USSR: State Capitalism?

[Faux Real]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15, 2007 09:03 pm
You know you're doing something wrong in a communist society when the workers are revolting.
A bureaucratic state-capitalist system under the guise of a "Communist Party" controlled by the USSR isn't a communist society just quite.

Sorry, I dislike nitpicking but, meh. :P

In any case, a shame really how workers' revolutions under false Workers' States like Eastern Germany, China('89), Hungary('56) post-Soviet states (late '80s/'90s), etc. were either crushed by the bureaucracy or didn't have the leadership(or had bad leaders unnecessarily) or the material support for 'real socialism' and reverted to full on capitalism. Nice post DJ.

[Labor Shall Rule]

Why does everyone insist on on labeling the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as 'state-capitalist'? It ignores the legal and political character of the capitalist mode of production, and is a slap on the face of the materialist conception of history.

[Faux Real]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16, 2007 01:02 am
Why does everyone insist on on labeling the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as 'state-capitalist'? It ignores the legal and political character of the capitalist mode of production, and is a slap on the face of the materialist conception of history.
I understand the material conditions that caused the revert back to "primitive socialism" if you will. I know of no other clear label that's been widely agreed upon to define the state of the USSR after Lenin's death until its collapse however. "Deformed worker's state" makes more sense? Suggestions are welcome, I hate using Trotskyist vocab.

[Labor Shall Rule]

Originally posted by rev0lt+August 16, 2007 08:58 am--> (rev0lt @ August 16, 2007 08:58 am)
[email protected] 16, 2007 01:02 am
Why does everyone insist on on labeling the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as 'state-capitalist'? It ignores the legal and political character of the capitalist mode of production, and is a slap on the face of the materialist conception of history.
I understand the material conditions that caused the revert back to "primitive socialism" if you will. I know of no other clear label that's been widely agreed upon to define the state of the USSR after Lenin's death until its collapse however. "Deformed worker's state" makes more sense? Suggestions are welcome, I hate using Trotskyist vocab. [/b]
I would argue that it was in a transitional stage between capitalism and socialism, with bureaucratic deformations.

I would argue that they are deformed workers' states, considering that they still had a progressive character; millions had access to welfare, free education and healthcare, and other initial gains. If they were truly 'capitalist' they wouldn't need to give all those concessions to the working class.

[Lamanov]

That's so naive. Not being able to distinguish formal from actual causes these confusions, so people accept these half-wit ideological formulas of "workers' state with bureaucratic deformations" and alike.

If theory of state capitalism "is a slap on the face of the materialist conception of history" then Lenin himself not only slapped it, but made a quite hard punch. If he himself never saw a problem with introduction of state capitalism - or whatever it takes to "build prerequisites for socialism" - (and he didn't) he should have prepared his apologists to accept the fact that Russia might have stayed state capitalist, just as it was built in such way through "New course", "War communism" and "NEP".

Essence of capitalism is labor-capital relation. It is a movement of alienated labor. Everything else is just "superstructure" which arises out of specific practice of those who make decisions.

Taking "concessions to the working class" and "legal and political character" as an argument is just predetermined to fail, miserably. If you really want to defend the notion of "workers' state", I suggest you start disapproving these facts:

- that there was wage labor
- that there was alienation of labor
- that there were class relations
- that there was commodity production...

...in Soviet Union and its satelites.

[al-Ibadani]

Right on DJ-TC. The focus on purely juridical forms is what confuses so many. Marxists look at relations of production. As such the USSR, East Germany, etc were indeed capitalist.

[Labor Shall Rule]

Actually DJ-TC, Lenin never turned his back on the materialist conception of history; "state capitalism", as Lenin saw it, was merely an acknowledgement that as the basic historical tasks assigned to capitalism had only begun to be fufilled in backward Russia, the state emerging from the revolution would have to employ capitalistic measures to increase the productive forces of the country. As Trotsky put it in Dual Character of the Workers' State,


" Insofar as the state which assumes the task of socialist transformation is compelled to defend inequality—that is, the material privileges of a minority—by methods of compulsion, insofar does it also remain a "bourgeois" state, even though without a bourgeoisie. These words contain neither praise nor blame; they name things with their real name.

The bourgeois norms of distribution, by hastening the growth of material power, ought to serve socialist aims—but only in the last analysis. The state assumes directly and from the very beginning a dual character: socialistic, insofar as it defends social property in the means of production; bourgeois, insofar as the distribution of life’s goods is carried out with a capitalistic measure of value and all the consequences ensuing therefrom. Such a contradictory characterization may horrify the dogmatists and scholastics; we can only offer them our condolences.

The final physiognomy of the workers’ state ought to be determined by the changing relations between its bourgeois and socialist tendencies. The triumph of the latter ought to facto to signify the final liquidation of the gendarme—that is, the dissolving of the state in a self-governing society. From this alone it is sufficiently clear how immeasurably significant is the problem of Soviet bureaucratism, both in itself and as a system!"

If that is the essence of capitalism then we could call the ancien regime of France "state capitalist", considering that there was a labor-capital relation, a steady movement of alienated labor growing within the cities, and growing production for exchange. We can't call it that though, because the legal and political presquisites were not layed down yet; the National Assembly were not yet in power; the bourgeoisie did not yet conquer the political power. I don't call the Soviet Union "state capitalist" for the same reason.

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16, 2007 08:17 pm
Actually DJ-TC, Lenin never turned his back on the materialist conception of history; "state capitalism", as Lenin saw it, was merely an acknowledgement that as the basic historical tasks assigned to capitalism had only begun to be fufilled in backward Russia, the state emerging from the revolution would have to employ capitalistic measures to increase the productive forces of the country.

A process which never ceased. Calling it "workers' state" can't hide factual transformation of Russia under Bolshevik rule, as diagnosed by the 'New Course', a transformation to state monopoly capitalism.

1918 Constitution is just a mask. Trotsky's "worker' state" and Lenin's "proletarian party" is just a mask. Just like "liberty, brotherhood, equality" was in example you chose to use.

This is a true story - do you know when I realized Russia was state capitalist? When I read 'Revolution Betrayed'. In my mind no amount of denying could save Trotsky from the very things he himself proves, but just like old Hegel, refuses to take his conclision making all the way, and call it what it is: class society based on alienation of labor, i.e. wage slavery = capitalism.

Precisely because you can't escape Bolshevik rhetorics you don't want to acknowledge the obvious: capitalist nature of Sovet Russia.

[IronColumn]

Furthermore, the inner capitalist content of the USSR shows up in such prostitute actions as its proclamation of the right to national self-determination, that "petty bourgeois humbug" (Luxemburg), the sell-out at Brest-Litovsk, the Kronstadt infamy, NEP, and the 1922 Rapallo Treaty (which provided arms and training to the same German soldiers who would be shooting down German revolutionaries in 1923). Or even in the philosophy of its leader, Lenin himself, as demonstrated in Pannekoek's "Lenin as Philosopher".

These are not mistakes, these are simply the reactionary policies of a capitalist state, which foreshadow many of the more notorious Soviet actions (Spain, Molotov-Ribbentrop, East Germany, etc).

It's also amusing how some self-styled "Marxists" on this board start from the political and juridical structure of the USSR (instead of the economic relations of production) and from that deduce its supposed economic "uniqueness". Very sad.

[Labor Shall Rule]

To DJ-TC

If anything, The Revolution Betrayed should of proved otherwise.


Chapter 9
Social Relations
in the Soviet Union

Not Yet Decided by History
IN THE INDUSTRIES state ownership of the means of production prevails almost universally. In agriculture it prevails absolutely only in the Soviet farms, which comprise no more than 10 per cent of the tilled land. In the collective farms, co-operative or group ownership is combined in various proportions with state and private ownership. The land, although legally belonging to the state, has been transferred to the collectives for “perpetual” use, which differs little from group ownership. The tractors and elaborate machinery belong to the state; the smaller equipment belongs to the collectives. Each collective farmer moreover carries on individual agriculture. Finally, more than 10 per cent of the peasants remain individual farmers.

According to the census of 1934, 28.1 per cent of the population were workers and employees of state enterprises and institutions. Industrial and building-trades workers, not including their families, amounted in 1935 to 7.5 millions. The collective farms and co-operative crafts comprised, at the time of the census, 45.9 per cent of the population. Students, soldiers of the Red Army, pensioners, and other elements directly dependent upon the state, made up 3.4 per cent. Altogether, 74 per cent of the population belonged to the “socialist sector”, and 95.8 per cent of the basic capital of the country fell to the share of this 74 per cent. Individual peasants and craftsmen still comprised, in 1934, 22.5 per cent, but they had possession of only a little more than 4 per cent of the national capital!

Since 1934 there has been no census; the next one will be in 1937. Undoubtedly, however, during the last two years the private enterprise sector has shrunk still more in favor of the “socialist.” Individual peasants and craftsmen, according to the calculations of official economists, now constitute about 10 per cent of the population – that is, about 17 million people. Their economic importance has fallen very much lower than their numbers. The Secretary of the Central Committee, Andreyev, announced in April 1936: “The relative weight of socialist production in our country in 1936 ought to reach 98.5 per cent. That is to say, something like an insignificant 1.5 per cent still belongs to the non-socialist sector.” These optimistic figures seem at first glance an unanswerable proof of the “final and irrevocable” victory of socialism. But woe to him who cannot see social reality behind arithmetic!

The figures themselves are arrived at with some stretching: it is sufficient to point out that the private allotments alongside the collective farms are entered under the “socialist” sector. However, that is not the crux of the question. The enormous and wholly indubitable statistical superiority of the state and collective forms of economy, important though it is for the future, does not remove another and no less important question: that of the strength of bourgeois tendencies within the “socialist” sector itself, and this not only in agriculture but in industry. The material level already attained is high enough to awaken increased demands in all, but wholly insufficient to satisfy them. Therefore, the very dynamic of economic progress involves an awakening of petty bourgeois appetites, not only among the peasants and representatives of “intellectual” labor, but also among the upper circles of the proletariat. A bare antithesis between individual proprietors and collective farmers, between private craftsmen and state industries, does not give the slightest idea of the explosive power of these appetites, which imbue the whole economy of the country, and express themselves, generally speaking, in the desire of each and every one to give as little as possible to society and receive as much as possible from it.

No less energy and ingenuity is being spent in solving money-grubbers’ and consumers’ problems than upon socialist construction in the proper sense of the word. Hence derives, in part, the extremely low productivity of social labor. While the state finds itself in continual struggle with the molecular action of these centrifugal forces, the ruling group itself forms the chief reservoir of legal and illegal personal accumulations. Masked as they are with new juridical norms, the petty bourgeois tendencies cannot, of course, be easily determined statistically. But their actual predominance in economic life is proven primarily by the “socialist” bureaucracy itself, that flagrant contradictio in adjecto, that monstrous and continually growing social distortion, which in turn becomes the source of malignant growths in society.

The new constitution – wholly founded, as we shall see, upon an identification of the bureaucracy with the state, and the state with the people – says: “... the state property – that is, the possessions of the whole people.” This identification is the fundamental sophism of the official doctrine. It is perfectly true that Marxists, beginning with Marx himself, have employed in relation to the workers’ state the terms state, national and socialist property as simple synonyms. On a large historic scale, such a mode of speech involves no special inconveniences. But it becomes the source of crude mistakes, and of downright deceit, when applied to the first and still unassured stages of the development of a new society, and one moreover isolated and economically lagging behind the capitalist countries.

In order to become social, private property must as inevitably pass through the state stage as the caterpillar in order to become a butterfly must pass through the pupal stage. But the pupa is not a butterfly. Myriads of pupae perish without ever becoming butterflies. State property becomes the property of “the whole people” only to the degree that social privilege and differentiation disappear, and therewith the necessity of the state. In other words: state property is converted into socialist property in proportion as it ceases to be state property. And the contrary is true: the higher the Soviet state rises above the people, and the more fiercely it opposes itself as the guardian of property to the people as its squanderer, the more obviously does it testify against the socialist character of this state property.

“We are still far from the complete abolition of classes,” confesses the official press, referring to the still existing differentiation of city and country, intellectual and physical labor. This purely academic acknowledgment has the advantage that it permits a concealment of the income of the bureaucracy under the honorable title of “intellectual” labor. The “friends” – to whom Plato is much dearer than the truth – also confine themselves to an academic admission of survivals of the old inequality. In reality, these much put-upon “survivals” are completely inadequate to explain the Soviet reality. If the differences between city and country have been mitigated in certain respects, in others they have been considerably deepened, thanks to the extraordinarily swift growth of cities and city culture – that is, of comforts for an urban minority. The social distance between physical and intellectual labor, notwithstanding the filling out of the scientific cadres by newcomers from below, has increased, not decreased, during recent years. The thousand-year-old caste barriers defining the life of every man on all sides – the polished urbanite and the uncouth muzhik, the wizard of science and the day laborer – have not just been preserved from the past in a more or less softened form, but have to a considerable degree been born anew, and are assuming a more and more defiant character.

The notorious slogan: “The cadres decide everything”, characterizes the nature of Soviet society far more frankly than Stalin himself would wish. The cadres are in their very essence the organs of domination and command. A cult of “cadres” means above all a cult of bureaucracy, of officialdom, an aristocracy of technique. In the matter of playing up and developing cadres, as in other matters, the soviet regime still finds itself compelled to solve problems which the advanced bourgeoisie solved long ago in its own countries. But since the soviet cadres come forward under a socialist banner, they demand an almost divine veneration and a continually rising salary. The development of “socialist” cadres is thus accompanied by a rebirth of bourgeois inequality.

From the point of view of property in the means of production, the differences between a marshal and a servant girl, the head of a trust and a day laborer, the son of a people’s commissar and a homeless child, seem not to exist at all. Nevertheless, the former occupy lordly apartments, enjoy several summer homes in various parts of the country, have the best automobiles at their disposal, and have long ago forgotten how to shine their own shoes. The latter live in wooden barracks often without partitions, lead a half-hungry existence, and do not shine their own shoes only because they go barefoot. To the bureaucrat this difference does not seem worthy of attention. To the day laborer, however, it seems, not without reason, very essential.

Superficial “theoreticians” can comfort themselves, of course, that the distribution of wealth is a factor secondary to its production. The dialectic of interaction, however, retains here all its force. The destiny of the state-appropriated means of production will be decided in the long run according as these differences in personal existence evolve in one direction or the other. If a ship is declared collective property, but the passengers continue to be divided into first, second and third class, it is clear that, for the third-class passengers, differences in the conditions of life will have infinitely more importance than that juridical change in proprietorship. The first-class passengers, on the other hand, will propound, together with their coffee and cigars, the thought that collective ownership is everything and a comfortable cabin nothing at all. Antagonisms growing out of this may well explode the unstable collective.

The Soviet press relates with satisfaction how a little boy in the Moscow zoo, receiving to his question, “Whose is that elephant?” the answer: “The state’s”, made the immediate inference: “That means it’s a little bit mine too.” However, if the elephant were actually divided, the precious tusks would fall to the chosen, a few would regale themselves with elephantine hams, and the majority would get along with hooves and guts. The boys who are done out of their share hardly identify the state property with their own. The homeless consider “theirs” only that which they steal from the state. The little “socialist” in the zoological garden was probably the son of some eminent official accustomed to draw inferences from the formula: “L’etat – c’est moi.”

If we translate socialist relations, for illustration, into the language of the market, we may represent the citizen as a stockholder in a company which owns the wealth of the country. If the property belonged to all the people, that would presume an equal distribution of “shares”, and consequently a right to the same dividend for all “shareholders.” The citizens participate in the national enterprise, however, not only as “shareholders”, but also as producers. On the lower stage of communism, which we have agreed to call socialism, payments for labor are still made according to bourgeois norms – that is, in dependence upon skill, intensity, etc. The theoretical income of each citizen is thus composed of two parts, a + b – that is, dividend + wages. The higher the technique and the more complete the organization of industry, the greater is the place occupied by a as against b, and the less is the influence of individual differences of labor upon standard of living. From the fact that wage differences in the Soviet Union are not less, but greater than in capitalist countries, it must be inferred that the shares of the Soviet citizen are not equally distributed, and that in his income the dividend as well as the wage payment is unequal. Whereas the unskilled laborer receives only b, the minimum payment which under similar conditions he would receive in a capitalist enterprise, the Stakhanovist or bureaucrat receives 2a + b, or 3a + b, etc., while b also in its turn may become 2b, 3b, etc. The differences in income are determined, in other words, not only by differences of individual productiveness, but also by a masked appropriation of the products of the labor of others. The privileged minority of shareholders is living at the expense of the deprived majority.

