Verdict on the Soviet Union- State Capitalist, Degenerate Workers State or Socialist?

[PostAnarchy]

I wanted to get the general opinion here of the Soviet Unions

- Do you believe that it was state capitalist? I do. As do most (all?) anarchists.
- Do you believe it was degenerated workers state as Trotsky did?
- Or do you really think it represented authentic socialism as Stalinists do?

Discuss

[FreeFocus]

State capitalist. I don't think there's such a thing as a non-capitalist state.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

"17. Since the earliest years of capitalism, working people have attempted -- in various geographic locations and to varying degrees of success -- to overthrow their exploiters.

"In 1871, a revolutionary uprising in Paris, France, created the Paris Commune, considered the first attempt at establishing a proletarian state.

"The first successful attempt at overthrowing capitalism came in 1917, when the October Revolution sent shockwaves through the world by overthrowing capitalist rule throughout the vast Russian Empire and laying the foundation for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

"The October Revolution, which was carried out by the proletariat – under the leadership of its Bolshevik party – destroyed the capitalist state and paved the way for the construction of a proletarian state in its place. Due to the USSR’s backwardness, isolation, imperialist encirclement, the failure of the socialist revolution to successfully spread to other (especially more advanced) countries, and the loss of many of its most advanced members of the working class in the civil war, the revolution began to degenerate after a few years, giving rise to a privileged bureaucratic caste that eventually seized political power, thus making the USSR a bureaucratized proletarian state.

"The bureaucracy did not own the means of production, which were brought into public ownership in the wake of the October Revolution, thus it was not a class. The bureaucracy was a conservative, nationalist caste that controlled the state." - Organization, guidelines and methods of work of the Party of World Revolution (http://powr-prm.org/guidelines.html)

[Incendiarism]

I've always had a question for those who propose state capitalism:

If the workers were effectively exploited under the soviet system, what was the reason for the return to capitalism?

[FreeFocus]

I've always had a question for those who propose state capitalism:

If the workers were effectively exploited under the soviet system, what was the reason for the return to capitalism?

The Soviet Union proved ineffective at triumphing in competition with other capitalist states. The bureaucratic nature also angered many of the higher-ups in the party apparatus, which some have written and spoken about.

[zimmerwald1915]

I've always had a question for those who propose state capitalism:

If the workers were effectively exploited under the soviet system, what was the reason for the return to capitalism?
Why the artificial distinction between the state capitalism pre-1991 and the state capitalism post-1991? The degree to which a system is applied is unimportant in understanding the fundamental nature of the system.

[PostAnarchy]

Why the artificial distinction between the state capitalism pre-1991 and the state capitalism post-1991? The degree to which a system is applied is unimportant in understanding the fundamental nature of the system.


Excellent point comrade. :)

[Dimentio]

I would define the Soviet Union as a "palace economy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_economy)" ruled by a small, dogmatic caste with the help of a mandarin class of bureaucrats.

In short, take away industrialism and socialist rhetoric, and we basically get the same structure as pre-industrial theocracies like Ancient Egypt and the Incan Empire.

To call the Soviet Union a socialist state is to claim that sharks and dolphins are close relatives because they both have similar fens on their back.

[PostAnarchy]

I would define the Soviet Union as a "palace economy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_economy)" ruled by a small, dogmatic caste with the help of a mandarin class of bureaucrats.

In short, take away industrialism and socialist rhetoric, and we basically get the same structure as pre-industrial theocracies like Ancient Egypt and the Incan Empire.

To call the Soviet Union a socialist state is to claim that sharks and dolphins are close relatives because they both have similar fens on their back.

Serpent - I must say this is a highly interesting analogy. I haven't heard of this particular term before to describe the Soviet Union but it seems accurate it many respects.

[thinkerOFthoughts]

"17. Since the earliest years of capitalism, working people have attempted -- in various geographic locations and to varying degrees of success -- to overthrow their exploiters.

"In 1871, a revolutionary uprising in Paris, France, created the Paris Commune, considered the first attempt at establishing a proletarian state.

"The first successful attempt at overthrowing capitalism came in 1917, when the October Revolution sent shockwaves through the world by overthrowing capitalist rule throughout the vast Russian Empire and laying the foundation for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

"The October Revolution, which was carried out by the proletariat – under the leadership of its Bolshevik party – destroyed the capitalist state and paved the way for the construction of a proletarian state in its place. Due to the USSR’s backwardness, isolation, imperialist encirclement, the failure of the socialist revolution to successfully spread to other (especially more advanced) countries, and the loss of many of its most advanced members of the working class in the civil war, the revolution began to degenerate after a few years, giving rise to a privileged bureaucratic caste that eventually seized political power, thus making the USSR a bureaucratized proletarian state.

"The bureaucracy did not own the means of production, which were brought into public ownership in the wake of the October Revolution, thus it was not a class. The bureaucracy was a conservative, nationalist caste that controlled the state." - Organization, guidelines and methods of work of the Party of World Revolution (http://powr-prm.org/guidelines.html)
Ok I loved this post.:tt1:

[BobKKKindle$]

This thread is ridiculous because it is based on the assumption that the Soviet Union was based on the same mode of production and system of government for the whole of its existence, whereas serious analysis of the Soviet Union generally acknowledges that there were qualitative changes which need to be recognized. Trotsky, for example, argued that the Soviet Union was initially a democratic workers state but degenerated as a result of its isolation from the rest of the world and the disintegration of the working class. Mao, on the other hand, argued that the death of Stalin led to the emergence of a revisionist faction within the leadership of the party which gradually transformed the Soviet Union into a social-imperialist regime which used its military strength to exercise control over the developing world. As it stands, this poll does not recognize these different perspectives.

[Mindtoaster]

This thread is ridiculous because it is based on the assumption that the Soviet Union was based on the same mode of production and system of government for the whole of its existence, whereas serious analysis of the Soviet Union generally acknowledges that there were qualitative changes which need to be recognized. Trotsky, for example, argued that the Soviet Union was initially a democratic workers state but degenerated as a result of its isolation from the rest of the world and the disintegration of the working class. Mao, on the other hand, argued that the death of Stalin led to the emergence of a revisionist faction within the leadership of the party which gradually transformed the Soviet Union into a social-imperialist regime which used its military strength to exercise control over the developing world. As it stands, this poll does not recognize these different perspectives.

