State Capitalist Theory

[nickdlc]

For most marxists critical of the soviet union's development, state capitalist theory seems to be the main economic theory that seriously tries to explain why russia could not be socialist. As I understand it trotskyists, left communists and anarchists adhere to some verision of this theory.

Trotskyists such as Tony Cliff saw the development of state capitalism in russia due to the failed revolutions in more industialized countries (who would have helped build productive forces in backwards russia) and also saw state capitalism as progressive. The view that russian state capitalism was progressive was undermined during the 1970's economic stagnation.

What I'm most interested is in the left communists view of state capitalism who saw state capitalism the neccassary outcome of the bolsheviks endorsment of nation wide nationalization instead of the control of the means of production by the workers and peasants. i.e. bolshiviks advocate nationalization while left communists and anarchists advocate socialisation.

Although i take the position of the left communists i have problems with the theory and maybe people can provide insight and websites which explain the theories in detail.

Some Questions:

1) If there was no competition between firms and russia could be seen as just one giant trust, then was commodity production not abolished as Hilferding said?

2) If russia was just one giant trust then different enterprises within that trust did not buy commodities but provided the neccassary money for accounting purposes. Did that not make money just a unit of account for distribution of use-values?

3) If there was no buying or selling of commodities then human labour power was not a commodity either. What would that make a worker?

4) What was the reason/incentive for producing anything in russia? Was there a concept of profit?

Personally i don't see state capitalism as progressive and take the view of another member on this board that said something along the lines of that it would have been better to see 5 years of actual dictatorship of the proletariat than decades of state capitalism and dictatorship over the proletariat.

[Djehuti]

Have you read Aufheben (http://www.geocities.com/aufheben2/)'s "What was the USSR"? It is a great piece of work and I think it can answer all your questions on the subject.


Part 1: Trotsky and State Capitalism
http://www.geocities.com/aufheben2/auf_6_ussr1.html

Part II: Russia as a Non-mode of Production
http://www.geocities.com/aufheben2/auf_7_ussr2.html

Part III: Left Communisn and the Russian Revolution
http://www.geocities.com/aufheben2/auf_8_ussr_3.html

Part IV: Value-analysis on the USSR
http://www.geocities.com/aufheben2/auf_9_ussr4.html

[xprol]

If the USSR was 'state capitalist' what is it now?

[Dyst]

Free-market capitalist.

[rouchambeau]

The Soviet Union was socialists in-as-much as Nazi Germany was socialist.

[American_Lenin]

In State Capitalism competition has to be looked at in a different way.
Competition between the Republics ect...

[nickdlc]

Have you read Aufheben's "What was the USSR"? It is a great piece of work and I think it can answer all your questions on the subject.

Thanks so much Djehuti this is the kind of analysis I was looking for!

[BattleOfTheCowshed]

Originally posted by [email protected] 12 2006, 03:02 PM
The Soviet Union was socialists in-as-much as Nazi Germany was socialist.
Err...not quite

[xprol]

If the USSR was 'state capitalist' what is it now?


Keiza says: Free-market capitalism.


Which is best for the working class?

[Xanthus]

Not all Trotskyists subscribe to Cliff's State Capitalism theory. I would define it as a "deformed worker's state", or if you will "proletarian bonapartism", but certainly not State Capitalism, as it's quite a different beast. I feel that Ted Grant has had the best analysis of the theory.

Against the Theory of State Capitalism - Reply to Comrade Cliff (http://www.tedgrant.org/works/4/9/reply_to_tony_cliff.html)

[nickdlc]

If the USSR was 'state capitalist' what is it now?
Keiza says: Free-market capitalism.
Which is best for the working class?
No form of capitalism is good be it state capitalist,free market, or partial welfare state capitalist.


Against the Theory of State Capitalism - Reply to Comrade Cliff:

Nowhere in the document does Cliff pose the main criterion for Marxists in analysing social systems: Does the new formation lead to the development of the productive forces? It does but not to the development of socialism. State capitalist countries such as russia are the transition period from fuedalism to free market capitalism.

It seems that Ted Grant is a orthodox trotskyist but the theory of a deformed worker state posited that since russia was in between capitalism and socialism that another revolution would be needed to overthrow the stalinist bureaucracy. This obviously didn't happen so I would say a left communist view of state capitalism is in tune with reality.

[Xanthus]

Originally posted by nickdlc+Mar 15 2006, 05:53 PM--> (nickdlc @ Mar 15 2006, 05:53 PM) Against the Theory of State Capitalism - Reply to Comrade Cliff:

Nowhere in the document does Cliff pose the main criterion for Marxists in analysing social systems: Does the new formation lead to the development of the productive forces? It does but not to the development of socialism. State capitalist countries such as russia are the transition period from fuedalism to free market capitalism.

It seems that Ted Grant is a orthodox trotskyist but the theory of a deformed worker state posited that since russia was in between capitalism and socialism that another revolution would be needed to overthrow the stalinist bureaucracy. This obviously didn't happen so I would say a left communist view of state capitalism is in tune with reality. [/b]
Hate to reopen a closed thread, but I didn't notice this comment before so I might as well reply.

I agree that Grant is an orthodox Trotskyist. But just because another revolution would be needed does not mean that another revolution was certain. To quote Trotsky from Revolution Betrayed:

End of Chapter 9 - Revolution Betrayed
To define the Soviet regime as transitional, or intermediate, means to abandon such finished social categories as capitalism (and therewith "state capitalism") and also socialism. But besides being completely inadequate in itself, such a definition is capable of producing the mistaken idea that from the present Soviet regime only a transition to socialism is possible. In reality a backslide to capitalism is wholly possible. A more complete definition will of necessity be complicated and ponderous.

The Soviet Union is a contradictory society halfway between capitalism and socialism, in which: (a) the productive forces are still far from adequate to give the state property a socialist character; (b) the tendency toward primitive accumulation created by want breaks out through innumerable pores of the planned economy; © norms of distribution preserving a bourgeois character lie at the basis of a new differentiation of society; (d) the economic growth, while slowly bettering the situation of the toilers, promotes a swift formation of privileged strata; (e) exploiting the social antagonisms, a bureaucracy has converted itself into an uncontrolled caste alien to socialism; (f) the social revolution, betrayed by the ruling party, still exists in property relations and in the consciousness of the toiling masses; (g) a further development of the accumulating contradictions can as well lead to socialism as back to capitalism; (h) on the road to capitalism the counterrevolution would have to break the resistance of the workers; (i) on the road to socialism the workers would have to overthrow the bureaucracy. In the last analysis, the question will be decided by a struggle of living social forces, both on the national and the world arena.

Doctrinaires will doubtless not be satisfied with this hypothetical definition. They would like categorical formulae: yes—yes, and no— no. Sociological problems would certainly be simpler, if social phenomena had always a finished character. There is nothing more dangerous, however, than to throw out of reality, for the sake of logical completeness, elements which today violate your scheme and tomorrow may wholly overturn it. In our analysis, we have above all avoided doing violence to dynamic social formations which have had no precedent and have no analogies. The scientific task, as well as the political, is not to give a finished definition to an unfinished process, but to follow all its stages, separate its progressive from its reactionary tendencies, expose their mutual relations, foresee possible variants of development, and find in this foresight a basis for action.
So Grant and Trotsky agree that both a backslide or a forward movement to socialism were possible. Obviously the baskslide is what occured, and using hindsight, to argue that Cliff was correct on that basis is a very easy argument to make.

But in my opinion, to suggest before the fact that backslide was the only possible outcome is in my opinion shortsighted. To suggest that Cliff was correct in assuming it was a concrete transition to free market capitalism is something which I do not agree with.

Also, I think there are many other problems with Cliff's analysis, and you picked out only one part of Grant's criticism to comment on.

[nickdlc]

So Grant and Trotsky agree that both a backslide or a forward movement to socialism were possible. Obviously the baskslide is what occured, and using hindsight, to argue that Cliff was correct on that basis is a very easy argument to make.

Yes but when the backslide happens in more than one state capitalist country I think it's safe to say that these societies were not in between capitalism and socialism but inbetween fuedalism and free market capitalism.


To suggest that Cliff was correct in assuming it was a concrete transition to free market capitalism is something which I do not agree with.

But look what happens in other leninist countries. The only country you have left that may go to socialism is cuba but i would say that would only be possible if there were communist revolutions in advanced capitalist countries. Most likely cuba will move to free market capitalism when fidel dies. btw I do not take cliff's view that russian state capitalism is superior to free market capitalsim and so i do not agree with his theory. I go by the left communist view of state capitalism.

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

Can some please explain to me how the Soviet Union was "state capitalist"?

For Marxists, we use class the analyze what type system it is.

For example, we call the USA capitalist because, it is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

We can see that the capitalist class are the rulers.

In the Soviet Union. We need to find out 'who' the capitalists were in order to call it 'state capitalist'. From my understanding, property or more specifically, the means of production were not owned by anyone or group of people.

So if the benefit of the means to production went to the workers, not the capitalists, as there were none. then doesn't that leave us with a conundrum?

calling it state capitalist seems to me to be an un-Marxist analysis, since there were was only a working class. and of course a bureaucracy, that however corrupt, did not own the means of production.

So, why is it capitalist?

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18 2006, 04:46 PM

So Grant and Trotsky agree that both a backslide or a forward movement to socialism were possible. Obviously the baskslide is what occured, and using hindsight, to argue that Cliff was correct on that basis is a very easy argument to make.

Yes but when the backslide happens in more than one state capitalist country I think it's safe to say that these societies were not in between capitalism and socialism but inbetween fuedalism and free market capitalism.
Why? If a society is inbetween socialism and capitalism, a backslide to capitalism would not be surprising.

What's more, it was predicted. As far back as Lenin: either worldwide socialist revolution will destroy capitalism, or else capitalism will sing a funeral dirge over the Soviet Republic.

On the contrary, if had advanced to socialism, that would have invalidated Marxist theory! Particularly everything about the impossiblity of socialism in one country.

In your first post you gave 4 excellent reasons why the "state capitalism" theory is wrong. (BTW, Maoists and other unregenerate admirers of Stalin also espouse it....that with the demise of the regimes they like, capitalism was presto restored, with nothing left worth defending against imperialism.)

****

Lemme give a couple more.

If the USSR was "state capitalist" we'd expect the transition to private capitalism to be not such a big deal. And a matter of indifference to workers, as you suggest.

But in fact, that transition has been tremendously difficult. The attempt to restore capitalism has had disastrous effects for workers. And workers have resisted it, stalling the effort to make these countries profitable arenas for investment with stable capitalist property relations.

This confirms that the nationalized property relations of these countries were a step forward for workers and should be defended against the capitalists of other countries....in other words, the "degenerated and deformed workers state" position developed by Trotsky.

(Incidentally, Trotsky said of those who refused to defend the USSR: "If this is Trotskyism, I at least am no Trotskyist." I gotta agree with him there.)

****

Second, the logical implications of the "state capitalist analysis"....obviously all these "state capitalist" countries abolished feudalism, far more thoroughly than even the classic bourgeois-democratic revolutions. They fought against imperialism for the independence and national unification of their countries.

Now, for quite some time Marxists had argued that such revolutionary behavior is no longer to be expected of the capitalists and capitalist regimes. If the USSR, PRC, Vietnam, Cuba, etc. are merely capitalist regimes...then this argument has to be abandoned.

I've actually seen "state cap" stuff where they use Vietnam as an example to argue that a capitalist regime can fight for national independence and unification against imperialism.....

So it's not surprising that Cliff's organization, the British SWP, has fallen in love with all kinds of bourgeois nationalists, even "Islamist" rightist groups, inventing all kinds of supposed progressive virtues for them....

As You Know They Murdered X, one of the British SWPers on this board, once put it: "How can an anti-imperialist force possibly be "reactionery", it simply doesn't make sense."

