ourselves to subject them more and more to our own will, and by means of them to reach our own ends. And this holds quite especially of the mighty productive forces of today. As long as we obstinately refuse to understand the nature and the character of these social means of action — and this understanding goes against the grain of the capitalist mode of production and its defenders — so long these forces are at work in spite of us, in opposition to us, so long they master us, as we have shown above in detail. But when once their nature is understood, they can, in the hands of the producers working together, be transformed from master demons into willing servants. The difference is as that between the destructive force of electricity in the lightning of the storm, and electricity under command in the telegraph and the voltaic arc; the difference between a conflagration, and fire working in the service of man. With this recognition, at last, of the real nature of the productive forces of today, the social anarchy of production gives place to a social regulation of production upon a definite plan, according to the needs of the community and of each individual. Then the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which the product enslaves first the producer and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of production: upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the maintenance and extension of production — on the other, direct individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of enjoyment.


Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and more completely transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. Whilst it forces on more and more the transformation of the vast means of production, already socialised, into state property, it shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production in the first instance into state property. But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, abolishes also the state as state. Society thus far, based upon class antagonisms, had need of the state, that is, of an organisation of the particular class, which was pro tempore the exploiting class, for the maintenance of its external conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited classes in the condition of oppression corresponding with the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom, wage-labour). The state was the official representative of society as a whole; the gathering of it together into a visible embodiment. But it was this only in so far as it was the state of that class which itself represented, for the time being, society as a whole: in ancient times, the state of slave-owning citizens; in the Middle Ages, the feudal lords; in our own time, the bourgeoisie. When at last it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a state, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the state really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not "abolished". It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase "a free people's state", both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the state out of hand.

[Jacob Cliff]

Marx and Engels were against the bourgeois state, calling for the smashing of the bourgeois state apparatus and for a transitional, revolutionary proletarian state. The OP asked if Marx thought that the proletarian state would seize the means of production. This is a sore point for all decentralists, market fetishists, self-managers and so on, but he patently did. As Engels puts it in Anti-Duhring:

This rebellion of the productive forces, as they grow more and more powerful, against their quality as capital, this stronger and stronger command that their social character shall be recognised, forces the capitalist class itself to treat them more and more as social productive forces, so far as this is possible under capitalist conditions. The period of industrial high pressure, with its unbounded inflation of credit, not less than the crash itself, by the collapse of great capitalist establishments, tends to bring about that form of the socialisation of great masses of means of production which we meet with in the different kinds of joint-stock companies. Many of these means of production and of communication are, from the outset, so colossal that, like the railways, they exclude all other forms of capitalistic exploitation. At a further stage of evolution this form also becomes insufficient: the official representative of capitalist society — the state — will ultimately have to undertake the direction of production. This necessity for conversion into state property is felt first in the great institutions for intercourse and communication — the post office, the telegraphs, the railways.




If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into joint-stock companies and state property shows how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose. All the social functions of the capitalist are now performed by salaried employees. The capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. At first the capitalist mode of production forces out the workers. Now it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus population, although not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army.


But the transformation, either into joint-stock companies, or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies this is obvious. And the modern state, again, is only the organisation that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the general external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. 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 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 relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.


This solution can only consist in the practical recognition of the social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in the harmonising of the modes of production, appropriation, and exchange with the socialised character of the means of production And this can only come about by society openly and directly taking possession of the productive forces which have outgrown all control except that of society as a whole. The social character of the means of production and of the products today reacts against the producers, periodically disrupts all production and exchange, acts only like a law of nature working blindly, forcibly, destructively. But with the taking over by society of the productive forces, the social character of the means of production and of the products will be utilised by the producers with a perfect understanding of its nature, and instead of being a source of disturbance and periodical collapse, will become the most powerful lever of production itself.