If you assume that the Soviet unskilled worker receives more than he would under a similar level of technique and culture in a capitalist enterprise – that is to say, that he is still a small shareholder – it is necessary to consider his wages as equal to a + b. The wages of the higher categories would be expressed with the formula: 3a + 2b, 10a + 15b, etc. This means that the unskilled worker has one share, the Stakhanovist three, the specialist ten. Moreover, their wages in the proper sense are related as 1:2:15. Hymns to the sacred socialist property sound under these conditions a good deal more convincing to the manager or the Stakhanovist, than to the rank-and-file worker or collective peasant. The rank-and-file workers, however, are the overwhelming majority of society. It was they, and not the new aristocracy, that socialism had in mind.

“The worker in our country is not a wage slave and is not the seller of a commodity called labor power. He is a free workman.” (Pravda) For the present period this unctuous formula is unpermissible bragging. The transfer of the factories to the state changed the situation of the worker only juridically. In reality, he is compelled to live in want and work a definite number of hours for a definite wage. Those hopes which the worker formerly had placed in the party and the trade unions, he transferred after the revolution to the state created by him. But the useful functioning of this implement turned out to be limited by the level of technique and culture. In order to raise this level, the new state resorted to the old methods of pressure upon the muscles and nerves of the worker. There grew up a corps of slave drivers. The management of industry became superbureaucratic. The workers lost all influence whatever upon the management of the factory. With piecework payment, hard conditions of material existence, lack of free movement, with terrible police repression penetrating the life of every factory, it is hard indeed for the worker to feel himself a “free workman.’’ In the bureaucracy he sees the manager, in the state, the employer. Free labor is incompatible with the existence of a bureaucratic state.

With the necessary changes, what has been said above relates also to the country. According to the official theory, collective farm property is a special form of socialist property. Pravda writes that the collective farms “are in essence already of the same type as the state enterprises and are consequently socialistic,” but immediately adds that the guarantee of the socialist development of agriculture lies in the circumstance that “the Bolshevik Party administers the collective farms.” Pravda refers us, that is, from economics to politics. This means in essence that socialist relations are not as yet embodied in the real relations among men, but dwell in the benevolent heart of the authorities. The workers will do very well if they keep a watchful eye on that heart. In reality the collective farms stand halfway between individual and state economy, and the petty bourgeois tendencies within them are admirably helped along by the swiftly growing private allotments or personal economies conducted by their members.

Notwithstanding the fact that individual tilled land amounts to only four million hectares, as against one hundred and eight million collective hectares – that is, less than 4 per cent – thanks to the intensive and especially the truck-garden cultivation of this land, it furnishes the peasant family with the most important objects of consumption. The main body of horned cattle, sheep and pigs is the property of the collective farmers, and not of the collectives. The peasants often convert their subsidiary farms into the essential ones, letting the unprofitable collectives take second place. On the other hand, those collectives which pay highly for the working day are rising to a higher social level and creating a category of well-to-do farmers. The centrifugal tendencies are not yet dying, but on the contrary are growing stronger. In any case, the collectives have succeeded so far in transforming only the juridical forms of economic relations in the country – in particular the methods of distributing income but they have left almost without change the old hut and vegetable garden, the barnyard chores, the whole rhythm of heavy muzhik labor. To a considerable degree they have left also the old attitude to the state. The state no longer, to be sure, serves the landlords or the bourgeoisie, but it takes away too much from the villages for the benefit of the cities, and it retains too many greedy bureaucrats.

For the census to be taken on January 6, 1937, the following list of social categories has been drawn up: worker; clerical worker; collective farmer; individual farmer; individual craftsman; member of the liberal professions; minister of religion; other non-laboring elements. According to the official commentary, this census list fails to include any other social characteristics only because there are no classes in the Soviet Union. In reality the list is constructed with the direct intention of concealing the privileged upper strata, and the more deprived lower depths. The real divisions of Soviet society, which should and might easily be revealed with the help of an honest census, are as follows: heads of the bureaucracy, specialists, etc., living in bourgeois conditions; medium and lower strata, on the level of the petty bourgeoisie; worker and collective farm aristocracy – approximately on the same level; medium working mass; medium, stratum of collective farmers; individual peasants and craftsmen; lower worker and peasant strata passing over into the lumpenproletariat; homeless children, prostitutes, etc.

When the new constitution announces that in the Soviet Union “abolition of the exploitation of man by man” has been attained, it is not telling the truth. The new social differentiation has created conditions for the revival of the exploitation of man in its most barbarous form – that of buying him into slavery for personal service. In the lists for the new census personal servants are not mentioned at all. They are, evidently, to be dissolved in the general group of “workers.” There are, however, plenty of questions about this: Does the socialist citizen have servants, and just how many (maid, cook, nurse, governess, chauffeur)? Does he have an automobile at his personal disposal? How many rooms does he occupy? etc. Not a word in these lists about the scale of earnings! If the rule were revived that exploitation of the labor of others deprives one of political rights, it would turn out, somewhat unexpectedly, that the cream of the ruling group are outside the bounds of the Soviet constitution. Fortunately, they have established a complete equality of rights ... for servant and master! Two opposite tendencies are growing up out of the depth of the Soviet regime. To the extent that, in contrast to a decaying capitalism, it develops the productive forces, it is preparing the economic basis of socialism. To the extent that, for the benefit of an upper stratum, it carries to more and more extreme expression bourgeois norms of distribution, it is preparing a capitalist restoration. This contrast between forms of property and norms of distribution cannot grow indefinitely. Either the bourgeois norm must in one form or another spread to the means of production, or the norms of distribution must be brought into correspondence with the socialist property system.

The bureaucracy dreads the exposure of this alternative. Everywhere and all the time in the press, in speeches, in statistics, in the novels of its litterateurs, in the verses of its poets, and, finally, in the text of the new constitution – it painstakingly conceals the real relations both in town and country with abstractions from the socialist dictionary. That is why the official ideology is all so lifeless, talentless and false.


1. State Capitalism
We often seek salvation from unfamiliar phenomena in familiar terms. An attempt has been made to conceal the enigma of the Soviet regime by calling it “state capitalism.” This term has the advantage that nobody knows exactly what it means. The term “state capitalism” originally arose to designate all the phenomena which arise when a bourgeois state takes direct charge of the means of transport or of industrial enterprises. The very necessity of such measures is one of the signs that the productive forces have outgrown capitalism and are bringing it to a partial self-negation in practice. But the outworn system, along with its elements of self-negation, continues to exist as a capitalist system.

Theoretically, to be sure, it is possible to conceive a situation in which the bourgeoisie as a whole constitutes itself a stock company which, by means of its state, administers the whole national economy. The economic laws of such a regime would present no mysteries. A single capitalist, as is well known, receives in the form of profit, not that part of the surplus value which is directly created by the workers of his own enterprise, but a share of the combined surplus value created throughout the country proportionate to the amount of his own capital. Under an integral “state capitalism”, this law of the equal rate of profit would be realized, not by devious routes – that is, competition among different capitals – but immediately and directly through state bookkeeping. Such a regime never existed, however, and, because of profound contradictions among the proprietors themselves, never will exist – the more so since, in its quality of universal repository of capitalist property, the state would be too tempting an object for social revolution.

During the war, and especially during the experiments in fascist economy, the term “state capitalism” has oftenest been understood to mean a system of state interference and regulation. The French employ a much more suitable term for this etatism. There are undoubtedly points of contact between state capitalism and “state-ism”, but taken as systems they are opposite rather than identical. State capitalism means the substitution of state property for private property, and for that very reason remains partial in character. State-ism, no matter where in Italy, Mussolini, in Germany, Hitler, in America, Roosevelt, or in France, Leon Blum – means state intervention on the basis of private property, and with the goal of preserving it. Whatever be the programs of the government, stateism inevitably leads to a transfer of the damages of the decaying system from strong shoulders to weak. It “rescues” the small proprietor from complete ruin only to the extent that his existence is necessary for the preservation of big property. The planned measures of stateism are dictated not by the demands of a development of the productive forces, but by a concern for the preservation of private property at the expense of the productive forces, which are in revolt against it. State-ism means applying brakes to the development of technique, supporting unviable enterprises, perpetuating parasitic social strata. In a word, state-ism is completely reactionary in character.

The words of Mussolini: “Three-fourths of Italian economy, industrial and agricultural, is in the hands of the state” (May 26, 1934), are not to be taken literally. The fascist state is not an owner of enterprises, but only an intermediary between their owners. These two things are not identical. Popolo d’Italia says on this subject: “The corporative state directs and integrates the economy, but does not run it (‘dirige e porta alla unita l’economia, ma non fa l’economia, non gestisce’), which, with a monopoly of production, would be nothing but collectivism.” (June 11, 1936) Toward the peasants and small proprietors in general, the fascist bureaucracy takes the attitude of a threatening lord and master. Toward the capitalist magnates, that of a first plenipotentiury. “The corporative state,” correctly writes the Italian Marxist, Feroci, “is nothing but the sales clerk of monopoly capital ... Mussolini takes upon the state the whole risk of the enterprises, leaving to the industrialists the profits of exploitation.” And Hitler in this respect follows in the steps of Mussolini. The limits of the planning principle, as well as its real content, are determined by the class dependence of the fascist state. It is not a question of increasing the power of man over nature in the interests of society, but of exploiting society in the interests of the few. “If I desired,” boasts Mussolini, “to establish in Italy – which really has not happened – state capitalism or state socialism, I should possess today all the necessary and adequate objective conditions.” All except one: the expropriation of the class of capitalists. In order to realize this condition, fascism would have to go over to the other side of the barricades – “which really has not happened” to quote the hasty assurance of Mussolini, and, of course, will not happen. To expropriate the capitalists would require other forces, other cadres and other leaders.

The first concentration of the means of production in the hands of the state to occur in history was achieved by the proletariat with the method of social revolution, and not by capitalists with the method of state trustification. Our brief analysis is sufficient to show how absurd are the attempts to identify capitalist state-ism with the Soviet system. The former is reactionary, the latter progressive.


2. Is the Bureaucracy a Ruling Class?
Classes are characterized by their position in the social system of economy, and primarily by their relation to the means of production. In civilized societies, property relations are validated by laws. The nationalization of the land, the means of industrial production, transport and exchange, together with the monopoly of foreign trade, constitute the basis of the Soviet social structure. Through these relations, established by the proletarian revolution, the nature of the Soviet Union as a proletarian state is for us basically defined.

In its intermediary and regulating function, its concern to maintain social ranks, and its exploitation of the state apparatus for personal goals, the Soviet bureaucracy is similar to every other bureaucracy, especially the fascist. But it is also in a vast way different. In no other regime has a bureaucracy ever achieved such a degree of independence from the dominating class. In bourgeois society, the bureaucracy represents the interests of a possessing and educated class, which has at its disposal innumerable means of everyday control over its administration of affairs. The Soviet bureaucracy has risen above a class which is hardly emerging from destitution and darkness, and has no tradition of dominion or command. Whereas the fascists, when they find themselves in power, are united with the big bourgeoisie by bonds of common interest, friendship, marriage, etc., the Soviet bureaucracy takes on bourgeois customs without having beside it a national bourgeoisie. In this sense we cannot deny that it is something more than a bureaucracy. It is in the full sense of the word the sole privileged and commanding stratum in the Soviet society.

Another difference is no less important. The Soviet bureaucracy has expropriated the proletariat politically in order by methods of its own to defend the social conquests. But the very fact of its appropriation of political power in a country where the principal means of production are in the hands of the state, creates a new and hitherto unknown relation between the bureaucracy and the riches of the nation. The means of production belong to the state. But the state, so to speak, “belongs” to the bureaucracy. If these as yet wholly new relations should solidify, become the norm and be legalized, whether with or without resistance from the workers, they would, in the long run, lead to a complete liquidation of the social conquests of the proletarian revolution. But to speak of that now is at least premature. The proletariat has not yet said its last word. The bureaucracy has not yet created social supports for its dominion in the form of special types of property. It is compelled to defend state property as the source of its power and its income. In this aspect of its activity it still remains a weapon of proletarian dictatorship.

The attempt to represent the Soviet bureaucracy as a class of “state capitalists” will obviously not withstand criticism. The bureaucracy has neither stocks nor bonds. It is recruited, supplemented and renewed in the manner of an administrative hierarchy, independently of any special property relations of its own. The individual bureaucrat cannot transmit to his heirs his rights in the exploitation of the state apparatus. The bureaucracy enjoys its privileges under the form of an abuse of power It conceals its income; it pretends that as a special social group it does not even exist. Its appropriation of a vast share of the national income has the character of social parasitism. All this makes the position of the commanding Soviet stratum in the highest degree contradictory, equivocal and undignified, notwithstanding the completeness of its power and the smoke screen of flattery that conceals it.

Bourgeois society has in the course of its history displaced many political regimes and bureaucratic castes, without changing its social foundations. It has preserved itself against the restoration of feudal and guild relations by the superiority of its productive methods. The state power has been able either to co-operate with capitalist development, or put brakes on it. But in general the productive forces, upon a basis of private property and competition, have been working out their own destiny. In contrast to this, the property relations which issued from the socialist revolution are indivisibly bound up with the new state as their repository. The predominance of socialist over petty bourgeois tendencies is guaranteed, not by the automatism of the economy – we are still far from that – but by political measures taken by the dictatorship. The character of the economy as a whole thus depends upon the character of the state power.

A collapse of the Soviet regime would lead inevitably to the collapse of the planned economy, and thus to the abolition of state property. The bond of compulsion between the trusts and the factories within them would fall away. The more successful enterprises would succeed in coming out on the road of independence. They might convert or they might find some themselves into stock companies, other transitional form of property – one, for example, in which the workers should participate in the profits. The collective farms would disintegrate at the same time, and far more easily. The fall of the present bureaucratic dictatorship, if it were not replaced by a new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalist relations with a catastrophic decline of industry and culture.

But if a socialist government is still absolutely necessary for the preservation and development of the planned economy, the question is all the more important, upon whom the present Soviet government relies, and in what measure the socialist character of its policy is guaranteed. At the 11th Party Congress in March 1922, Lenin, in practically bidding farewell to the party, addressed these words to the commanding group: “History knows transformations of all sorts. To rely upon conviction, devotion and other excellent spiritual qualities – that is not to be taken seriously in politics.” Being determines consciousness. During the last fifteen years, the government has changed its social composition even more deeply than its ideas. Since of all the strata of Soviet society the bureaucracy has best solved its own social problem, and is fully content with the existing situation, it has ceased to offer any subjective guarantee whatever of the socialist direction of its policy. It continues to preserve state property only to the extent that it fears the proletariat. This saving fear is nourished and supported by the illegal party of Bolshevik-Leninists, which is the most conscious expression of the socialist tendencies opposing that bourgeois reaction with which the Thermidorian bureaucracy is completely saturated. As a conscious political force the bureaucracy has betrayed the revolution. But a victorious revolution is fortunately not only a program and a banner, not only political institutions, but also a system of social relations. To betray it is not enough. You have to overthrow it. The October revolution has been betrayed by the ruling stratum, but not yet overthrown. It has a great power of resistance, coinciding with the established property relations, with the living force of the proletariat, the consciousness of its best elements, the impasse of world capitalism, and the inevitability of world revolution.


3. The Question of the Character of the Soviet Union
Not Yet Decided by History
In order better to understand the character of the present Soviet Union, let us make two different hypotheses about its future. Let us assume first that the Soviet bureaucracy is overthrown by a revolutionary party having all the attributes of the old Bolshevism, enriched moreover by the world experience of the recent period. Such a party would begin with the restoration of democracy in the trade unions and the Soviets. It would be able to, and would have to, restore freedom of Soviet parties. Together with the masses, and at their head, it would carry out a ruthless purgation of the state apparatus. It would abolish ranks and decorations, all kinds of privileges, and would limit inequality in the payment of labor to the life necessities of the economy and the state apparatus. It would give the youth free opportunity to think independently, learn, criticize and grow. It would introduce profound changes in the distribution of the national income in correspondence with the interests and will of the worker and peasant masses. But so far as concerns property relations, the new power would not have to resort to revolutionary measures. It would retain and further develop the experiment of planned economy. After the political revolution – that is, the deposing of the bureaucracy – the proletariat would have to introduce in the economy a series of very important reforms, but not another social revolution.

