Was the USSR State-Capitalist or a Degenerated Workers' State?

[Jacob Cliff]

I'm stuck between understanding the USSR as a degenerated workers' state or state-capitalism. The left communist view of the USSR as just another form of capitalism I can see as applying in certain ways (generalized commodity production, wage labor, etc.), but the proletarian dictatorship (which is what the USSR was, even if deformed and overtaken by a bureaucratic apparatus) would inevitably feature these capitalistic characteristics in the beginning (consequently, the DOTP is at first in the capitalist mode of production from what I understand).
At the same time, I'm not sure if the Trotskyist view of these countries as "workers' states" makes much sense, either. How was the USSR a "workers' state" if the workers had no power– if the bureaucracy indeed did hijack the revolution around 1926? Or does a "workers' state" just refer to the economic basis of these countries – i.e., their planned economies?

TL;DR: was the USSR state-capitalist or a degenerated workers' state, and if they were state-capitalist, wouldn't all prole dictatorships be "state capitalist" in the sense they wouldn't get rid of many capitalist attributes in the beginning?

[OnFire]

The USSR is in my opinion the result of the only attempt ever in history to implement communism. As the Russians of that time were too underdeveloped and due to the military blockade and failed revolutions elsewhere, the revolution was turned on tis head and resulted in a dictatorship that only paid lipservice to communist ideals, while being reactionary and imperialist AF.

[Fourth Internationalist]

For the best understanding of the degenerated workers state, I would highly recommend reading Leon Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and Where is it Going? (https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/index.htm)

A summary of the degenerated workers state position:

"The USSR is a state which bases itself upon the property relationships created by the proletarian revolution and which is administered by a labor bureaucracy in the interests of new privileged strata. The Soviet Union can be called a workers’ state in approximately the same sense—despite the vast difference in scale—in which a trade union, led and betrayed by opportunists, that is, by agents of capital, can be called a workers’ organization. Just as revolutionists defend every trade union, even the most thoroughly reformist, from the class enemy, combating intransigently the treacherous leaders at the same time, so the parties of the Fourth International defend the USSR against the blows of imperialism without for a single moment giving up the struggle against the reactionary Stalinist apparatus."

—Leon Trotsky, The Fourth International and the Soviet Union (July 1936)

I would recommend checking out the websites of Orthodox Trotskyist groups such as the International Communist League (http://www.icl-fi.org/) and the League for the Fourth International (http://www.internationalist.org/)to see their positions. In short, the position amounts to unconditional military defense of the USSR against imperialism and internal counterrevolution while simultaneously advocating proletarian political revolution to oust the Stalinist bureaucrats.

[Tim Cornelis]

See Aufheben's What was the USSR? for a refutation of the degenerated/deformed workers' state.

On why many of the assumptions of transitional society are incoherent (e.g. counter-posing the law of value and law of planning): http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/alternatives-to-capital/video-the-incoherence-of-transitional-society.html

I also disagree with that the USSR was a proletarian dictatorship. The USSR was borne from the failure of the proletarian revolution. It wasn't ruled by the working class, it was not mandated by the proletariat, it was not run in the interests of the proletariat.

[RedMaterialist]

Trotsky


The attempt to represent the Soviet bureaucracy as a class of “state capitalists” will obviously not withstand criticism.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch09.htm#ch09-2 (1936)

[Comrade Jacob]

Neither. It was a genuine socialist-society up until the late 50s when the Khrushchev capitalist reforms kicked in. At that point it became a revisionist-socialist state and then in the late 80s it became a flat out capitalist society.

[Armchair Partisan]

Re: "wouldn't all prole dictatorships be state capitalist in the beginning", why wouldn't the workers get rid of capitalist methods straight away? What reason do they have to wait, aside from the brief time it takes to plan out a full takeover?

I subscribe to the "state capitalist" theory.

[DOOM]

Neither. It was a genuine socialist-society up until the late 50s when the Khrushchev capitalist reforms kicked in. At that point it became a revisionist-socialist state and then in the late 80s it became a flat out capitalist society.

Care to elaborate why this is true?
For all I know commodities, value, labor in the abstract and wages were still a thing.

[Tim Cornelis]

The Stalinist position is that the means of production were not commodities in the sense that profit was the rationale which determined their employment. Subsidies meant that they could be employed for socially (government) determined ends, and not market/profit determined ends. This changed after Stalin's death because the Soviet administration recognised that this system wasn't the most optimal means of stimulating capital accumulation, which Stalinists see as restoration of capitalism, or the first step toward the restoration of capitalism. Of course a deeply flawed position by any rudimentary Marxist standard. We can apparently move between modes of production at wills and whims of a small leadership making subtle policy reforms, without social upheaval. It's in complete disregard of the Marxist method and historical materialism.

[Islam Muslim Muhammad]

I) All capitalist societies in history fit the definition of state-capitalism. Non-state capitalism is an oxymoron to everyone except for libertarians that believe it's possible to found a truly laissez faire society unfettered by the market-molesting hand of the state. Why self-proclaimed socialists would use this qualifier is a mystery to me.

II) Degenerated Workers' State isn't a real theory. It's a barely concealed theoretical justification that Trotsky pulled out of his ass to advance the interests of his political faction in the Bolshevik party at the expense of Stalin's faction. The ultimate aim was to provide an ideological cover for regime change in the USSR, with Trotsky returning from exile to claim what he considered his rightful position as successor to Lenin. A truly delusional notion on Trotsky's part.


I also disagree with that the USSR was a proletarian dictatorship.Of course it wasn't a proletarian dictatorship. The Soviet experience(and by this I mean the Worker's Councils that arose in 1917, not the Soviet Union) completely discredited the notion that the proletariat as a class can rule. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is a nonviable concept. The Worker's Council experience in Russia and Germany and other countries unleashed by the revolutionary tide that began in 1917 demonstrated very clearly that even Worker's Councils are organs of not proletarian class rule as everyone hoped but rather arenas of contest between different socialist political parties(in Russia, the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks, and the SRs). You can have a Dictatorship of the X or Y Faction Of The Politically Active Part Of Proletariat Ruling In The Name Of The Wider Proletariat as happened in Russia but that's about it, for very natural reasons - only a minority of the working class has any interest in Dictator-ing even during a revolutionary period.

It really puzzles me why socialists still think proletarian class-rule is feasible after the Russian experiences. Um, people, have any of you ever met an average proletarian? The vast majority have no interest whatsoever managing the means of production. That interferes with their lives. Who wants to spend what can be leisure time one can spend on a hobby or with family/friends on committees and worker's meetings instead, except for the ideologically inclined(and the ideologically inclined are always a small minority)? Committees and meetings don't add any value to life. These 19th century utopian notions of democracy are archaic.