Theres a none of the above option...

I would say it was state capitalist as the means of production were seized by a powerful bureaucracy, largely alien to the proletariat.

On the other hand, I'm not really sure what the difference between state capitalism and a degenerate workers state are.

[PostAnarchy]

Thank you.

And if you really don't like the poll, well I guess you don't have to participate in it. :)

[BobKKKindle$]

Theres a none of the above option...

Picking none of the above would imply that you don't see the Soviet Union as embodying any of the other possible property forms at any point during its existence, but it doesn't address the issue of time and qualitative changes during the Soviet Union's existence. The fact that this poll fails to recognize the importance of time leaves room for confusion - it is possible for both a Maoist and a heterodox Trotskyist to vote for the first option but then each of them would have something completely different in mind in terms of when the Soviet Union became state-capitalist - the Maoist would be thinking about Khrushchev's rise to power during the 1950s but then the heterodox Trotskyist would be referring to the isolation of the revolution after the Civil War and the consequent rise of the bureaucracy under the leadership of Stalin.


On the other hand, I'm not really sure what the difference between state capitalism and a degenerate workers state are.

Proponents of the second theory argue that even though a bureaucracy did emerge within the party and eventually take control of the state by abolishing political democracy, the economy was still based on the state ownership of property and so the bureaucracy should not be seen as a class, merely as a social stratum. In terms of practical implications, this theory obligates its proponents to call for the unconditional military defense of countries which they categorize as degenerated workers states, including China, Vietnam, North Korea, etc.

[Panda Tse Tung]

Depends on the period. I wouldn't say healthy though. But that was the closest this poll got to my answer. Mostly because degenerated workers state refers to Trotsky's idea thereof and i don't agree with that one.

[ckaihatsu]

The fact that this poll fails to recognize the importance of time leaves room for confusion


The definition also fails to recognize the importance of perspective of *scale* -- is one viewing the national entity from below or from above? Another way of putting it is that a country has both *international* and *internal* spheres of political-economic activity.



Proponents of the second theory argue that even though a bureaucracy did emerge within the party and eventually take control of the state by abolishing political democracy, the economy was still based on the state ownership of property and so the bureaucracy should not be seen as a class, merely as a social stratum. In terms of practical implications, this theory obligates its proponents to call for the unconditional military defense of countries which they categorize as degenerated workers states, including China, Vietnam, North Korea, etc.


This distinction between private ownership and bureaucratic ownership is a crucial one. I've heard it described as the difference between *expropriation*, which happens under capitalism (wealth squirreled away into disparate private hands), and *skimming*, wherein the overall infrastructure remains collectivized and internally coherent even if some of the gross surplus value is skimmed off by the bureaucratic elite for personal aggrandizement.


Chris




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[Die Neue Zeit]

I've always had a question for those who propose state capitalism:

If the workers were effectively exploited under the soviet system, what was the reason for the return to capitalism?

It goes deeper than this, actually: think back to capital as a process, or M-C-M (money to commodities and/or capital back to money). If, "under socialized production, the money-capital is eliminated" (Capital, Volume II), then an economy can have as much "social ownership and control" as it likes and still operate on this fundamental M-C-M basis, thereby not being social-abolitionist.

[Q]

Why the artificial distinction between the state capitalism pre-1991 and the state capitalism post-1991? The degree to which a system is applied is unimportant in understanding the fundamental nature of the system.

I never understood this absurd stance. The fall of Stalinism and the reintroduction of capitalism by means of "shock therapy" meant a sharp fall in living standards for ordinary citizens. Stalinism was an authoritarian dictatorship yes, but it featured a planned economy (although highly ineffective due to the bureaucracy) which opened the way to a huge system of social and public services like free education and healthcare and a guarantee to job security. The reintroduction of capitalism meant in practice that the life expectancy of working people dropped by two decades.

How does your highly abstract armchair scholar, yes even artificial, "switch from one type of capitalism to another" explain all this?

Also, the Soviet Union was a degenerated workers' state. It featured not only a planned but also a socialised economy. The problem however wasof course the bureaucracy that (mis)managed the planned economy to its own gain. This eventually led the USSR to an economic stagnation, which in turn led to a political and social crisis. NHIA already made an excellent post on this aswell.


On the other hand, I'm not really sure what the difference between state capitalism and a degenerate workers state are.
The most important difference (and still relevant today for Cuba and North-Korea) is that the analysis of a degenerated/deformed workers state calls for a political revolution to oust the bureaucratic dictatorship, as opposed to a social revolution which goes much deeper and requires different tactics and strategies.

[chegitz guevara]

Gone

I voted DWS. I think, however, that this has become an academic question, largely. The remaining "socialist" states are all under threat of imperialism, and so comrades, regardless of what category of state or mode of production they may think Cuba or Vietnam or China, etc., fall under, are still obliged to defend them and act in solidarity with them.

[chebol]

FreeFocus wrote:

State capitalist. I don't think there's such a thing as a non-capitalist state.

Don't be daft. What would you call those social, political and economic structures that existed for all those millennia before capitalism. Your argument is basically anarchist, and misses entirely the point of the question. I strongly advise reading some Marx, and Lenin.

DWS, for what it matters.

This issue has been raised in topics and polls several times - I suggest it might be a better idea to actually read up on the arguments one way or another, and to focus on more relevant issues, for that matter.

The debate between Ernst Mandel (FI) and Chris Harman (IST) is probably the most concise and useful summary of both sides - even if not every StateCap accepts Cliffite theory, and not everyone who agrees on the DWS argument is a Mandelite.

Alternatively, you could chase up the Monthly Review crew, whose position that is was a "post-revolutionary state" places the whole issue nicely to the side, where it (largely) belongs.