If – to adopt a second hypothesis – a bourgeois party were to overthrow the ruling Soviet caste, it would find no small number of ready servants among the present bureaucrats, administrators, technicians, directors, party secretaries and privileged upper circles in general. A purgation of the state apparatus would, of course, be necessary in this case too. But a bourgeois restoration would probably have to clean out fewer people than a revolutionary party. The chief task of the new power would be to restore private property in the means of production. First of all, it would be necessary to create conditions for the development of strong farmers from the weak collective farms, and for converting the strong collectives into producers’ cooperatives of the bourgeois type into agricultural stock companies. In the sphere of industry, denationalization would begin with the light industries and those producing food. The planning principle would be converted for the transitional period into a series of compromises between state power and individual “corporations” – potential proprietors, that is, among the Soviet captains of industry, the émigré former proprietors and foreign capitalists. Notwithstanding that the Soviet bureaucracy has gone far toward preparing a bourgeois restoration, the new regime would have to introduce in the matter of forms of property and methods of industry not a reform, but a social revolution.

Let us assume to take a third variant – that neither a revolutionary nor a counterrevolutionary party seizes power. The bureaucracy continues at the head of the state. Even under these conditions social relations will not jell. We cannot count upon the bureaucracy’s peacefully and voluntarily renouncing itself in behalf of socialist equality. If at the present time, notwithstanding the too obvious inconveniences of such an operation, it has considered it possible to introduce ranks and decorations, it must inevitably in future stages seek supports for itself in property relations. One may argue that the big bureaucrat cares little what are the prevailing forms of property, provided only they guarantee him the necessary income. This argument ignores not only the instability of the bureaucrat’s own rights, but also the question of his descendants. The new cult of the family has not fallen out of the clouds. Privileges have only half their worth, if they cannot be transmitted to one’s children. But the right of testament is inseparable from the right of property. It is not enough to be the director of a trust; it is necessary to be a stockholder. The victory of the bureaucracy in this decisive sphere would mean its conversion into a new possessing class. On the other hand, the victory of the proletariat over the bureaucracy would insure a revival of the socialist revolution. The third variant consequently brings us back to the two first, with which, in the interests of clarity and simplicity, we set out.

* * *
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.

The only way that it could truly be 'state capitalist' is if it was founded as a bourgeois state in the first place, which it was not. Whether you like it or not, the Soviet regime cannot be judge without considering the material circumstances in which it was formed and in which they were forced to exist; socialism requires abundance, not scarcity; socialism requires the basic material needs of the entire population to be met, not the lack thereof; socialism can not exist unless "the productive forces are developed to a very high level", not with backwards, smallscale production! Considering that they weren't, it's no question why it never ceased, because it was materially and historically impossible to! In the event of the socialist revolution spreading to industrialized countries, which Lenin and the Bolsheviks saw as inevitable, these capitalistic functions probably would of eventually been thrown off easily: because it was subordinated to the proletarian state, and the masses had socialist consciousness.

To IronColumn

Oh, those measures were instituted for no reason?

It's obvious you are reading the Anarchist FAQ too much. Trotsky, along with other leading Bolsheviks, argued that the workers of the world would see the signing of the Brest-Livtosk Treaty as a betrayal and evidence that the capitalists were correct when they claimed that the Bolsheviks were simply German agents. Rather than sign a humiliating treaty which betrayed the workers of the Baltics, Poland, and the Ukraine, they would simply declared peace on Germany while delaying the negotiating in order to encourage revolutionary spasms within Germany itself. The Germans were actually stunned by the move. At no moment in history had anyone declared peace on someone, and the Germans actually waited for a time before deciding to continue the war. So, the Germans plowed right through the steppes of the country, occupying the areas described. With no military but a few decentralized, untrained, unarmed, and undisciplined militas going against a centralized, elite, heavily armed, and disciplined force that far outnumbered them, the Bolsheviks did not rely on some romanticized notion of 'democracy' when this situation encountered them, and they signed the treaty in order to preserve their gains, which seems logical to me.

As for Kronstadt, it was a heavily-armed mutiny at a strategic point - whether it was 'revolutionary' or not doesn't matter, because it still assisted imperialist-interventionist armies, whether you like it or not. Finland, along with the French and British, all had a military presence in the area, and they could of easily exploited the situation to take "Red Petrograd", which was facing a hostile, heavily-armed and well-supplied garrison that had the capability to paralyze the entire city and the surrounding area. I would rather face a sacrifice of one revolutionary citadel, then politically compromise the entire revolution in the first place, which would of occured if we chose to take 'your path' of putting a pillow on the heads of the rebels.

As for my "un-Marxism", I refer you to Trotsky's analysis that I posted. Critique it if you are in disagreement with it.

[Devrim]

Originally posted by RedDali+--> (RedDali)As for my "un-Marxism", I refer you to Trotsky's analysis that I posted. Critique it if you are in disagreement with it. [/b]

Why bother? Trotsky's analysis has already been swept into 'the Dustbin of History'. What started as an brave attempt to understand the degeneration of the Russian revolution has been turned into a theory, which defended capitalist states, and imperialist wars.


alibadani
The focus on purely juridical forms is what confuses so many.

It is very clear really. It cuts through Trotsky's entire argument.

Devrim

P.S. Critique is a noun, not a verb.

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by RedDali+August 17, 2007 07:57 am--> (RedDali @ August 17, 2007 07:57 am) If anything, The Revolution Betrayed should of proved otherwise. [/b]

It starts to prove one true thing, and then, thanks to author's past and his illusions about the present, diverts into some dissapointing idealist festation. As I said, just like Hegel.


Originally posted by RedDali+--> (RedDali)The only way that it could truly be 'state capitalist' is if it was founded as a bourgeois state in the first place, which it was not...[/b]

False. It could have turned state capitalist when state assumed all funcions of unified agency of capital. That happened. It stayed that way.

Amadeo Bordiga took the same investigative path as you did (in the rest of your post). But he wasn't shy at concluding the obvious: Russia, as it was "organized" as state capitalist, for whatever reason, remained state capitalist.

It remained a class society structurally based on production of surplus value (economic essence of capitalist society).


[email protected]
...these capitalistic functions probably would of eventually been thrown off easily...

[Emphasis added.] Sure, just like all other capitalist nations would be "thrown off easily", and I hope "eventually" ... "probably" ... We're all optimists here.


RedDali
...because it was subordinated to the proletarian state, and the masses had socialist consciousness.

Ideological mask. A false pretension to the universal, nothing more, nothing less.

[manic expression]

Originally posted by DJ-[email protected] 17, 2007 03:34 pm
False. It could have turned state capitalist when state assumed all funcions of unified agency of capital. That happened. It stayed that way.

Amadeo Bordiga took the same investigative path as you did (in the rest of your post). But he wasn't shy at concluding the obvious: Russia, as it was "organized" as state capitalist, for whatever reason, remained state capitalist.

It remained a class society structurally based on production of surplus value (economic essence of capitalist society).
I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you claiming that there were classes in the Soviet Union? If so, the dictatorship of the proletariat is always a "class society", because the material conditions necessary for a classless society are not in place. It's basic Marxism that the DoP is not classless.

Furthermore, socialism does not do away with surplus value, it puts its control into different hands. In capitalism, surplus value becomes capital, which is used as profit; in socialism, surplus value is controlled by the workers.

Privately owned means of production, wage labor, capitalist property relations; all these things were not a part of the Soviet Union. Property relations were still progressive and firmly non-capitalist, and so it is absurd to call the Soviet Union capitalist. However, the workers had become estranged from control over the means of production due to the position of the bureaucracy (or in this case, Moscow's bureaucracy).

Instead of trying (and failing) to jam a square peg into a round hole, as those who tout "state-capitalism" inevitably do, we must analyze the material conditions in place.

[Lamanov]

It was a class society in the sense that workers were the "lower" class, still. Bureaucracy was the "upper" one. Workers remained workers, bureaucracy took over the functions of bourgeoisie and unified them into state management. Capital changed its agency, while labor remained wage labor.

Let's see how you group completely different things into one negating sentence:


Originally posted by manic expression+--> (manic expression)Privately owned means of production, wage labor, capitalist property relations; all these things were not a part of the Soviet Union.[/b]

Now...


Originally posted by manic expression+--> (manic expression)Privately owned means of production...[/b]

True, but it's not crucial.


manic [email protected]
...wage labor...

Flase. Wage labor was a fact. Even Trotsky can't, with all attempts at glorifying the socialist "potential", the "juridicial transfer", deny the fact. Let's return to the book at hand:

>>“The worker in our country is not a wage slave and is not a seller of a commodity called labour-power. He is a free workman” (Pravda). For the present period this unctuous formula is unpermissible bragging. The transfer of the factories to the state changed the situation of the worker only juridically. In reality, he is compelled to live in want and work a definite amount of hours for a definite wage.<< (Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed)

Now, let&#39;s not even attempt to bring out more compatible evidence.


manic expression
...capitalist property relations...

Actually, it&#39;s capitalist production relations that count, not properity relations, which are not essential to capitalism as social dominance of labor-capital relation.

[manic expression]

Originally posted by DJ&#045;TC+August 18, 2007 02:56 pm--> (DJ-TC @ August 18, 2007 02:56 pm) It was a class society in the sense that workers were the "lower" class, still. Bureaucracy was the "upper" one. Workers remained workers, bureaucracy took over the functions of bourgeoisie and unified them into state management. Capital changed its agency, while labor remained wage labor.

Let&#39;s see how you group completely different things into one negating sentence:


Originally posted by manic expression+--> (manic expression)Privately owned means of production, wage labor, capitalist property relations; all these things were not a part of the Soviet Union.[/b]

Now...


Originally posted by manic expression
Privately owned means of production...

True, but it&#39;s not crucial.


manic [email protected]
...wage labor...

Flase. Wage labor was a fact. Even Trotsky can&#39;t, with all attempts at glorifying the socialist "potential", the "juridicial transfer", deny the fact. Let&#39;s return to the book at hand:

>>“The worker in our country is not a wage slave and is not a seller of a commodity called labour-power. He is a free workman” (Pravda). For the present period this unctuous formula is unpermissible bragging. The transfer of the factories to the state changed the situation of the worker only juridically. In reality, he is compelled to live in want and work a definite amount of hours for a definite wage.<< (Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed)

Now, let&#39;s not even attempt to bring out more compatible evidence.


manic expression
...capitalist property relations...

Actually, it&#39;s capitalist production relations that count, not properity relations, which are not essential to capitalism as social dominance of labor-capital relation. [/b]
Yes, of course, I agree that there were levels of hierarchy within the Soviet Union. These fell along lines of bureaucracy. That is central to the analysis of the deformed worker state. What you are arguing, however, is that this hierarchy translates into a capitalist society; that is incorrect.

You say that it the workers constituted a lower class and the bureaucracy constituted an upper class. First, class is the relationship one has to the means of production. If the bureaucracy merely "took over the functions of bourgeoisie", then we would see that the relationship to the means of production would change accordingly. However, the Soviet bureaucracy did not own production at all, it presided over it and gained from its position within the state; that is not capitalist. Capitalists own things and employ people; the Soviet bureaucracy did neither.

Next, you say that labor remained wage labor, yet you don&#39;t justify the claim. If it was to remain wage labor, then proletarians would be selling their labor in order to survive. Was that the case in the Soviet Union? Soviet workers were in an inferior position in relation to the nomenklatura, of course, but they were not selling their labor for a price. On the contrary, their livlihood depended upon receiving products from the state. That is not capitalist.

On your response to my points:

Yes, privately owned means of production are not crucial, but important regardless.

You cite Trotsky&#39;s argument but not his conclusion, which is both selective and misleading. Trotsky took the portion you cited (and many others) and came to this:

"The first concentration of the means of production in the hands of the state to occur in history was achieved by the proletariat with the method of social revolution, and not by capitalists with the method of state trustification. Our brief analysis is sufficient to show how absurd are the attempts to identify capitalist state-ism with the Soviet system. The former is reactionary, the latter progressive." (The Revolution Betrayed)

And Trotsky is right. It is simply irrational to say that the bureaucracy "took over the function of bourgeoisie" when a.) the Soviet system established direct worker control prior to the rise of the bureaucracy and b.) the property relations were clearly NOT the product of capitalist production.

Yes, capitalist production relations are essential, but property relations necessarily spring from production. Feudal production brings feudal property relations, just as capitalist production brings capitalist property relations. It is simply indefensible to claim that progressive property relations would be the product of regressive production. The equation you present is incorrect due to this.

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by manic expression+August 18, 2007 03:28 pm--> (manic expression &#064; August 18, 2007 03:28 pm) What you are arguing, however, is that this hierarchy translates into a capitalist society; that is incorrect. [/b]

I am not&#33; :angry:

Don&#39;t simplify my arguments, and don&#39;t use cheap diversions.


Originally posted by manic expression+--> (manic expression)First, class is the relationship one has to the means of production. If the bureaucracy merely "took over the functions of bourgeoisie", then we would see that the relationship to the means of production would change accordingly.[/b]

Taking over all those functions is a change in "relationship to the means of production"&#33;


Originally posted by manic expression
Next, you say that labor remained wage labor, yet you don&#39;t justify the claim. If it was to remain wage labor, then proletarians would be selling their labor in order to survive. Was that the case in the Soviet Union? ... On the contrary, their livlihood depended upon receiving products from the state. That is not capitalist.

You can&#39;t determine that on the grounds from whom the wages are received, but what is their function. Just as in the rest of capitalist world, wages in the USSR were paid to a worker in order for him to survive and reproduce his own kind. They were determined through plan in relation to the need of reproducing labor power as a whole. They were increasing and decreasing according to that need. They came through at the beginning of capital circulation, and they were clearly separated from the end of that same circle which split to surplus value on one side (appropriated by the "state", i.e. the bureaucracy which controlled it) and recirculated capital on the other (directed for reproduction of commodities necessary for the production process and fertilization of value, including, again, labor power).

You are taking the difference between individual motive for employment and the means through which capital circulates as something of a proof... for what? I suggest you to rethink your arguments and redesign your categories.


manic [email protected]
And Trotsky is right. It is simply irrational to say that the bureaucracy "took over the function of bourgeoisie" when a.) the Soviet system established direct worker control prior to the rise of the bureaucracy and b.) the property relations were clearly NOT the product of capitalist production.

Wishful thinking, and, indeed, misleading&#33; Workers themselves established control - through self-organization autonomous from any political change of institutionalized power, including months after October. Established control suffered opposite fate from the one officially proclaimed by Leninist apology: state took it away. [See M. Brinton, Bolsheviks and Workers&#39; Control, Solidarity]


manic expression
Yes, capitalist production relations are essential, but property relations necessarily spring from production. Feudal production brings feudal property relations, just as capitalist production brings capitalist property relations. It is simply indefensible to claim that progressive property relations would be the product of regressive production. The equation you present is incorrect due to this.

And you are basing this on pure faith in some abstract formula - crude determinism. However, property relations may change, but production relations can remain esentially the same. Just what happened.

[manic expression]

I am not&#33; :angry:

Don&#39;t simplify my arguments, and don&#39;t use cheap diversions.

It was a class society in the sense that workers were the "lower" class, still. Bureaucracy was the "upper" one.

That was precisely what you said. I responded to your assertion that the bureaucracy took over the function of bourgeoisie, and so the rest of your argument was basically: if there is hierarchy, then there is capitalism. I simplified nothing.


Taking over all those functions is a change in "relationship to the means of production"&#33;

How so? First you say that they just substituted themselves for the bourgeoisie, and then you say that there was a change in the relationship to the means of production. If it was a mere substitution, then would there be a change? More importantly, the change that occurred was not one that created capitalist relations. The bureaucracy did not hold private property, they employed no one. All this was done through the use of the state apparatus, and so these inherent parts of capitalism were an impossibility.


You can&#39;t determine that on the grounds from whom the wages are received, but what is their function. Just as in the rest of capitalist world, wages in the USSR were paid to a worker in order for him to survive and reproduce his own kind. They were determined through plan in relation to the need of reproducing labor power as a whole. They were increasing and decreasing according to that need. They came through at the beginning of capital circulation, and they were clearly separated from the end of that same circle which split to surplus value on one side (appropriated by the "state", i.e. the bureaucracy which controlled it) and recirculated capital on the other (directed for reproduction of commodities necessary for the production process and fertilization of value, including, again, labor power).

You are taking the difference between individual motive for employment and the means through which capital circulates as something of a proof... for what? I suggest you to rethink your arguments and redesign your categories.

Again, you&#39;re making a fallacious argument because while you don&#39;t refute the existence of progressive property relations, you insist upon the existence of capitalist modes of production, which is simply contradictory.

Next, you&#39;re blatantly ignoring the way in which the Soviet worker recieved subsistence. It was not solely through wages, and the buying and selling commodities such as apartments (stuff you need in order to live) were a rare occurance. Most of what the Soviet worker recieved was not through capitalist or capitalist-ish avenues and you know that as well as I do.