A lot of other leftists, including some self-described "left communists", have an even worse case of this disease....

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22 2006, 08:15 PM
Can some please explain to me how the Soviet Union was "state capitalist"?

For Marxists, we use class the analyze what type system it is.

For example, we call the USA capitalist because, it is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

We can see that the capitalist class are the rulers.

In the Soviet Union. We need to find out 'who' the capitalists were in order to call it 'state capitalist'. From my understanding, property or more specifically, the means of production were not owned by anyone or group of people.

So if the benefit of the means to production went to the workers, not the capitalists, as there were none. then doesn't that leave us with a conundrum?

calling it state capitalist seems to me to be an un-Marxist analysis, since there were was only a working class. and of course a bureaucracy, that however corrupt, did not own the means of production.

So, why is it capitalist?
A class society is not defined by "rules on paper" (law) but by the actual relations of production.

In the USSR, China, Cuba, et.al., workers worked for wages and produced surplus value.

This surplus value was appropriated by the Party and especially its highest circles...partly used for capital investment, partly used for social welfare programs, partly used to maintain a large professional military, police force, prison system...and partly used to support an elevated standard-of-living for Party members and especially for its highest circles.

Privileges were de facto inherited as if they were property.

And then the laws changed to reflect the material reality.

That's usually what always happens...a new class emerges and then the laws are rewritten to reflect that.

That's why I think it is correct to speak of the "USSR, Inc.", "People's China, Inc.", etc. The economies in those countries essentially consisted of an enormous state monopoly.

I do prefer "state monopoly capitalism" as more accurate than simply "state capitalism".

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[Janus]

This surplus value was appropriated by the Party and especially its highest circles
The party leaders were able to exploit their positions in order to appropriate surplus value and live relatively luxurious lives. This can be seen in the later years of the USSR when Politburo members shopped in special stores and owned huge dachas.

[bloody_capitalist_sham]

ahh i see, thank you for a good explanation :)

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 23 2006, 11:19 PM
This surplus value was appropriated by the Party and especially its highest circles...partly used for capital investment, partly used for social welfare programs, partly used to maintain a large professional military, police force, prison system...and partly used to support an elevated standard-of-living for Party members and especially for its highest circles.
One, social welfare programs are part of the social wage, not surplus value.

More basically: these kinds of statement could be made of any class-divided society. What makes this capitalism, specially? A whole number of reasons have been given to say it's not; you've given none to say it is.

Heck, if you don't want to admit it's a step towards socialism, even the "bureaucratic collectivism", aka "third system" theory make more sense than 'state capitalism", given that these societies did not quack like capitalism or develop according to its laws. 'Course the collapse of the Stalinist regimes is a strong argument against the original version.

"Bureaucratic collectivism" is less common on the left than state capitalism primarily because its implications tend to take its adherents out of the left entirely....into support of capitalism against the alleged new exploitive system.

And in your case, you say these societies are capitalist....probably 'cause Chairman Mao said the USSR was. You've certainly given no other reason.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Since when does RedStar have to back up anything he says with facts ever? Don't you know, it's true because he says it is.

[Vanguard1917]

...because its implications tend to take its adherents out of the left entirely....into support of capitalism against the alleged new exploitive system.

Though that's not to say that the Stalinist system did not rely almost solely on the exploitation of the working class.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Compañ[email protected] 25 2006, 09:50 PM
Since when does RedStar have to back up anything he says with facts ever? Don't you know, it's true because he says it is.
So what do you want to call them?

Or would you prefer to dodge the question altogether?

Severian, as a good Trotskyist, would doubtlessly insist on the old "degenerate workers' state" formula. You like that one?

Or bureaucratic collectivism...whatever that's supposed to mean.

Does "Stalinist totalitarianism" appeal to you?

Some anarchists like "techno-managerial despotism"...how about that one?

Meanwhile, I posted an argument as to why I think state monopoly capitalist is the best term to describe those regimes.

Was it a "bad" argument? Did it "depart" in some factual sense from what it was really like for ordinary people to live and work in those countries?

Severian actually made a useful point and corrected an erroneous statement on my part. The social welfare programs in those countries were indeed not financed from surplus value but instead represented part of the "social wage" paid to the working class. That doesn't challenge my central point but it's always useful to have one's "slips" corrected.

Or did you just want to "vent" a personal attack on me in place of a serious discussion of the matter? :lol:

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[chebol]

Redstar (and others), if you're so sure of this "state capitalist" nonsense, let's see a full analysis. What is "capitalism"? What is "state capitalism"? And how was the USSR "state capitlaist".

You aren't gonna convince me mate, but I'd like to see your facts, instead of putting up with the to and fro of insults and half-baked ideas that go on on this board (and of which you are only one part, for sure).

Has anyone, for example, actually read the debate between Harman and Mandel in "The Fallacies of State Capitalism"?

Also, before starting another (or indeed continuing this) thread on the topic, people should read:
http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/lofiversi...php/t28283.html (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/lofiversion/index.php/t28283.html)

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Redstar, the reason I chimed in was because I wanted to point out a flaw in your manner of "debate", hoping to discourage others (like newbies) who may be reading this post (and others of yours) from buying into your opinion (that you push as fact, with almost no back up, ever).

When you say "these states", you're not being specific, so I can't answer your question. If you want to tell me which states in particular you'd like an analysis of, I'd be happy to oblige you.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by chebol+--> (chebol)Redstar (and others), if you're so sure of this "state capitalist" nonsense, let's see a full analysis.[/b]

Always helps to read the thread before commenting. ;)

Here's the link...

http://www.geocities.com/aufheben2/auf_9_ussr4.html

Scroll about halfway down for the gritty details...if you're interested. :lol:


CompañeroDeLibertad
Redstar, the reason I chimed in was because I wanted to point out a flaw in your manner of "debate", hoping to discourage others (like newbies) who may be reading this post (and others of yours) from buying into your opinion (that you push as fact, with almost no back up, ever).

RevLeft is not a peer-reviewed professional journal. Every post does not come complete with 200 footnotes.

That includes your own posts, of course. :)

I do indeed offer my opinions as "fact"...because as far as I'm concerned, they are based on a lifetime's experience and reading. If you think I am "factually wrong", you are free to offer corrections.

As is anyone.

You may, to be sure, prefer Severian's "style"...the "man of a thousand links" is a diligent researcher, no question about it.

Historically speaking, social democrats have always been "good researchers". It's their politics that suck!

I recommend to anyone who reads my posts or anyone else's to always ask yourself the question: does this post make sense?

If it doesn't, then you should question it! But if it does, then you have no legitimate "gripe".

It really doesn't matter that much what term you "prefer" for the old USSR, China, etc.

It makes no sense to call any of them "socialist" because the proletariat did not have state power...which is the most basic and fundamental definition of socialism in the Marxist sense of the word.

Only those who believe that socialism "means" the despotism of a "Vanguard Party", nationalization of the means of production, centralized economic planning, a plethora of social welfare schemes, and lots and lots of red flags and "Marxist" rhetoric could "think" otherwise.

If you happen to "be" one of those believers, then go for it! Let first-hand experience teach you what I (and so many others) cannot.

I can tell you where certain roads lead...but the choice of which road to take is always yours.

Choose carefully. :)

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[Led Zeppelin]

Originally posted by RS
It makes no sense to call any of them "socialist" because the proletariat did not have state power

Depends on how you look at it, I agree that under Stalinism and Krushevism there was no state-power in the hands of the proletariat, because Stalinism and Krushevism are anti-Marxist. However Leninism is not, while the USSR was Leninist the proletariat did have state-power indirectly.

[Vanguard1917]

Perhaps the USSR was neither state capitalist nor a deformed workers' state?

Both theories are based on an underlying assumption that the Soviet Union has to either be a workers' state or a capitalist state. Why? Where does it say that a modern society has to be either socialist or bourgeois in character?

The Soviet Union was a distinct form of social organisation. It was artificially kept in place - first and foremost, through means of repression.

It was distinct from capitalism because of the repression of the market.

It was distinct from socialism because of the repression of the working class.

In the absence of workers' planning, and without the market, Soviet society could not reproduce itself. And without workers' planning or the market, there's no organic mechanism to allocate resources, especially labour-time. Capitalist society provides such a mechanism, as does socialist society.

In the Soviet Union, due to the fact that both the market and the working class were repressed, it was the bureaucracy that allocated resources. Such a system could not last forever precisely due to the fact that it could not reproduce itself.


If the USSR was 'state capitalist' what is it now?


Keiza says: Free-market capitalism.


Which is best for the working class?

The Soviet Union only 'looked good' when Western capitalism was in trouble. In reality, though, the Stalinist system subordinated the working class at least as much as capitalist society does. There was very little progressive about Stalinist society.

BTW Trotsky understood this, but he blamed it on a corrupt bureaucracy. He did not grasp (partly due to his attachment to the October revolution, and partly due to the circumstances of his exile) the fact that the bureaucracy was a product of Soviet society. Social revolution was needed, not merely 'political revolution'. The problems were a lot more deep rooted that Trotsky thought.

It was a shame that Trotskyist parties did not see Trotsky's mistakes. If they had, they could have taken a far more critical view of the Soviet Union, and they could have acted accordingly.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Marxism-Leninism
Depends on how you look at it. I agree that under Stalinism and Khrushchevism there was no state-power in the hands of the proletariat because Stalinism and Khrushchevism are anti-Marxist. However Leninism is not; while the USSR was Leninist, the proletariat did have state-power indirectly.

What does "indirect state power" consist of? How could we recognize its "presence" or "absence"?

The concept of "indirect state power" sounds metaphysical to me.

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[anomaly]

Originally posted by Marxism-Leninism
while the USSR was Leninist the proletariat did have state-power indirectly.
If this were true, they should have been able to retain this state power despite a change in leadership.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 25 2006, 09:34 PM
Meanwhile, I posted an argument as to why I think state monopoly capitalist is the best term to describe those regimes.
No, you didn't.

You posted an argument that demonstrates they were class-divided societies - which is not in dispute. Your argument in no way even begins to demonstrate that they were specifically capitalist.

Extraction of surplus-value, the existence of a privileged social layer...these are in no way distinctively capitalist.

So CdeL is absolutely right: you have not yet begun to argue. You rarely do.


I do indeed offer my opinions as "fact"...because as far as I'm concerned, they are based on a lifetime's experience and reading.

And there you have it, the reason Redstar has no need to offer facts or logic...because he's wiser than you, and you should just accept what he says.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Severian
And there you have it, the reason Redstar has no need to offer facts or logic...because he's wiser than you, and you should just accept what he says.

Thanks for sharing. :lol:

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[Led Zeppelin]

Originally posted by RS
What does "indirect state power" consist of? How could we recognize its "presence" or "absence"?


Well for me it's easy, if the party who enjoys state-power is really Leninist I believe the proletariat has indirect state-power, if it is not I believe they don't.

But of course this can only be determined by the actions of the party in question, by its politics. Were the actions of the Bolsheviks revolutionary or reactionary? To me they were revolutionary, maybe you can point out one of their actions that you disagree with and explain why you think it to be reactionary rather than revolutionary?

That is how you prove that the proletariat was not in control -either directly or indirectly- so go ahead.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by Marxism-Leninism
Were the actions of the Bolsheviks revolutionary or reactionary? To me they were revolutionary, maybe you can point out one of their actions that you disagree with and explain why you think it to be reactionary rather than revolutionary?

Try this one...

http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article....iclenumber=8689 (http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=8689)

Here's my response...

http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php...st&p=1292028722 (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=46943&view=findpost&p=1292028722)

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[Guest1]

Marxism-Leninism's mistake shows something important.

Sorry, the politics of the leadership is not necessarily indicative of the class nature of the state.

The reality is, Russia can be considered neither Socialist nor Capitalist for the reasons already mentioned. The bourgeoisie, private owners of the means of production, did not have that economic hegemony characteristic of Capitalist systems. On the other hand, as has been pointed out, the proletariat did not complete its tasks.