Anyways as far as I can see the Soviet Union had a semi-developed socialist system until capitalist reforms began in 1965 and culminated with Perestroika.

[Tim Cornelis]

'I)' This is an annoying semantic point that some Leftcoms and I think also ortho-trots keep using. State-capitalism is employed to differentiate it from, for instance, liberal capitalism. Of course, capitalism requires a state, that doesn't make it state-capitalist. State-capitalism, here, is defined as state command over capital. It also seems, by IMM, used as red herring. By attacking the name, it distracts from the validity of the concept. But I'm not sure about that.

Also, what do you propose for methods of governance then IMM?

[Sewer Socialist]

Neither. It was a genuine socialist-society up until the late 50s when the Khrushchev capitalist reforms kicked in. At that point it became a revisionist-socialist state and then in the late 80s it became a flat out capitalist society.

Yes, because the presence or absence of proper leadership and their policies determines the mode of production, which would mean that states could fluidly go back and forth between the socialism and capitalism. :rolleyes:

Also, are you referring to "revisionism" as a mode of production?

[Armchair Partisan]

It really puzzles me why socialists still think proletarian class-rule is feasible after the Russian experiences. Um, people, have any of you ever met an average proletarian? The vast majority have no interest whatsoever managing the means of production. That interferes with their lives. Who wants to spend what can be leisure time one can spend on a hobby or with family/friends on committees and worker's meetings instead, except for the ideologically inclined(and the ideologically inclined are always a small minority)? Committees and meetings don't add any value to life. These 19th century utopian notions of democracy are archaic.

So... what do we do to further communism then? Establish a theocracy?

Yeah, the "average worker" today is different from the "average worker" of a century in the past or a century in the future. But the reason the workers don't want to get involved with politics today is because it is useless to them. There are a lot of other ideas the "average worker" holds (re: class societies, inequality, LGBTQ issues) that we should seek to change.

(P.S.: I'd be very interested in your stance on LGBTQ issues for that matter.)

[Zoop]

It was a genuine socialist-society up until the late 50s

Forgive him Father, for he knows not what he says.

[DOOM]

The Stalinist position is that the means of production were not commodities in the sense that profit was the rationale which determined their employment. Subsidies meant that they could be employed for socially (government) determined ends, and not market/profit determined ends. This changed after Stalin's death because the Soviet administration recognised that this system wasn't the most optimal means of stimulating capital accumulation, which Stalinists see as restoration of capitalism, or the first step toward the restoration of capitalism. Of course a deeply flawed position by any rudimentary Marxist standard. We can apparently move between modes of production at wills and whims of a small leadership making subtle policy reforms, without social upheaval. It's in complete disregard of the Marxist method and historical materialism.

Honestly this sounds like they wanted to sublate the commodity-form by pretending it doesn't exist.

[Rafiq]

You can have a Dictatorship of the X or Y Faction Of The Politically Active Part Of Proletariat Ruling In The Name Of The Wider Proletariat as happened in Russia but that's about it, for very natural reasons - only a minority of the working class has any interest in Dictator-ing even during a revolutionary period.

This of course ignores the reality that these different factions were only factions insofar as they were divided along class lines. For that reason, the Bolsheviks enjoyed hte support of virtually the whole Russian proletariat, with the SR's and Mensheviks enjoying popularity among the rural (SR's) petite-bourgeoisie. The Mensheviks, conversely, were a thoroughly (radical) bourgeois party. What this means, is not that the bourgeoisie supported the Mensheviks, but that the prerogative of the Mensheviks was structurally bourgeois, i.e. in the same vein that the Jacobins, whose basis of support was thoroughly in a doomed class, were none the less bourgeois politically. It is vulgar, and rather stupid to conceive the proletarian dictatorship as the actual political rule of all individual proletarian too, for this is beyond the point. The point of the proletarian dictatorship doesn't even have to be this fetishistic "rule of councils", for councils were merely the unique expression of the interests of the proletariat in Russia. Just as the bourgeoisie might not "directly" rule politically, but still has the upper hand in all political matters, the proletarian dictatorship forms the basis of the rule of the proletariat as a class insofar as it is socially self-conscious. The point of a "proletarian" prerogative is its negation. What is more likely, anyway, in the 21st century, as far as the expression of a proletarian dictatorship, isn't councils either - it is most likely demarchy (which oddly enough, also encapsulates Hegel's praise of "monarchy" as merely and unquestionably constituting a symbolic role), i.e. where the structural mechanisms are in place that makes political rule akin to jury duty. To say that only a minority of the proletarians in Russia had any interest in "dictator-ing" is a baseless statement too, for you're mistaking the reality that the proletariat were themselves a minority in general. As it happens, the Russian working class was very politically active, and socially conscious.

The reason these are real categories, unlike a "race" or a "community of the faithful" is that social relations to production form the foundational basis of all ideological and spiritual categories - i.e. class antagonism is ABSOLUTELY constitutive of the social field, and the roaring success of categories like 'race" or even "community of the faithful" is their fundamental obfuscation, and displacement of this reality. That is why when ISIS is attempts to recruit from Saudi Arabia among other places, instead of harking on about some abstract "community of the faithful" they focus on emphasizing their recognition of the social injustices, political repressions, poverty, ETC. of potential recruits. After all, what does some millionaire from the gulf have in common with a working class Muslim in Cairo, or better yet, the enslaved South Asians they "employ" for their grotesque architectural projects? All racial, religious and national categories were formed as a result of class realities, not the other way around, all of which exist in direct approximation to the process of production.

So, "for very natural reasons" even if only a minority of people are actively ruling in a proletarian dictatorship, which is to be expected, this does not negate the reality of the existence of a proletarian dictatorship.


It really puzzles me why socialists still think proletarian class-rule is feasible after the Russian experiences

It's adorable how philistines love to discredit everything and anything from the Russian experience, from the abolition of the family to the act of revolution itself, to show how "it turned out 2 be a failure lul". The fact of the matter is that sustaining "proletarian class-rule" in Russia would not have been a problem to the slightest if not for the reality that they were a demographic minority, and the inability to reconcile this problem is what led to the destruction of the proletarian dictatorship. Your notion of power is already infantile, however: Class rule IS NOT the literal, active rule of everyone who fits a certain criteria, it amounts to the existence of power contingent upon its approximation to definite social realities, upon its approximation to certain social formations. This is why we can say Germany was a bourgeois state in the 1930's, even if the state wasn't built upon bribery and corruption by their money. Production exists for its own sake.