To quote Trotsky:
"Theoretically, to be sure, it is possible to conceive a situation in which the bourgeoisie as a whole constitutes itself a stock company which, by means of its state, administers the whole national economy. The economic laws of such a regime would present no mysteries. A single capitalist, as is well known, receives in the form of profit, not that part of the surplus value which is directly created by the workers of his own enterprise, but a share of the combined surplus value created throughout the country proportionate to the amount of his own capital. Under an integral “state capitalism”, this law of the equal rate of profit would be realized, not by devious routes – that is, competition among different capitals – but immediately and directly through state bookkeeping. Such a regime never existed, however, and, because of profound contradictions among the proprietors themselves, never will exist – the more so since, in its quality of universal repository of capitalist property, the state would be too tempting an object for social revolution."

What you have done is use the existence of the bureaucracy to claim that they were, in fact, a bourgeoisie. However, this flies directly in the face of the property relations of the Soviet Union (not to mention the workers&#39; relationship to the means of production). It is this type of statement that leads the supporters of the state-capitalist theory to assert that capitalist production could produce progressive property relations, an impossible absurdity.


Wishful thinking, and, indeed, misleading&#33; Workers themselves established control - through self-organization autonomous from any political change of institutionalized power, including months after October. Established control suffered opposite fate from the one officially proclaimed by Leninist apology: state took it away. [See M. Brinton, Bolsheviks and Workers&#39; Control, Solidarity]

Yes, the workers established this control, this is obvious. The Bolsheviks took power in the October Revolution and gave authority to the Soviets. This established worker control, this is at the heart of the Soviet system. Therefore, in order for there to be capitalist production, there would have needed to be a shift toward that end, which did not happen. To quote Trotsky:

"The attempt to represent the Soviet bureaucracy as a class of “state capitalists” will obviously not withstand criticism. The bureaucracy has neither stocks nor bonds. It is recruited, supplemented and renewed in the manner of an administrative hierarchy, independently of any special property relations of its own. The individual bureaucrat cannot transmit to his heirs his rights in the exploitation of the state apparatus. The bureaucracy enjoys its privileges under the form of an abuse of power It conceals its income; it pretends that as a special social group it does not even exist. Its appropriation of a vast share of the national income has the character of social parasitism. All this makes the position of the commanding Soviet stratum in the highest degree contradictory, equivocal and undignified, notwithstanding the completeness of its power and the smoke screen of flattery that conceals it."


And you are basing this on pure faith in some abstract formula - crude determinism. However, property relations may change, but production relations can remain esentially the same. Just what happened.

I am basing this on elementary Marxist analyses. Modes of production are the source for property relations and forms of property. The property relations were not capitalist, and so it is completely irrational to claim that the modes of production could be capitalist. It is like claiming that a sand dune can be the source of a river.

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by manic expression+--> (manic expression)That was precisely what you said. I responded to your assertion that the bureaucracy took over the function of bourgeoisie, and so the rest of your argument was basically: if there is hierarchy, then there is capitalism. I simplified nothing.[/b]

If you did not simplify it, that leaves us with two things: either you don&#39;t know what exactly happened in Russia through October 1917 - April 1918, or can&#39;t put it in proper context. I doubt that such an Orthodox believer as yourself lacks knowledge in "his revolution". So, let me put it in proper context:

Bureaucracy, by taking over the functions of bourgeoisie, took over essential relations upon which that hierarchy functioned. It "took over capitalism". Quite simple, really.


Originally posted by manic expression+--> (manic expression)How so? First you say that they just substituted themselves for the bourgeoisie, and then you say that there was a change in the relationship to the means of production. If it was a mere substitution, then would there be a change? More importantly, the change that occurred was not one that created capitalist relations. The bureaucracy did not hold private property, they employed no one. All this was done through the use of the state apparatus, and so these inherent parts of capitalism were an impossibility.[/b]

I should have expected that you would conveniently forget what line of yours I was actually responding to, in ambitious attempt to divert my argumentation.

Let me remind you what were we talking about:

Manic expression: >> First, class is the relationship one has to the means of production. If the bureaucracy merely "took over the functions of bourgeoisie", then we would see that the relationship to the means of production would change accordingly. <<

DJ-TC: >> Taking over all those functions is a change in "relationship to the means of production"&#33; <<

Bureaucracy, through taking over the functions of the bourgeoisie, took over their essential role: agency of capital. This never changed, because operation of capital as alienated labor, i.e., labor power, remained untouched, or better yet - restored - through Lenin&#39;s &#39;New Course&#39; in the spring of 1918.

Thus, "production relations" remained essentially as such.

However, because of its specific composition and social organization (i.e., through state, union and production apparatus that was merged together) formed around the state, through which bureaucracy exercised its agency of capital, it decomposed previous "property relations" - i.e., it expropriated, "socialized" and nationalized the means of production, took it over from the hands of the bourgeoisie, and turned it into state property.

Thus, as "property relations" changed, "relationship to the means of production" changed, as one subject - bureaucracy, replaced another one - bourgeoisie, through statification.


Originally posted by manic expression
Again, you&#39;re making a fallacious argument because while you don&#39;t refute the existence of progressive property relations, you insist upon the existence of capitalist modes of production, which is simply contradictory.

It&#39;s "contradictory" only if you believe that changes were "progressive". Typical Orthodox Trotskyist "can&#39;t let go" illusion. To cut through the denial game: am I saying they were not progressive? Yes, I am.


Originally posted by manic expression
Next, you&#39;re blatantly ignoring the way in which the Soviet worker recieved subsistence. It was not solely through wages, and the buying and selling commodities such as apartments (stuff you need in order to live) were a rare occurance. Most of what the Soviet worker recieved was not through capitalist or capitalist-ish avenues and you know that as well as I do.

Oh, comrade, I am ignoring nothing. You&#39;re the one ignoring the fact that all those "other ways of subsistence" are just another form, a technical "shortcut", in the process of reproduction of labor power as a whole - the sole essence of wages.


Originally posted by manic expression
What you have done is use the existence of the bureaucracy to claim that they were, in fact, a bourgeoisie.

I am not. I am, however, using "the existence" of capitalist relations "to claim that they were", actually, agents of capital.


Originally posted by manic expression
[b]However, this flies directly in the face of the property relations of the Soviet Union...

It does not, it acknowledges it, obviously, as superficial.


Originally posted by manic expression
...(not to mention the workers&#39; relationship to the means of production).

Wage slavery? We&#39;re not ignoring it, it&#39;s the center of our theory.


manic [email protected]
It is this type of statement that leads the supporters of the state-capitalist theory to assert that capitalist production could produce progressive property relations, an impossible absurdity.

Of course they can, but, to be precise, it were backward historical conditions of these countries that produced political basis (through such semi-revolutions) for introduction of these "progressive property relations" for the reason of perpetuation of capitalism.


manic expression
Yes, the workers established this control, this is obvious. The Bolsheviks took power in the October Revolution and gave authority to the Soviets. This established worker control, this is at the heart of the Soviet system. Therefore, in order for there to be capitalist production, there would have needed to be a shift toward that end, which did not happen.

There was. Everything you wrote previous to denial is simply not true.

Workers themselves established workers&#39; control - not soviets, not Bolsheviks. They did it through factory committees. Bolsheviks (starting with &#39;Decree on Workers&#39; Control&#39; on November 14th 1917 - see Lenin&#39;s Draft (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/26.htm)) stopped that process, blocked "expropriation from below", and in those conditions of half-way halted process, installed party control in all relevant economic structures. After that, by retaining hierarchy, they simply reintroduced capitalism (to the full) through statification and the well known &#39;New Course&#39; (see “Left-Wing” Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/may/09.htm)).

[IronColumn]

This is not as complicated as the Trotskyists make it. There are numerous quotations from Lenin himself where he sets as the goal of Soviet Russia "state capitalism" for the time being. The Bolsheviks, and indeed most of the 2nd International, had identified centralized statist capitalism as the goal of the working class.

The attempts at workers running their own factories democratically, along with the co-operatives and other libertarian ideas, are the germs of socialism. These were slowly crushed by Lenin and Trotsky during the Civil War, and on a magnificent scale in the suppression of the Kronstadt Commune. Only the dullards who think nationalization by a capitalist state is equivalent to socialization by workers councils can be deluded enough to think that the USSR was anything but state capitalist for its entire existence (with periods of private capitalism, like the NEP).

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by IronColumn+--> (IronColumn) These were slowly crushed by Lenin and Trotsky during the Civil War... [/b]

Even earlier. Leninists of a more "left" affiliation tend to explain limitations on workers&#39; control and workplace democracy as a "wartime necessity", but &#39;New Course&#39;, constructed and implemented through March-April 1918 was a peacetime policy.

In April 1918 Lenin was saying "Basically, Civil war is over." (Quoted in G. Boffa, History of the Soviet Union.) And this was in time of his crusade for state capitalism, as he was openly stating.


IronColumn
Only the dullards who think nationalization by a capitalist state is equivalent to socialization by workers councils can be deluded enough to think that the USSR was anything but state capitalist...

Oh, but they say it was a "workers&#39; state". ;) Of course, this is an oversimplification which Lenin himself always repudiated by more flexible constructions. Of course, there&#39;s no such thing as a "workers&#39; state": especially "deformed" one.

[Random Precision]

This might be of some use to the discussion:

The Nature of Stalinist Russia (http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1948/stalruss/index.htm)

[BobKKKindle$]

Even earlier. Leninists of a more "left" affiliation tend to explain limitations on workers&#39; control and workplace democracy as a "wartime necessity", but &#39;New Course&#39;, constructed and implemented through March-April 1918 was a peacetime policy.

Actually, the local workers&#39; committees were the first bodies of power to call for the power of the workers&#39; state to structure industry and ensure that production continued, and immediately after the revolution had taken place, the All Russian Council of Factory Committees passed a decree that demanded a central apparatus to regulate the economy - Lenin actually felt that this demand was somewhat too strong and was a threat to workers&#39; power, and so he used his influence to tone down the eventual decree that was passed. Many workers actively pressed for the nationalisation of their enterprises, as they were facing the threat of financial insolvency if the factories had remained within the framework of the market system. I refer you to S A Smith&#39;s Red Petrograd - you have tried to present changes to workers&#39; managment as imposed from above, whereas in reality all the policies of the Bolshevik party in the course of the civil war reflected the desires and interests of the Proletariat.

[Lamanov]

Not quite. Workers pressed for socialization on the means of 1) selfactivity, 2) help from Sovnarkom. After the Decree on Workers&#39; Control of November 14th 1917, workers - in factory committees - realized that the Bolshevik party might not keep its promises, so they turned to self organizing.

One of the key documents for understanding autonomous aspirations of the workers is their document called "Practical Manual for the Implementation of Workers&#39; Control", which Bolsheviks saw as a violation of mentioned decree, after which they pressed for creating "order" in those autonomous bodies. They published a "Counter-manual" that radically emasculates workers&#39; autonomous programme.

Not so long after that almost every Bolshevik would attack fabkom-s as "anarchic", "local-patriot" structures that "disregard wider proletarian interests" [their autonomous all-worker centralization attempts after Sovnarkom&#39;s backstab, their open talk about socialist economy, its immediate introduction, etc, beg to differ].

See:

- Factory Committees in the Russian Revolution (http://www.prole.info/articles/factorycommitteesinrussia.html) by Rod M. Jones
- The Bolsheviks and Workers&#39; Control - The State and Counter-Revolution (http://libcom.org/library/the-bolsheviks-and-workers-control-solidarity-group) by Maurice Brinton


Originally posted by catbert836
This might be of some use to the discussion: The Nature of Stalinist Russia (http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1948/stalruss/index.htm)

Oh, we are waay past that.

[ern]

The central points made by DJ-TC about the class nature of the USSR are essential:


- that there was wage labor
- that there was alienation of labor
- that there were class relations
- that there was commodity production...

That the state became the collective capitalist.

These points are firmly based on marx&#39;s and engel&#39;s analysis of capitalism, particularly their understanding of the meaning of the growing concentration and centralisation of capitalism. Engel&#39;s made a point of rejecting the idea that state ownership meant socialism.

There is one element missing from this discussion so far: the fact that the revolution remained isolated and that there was not the world revolution. Only the international revolution can provide the foundations for the work of constructing commmunism.

Someone said that there will be surplus value under socialism. This is wrong. The central characteristic of communism will be the production for human need not profit. Value relations will no longer determine the economic relations of society. There will be surplus production but this will be determined by social need not value relations. I think this is probably what the poster was getting at.

One final point to understand the state capitalist nature of the USSR it is necessary also to understand what communism is. This article is a brief outline of the nature of communismnature of communism (http://en.internationalism.org/pamphlets/classconc/1_communism/nature)

[IronColumn]

Would we not rather say that the revolution failed because the workers of the world did not have the consciousness to determine what socialism was and was not? In my view, this is what ruined the attempted Russian, German, and Italian revolutions. In all 3 countries the workers&#39; councils had effective power in one place or one time, but they gave it up to social democratic parties who were all capitalist.

Of course, you&#39;re ICC, and probably equate the political coup of October with the goal of the working class, and thus could claim that the revolution had been successful in one place (Russia) but not another. Unfortunately, I do not think that we can equate the historic task of the proletariat with the Jacobin-style coup of the Bolsheviks; thus how can anyone claim that there was a Revolution that could degenerate in any real sense? The working class lacked the subjective understanding to know what it could do with the councils.

Sadly, the economic determinism and focus on objective factors of the 2nd International still weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the left.

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24, 2007 03:28 am
The working class lacked the subjective understanding to know what it could do with the councils.

I don&#39;t think it "lacked" understanding of what was going on. On the contrary. The problem was this: even through cities were the centers of Revolution, workers were still a minority which had to adapt to political and economic demands of other classes: peasantry and "peasants in uniforms".

Take for instance, the composition of Soviet in Petrograd, which was composed out of proletarians and soldiers (peasant council was separate):

- big factories (containig 87% of the workers) send 424 delegates
- small factories and shops (only 13%) send 422 delegates
- soldiers (250 by unit) send 2000 delegates

Consider the fact that in most cities mandate to the Soviet did not recquire working relation or uniform, so external representatives, usually party men, could have been sent as delegates. Kronstadt, for example, was one of the few: you had to be an actual worker or soldier to be a delegate. That&#39;s why it was so radical.

Now, consider the fact that most of the Soviets in Russia were composed out of soldiers&#39;, peasants&#39; and workers&#39; representatives (305), in which the latter were a minority. Soldiers&#39; and workers&#39; were less in number (101), while there was a very small number of worker-only election (28).

Of course, this wasn&#39;t supposed to be a big problem in relation of one class to another. Peasants and workers cooperated, in a really good and productive manner, autonomously, building village-city cooperatives. The problem was that these buildups were slow, and political situation was fast, so the Bolshevik party (together with Left SRs) could have been the fastest element in the revolution, which came to appease general demands after July, and that&#39;s why it was being given support via voce, as a political compromise of two classes in the time of need.


Workers continued to work on theri autonomous projects, but Bolshevik government simply manipulated them - by being faster - into surrendering their "local-patriot" endeavors to central bodies regulated from above.


But you&#39;re right, revolution shold be understood as a process, not an act.

[Xanthus]

It&#39;s quite frustrating that this argument pops up so often. The theory of state capitalism sounds like a nice little box in which we can place Stalinism, so that we don&#39;t have to take a more detailed scientific approach to analysing the true contradictory nature of a deformed workers&#39; state. However, this act of believing in such a convenient explaination has led to countless mistakes among trotskyist sects who have failed to acknowledge or defend the gains of the planned economy in these beurocraticly deformed workers&#39; states. State capitalism refers to the capitalist state serving in the interests of capitalists (a great example from my country of Canada would be Export Development Canada (http://www.edc.ca/))... not beurocrats enriching themselves in a manner which appears vaguely similar to capitalists.

Rather then spend half the night elaborating on my own arguments against the theory of State Capitalism, I&#39;ll present the most concrete document written in reply to that theory, by the great Marxist theortician, Ted Grant. It&#39;s a lengthy reply, but if you truely want to understand what&#39;s wrong with the theory, it&#39;s a more relevent read then dozens of pages of cyclical arguments such as what I see here already.

Against the Theory of State Capitalism: A Reply to comrade Cliff (1949) (http://www.tedgrant.org/archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm)

[Xanthus]

I had posted the article in two parts, but after some thought, realised that a link would serve better. Mods, if you see this, please delete this second post.