The reality however, is that power did rest, objectively, in the hands of the proletariat. The Soviets merged the economic power of the proletariat with the state, in other words parliamentary democracy was replaced by factory or proletarian democracy. While this was rolled back to a large extent, and workers' participation and activity in the process dropped, the basis of the society remained the working class.

It is only by political maneuvering, at the top, that the bureaucratic caste achieved what they achieved. Their corruption did not change the basis of the society, only its political trappings. Much as Napoleon's abolition of the revolution's political reforms did not put the nobility back in power or strip the bourgeoisie of its economic hegemony, neither did Stalin destroy the economic basis of the Russian revolution despite his reactionary rule.

Again, the politics of the leadership divorced from the reality of the street.

Hence, deformed workers' state.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Che y [email protected] 27 2006, 12:45 PM
Marxism-Leninism's mistake shows something important.

Sorry, the politics of the leadership is not necessarily indicative of the class nature of the state.
Right, that's the fundamental error that many people make in different ways.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 26 2006, 03:42 PM
Perhaps the USSR was neither state capitalist nor a deformed workers' state?

Both theories are based on an underlying assumption that the Soviet Union has to either be a workers' state or a capitalist state.
On the contrary. Trotsky developed the "degenerated workers state" theory in debate with "bureaucratic collectivism" theory; "state capitalism" didn't become popular until later. Far from "assuming" bureaucratic collectivism is wrong, Trotsky argued it in both Revolution Betrayed and In Defense of Marxism.


The Soviet Union was a distinct form of social organisation. It was artificially kept in place - first and foremost, through means of repression.

It was distinct from capitalism because of the repression of the market.

It was distinct from socialism because of the repression of the working class.

This is more serious than "state capitalism", as I said in response to Redstar.

But: it doesn't remotely fit the complete facts of the USSR's existence over decades. Where did that "force" come from? How did it defy gravity - "all historical laws" - for decades? How did it not only survive but emerge victorious from WWII, after taking blows which, as its enemy Churchill recognized, would have destroyed any other regime?

Additionally: after the dissolution of the USSR, it's become clearer than ever that its economic differences from capitalism were advances from the workers' point of view, and are defended by workers operating with the most basic kind of consciousness. Even the peasants don't much care for breaking up the cooperatives and legalizing the sale of land (which keeps getting put off in Russia.)


In the absence of workers' planning, and without the market, Soviet society could not reproduce itself. And without workers' planning or the market, there's no organic mechanism to allocate resources, especially labour-time. Capitalist society provides such a mechanism, as does socialist society.

In the Soviet Union, due to the fact that both the market and the working class were repressed, it was the bureaucracy that allocated resources. Such a system could not last forever precisely due to the fact that it could not reproduce itself.

This is an after-the-fact explanation, not a successful theoretical prediction. On the contrary, bureaucratic collectivism theorist originally said that bureaucratic collectivism was the next stage of society, which many countries were evolving towards - fascism and even the New Deal were examples of this.

So they saw a tremendous threat of 1984-like societies lasting and spreading across the globe. That's why they tended to go over to pro-capitalist conclusions (or pro-Cold War social-democracy.)

You - or someone - has modified bureaucratic collectivist theory after the fact to deal with this problem - but a good theory predicts, not just post-dicts.

Lenin and Trotsky predicted correctly: either the world revolution spreads, or the workers state is defeated. We can be thankful the bureaucratic regimes fell - opening up more space for workers' struggle - before the foundations of the workers state completely rotted out.

Leading to the situation we see now, where workers fight in defense of what's left of those foundations. From east Germany to China.


The Soviet Union only 'looked good' when Western capitalism was in trouble.

It also looks good, in some respects, compared to the present situation in Russia.


In reality, though, the Stalinist system subordinated the working class at least as much as capitalist society does. There was very little progressive about Stalinist society.

BTW Trotsky understood this, but he blamed it on a corrupt bureaucracy.

That is not at all an accurate statement of Trotsky's conclusions. He said there was nothing progressive about the Stalinist bureaucracy and regime.....but a great deal progressive about Soviet society and its economic foundations.

He distinguished between the bureaucracy and the workers state....an important distinction today, when Chinese workers and peasants are defending the foundations of the Chinese workers state against the Chinese Communist Party.


He did not grasp (partly due to his attachment to the October revolution, and partly due to the circumstances of his exile) the fact that the bureaucracy was a product of Soviet society.

What does this mean, aside from subjective explanations of Trotsky's supposed errors? He didn't think the bureaucracy was composed of Martians....on the contrary, he explained its roots in the objective circumstances - the backwardness of tsarist Russia, the isolation of the world's first workers state, the defeat of revolutions in other countries....

If you reject that, then what about "Soviet society" produced the bureaucracy exactly?


It was a shame that Trotskyist parties did not see Trotsky's mistakes. If they had, they could have taken a far more critical view of the Soviet Union, and they could have acted accordingly.

Many have - most, really. "Trotskyist" has effectively ceased to mean anything having to do with the kind of political course Trotsky followed.

This hasn't made "Trotskyist parties" more revolutionary.

On the contrary, support for the revolutions which have actually happened is an acid test for whether a party's worth anything for revolution.

(Even if this means, at times, supporting the revolutions despite and against their misleaders.)

[Vanguard1917]

Severian:

But: it doesn't remotely fit the complete facts of the USSR's existence over decades. Where did that "force" come from? How did it defy gravity - "all historical laws" - for decades? How did it not only survive but emerge victorious from WWII, after taking blows which, as its enemy Churchill recognized, would have destroyed any other regime?

The Soviet Union was not defeated in WW2 partly because, as you know, it was allied with Britain and the US - two major capitalist powers.

The Soviet Union emerged as a world superpower mainly due to its military capacity. Economically speaking, the Soviet economy did not have much inner dynamism. It depended heavily on Western productive technology, especially in its latter years. Also, the system of priority production (whereby the bureaucracy essentially allocated resources to the sectors of the economy which it thought were most important - such as military and arms production) could not replace the market in terms of resource allocation efficiency. The Soviet system could send rockets into space but it couldn't stock its stores with the most basic foodstuffs, for example. That the Soviet Union periodically appeared dynamic said much more about the lack dynamism of Western capitalism than it did about the inner dynamism of the Soviet economic system.

Also, the rise of anti-imperialist movements after the war provided the Soviet Union with a new impetus. It could mobilise anti-imperialist movements against the West. This shouldn't be underestimated. That anti-imperialist movements across the periphery looked to the USSR gave the USSR considerable diplomatic and strategic clout. Western imperialism was in trouble, and the USSR took advantage. In this sense the USSR had a progressive effect. But don't confuse this with any inner progressive dynamic in Soviet society. Anti-imperialist movements looked to the USSR largely for strategic reasons in their nationalist struggles against the imperialists (the Maoist movements are perfect examples). The Soviet Union's influence on the periphery was only progressive in that it dealt a blow for Western imperialism. The Soviet Union was,if you like, the lesser of the two evils - which is largely how Trotsky came to see it in his late years.


Additionally: after the dissolution of the USSR, it's become clearer than ever that its economic differences from capitalism were advances from the workers' point of view, and are defended by workers operating with the most basic kind of consciousness.

But this hasn't got much to do with a progressive Soviet economic system. It is to do with the problems of transition to capitalism in Russia. How do we judge, from a Marxist perspective, whether a society is progressive or not? It has something to do with advancement in the mode of production, the breaking down of the barriers to the development of the means of production. In what sense did Stalinist Russia bring about such progress? Is one country even capable of bringing about such progress?


Lenin and Trotsky predicted correctly: either the world revolution spreads, or the workers state is defeated.

The workers' state and the society in which a workers' state stands is defeated.

The Soviet ruling caste was a product of Soviet society. It wasn't a disease on an otherwise healthy body.


We can be thankful the bureaucratic regimes fell - opening up more space for workers' struggle - before the foundations of the workers state completely rotted out.

Such foundations do not exist. Social revolution is needed to create such foundations.


Leading to the situation we see now, where workers fight in defense of what's left of those foundations. From east Germany to China.

Nostalgia for the Stalinist system comes from disillusionment with current society. We don't need backward looking movements.


What does this mean, aside from subjective explanations of Trotsky's supposed errors? He didn't think the bureaucracy was composed of Martians....on the contrary, he explained its roots in the objective circumstances - the backwardness of tsarist Russia, the isolation of the world's first workers state, the defeat of revolutions in other countries....

If you reject that, then what about "Soviet society" produced the bureaucracy exactly?

Essentially Soviet isolation, a product of the defeat of the workers' movement in Europe in the early 1920s.

But the rise of the bureacracy was a social product, not merely a political coup. It wasn't an emerging problem in an otherwise unchanged society. Soviet isolation had fundamental implications for Soviet society. 'Socialism in one country' was not just something invented in Stalin's head. It was an expression of real social problems facing the isolated Soviet state.


On the contrary, support for the revolutions which have actually happened is an acid test for whether a party's worth anything for revolution.

(Even if this means, at times, supporting the revolutions despite and against their misleaders.)

I agree. But Stalinism could not have just been a misleadership of the Russian revolution because the Russian revolution had suffered very important setbacks before Stalin had even come to power. The point is that the emergence of Stalinism was partly, and importantly, responsive to the social conditions that the isolated Soviet Union found itself in. I don't think we should give Stalin more credit than he deserves. Stalin emerged as a result of circumstances that he could not have had much control over. This doesn't mean that there was no point in opposing the Stalin leadership. But the state leadership and the social conditions that gave way to that leadership needed to be opposed at the same time. Stalinism perpetuated those conditions, but i don't think that it created them.

Also, Stalin was no Bonaparte, an authoritarian leader of a society where the mode of production had remained unchanged since the revolution. He did not lead a socialist society. Socialism was not spreading around the world - capitalist relations of production remained predominant (globally speaking).

[YKTMX]

If the USSR was "state capitalist" we'd expect the transition to private capitalism to be not such a big deal. And a matter of indifference to workers, as you suggest.

And that was exactly the case. There was little struggle in any of the state capitalist countries during the move to market economies.

There was a little struggle in Poland, with Solisdarsnosc leading the fight, and in Romania - where the Romanian secret police became the vanguard of the class.

Doesn't the fact that none of these countries saw any organised attempt by workers to defend the state tell you something?

If these regimes were really "workers' states", deformed or otherwise, then the workers would surely have organised to defend them from "counter-revolution". If the move was really from "workers' states" to capitalism, there would have been a civil war. The lack of any significant violence proves the correctness of the state capitalist theory.

There was more struggle in Britain during the miner's strike than their was in the whole history of the collapse of Eastern European Stalinism.


The attempt to restore capitalism has had disastrous effects for workers. And workers have resisted it, stalling the effort to make these countries profitable arenas for investment with stable capitalist property relations.

Severian, I don't see how a collapse in standards of living "proves" the glory of the centralised economy. By this logic, the higher living standards in the West during the Cold War "prove" the historical supremacy of the market. The early growth that the Soviet Union saw came at huge social and human expense. It was not a excercise in "rationality" - but a barbarous period of exploitation and brutality.

The transition to the Market in the east has been a disaster, an embarrassment of the worst kind for bourgeois economics. But the economy was heading that way anyway, which is one of the reasons the bureaucracy moved towards liberalism. As a way of protecting their economic and political interests.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

YouKnow...X

Well said. I could not agree with you more.

But, notice how all these 'scientific socialists' try to fit reality to their pre-conceived schemas, bending facts accordingly. For them, the world has to reflect theory -- not theory capture the world.

[Did someone just say "Idealists"?]

Heaven forbid that someone (like Tony Cliff, say) should try to innovate, and introduce a few new ideas into this aging science.

Good grief, new ideas in science; there's a revolutionary concept!