Ideology, to be very simplistic, works more like a set of ethical presuppositions about "this is the natural way" or "this is just" without even having to constitute yourself an identity which is a part of this ethical designation. For this reason, violent social transformation occurred in the Soviet Union, while Nazi Germany merely put on a glorified, prolonged parade.

[The Intransigent Faction]

It really puzzles me why socialists still think proletarian class-rule is feasible after the Russian experiences. Um, people, have any of you ever met an average proletarian? The vast majority have no interest whatsoever managing the means of production. That interferes with their lives. Who wants to spend what can be leisure time one can spend on a hobby or with family/friends on committees and worker's meetings instead, except for the ideologically inclined(and the ideologically inclined are always a small minority)? Committees and meetings don't add any value to life. These 19th century utopian notions of democracy are archaic.

Anyways as far as I can see the Soviet Union had a semi-developed socialist system until capitalist reforms began in 1965 and culminated with Perestroika.

The arrogance of this post is fucking painful. You act as if the alienation and resignation to the status quo inculcated in workers by their economic conditions and subjection to capitalist ideology demonstrates some inherent antipathy of workers to democratic management.

If you don't believe that democratic management of the means of production "adds any value to life" by overcoming the insanities of capitalism, actually enabling people to achieve things which capitalism prevents them from achieving, and letting communities make decisions that significantly affect their lives themselves instead of having them made by an entrenched elite, then what are you doing here? How can a system which has yet to actually be implemented be called "archaic", especially relative to one which predates it ideologically and (therefore also) structurally?

Anyway, if that's as far as you can see, that's myopic and misinformed. The USSR up to the late 1950s was not "partially developed socialism". What happened in that period was rapid industrialization achieved under brutal conditions imposed on the workers by the Soviet state (and by reactionary international forces which even by the Leninist definition posed a problem for the international development of socialism). Along with that there was an adoption of Western "scientific management" techniques designed to treat workers as automatons (the orchestrators of which later ended up shot or otherwise removed shortly before WW2).

EDIT: Also, I'm not particularly concerned with defending Trotsky, but that conflict was not reducible to a personal vendetta between Trotsky and Stalin. "Stalin's faction" represented elements of the Soviet bureaucracy which supported the notion of "socialism in one country", whereas "Trotsky's faction" recognized this as a convenient ideological explanation by an entrenched and conservative bureaucracy for the containment of 'socialist' revolution to a limited sphere.

[Cliff Paul]

It's adorable how philistines love to discredit everything and anything from the Russian experience, from the abolition of the family to the act of revolution itself, to show how "it turned out 2 be a failure lul". The fact of the matter is that sustaining "proletarian class-rule" in Russia would not have been a problem to the slightest if not for the reality that they were a demographic minority, and the inability to reconcile this problem is what led to the destruction of the proletarian dictatorship.

So are you saying that it was hypothetically possible for the USSR to maintain its existence as a dictatorship of the proletariat even after the international revolution failed?

[Rafiq]

So are you saying that it was hypothetically possible for the USSR to maintain its existence as a dictatorship of the proletariat even after the international revolution failed?

No, the revolution would have failed, but this failure being encapsulated on the problem over ruling the population would not have been present. The dictatorship certainly could have been survived longer (i.e. past the 1920's) with the Soviet Union being a proletarian sparta of sorts.

[StromboliFucker666]

state capitalism

[StromboliFucker666]

I) libertarians that believe it's possible to found a truly laissez faire society unfettered by the market-molesting hand of the state. Why self-proclaimed socialists would use this qualifier is a mystery to me.


You do not understand what we mean by libertarian. We use the original definition of libertarian so when we say libertarian socialist, we mean anti-authoritarian socialist.

[DOOM]

re

You do not understand what we mean by libertarian. We use the original definition of libertarian so when we say libertarian socialist, we mean anti-authoritarian socialist.

This is a really stupid argument. It doesn't really matter what you or "we" think, libertarian means now laissez-faire.

[StromboliFucker666]

This is a really stupid argument. It doesn't really matter what you or "we" think, libertarian means now laissez-faire.


No it does not. You can be a right libertarian which means you support so called "laissez-faire" capitalism or a left libertarian which means you support anti-authoritarian socialism. Get over it.

[motion denied]

No it does not. You can be a right libertarian which means you support so called "laissez-faire" capitalism or a left libertarian which means you support anti-authoritarian socialism. Get over it.

"Left libertarians" come in all flavours though: https://c4ss.org/

Anyway, I'm a traditionalist. Only libertarians that exist are libertarian socialists, aka anarchists. The aforementioned half-a-dozen of crackpots are meaningless.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

goddamn libertarians trying to arbitrarily change the meaning of words that's our job

[StromboliFucker666]

"Left libertarians" come in all flavours though: https://c4ss.org/

Anyway, I'm a traditionalist. Only libertarians that exist are libertarian socialists, aka anarchists. The aforementioned half-a-dozen of crackpots are meaningless.

traditionalist? if you mean this: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Radical_traditionalism

then how the fuck aren't you restricted?

If not, then I am an idiot and apologize.

[motion denied]

Hahaha no, I was being tongue-in-cheek.

[StromboliFucker666]

lol sorry. I need sleep right now

[RedMaterialist]

Neither. It was a genuine socialist-society up until the late 50s when the Khrushchev capitalist reforms kicked in. At that point it became a revisionist-socialist state and then in the late 80s it became a flat out capitalist society.

So, if it was a flat out capitalist society, why did it collapse in 1989? Is it a rule that capitalist societies wither away and die?

[Sharia Lawn]

So, if it was a flat out capitalist society, why did it collapse in 1989? Is it a rule that capitalist societies wither away and die?

The ancien regime in France withered away in 1789, too, huh? So did the southern slavocracy in 1861-1865.

[Fourth Internationalist]

So, if it was a flat out capitalist society, why did it collapse in 1989? Is it a rule that capitalist societies wither away and die?

The Soviet Union did not "wither away".

[RedMaterialist]

The ancien regime in France withered away in 1789, too, huh? So did the southern slavocracy in 1861-1865.

No. The first ended as the result of a violent revolution, the second ended as the result of a 4 yr long bloody civil war. Neither suddenly collapsed.

[RedMaterialist]

The Soviet Union did not "wither away".

Why did it collapse, then?

[Sharia Lawn]

No. The first ended as the result of a violent revolution, the second ended as the result of a 4 yr long bloody civil war. Neither suddenly collapsed.