[ZeroNowhere]

'State capitalism', using the political definition of the word 'state', since the government and capitalist class were the exact same thing (if you were in a higher position of the government, you were a capitalist, if not, you're not). Democracy was destroyed by Lenin and such a few months after the revolution (and a while before the Civil War) because they didn't like the results (it was replaced with appointment from above), the Party apparatus was always in power, and pretty much undermined the Soviets, as well as the factory committees (they > Soviets) that formed during the revolution. Most of Lenin's promises never took fruit, of course. Also, was it even called the USSR in Lenin's time? Certainly, it was never socialism, since socialism is international. Nor was it a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Of course, we then got the crushing of the Kronstadt rebellion and the anarchists. Ouch.


How does your highly abstract armchair scholar, yes even artificial, "switch from one type of capitalism to another" explain all this?
Explain the reasoning behind this question, please?


State capitalist. I don't think there's such a thing as a non-capitalist state.
Feudalism?
Anyways, by Marx's definition, a 'state' would exist in anything except socialism, including when the socialist revolution had not yet taken place internationally, as it would be the enforcement of the interests of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie's.


The remaining "socialist" states are all under threat of imperialism, and so comrades, regardless of what category of state or mode of production they may think Cuba or Vietnam or China, etc., fall under, are still obliged to defend them and act in solidarity with them.
Why?

[Sasha]

went for other, because i see two fases, i think that as soon as the bolshevic counter revolution was in effect russia transformded first in an failed and misled but sincere attemp at an socialist workers state, but as the ego's progressed i realy liked what serpent said:

I would define the Soviet Union as a "palace economy (http://www.anonym.to/?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_economy)" ruled by a small, dogmatic caste with the help of a mandarin class of bureaucrats.

In short, take away industrialism and socialist rhetoric, and we basically get the same structure as pre-industrial theocracies like Ancient Egypt and the Incan Empire.

To call the Soviet Union a socialist state is to claim that sharks and dolphins are close relatives because they both have similar fens on their back.

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

The USSR was the best nation that ever existed on the Earth.

[Q]

Explain the reasoning behind this question, please?
Read the rest of the post you quoted that from?

[Dimentio]

In what way did the party represent the workers?

[BraneMatter]

"17. Since the earliest years of capitalism, working people have attempted -- in various geographic locations and to varying degrees of success -- to overthrow their exploiters.

"In 1871, a revolutionary uprising in Paris, France, created the Paris Commune, considered the first attempt at establishing a proletarian state.

"The first successful attempt at overthrowing capitalism came in 1917, when the October Revolution sent shockwaves through the world by overthrowing capitalist rule throughout the vast Russian Empire and laying the foundation for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

"The October Revolution, which was carried out by the proletariat – under the leadership of its Bolshevik party – destroyed the capitalist state and paved the way for the construction of a proletarian state in its place. Due to the USSR’s backwardness, isolation, imperialist encirclement, the failure of the socialist revolution to successfully spread to other (especially more advanced) countries, and the loss of many of its most advanced members of the working class in the civil war, the revolution began to degenerate after a few years, giving rise to a privileged bureaucratic caste that eventually seized political power, thus making the USSR a bureaucratized proletarian state.

"The bureaucracy did not own the means of production, which were brought into public ownership in the wake of the October Revolution, thus it was not a class. The bureaucracy was a conservative, nationalist caste that controlled the state." - Organization, guidelines and methods of work of the Party of World Revolution (http://powr-prm.org/guidelines.html)

Would you say the above is an accurate of Stalinism, and is it correct to say it was totalitarian? With Gorbachev and Yeltsin, we certainly have the start of state capitalism which led to the demise of the socialist Soviet system. So, the Soviet Union was never a pure worker's socialist state, but was corrupted by Stalinism and the bureaucracy.

[PostAnarchy]

Would you say the above is an accurate of Stalinism, and is it correct to say it was totalitarian? With Gorbachev and Yeltsin, we certainly have the start of state capitalism which led to the demise of the socialist Soviet system. So, the Soviet Union was never a pure worker's socialist state, but was corrupted by Stalinism and the bureaucracy.

I would agree with this analysis though I would argue that any notion of a "worker's state" was destroyed when Lenin and Trotsky disbanded all the soviets and workers councils by 1919 at the latest.

[Dóchas]

state capitalism

[Die Neue Zeit]

'State capitalism', using the political definition of the word 'state', since the government and capitalist class were the exact same thing (if you were in a higher position of the government, you were a capitalist, if not, you're not). Democracy was destroyed by Lenin and such a few months after the revolution (and a while before the Civil War) because they didn't like the results (it was replaced with appointment from above), the Party apparatus was always in power, and pretty much undermined the Soviets, as well as the factory committees (they > Soviets) that formed during the revolution. Most of Lenin's promises never took fruit, of course. Also, was it even called the USSR in Lenin's time? Certainly, it was never socialism, since socialism is international. Nor was it a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Of course, we then got the crushing of the Kronstadt rebellion and the anarchists. Ouch.

If you're gonna be an apologist for the Constituent Assembly, please read this:

Theses on the Constituent Assembly (http://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/lenin/works/1917/dec/11a.htm)

You do have a point about Bolshevik suppression of the soviets (because the Menshevik-Internationalists, as opposed to the chauvinist Menshevik-Defencists, gained seats at the expense of the Bolsheviks) and the factory committees just after the outset of the civil war, though. :(

[RHIZOMES]

What time period is this poll supposed to be set in exactly?

[Revy]

Glad to see the state capitalism fact with popularity. Down with all the "degenerated/deformed workers' states" nonsense.

[iraqnevercalledmenigger]

Interesting that the majority of people voted "state-capitalist" even though on the far left the degenerated workers' statists out number those who see the USSR as capitalist.

I voted state capitalist. Any serious theoretical analysis I think bears this out. It is not surprising that the DWS theories have not been presented seriously and at length outside of the works of Ernest Mandel, who political conclusions almost all DWS shy away from.