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by Xanthus+August 25, 2007 06:39 am--> (Xanthus &#064; August 25, 2007 06:39 am) ...so that we don&#39;t have to take a more detailed scientific approach to analysing the true contradictory nature of a deformed workers&#39; state.[/b]

We have to and we did. :angry:


Originally posted by Xanthus+--> (Xanthus)State capitalism refers to the capitalist state serving in the interests of capitalists (a great example from my country of Canada would be Export Development Canada (http://www.edc.ca/))... not beurocrats enriching themselves in a manner which appears vaguely similar to capitalists.[/b]

State capitalism refers to state capitalism. Who gets rich: &#39;bureaucrats&#39; who excercise their rights as a collective of administrators, or &#39;bourgeois&#39; who excercise their rights with investment through state or simply rent the means of production (loosely or tightly) controled by state or its trusts (in NEP all three were the case), is less important then the fact that workers are reproducting capital and themselves as commodities, alienating their own activity.


[email protected]
Rather then spend half the night elaborating on my own arguments against the theory of State Capitalism...

Of course, use time to justify your lack of ability to respond to all arguments brought out in this thread. I mean: why bother? Just give us some text filled up with orthodoxy from top to... oh, there you go&#33;


Xanthus
Against the Theory of State Capitalism: A Reply to comrade Cliff (1949) (http://www.tedgrant.org/archive/grant/1949/cliff.htm)

This text responds to a theory which is itself deeply flawed. Therefore, it can&#39;t be used in this case. Either you try harder to find something worth reading, or just write a valid responce to these posts. If you can&#39;t, step down.

[Xanthus]

I must admit, your reply leaves me a little bit puzzled...


This text responds to a theory which is itself deeply flawed. Therefore, it can&#39;t be used in this case. Either you try harder to find something worth reading, or just write a valid responce to these posts. If you can&#39;t, step down.
Are we not debating this seriously flawed theory? How can a responce to the theory listed in the thread topic be invalid?


State capitalism refers to state capitalism. Who gets rich: &#39;bureaucrats&#39; who excercise their rights as a collective of administrators, or &#39;bourgeois&#39; who excercise their rights with investment through state or simply rent the means of production (loosely or tightly) controled by state or its trusts (in NEP all three were the case), is less important then the fact that workers are reproducting capital and themselves as commodities, alienating their own activity.
Just because a difference is considered "less important" does not mean it doesn&#39;t exist. When we are attempting to define and differenciate between economic structures, we must be specific, and not ignore differences because we may feel them less important.

This difference is not unimportant. It means the difference between requiring a social revolution to remove the beurocracy installing in its place worker&#39;s control over the economy, vs requiring a complete economic revolution, entirely replacing the economic organisation of society. Basically the difference is that while in a deformed workers state, the economy ultimately works in a manner of mutual benefit between industries, utilising a planning to build an interdependant economy (even if much of that benefit may be stolen by beurocrats), State Capitalism maintains the competitive structure of capitalism as a model for economic building.

Not understanding the nature of this difference has led to, and is still leading to many tactical mistakes, which is a very large problem.


Of course, use time to justify your lack of ability to respond to all arguments brought out in this thread. I mean: why bother? Just give us some text filled up with orthodoxy from top to... oh, there you go&#33;
Declaring something "filled up with orthodoxy" is a very easy way to dismiss it. Orthodoxy is not always wrong, the lessons of those who came before can be very valuable if we are careful to conciously retain our skeptisism towards those lessons.

Perhaps, you would do well with the advice that a reply such as the one above something is better read and understood (even if disagreed with) then dismissed. Besides, I didn&#39;t post it for the benefit of those who already have their minds made up and filled with clear distinctions between accepted and rejected sets of orthadoxy, but for the many who read these forums in an attempt to understand the often complex theories which make up the world-view of Marxism. For these people who wish to learn, I stand by my statement that the article is worth more then 10 of these forum topics.

By the way, time can be a very valuable resource. Sometimes an article for publication or a discussion with a young comrade can be far more valuable then hours spent typing out arguments in an internet messageboard for someone who seems unlikely to listen.


We have to and we did. mad.gif
This also confuses me. Does "we did" refer to the theory of state capitalism? Did you not just refer to that theory as deeply flawed?

As an aside, you might think about controling that anger, it does not benefit comradely discussion.

[Lamanov]

Comrade, you must forgive my skepticism and impatience, but it wasn&#39;t the first time someone posted Ted Grant&#39;s text in place of a coherent responce concerning this subject. As you can see, this discussion has its worth in more than a page of long ass posts, each one written carefully. I wouldn&#39;t ignore it.

Now, "flawed theory" I was talking about it Tony Cliff&#39;s theory of "state capitalism". Ted Grand was responding to him. His theory was neither the first nor the last of its kind, but in my opinion (and many others&#39;) it was the worst.

Now...


Originally posted by Xanthus+--> (Xanthus)This difference is not unimportant. It means the difference between requiring a social revolution to remove the beurocracy installing in its place worker&#39;s control over the economy, vs requiring a complete economic revolution, entirely replacing the economic organisation of society.[/b]

Well, I think it&#39;s clear: were East German uprising, Polish revolt, Hungarian revolution, "reforms"? Nope, they were rank-and-file working class movements - they stem from workplace resistance.

Was there ever a real prospect of "reform" which would "de-deform" these "workers&#39; states" - free them from wage labor, commodity production, political hierarchy, etc? I don&#39;t think so. If there ever was such a movement [reformist I mean], it started within the workplaces, and threatened to shake up the very foundation of the system: production relations themselves. Such were strike movements in the early &#39;20s, any place where an idea of "free soviets" emerged, movement of Polish workers in &#39;70s up to 1981, etc.


Xanthus
Basically the difference is that while in a deformed workers state, the economy ultimately works in a manner of mutual benefit between industries, utilising a planning to build an interdependant economy (even if much of that benefit may be stolen by beurocrats), State Capitalism maintains the competitive structure of capitalism as a model for economic building.

When did we decide that state capitalism is necessarily a "competitive structure"? We didn&#39;t. You just added that, in an attempt to distance a precious "workers&#39; state" from its rightful condemnation. State capitalism is when the state takes over the function of agency of capital. Considering the fact that only bureaucratic formations control the state, they collectively play agents of capital. Simple as that. (Read previous posts. Chances are, anything you might object is probably objected to, and all objections got their responses.)

Besides, what does a "competitive structure" mean? How can a structure be "competitive"? Isn&#39;t structure just a word we use do describe channels and levels of social composition and movement? Aren&#39;t hierarchical relations always "infested" with competition? Wasn&#39;t the primary commodity - wage labor - in the process of its consumption (production process) reproducing itself in conditions of competition between the laborers through peace work (not just Stakhanovism, but as early as April 1918 when peace work and "bonuses" were being considered)? Weren&#39;t companies during NEP operating on the principles of profit-and-loss, namely, &#39;competition&#39;?

Now, "mutual benefit between industries" doesn&#39;t mean anything if workers don&#39;t control them, not just "control", but actually manage them, as a basis for all political and economic power. Hell, "mutual benefit" is created within monopolies and concerns, in industrial employers&#39; syndicates and cartels, in "private", bourgeois capitalist system.

[manic expression]

Bureaucracy, by taking over the functions of bourgeoisie, took over essential relations upon which that hierarchy functioned. It "took over capitalism". Quite simple, really.

This is completely indefensible. Why? The relations which the bourgeoisie operated upon had been smashed by the revolution and working class organization (both before and after the October Revolution). You are claiming that a group took over something that no longer existed. For the bureaucracy to "take over" the functions of bourgeoisie, those functions would need to still exist. They didn&#39;t.


Bureaucracy, through taking over the functions of the bourgeoisie, took over their essential role: agency of capital. This never changed, because operation of capital as alienated labor, i.e., labor power, remained untouched, or better yet - restored - through Lenin&#39;s &#39;New Course&#39; in the spring of 1918.

Thus, "production relations" remained essentially as such.

However, because of its specific composition and social organization (i.e., through state, union and production apparatus that was merged together) formed around the state, through which bureaucracy exercised its agency of capital, it decomposed previous "property relations" - i.e., it expropriated, "socialized" and nationalized the means of production, took it over from the hands of the bourgeoisie, and turned it into state property.

Thus, as "property relations" changed, "relationship to the means of production" changed, as one subject - bureaucracy, replaced another one - bourgeoisie, through statification.

Diverting the argument? Interesting, considering that little gem above.

The differences between bourgeoisie and bureaucracy are innumerable and obvious. The bourgeoisie makes profit through private property, the bureaucracy uses the state apparatus to secure priveleges; the bourgeoisie employs workers directly, the bureaucracy cannot; the bourgeoisie works from capitalist property relations, the bureaucracy from progressive ones. You, for some reason, cannot grasp these simple facts, and instead have embarked on an absurdly futile attempt to characterize bureaucracy as bourgeoisie (and even worse, bourgeoisie as bureaucracy&#33;). This equation, as I have demonstrated, is irrational to the highest degree.

You claim that "operation of capital" proves your thesis. This does not take into account the reality involved. The bureaucracy operated capital through the state, and did not own it, but maintained a position of hierarchy and privilege. Now, is this what capitalists do? Not at all. If it was what capitalists did, then we would find CAPITALIST PROPERTY RELATIONS; we do not find any such relations. Your premise is disproven by your own admissions and omissions.

Your talk of capitalist production becomes all the more pathetic when held in contrast to the property relations that actually existed. Like I said, your argument (that capitalist production could be carried out in a society with progressive property relations) is exactly like saying a river can flow from a sand dune.


It&#39;s "contradictory" only if you believe that changes were "progressive". Typical Orthodox Trotskyist "can&#39;t let go" illusion. To cut through the denial game: am I saying they were not progressive? Yes, I am.

Your name calling and sloganeering cannot make up for your insufficient arguments. Finally, after your immature insults, we find the real source of your fallacy: you deny the reality of the Soviet Union. Please, kindly illustrate how property relations in the Soviet Union were capitalist. We will now see the mental gymnastics of the promoters of the state capitalist myth.


Oh, comrade, I am ignoring nothing. You&#39;re the one ignoring the fact that all those "other ways of subsistence" are just another form, a technical "shortcut", in the process of reproduction of labor power as a whole - the sole essence of wages.

Ignoring nothing? Comrade, calling the structures of the Soviet Union a mere "shortcut" away from capitalism is more than that: it is stark delusion. You don&#39;t even pretend to regard the specifics as important, you flatly discount them because they don&#39;t fit your miscalculations.


I am not. I am, however, using "the existence" of capitalist relations "to claim that they were", actually, [b]agents of capital.

Given the way your argument cannot explain the actual existing property relations in the Soviet Union or account for the many differences between bureaucracy and bourgeoisie, your argument does boil down to using the existence of bureaucracy to assert the existence of bourgeoisie, regardless of the facts. Now, you are saying that capitalist relations existed, which is in complete contradiction to the way the Soviet Union actually worked. Please refer to the (partial) list of differences between bureaucracy and bourgeoisie, as well as the progressive nature of Soviet property relations.


Wage slavery? We&#39;re not ignoring it, it&#39;s the center of our theory.

Wage slavery? Whose "wages" were not wages in the capitalist sense at all? That, it seems, is the essence of your theory, contradictions that defy logic.


Of course they can, but, to be precise, it were backward historical conditions of these countries that produced political basis (through such semi-revolutions) for introduction of these "progressive property relations" for the reason of perpetuation of capitalism.

In relation to feudal property relations, they can. In relation to socialist property relations, they cannot. That is what we mean by "progressive", and bringing up antiquated social structures is just a desperate attempt at deflection.


There was. Everything you wrote previous to denial is simply not true.

Workers themselves established workers&#39; control - not soviets, not Bolsheviks. They did it through factory committees. Bolsheviks (starting with &#39;Decree on Workers&#39; Control&#39; on November 14th 1917 - see Lenin&#39;s Draft (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/26.htm)) stopped that process, blocked "expropriation from below", and in those conditions of half-way halted process, installed party control in all relevant economic structures. After that, by retaining hierarchy, they simply reintroduced capitalism (to the full) through statification and the well known &#39;New Course&#39; (see “Left-Wing” Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/may/09.htm)).

And here lies the naked delusion of the so-called left-communists. By claiming that the Bolsheviks stopped worker control by a.) giving power to the Soviets and making it the basis for the government and b.) solidifying that system against counterrevolution, the argument becomes not just a criticism of the "bureaucracy", but of Marxism itself. The Bolsheviks used working class organization to form a dictatorship of the proletariat, and this defended worker control of the means of production. Your argument, however, holds that the establishment of this worker state is, impossibly, against the interests of the workers&#33; Nothing could be further from the truth. The state defends the interests of the workers and creates socialist relations; the plan of the "left-wing", on the other hand, is rely on idealist faith that Bakunin would have been proud of.

Time to go back to school:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works...festo/index.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm)

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by manic expression+--> (manic expression)They didn&#39;t.[/b]

They did.

Decree of 14th November even had to acknowledge existing owners. Concept of management, even thought it was challenged by the factory committees in almost half the factories, returned by Lenin&#39;s New Course. From that moment on it remained. One of the key issues for the Bolshevik government was continuation of production, in which they did not challenge old relations, but they challenged the new ones: "syndicalist deviation" wasn’t it called? (We don&#39;t have to remind ourselves here of the way in which Lenin fought against opposition - any - that proposed collective management in industry. Trotsky even went so far to call collective management "a Menshevik idea": IXth congress of the Party - in whatever context, it would be too much to swallow for anyone who can think clearly.)

Now, how was this "taking over" made? &#39;Vesenka&#39;, body created by &#39;Sovnarnom&#39; (not the Soviets) took over &#39;tzentri&#39;, already existing organs that were formed by tsarist government which were supposed to lead coordination of production for war, created new ones, and created &#39;sovnarkhozy&#39;, which (as decreed in March 1918) appointed factory and technical directors. Their own officials were appointed by &#39;Vesenka&#39;, from "above", not by workers. &#39;Vesenka&#39; was responsible only to &#39;Sovnarkom&#39;. Excuse my French, but "workers&#39; control" my ass&#33;


Originally posted by manic expression+--> (manic expression)You claim that "operation of capital" proves your thesis. This does not take into account the reality involved. The bureaucracy operated capital through the state, and did not own it, but maintained a position of hierarchy and privilege. Now, is this what capitalists do? Not at all. If it was what capitalists did, then we would find CAPITALIST PROPERTY RELATIONS; we do not find any such relations. Your premise is disproven by your own admissions and omissions.[/b]

This is so weak I don&#39;t know where to start. I repeat an argument which was not disproved by any attempt of denial so far: it&#39;s production relations that count. This is where capital operates. Not on in the field of property which only reproduces itself at the end of circulation, but in the sphere of production, where existing relations reproduce the essence itself - alienation of labor and commodity reproduction.

Your wining about differences between bourgeoisie and bureaucracy are stuck in the sphere of property forms, so they can&#39;t dig deeper. In the end, you can only indulge yourself by proclaiming how "bureaucratic forms of property" are more "progressive", which, considering everything stated above, means nothing to the working class which remains in the same place.


manic [email protected]
Ignoring nothing? Comrade, calling the structures of the Soviet Union a mere "shortcut" away from capitalism is more than that: it is stark delusion. You don&#39;t even pretend to regard the specifics as important, you flatly discount them because they don&#39;t fit your miscalculations.

Sticking blindly to "property relations" and "structures" and disregarding the fact that they were operating in the "process of reproduction of labor power" is what should be worrying you; and many others, calling themselves "communists" for that matter.


manic expression
Given the way your argument cannot explain the actual existing property relations in the Soviet Union or account for the many differences between bureaucracy and bourgeoisie, your argument does boil down to using the existence of bureaucracy to assert the existence of bourgeoisie, regardless of the facts. Now, you are saying that capitalist relations existed, which is in complete contradiction to the way the Soviet Union actually worked. Please refer to the (partial) list of differences between bureaucracy and bourgeoisie, as well as the progressive nature of Soviet property relations.

The list refers only to the beginnings and the ends of the circulation of capital, positions in which only property differences can manifest themselves, but it completely misses out on the "middle", the ground in which these property objects subjectify themselves in subsumption of living human activity, i.e., labor power.

Profit - your first difference - of the bourgeoisie comes from the whole end-capital [C&#39;], biger in value than the start-capital [C]. It [C&#39;] turns into reproduction of capital on one side [C] and other things you call "privileges" that bureaucracy has, (or &#39;luxuries&#39;, political power, etc.), on the other [surplus value - turned into profit] ... what you are missing on is that the state can&#39;t itself "produce" privileges, but privileges stem from the manner in which the bureaucracy uses state apparatus and functions of employer and "owner" of capital to "pick up" surplus value produced by the workers. That surplus vaule, just as it can turn into profit for the bourgeoisie, in the same manner is detached from recirculated capital [C] (put in new motion), and used by the bureaucracy - as "state properity" - by its own [&#39;collective&#39;] will for creating these "privileges". I see no essential difference.

Direct and "indirect" employment - your second objection - is completely irrelevant. What&#39;s relevant is the fact that employment is purchase and consumption of labor power.