If the Soviet Union suddenly collapsed, this seems quite different than characterizing its disappearance as "withering away."

[RedMaterialist]

If the Soviet Union suddenly collapsed, this seems quite different than characterizing its disappearance as "withering away."

The withering occurred over a lengthy period, like a tree withering. One day it fell over.

[Sharia Lawn]

The withering occurred over a lengthy period, like a tree withering. One day it fell over.

The problem is that "withering away" was a metaphor employed by Marx and Engels to describe how there was no need for any more qualitative falling over. The falling over had occurred, and what remained was the withering away of the carcass. This is why the way you describe the Soviet collapse makes no sense from that perspective.

[Mr. Piccolo]

Why did it collapse, then?

If one holds to the state capitalist theory, I suppose the answer would be that the Soviet elite supported a transition to private capitalism so that they could benefit from private capitalism the same way private capitalists do, that is through de jure ownership of the means of production, which includes the important ability to alienate property, especially through inheritance to children.

We know that nomenklatura and factory directors often took over some of the state properties in the privatization campaigns in the early 1990s and made up a portion of the new oligarch class in Russia. A similar process took place in China.

[Jacob Cliff]

'I)' This is an annoying semantic point that some Leftcoms and I think also ortho-trots keep using. State-capitalism is employed to differentiate it from, for instance, liberal capitalism. Of course, capitalism requires a state, that doesn't make it state-capitalist. State-capitalism, here, is defined as state command over capital. It also seems, by IMM, used as red herring. By attacking the name, it distracts from the validity of the concept. But I'm not sure about that.

Also, what do you propose for methods of governance then IMM?
I can see your point, to an extent, on state-property there being alien to its immediate producers (ergo fitting the realm of private property hand-in-glove), but I do have to wonder, what exactly would make social-property non-alienating? To word that differently, what is the solution to this alienation of property? If whether or not property held by the state under a proletarian dictatorship (which I assume is going to be the general Marxist standpoint here) is "private" or not depends on the (very subjective!) feeling of "alienation," how do we know we have socialism from state capitalism?

What exactly would make a planned economy – in a proletarian dictatorship – not state-capitalist? I don't mean any disrespect to any LeftCom comrades, but from a lot of what I've seen, most answers to questions as to how genuine socialist planning would work is usually some abstract-drivel about introducing overall societal planning or production for-use (which I can see existing in socialism, but not in a workers' state in a sea of capitalism).
In sum: what kind of structure would a genuinely planned economy be if it were to not be classified as "state-capitalist"? What would make it not alienated from its immediate producers?

[RedMaterialist]

The problem is that "withering away" was a metaphor employed by Marx and Engels to describe how there was no need for any more qualitative falling over. The falling over had occurred, and what remained was the withering away of the carcass. This is why the way you describe the Soviet collapse makes no sense from that perspective.


So, you agree the Soviet Union collapsed. Why?

[RedMaterialist]

If one holds to the state capitalist theory, I suppose the answer would be that the Soviet elite supported a transition to private capitalism so that they could benefit from private capitalism the same way private capitalists do, that is through de jure ownership of the means of production, which includes the important ability to alienate property, especially through inheritance to children.

We know that nomenklatura and factory directors often took over some of the state properties in the privatization campaigns in the early 1990s and made up a portion of the new oligarch class in Russia. A similar process took place in China.

I don't think I have heard any evidence that the Soviet elite conspired in or planned the collapse. The elite, with Gorbachev and some of the military, also tried to carry out a coup against the Yeltsin group. It had to be one of the weakest coups in modern history.

It is certainly true that within a few yrs the former industry managers were able to take control of industries with the help of Yeltsin and western bribery.

[RedMaterialist]

What would make it not alienated from its immediate producers?

In Marx's view in the Gotha Programme the workers would still be paid in wages as under the capitalist system, but the surplus-value or profit would be taken by the proletariat or the proletarian state and used for social benefit and re-investment.

The private capitalists would no longer alienate or take the surplus-value for their own use. The alienation, therefore, would be for the benefit of the working class.

[Mr. Piccolo]

I don't think I have heard any evidence that the Soviet elite conspired in or planned the collapse. The elite, with Gorbachev and some of the military, also tried to carry out a coup against the Yeltsin group. It had to be one of the weakest coups in modern history.

It is certainly true that within a few yrs the former industry managers were able to take control of industries with the help of Yeltsin and western bribery.

Well, there were different factions within the Soviet elite. The pro-capitalist faction won the battle. As you mentioned, the 1991 coup attempt failed.

I don't see the collapse of the Soviet Union as a "conspiracy" but the inevitable result of trying to bring about socialism without any democracy and without any meaningful worker control over the means of production.

Soviet elites had every material reason to abandon state socialism (or state capitalism, depending on how you define the USSR) and build private capitalism. Compared to private capitalists, the Soviet elite class was not very privileged compared to the average Soviet worker (although they did benefit from many material and institutional privileges). The most important privilege that Soviet elite lacked was de jure private ownership of the means of production.

David M. Kotz (who subscribes to the state socialist theory of the USSR) has written an interesting paper on the capitalist transition in the USSR and China.

See: http://people.umass.edu/dmkotz/Soc_and_Cap_Lessons_00.pdf

[Tim Cornelis]

RedMaterialist again demonstrating his utter ignorance of Marxism, and his utter misreadings of Marx. There's no profits, no values, in the first phase of socialism. The Gotha Program speaks of labour cheques, not money. No commodity-form, no value-form, no profits, none of that exists in communism, first phase or otherwise.

As for the USSR's collapse, as I've pointed out, and others, lots of states collapse. The Mayan Empire did. Did it wither away? This is the stupidest theory ever thought up, except maybe for the moon is a spaceship theory. The USSR collapsed, the state did not. The state underwent rapid transformation, liberalisation. But there was continuity, chaotic continuity, but continuity. The USSR collapsed in the sense that the political entity disintegrated, which is distinct from a state collapsing (e.g. Somalia -- withered away too right?) or withering away. Your "theory" does not fit with empirical facts. It is ridiculous.

All these consistent misreadings and misinterpretations derail threads. I invite everyone to just ignore RedMaterialist. I also want to emphasise that I propose a ban on stupidity. When you consistently say stupid things, which are of no value to discussions, and are objectively wrong, you get banned. And this is not a joke. I hope to get support for this, then we can ban RM and have more useful discussions (even if the level of revleft is not really high anyway).