[Vanguard1917]

Heaven forbid that someone (like Tony Cliff, say) should try to innovate, and introduce a few new ideas into this aging science.

Marxist theory only develops if it's constantly tested against emerging problems. People are free to introduce new ideas into, as they are free to 'innovate', Marxist theory. But we're also free to criticise those ideas, challenge them and hold them to account. Because ideas and theories matter. As Marx said, when a theory grips the masses, it becomes a material force.

In short, if wrong ideas and theories are allowed to go unchallenged merely for the sake of encouraging 'innovation', and if they're allowed to thrive within the movement, the movement suffers... often decisively.

YouKnowTheyMurderedX:

The lack of any significant violence proves the correctness of the state capitalist theory.

In what way? You're right that the lack of working class opposition to the introduction of the market does say something about the lack of workers' control in the Soviet Union. But why must it follow that it 'proves the correctness of the state capitalist theory'? Perhaps the lack of opposition had more to do with a realisation of the historical bankruptcy of the Stalinist system in comparison to capitalism, rather than being due to the 'state capitalist' nature of the USSR. Remember, the Soviet Union collapsed at a time when opposition to capitalism had also collapsed in the West. The defeats suffered by the working class of the Western world in the 1980s gave way to worldwide sentiments of capitalist triumph. Workers in the Soviet world were not unaffected by this.

[YKTMX]

But why must it follow that it 'proves the correctness of the state capitalist theory'?

I've never found any of the theories claiming that the USSR was a "new" type of society at all convincing.

So if it wasn't, as I think is clear, a workers' state, then it must be, from my point of view, state capitalist.


Perhaps the lack of opposition had more to do with a realisation of the historical bankruptcy of the Stalinist system in comparison to capitalism

Hardly a "realisation". The Poles, the Czechs and the East Germans had a record of opposition to the "Stalinist system" that dates back to when it was first forced upon them.

The "lack of opposition" relates to the fact that the Eastern working classes had no stake in the creation, preservation or continued existence of the state capitalist regimes.

Their opposition to Stalinism is therefore not a historically transient one, indicative of "Western" or "religious" influence, but merely an expression of long held nationalist, sometimes socialist, opposition to domination by foreign powers.

[Vanguard1917]

Hardly a "realisation". The Poles, the Czechs and the East Germans had a record of opposition to the "Stalinist system" that dates back to when it was first forced upon them.

The "lack of opposition" relates to the fact that the Eastern working classes had no stake in the creation, preservation or continued existence of the state capitalist regimes.

Then why would they call for a market society that also subordinates their interests? It has something to do with historical change. The protests of the past (such as those in '56) were often working class in nature, whereas those in the 1980s called for the market and the establishment of bourgeois democracy. Workers under Stalinism never had much of a stake in the Stalinist system. But it was only with the defeat of the working class in the West that Western-style capitalism came to be seen as the only alternative to Stalinist society.

[YKTMX]

Then why would they call for a market society that also subordinates their interests?

I don't they did "call for a market economy". Solisdarsnosc hated the Soviet influence, they demanded rights for Polish workers to organise. There was some religious influence. Their demands were for Polish national rights and political and social freedoms. Now, as we know, the vcitory of the Polish resistance movement and the collapse of the Socialist Republic there led to a market economy. This leads some, so-called socialists, to advance the preposterous position of support of the Stalinist bureaucracy against the toilers at the Lenin shipyards in Gdansk.

A kind of absurdism arises, 'defend the workers' state from the workers'.

Reprehensible.

We defend the rights of all workers to defend their interests against their oppressors.


Workers under Stalinism never had much of a stake in the Stalinist system. But it was only with the defeat of the working class in the West that Western-style capitalism came to be seen as the only alternative to Stalinist society.


I don't think the two things are related. Yes, the collapse of the Union coincided with the rightward shift in the West, but as I've said, the point is that, bar a few exceptions, it was not the "people" who broke up the Soviet Union, nor was it was the working class who defended it.

The whole affair amounted to a restructuring in the Eastern European ruling classes.

[Guest1]

But to ask the workingclass to defend the corrupt workers' states, is asking them to be an organized opposition with the will power to resist the bosses. In a period of global reaction, that is not possible. There were no active organs of workingclass power, workers were complacent, defeated and disorganized. The bureaucrats had starved all the organizations for years, and were jumping ship and taking the organizations down with them.

I do think you underestimate the necessity for a left leadership to organize the alternative in this case, which was not at all in the cards, and the mood of disorientation and demoralization which gripped the workingclasses of the world, the SU included.

Have you ever seen people let their union be destroyed and not lift a finger? I have. That doesn't make the union a bourgeois organ of power though, it just means the bureaucrats had spent so long holding the rank and file back to keep their own power that there was no one to answer the battlecry when they finally had no choice but to turn to action.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30 2006, 10:13 AM
Severian:

But: it doesn't remotely fit the complete facts of the USSR's existence over decades. Where did that "force" come from? How did it defy gravity - "all historical laws" - for decades? How did it not only survive but emerge victorious from WWII, after taking blows which, as its enemy Churchill recognized, would have destroyed any other regime?

The Soviet Union was not defeated in WW2 partly because, as you know, it was allied with Britain and the US - two major capitalist powers.
Definitely a secondary cause: the USSR did the heavy lifting of defeating the Third Reich. It'd be more true to say the USA & UK emerged victorious because they were allied with the USSR!

So my question remains unanswered by you.


Economically speaking, the Soviet economy did not have much inner dynamism. It depended heavily on Western productive technology, especially in its latter years.

I think this is one-sided. Rapid economic growth did occur during the earlier part of the USSR's existence. Essentially until it reached a certain level of basic industrialization.

The planned economy did show some advantages at times; it just ran into the limits of what it could do without workers' initiative and involvement in planning.


Also, the system of priority production (whereby the bureaucracy essentially allocated resources to the sectors of the economy which it thought were most important - such as military and arms production) could not replace the market in terms of resource allocation efficiency. The Soviet system could send rockets into space but it couldn't stock its stores with the most basic foodstuffs, for example.

Again, a bit one-sided. Stuff didn't stay on the shelves - in part because it was so easy to buy at subsidized prices. Now there's plenty on Russian store shelves - not because more is produced, but because so many people can't afford to buy it.

But I agree that the USSR proved to be a dead-end. Lemme point out again this is a post-diction not a prediction of the bureaucratic collectivist theory - its founders feared the bureaucratic oligarchs would outcompete and defeat the capitalists. They seemed to think "bureaucratic collectivism" was the next phase of human social evolution, in place of socialism. Progressive economically, though offering only endless slavery to working people.


That anti-imperialist movements across the periphery looked to the USSR gave the USSR considerable diplomatic and strategic clout. Western imperialism was in trouble, and the USSR took advantage. In this sense the USSR had a progressive effect. But don't confuse this with any inner progressive dynamic in Soviet society. Anti-imperialist movements looked to the USSR largely for strategic reasons in their nationalist struggles against the imperialists (the Maoist movements are perfect examples).

Uh, not so perfect. Historically, imperialist powers have sometimes supported nationalist movements against their rivals - Lawrence of Arabia, etc.

But for it to happen on this scale is unprecedented. What's more, Moscow and Beijing influenced mass workers' parties worldwide, unfortunately. Their political agents remained part of the workers' movement.

This is not something ever seen in the case of capitalist regimes, and there's no special reason it would be expected with bureaucratic collecitivist regimes.

And those struggles were not just nationalist in all cases! Capitalism was overthrown in China - not a minor event! As well as several other countries.


But this hasn't got much to do with a progressive Soviet economic system. It is to do with the problems of transition to capitalism in Russia.

So is that transition a step forward, backwards, or sideways? Seems a relevant question to both real life and the theoretical questions raised here. Deserves better than evasions.


How do we judge, from a Marxist perspective, whether a society is progressive or not? It has something to do with advancement in the mode of production, the breaking down of the barriers to the development of the means of production. In what sense did Stalinist Russia bring about such progress? Is one country even capable of bringing about such progress?

It did break down some of the barriers, though in one country it couldn't advance far.

It's significant to look at how the USSR evened out cultural and economic conditions throughout its vast and varied territory, for example. It practiced affirmative action on a geographic scale, developing the Central Asian Republics. Throughout the USSR, electricity was brought to the population on a level comparable to the imperialist countries.



Lenin and Trotsky predicted correctly: either the world revolution spreads, or the workers state is defeated.

The workers' state and the society in which a workers' state stands is defeated.

The Soviet ruling caste was a product of Soviet society. It wasn't a disease on an otherwise healthy body.

You seem to be equating the caste with the workers' state; which certainly wasn't Trotsky's postion.

The state is a workers' state precisely because of the society in which it stands; it rests on and defends nationalized property relations.



We can be thankful the bureaucratic regimes fell - opening up more space for workers' struggle - before the foundations of the workers state completely rotted out.

Such foundations do not exist. Social revolution is needed to create such foundations.

Oh. So what exactly do you think happened in Russia - or, heck, China? This discussion has been a bit over-exclusively USSR-focused.

The biggest revolution in human history occurred in China, under Stalinist leadership. It's not a minor theoretical problem.

That wasn't a social revolution? You're creating a lot of problems for yourself if you say all those changes can occur without a social revolution.....



Leading to the situation we see now, where workers fight in defense of what's left of those foundations. From east Germany to China.

Nostalgia for the Stalinist system comes from disillusionment with current society. We don't need backward looking movements.

An evasion. The issue is not nostalgia; the issue is protests and strikes against privatization and other moves towards capitalist market relations.

There are a lot of them. Hundreds a day in China alone.

You may reject them as "backward looking" if you choose; the apostles of the free market also consider any defense of workers past gains as backward-looking, and only the unfettered free market as progressive.

But those who can't at least try to defend past gains won't be able fight for new advances either.


Essentially Soviet isolation, a product of the defeat of the workers' movement in Europe in the early 1920s.

But the rise of the bureacracy was a social product, not merely a political coup. It wasn't an emerging problem in an otherwise unchanged society. Soviet isolation had fundamental implications for Soviet society. 'Socialism in one country' was not just something invented in Stalin's head. It was an expression of real social problems facing the isolated Soviet state.

None of which adds anythig to Trotsky's analysis.


I agree. But Stalinism could not have just been a misleadership of the Russian revolution because the Russian revolution had suffered very important setbacks before Stalin had even come to power.

Again, China? Vietnam? Yugoslavia? Albania? Property transformations in Eastern Europe?

Of course material conditions in these countries had a lot to do with it; their bureaucratic regimes weren't just a product of political misleadership. But your particular expanation doesn't apply.


The point is that the emergence of Stalinism was partly, and importantly, responsive to the social conditions that the isolated Soviet Union found itself in. I don't think we should give Stalin more credit than he deserves. Stalin emerged as a result of circumstances that he could not have had much control over. This doesn't mean that there was no point in opposing the Stalin leadership. But the state leadership and the social conditions that gave way to that leadership needed to be opposed at the same time. Stalinism perpetuated those conditions, but i don't think that it created them.

Again, adds nothing to Trotsky's analysis.


Also, Stalin was no Bonaparte, an authoritarian leader of a society where the mode of production had remained unchanged since the revolution. He did not lead a socialist society. Socialism was not spreading around the world - capitalist relations of production remained predominant (globally speaking).

Um....how all that proves he was no Bonaparte, I'm not sure.

The mode of production changed in both the French and Russian Revolutions. Both came to power as a result of counterrevolutions after revolutions failed to spread around the world. Both revolutionary states were isolated (globally speaking.)

Ultimately, Napoleon was defeated and the monarchy restored in France. Taking the land back from the peasants - destroying the economic foundations of the bourgeois state - proved more difficult and really was never done.

New revolutionary waves followed in the path set by the French Revolution.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 3 2006, 06:47 PM

If the USSR was "state capitalist" we'd expect the transition to private capitalism to be not such a big deal. And a matter of indifference to workers, as you suggest.