As to the question about the drop in the standard of living of the masses of people that came with the fall of Stalinism, it is not some mystery to state-caps. It has been explained, if the CWI comrade has not seen the explanation it is for a lack of looking hard enough I think.

Generally Stalinist capitalism embodied many gains for the working class in the statified social services and means of production. And with the privatization of these services and industries, the workers lost those gains. This happened not only in Stalinist countries, but in the post-colonial countries that initially embraced statification as a guard against imperialism, and subsequently embraced neo-colonial austerity plans.

The fall in the living standards with the loss of gains of the workers codifies in statification is not necessarily the signal of the loss of a workers' state.

[JimmyJazz]

What time period is this poll supposed to be set in exactly?

Yeah, no kidding.


I used to think, from how I had heard it summarized, that the state capitalist analysis made a lot of sense. I heard it summarized in a way that made me think of it like this:

Capitalist = no workers' control, production for private profit
Socialist = workers' control, production for need
State Capitalist = no workers' control, production for need

However, later on I read some excerpts from Tony Cliff's book. And from what I could gather, he didn't seem to be making a nice, clear categorization like the one above. He seemed to just be rambling on about how the Soviet bureaucracy pushed the workers too hard for too much industrialization too fast. Well, regardless of how good or bad it was to live as a worker under such conditions, that was done out of necessity to survive in the absence of a world revolution, obviously.

Here is a pretty interesting online discussion (http://www.freeratio.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=209570) of Cliff's book/thesis.

[FreeFocus]

Don't be daft. What would you call those social, political and economic structures that existed for all those millennia before capitalism. Your argument is basically anarchist, and misses entirely the point of the question. I strongly advise reading some Marx, and Lenin.

DWS, for what it matters.

This issue has been raised in topics and polls several times - I suggest it might be a better idea to actually read up on the arguments one way or another, and to focus on more relevant issues, for that matter.

The debate between Ernst Mandel (FI) and Chris Harman (IST) is probably the most concise and useful summary of both sides - even if not every StateCap accepts Cliffite theory, and not everyone who agrees on the DWS argument is a Mandelite.

Alternatively, you could chase up the Monthly Review crew, whose position that is was a "post-revolutionary state" places the whole issue nicely to the side, where it (largely) belongs.

Surprise surprise, it sounds anarchist because it is anarchist. I "strongly advise" reading some Bakunin.

I'll grant that I was wrong to characterize all states as capitalist, if you define capitalist as describing a system based on the investment of capital and production of goods for private profit. If, however, we merely view capitalism as one of numerous forms of economic exploitation, alienation and oppression (with a small elite exploiting a large majority for their own benefit - this describes ancient Egypt, all those "palace economies," etc), or as having the fundamental characteristic of hierarchical economics, every state is capitalist. All states use arbitrary, unjustifiable violence to control people and assert their will. No state includes everyone in government, and thus certain people are privileged over others. These people do not willingly relinquish power, but instead use it for their own benefit.


Feudalism?
Anyways, by Marx's definition, a 'state' would exist in anything except socialism, including when the socialist revolution had not yet taken place internationally, as it would be the enforcement of the interests of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie's.

See my above explanation. Feudalism is not all that different from capitalism in qualitative terms when it comes to oppression, exploitation, and who gains at the expense of others.

[BobKKKindle$]

The class character of the USSR is now a historical issue, because all the states which could potentially still be workers states are also oppressed nations, and so communists have an obligation to call for the military defense of these states if they come under attack from the imperialist powers even though we may not all agree on whether they are socialist or just a different form of capitalism. What is more important is the fact that the system which existed in the USSR did embody certain benefits such, as the universal provision of healthcare, a high standard of education at no cost to the consumer, a counterweight to US imperialism, as well as guaranteed employment for every member of the working population. These benefits were lost as a result of a combination of widespread political instability and the implementation of radical market reforms, leading a to a rapid decline in life expectancy, and even now the Russian Federation and many of the other states which emerged from the ruins of the USSR have yet to reach the pre-1991 level of industrial output and continue to suffer serious economic problems. Given these changes, communists, as leaders of the proletariat, should have fought to preserve the positive aspects of the Soviet economic model against the threat of widespread privatization and restructuring regardless of whether we saw the USSR as a workers state or something else, in the same way that communists are fighting against welfare cutbacks in countries which are universally considered capitalist. This principle is also true of countries such as China which are beginning to suffer the effects of market reforms.

[Revy]

Interesting that the majority of people voted "state-capitalist" even though on the far left the degenerated workers' statists out number those who see the USSR as capitalist.

I voted state capitalist. Any serious theoretical analysis I think bears this out. It is not surprising that the DWS theories have not been presented seriously and at length outside of the works of Ernest Mandel, who political conclusions almost all DWS shy away from.

As to the question about the drop in the standard of living of the masses of people that came with the fall of Stalinism, it is not some mystery to state-caps. It has been explained, if the CWI comrade has not seen the explanation it is for a lack of looking hard enough I think.

Generally Stalinist capitalism embodied many gains for the working class in the statified social services and means of production. And with the privatization of these services and industries, the workers lost those gains. This happened not only in Stalinist countries, but in the post-colonial countries that initially embraced statification as a guard against imperialism, and subsequently embraced neo-colonial austerity plans.

The fall in the living standards with the loss of gains of the workers codifies in statification is not necessarily the signal of the loss of a workers' state.

IRAQ!!!!!!!!!!! Long time no see, it's Stancel, from MySpace...

[Comrade_Red]

I voted Degenerated Workers State. It wasn't perfect, but i do believe it was a worker's state.

[Comrade_Red]

Yeah, no kidding.
Well, regardless of how good or bad it was to live as a worker under such conditions, that was done out of necessity to survive in the absence of a world revolution, obviously.
.
I second that.