Third difference ... oh, wait, what was it? "Progressive" property relations? Well, call them what you like. After this, you&#39;re out of differences, it seems.


* * *


As far as restricting workers&#39; control goes, I&#39;m right, because you did not manage to bring out any historical evidence, any valid document, and I did: Lenin&#39;s own drafts and speeches that prove my points.

Comrade, your blind faith in what "the Bolsheviks did" even makes you construct sloppy arguments such as >>By claiming that the Bolsheviks stopped worker control by ... giving power to the Soviets ...<<: it was the workers&#39;, peasants&#39; and soldiers&#39; votes that gave "all power to the Soviets", not the Bolshevik party... Bolshevik party took those votes to create it&#39;s own government, soon independent of the Soviets (which were soon independent of the voters -- call it what you may, "necessity", whatnot, but it&#39;s a fact).

What were you saying? ...

>>The proletariat will use its political supremacy [and its working class delegates, Lenin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Trotsky, etc, subject to recall at any time by their respective factories where they work at] to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie , to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State [not through their own autonomous organs from below but as decreed by their working class delegates from above], i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class [scratch that]; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible [even if it means changing absolutely nothing for themselves].<< [Communist Manifesto, 1848.]

School&#39;s this way:

>>In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved and extended organization of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this programme [of the Communist Manifesto and its political propositions] has in some details been antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that “[b]the working class cannot simply lay hold of ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” << [Preface, German edition, 1872.]

[syndicat]

i think the Soviet Union was clearly a class system. but I don&#39;t think it was capitalist. first, there were no capitalists. second, allocation of labor and other resources in social production was not governed by the market. capitalism presupposes a system of commodity production. the capitalist starts with some money, M, uses it to buy labor power (V) and machines etc &copy;, and then produces some commodities with the expectation of selling them on the market to get an amount of money, M&#39;, which is greater than M. the Soviet economy didn&#39;t work that way. the central planning authorities tried to determine what demand was, and based on political critieria, developed a plan to allocate resources to various operations. Prices were only then set AFTER the decisions had been made about what to produce. Prices available on markets were thus not what governed the planning process.

so, who was the dominating class? i believe it was the coordinator class. the coordinator class also exists in mature capitalism, but as a class intermediate between the capitalists and the proletarians. the coordinators are the managers and top professional who make up the hierarchies in the corporations and the state in mature capitalism. their class position isn&#39;t based on ownership, but on a relative monopolization of the empowering tasks -- conceptualization, planning, decision-making authority. This class is subordinate to the capitalists within capitalism but in extreme circumstances it can become a ruling class and this is what happened in the Soviet Union.

to see this, we need to consider the ways an administrative/professional/planning layer was consolidated over industry and society in Russia. first of all, most of the soviets, at least the ones in the big cities, were not very well controlled by the workers. power was centralized into the executive committee, first by the Mensheviks and continued by the Bolsheviks, and then in a smaller body, the presidium. these executive committes were run by members of the intelligentsia, mainly, or party stalwarts.

and then there was the setting up of Vesenkha, the central planning committee, in Nov. 1917, this was appointed from above, by Sovnarkom, the government executive. Not by the workers. Lenin&#39;s idea of "workers control" was merely that workers committees would exercise "surveillance" or "checking" over management. he did not advocate, in 1917, workers expropriating capitalists and taking over management.

at the first Russian Trade Union Congress in Jan 1918 the syndicalists and maximalists advocated regional and national congresses of the factory committees, to develop planning "from below." This was voted down with the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks voting against.

The various czarist regulatory bodies in the regions for industrial regulation and planning were taken over, from above, by Vesenkha.

Now, once you&#39;re committed to the state creating a central plan, this naturally leads to the idea of a management hierarchy over production. that&#39;s because the planners are going to want to have their own bosses on site to make sure that their plans are carried out.

by the spring of 1918 Trotsky and Lenin were beating the drum for one-man management, managers appointed from above. by late 1920 all of the collective management committees, derived from the shop committee movement in the revolution, were gone, replaced with one-man managers.

this same preference for control from above through a top-down hierarchy was shown in the replacement of the Red Guard by a professional, hierarchical army officer corps in the spring of 1918, with the creation of the new Red Army, and the hiring of 30,000 czarist officers to run it, with all the old privileges of an officer caste.

what we see here is the emerence of an administrative layer that dominates over the working class. in the First Five Year Plan of 1929 there was a program called "proletarianization." This was a big drive to recruit Communist party members from the working class, army and peasantry to go thru university training to become managers and engineers and the like. At that time most of the managers and professionals in the hierarchy in industry and government were inherited from the old pre-revolutionary era, and their loyalty to the party was in question. the aim of the "proletarianization" plan was NOT to educate workers in general so that they could self-manage industry. it was a kind of upward mobility program for party loyalists, who would take the higher paying, more powerful jobs in management, engineering etc.

thus you end with a system that has public ownership of property but there is a dominating class, the plant managers, generals, elite Gosplan planners, political apparatchiks. this is not a capitalist ruling class but a coordinatorist ruling class. this is why i say that the old Soviet Union was a coordinatorist mode of production.

[IronColumn]

No one wants your weak Parecon swindicalist tripe. No one cares about your artifically determined and poorly thought out "coordinator class". A capitalist class owns the means of production and exploits workers. This is precisely what there was in Russia. It&#39;s especially unimpressive that you pretend there was a "new class" when the vast majority of the "one man managers" in the factories were the old capitalists themselves. That and the "socialist production cycles", an observable phenomenon within the USSR, which quite clearly were the classic capitalist crises of accumulation.

[syndicat]

IC:
No one wants your weak Parecon swindicalist tripe. No one cares about your artifically determined and poorly thought out "coordinator class". A capitalist class owns the means of production and exploits workers. This is precisely what there was in Russia. It&#39;s especially unimpressive that you pretend there was a "new class" when the vast majority of the "one man managers" in the factories were the old capitalists themselves. That and the "socialist production cycles", an observable phenomenon within the USSR, which quite clearly were the classic capitalist crises of accumulation.

Glad to see you can offer no cogent counter-arguments to the theory i offered.

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by syndicat+--> (syndicat)but I don&#39;t think it was capitalist. first, there were no capitalists.[/b]

But what are &#39;capitalists&#39;?


syndicat
capitalism presupposes a system of commodity production. the capitalist starts with some money, M, uses it to buy labor power (V) and machines etc ©, and then produces some commodities with the expectation of selling them on the market to get an amount of money, M&#39;, which is greater than M. the Soviet economy didn&#39;t work that way. the central planning authorities tried to determine what demand was, and based on political critieria, developed a plan to allocate resources to various operations. Prices were only then set AFTER the decisions had been made about what to produce. Prices available on markets were thus not what governed the planning process

You mean this:

M - C [Lp + MoP] - P - C&#39; - M&#39;

But commodity production does not base itself on the beginning or the end of this process, but on the contrary, in the middle. It would be like saying that there is no commodity production - and thus no commodities - because there was "no market", and we could base this only on a fact that prices were set according to plan, and not otherwise. This would be like saying that money has to exist for commodities to exist - but we know it&#39;s otherwise.

To be exact, commodity production bases itself on production process (not &#39;market&#39;). This would mean, basically, that commodities come from alienated labor, i.e., labor detached from producer for production of externally determined product.

The quality and quantity of this [social] product is not set by "political criteria", but like all other motives for production and reproduction of commodities, by social need. This need may be expressed by the competition of confronted capitals ("free market"), or simply by a unified plan of one, unified capital, controlled by the bureaucracy. Now, considering the fact that bureaucracy controls the end social product (just as it controls the means of production, work process and its &#39;plan&#39;), it now has to 1.) reproduce labor power for 2.) continuation of this same process. Thus, the end-line of commodity production [C&#39;] is thus split in two: one side goes to reproduction of labor power, and this quantity-quality is determined by the "cost", the &#39;need&#39; for reproduction of labor power as a whole, i.e., the working class and its abilities to work (it also goes to reproduction of other commodity, MoP = raw materials and amortization); the other side (surplus commodities or surplus value) goes to wherever bureaucracy decides by consensus plan, just like individual bureaucrat decides what to do with his own surplus value; it may go to expansion of production, expansion of "privileges", even waste.

So, this circulation looks like this:

Bureaucracy controls the means of production [MoP] [MoP as constant capital, including machines and raw materials], thus it needs labor power [Lp] for the production process [P], which is determined by plan, which is determined by existing social needs. Labor, in having no control over itself in the production process, thus alienates itself, receiving in return commodities it needs for its own reproduction as a commodity [C = Lp] (the need, as we concluded, is planned ahead). Thus:

C [Lp + MoP] - P - C&#39; [(C = reproduction of Lp and MoP) + (surplus value)]

Beginning and the end - M and M&#39; - is now spared of marked regulated value-price transformation (because there is no more confronted capitals) and it is determined by plan (a unified capital).

Therefore, I can&#39;t agree with the rest of your post, where you try to explain "coordinator class" as something other than the class which controls the whole capitalist production process. (The historical facts you bring out are, indeed, correct. I&#39;ve already spoke of those issues in above posts.)

[syndicat]

i think this is a lot of obscure language to avoid what is fairly obvious. it&#39;s sort of like what happened with the Ptelemaic theory of the universe when confronted with data that showed the planets don&#39;t move in perfect cirlces. they added the complication of epicycles. eventually the costs of maintaining that theory became too great and a better theory replaced it.

same thing here in regard to Marx&#39;s two-class theory of capitalism. Marx didn&#39;t live long enough to see the growth and increased visibility of the coordinator class, with the emergence of the big corporation and the growth of the state in the 20th century. so religious marxists want to continue trying to stuff round pegs in square holes.

the state is not a class but an institution. classes are groups of humans who are differentiated into groups by power relations in social production. the capitalists are a class who own capital and invest it in commodity production to expand their capital. capital itself is a power relation. the owner of the capital can command resources for social production by buying them in the market. they purchase labor power and they purchase other inputs and then set up a production process where labor is alienated precisely so that they can keep costs down and ensure that there is sufficient marketable output for them to make a profit.

capitalism does in fact start with a market. it is a system of market governance of social production. the idea that human society could be managed by the market never occurred in human history until the 18th century, as Karl Polanyi argues cogently in "The Great Transformation".

in previous social formations there were markets and there was currency (coins). but not capitalism. a significant class of propertyless people available for exploitation on a labor market had to come into existence to have capitalism.

you refer to "the bureaucracy" but offer no theory of this group. this is in fact an inadequate term for a class. that&#39;s because there are "bureaucracies" in all sorts of organizations, in the Red Cross, the Boy Scouts, the unions, AARP, etc. to have a dominating class you need to explain what the basis of their power is. also, if "the bureaucracy" are the dominant group, where are the capitalists?

with the coordinator class its power isn&#39;t based on ownership of capital, but on a relative monopolization of empowering work, the planning, design, conceptualization work and the decision-making authority. Concentration of these aspects of production into a minority empowers this class, and enables them to control the working class, even if they don&#39;t own the means of production.

if prices are set after decisions are made about allocation of resources in production, thru a central planning process, then you don&#39;t have a system of commodity production.

if separation of control of labor from the laborers were sufficient for capitalism to exist, then why were ancient slave-based societies not capitalist?

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by syndicat+--> (syndicat)you refer to "the bureaucracy" but offer no theory of this group. this is in fact an inadequate term for a class. that&#39;s because there are "bureaucracies" in all sorts of organizations, in the Red Cross, the Boy Scouts, the unions, AARP, etc. to have a dominating class you need to explain what the basis of their power is.[/b]

I explained the basis: control of the whole production process, whole circulation of capital, whole capital, thorugh administrative functions granted [this] control by legislature.


Originally posted by syndicat+--> (syndicat)with the coordinator class its power isn&#39;t based on ownership of capital, but on a relative monopolization of empowering work, the planning, design, conceptualization work and the decision-making authority. Concentration of these aspects of production into a minority empowers this class, and enables them to control the working class, even if they don&#39;t own the means of production.[/b]

Exactly, this is what I argued: it&#39;s not formal ownership ("property relations" that Leninists are stuck to), but factual control. Therefore, your question "where are the capitalists?" is irrelevant, since it&#39;s not important who "owns" capital, but who controls it from start to finish and all over again.

The question is: where are the "agents of capital?" This is why Marx&#39;s theory is not based on property relations (owners and "non-owners") but on production relations (capital and labor) which, with its own reproduction, reproduce certain forms of property. That&#39;s why we recognize two basic sides.


[email protected]
if prices are set after decisions are made about allocation of resources in production, thru a central planning process, then you don&#39;t have a system of commodity production.

You do. I explained it. Besides, prices were never fixed for eternity. Conditions changed constantly - just as production process changed, so prices had to fluctuate. This real tendency was always followed by administrative action: &#39;loosening&#39; of control (certain production centers could determine prices of their commodities) or &#39;tightening&#39; (according new prices).

Think about this: state decides on all prices for two years, but suddenly, at the beginning of next year, there are not enough resources to "allocate" in production, so - in order to keep an illusion of "fixed prices" that are "not really prices" - state has to 1.) increase labor time (for extraction of absolute surplus value), 2.) decrease "wages that are not really wages" and 3.) introduce "bonuses that are not really incentive for consumption of labor power" but "rewards". These things happened about every year ... but somehow we choose to believe that there was "no exchange", "no commodity production" and thus "no labor power" - when in reality, commodity production operated starting from reproduction of labor power and extended to every sphere of social life.


syndicat
if separation of control of labor from the laborers were sufficient for capitalism to exist, then why were ancient slave-based societies not capitalist?

Because slave as a person was considered an object of property, while proletarians alienated their activity for certain amount of time in exchange for certain amount of exchange values* - that&#39;s why capitalism is necessarily a production of surplus value, since "separation of control of labor from the laborers" exists together with a &#39;control of laborers over themselves&#39;.

(* Sometimes, these exchange values - like in "planned" economies during crises - could be replaced directly by use values: as a "shortcut" through whole "free exchange" process.)


P.S.

I just have to adress the issue of "social need", in case someone has objections to my previous post:

These "social needs" (in capitalist system) are not decided by those who consume but by those who control the production process. They produce to satisfy the need, not one determined by consumption, but one determined by production, production of labor power, commodity necessary for the production process and thus production of surplus value ("fertilization of value", basis for the capitalist system from the standpoint of capital). (That means that in capitalist system production exists for reproduction of itself - of capital, not for consumption. This means that products are made to be exchanged for labor power. This exists in "free market" economies, where exchange of commodities is regulated by competition; and it exists in "planned" economies, where unified capital subsumes unified labor power.)

If production would be orientated towards satisfaction of needs of those who consume (not for reproduction of labor power), production would have to be controlled by those who produce (workers); in this way, human needs and production process would be unified in total direct control of the producers, the working class. This way, when production for exchange is abolished, commodity production ceases to exist; when production for human needs is introduced, alienated labor ceases to exist and "free association of labor" appears.

[syndicat]

The question is: where are the "agents of capital?" This is why Marx&#39;s theory is not based on property relations (owners and "non-owners") but on production relations (capital and labor) which, with its own reproduction, reproduce certain forms of property. That&#39;s why we recognize two basic sides.

First of all, I don&#39;t accept Marx&#39;s base/superstructure distinction. I think it doesn&#39;t hold.

Putting that aside, it is true that, for Marxism, "ownership", being a legal term is supposed to be "superstructural", so it is some underlying power relation that "capital" refers to. but that is what i said. i said it is a power relation. but it is a power relation understood in market terms. capital is the power to use the market to command labor power (presupposing that there is a class of propertyless wage earners available in a labor market) and other means of production. capitalism is not understandable only in terms of relations internal to workplaces, but also presupposes the market relations.

Your argument about the old Soviet economy seemed to be that wherever there are exchange relations there is capitalism or a market. This is not the case.

Exchange would exist under any economic arrangement possible today. that&#39;s because if you consume things produced by others, there is exchange. you do a certain amount of work, producing X, and others do a certain amount of work producing Y, and the X you produce is consumed by them, and the Y they produce is consumed by you. that is an exchange.

A market-governed system is a particular type of system of exchange. It presupposes separation of pools of unilateral control where people who have this control use it to secure advantage in the sharing out of the social product. They use this control, that is, as bargaining power. A market system is a system of allocation by bargaining power.

When an economy is unified via a system of central planning, you don&#39;t have a market system. You therefore don&#39;t have a system of commodity production.

Moreover, i don&#39;t think that even a system of commodity production is sufficient for capitalism. if the economy were a system of simple commodity production, made up of self-employed farmers and artisans, it wouldn&#39;t be capitalist.

similarly, if you have a system of "market socialism" of either the statist or pseudo-self-managed kind like in Yugoslavia, you still have control by the coordinator class, not a capitalist class.