[Fourth Internationalist]

RedMaterialist again demonstrating his utter ignorance of Marxism, and his utter misreadings of Marx. There's no profits, no values, in the first phase of socialism. The Gotha Program speaks of labour cheques, not money. No commodity-form, no value-form, no profits, none of that exists in communism, first phase or otherwise.

As for the USSR's collapse, as I've pointed out, and others, lots of states collapse. The Mayan Empire did. Did it wither away? This is the stupidest theory ever thought up, except maybe for the moon is a spaceship theory. The USSR collapsed, the state did not. The state underwent rapid transformation, liberalisation. But there was continuity, chaotic continuity, but continuity. The USSR collapsed in the sense that the political entity disintegrated, which is distinct from a state collapsing (e.g. Somalia -- withered away too right?) or withering away. Your "theory" does not fit with empirical facts. It is ridiculous.

All these consistent misreadings and misinterpretations derail threads. I invite everyone to just ignore RedMaterialist. I also want to emphasise that I propose a ban on stupidity. When you consistently say stupid things, which are of no value to discussions, and are objectively wrong, you get banned. And this is not a joke. I hope to get support for this, then we can ban RM and have more useful discussions (even if the level of revleft is not really high anyway).

What qualifies as stupid and objectively wrong? People disagree on what is right and wrong, on what is objectively true or not all the time.

[RedMaterialist]

RedMaterialist again demonstrating his utter ignorance of Marxism, and his utter misreadings of Marx. There's no profits, no values, in the first phase of socialism. The Gotha Program speaks of labour cheques, not money. No commodity-form, no value-form, no profits, none of that exists in communism, first phase or otherwise.

The question is what happens to the product of labor, including the surplus-value, the profit:

Marx from Gotha:


Let us take, first of all, the words "proceeds of labor" in the sense of the product of labor; then the co-operative proceeds of labor are the total social product.

From this must now be deducted: First, cover for replacement of the means of production used up. Second, additional portion for expansion of production. Third, reserve or insurance funds to provide against accidents, dislocations caused by natural calamities, etc.

These deductions from the "undiminished" proceeds of labor are an economic necessity, and their magnitude is to be determined according to available means and forces, and partly by computation of probabilities, but they are in no way calculable by equity.

There remains the other part of the total product, intended to serve as means of consumption.

Before this is divided among the individuals, there has to be deducted again, from it: First, the general costs of administration not belonging to production. This part will, from the outset, be very considerably restricted in comparison with present-day society, and it diminishes in proportion as the new society develops. Second, that which is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc. From the outset, this part grows considerably in comparison with present-day society, and it grows in proportion as the new society develops. Third, funds for those unable to work, etc., in short, for what is included under so-called official poor relief today.

Only now do we come to the "distribution" which the program, under Lassallean influence, alone has in view in its narrow fashion -- namely, to that part of the means of consumption which is divided among the individual producers of the co-operative society.

The "undiminished" proceeds of labor have already unnoticeably become converted into the "diminished" proceeds, although what the producer is deprived of in his capacity as a private individual benefits him directly or indirectly in his capacity as a member of society.

Just as the phrase of the "undiminished" proceeds of labor has disappeared, so now does the phrase of the "proceeds of labor" disappear altogether.


As for the USSR's collapse, as I've pointed out, and others, lots of states collapse. The Mayan Empire did. Did it wither away?

The Spanish Invasion had something to do with it.


The USSR collapsed, the state did not.

The USSR was not the state. And you say my theory is stupid?


(e.g. Somalia -- withered away too right?) or withering away. Your "theory" does not fit with empirical facts. It is ridiculous.


The official name of Somalia is the Federal Republic of Somalia. Like most states emerging from colonial rule it has undergone decades of civil war. There is nothing "withering" in Somalia. Any day the new state can be overthrown and a new one instituted.

My theory is the only one that does fit the facts: No state in history has simply disappeared one day. The Soviet Union was a developed, military super-power, with a more than adequately functioning economy (read Paul Samuelson.) Not a single shot was fired, no foreign tank entered Red Square. No brutal civil war occurred.

Ban me? My theory is the only consistently Marxist-class analysis of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Every other theory posted here is a variant of bourgeois history. Remember the "End of History?"


I hope to get support for this, then we can ban RM and have more useful discussions (even if the level of revleft is not really high anyway).

I demand my right to a Stalinist show trial.

[Faust Arp]

State capitalist. I'm a bit surprised nobody mentioned Tony Cliff's theory of state capitalism, which gives a quite nuanced and detailed approach within a Trotskyist framework. His "State Capitalism in Russia" (you can find it on marxists.org, can't post links yet, sorry) gives the basics - he uses Lenin's and (of all people!) Bukharin's ideas on state capitalism and compares the economy of the USSR with them. This quote by Bukharin is pretty useful:


In the system of state capitalism the economic subject is the capitalist state, the collective capitalist. In the dictatorship of the proletariat, the economic subject is the proletarian state, the collectively organised working class, “The proletariat organised as state power.” Under state capitalism, the production process is that of the production of surplus value which falls into the hands of a capitalist class, which tries to transform this value into surplus product. Under the dictatorship of the proletariat the production process is a means for the planned satisfaction of social needs. The system of state capitalism is the most complete form of exploitation of the masses by a handful of oligarchs. The dictatorship of the proletariat makes any exploitation whatsoever altogether unthinkable, as it transforms collective capitalist property and its private capitalist form into collective-proletarian “property”! Notwithstanding their formal similarity, these are diametrical opposites in content. This antagonism determines also the antagonism of all the parts of the systems under discussion, even if formally they are similar. Thus, for instance, the general labour duty under state capitalism means the enslavement of the working masses; as against this, under the dictatorship of the proletariat it is nothing but the self-organisation of labour by the masses; in the former case the mobilisation of industry means the strengthening of the power of the bourgeoisie and the strengthening of the capitalist regime, while in the latter it means the strengthening of socialism. Under the state capitalist structure all the forms of state compulsion represent a pressure which will assure, broaden and deepen the process of exploitation, while state compulsion under the dictatorship of the proletariat represents a method of building up communist society. In short, the functional contradiction between the formally similar phenomena is here wholly determined by the functional contradiction between the systems of organisation, by their contradictory class characteristics.

This can obviously be applied to the USSR - the key factor determining the difference between the two is whethere the economy is geared towards generating surplus value or satisfying social needs. When you consider the massive differences in the quality of living between the bureaucratic class and the ordinary workers and peasants, as well as the poor quality and regular shortages of consumer products in one of the biggest and most resource-rich countries in the world, which had managed to achieve a very solid level of industrialization, it's obvious that everyday social needs weren't first on the list of priorities. Rather, the priority was to generate profit in an ordinary capitalist fashion, orientate the economy towards the world market and reap the fruits of working peoples' labor in order to guarantee the nomenklatura a comfortable, luxurious life (though admittedly still not as extravagant as the life of the Western ruling classes) and build up a huge military to protect it from external and internal threats.