[The Intransigent Faction]

As was said, this poll fails to recognize the importance of time, so "None of the Above/I don't know". 1917-1950ish---the Soviet Union was a genuine Socialist state.
Post-1950, reformist bureaucrats took over under the guise of "de-Stalinization". This was in some ways preferable to Capitalism, as made evident by the ever-worsening state of nationalist Oligarch-run Russia, but certain a big step down.
I am not a "Stalinist" though. I am a Maoist, and as Mao himself said, "Stalin was a great Marxist-Leninist, but at the same time he committed several grievous errors".
"Stalinist" is just a reactionary term used by those who do not sufficiently question, or do not at all question, the bourgeois account of history.
For these reasons and more, I vote "Healthy Workers' State" from 1917-1945, and although they aren't options on the poll right now; "revisionist Socialism" 1945-1991, "ultra-nationalistic crumbling Capitalist remnant of once Socialist states" 1991-hopefully not forever.

[Revy]

As was said, this poll fails to recognize the importance of time, so "None of the Above/I don't know". 1917-1950ish---the Soviet Union was a genuine Socialist state.
Post-1950, reformist bureaucrats took over under the guise of "de-Stalinization". This was in some ways preferable to Capitalism, as made evident by the ever-worsening state of nationalist Oligarch-run Russia, but certain a big step down.
I am not a "Stalinist" though. I am a Maoist, and as Mao himself said, "Stalin was a great Marxist-Leninist, but at the same time he committed several grievous errors".
"Stalinist" is just a reactionary term used by those who do not sufficiently question, or do not at all question, the bourgeois account of history.
For these reasons and more, I vote "Healthy Workers' State" from 1917-1945, and although they aren't options on the poll right now; "revisionist Socialism" 1945-1991, "ultra-nationalistic crumbling Capitalist remnant of once Socialist states" 1991-hopefully not forever.

I think that Khrushchev would have been better to live under than Stalin, because he wasn't a brutal dictator with a ridiculous personality cult. "De-Stalinization" improved the lives of many people in the USSR. Furthermore, under Khrushchev peasants were finally liberated from their position. Even the invasion of Hungary, which Khrushchev gets a lot of criticism for, he initially opposed but was pressured by the Stalinist elements (Brezhnev, Andropov, who would later replace Khrushchev to begin their own dictatorships).

This doesn't mean that Khrushchev was a swell guy, but compared to Stalin he sure seems like one. Still, he descended out of Stalinism, the rule of a new capitalist class over the proletariat in the name of "socialism".

[Die Neue Zeit]

Yeah, no kidding.


I used to think, from how I had heard it summarized, that the state capitalist analysis made a lot of sense. I heard it summarized in a way that made me think of it like this:

Capitalist = no workers' control, production for private profit
Socialist = workers' control, production for need
State Capitalist = no workers' control, production for need

However, later on I read some excerpts from Tony Cliff's book. And from what I could gather, he didn't seem to be making a nice, clear categorization like the one above. He seemed to just be rambling on about how the Soviet bureaucracy pushed the workers too hard for too much industrialization too fast. Well, regardless of how good or bad it was to live as a worker under such conditions, that was done out of necessity to survive in the absence of a world revolution, obviously.

Here is a pretty interesting online discussion (http://www.freeratio.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=209570) of Cliff's book/thesis.

Jimmy, I don't take Cliff's book that seriously. On the other hand, given the overly broad nature of the term "state capitalism," I would've preferred the OP to include the option "state 'M-C-M'-ist." :(


If, however, we merely view capitalism as one of numerous forms of economic exploitation, alienation and oppression (with a small elite exploiting a large majority for their own benefit - this describes ancient Egypt, all those "palace economies," etc), or as having the fundamental characteristic of hierarchical economics, every state is capitalist.

But ancient Egypt didn't function on the basis of M-C-M at all.

Note to stancel: Even Luxemburg had an "M-C-M"-ist conception of socialism. Ironically, Lenin came closer to breaking with this Second International view than she did. :(


I think that Khrushchev would have been better to live under than Stalin, because he wasn't a brutal dictator with a ridiculous personality cult. "De-Stalinization" improved the lives of many people in the USSR. Furthermore, under Khrushchev peasants were finally liberated from their position. Even the invasion of Hungary, which Khrushchev gets a lot of criticism for, he initially opposed but was pressured by the Stalinist elements (Brezhnev, Andropov, who would later replace Khrushchev to begin their own dictatorships).

This doesn't mean that Khrushchev was a swell guy, but compared to Stalin he sure seems like one. Still, he descended out of Stalinism, the rule of a new capitalist class over the proletariat in the name of "socialism".

The ascent of Khrushchev merely marked the end of "socialist" primitive accumulation:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/lenin-stalin-and-t66656/index.html?t=66656

[BraneMatter]

There is always a lot of debate over how to evaluate Stalinism and Maoism. Yes, they existed through VERY difficult conditions, and yes, they did make gains, but they were also totalitarian and crippled by bureaucracy, as well as being a type of personality cult. (Of course, Che is also a personality cult, among other things! Maybe not so bad if the personality is really for the people and not corrupt, but still a dangerous thing potentially.)

The real question is whether any FUTURE socialist worker's state should imitate these two regimes, and to what extent. And so we split ourselves between Stalinists, Maoists, and Trotskyists.

But the fact is, no future worker's state will come into existence in the same historical conditions, and Chavez can call himself a Maoist all he wants, but the two circumstances are entirely different. Socialism will not be the same in an advanced country as socialism in a third world country. Castro did what Castro did because of the conditions he had to operate under, i.e., the trade embargo imposed by the U.S. and other capitalist powers, plus constant attempts to overthrow and assasinate him. What would Cuba have been had the U.S. established peaceful relations and trade, instead of taking a war stance? Same could be said of Vietnam. After all that death and war and anti-communist hysteria, now we have peaceful relations with Vietnam and have established trade and tourism.

A Marxist state, ideally, should certainly NOT be totalitarian or be crippled by a bureaucratic caste system, but depending upon the counter-revolutionary and reactionary forces, a 'dictatorship of the proletariat' and defense of the revolution may require drastic measures. Some people would say Chavez is a dictator, but who is it that he has taken action against? How does he defend socialism against the capitalist attacks and attemped coups without being accused of being harsh?

