Labor Shall Rule
10th April 2007, 06:00
I have recently been debating many proponents of the worker's state assuming the role of capital accumulation, of course in the historical context of the Soviet Republic, and someone has sent me an article from a certain organization that aruges the necessity of doing so in order to progress the relations in production foward, thus moving closer to socialism itself. I have argued the respective points that it was a betrayel of the revolution to place former managers back in control of their factories, and this was his response:
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The founding Marxists all recognized that communist society requires not only a long period of time before it can be established but also new conditions which have to be constructed from scratch. Socialized forms of production already exist under capitalism, but not the requisite social relations. Lenin put the problem this way:
“One of the fundamental differences between bourgeois revolution and socialist revolution is that for the bourgeois revolution, which arises out of feudalism, the new economic organizations are gradually created in the womb of the old order, gradually changing all the aspects of feudal society. The bourgeois revolution faced only one task – to sweep away, to cast aside, to destroy all the fetters of the preceding social order. By fulfilling this task every bourgeois revolution fulfills all that is required of it; it accelerates the growth of capitalism.
“The socialist revolution is in an altogether different position. ... The difference between a socialist revolution and a bourgeois revolution is that in the latter case there are ready-made forms of capitalist relation-ships; Soviet power - the proletarian power — does not inherit such ready-made relationships ,..”( Lenin, “Political Report of the Central Committee,” March 7, 1918; Collected Works, Vol. 27, pp. 89-90.)
In short, the bourgeois revolution places the bourgeoisie in power after its economic power has already been established, after the bourgeoisie has long existed as an economic class. Whereas the socialist revolution places the workers in power before socialist economic forms exist - before, for example, there can be any generalized non-commodity production. It is not enough, therefore, for the proletariat to simply do away with capitalists and their property; it must create from nothing the economic organization of socialism. The socialist revolution, unlike the bourgeois, is a conscious act of social transformation. Nevertheless, the workers’ state inherits a capitalist economy and must therefore live with it at the same time that it transforms it - it is indeed a bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie.
In order to overcome the laws and relations inherited from capitalism, the workers must consciously plan their economy. As increasingly more is produced and scarcity is conquered, the bourgeois laws are gradually reduced in force. Planning becomes fully dominant only when scarcity is ended, when the higher state of communism is reached. After all, there can be no qualitative change in production relations without a qualitative development of the productive forces.
The economic task of the workers’ state is therefore to carry out the accumulative potential of capitalism and destroy the social basis for continued scarcity. The proletarian logic is to eliminate value production, since this means class exploitation and is therefore a barrier to the advance of the productive forces. (In contrast, under capitalism workers must often resist modernization in order to defend their working and living conditions against deeper exploitation and unemployment.)
The proletarian state can accumulate value without the contradictions due to the separate ownership of capitalism - which makes exchange value and the labor time underlying it diverge. The reduction of scarcity under-mines the existence of classes, as owners and petty owners are transformed, forcibly in some cases and slowly in others, into producers. Thus the growing use values gradually lose their aspect as capital. When the proletariat finally eliminates itself as a separate class, the last remnant of capitalism is abolished in production and socialism begins.
As we know, Marx from time to time illustrated the contradictory nature of capitalism by comparing it with the future socialist society. One question he dealt with was why the barriers to accumulation inherent in capitalism would not also apply to communism or the transitional workers’ state. Here he shows how one capitalist barrier to the introduction of new ' machinery would be broken through:
“The use of machinery for the exclusive purpose of cheapening the product is limited in this way, that less labor must be expended in producing the machinery than is displaced by the employment of that machinery. For the capitalist, however, this use is still more limited. Instead of paying for the labor, he only pays the value of the labor power employed; therefore the limit to his using a machine is fixed by the difference between the value of the machine and the value of the labor power replaced by it.” (Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 15, Section 2 (p. 392).)
