Is "state capitalism" an anti-concept?

[Post-Something]

The other day I came across an argument on another forum (a debate between Ulster Socialist and a capitalist) which said that "state capitalism" is just an anti concept, and in reality, Stalin actually regressed to feudalism. Is this a common argument made, and how would one go about refuting it?

[Hit The North]

Firstly, what is an "anti concept"?

Secondly, it's fairly obvious that the USSR under Stalin did not regress to a state of feudalism, as feudalism would not be able to industrialize and raise the forces of production to the extent which happened under Stalin.

[Post-Something]

By anti-concept, I think it's meant that it's not really a concept on it's own, it's just a name that is made up, even though it is almost the same as one in existence.

The argument is


Stalin appropriated industry, and agriculture, to seel wheat on the world market, to propel the USSR into world power status. This is not a speices of capitalism. This is indistiguishable from countless other Feudal lords, Despots, kings, emperors and Pharaos who have done this before Capitalism. Stalin was not a capitalist, state, or otherwise. Karl Marx, who actually played the stock market was more of a capitalist than he.

And you can find it here (http://anticom.proboards46.com/index.cgi?board=evil&action=display&thread=89&page=1)

Anyway, this guy, Leninsbane, made a lot of points I don't think I could refute with my current understanding of Marxism, or history. So it would be good to see both a Trotskyists' and a Stalinists' take on his post; in response to "why Stalinism and communism are not the same"

[ComradeOm]

The argument is correct on one point - the theory of state capitalism is IMO bullshit. Irritatingly it often takes a capitalist to point this out but the USSR is simply too removed from the market to be considered capitalism. Personally I've always preferred state socialism - a term that has a much older history and relevance

Of course the 'feudalism' argument is even more bizarre. The statement that Stalin's economic planning was 'indistiguishable [sic] from countless other Feudal lords, Despots, kings, emperors and Pharaos' is simply false in almost every possible way. Refuting this is not for Marxist theory but rather simple history. To be honest, and blunt, however I'd expect anyone with a cursory knowledge of each to be able to tell the difference between a feudal society and the USSR... regardless of what the latter is called

And, to complete the hat-trick, AFAIK the concept of an 'anti-concept' is a nonsense term dreamt up by Ayn Rand to, suitably enough, describe nonsense terms

[Hit The North]

Disregarding the "anti-concept" nonsense (why isn't it just a non-concept or a faulty concept? And just labeling something as such does not make it so anyhoo), the poster seems to be using the term feudalism in an arbitrary manner. For a start, you should ask him/her which "Feudal lords, Despots, kings, emperors and Pharaos" he/she has in mind who presumably sold surplus grain on the world market to maintain their power? I can't imagine that any pre-capitalist society was a net exporter of wheat - unless they were forced to do this through foreign conquest. It certainly wouldn't have been a regular and normal basis for one feudal state to impose itself on others. Judicious use of the sword was far more common. It would also be impossible to talk of a "world market" pre-capitalism.

A second point: it wasn't the USSR's selling of wheat which made it a super power. That is a ridiculous assertion.

Thirdly, the poster seems to think that forms of capitalist economic activity were absent in previous modes of production like feudalism. This isn't what Marx believed. Ancient Rome, for example, had enclaves of capitalist activity. The real point is that this economic activity was subordinate to other, more dominant forms of production. In the case of Rome, slavery dominated. We can talk of a capitalist society only when commodity production on the basis of private ownership of capital comes to dominate a society. But this in itself doesn't mean the immediate disappearance of slavery or the landed classes. Britain, for example, the first major European country to have a bourgeois revolution (the so-called English Civil War begun in the 1640s) and the first to industrialize, still to this day has the remnants of a feudal aristocracy which still commands huge social power a good 200 years after the industrial revolution. No society is just this or that, but most are a combination of elements - modernizing forces existing side by side with remnants of the past. The key is which forces dominate. Thus, if the poster is attempting to argue that the USSR was feudal due to certain similarities between the practices of the Stalinist state and the Tsarist state, you could accuse him/her of holding an unduly simplistic notion of what comprises a mode of production.

[LiberaCHE]

So now the argument is that Stalin was even "to the left" of Marx himself.

interesting.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The argument is correct on one point - the theory of state capitalism is IMO bullshit. Irritatingly it often takes a capitalist to point this out but the USSR is simply too removed from the market to be considered capitalism. Personally I've always preferred state socialism - a term that has a much older history and relevance

Markets do not make capitalism what it is (I'm sure you've read Chapter 5 already). It is the underlying processes of wage labour and capital accumulation (including the initial formation, which only labour credit can eliminate altogether and facilitate "common funds" production directly). After all, what makes capitalism "capitalism" is the existence of:

1) The labour market (the existence of minimum wage laws means that there were at least slight wage differentials throughout the Soviet Union pertaining to each specific job, taking into account regional peculiarities); and
2) The capital market (various Soviet managers bribing their way to get investment funds from the ministries, even if this isn't the trading of stocks, bonds, derivatives, etc.)

[trivas7]

The other day I came across an argument on another forum (a debate between Ulster Socialist and a capitalist) which said that "state capitalism" is just an anti concept, and in reality, Stalin actually regressed to feudalism. Is this a common argument made, and how would one go about refuting it?
I assume that the cappy mean Stalin's regime was totalitarian.