And that was exactly the case. There was little struggle in any of the state capitalist countries during the move to market economies.
That move is still underway. There have been major strikes and protests against privatizations in many countries. There are hundreds of worker and peasant protests in China every day.


There was a little struggle in Poland, with Solisdarsnosc leading the fight, and in Romania - where the Romanian secret police became the vanguard of the class.

Doesn't the fact that none of these countries saw any organised attempt by workers to defend the state tell you something

If these regimes were really "workers' states", deformed or otherwise, then the workers would surely have organised to defend them from "counter-revolution".

See, you haven't even tried to understand my position, or Trotsky's.

The regime was not a workers' state. The bureaucratic regime undermined and rotted away the workers' state and its economic foundations.

The regime is not worth defending, and workers were correct to not defend it, and even to participate in bringing it down in many cases.

The fall of those regimes is fortunate, as I said earlier. Especially where workers participated in bringing them down, in the process they won political space to discuss, organize, and fight.

Space that can be used to resist the privatization efforts. And has been so used.

Within the limits of the class consciousness that workers in these countries retained, after being cut off from the world for decades, driven out of politics by the bureaucracy.


The transition to the Market in the east has been a disaster, an embarrassment of the worst kind for bourgeois economics. But the economy was heading that way anyway, which is one of the reasons the bureaucracy moved towards liberalism. As a way of protecting their economic and political interests.

So what happens to Tony Cliff's argument that capitalism is generally heading towards increased state-ization, then?

But anyway, the bureaucratically planned economies were increasing stagnating; I don't know if they were heading for collapse, but they'd hit the limit of what they could accomplish. In the more developed examples, anyway; China for example is still undergoing the transition from agriculture to industry (the source of its rapid growth.)

That doesn't answer why it's been so hard to restore stable capitalist property relations and make these countries safe and profitable arenas for investment....neither state capitalist nor bureaucratic collectivist theory can explain that.

It's a reality that's had a major impact on the whole curve of world capitalist economy. You might expect the restoration of capitalism - or "private" capitalism if you prefer - to herald a new worldwide boom; new markets and all that.

Hasn't happened, huh? If capitalism - or "private" capitalism - was instantly restored as most of the left carelessly assumes - why not?

[Vanguard1917]

YouKnowTheyMurderedX:

I don't think the two things are related.

I think they're inseparable.

Severian:

Definitely a secondary cause: the USSR did the heavy lifting of defeating the Third Reich. It'd be more true to say the USA & UK emerged victorious because they were allied with the USSR!

So my question remains unanswered by you.

What do you think: why did the Soviet Union survive the war?


The planned economy did show some advantages at times; it just ran into the limits of what it could do without workers' initiative and involvement in planning.

But this is so central. In order for an economy to be progressive in comparison to capitalism workers' initiative, involvement and conscious planning is vital. Socialism relies on the conscious decisions of the mass of the working class.


And those struggles were not just nationalist in all cases! Capitalism was overthrown in China - not a minor event! As well as several other countries.

A major event - dealt a massive blow to the plans of the imperialists, and it marked the beginning of Cold War alignment, providing the Soviet Union with significant levels of international influence.


So is that transition a step forward, backwards, or sideways?

Well, considering that the Stalinist system was artificially kept in place, transition to capitalism in Russia was always the only possible transition as long as there was no workers' movement putting forth an socialist alternative.


The state is a workers' state precisely because of the society in which it stands; it rests on and defends nationalized property relations.

Again, this is central to the argument. It is a key error made by many Trotskyists, Stalinists and even bourgeois historians. It is the idea that nationalisation amounts to workers' control. Those who apologise for the Stalinist system have always used this as a means of establishing its progressive nature. Bourgeois opponents of Marxism have used it in order to 'prove' that 'the USSR is/was communist'.

Neither Marx nor Engels nor Lenin considered the nationalisation of the means of production as in itself being progressive. Neither of them had any illusions about the intrinsically progressive nature of nationalisation. Engels wrote that if nationalisation is socialistic, people like Napoleon and Metternich should be numbered among the founders of socialism. From a Marxist perspective, nationalisation is progressive to private ownership only if it socialises the means of production and increases productivity.


Oh. So what exactly do you think happened in Russia - or, heck, China? This discussion has been a bit over-exclusively USSR-focused.

The biggest revolution in human history occurred in China, under Stalinist leadership. It's not a minor theoretical problem.

That wasn't a social revolution? You're creating a lot of problems for yourself if you say all those changes can occur without a social revolution.....

What i meant was that, in Stalinist societies, social revolution was needed to establish/re-establish the conditions for workers control. Are you seriously suggesting that those conditions exist in the former Stalinist countries? Did they even ever exist in places like China?



But the rise of the bureacracy was a social product, not merely a political coup. It wasn't an emerging problem in an otherwise unchanged society. Soviet isolation had fundamental implications for Soviet society. 'Socialism in one country' was not just something invented in Stalin's head. It was an expression of real social problems facing the isolated Soviet state.

None of which adds anythig to Trotsky's analysis.

Then why did Trotsky's analysis call only for a political revolution? If the rise of the bureaucracy was a product of social conditions, then social transformation is needed to address those conditions, rather than a mere 'political revolution'.


Again, China? Vietnam? Yugoslavia? Albania? Property transformations in Eastern Europe?

Of course material conditions in these countries had a lot to do with it; their bureaucratic regimes weren't just a product of political misleadership. But your particular expanation doesn't apply.

Did material conditions have 'a lot to do with it', or were they, in fact, central to the rise of the bureaucracy?


Ultimately, Napoleon was defeated and the monarchy restored in France. Taking the land back from the peasants - destroying the economic foundations of the bourgeois state - proved more difficult and really was never done.

And the difference between Napoleon and Stalin is that, in the former, 'the economic foundations of the bourgeois state' were, as you imply, maintained; the bourgeoisie remained in power.

Stalinism symbolised the destruction of the rule of the working class.

[YKTMX]

I wrote a reply to this but the database fucked up and it got lost.

Oh well, I'll try again because I want to get into this issue.



See, you haven't even tried to understand my position


I'm not sure even you understood your position, Sev. First, you say:


This confirms that the nationalized property relations of these countries were a step forward for workers and should be defended against the capitalists of other countries....in other words, the "degenerated and deformed workers state" position developed by Trotsky.


Then, you say:


The regime was not a workers' state. The bureaucratic regime undermined and rotted away the workers' state and its economic foundations.

The regime is not worth defending, and workers were correct to not defend it, and even to participate in bringing it down in many cases.


So, which is it? Either the regimes are types of workers' states which should be defended, or it's "fortunate" that they were overthrown. It can't be both, I imagine.

However, I think it's worth re-affirming just where Sev, and indeed Trotsky, went wrong in their analyses of Russia and its satellites - namely in their reification of the form of property. Firstly, a dictionary defintion of reification:

To regard or treat (an abstraction) as if it had concrete or material existence.


When Sev talks about "nationalized property", he treats it as a "thing" with its own innate characteristic, not a relationship between human beings.

Property in the Soviet states may well have been in the hands of the state, but that tells us nothing about the actual property relations. If the state is no longer under the control of the labouring classes, if the labouring classes have no say in what's produced, if workers are alienated at the point of the production, if an autonomous social class distinct fron the workers enriches itself in a parasitical fashion from the labour of the workers, then to focus on the "form" of property becomes, at best, fetishistic. If the experience of the workers in these countries is, in many ways, identical to those in the "capitalist" states, then what exactly is a "workers' state", degenerated or otherwise?

Furthermore, we have to examine the social origins of these property relations, so we can understand which social class' interests they benefit.

The state capitalist regimes set up after the second world war were identical to Russia. If Russia was a " degenerated workers' state" then so were these. Except these countries had never seen workers' struggle. These states had not been created by a class conscious workers' movement. They had been created by Soviet Imperial expansion and clones of the Soviet bureaucracy?

If we accept that these states were "progressive" or some kind of workers states, then Marxism as the main theory of the working class movement is dead. Marx and "self emancipation" is refuted, Lenin and the need for a vangaurd is refuted and Engels' argument that the socialist revolution is "history conscious of itself" is refuted.

Workers states can be created without workers. All you need is a good general and hefty firepower.

That is why Cliff developed the theory in the first place. He grew tired of Trotskyists parroting discredited theories when historical facts hadn't borne them out - Cannon's insistence that the second world war hadn't ended, for instance.

We sometimes have to save Marxism from itself.

The theory of state capitalism does that.

And the events of '89 showed it be absolutely, precisely and completely the correct theory.

[Janus]

That move is still underway. There have been major strikes and protests against privatizations in many countries. There are hundreds of worker and peasant protests in China every day.
That has been more of a rencent phenomenon since much of this unrest began during the Jiang era when the government was focused solely on urban development rather than the rural areas. They are protesting their conditions and the treatment that they face rather than privatization itself.

Most of the original economic reforms were decided on through grassroots democracy. They emerged from the local scence rather than from the national leaders as what happened in the USSR with perestroika. Thus, Deng slowly moved China away from Mao's vision of it as a self-reliant economic force.

I think that state capitalist theory is quite solid but I'm not too sure about the state monopoly theory since that would require actual monopolies to exist which would be supported by the government itself. I suppose that the US came close to that in the late 19th century but the USSR?

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 6 2006, 09:33 AM
What do you think: why did the Soviet Union survive the war?
Because of the remaining strength of the workers state - not so many years after the Russian Revolution then - and the consciousness of most working people in the USSR that they had a vital stake in defending it.

The German invasion of the USSR remains the example of the level of anti-working-class violence it would take to fully restore stable capitalist property relations.


But this is so central. In order for an economy to be progressive in comparison to capitalism workers' initiative, involvement and conscious planning is vital. Socialism relies on the conscious decisions of the mass of the working class.

That is a major reason the USSR was not socialist, yes. The kind of nationalizations there provided a necessary but not sufficient condition for the transition to socialism.

My point was, though, that the USSR did make certain advances for a time despite this. Up to a certain level of development, brute-force planning contributed to economic growth, sometimes rapid economic growth. But this approach couldn't increase quality, just quantity of production.


A major event - dealt a massive blow to the plans of the imperialists, and it marked the beginning of Cold War alignment, providing the Soviet Union with significant levels of international influence.

Which avoids the question: what was the effect of the Chinese Revolution inside China? Was that social transformation - which destroyed feudalism more thoroughly than any bourgeois revolution, for starters - progressive or not?

I might point out that every economic and social indicator remains superior in China today than in India. Two countries of roughly the same size, and in the late 40s roughly the same level of development. Indian independence and the Chinese Revolution occurred around the same time. So it's a good comparison.

India looks good compared to much of the Third World - but China looks better in everything but bourgeois democracy.



So is that transition a step forward, backwards, or sideways?

Well, considering that the Stalinist system was artificially kept in place, transition to capitalism in Russia was always the only possible transition as long as there was no workers' movement putting forth an socialist alternative.

Yeah, Lenin said that. Again, you're adding nothing new, and also not answering the question.



The state is a workers' state precisely because of the society in which it stands; it rests on and defends nationalized property relations.

Again, this is central to the argument. It is a key error made by many Trotskyists, Stalinists and even bourgeois historians. It is the idea that nationalisation amounts to workers' control.

No. One, not all nationalisations have this effect. Nobody - except state capitalism theorists - thinks Egypt or Burma were ever the same as the USSR. Despite the nationalisation of all industry in those countries.

Two, it's not that it "amounts to workers' control." (I'll guess you mean workers' concious involvement in administration and planning, rather than the narrower syndicalist meaning.)

Rather, it's that the nationalization of capitalist property in the course of a social revolution which destroys the capitalists as a class creates a new set of social relations surrounding property, a new consciousness and set of expectations by workers, and is an essential step for new advances towards socialism.