I explained the basis: control of the whole production process, whole circulation of capital, whole capital, thorugh administrative functions granted [this] control by legislature.

this doesn&#39;t really differentiate the bureaucracy as a class from other classes. what is the basis of their control. that it is granted by the legislature is too legalistic.

[Lamanov]

Market relations, and those would be exchange relations, are relations between things, between living and dead labor, not between conscious individuals who "allocate" them, not between "political norms" or "property forms". You have a market system wherever relationship between things in the process of exchange takes place. Whether this market is left to "free" competition in which confronting commodities transform their exchange value into prices, or whether it is "controlled" by the almighty hand of State, as long as exchange exist: alienation of use values for exchange values and vice versa, market is there.

Even if the State decided to regulate (if it ever could - and it didn&#39;t) all conditions of "allocation" and every single product, it was still operating on a capitalist principle because it had to exchange given amount of social product (which it controlled) for social labor power (which it did not control outside production) in order to turn constant capital into surplus value through process of production in order to reproduce its social position: this is what characterizes capitalist production and only capitalist production.

[From the standpoint of capital, this process (production of surplus value) is the essence of capitalism, its very own logic by which it has to operate. It managed -- to say the least -- to impose this logic on every "coordinator class" in the world, turning them into - excuse my "Marxism" - "agents of capital".]

Thus, market exists because relations between value forms take place, not because there are people who "bargain". As far as this relation is extended, but "bargaining power" is replaced by "planning power", market, albeit not "free", remains.

As far as your objections on bureaucracy go, I&#39;m not sure where the problem is, except the fact that I chose to call them what they are in relation to state capital - &#39;agents of capital&#39;, and you give them a name of "coordinator class". Your argument that this "coordinator class" in Yugoslavia controlled market forces is not quite true. Market in Yugoslavia was mostly "free", that is, based on competition, prior to 1974 Constitution, when state was given a more hand in regulation and "planning" (but local bureaucracies got more political power and &#39;decentralization&#39; in return).

[syndicat]

Even if the State decided to regulate (if it ever could - and it didn&#39;t) all conditions of "allocation" and every single product, it was still operating on a capitalist principle because it had to exchange given amount of social product (which it controlled) for social labor power (which it did not control outside production) in order to turn constant capital into surplus value through process of production in order to reproduce its social position: this is what characterizes capitalist production and only capitalist production.

your statement here confuses the state with people. you are saying, literally, the the state has a "social position". but it is people who have social positions. the state is an institution.

moreover, it seems that according to your overly abstract definition of capitalism, even a communist mode of production would be capitalist. according to the definition of "communist mode of production" offered by Reznick and Wolff in "Class Theory and History" a communist mode of production is one where those who produce the social surplus appropriate it.

now it could happen that the producers collectively require that able-bodied adults earn an entitlement to their share of the social product through work effort. in a revolutionary society emerging from capitalism i think it highly likely the working class would have such a requirement, to avoid "free riders" who would otherwise be likely due to the individualistic habits engrained by capitalist society.

in such a case, the society gains the benefit of the labor abilities of producers when they work, and in exchange for this workers receive a portion of the social product. insofar as the entire society allocates some portion of its total labor to replacing and enhancing productive capacity, there is a surplus over and above immediate consumption.

there isn&#39;t capital in such an arrangement, as i see it, since there aren&#39;t people or organizations with the power to buy labor power and other factors in markets and then control them hierarchically in production for the purpose of selling commodities in markets for a profit. so it isn&#39;t capitalist. but it satisfies your defintion of "capitalism" because there is a surplus for society generated by producers whose labor power is employed by the society in exchange for their share of the social product.

yet it satisfies Wolff and Reznick&#39;s definition of communism since the surplus is appropriated by the collective producers, assuming the producers manage production and control the overall social planning system.

[IronColumn]

So when the USSR collapsed, and its magical ahistorical system of coordinatorist bureaucracy ended, it was simply coincidence that the state-capitalist bureaucrats quickly became private property capitalists? Or that state capital, previously the domain of "coordinators", so quickly became private capital? And now, as the state moves to reel in more private capitalists, are we supposed to believe that a coordinatorist bureaucratic drive is behind this?

Parecon, coordinatorism, and its pitiful theorists are simply a detritus from the New Left which was attempting to explain the seemingly "new nature" of Fordist capitalism. As events revealed, there was nothing new about capitalism and the everpresent crisis of accumulation manifested itself once more (and will do so again). No one needs to take the time to present a cogent response to your gibberish.

[syndicat]

IC:
"new nature" of Fordist capitalism. As events revealed, there was nothing new about capitalism and the everpresent crisis of accumulation manifested itself once more

"Fordist capitalism", "ever present crisis of accumulation" -- and you&#39;re the one who accuses others of gibberish.

so there was no difference between, say, the capitalist putter-outers of the 1700s and the corporate capitalism of the late 20th century? talk about "ahistorical" &#33;

coordinatorism is an unstable system, especially so when in the context of world capitalism. capitalism has a long history of absorbing and transforming other forms of class society. the coordinators could not pass on their class status thru simple inheritance of property. not owning the means of production, this weakened their position viz a vis the working class, which is shown by things like the lower ratio between coordinator and worker income in the USSR than between the plutocracy and the workers in the USA, or even in other capitalist countries.

it was thus in the interests of the coordinators to try to finagle a way to transform the productive assets from public property to private. centrally planned economies tend inevitably to generate authoritarianism and working class passivity. there is little avenue for working class self-development and collective self-organization. this makes it easier for the coordinators to organize a scheme -- a revolution from above -- to transform the means of production to private property, which involved a vast theft of public assets.

if nothing changed you have to explain the vast decline in the economic situation of the working class in the USSR.

your resort to rhetorical blather is cover for the poverty of your theoretical understanding.

[catch]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16, 2007 09:11 am
[QUOTE=rev0lt,August 16, 2007 08:58 am]
I would argue that it was in a transitional stage between capitalism and socialism, with bureaucratic deformations.

I would argue that they are deformed workers&#39; states, considering that they still had a progressive character; millions had access to welfare, free education and healthcare, and other initial gains. If they were truly &#39;capitalist&#39; they wouldn&#39;t need to give all those concessions to the working class.
Yeah because there wasn&#39;t universal education, free health care at point of use or welfare in Western countries like the UK during Stalin&#39;s time. Oh wait....

State capitalism became the dominant form for both sides during the Cold War (with the process starting beforehand of course). Going to read the rest of the thread before I respond further.

[catch]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16, 2007 08:17 pm
quoting Trotsky: The state assumes directly and from the very beginning a dual character: socialistic, insofar as it defends social property in the means of production; bourgeois, insofar as the distribution of life’s goods is carried out with a capitalistic measure of value and all the consequences ensuing therefrom.
That statement typifies the fetishism of formal ownership over social relations that confuses so many of these discussions. The modern state is a big capitalist enterprise - employing millions of people, holding shares in other interests etc. etc. so you think the NHS, workers co-ops, other concerns which don&#39;t have capitalists in top hats holding formal ownership aren&#39;t capitalist then? That people who work for them aren&#39;t exploited, don&#39;t perform alienated labour? I should hope not.

[catch]

Originally posted by "IronColumn+August 16, 2007 11:31 pm"--> ("IronColumn &#064; August 16, 2007 11:31 pm") Furthermore, the inner capitalist content of the USSR shows up in such prostitute actions as its proclamation of the right to national self-determination, that "petty bourgeois humbug" (Luxemburg), the sell-out at Brest-Litovsk, the Kronstadt infamy, NEP, and the 1922 Rapallo Treaty (which provided arms and training to the same German soldiers who would be shooting down German revolutionaries in 1923). Or even in the philosophy of its leader, Lenin himself, as demonstrated in Pannekoek&#39;s "Lenin as Philosopher".

These are not mistakes, these are simply the reactionary policies of a capitalist state, which foreshadow many of the more notorious Soviet actions (Spain, Molotov-Ribbentrop, East Germany, etc). [/b]
Not to mention the introduction of taylorism, piece work, "socialist competition", the Vesenka set up at the end of 1917, the incorporation of the unions and later factory committees into the state and their role in maintaining labour discpline which began early 1918 (a process mirrored in the West).

And yes I don&#39;t think these can be called "mistakes", nor can they be called the evil actions of the wrong leader - I think they were inherent in the politics of the Bolsheviks and rooted in the Social Democracy of Kautsky etc. (is it Pannekoek who says that or someone else).

Then we also have to look at the resistance to this by workers in Moscow and Petrograd as early as 1918, and when it became the USSR proper, real working class strikes such as the ones in Vichuga and Teikovo in 1932 (http://libcom.org/history/1932-vichuga-uprising) which were about wages, intensification of labour - in other words responses to 100% capitalist policy designed to increase the exploitation of labour and increase the extraction of surplus value.


"manic expression"
Capitalists own things and employ people; the Soviet bureaucracy did neither.
So who owns a corporation? Not the directors or chief executive. Big share holders can be workers&#39; pension funds (some of the biggest international investors) or other corporations. Are the directors and chief executives working class? If an enterprise was owned by coalition of pension funds would it be controlled by the workers? Would they then not be exploited? Looking at purely formal ownership, rather than actual social relations is a very poor method of analysis that essentially slides into legalism as DJ-TC has already mentioned.

Xanthus:
Are we not debating this seriously flawed theory? How can a responce to the theory listed in the thread topic be invalid?
This just shows your disregard for the topic. Cliff wasn&#39;t the first to come up with a theory of state capitalism, nor the last, but his was one of the worst. I&#39;d suggest reading Aufheben&#39;s four part article "What was the USSR?" which starts here: http://libcom.org/library/WhatwastheUSSRAufheben1 to get an overview of the various theories of state capitalism, rather than simply posting trot hack vs. trot hack articles to "refute" what we&#39;re saying.

[manic expression]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28, 2007 08:31 am
So who owns a corporation? Not the directors or chief executive. Big share holders can be workers&#39; pension funds (some of the biggest international investors) or other corporations. Are the directors and chief executives working class? If an enterprise was owned by coalition of pension funds would it be controlled by the workers? Would they then not be exploited? Looking at purely formal ownership, rather than actual social relations is a very poor method of analysis that essentially slides into legalism as DJ-TC has already mentioned.
A vintage example of this insanity. You have completely failed to look at relationships to the means of production, property relations and modes of production. In case you forgot, capitalists OWN the means of production and directly exploit labor; the Soviet bureaucracy did no such thing. Capitalists create profit for themselves through worker creation of surplus value; the Soviet bureaucracy used the state apparatus to hold priveleges. More than anything else, the Soviet Union did not have capitalist property relations, and so it is plainly stupid to say that it was capitalist or saw capitalist modes of production. Your argument, along with DJ-TC&#39;s delusional ramblings, goes against rationality and fact.

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by manic expression+September 01, 2007 02:49 pm--> (manic expression &#064; September 01, 2007 02:49 pm) A vintage example of this insanity. You have completely failed to look at relationships to the means of production, property relations and modes of production. [/b]

Stubborn and persistant, aren&#39;t we?


Originally posted by manic expression+--> (manic expression)In case you forgot, capitalists OWN the means of production and directly exploit labor; the Soviet bureaucracy did no such thing.[/b]

[Emphasis added] Yes, so the state owned them. Thus, bureaucracy did it "indirectly".


manic [email protected]
Capitalists create profit for themselves through worker creation of surplus value; the Soviet bureaucracy used the state apparatus to hold priveleges.

Where do the "priveleges" come from? Well, you kind&#39;a answered your own riddle, but you just can&#39;t (or won&#39;t) see it.

I&#39;ll give you a hint:


manic expression
Capitalists create profit for themselves through worker creation of surplus value; the Soviet bureaucracy used the state apparatus to hold priveleges.

These priveleges come from the surplus value created by workers in the production process.

Need I explain further? :mellow:

[manic expression]

Stubborn and persistant, aren&#39;t we?

Don&#39;t play that game, your arguments fell flat on their face on this very point (and this very response recalls the immature side-stepping you engaged in before).


State owned it.

And the bureaucracy did not. The bureaucracy was a parasitic development ON the state. This all means what you just said: the bureaucracy did not directly exploit labor.


Where do the "priveleges" come from? Well, you kind&#39;a answered your own riddle, but you just can&#39;t (or won&#39;t) see it.

I&#39;ll give you a hint:


Originally posted by manic expression
Capitalists create profit for themselves through worker creation of surplus value; the Soviet bureaucracy used the state apparatus to hold priveleges.

These priveleges come from the surplus value created by workers in the production process.

Need I explain further? :mellow:

Vapid and wrong as usual, the same delusional tripe that I&#39;ve come to expect from you. Your argument amounts to claiming that is true...because you said so. Those priveleges came only from an abuse of the worker state, not from profit gained by surplus value. The bureaucracy owned nothing themselves, they employed no one, and yet here you are, claiming that this constitutes capitalist relations&#33; The contradictions inherent in your fictitious argument are far too obvious.

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by manic [email protected] 01, 2007 06:45 pm
And the bureaucracy did not. The bureaucracy was a parasitic development ON the state. This all means what you just said: the bureaucracy did not directly exploit labor.

As I&#39;ve said: >>[i]bureaucracy did it "indirectly"<< but you may remain in your adoration of "exploited workers&#39; state" that "doesn&#39;t exploit workers".


Those priveleges came only from an abuse of the worker state, not from profit gained by surplus value. The bureaucracy owned nothing themselves, they employed no one...

Oh boy. You&#39;re reaching. :rolleyes:

Enjoy your denial game.

[catch]

Originally posted by manic [email protected] 01, 2007 02:49 pm

A vintage example of this insanity. You have completely failed to look at relationships to the means of production, property relations and modes of production. In case you forgot, capitalists OWN the means of production and directly exploit labor; the Soviet bureaucracy did no such thing.
So Adam Crozier and Allan Leighton OWN Royal Mail then do they?

[manic expression]

Originally posted by DJ&#045;TC+September 01, 2007 06:53 pm--> (DJ-TC @ September 01, 2007 06:53 pm)
manic [email protected] 01, 2007 06:45 pm
And the bureaucracy did not. The bureaucracy was a parasitic development ON the state. This all means what you just said: the bureaucracy did not directly exploit labor.

As I&#39;ve said: >>[i]bureaucracy did it "indirectly"<< but you may remain in your adoration of "exploited workers&#39; state" that "doesn&#39;t exploit workers".


Those priveleges came only from an abuse of the worker state, not from profit gained by surplus value. The bureaucracy owned nothing themselves, they employed no one...

Oh boy. You&#39;re reaching. :rolleyes:

Enjoy your denial game. [/b]
Yawn. You&#39;re missing the point: the FACT that they did it "indirectly" in the manner that they did is exactly what disproves your myths. The bureaucracy got their gains through abuse of the worker state; nothing more, nothing less. You continue to ignore this undeniable fact and simply repeat your fictitious talking points.

[manic expression]

Originally posted by catch+September 02, 2007 01:19 pm--> (catch @ September 02, 2007 01:19 pm)
manic [email protected] 01, 2007 02:49 pm

A vintage example of this insanity. You have completely failed to look at relationships to the means of production, property relations and modes of production. In case you forgot, capitalists OWN the means of production and directly exploit labor; the Soviet bureaucracy did no such thing.
So Adam Crozier and Allan Leighton OWN Royal Mail then do they? [/b]
I have no idea. Maybe you could expand on that point and contribute something worthwhile.

[McCaine]

To be honest, I don&#39;t really see what the point is of arguing whether the USSR was "state capitalist" or a "deformed worker&#39;s state" or a "state bureaucracy" or whatever. These are all just terminological issues, and I don&#39;t think it adds anything to our knowledge or understanding to fight about precisely what term to use. As long as we can come to an agreement about what was historically there, it doesn&#39;t really matter what we call it.

That said, I would recommend the opponents of the "state capitalism" thesis (or its equivalents) read Paresh Chattopadhyay&#39;s excellent The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience. Using the only criterion Marx & Engels themselves gave for the existence of capitalism, namely the "double freedom of the worker", he analyzes the USSR from that point of view and demonstrates that this double freedom held at all circumstances. Whether you think that means it&#39;s deformed or not is immaterial - what matters is that it was a society based on accumulation and exploitation, which is the entire point.

Now where I think things go wrong is that a lot of people feel inclined to want to defend the USSR, or at least the early USSR, as a real improvement in terms of social development, especially compared to Czarist Russia. And because of this, they want to call it socialist, since they associate everything socialist with goodness and everything good with socialism. Yet I see absolutely no reason why it cannot be both true that the USSR was a society based on accumulation (Moses and all the prophets and all that) and yet also a vast improvement, at least at first, over prior societies. Can&#39;t we just agree on that?