[ñángara]

Cliff's theory about the Soviet State capitalism is one part of his "trilogy" which includes the deflected permanent revolution and the "permanent militarist economy".

[oneday]

As for the USSR's collapse, as I've pointed out, and others, lots of states collapse. The Mayan Empire did. Did it wither away? This is the stupidest theory ever thought up, except maybe for the moon is a spaceship theory.


I don't know, it's kind of awesome. With this and his other theory we can confidently predict that the states of China, Vietnam, Britain, Norway and France will also wither away, since they are also Leninist states :laugh:.

[Tim Cornelis]

Cliffite's theory is not really coherent, as Paresh Chattopadhyay points out in his book the Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience. There's also some flaws in that book, but still.

[Faust Arp]

What are the main points of his critique? I'm genuinely curious, but don't have the time to read the book right now.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I don't really have the time for an extensive reply right now, but concerning the article Tim linked to, I don't think Kliman knows what he's talking about. He charges Preobrazhensky (not a Trotskyist, but the person to who we are indebted for the analysis of the transitional society as a set of temporary relations of production where the law of value competes with the law or principle of planning) with understanding the law of value as the bourgeois "law" of supply and demand. Whereas Preobrazhensky actually writes:

"Let us suppose that in a certain capitalist country there is under-production of leather footwear in comparison with the existing effective demand for this commodity on the market. First, the disproportion is revealed post factum, after the increased demand has come into existence. It could not happen otherwise where there is no social organization of production, no estimation of the dimensions of production and of effective demand. True, capitalist society has worked out its palliative methods of estimating future demand, but they only mitigate the inevitable fluctuations without being able to eliminate them, in so far as the system of distribution of productive forces remains a system of commodity economy. (Under monopoly capitalism, which means an increase in the organized character of production and exchange on the same capitalist basis, estimation of production, and to some extent also of effective demand, is of course carried out better than under completely free competition.)

The increased demand causes an increase in the prices of footwear and consequently leads to an unforeseen re-distribution of the national income (involving surprises which are pleasant to some and unpleasant to others), different from what it would have been if there had been equilibrium between supply and demand. After this comes an increase of production in the existing enterprises of the leather industry, an influx of new capital, perhaps fresh construction. Just as the amount of additional demand was not exactly known, because previously, before the market gave warning, the fact of under-production was not known, so the additional production may overflow, and usually does overflow, the limits of the additional demand, the phase of under-production thus being succeeded by a phase of overproduction, with a consequent fall in prices, a new spontaneous redistribution of the national income and of capital between different branches of production, and so on into the next disproportion. Any correspondence between supply and demand happens by accident; disproportion one way or the other is the rule. This is the way in which, through the operation of the law of value, the necessity of attaining equilibrium between production and effective demand asserts itself. The laws of man's social activity in the sphere of production confront the agents of production as forces external to themselves, blind, uncontrolled forces of nature. Just as, in order that equilibrium may be achieved in any system, a regulator is needed in the sphere of reality, a regulator specific to the given system alone, so also, in order to understand all this mechanism and the regularities peculiar to it, we need specific methodological procedures." (from The New Economics)

"Any correspondence between supply and demand happens by accident": if Kliman understood this he wouldn't have spent so much time trying to "solve" the transformation "problem".

He also says of Preobrazhensky: "In his view, the economy of the Soviet Union at that moment was partly a commodity-producing economy and partly a socialist economy. He regarded part of it as socialist because it was state-owned and controlled, and because it used planning, rather than “spontaneous” market forces, to determine prices and levels of output, and to allocate resources and workers."

Well, no, Preobrazhensky thought the Soviet Union was a "commodity socialist" society, where the "socialist" designation was not understood - socialism in one country not having been invented yet - to signify a transition to socialism, much like Lenin talked about the socialist government of the Soviet Union.

He also charges Preobrazhensky with identifying socialism with state planning when he, and Bukharin, explicitly stated that "In a communist society there will be no classes. But if there will be no classes, this implies that in communist society there will likewise be no State." a mere six years ago. (And before anyone starts insisting on the supposed socialism/communism distinction, note that P. and B. also wrote " Proletarian communism (or proletarian socialism) is a huge cooperative commonwealth. It is a sequence of the whole development of capitalist society and of the condition of the proletariat in that society.")


Kliman just shows no understanding of the man whatsoever.

[Antiochus]

The Soviet Union was a developed, military super-power, with a more than adequately functioning economy (read Paul Samuelson.) Not a single shot was fired, no foreign tank entered Red Square. No brutal civil war occurred.

The Han Dynasty was a superpower, comparatively speaking much larger than the USSR. No 'shots' fired, no invasion and no civil war (preceding). You have no 'theory'. The USSR collapsed for quite a few reasons, none of which were due to the state withering away. The USSR merely transitioned from a singular entity to multiple states, there was continuity (i.e Yelstin's Russia; Belorussia etc...).

And the Mayan collapse which Tim is referring to happened hundreds of years before the Spanish invasion. Not really a Mayan 'Empire', but a civilization. States/Civilizations collapse all the time, and often not due to some singular cataclysmic reason, for example the Bronze Age collapse. Just because the Hittites, Myceneans etc... collapsed does not mean they were 'so feudal' that they became Capitalist or some other convoluted theory.

[Blake's Baby]

A 'degenerated workers' state' is not a mode of production, it is at best a description of the political apparatus. Capitalism is a mode of production. So, its mode of production was capitalism.

[Blake's Baby]

...

The Spanish Invasion had something to do with it...

The Mayan civilisation collapsed around 800AD. The Spanish invasion, 700 years later, caused it?

Well, we've obviously got to wait another 675 years to discover what will have caused the collapse of the Soviet Union, haven't we?

[Jacob Cliff]

A 'degenerated workers' state' is not a mode of production, it is at best a description of the political apparatus. Capitalism is a mode of production. So, its mode of production was capitalism.
What is the mode of production in a proletarian dictatorship? Is it socialist, capitalist, or one in transition to socialism (i.e. one bearing the "birthmarks of the old society")? If it's the latter, what do we call this?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

A 'degenerated workers' state' is not a mode of production, it is at best a description of the political apparatus. Capitalism is a mode of production. So, its mode of production was capitalism.