Again, it's all about historical and actual conditions. We can argue ideology all we want, but actual conditions and circumstances will still have to be faced!

So let us just call ourselves Marxists, and leave it at that. Why divide ourselves? The lessons of the past are valuable, and we must consider how to apply them in the particular circumstances in which we now find ourselves. We must focus on the present and the future. We can learn from the period of Stalin and Mao, but we are now in different historical circumstances, and must go forward with a new scientific view based on present conditions. We should hold to the basic principles of Marxism, take note of the past historical manifestations, but plan for a better future. Our task now is the socialist state of the future.

It would be nice to think it can all be achieved without struggle, but history tells us a different story, so we must be prepared to take tough measures when necessary. This does not mean we should embrace a totalitarian model. The fight must be focused against the real class enemy, while at the same time striving always for the Marxist ideal of a true worker's state. Historical conditions will determine how the fight proceeds. "Dictatorship of the proletariat" is not just a slogan, but has definite class realities attached to it. Cuba is not my ideal, but neither will I attack Castro or ignore what has been accomplished! He is one tough mother, and a survivor in extreme conditions, and has been flipping-off U.S. imperialism for a long, long time! The Soviet Union and Maoist China were not ideal either, but we cannot ignore the lessons or what was accomplished.

So I do not call myself a Stalinist, or Maoist, or a Trot, but neither do I condemn anyone. We can learn from them all. I'm a Marxist first, and the rest depends on conditions and a scientific analysis. So I guess I will always be open to attack from some line, and will be accused of being too much on the fence. :confused:

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

The Soviet Union was a pure Socialist nation in which the People were in power.
Lenin and Stalin protected the Power of the People, but with Kruschev's treason in 1956 the People's Power began to wander, until the traitor Gorbachev finally destroyed the People's Nation in 1991.

[Das war einmal]

Not ever heard of a capitalist system that provides things for free (except for the market ofcourse). I cant take people seriously if they conjure this kind of crap, certainly because they mainly consider trotskyists and anarchists, which have achieved absolutely nothing and therefore are frustrated people who have given themselves a sort of ''holier than thou" status

The USSR was a socialist state, but not healthy, I chose this option however, because its most close to what it really was.

[Prairie Fire]

"Verdict on the Soviet Union"? Is Revleft the supreme court of socialism now?:lol:

The jury of teen anarchists and petty-bourgeois intellectuals seems to have reached a verdict (over a decade after it's dissolution,) that the USSR was "State-capitalist" .
Take THAT, history!

I voted "nothing", not because I have no opinion, but because I wanted to see the poll results. This thread is simply periodic denunciation of tangible socialist models.

[Valeofruin]

"Verdict on the Soviet Union"? Is Revleft the supreme court of socialism now?:lol:

The jury of teen anarchists and petty-bourgeois intellectuals seems to have reached a verdict (over a decade after it's dissolution,) that the USSR was "State-capitalist" .
Take THAT, history!

I voted "nothing", not because I have no opinion, but because I wanted to see the poll results. This thread is simply periodic denunciation of tangible socialist models.

Yea sounds about right, I'll get to work filing 'Revleft Supreme mandate #9421- The Soviet Union was State Capitalist' after I get done filing 'Revleft Supreme mandate #9420- Trotsky was a Socialist Hero and Peagen Diety'

[Soviet]

Verdict on the Soviet Union!And who are judges?Trotskysts ad anarhists?Well,if there was a "wrong" socialism in USSR tell me where was a "right" socialism?Why don t you,trotskysts ad anarhists,why don t you show us how to make "right" revolutions,how to build a "right" socialism a la Trotsky?Where are results of your many years activity?No results?Then you have no moral rights to adjudge USSR.

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

Verdict on the Soviet Union!And who are judges?Trotskysts ad anarhists?Well,if there was a "wrong" socialism in USSR tell me where was a "right" socialism?Why don t you,trotskysts ad anarhists,why don t you show us how to make "right" revolutions,how to build a "right" socialism a la Trotsky?Where are results of your many years activity?No results?Then you have no moral rights to adjudge USSR.
Indeed Comrade.
After so many years, the only thing the trotskyists have done is rejecting every practically existant form of Communism.

[RedSabine]

Verdict on the Soviet Union!And who are judges?Trotskysts ad anarhists?Well,if there was a "wrong" socialism in USSR tell me where was a "right" socialism?Why don t you,trotskysts ad anarhists,why don t you show us how to make "right" revolutions,how to build a "right" socialism a la Trotsky?Where are results of your many years activity?No results?Then you have no moral rights to adjudge USSR.

It makes no difference whether or not the Trotskyist or anarchist ideas (or any ideas for that matter) have taken root; that does not hinder the ability t look at a situation (the USSR) objectively and see its faults.

I think that you may be blinded by ideology, it is keeping you from looking at things objectively. The Soviet Union had its acheivements, it had its progressive steps, but I do not think that it was Socialist. There was no democracy to speak of, and the beaurocratic caste got extra benefits.


Be free of ideology and orthodoxy, they strangle our movement to the point of death (ie, indifference on the part of the world.)

[Soviet]

I'm sure that there was a socialism in USSR.I think that those who speak about state capitalism or degenerated socialism doesn't quite understand the dialectics of the new system creation.Ther's no ideal model wich can be an etalon.Socialism is creating from old system,it's bearing from capitalism with all ancestral vices of capitalism.Lenin said:'We'll have to build socialism from human material that capitalism left us".The bearig and the following survivaling are taking place in extreme conditions of desperate fight when it's impossible to be clear and ideal.That's why it is wrong to distinguish the Soviet socialism from some ideal marxist-leninist socialism.