Active social forces work exactly like natural forces: blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand, and reckon with them. But when once we understand them, when once we grasp their action, their direction, their effects, it depends only upon ourselves to subject them more and more to our own will, and by means of them to reach our own ends. And this holds quite especially of the mighty productive forces of today. As long as we obstinately refuse to understand the nature and the character of these social means of action — and this understanding goes against the grain of the capitalist mode of production and its defenders — so long these forces are at work in spite of us, in opposition to us, so long they master us, as we have shown above in detail. But when once their nature is understood, they can, in the hands of the producers working together, be transformed from master demons into willing servants. The difference is as that between the destructive force of electricity in the lightning of the storm, and electricity under command in the telegraph and the voltaic arc; the difference between a conflagration, and fire working in the service of man. With this recognition, at last, of the real nature of the productive forces of today, the social anarchy of production gives place to a social regulation of production upon a definite plan, according to the needs of the community and of each individual. Then the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which the product enslaves first the producer and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of production: upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the maintenance and extension of production — on the other, direct individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of enjoyment.


Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and more completely transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. Whilst it forces on more and more the transformation of the vast means of production, already socialised, into state property, it shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production in the first instance into state property. But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, abolishes also the state as state. Society thus far, based upon class antagonisms, had need of the state, that is, of an organisation of the particular class, which was pro tempore the exploiting class, for the maintenance of its external conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited classes in the condition of oppression corresponding with the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom, wage-labour). The state was the official representative of society as a whole; the gathering of it together into a visible embodiment. But it was this only in so far as it was the state of that class which itself represented, for the time being, society as a whole: in ancient times, the state of slave-owning citizens; in the Middle Ages, the feudal lords; in our own time, the bourgeoisie. When at last it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a state, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the state really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not "abolished". It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase "a free people's state", both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the state out of hand.

Xhar-Xhar:

So the state must become the exploiter of all for exploitation to end? I'm a bit confused on this. Is the economy of the dictatorship of the proletariat state capitalism, in that case? And if that's the case, what's difference does the economy undergo when the state dies out? Would it still be planned and managed in the same way, just without money or state violence?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Xhar-Xhar:

So the state must become the exploiter of all for exploitation to end? I'm a bit confused on this. Is the economy of the dictatorship of the proletariat state capitalism, in that case? And if that's the case, what's difference does the economy undergo when the state dies out? Would it still be planned and managed in the same way, just without money or state violence?

That depends on how you view the relations of production during the transitional period. The general Trotskyist view, given by Mandel and others, is that there is a set of transitional relations of production between capitalism and socialsim, which include a partial negation of the law of value. These relations do not have the long-term stability that characterises a mode of production.

There is still something like exploitation in that society disposes of the aggregate social products - the workers might receive wages well in excess of the cost of reproduction of labour-power, but part of the social product will still be taken for things like the civil war etc. There is no possibility of the workers getting the Lassallean "undiminished proceeds of labour".

When the state becomes unnecessary, money, wages and the market no longer exist, and planning is now truly global (whereas previously it was confined to the revolutionary area). It would still be centrally planned on account of the objective socialisation of and the global scale of production processes, and it would still require the "labour of management and supervision" on account of socialism being a combined mode of production.

Left Communists would generally say the relations of production in the transitional period are capitalist - you would have to ask them for clarification, as I don't think I can set out their views here.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

There is enough ambiguity and change (between early and late period Marx) in Marx's ideas on the dynamic of a revolutionary change from a capitalist to a communist society that it has become necessary, since Marx, to update and revise his ideas.

This was first done by the Bolsheviks, who were very much pro-state under Lenin and certainly Stalin et al. continued this tradition of the 'proletarian state'.

In my opinion, the failure to find a practical solution that fully explains how a communist society might come about is one of the major reasons for the demise of communism. Clearly, the Soviet Union failed as an experiment, most notably its constant revisions towards state-managed reformism until its dissolution in 1991. I think that this shows a major weakness we have as communists is that, whilst we have probably the most enviable plurality of theoretical ideas to draw on from any political philosophy in history, the actual 'real' experiences of socialist experiments are something of a sore point, since all hitherto have failed. Therefore, the question of the role of the state in controlling the means of production remains a central, yet un-answered, question for communists.

[Futility Personified]

Whilst admittedly abstract, (cuz utopian otherwise, yeah?) in a way, the unhindered rampage of neoliberal capitalism could be seen as circumventing the question of socialism and the state, at least temporarily.