A degenerated workers' state, according to Trotskyist theory, is a particular kind of state formation, issuing out of the degeneration of the proletarian revolution in Russia. It was always understood, by Trotsky and by Trotskyists, that the relations of production underlying that kind of state formation were those of a transitional society, where commodity production in accordance with the law of value clashed with the law of planning (as first outlined by the I Can't Believe It's not Trotskyism-ist Preobrazhensky), and one where the natural development of these relations of production was stifled by the ruling bureaucratic caste. That is why Trotsky sharply distinguished his analysis from Burnham and others, who also held that the bureaucracy had political power in the Soviet Union, but though they were a class instead of a contradictory and brittle ruling layer, the ruling class of a "bureaucratic-collectivist" mode of production (of which nothing sensible could be said, apparently, except that it wasn't nice).

[Blake's Baby]

But (as I keep arguing with Trots, ortho- or not) 1-the idea of a 'degenerated workers' state' being a stable state form over 70 years is a nonsense, and 2-if something is 'transitional' it has a trajectory.

I'd go so far as to say that I accept that the Soviet Republic was a 'degenerated workers' state' up until, let's say, 1921, but after that I think it was full-on capitalist. There was no 'transition', because something that 'transitions' to what it was before doesn't transition at all. It wasn't a 'degenerated' workers' state, because it was an ex-workers' state (ie not a "workers' state").

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

But (as I keep arguing with Trots, ortho- or not) 1-the idea of a 'degenerated workers' state' being a stable state form over 70 years is a nonsense, and 2-if something is 'transitional' it has a trajectory.

I'd go so far as to say that I accept that the Soviet Republic was a 'degenerated workers' state' up until, let's say, 1921, but after that I think it was full-on capitalist. There was no 'transition', because something that 'transitions' to what it was before doesn't transition at all. It wasn't a 'degenerated' workers' state, because it was an ex-workers' state (ie not a "workers' state").

But we don't claim that it was a stable state. We claim that it was a contradiction on stilts, and therefore was doomed from the start, despite a temporary stabilisation after WWII. And, yes, in the end the Soviet Union didn't transition into anything. Where we differ is that we Trotskyists of the Canonite persuasion think there was a real chance that it would have, after a political revolution overthrowing the bureaucracy, without a change in the relations of production.

[Blake's Baby]

OK, we agree that without an 'end' - the success of the world revolution - there was no transition.

And we agree that it was in your somewhat poetic phrasing 'a contraddiction on stilts'. Only, in my (and the Left Comms generally's) estimation that contradiction fell off its stilts in the early 1920s. Do you think it continued to be a contradiction teetering on those stilts until 1989?

[RedWorker]

Where we differ is that we Trotskyists of the Canonite persuasion think there was a real chance that it would have, after a political revolution overthrowing the bureaucracy, without a change in the relations of production.

The German Democratic Republic (GDR) ran more-or-less 'free' elections for the state authority positions formerly occupied by the political bureaucracy, under which the majority of voters were proletarians, before fully finishing the transformation of its 'relations of production'. Yet this only accelerated this transformation into a liberal state, eliminating the remaining elements of Stalinism. What evidence is there that these 'relations of production' constituted a significant departure from capitalism, rather than only constituting mass nationalization by the state ran by a political bureaucracy within fundamentally unaltered bourgeois society? It is clear that the measures turning it into a liberal state were merely policy changes within the existing social, economic and political framework. The notion that these minor changes could constitute a qualitative changes between modes of production is an assertion that challenges Marxist analysis, I believe.

You have previously argued that there was a strong movement in order to attempt to move towards socialism without the political bureaucracy towards the end of the GDR, but this position is hard to defend when faced that under 93.4% of turnout in the elections, 48% of support went to the CDU, 21.9% to the SPD, 16.4% to PDS, unless you consider the PDS to be the leader of such a movement.

There never was a social revolution in 1945 in Germany. The GDR was practically formed by the USSR's military expansion. And it constituted the exact same relations employed in the USSR. So, can 'transitory between capitalism and socialism' relations be brought about simply by military expansion, without a social revolution? I seriously doubt that these relations that existed in the USSR were the result of a social revolution, degenerated or not. That the social revolution failed and from then on it was simply bourgeois society run by a political bureaucracy seems like a more coherent analysis to me.

Of course, the political organization you defend, ICL(FI), practically claims that a social revolution had occurred in North Korea, by stating that "Our defense of North Korea is based on the fact that, under the protection of the Soviet Army following World War II, the workers and peasants expropriated the capitalists and landlords." This is an absurd statement. It seems hard to defend that the 'workers expropriated the capitalists and landlords' in North Korea. That was merely the state, the positions of which were filled by military intervention of the USSR, undertaking a series of policy changes.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

OK, we agree that without an 'end' - the success of the world revolution - there was no transition.

And we agree that it was in your somewhat poetic phrasing 'a contraddiction on stilts'. Only, in my (and the Left Comms generally's) estimation that contradiction fell off its stilts in the early 1920s. Do you think it continued to be a contradiction teetering on those stilts until 1989?

For us, the contradiction didn't get on the stilts until the mid-twenties. Until that point, the Bolshevik state was a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat - in a backward region, isolated and so on, but revolutionary. The degeneration of the October Revolution produced a contradictory regime that, yes, lasted until the nineties. In some regions of the world - in Cuba, north Korea, in China, Vietnam and Laos - regimes of the same sort still exist. That is prima facie an empirical problem for the theory - we say it was the Second World War that provided a temporary stabilisation for the degenerated and deformed workers' states.

Of course, if you think the Soviet Union was a bourgeois state since the early twenties, and states like Yugoslavia and Democratic Germany were always capitalist, how do you explain the actual events of the nineties? The leftcoms at that point generally predicted the following years would be positive for the proletariat, but obviously nothing remotely similar happened. Why, if it was simply a matter of the bourgeois Soviet Union changing name and some faces, was its fall such a historic defeat for the working class?


The German Democratic Republic (GDR) ran more-or-less 'free' elections for the state authority positions formerly occupied by the political bureaucracy, under which the majority of voters were proletarians, before fully finishing the transformation of its 'relations of production'. Yet this only accelerated this transformation into a liberal state, eliminating the remaining elements of Stalinism. What evidence is there that these 'relations of production' constituted a significant departure from capitalism, rather than only constituting mass nationalization by the state ran by a political bureaucracy within fundamentally unaltered bourgeois society? It is clear that the measures turning it into a liberal state were merely policy changes within the existing social, economic and political framework. The notion that these minor changes could constitute a qualitative changes between modes of production is an assertion that challenges Marxist analysis, I believe.