[Enragé]

Fascist

petty bourgeois counter-revolution/counter revolution of the intelligentsia/komitetchiks under stalin's leadership

now i dont really care if anyone agrees with it being fascist, as long as we can all agree that the USSR is not our example, im fine with it. If not, go fuck yourself :)

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

Fascist

petty bourgeois counter-revolution/counter revolution of the intelligentsia/komitetchiks under stalin's leadership

now i dont really care if anyone agrees with it being fascist, as long as we can all agree that the USSR is not our example, im fine with it. If not, go fuck yourself :)
You haven't the foggiest idea what you're talking about, have you?
Fascist? Have you lost you mind? Ever studied political basics?
In case you didn't know, the Stalinists were the main enemy of fascism and the ones who destroyed it. Without Stalinism, who would have defeated the nazis? England? The USA? Don't think so.

What you're saying is the worst and very commonly used right-wing conservative and capitalist insult towards Communism: saying we are fascism.

I have a litle question for you: where on earth do you see anything that has to do with racism or suppressing other races in the USSR?

The USSR hasn't collapsed during Stalinism, but during revisionism.

You just copy the worst capitalist bullshit without even thinking.

[Led Zeppelin]

You just copy the worst capitalist bullshit without even thinking.

You're really not the right person to be telling others about "copying the worst bullshit without even thinking".

[Woland]

Fascist

petty bourgeois counter-revolution/counter revolution of the intelligentsia/komitetchiks under stalin's leadership

now i dont really care if anyone agrees with it being fascist, as long as we can all agree that the USSR is not our example, im fine with it. If not, go fuck yourself :)

No. Really. What the fuck. Not only is this saying absolutely idiotic, you are really fucking disrespectful to the millions who lived in the CCCP, who fought and died (including my relatives) to destroy fascism. Do you know anything about the Soviet economy, politics or history?? Don't post such crap.

[Enragé]

the Stalinists were the main enemy of fascism

:lol:
So that's why they signed a non agression pact with adolf hitler?


Without Stalinism, who would have defeated the nazis? England? The USA? Don't think so.


Without stalinism, trotskyism from the east (russia) and anarchism from the south (spain)
would "have" (or in other words, just like under stalinism, the people would have, did you ever see stalin at the front?)

Oh, and without stalinism the KPD might not have been such dumbfucks and worked together with the SPD to defeat the nazis (at no point in history did adolf get more votes than the SPD and KPD combined! But nooo, they couldnt work together, because the SPD were "social fascists", hah! talk about lacking political basics!). And then, there would have been no fucking Nazism!


insult towards Communism: saying we are fascism.


We? Who the fuck are you talking about?! If you are a stalinist, then YOU are fascism. (bad grammar btw but fuck that :P)


where on earth do you see anything that has to do with racism or suppressing other races in the USSR?


o0
dude
check your facts, damn
STALIN WAS AN ANTI-SEMITE!

"Antisemitism was commonly used as an instrument for personal conflicts in Soviet Russia, starting from conflict between Stalin and Trotsky ("Jews are trotskists, trotskists are Jews") and continuing through numerous conspiracy theories spread by official propaganda. Departament IV of NKVD was called "Jewsekcia" for its activity in "cleansing" party structures from Jews. Antisemitism in the USSR reached new heights after 1948 during the campaign against the "rootless cosmopolitan" (euphemism for "Jew") in which numerous Yiddish-writing poets, writers, painters and sculptors were killed.[48][49] This culminated in the so-called Doctors' Plot. Similar anti-Jewish propaganda in Poland resulted in the flight of the Polish Jewish survivors out of the country. [49]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semitism#Twentieth_century

[Woland]

Oh, and without stalinism the KPD might not have been such dumbfucks and worked together with the SPD to defeat the nazis (at no point in history did adolf get more votes than the SPD and KPD combined! But nooo, they couldnt work together, because the SPD were "social fascists", hah! talk about lacking political basics!). And then, there would have been no fucking Nazism!

Weimar Republic was no good of a democracy to start with. The power elite remained and worked against it. With the economic crisis and the depression, there was definite support for radical politics, and there was conflict between parties. They did try to control the Nazis, but with Weimar Republic's style of parliament appointment, every party could get a seat, and they did, and people were for them, especially because of their opposition to the hated terms of the Versailles peace agreement.
NO ONE wanted to work together with the SPD. Thats why the Great Coalition collapsed, with the SPD isolated. The Parliament was pretty dysfunctional at that point, with a great power vacuum, as no one could build a majority coalition government. For that time, by the constitution of the Weimar Republic, the presidential cabinet took the role of the parliament.
And if you would actually look at the votes, by the end, KPD was the largest party after the Nazis, who had the majority.

[hugsandmarxism]

I don't know... I really don't. I do think the ultimate fate of the USSR is an important thing to understand if revolution is to be had...

...but don't mind captain obvious here... :blushing:

[JohnnyC]

State capitalist.But in my opinion, still slightly better than any other common capitalist country.

[Enragé]

Weimar Republic was no good of a democracy to start with. The power elite remained and worked against it. With the economic crisis and the depression, there was definite support for radical politics, and there was conflict between parties. They did try to control the Nazis, but with Weimar Republic's style of parliament appointment, every party could get a seat, and they did, and people were for them, especially because of their opposition to the hated terms of the Versailles peace agreement.
NO ONE wanted to work together with the SPD. Thats why the Great Coalition collapsed, with the SPD isolated. The Parliament was pretty dysfunctional at that point, with a great power vacuum, as no one could build a majority coalition government. For that time, by the constitution of the Weimar Republic, the presidential cabinet took the role of the parliament.
And if you would actually look at the votes, by the end, KPD was the largest party after the Nazis, who had the majority.


Yes i know, but that wasnt my point. They could've smashed the nazis together, but didnt, because of a sectarian attitude promoted by the USSR.


Not only is this saying absolutely idiotic, you are really fucking disrespectful to the millions who lived in the CCCP, who fought and died (including my relatives) to destroy fascism.

Im not disputing the heroism of those who fought fascism, whether on the side of the USSR or the US. My grandfather was in the resistance over here in the netherlands, and i had nothing but respect for him (rip you old sod).


Do you know anything about the Soviet economy, politics or history??

Actually i do. Is there anything i missed post-1924/25 that indicates it was anything but fascism? They were murdering revolutionaries into the 30's to suppress the revolution! (you can kill the revolutionary, and if you kill enough, you actually kill the revolution)

[Sentinel]

This belongs in History -- moved.