For arguments sake, as at this point in time I don't see how it can be anything but, say the complete transcendence of state boundaries occurs by multinational corporations, the seizure of the MOP in what could be considered the fiefdom of a business in years to come would be the same and yet economically different to how it would be in the traditional sense of the proleteriat coming to power in a nation state. Getting a bit dystopian here, but perhaps the burgeoning doom that awaits us all in forthcoming free trade agreements posits a different future, assuming that resistance to them fails (which almost certainly will). The relations of a previously privately run domain must surely be different to those of a nation state?

[cyu]

The OP asked if Marx thought that the proletarian state would seize the means of production. This is a sore point for all decentralists, market fetishists, self-managers and so on, but he patently did.


As a self-described "decentralist" I wouldn't exactly put it like that. It's not really a sore point if Marx thinks differently from anarchists, and it's not really a sore point if I think differently from any other anarchist - it's kind of the nature of the beast that anarchists don't trust any one person to be the single source of truth (and if that "single source of truth" still lives, it might even endanger him by turning him into a target of corruption). If a handgun is useful, use it. If there are situations where it's not as useful, fire the artillery.

If workers seize the means of production, that's fine by me. Clearly anarcho-syndicalists want employees to take over their companies. As for what counts as "government" in the post-capitalist world, I suspect there's going to be contention with other types of leftists - how much effect should two employees of the same company have on one another? What if they lived in different planets or galaxies?

[ckaihatsu]

[T]he question of the role of the state in controlling the means of production remains a central, yet un-answered, question for communists.


I don't see why this is phrased as being such a conundrum -- yes, any given geographical point of production, and also the entirety of the world, is a fixed, immutable location and must be dealt with as humanity's self-created responsibility. Thus politics.

But I don't see why we should feel beholden to the bourgeois tradition of a single chambers where personages of concentrated influence trade favors over their clients' respective turf.

I don't think it's even too much of a stretch to picture a post-revolutionary social environment as being very 'tabula-rasa' (blank slate) -- a phase change away from fixed ownership, to what's sorely needed: Socially mandated tasks that people step in to accomplish at will for the good of the public.

Here's a particular model for such, in the way of a state-less social organization that lends itself to centralization:


labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'



http://s6.postimg.org/nfpj758c0/150221_labor_credits_framework_for_communist_su.jp g (http://postimg.org/image/p7ii21rot/full/)

[Die Neue Zeit]

So the state must become the exploiter of all for exploitation to end? I'm a bit confused on this. Is the economy of the dictatorship of the proletariat state capitalism, in that case?

Most likely yes.

The closer the economy of worker-class rule (DOTP) is to "state-capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people" (Lenin), in which "circulation money will be found indispensable until something better is " (Kautsky the orthodox Marxist) - no matter how theoretically, practically, and tragically wrong it was to equate all this with non-circulable labour credits and the rest of the [i]lower phase of the communist mode of production ("late Marx" and Engels) - the easier the further transition.

Labour-credit and demarchy advocates Paul Cockshott and Dave Zachariah wrote in Arguments for Socialism (2012):


What was required was a decisive shift of the economy towards fully fledged state capitalism [...]

Had such gains been won, then the next restructuring crisis, occuring perhaps in [a couple of decades] would have posed the question of a transition from state capitalism to socialism.

[Jacob Cliff]

As for the Lenin quote, doesn't Lenin refer to the NEP here? His other quotes about Statw Capitalism have always tended to do with partial state ownership of the means of production and the rest of the economy being privatized; does this quote too refer to the NEP, or to the workers' state's economy?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Nope. That was the infamous Lenin quote in 1917 declaring that "socialism is state-capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people."

Those other quotes on state capitalism describe the usual state capitalism that is not state-capitalist monopoly, which in the worst-case scenario can be little different from the mercantilism and dirigisme that Adam Smith himself argued against.

P.S. - The Kautsky-when-he-was-a-Marxist quote on the necessity of money in the transitional period comes from The Social Revolution (1902).