You have previously argued that there was a strong movement in order to attempt to move towards socialism without the political bureaucracy towards the end of the GDR, but this position is hard to defend when faced that under 93.4% of turnout in the elections, 48% of support went to the CDU, 21.9% to the SPD, 16.4% to PDS, unless you consider the PDS to be the leader of such a movement.

I have to hand it to you, RedWorker, you never let such trifles as a complete lack of understanding get in the way of your posting. Who ever equated the political revolution against the bureaucracy with "more democracy"? Certainly not Trotsky, who defended the exclusion of bureaucrats from the soviets in the case of a political revolution, against Shachtman and his formal-democratic fetishism, a fetishism you share. And certainly not the Hungarian workers organised in workers' councils, who gave reality to the at that point purely formal notion of a workers' political evolution. What an odd man you are. You try to criticise Trotskyism by avoiding engagement with actual Trotskyist literature and instead criticising Trotskyists for what you think they should be saying. If you want democracy, be a Marxist-Leninist, they're the most democratic people who ever lived, they're practically composed of condensed democracy. But we Trotskyists don't make a fetish out of it. Class rule is important - democracy is important only to the extent that it serves that rule. The results of a democratic election where every contending party was a stooge for the Bonn Regime and US imperialism, without a Leninist party to lead the workers, are only interesting to us in the sense that we might run out of toilet paper to wipe our arses with, and this sacred result of bourgeois democracy might have to do.


There never was a social revolution in 1945 in Germany. The GDR was practically formed by the USSR's military expansion. And it constituted the exact same relations employed in the USSR. So, can 'transitory between capitalism and socialism' relations be brought about simply by military expansion, without a social revolution? I seriously doubt that these relations that existed in the USSR were the result of a social revolution, degenerated or not. That the social revolution failed and from then on it was simply bourgeois society run by a political bureaucracy seems like a more coherent analysis to me.

Of course, the political organization you defend, ICL(FI), practically claims that a social revolution had occurred in North Korea, by stating that "Our defense of North Korea is based on the fact that, under the protection of the Soviet Army following World War II, the workers and peasants expropriated the capitalists and landlords." This is an absurd statement. It seems hard to defend that the 'workers expropriated the capitalists and landlords' in North Korea. That was merely the state, the positions of which were filled by military intervention of the USSR, undertaking a series of policy changes.

I don't "defend" the ICL-FI, I sympathise with them. If they had a section here I would try to become a member. And it is, again, clear that you haven't actually read a single ICL article from start to finish, let alone any of the theory that the ICL put out - such as the seminal "Cuba and Marxist Theory", which explains the Spartacist group's view on the events in Cuba, and retroactively in Yugoslavia and China. Or in fact any of the articles and the documents where the analysis has been repeated, for example the declaration of principles:

"The partial character of the anti-capitalist revolutions in the colonial world leads us to reaffirm the Marxist-Leninist concept of the proletariat as the only social force capable of making the socialist revolution. The ICL fundamentally opposes the Maoist doctrine, rooted in Menshevism and Stalinist reformism, which rejects the vanguard role of the working class and substitutes peasant-based guerrilla warfare as the road to socialism.

A further extension of Marxism contributed by the International Communist League in analyzing Stalinism was our understanding of the Cuban Revolution (see Marxist Bulletin No. 8, “Cuba and Marxist Theory”), which retrospectively illuminated the course of the Yugoslav and Chinese Revolutions. In Cuba, a petty-bourgeois movement under exceptional circumstances—the absence of the working class as a contender for social power in its own right, the flight of the national bourgeoisie and hostile imperialist encirclement, and a lifeline thrown by the Soviet Union—did overthrow the old Batista dictatorship and eventually smash capitalist property relations. But Castroism (or other peasant-based guerrilla movements) cannot bring the working class to political power.
Under the most favorable historic circumstances conceivable, the petty-bourgeois peasantry was only capable of creating a bureaucratically deformed workers state, that is, a state of the same order as that issuing out of the political counterrevolution of Stalin in the Soviet Union, an anti-working-class regime which blocked the possibilities to extend social revolution into Latin America and North America, and suppressed Cuba’s further development in the direction of socialism. To place the working class in political power and open the road to socialist development requires a supplemental political revolution led by a Trotskyist party. With the destruction of the Soviet degenerated workers state and consequently no readily available lifeline against imperialist encirclement, the narrow historical opening in which petty-bourgeois forces were able to overturn local capitalist rule has been closed, underscoring the Trotskyist perspective of permanent revolution."


You're free to not understand anything, but at least put some effort into your posts. At least as much as actually familiarising yourself with the issue being discussed.

[RedWorker]

A guerrilla coup can't do a social revolution nor 'smash capitalist relations'. They took over the bourgeois state machinery and started a mass nationalization campaign and a series of policy changes. To argue that capitalism could be destroyed in this way, or that any step towards socialism could be made, defies basic Marxist principles.

How can a bunch of coupists who have just taken over the bourgeois state transform it into any kind of workers' state through a series of policy changes?


With the destruction of the Soviet degenerated workers state and consequently no readily available lifeline against imperialist encirclement, the narrow historical opening in which petty-bourgeois forces were able to overturn local capitalist rule has been closedMore accurately, in the absence of the USSR it made no sense to keep an inefficient economic model going thus the turn towards the mainstream bourgeois liberal consensus started - for the same reasons as it did in the USSR.

I think the ICL(FI) is more interested in defending its own view rather than putting together a coherent view. Cuba turns out to have more or less the same functioning of the USSR, and because it was born out of a coup and a bunch of policy changes, with no revolution, it threatens the Trotskyist view that the USSR constituted some kind of workers' state or non-capitalist relations despite degeneration because it was born out of a social revolution. So ridiculous, incoherent positions start being taken in order to avoid the Trotskyist analysis being 'shown wrong'.

[Pancakes Rühle]

The DOTP is a political entity which can only exist under the capitalist mode of production. Therefore, whether it is a "proper" workers state, or a deformed one, is irrelevant. The mode of production in the USSR was capitalist.

That leaves the question, what was the USSR state? Was it a DOTP? The answer to that is no.

[JesusRocks]

Thing is, despite calling themselves communists or socialists, the USSR was just a state-capitalistic nation. Communism could never work on such a scale, because someone in the food line will always want more than everyone else, or feel entitled to more, making their communistic foundation flawed, and causing the USSR to go even more backwards technology and culturally wise.