In Marx’s algebraic notation, where the value of commodities produced is C + V + S, the capitalist will employ new methods only if they lower his costs, C + V (constant plus variable capital) - that is, only if the additional C he must spend is less than the V that he saves. In contrast, in a workers’ state, efficiency would be less restrictive, and of course would exclude efforts to lower wages. Machinery could be introduced simply if it lowered the total cost; that is, if the additional C were, less than V + S – an easier condition to meet.
Our interpretation of Marx’s falling rate of profit theory provides an additional illustration of the greater efficiency of a workers’ state. Under standard interpretations, the FRP is an automatic consequence of the rising organic composition of capital. But the organic composition will continue to rise in a workers’ state: modernization and accumulation of capital to expand the resources of society are a necessity, hence embodied dead labor increases faster than living labor. If the standard interpretation were correct, the rising organic composition would make the rate of profit fall and would mean that society's rate of growth must slow down as dead labor accumulates. Thus the workers' state would stagnate, as in Bukharin’s model of state capitalism.
In our interpretation, on the contrary, the FRP comes to dominate its countertendencies because of the disproportionate power of the strongest capitals that characterizes the epoch of decay. It depends both on the preponderant role played by monopolies in preventing equalization of the rate of profit and generating fictitious capital, and on the international inequality that allows imperialists the lions’ share of surplus value. But under a workers’ state, the major industries will be taken over from private capital, the special influence of powerful monopolies and the role of fictitious capital will end, and national limitations will be on their way out. The devaluation of fixed capital (in terms of labor time) that comes with increased productivity would make it easier, not harder, to invest in new techniques of production. Consequently, even during the period when thee workers’ state has not yet succeeded in abolishing value and capital, productive advances would not cause it to stagnate.
The early Soviet Union, the only workers’ state that has yet existed long enough to put theory to the test, reflected these theoretical considerations only in part. It suffered from the illnesses of backward, not advanced, capitalism; still it was able to overcome the economic stagnation dominant in the capitalist world in the 1930’s, largely because of the centralized power of its state. Today’s USSR, however, embodying statified capitalism, does exhibit the stagnation tendencies imposed by the FRP (Chapter 5).
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He has argued therefore, that state capitalism was a necessity, and that the upper stratum of the Bolshevik Party were in no betraying the revolution, but rather taking on a variating role within the proletarian state to develop capitalist relations in production, which would therefore make the transition to socialism a possibility.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The founding Marxists all recognized that communist society requires not only a long period of time before it can be established but also new conditions which have to be constructed from scratch. Socialized forms of production already exist under capitalism, but not the requisite social relations. Lenin put the problem this way:
“One of the fundamental differences between bourgeois revolution and socialist revolution is that for the bourgeois revolution, which arises out of feudalism, the new economic organizations are gradually created in the womb of the old order, gradually changing all the aspects of feudal society. The bourgeois revolution faced only one task – to sweep away, to cast aside, to destroy all the fetters of the preceding social order. By fulfilling this task every bourgeois revolution fulfills all that is required of it; it accelerates the growth of capitalism.
“The socialist revolution is in an altogether different position. ... The difference between a socialist revolution and a bourgeois revolution is that in the latter case there are ready-made forms of capitalist relation-ships; Soviet power - the proletarian power — does not inherit such ready-made relationships ,..”( Lenin, “Political Report of the Central Committee,” March 7, 1918; Collected Works, Vol. 27, pp. 89-90.)
In short, the bourgeois revolution places the bourgeoisie in power after its economic power has already been established, after the bourgeoisie has long existed as an economic class. Whereas the socialist revolution places the workers in power before socialist economic forms exist - before, for example, there can be any generalized non-commodity production. It is not enough, therefore, for the proletariat to simply do away with capitalists and their property; it must create from nothing the economic organization of socialism. The socialist revolution, unlike the bourgeois, is a conscious act of social transformation. Nevertheless, the workers’ state inherits a capitalist economy and must therefore live with it at the same time that it transforms it - it is indeed a bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie.
In order to overcome the laws and relations inherited from capitalism, the workers must consciously plan their economy. As increasingly more is produced and scarcity is conquered, the bourgeois laws are gradually reduced in force. Planning becomes fully dominant only when scarcity is ended, when the higher state of communism is reached. After all, there can be no qualitative change in production relations without a qualitative development of the productive forces.