(Present-day efforts to restore capitalism keep running into those expectations. Those buying up industries, for example, often discover they are buying a whole set of obligations along with them; to provide social programs; heating to the town, all kinds of things. Or the early-90s mass revolt in Albania when pyramid "investment" schemes collapsed. People in capitalist countries don't react like that to investment scams or market collapses; they are accustomed to that kind of uncertainty and dog-eat-dog reality.)

That's the kind of nationalized property relations I'm talking about.

Obviously the nationalized property relations in the USSR were different from those in capitalist countries where some industry, or even all industry, was nationalized. You must know this, since you don't claim the USSR was capitalist!


What i meant was that, in Stalinist societies, social revolution was needed to establish/re-establish the conditions for workers control. Are you seriously suggesting that those conditions exist in the former Stalinist countries? Did they even ever exist in places like China?

I don't think workers' political power exists or in China ever existed, certainly. And that's one of the conditions for increasing workers' participation in planning and administration. But the kind of property forms which, well, existed and to some extent still exist, are another condition which did and to some extent still does exist;

But you haven't answered the question; or your answer isn't clear to me anyway. Was there a social revolution or not? In, say, China? If not, what was that?


Then why did Trotsky's analysis call only for a political revolution? If the rise of the bureaucracy was a product of social conditions, then social transformation is needed to address those conditions, rather than a mere 'political revolution'.

To review, those social conditions were the backwardness of Russia and its isolation in a capitalist world. You said yourself if I understood you right.

It should be obvious that those kind of conditions aren't changed by labelling a revolution "social" rather than "political"! (And what political conclusions are changed with that different label, anyway? What changes to property forms do you propose, for example?)

The revolution needed to change those social conditions is the world revolution, first of all. And then there's the long battle to raise and equalize the economic and cultural conditions in city and countryside, the First World and the Third World....



Again, China? Vietnam? Yugoslavia? Albania? Property transformations in Eastern Europe?

Of course material conditions in these countries had a lot to do with it; their bureaucratic regimes weren't just a product of political misleadership. But your particular expanation doesn't apply.

Did material conditions have 'a lot to do with it', or were they, in fact, central to the rise of the bureaucracy?

Fine, it was central. But then again, bureaucratic regimes weren't inevitable simply given adverse conditions; like all political questions this is decided in struggle.

Stalinist regimes resulted again and again....in large part since these revolution were Stalinist-misled. With better conditions, the Stalinist misleadership likely would have been challenged more seriously. With better leadership, the counterrevolution resulting from the conditions would have been resisted.

But nevertheless, which side are you on in the Chinese Civil War, between Yugoslav Partisans and Chetniks, in the Vietnamese Revolution? Traditionally, bureaucratic collectivism theorists have chosen capitalism as the lesser evil. Your version may lead to different conclusions....but what are those conclusions, in your view? How are they different from Trotsky's?

To test different theories, it's necessary to see which results in better analyses and predictions. You've tended to avoid looking at the differences on that level.

Then there's Cuba. Which is different and better than the Stalinist regimes, as a host of facts show. Many in the insular British left seem to think this is a minor footnote they can gloss over, or get by on assumptions rather than detailed knowledge. It's way over in another hemisphere, what do we need to know about it?

But the rest of the world recognizes Cuba has an importance out of proportion to its size.

Cuba's had all the same problems of bureaucracy as the USSR, China, etc. But the political battles have all turned out differently from the USSR. (Of course Cuba had one great material advantage the USSR didn't in its early years - Soviet trade, aid, and military alliance.)

Workers have not been driven out of politics, and participate in decision-making, including economic decision-making, on many levels. (One interesting economic question here: to what extent does Cuba suffer from the USSR's great insoluble production problem, shoddy quality? I don't know, I'd guess some....but Cuba is still known for the world's highest quality in one export, cigars. The USSR wasn't known for that even in weapons.)

It's another intermediate form in social evolution. More advanced than the degenerated and deformed workers states, with fewer roadblocks in the way of socialism - but clearly with a resemblance to the other workers states, even in its problems and diseases.

Just as intermediate forms in biological evolution tell us something about phyletic lineages and the relationships between other species, Cuba tells us something about the relationships between other societies.


And the difference between Napoleon and Stalin is that, in the former, 'the economic foundations of the bourgeois state' were, as you imply, maintained; the bourgeoisie remained in power.

Stalinism symbolised the destruction of the rule of the working class.

You're conflating two different things. "'the economic foundations of the bourgeois state' were, as you imply, maintained; ", yes. "the bourgeoisie remained in power. ", no. Even under Napoleon, there was a balancing between bourgeois and feudal interests; Marx analyzed this balancing as fundamental to the phenomenon of Bonapartism.

And then the Bourbons were restored! But it proved harder to carry out the economic counterrevolution than the political counterrevolution.

Similarly with the rise of Stalinism - or today.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 6 2006, 10:12 AM
I wrote a reply to this but the database fucked up and it got lost.

Oh well, I'll try again because I want to get into this issue.
A pity you didn't, then.


First, you say:

This confirms that the nationalized property relations of these countries were a step forward for workers and should be defended against the capitalists of other countries....in other words, the "degenerated and deformed workers state" position developed by Trotsky.


Then, you say:


The regime was not a workers' state. The bureaucratic regime undermined and rotted away the workers' state and its economic foundations.

The regime is not worth defending, and workers were correct to not defend it, and even to participate in bringing it down in many cases.


So, which is it? Either the regimes are types of workers' states which should be defended, or it's "fortunate" that they were overthrown. It can't be both, I imagine.

In one case, I'm talking about the property relations, in the other case the regime. If you'd bother to read and think, you could avoid wasting your time and mine with this kind of non-contradiction.


However, I think it's worth re-affirming just where Sev, and indeed Trotsky, went wrong in their analyses of Russia and its satellites - namely in their reification of the form of property. Firstly, a dictionary defintion of reification:

To regard or treat (an abstraction) as if it had concrete or material existence.


When Sev talks about "nationalized property", he treats it as a "thing" with its own innate characteristic, not a relationship between human beings.

Ah. That must be why I keep saying "property relations". And emphasizing how they're tied up with things like workers' expectations.


Property in the Soviet states may well have been in the hands of the state, but that tells us nothing about the actual property relations.

By itself, obviously not. See reply to Vanguard1917 immediately above. But this truism is a poor substitute for an analysis of those actual property relations.


If the state is no longer under the control of the labouring classes, if the labouring classes have no say in what's produced, if workers are alienated at the point of the production, if an autonomous social class distinct fron the workers enriches itself in a parasitical fashion from the labour of the workers, then to focus on the "form" of property becomes, at best, fetishistic.If the experience of the workers in these countries is, in many ways, identical to those in the "capitalist" states, then what exactly is a "workers' state", degenerated or otherwise?

But of course it wasn't identical. This is one reason why the "state capitalist" position is so much less serious than even the "bureaucratic collectivist" position, then.

Workers in capitalist countries don't typically say things like "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us", one of the many cynical sayings workers had about their experience under Stalinism. For starters.

In practice, the "state cap" approach boils down to "If I don't like the political regime, then the economy is capitalist." ("If the state is no longer under the control of the labouring classes", as YTMX puts it.) It's shared by Maoists and by ex-Maoists like Redstar. Only they attach a different date to when the regime went bad, in their judgement. As soon as it did, poof! capitalism.


Furthermore, we have to examine the social origins of these property relations, so we can understand which social class' interests they benefit.

Indeed. One reason your earlier truism is useless.


The state capitalist regimes set up after the second world war were identical to Russia. If Russia was a " degenerated workers' state" then so were these. Except these countries had never seen workers' struggle. These states had not been created by a class conscious workers' movement. They had been created by Soviet Imperial expansion and clones of the Soviet bureaucracy?

Neat little a priori bit of reasoning. But this kind of pure scholastic theory is a poor substitute for a scientific approach which checks results against facts.

"These countries had never seen workers' struggle"? Quite the sweeping generalization. And as usual, overly simplistic.

In fact, Stalin&Co did have to set in motion mass action to smash capitalism in these countries, albeit in a controlled and limited way. See "Workers and Farmers Governments since the Second World War" by Robert Chester for some example on this.

Here's something I wrote about a case which turned out to be oddly analagous to Poland and east Germany (http://www.seeingred.com/Copy/3.1_freetibet.html) I started researching Tibet in depth mostly 'cause there was nothing Marxist about it, really....and all this New Age Western Buddhist crap. Ended up finding out the military takeover had to be accompanied by a certain involvement of the Tibetan poor - when the PRC found itself, against its initial intentions, smashing the former property relations there.

And, of course, the extension of Soviet control over Eastern Europe was a result of a rather large revolutionary war against German imperialism. This may seem, instead, as nothing but "Soviet imperialism" to you - but that's assuming your conclusion in order to prove your conclusion. Circular.


If we accept that these states were "progressive" or some kind of workers states, then Marxism as the main theory of the working class movement is dead. Marx and "self emancipation" is refuted, Lenin and the need for a vangaurd is refuted and Engels' argument that the socialist revolution is "history conscious of itself" is refuted.

You actually don't avoid this problem by going with your "state capitalism" theory. Because even if these states were capitalist, you have the little problem that they undoubtedly smashed feudalism. With greater thoroughness than any of the great bourgeois revolution in history.

This doesn't just apply to the Warsaw Pact countries which were most convenient for your argument. Right next door, there's the Yugoslav and Albanian revolutions, where the role of the Red Army was distinctly secondary. Plus that tiny little thing called the Chinese Revolution, plus Korea, Vietnam, Cuba for you in the same category....who did those revolutions benefit, capitalists?

And, hm, didn't Tony Cliff say state capitalism was progressive compared to private capitalism? Well, that doesn't so much matter.

Either way, if you start attributing all kinds of anti-feudal and nationalist revolution to "state capitalism"...then capitalism apparently still has a lot of progress left in it. So the workers' apparently aren't the only ones who can liberate ourselves, at least from feudalism and national oppression.

(The same holds true for "bureaucratic collectivism"....unless you say it's worse even than feudalism. Which takes you even further right politically.)

That way lies class collaboration and Popular Frontism. What's the matter with that, you ask? Well, that's outside the scope of this thread and besides I suspect you're familiar with the argument. But my point is, it's the same place you warned against ending up. Only it's the British SWP which has actually ended up there.

"Lenin and the need for a vangaurd is refuted"

Look, let's not fetishize the leadership question or raise it to the same level as the self-emancipation of the working class. The exploited do make gains with inadequate leadership sometimes - to deny that implies the worst kind of sectarianism. Which is, incidentally, not at all incompatible with class collaboration.

(The early Communist International, in its resolution on workers and peasants' governments, said they could potentially be set up under petty-bourgeois leadership. Was Lenin along with others "refuting Lenin"? Or just applying that idea with a modicum of flexibility?)

And the events of '89 showed it be absolutely, precisely and completely the correct theory.

Well, I've made a number of points about the events of '89 and since, which you've neatly ignored. Except for one which you misconstrued in the most obviously wrong way.

But anyway, sectarians always take every new event...primarily as an opportunity to proclaim all their earlier proclamations proven once again. Rather than, say, as something to analyze in its own right, in order to produce a political orientation on present and future events. Like, say, the class battles occurring from east Germany to the Pacific, over privatizations and other moves back towards capitalism.

Incidentally, theoretical novelty is no virtue in and of itself. There have been a lot fewer worthwhile additions and modifications to Marxist theory....than modifications made under the pressure of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois influences.

The present moment, when the working class is in retreat in most countries, is a time when the second kind of modification is especially likely, and the first especially unlikely.

[Vanguard1917]

Because of the remaining strength of the workers state - not so many years after the Russian Revolution then - and the consciousness of most working people in the USSR that they had a vital stake in defending it.

I think that evidence is needed here. I sympathise with the opinion - but is it true?