Objectivists are big on 'anti-concepts', wish they would dissolve into anti-matter.
:lol:

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Are these the same people that call corporatism socialism? I've found that there exists a very vocal minority which will label anything clearly negative socialist, including natural disasters, or grown men named Sunny.

[GPDP]

I'm not surprised, really. From the way they argue, I get the idea that the Libertiarian/Objectivist spectrum basically runs like this:

|--------------------------|--|

Where the entire left segment is socialism, the second part being Libertarianism/Objectivism, and the right edge is Ancapism.

In other words, stray from their little niche, and you're a freedom-hating statist.

[Mala Tha Testa]

I'm not surprised, really. From the way they argue, I get the idea that the Libertiarian/Objectivist spectrum basically runs like this:

|--------------------------|--|

Where the entire left segment is socialism, the second part being Libertarianism/Objectivism, and the right edge is Ancapism.

In other words, stray from their little niche, and you're a freedom-hating statist.

it seems that way, hell, it is that way.

[Yehuda Stern]

Of course state capitalism isn't an "anti-concept" and even Engels and Lenin, never mind Trotsky, recognized that state capitalism isn't impossible in principle. Smug Pabloites can argue against the theory all they like, but they might want to check what the fathers of Marxism had to say on the subject before they embarrass themselves further.

Just to illustrate this point, a question to those who claim that there is no such thing as state capitalism: what would you call Israel where, up to the 1970s, all industry was nationalized? Was it a progressive state? A socialist state?

[trivas7]

From the Ayn Rand Lexicon (the little White book for Randroids):

An anti-concept is an unncessary and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept. The use of anti-concepts gives the listeners a sense of approximate understanding. But in the realm of cognition, nothing is as bad as the approximate [...]

Some [...] terms that Ayn Rand identified as anti-concepts are 'consumerism', 'duty', 'ethnicity', 'extremism', 'isolationism', 'McCarthyism', 'meritocracy', and 'simplistic'.

[Bilan]

The argument is correct on one point - the theory of state capitalism is IMO bullshit. Irritatingly it often takes a capitalist to point this out but the USSR is simply too removed from the market to be considered capitalism. Personally I've always preferred state socialism - a term that has a much older history and relevance

Of course the 'feudalism' argument is even more bizarre. The statement that Stalin's economic planning was 'indistiguishable [sic] from countless other Feudal lords, Despots, kings, emperors and Pharaos' is simply false in almost every possible way. Refuting this is not for Marxist theory but rather simple history. To be honest, and blunt, however I'd expect anyone with a cursory knowledge of each to be able to tell the difference between a feudal society and the USSR... regardless of what the latter is called

And, to complete the hat-trick, AFAIK the concept of an 'anti-concept' is a nonsense term dreamt up by Ayn Rand to, suitably enough, describe nonsense terms

IT's not bullshit. It was something advocated by Lenin, in such ignored texts as Left Wing Childishness and Petit-bourgeois ideology.
Just because you ignore the realities of history doesn't make them false.

[Trystan]

I always thought of it as one huge corporation employing millions. But of course it was largely self-sufficient, so I don't get the whole "state capitalist" thing when they didn't trade that much with foreigners. I don't think you can be justified in calling it "feudalist", though.

[Joe Hill's Ghost]

Well the USSR was a state, the state owned the means of the production, controlled by bureaucrats. Those bureaucrats retained the benifits of those state enterprises, while workers produced the value that supported those bureaucrats. Sounds like State Capitalism to me.

[Trystan]

Well the USSR was a state, the state owned the means of the production, controlled by bureaucrats. Those bureaucrats retained the benifits of those state enterprises, while workers produced the value that supported those bureaucrats. Sounds like State Capitalism to me.

The (bureaucrats) "New Class" you mean? I think I know what you mean. I'm not too well versed on the critiques of the USSR, to be honest.

[Post-Something]

I always thought of it as one huge corporation employing millions.

Yeah, me too! I wish I had a real breakdown of exactly how all the industries worked and stuff, that would be really helpful for me to imagine a life back then.

Anyway, yeah, I see why it obviously isn't Feudalism, I was just unable to think up a reason why for some reason. Thanks to Bob The Builder for really clearing things up (I never thought I'd ever say that sentence).

What else do "Ayn Randians" usually argue? Because out of most debates I've seen, these guys seem really fervently anti communist, and I'm afraid that if I got into a debate with one, they'd keep pushing on one point which they have taken out of context or something.

See that link I posted earlier for a prime example.

Thanks.

[Die Neue Zeit]

IT's not bullshit. It was something advocated by Lenin, in such ignored texts as Left Wing Childishness and Petit-bourgeois ideology.
Just because you ignore the realities of history doesn't make them false.

To be fair, I quoted the multi-economy part of this specific work in my work. :p

[Joe Hill's Ghost]

The (bureaucrats) "New Class" you mean? I think I know what you mean. I'm not too well versed on the critiques of the USSR, to be honest.

Well you could view them as capitalists utilizing a more intense state apparatus to ensure their rule. Or you could view them as a sort of "new Class" of coordinators. I honestly do not know which one it is. But they certainly were extracting surplus value.

[Socialismo_Libertario]

state-capitalism is a concept on it's own, not an anti-concept