The economic task of the workers’ state is therefore to carry out the accumulative potential of capitalism and destroy the social basis for continued scarcity. The proletarian logic is to eliminate value production, since this means class exploitation and is therefore a barrier to the advance of the productive forces. (In contrast, under capitalism workers must often resist modernization in order to defend their working and living conditions against deeper exploitation and unemployment.)
The proletarian state can accumulate value without the contradictions due to the separate ownership of capitalism - which makes exchange value and the labor time underlying it diverge. The reduction of scarcity under-mines the existence of classes, as owners and petty owners are transformed, forcibly in some cases and slowly in others, into producers. Thus the growing use values gradually lose their aspect as capital. When the proletariat finally eliminates itself as a separate class, the last remnant of capitalism is abolished in production and socialism begins.
As we know, Marx from time to time illustrated the contradictory nature of capitalism by comparing it with the future socialist society. One question he dealt with was why the barriers to accumulation inherent in capitalism would not also apply to communism or the transitional workers’ state. Here he shows how one capitalist barrier to the introduction of new ' machinery would be broken through:
“The use of machinery for the exclusive purpose of cheapening the product is limited in this way, that less labor must be expended in producing the machinery than is displaced by the employment of that machinery. For the capitalist, however, this use is still more limited. Instead of paying for the labor, he only pays the value of the labor power employed; therefore the limit to his using a machine is fixed by the difference between the value of the machine and the value of the labor power replaced by it.” (Capital, Vol. I, Chapter 15, Section 2 (p. 392).)
In Marx’s algebraic notation, where the value of commodities produced is C + V + S, the capitalist will employ new methods only if they lower his costs, C + V (constant plus variable capital) - that is, only if the additional C he must spend is less than the V that he saves. In contrast, in a workers’ state, efficiency would be less restrictive, and of course would exclude efforts to lower wages. Machinery could be introduced simply if it lowered the total cost; that is, if the additional C were, less than V + S – an easier condition to meet.
Our interpretation of Marx’s falling rate of profit theory provides an additional illustration of the greater efficiency of a workers’ state. Under standard interpretations, the FRP is an automatic consequence of the rising organic composition of capital. But the organic composition will continue to rise in a workers’ state: modernization and accumulation of capital to expand the resources of society are a necessity, hence embodied dead labor increases faster than living labor. If the standard interpretation were correct, the rising organic composition would make the rate of profit fall and would mean that society's rate of growth must slow down as dead labor accumulates. Thus the workers' state would stagnate, as in Bukharin’s model of state capitalism.
In our interpretation, on the contrary, the FRP comes to dominate its countertendencies because of the disproportionate power of the strongest capitals that characterizes the epoch of decay. It depends both on the preponderant role played by monopolies in preventing equalization of the rate of profit and generating fictitious capital, and on the international inequality that allows imperialists the lions’ share of surplus value. But under a workers’ state, the major industries will be taken over from private capital, the special influence of powerful monopolies and the role of fictitious capital will end, and national limitations will be on their way out. The devaluation of fixed capital (in terms of labor time) that comes with increased productivity would make it easier, not harder, to invest in new techniques of production. Consequently, even during the period when thee workers’ state has not yet succeeded in abolishing value and capital, productive advances would not cause it to stagnate.
The early Soviet Union, the only workers’ state that has yet existed long enough to put theory to the test, reflected these theoretical considerations only in part. It suffered from the illnesses of backward, not advanced, capitalism; still it was able to overcome the economic stagnation dominant in the capitalist world in the 1930’s, largely because of the centralized power of its state. Today’s USSR, however, embodying statified capitalism, does exhibit the stagnation tendencies imposed by the FRP (Chapter 5).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
He has argued therefore, that state capitalism was a necessity, and that the upper stratum of the Bolshevik Party were in no betraying the revolution, but rather taking on a variating role within the proletarian state to develop capitalist relations in production, which would therefore make the transition to socialism a possibility.