My point was, though, that the USSR did make certain advances for a time despite this. Up to a certain level of development, brute-force planning contributed to economic growth, sometimes rapid economic growth. But this approach couldn't increase quality, just quantity of production.

Production was always increased at the expense of the working class. Stalinist society could exploit labour often to levels which advanced capitalist societies could not. Having said that, even this couldn't bring about a more productive economic system: productive technology was archaic, and this was reflected in the quality of the goods produced. What is the point of having quantity without quality?


Again, you're adding nothing new, and also not answering the question.

The transition to capitalism is inevitable as long as there's no socialist alternative. Why does it matter whether i think that this is 'forwards', 'backwards' or 'sideways'?


I don't think workers' political power exists or in China ever existed, certainly. And that's one of the conditions for increasing workers' participation in planning and administration. But the kind of property forms which, well, existed and to some extent still exist, are another condition which did and to some extent still does exist;

But you haven't answered the question; or your answer isn't clear to me anyway. Was there a social revolution or not? In, say, China? If not, what was that?


Which avoids the question: what was the effect of the Chinese Revolution inside China? Was that social transformation - which destroyed feudalism more thoroughly than any bourgeois revolution, for starters - progressive or not?

I think that the Chinese Revolution was progressive because it was a nationalist revolution against imperialism. But that's really all that it was. The underlying reason is not, as some claim, because China was a backward, agrarian society prior to the revolution, but because of the nature of the revolution's leadership and the historical situation in which the Chinese Revolution took place.

For example, in the mid-1920s, there had already been a revolutionary situation in China. The historical conditions in China were very similar to those in Russia around and before 1917. There was also a genuine revolutionary communist leadership in China, ready to take power with a base in an increasingly class conscious (though small) proletariat. It was part of the wave of working class radicalism spreading around the world in the years around the First World War. Stalin failed to give revolutionary backing to the Chinese communists and the movement was defeated.

After WW2, on the other hand, the Chinese revolution took place in the historical context of worldwide nationalist revolutions in periphery countries against imperialism. The Maoist movement in China was a nationalist movement, first and foremost. It was a nationalist leadership taking advantage of widespread anti-imperialist sentiment. It was progressive because it dealt a blow for imperialism. But it wasn't a movement of a class conscious proletariat. And, without a class conscious working class, how can socialistic modes of production be established?


I might point out that every economic and social indicator remains superior in China today than in India. Two countries of roughly the same size, and in the late 40s roughly the same level of development. Indian independence and the Chinese Revolution occurred around the same time. So it's a good comparison.

India looks good compared to much of the Third World - but China looks better in everything but bourgeois democracy.

This is an interesting point. China is one of the only countries showing any signs of true economic dynamism in the 21st century. (It's already the world's 6th largest producer, and it has in recent recent contributed almost as much as the US to global economic growth.)

There needs to be a good, concrete Marxist study to explain the reason's behind this relative dynamism (if you know of one, feel free to let me know). It most probably has something to do with the high levels of independence from the West (post-war) enjoyed by China relative to the other periphery countries of that part of the world.

But one thing is for sure: the relative dynamism of China can have nothing to do with workers' power or the existance of conditions for workers' power.


Obviously the nationalized property relations in the USSR were different from those in capitalist countries where some industry, or even all industry, was nationalized. You must know this, since you don't claim the USSR was capitalist!

It is different because nationalisation in the USSR was not subject to the laws of the market, whereas nationalisation under capitalism was and always is. Nationalisation under Stalinism was the bureaucracy taking command of industry. There's a very clear distinction.


It should be obvious that those kind of conditions aren't changed by labelling a revolution "social" rather than "political"! (And what political conclusions are changed with that different label, anyway? What changes to property forms do you propose, for example?)

There's a fundamental difference between the caution proposed by the apologists for Stalinism and the radical change called for by anti-Stalinist revolutionaries. The former saw the bureaucracy as the problem (an illness on an otherwise healthy body) and the latter argued that social revolution is needed to overthrow the underlying conditions for the rise of the bureaucracy. Trotsky can be excused for his mistakes, for numerous reasons. But post-WW2 'Trotskyist' dogmaticism should never have been allowed to thrive. Leftwing apologists for the Stalinist system had a great detrimental impact on the working class movement.


bureaucratic regimes weren't inevitable simply given adverse conditions; like all political questions this is decided in struggle.

Stalinist regimes resulted again and again....in large part since these revolution were Stalinist-misled. With better conditions, the Stalinist misleadership likely would have been challenged more seriously. With better leadership, the counterrevolution resulting from the conditions would have been resisted.

I agree completely that better leadership would have given way to better resistance. We cannot let the Stalinists off lightly by arguing that they were mere slaves of objective conditions. That's nonsense. We need a careful combination of subjective and objective factors in explaning the rise of Stalinism.

But the historical conditions in which the Stalinist of the early '20s found themselves in were not really under their control. The defeat of the workers' movement in early 1920s Europe cannot be blamed on Stalin or his followers, as you would probably agree. However, the rise of Stalinism required the objective necessity of Soviet isolation - i.e. the defeat of the working class in Europe. Immediate historical circumstances were, in this sense, on the side of the Stalinists.


You're conflating two different things. "'the economic foundations of the bourgeois state' were, as you imply, maintained; ", yes. "the bourgeoisie remained in power. ", no. Even under Napoleon, there was a balancing between bourgeois and feudal interests; Marx analyzed this balancing as fundamental to the phenomenon of Bonapartism.

And then the Bourbons were restored! But it proved harder to carry out the economic counterrevolution than the political counterrevolution.

Similarly with the rise of Stalinism - or today.

The epoch of capitalism was upheld under Napoleon. What epoch did Stalin have to uphold or destroy in Russia?

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 8 2006, 11:06 PM

Because of the remaining strength of the workers state - not so many years after the Russian Revolution then - and the consciousness of most working people in the USSR that they had a vital stake in defending it.

I think that evidence is needed here. I sympathise with the opinion - but is it true?
I think this explanation best explains the course of the war. There's also plenty of evidence, if you read any good military history on WWII, that working people in the USSR fought with amazing tenacity.


Production was always increased at the expense of the working class. Stalinist society could exploit labour often to levels which advanced capitalist societies could not.

But how about compared to capitalist countries at comparable levels of economic development?

Also, if you're going to try to measure a level of exploitation of labor, you have to factor in productivity of labor, wages, and the social wage (aka welfare state). The first was often very low ("we pretend to work", no fear of unemployment) and the last very high.


The transition to capitalism is inevitable as long as there's no socialist alternative. Why does it matter whether i think that this is 'forwards', 'backwards' or 'sideways'?

It matters in terms of a political orientation to the economic transition underway, and the resistance to it.


I think that the Chinese Revolution was progressive because it was a nationalist revolution against imperialism. But that's really all that it was.

Compared to any number of merely nationalist revolutions, the Chinese Revolution is clearly far more sweeping in its mass involvement and its effects, starting with the agrarian revolution. It takes a very a priori approach to deny this.

This strikes me as having a certain similarity to the state-caps idea that this was basically a bourgeois-democratic revolution. The political implications are similar - that the bourgeoisie, or the bureaucratic collectivists, are capable of conducting progressive anti-imperialist, anti-feudal revolutions. The working class, then, is not the only revolutionary class in the world today.

A lot of the debate in the FI over the post-WWII revolutions was very a priori, IMO, with elaborate theoretical structures floating high in the air and having little contact with the ground. It went something like: Stalinists can't lead socialist revolutions that overthrow capitalism. So: either there's no socialist content to this revolution, or the CCP isn't Stalinist. The initial premise was applied inflexibly, either way, to the point of denying the obvious. Trotsky himself had the experience not to be so categorical on this possibility.

The ultimate expression of this method, which I mention to show the ultimate absurdity of the approach, was Healy's line on Cuba. It goes like this: The Cuban revolution wasn't led by Trotskyists, so it can't possibly be a "healthy" workers state. It wasn't led by Stalinists, so it isn't a "deformed workers state. That leaves.....Cuba must be a capitalist state! No need to actually examine any inconvenient facts.


This is an interesting point. China is one of the only countries showing any signs of true economic dynamism in the 21st century. (It's already the world's 6th largest producer, and it has in recent recent contributed almost as much as the US to global economic growth.)

There needs to be a good, concrete Marxist study to explain the reason's behind this relative dynamism (if you know of one, feel free to let me know).

Part of it's fairly straightforward - there's a massive movement of labor from city to countryside, from agriculture to industry. Labor productivity is of course much higher in industry. One implication: this won't be sustainable forever; eventually the industrial revolution will be in the past. Already some Chinese employers have been complaining of a (relative) labor shortage.

Also, it's easier to have a rapid growth rate, measured as a percentage, from a lower level.

I don't know a good detailed study of this, though.


It most probably has something to do with the high levels of independence from the West (post-war) enjoyed by China relative to the other periphery countries of that part of the world.

But not relative to India, which has also been independent in policy, and during the Cold War loosely allied with the USSR.


It is different because nationalisation in the USSR was not subject to the laws of the market, whereas nationalisation under capitalism was and always is. Nationalisation under Stalinism was the bureaucracy taking command of industry. There's a very clear distinction.

Actually the law of value did continue to operate in the USSR - though not in the same way, since prices weren't set through the competition of different capitals setting an average rate of profit (that's volume 3 of Capital stuff I'm not completely up on.) Official Kremlin doctrine held that the law of value could be used as a tool to build socialism. Che Guevara did an extensive critique of this.

I think the difference is more that in, say, Nasser's Egypt there had been no anticapitalist revolution, the state remained the implement of capitalism, and the whole policy was clearly aimed all along at fostering a new and stronger national capitalist class, which happened relatively quickly. The Workers and Farmers Government by Joseph Hansen includes an article examining the Egyptian example in some detail.

If anyone wants to say, based on the present-day Russian oligarchs, that the USSR was a longer-term version of the same thing...clearly it was a fairly unsuccessful strategy, then. After several decades, the Russian "new capitalists" are a narrower layer and far less able to promote national development than the pre-1917 capitalists even.


There's a fundamental difference between the caution proposed by the apologists for Stalinism and the radical change called for by anti-Stalinist revolutionaries. The former saw the bureaucracy as the problem (an illness on an otherwise healthy body) and the latter argued that social revolution is needed to overthrow the underlying conditions for the rise of the bureaucracy. Trotsky can be excused for his mistakes, for numerous reasons. But post-WW2 'Trotskyist' dogmaticism should never have been allowed to thrive. Leftwing apologists for the Stalinist system had a great detrimental impact on the working class movement.

One, saying the USSR and China were workers states is not an apologia for Stalinism. Not if you distinguish between the regime and the workers' gains.

Two, that is not a difference in line, program, or course of action. It is a claimed difference in attitude or tone. You don't need a different theory for that; and if you don't have the right gut-level attitude, a theory won't give it to you.

(The attitude needed, I think, is summarized in Orwell's "...when I see a real flesh-and-blood worker fighting with his natural enemy, a policeman, I don't need to ask myself which side I'm on." Orwell, of course, had a left social-democratic theory.)

Three, you haven't explained how to "overthrow" social conditions like economic underdevelopment, illiteracy, or capitalist domination of the rest of the world.

So it's still not clear to me what purpose or practical implications you think your theory has.


The epoch of capitalism was upheld under Napoleon.

Only partly. He was both the hangman of the bourgeois revolution and the executor of its will. Napoleon abolished serfdom in Poland (but tried to restore slavery in Haiti); Stalin abolished capitalism in Poland (but betrayed revolutions worldwide.) That's the similarity.


What epoch did Stalin have to uphold or destroy in Russia?

Well, the Soviet workers state was defended in WWII despite Stalin's gross misleadership. So I wouldn't say he "upheld" it....

All analagies have their limits. History is kinder to Napoleon than to Stalin; the bourgeois revolution had more use for Bonapartist figures than the proletarian revolution does.