[black magick hustla]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18, 2007 03:42 pm
To be honest, I don&#39;t really see what the point is of arguing whether the USSR was "state capitalist" or a "deformed worker&#39;s state" or a "state bureaucracy" or whatever. These are all just terminological issues, and I don&#39;t think it adds anything to our knowledge or understanding to fight about precisely what term to use. As long as we can come to an agreement about what was historically there, it doesn&#39;t really matter what we call it.

That said, I would recommend the opponents of the "state capitalism" thesis (or its equivalents) read Paresh Chattopadhyay&#39;s excellent The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience. Using the only criterion Marx & Engels themselves gave for the existence of capitalism, namely the "double freedom of the worker", he analyzes the USSR from that point of view and demonstrates that this double freedom held at all circumstances. Whether you think that means it&#39;s deformed or not is immaterial - what matters is that it was a society based on accumulation and exploitation, which is the entire point.

Now where I think things go wrong is that a lot of people feel inclined to want to defend the USSR, or at least the early USSR, as a real improvement in terms of social development, especially compared to Czarist Russia. And because of this, they want to call it socialist, since they associate everything socialist with goodness and everything good with socialism. Yet I see absolutely no reason why it cannot be both true that the USSR was a society based on accumulation (Moses and all the prophets and all that) and yet also a vast improvement, at least at first, over prior societies. Can&#39;t we just agree on that?
There are practical implications to wether it is "deformed/degenerate workers state" or state-capitalist.

If those states are really state-capitalist, they demand total opposition in the same way any capitalist state demands it.

If they are deformed or degenerate, they should be protected against imperialists, while at the same time, actively pursuing to oust their bureacracy.

[YKTMX]

There are practical implications to wether it is "deformed/degenerate workers state" or state-capitalist.

If those states are really state-capitalist, they demand total opposition in the same way any capitalist state demands it.

If they are deformed or degenerate, they should be protected against imperialists, while at the same time, actively pursuing to oust their bureacracy.

That&#39;s wrong.

We would defend ANY state, regardless of its class or social formation, against imperialist aggression.

Therefore, while I think Cuba, DPRK, Vietnam etc. are "state capitalist" and thus "just as bad" as market capitalist states, I would still defend them against imperialism.

I don&#39;t want to have another debate about state capitalism but I don&#39;t want the issue to be confused.

[black magick hustla]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19, 2007 03:01 pm

There are practical implications to wether it is "deformed/degenerate workers state" or state-capitalist.

If those states are really state-capitalist, they demand total opposition in the same way any capitalist state demands it.

If they are deformed or degenerate, they should be protected against imperialists, while at the same time, actively pursuing to oust their bureacracy.

That&#39;s wrong.

We would defend ANY state, regardless of its class or social formation, against imperialist aggression.

Therefore, while I think Cuba, DPRK, Vietnam etc. are "state capitalist" and thus "just as bad" as market capitalist states, I would still defend them against imperialism.

I don&#39;t want to have another debate about state capitalism but I don&#39;t want the issue to be confused.
Kinda.

I think it is more of a rejection of imperialism rather than protecting the states themselves, in the same way the communists in WWI rallied under the anti-war banner, arguing that it was an imperialist conflict and butchering of workers, rather than protecting "states" from imperialist agression.

[blackstone]

Originally posted by Marmot+September 19, 2007 02:55 pm--> (Marmot @ September 19, 2007 02:55 pm)
[email protected] 18, 2007 03:42 pm
To be honest, I don&#39;t really see what the point is of arguing whether the USSR was "state capitalist" or a "deformed worker&#39;s state" or a "state bureaucracy" or whatever. These are all just terminological issues, and I don&#39;t think it adds anything to our knowledge or understanding to fight about precisely what term to use. As long as we can come to an agreement about what was historically there, it doesn&#39;t really matter what we call it.

That said, I would recommend the opponents of the "state capitalism" thesis (or its equivalents) read Paresh Chattopadhyay&#39;s excellent The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience. Using the only criterion Marx & Engels themselves gave for the existence of capitalism, namely the "double freedom of the worker", he analyzes the USSR from that point of view and demonstrates that this double freedom held at all circumstances. Whether you think that means it&#39;s deformed or not is immaterial - what matters is that it was a society based on accumulation and exploitation, which is the entire point.

Now where I think things go wrong is that a lot of people feel inclined to want to defend the USSR, or at least the early USSR, as a real improvement in terms of social development, especially compared to Czarist Russia. And because of this, they want to call it socialist, since they associate everything socialist with goodness and everything good with socialism. Yet I see absolutely no reason why it cannot be both true that the USSR was a society based on accumulation (Moses and all the prophets and all that) and yet also a vast improvement, at least at first, over prior societies. Can&#39;t we just agree on that?
There are practical implications to wether it is "deformed/degenerate workers state" or state-capitalist.

If those states are really state-capitalist, they demand total opposition in the same way any capitalist state demands it.

If they are deformed or degenerate, they should be protected against imperialists, while at the same time, actively pursuing to oust their bureacracy. [/b]
Why would we be in total opposition to states that are capitalist? Isn&#39;t it a general rule of thumb in Marxism that a backward society must go through the capitalist mode of production before transitioning to communism?

Feel free to correct me if i&#39;m wrong.

[Lamanov]

Originally posted by manic [email protected] 11, 2007 10:48 pm
Yawn. You&#39;re missing the point: the FACT that they did it "indirectly" in the manner that they did is exactly what disproves your myths. The bureaucracy got their gains through abuse of the worker state; nothing more, nothing less. You continue to ignore this undeniable fact and simply repeat your fictitious talking points.

On the contrary. You&#39;re the one perpetuating a myth by a belief that bureaucracy operated "indirectly"* through a "workers&#39; state".

* When I say "indirectly", it only means that bureaucrat employs a worker (buys his labor power) not as a private person or even a &#39;legal subject&#39; but as a representative of state capital: if he is an "operative" or an "administrative director" he controls a section of this capital, working in realtion to the production process as a capitalist on one side (de facto but not de jure), and in relation to the "central plan" as an employee on the other.

[catch]

Originally posted by manic expression+September 11, 2007 10:49 pm--> (manic expression &#064; September 11, 2007 10:49 pm)
Originally posted by [email protected] 02, 2007 01:19 pm

manic [email protected] 01, 2007 02:49 pm

A vintage example of this insanity. You have completely failed to look at relationships to the means of production, property relations and modes of production. In case you forgot, capitalists OWN the means of production and directly exploit labor; the Soviet bureaucracy did no such thing.
So Adam Crozier and Allan Leighton OWN Royal Mail then do they?
I have no idea. Maybe you could expand on that point and contribute something worthwhile. [/b]
The majority of large companies aren&#39;t owned directly by top hat wearing capitalists, they&#39;re corporations run by directors, executives etc. who may not own much of a stake in the company at all, and even receive a "wage" (counted as operating expenses rather than profit of course, since they&#39;re an employee).

That these people aren&#39;t capitalists, that these companies can&#39;t be capitalist because the exploitation is done by a bureaucracy I don&#39;t think even you would argue. Not to mention places like Japan - where there&#39;s a massive state capitalist bureaucracy that creams off public money all over the place from contracts and pay-offs and shell companies - that this is all &#39;indirect&#39; exploitation doesn&#39;t stop it from being capitalist.

[McCaine]

Originally posted by Marmot+September 19, 2007 02:55 pm--> (Marmot @ September 19, 2007 02:55 pm)
[email protected] 18, 2007 03:42 pm
To be honest, I don&#39;t really see what the point is of arguing whether the USSR was "state capitalist" or a "deformed worker&#39;s state" or a "state bureaucracy" or whatever. These are all just terminological issues, and I don&#39;t think it adds anything to our knowledge or understanding to fight about precisely what term to use. As long as we can come to an agreement about what was historically there, it doesn&#39;t really matter what we call it.

That said, I would recommend the opponents of the "state capitalism" thesis (or its equivalents) read Paresh Chattopadhyay&#39;s excellent The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience. Using the only criterion Marx & Engels themselves gave for the existence of capitalism, namely the "double freedom of the worker", he analyzes the USSR from that point of view and demonstrates that this double freedom held at all circumstances. Whether you think that means it&#39;s deformed or not is immaterial - what matters is that it was a society based on accumulation and exploitation, which is the entire point.

Now where I think things go wrong is that a lot of people feel inclined to want to defend the USSR, or at least the early USSR, as a real improvement in terms of social development, especially compared to Czarist Russia. And because of this, they want to call it socialist, since they associate everything socialist with goodness and everything good with socialism. Yet I see absolutely no reason why it cannot be both true that the USSR was a society based on accumulation (Moses and all the prophets and all that) and yet also a vast improvement, at least at first, over prior societies. Can&#39;t we just agree on that?
There are practical implications to wether it is "deformed/degenerate workers state" or state-capitalist.

If those states are really state-capitalist, they demand total opposition in the same way any capitalist state demands it.

If they are deformed or degenerate, they should be protected against imperialists, while at the same time, actively pursuing to oust their bureacracy. [/b]
But how does that follow? If we can&#39;t even agree on what the criteria are for when something is "state capitalist" and when it is "degenerate", then how can some sort of transhistorical iron rule of politics apply? That seems like pointless dogma to me.

[syndicat]

catch:
The majority of large companies aren&#39;t owned directly by top hat wearing capitalists, they&#39;re corporations run by directors, executives etc. who may not own much of a stake in the company at all, and even receive a "wage" (counted as operating expenses rather than profit of course, since they&#39;re an employee).

That these people aren&#39;t capitalists, that these companies can&#39;t be capitalist because the exploitation is done by a bureaucracy I don&#39;t think even you would argue. Not to mention places like Japan - where there&#39;s a massive state capitalist bureaucracy that creams off public money all over the place from contracts and pay-offs and shell companies - that this is all &#39;indirect&#39; exploitation doesn&#39;t stop it from being capitalist.

But the big companies ARE directly owned by capitalists. The corporation is a means of pooling the investment capital of various investors, that is, capitalists. It&#39;s true that much of management and top professionals (corporate lawers, finance officers) in the corporation are not capitalists, that is, investors whose living is based on investing capital. That&#39;s why they are a different class.

From the fact that *some* power is held by the bureaucracy, it doesn&#39;t follow that most of the exploitation benefits them. On the contray, the income and wealth of the owning class is very much greater than that of the professional/managerial or coordinator class.

Of course, there might be situations where the state in some way "acts as a capitalist" thru its ownership share in some profit-making enterprise. But i don&#39;t think the concept of "state capitalism" makes any sense if this is intended to be an account of some mode of production. Modes of production are understood in terms of the dominant class, and the social relations of production which they preside over. In the Soviet Union you didn&#39;t have private accumulation of wealth by an investor class. Nor was labor and other resources allocated via the market price mechanism. Prices were irrelevant to the way allocation of resources occurred in the old Soviet Union.

There was however a ruling class in the Soviet Union, and it dominated and exploited the working class.

The problem comes back to the dogma that there are only two main classes in capitalism, based on Marx&#39;s labor/capital polarity. This led to the mistaken idea that you can liberate the working class merely by changing ownership. Get rid of private ownership, and you get rid of the exploitation of the working class. That fallacy was arrived at due to the failure to see the way control in production through monopolization of authority and expertise can be the basis of a class division irrespective of ownership.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Didn&#39;t you read Marx&#39;s remarks on the petit-bourgeoisie as a separate class? <_<

The differences between the peasants, small businessmen, and managers (who are all for bureaucracy, HINT HINT) - all within the petit-bourgeois umbrella - is like the differences in various sections of the working class (most notably the employed and unemployed), or of the lumpenproles (which I&#39;ve concluded includes mercenaries and riot police), or of the capitalists themselves (industrial capitalists, financial capitalists, landlords, etc.).

So, in fact, Marx had at least FOUR classes in mind (and at one pointed separated the peasants and the landlords from the petit-bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie, respectively, into two more classes).

[OneBrickOneVoice]

State Capitalism and Social Imperialism are such bullshit.

[syndicat]

Hammer:
Didn&#39;t you read Marx&#39;s remarks on the petit-bourgeoisie as a separate class?

didn&#39;t you notice that the petit bourgeoisie are bourgeoisie, ie capitalists? They&#39;re not outside the labor/capital divide. Nor did Marx regard them as a main class. A main class is a class that can be dominant in a mode of production. The petit bourgeoisie were, Marx correctly predicted, a class shrinking in numbers. The small business owners are both owners and also do their own management labor. That is, they manage workers directly. This is what differentiates the small from big capitalists. Insofar as they own a business, they are capitalists. Their class position and prospects are bound up with expanding the particular business they own. This is different than the professional/managerial or coordinator class.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Marxism vs. Coordinatorism (http://www.socialistworker.org/Featured/Stories/Debate_Maass0719.shtml)


But that doesn’t mean he ignored the existence of social classes other than the capitalist class and the working class, including the layers that exist between the two in capitalist society. He wrote extensively about the "petty bourgeoisie"--people who make their living primarily by their own labor, rather than through the economic exploitation of others, using self-owned means of production (tools) or other property (their own store or office). The classic examples are self-employed tradespeople or shopkeepers--a social layer that was more extensive in capitalism’s infancy--though the term can be extended without too many conditions to cover small employers or professionals.

Also--and more to the point of Albert’s arguments about "coordinators"--Marx anticipated a development in capitalism that wouldn’t take place on a significant scale until the end of the 19th century: the rise of what he called the "overseers of labor and stewards of capital." In one of his economic notebooks, for example, Marx refers to the tendency, as the system develops, for capitalist owners to "hand over the work of direct and constant supervision of the individual workmen, and groups of workmen, to a special kind of wage-laborer. An industrial army of workmen, under the command of a capitalist, requires, like a real army, officers (managers), and sergeants (foremen, overlookers), who, while the work is being done, command in the name of the capitalist. The work of supervision becomes their established and exclusive function."

So it’s simply not true that Marx "literally denied the existence" of social layers between capital and labor. Likewise, Marxists after Marx have spent plenty of time and ink adding to the understanding of this middle class, and I have a small stack of books next to me as I write this to prove it.

...

He doesn’t define his "coordinator class" except with four words in parenthesis--"professional-managerial or technocratic."

Either way, these MIDDLE-level technocrats, bureaucrats, etc. are merely the most dominant of the petit-bourgeoisie today, just as the financial capitalists are the most dominant of the bourgeoisie.


And I’ll assume that Albert doesn’t include among the coordinators people who may not technically own the means of production, but whose power in society comes from their share in the ruling class’s collective control over them--that is, top corporate executives, top bureaucratic administrators and leading politicians. This bunch has to be considered part of the capitalist class, or we’re left with the absurd idea that a Walton toddler who shares in the family stake in Wal-Mart is a capitalist, but Bush administration officials who coordinate and implement the national policy of the American ruling class aren’t.

[syndicat]

the argument here is entirely fallacious, however. that&#39;s because

(1) first:
from the mere fact Marx mentions the tendency towards the building up of a managerial bureuacracy, it doesn&#39;t follow that Marx offered a *theory* of the coordinator class. The coordinator class isn&#39;t correctly identified in terms of a job category such as "manager." What began to emerge at the end of the 19th century, with the emergence of the big corporation and the growth of the state, is the movement to systematically redesign work and separate out conceptual and design and decision-making work into an elaborate hierarchy. Not only managers but also those who marshall or have a relative monopolization, of certain key forms of expertise important for the conduct and management of the labor process, such as corporate lawyers, finance officers, money-managers, top engineers.

(2) second, it is simply not plausible to identify this class with the petty bourgeoisie.

There is a certain confusion here between for example self-employed artisans and farmers and owners of small businesses who exploit labor.

The first have a different situation than the coordinator class because the coordinator class is developed by *destroying* the integration of skill and decision-making with doing the work that was characteristic of self-employed artisans and farmers, and which survived to some extent in the skilled crafts employed by early capitalists.

and in the case of the small business owners who exploit labor, they are simply capitalists. their enterprises are too small, don&#39;t have enough resources, for the separation of coordinator work from the owner to have developed very far.

what happens in mature capitalism is that the investor class, the major capitalists, confine themselves to the broad strategic management of their investments and concerns of their partners and their class in the running of the system. they thus cede a realm of power to the new coordinator class. the coordinator class gains its positions through its expertise, educations, connections, and so on. It is not able to pass on its clalss position to its children simply thru inheritance of a fortunte, that is, of property.

Moreover, Kotz and Weir, in "Revolution from Above: The Demise of the Soviet System" use exactly this sort of description for the Soviet ruling class who they call the "party-state elite".