Reminds me of This article (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=40434) by the veteran Cuban revolutionary Armando Hart on Stalinand his heirs. Hart concludes that Deutscher's biography took too favorable a view of Stalin, in comparing him to Napoleon among others because:

"Napoleon set the legal and political basis of the French bourgeoisie and, paradoxically, opened the way for a bourgeois-feudal alliance that formed the capitalist politics of the 19th century.....Stalin did not reach these objectives regarding socialism. Nor could he encourage the socialist revolution in Europe and the world, nor was he able to consolidate it in the USSR....
If Stalin belongs to the category of revolutionary despots, the lessons learned reveal that it is not possible to open an everlasting way towards a socialist society without love and culture to build itself.

It is evident that if the revolutionary despots were able to open up the way for capitalism, the construction of socialism cannot be made under the direction of a despot."

[YKTMX]

Workers in capitalist countries don't typically say things like "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us"

On the contrary, state owned enterprises, which were unprofitable and on the whole completely useless, existed for a long time in the West. It's quite common for capitalists to accept reduced profitability for stability.



And, of course, the extension of Soviet control over Eastern Europe was a result of a rather large revolutionary war against German imperialism.

I presume you're referring to the partisans, here?

I hope you're not, as I fear you are, getting wrapped up in Stalinist propaganda about the glory of Stalingrad. The fight of the USSR against Nazi Germany was not a great ideological struggle. The Soviet people did not fight to defend their nationalized property relations. They fought because they were conscripted and would be shot if they didn't.

Anyone who concludes that they fought with particular "bravery" is involved in projection of the most vulgar kind.


With greater thoroughness than any of the great bourgeois revolution in history.


On what criteria are you basing this?

In any case, Cliff's argument with regards to the other state capitalisms - China, Vietnam, Cuba - is that the revolutions were led by radical sections of the petty bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia. This force substitutes itself for an indolent or defeated working class and a conservative bourgeoisie, which is unwilling, or unable, to complete the tasks of the bourgeois revolution.

Rather than accept this rather sensible theory, Severian would like us to believe that Doctor Castro and Doctor Guevara and their 50 comrades roaming the jungles of Cuba represent the self-activity of the masses!


I think Cliff's analysis is a bit more serious.


And, hm, didn't Tony Cliff say state capitalism was progressive compared to private capitalism?

No, the position was always that, as Harman famously put it, the move from state to private capitalism was not a step forward or a step back, but a step sideways.


Either way, if you start attributing all kinds of anti-feudal and nationalist revolution to "state capitalism"

Well, of course, since when has it been the position that a period of capitalist development is not required in the remaining feudalist countries?

I'm sure we'll see exactly that if the Nepalese Maoists win. They'll set up a nice Maoist regime, with some elements of "planning", and lots of foreign investment from Russia and China.

Presumably you'll be cheering for the victories of the Nepalese Proletarians when that glorious day occurs.


The exploited do make gains with inadequate leadership sometimes - to deny that implies the worst kind of sectarianism.

No, I'm sorry, I'm not going to collapse into a position of acquiescence with the Stasi because there was "full employment" and free education in Eastern Europe.

'Gains' made by the workers in Eastern Europe were, by comparison, risible to the gains by workers in the West. Where would you have rather been a proletarian in the 1960's, East Berlin or West Berlin?


But anyway, sectarians always take every new event...primarily as an opportunity to proclaim all their earlier proclamations proven once again. Rather than, say, as something to analyze in its own right, in order to produce a political orientation on present and future events.

A rather dubious slur since you're still mercilessly parroting writings from Trotksy circa 1938.


Like, say, the class battles occurring from east Germany to the Pacific, over privatizations and other moves back towards capitalism.


East Germany has been capitalist since the days of Bismarck.

Without interruption.

It's not moved or moving anywhere.


than modifications made under the pressure of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois influences.


Ironic that apologists for Stalinism and friends of Fidel Castro, M.D can criticise others for "petty bourgeois" influences, but well, you take what you can get, I suppose.


the working class is in retreat in most countries, is a time when the second kind of modification is especially likely, and the first especially unlikely.


An innocuous sentence you might think, but I think highly important to frame Severian's thought.

In what sense is the working class in 'retreat' in most countries?

We've just seen the biggest mobilisation since the General strike in Britain, the French state is in absolute crisis, Berlusconi is going, the German far left has received its biggest vote since the 30's, there's pensions strikes all over the place, Latin America is turning Redder by the moment, there's mass revolts in South Korea and other East Asia countries.


This is where Severian and his "well, maybe the Doctors or the Generals can do it for us" politics lead - an antipathy towards the working class.

The French workers seems indolent, useless compared to Doctor Guevara and his pretty gun.

[chebol]

***Warning: Short Fuse Day***

Maybe YouKnowHeMurdersLogic can explain this comment to the tens of thousands of militants of the July 26 Movement, or the hundreds of thousands of activists fighting against Batista (not to mention the more than one thousand- not "50" guerrillas), or the worker-run factories that initiated the People's Power system, or any of the millions of revolutionary socialist Cubans before he concludes his pointless rant on how "State Capitalism" is meant to even resemble reason or marxism.


Rather than accept this rather sensible theory, Severian would like us to believe that Doctor Castro and Doctor Guevara and their 50 comrades roaming the jungles of Cuba represent the self-activity of the masses!

For myself, I advise not trying to argue against people who think Cliff made sense. It tends to go around in circles. The moment you approach marxist analysis, they're off, playing with the daisies again. Point proved by the sidestep quoted below.....


QUOTE
And, hm, didn't Tony Cliff say state capitalism was progressive compared to private capitalism?


No, the position was always that, as Harman famously put it, the move from state to private capitalism was not a step forward or a step back, but a step sideways.

State Caps' arguments tend to degenerate into progressivist garden liberalism- refernce to the very real events of europe or no (and tell me, which "revolutionary parties" and organisatoins were involved in these movements to the left, and what is their opinion on what the IST thinks makes the world go round???)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Chebol:

"State Caps' arguments tend to degenerate into progressivist garden liberalism- refernce to the very real events of europe or no (and tell me, which "revolutionary parties" and organisatoins were involved in these movements to the left, and what is their opinion on what the IST thinks makes the world go round???)"

On the contrary, those who agree with Cliff (like myself) are superglued to the proposition that only the working class can emancipate the working class, and that any argument that tries to substitute other social forces for the proletariat is rejected out of hand. No compromise.

I think 'YouKnowThey..." made this pretty clear. Severian is merely trying to put a 'Marxist' gloss on substitutionism.

[chebol]

Rosa, you have strained the gnat and swallowed the camel. State Caps (for eg, the IST, or rather the SWP and their satellites....) are more notorious "substitutionists" than most.

And until you can satisfactorily explain how the USSR avoided the crises of overproduction that plague capitalism for over 70 years if it were 'capitalist', I'm not interested.

While we're at it, more State Cap mystification and seamless self-contradiction:

YKTMX

East Germany has been capitalist since the days of Bismarck.

Without interruption.

It's not moved or moving anywhere.

followed by


We've just seen the biggest mobilisation since the General strike in Britain, the French state is in absolute crisis, Berlusconi is going, the German far left has received its biggest vote since the 30's, there's pensions strikes all over the place, Latin America is turning Redder by the moment, there's mass revolts in South Korea and other East Asia countries.

So is there movement, or not?


We sometimes have to save Marxism from itself.

Pretentious drivel from a theory that tends to contradict both Marx and logic- oh, and the facts.


The theory of state capitalism does that.

And the events of '89 showed it be absolutely, precisely and completely the correct theory.

No. No it didn't. Actually, the events of the late eighties showed precisely the opposite.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 11 2006, 07:33 AM
On the contrary, those who agree with Cliff (like myself) are superglued to the proposition that only the working class can emancipate the working class, and that any argument that tries to substitute other social forces for the proletariat is rejected out of hand. No compromise.
So, didn't Cliff say he arrived at this position by means of dialectical materialism? And don't you say that dialectical materialism is so awful that it is responsible for "revolutionary Socialism" being the biggest failure in world history?

How exactly did dialectical materialism do that, again? By leading people like Cliff to.....political conclusions you consider correct?

***

Chebol's right, of course, that the British SWP and other "state cap" groups have adopted thoroughly "substitutionist" and class-collaborationist politics. I previously explained how this in fact follows from their false theory.

What's more, this theory was designed from the beginning to arrive at a desired political conclusion: fence-sitting. Not having to side with the massive post-WWII revolutions against world capitalism. It was never based on evidence or solid arguments; it's the least serious of all the theories of Stalinism in that respect.

Though Cliff was probably unaware of the implications in terms of the bourgeois leadership of democratic, anti-imperialist revolutions. I.e. he had....good intentions.

[YKTMX]

State Caps (for eg, the IST, or rather the SWP and their satellites....) are more notorious "substitutionists" than most.


Why, what force do we suggest should replace the working class?


So is there movement, or not?


Yes, there is. But Germany isn't going to become socialist any time soon.


Maybe YouKnowHeMurdersLogic can explain this comment to the tens of thousands of militants of the July 26 Movement, or the hundreds of thousands of activists fighting against Batista (not to mention the more than one thousand- not "50" guerrillas), or the worker-run factories that initiated the People's Power system, or any of the millions of revolutionary socialist Cubans before he concludes his pointless rant on how "State Capitalism" is meant to even resemble reason or marxism.


I don't have to "explain" my comments to anyone. I've never doubted the heroism of people like the Cuban revolutionaries or any other third world anti-imperialist movement.

The problem comes when people try to gut socialism of any meaning at all by arguing that these movements are socialist, or that socialism can be created by movements like these.

I'd like to pacify you by dismantling Marxism and capitulating to your "logic", but sadly I have too firm a grasp on reality.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Chebol:

"Rosa, you have strained the gnat and swallowed the camel. State Caps (for eg, the IST, or rather the SWP and their satellites....) are more notorious "substitutionists" than most."

In depth analysis there, comrade!

I think you have swallowed that camel and puked up a gnat.

"And until you can satisfactorily explain how the USSR avoided the crises of overproduction that plague capitalism for over 70 years if it were 'capitalist', I'm not interested."

Well, you DM-fans should be able to swallow that contradiction too; you seem to cope with more than your fair share already.

As here:

"Pretentious drivel from a theory that tends to contradict both Marx and logic..."

[But you should welcome contradictions, they cause change.... And, you dialecticians are so poor at logic, I rather think you are in no position to judge.]

However, I reckon massive waste on arms production (vast overproduction there), enormous investment in internal security (to increase the rate of exploitation by force, but more waste therte), huge increases in surplus extraction, the use of vast reserves of labour-power -- all of these are quite adequate to account for it.

You know, the usual Marxist stuff, Chebol.....

You can read the details in Cliff and Harman.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Severian:

"So, didn't Cliff say he arrived at this position by means of dialectical materialism? And don't you say that dialectical materialism is so awful that it is responsible for "revolutionary Socialism" being the biggest failure in world history?"

Not only do I not slavishly accept everything Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Trotsky said, I do not hang on Cliff's every word, either.

But, unless Marxism were a religion (which it is to you DM-fans), no Marxist should accept everything he or she reads in the 'classics'.

Since Marxism is a science, and science is predicated on not following tradition for its own sake, I think we 'State Caps' are being eminently scientific.

Anyway, I have yet to find a reference in Cliff's writings where he attributes the Theory of State Capitalism to his devotion to DM, so unless you know of one, I suggest you leave that dead horse alone. Go and flog something else.

[And my rejection of DM is a minority opinion in the SWP. We are allowed to have other opinions, unlike some parties I could mention.]

More unsubstantiated slander:

"Chebol's right, of course, that the British SWP and other "state cap" groups have adopted thoroughly "substitutionist" and class-collaborationist politics. I previously explained how this in fact follows from their false theory."

You DM-fans are good at fiction. You should write for Bush.