[Bilan]

The jury of teen anarchists and petty-bourgeois intellectuals seems to have reached a verdict (over a decade after it's dissolution,) that the USSR was "State-capitalist" .
Take THAT, history!

Teenagers and intellectuals! smart kids.
Anyway, don't be silly.



I voted "nothing", not because I have no opinion, but because I wanted to see the poll results. This thread is simply periodic denunciation of tangible socialist models.


No, it isn't.

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

:lol:
So that's why they signed a non agression pact with adolf hitler?

The pact was signed to prevent Hitler from invading in 1939. In the two years between the non agression pact and the invasion the Red Army greatly expanded. Without those two years of expansion, defeating Hitler would been (almost) impossible.



Without stalinism, trotskyism from the east (russia) and anarchism from the south (spain)
would "have" (or in other words, just like under stalinism, the people would have, did you ever see stalin at the front?)

The People were inspired by Stalin. Wether you like him or not, that's a fact. When Stalin siad something, the People did it. The Allies had no other leaders who were obeyed like that.



Oh, and without stalinism the KPD might not have been such dumbfucks and worked together with the SPD to defeat the nazis (at no point in history did adolf get more votes than the SPD and KPD combined! But nooo, they couldnt work together, because the SPD were "social fascists", hah! talk about lacking political basics!). And then, there would have been no fucking Nazism!

Bullshit, the social democrats chose the side of the fascists. They outlawed the KPD, but never the NSDAP.
How could the Communists ever ally with a party that outlwed them?



We? Who the fuck are you talking about?! If you are a stalinist, then YOU are fascism. (bad grammar btw but fuck that :P)
Just say you hate me instead of telling all this nonsense.




o0
dude
check your facts, damn
STALIN WAS AN ANTI-SEMITE!

No he wasn't at all. Many high-ranking officials were Jews. The predecessor of Molotov was for example a Jew. Hitler often compared Judaism to Bolshevism, because many Jews were Bolsheviks.



"Antisemitism was commonly used as an instrument for personal conflicts in Soviet Russia, starting from conflict between Stalin and Trotsky ("Jews are trotskists, trotskists are Jews") and continuing through numerous conspiracy theories spread by official propaganda. Departament IV of NKVD was called "Jewsekcia" for its activity in "cleansing" party structures from Jews. Antisemitism in the USSR reached new heights after 1948 during the campaign against the "rootless cosmopolitan" (euphemism for "Jew") in which numerous Yiddish-writing poets, writers, painters and sculptors were killed.[48][49] This culminated in the so-called Doctors' Plot. Similar anti-Jewish propaganda in Poland resulted in the flight of the Polish Jewish survivors out of the country. [49]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semitism#Twentieth_century

Anyone can write in Wikipedia. I can just go there too and write that Stalin was a Jew. Not very trustworthy.

[Enragé]

The pact was signed to prevent Hitler from invading in 1939. In the two years between the non agression pact and the invasion the Red Army greatly expanded. Without those two years of expansion, defeating Hitler would been (almost) impossible.

If the fucker wouldnt have had a shitload of army officers shot the red army would have been ready in '39. Also, are you saying russia wasnt taken by surprise by the german invasion? Damn.


The People were inspired by Stalin. Wether you like him or not, that's a fact. When Stalin siad something, the People did it. The Allies had no other leaders who were obeyed like that

Terrorised more likely. If stalin said something, people did it, or got shot/sent to the gulag.


Bullshit, the social democrats chose the side of the fascists. They outlawed the KPD, but never the NSDAP.
How could the Communists ever ally with a party that outlwed them?


By not holding childish grudges. Also, when did the SPD outlaw the KPD?


Just say you hate me instead of telling all this nonsense.

I hate you.


Anyone can write in Wikipedia. I can just go there too and write that Stalin was a Jew. Not very trustworthy

I didnt get it just from wikipedia, i just used it to illustrate my point. Also, wikipedia is as accurate as the encyclopedia brittanica.
But ofcourse, you prefer books written by people with a stalin fetish.

Fuck off to North Korea would ya. Better yet, shoot yourself, one less fascist with a red flag to worry about.

[AtteroDominatus]

We? Who the fuck are you talking about?! If you are a stalinist, then YOU are fascism. (bad grammar btw but fuck that :P)

(go to wiki and look up fascism, i can't post the link)
like you, i also know my from another source besides wiki, just using wiki to demonstrate it. Even in the very definition is says "Fascism opposes communism" Fascism has many meanings now. Especially in the U.S., where everyone calls the other a fascist to gain votes. But the truth remains that even if the Soviets killed Jews (I haven't confirmed or disregarded it) communism never supported only one race or superior force, which is what fascism is.

Yes, Stalin may have scared people into listening to him, in some regards, but he also inspired others and did not promote the wiping out of one entire group, like hitler (A fascist, agreed by many historians) did. Hitler killed off many more people, and without sanction. He made it known he hated them and wanted to kill them. In USSR, this was not true. True, he did kill people who did not agree. but, you cannot condone the Soviets for that, as many governments did that at first. Stalin had to kill opposition at first, because in order to start a government, one must get support. It's a crude technique, granted, but all governments started with this kind of method at the start of things. And even now things like this exist. i.e assassinations.

Evne in the rules to join this site, it says you cannot act like a fascist here. what would the point of that be if this entire site was filled with fascists? The very essence is claiming one race or group to be superior to all others. For communism, its goal is to allow everyone to own everything and share it amongst themselves. It is in no way even remotely promoting the structure of one group among another. That would be going against itself in its own views. I may still be new to the whole ideology of communism, but I can tell you the two are very conflicting. In its very meaning it is against divisions and classes, so saying its working to eliminate classes is just illogical.

And, if you are regarding Stalinism, as opposed to communism, let me make that clear as well. There is a lot of sketchy discussions on what Stalin did, but he followed the teachings of Marx. In the end, agree or not, he was true to the actual ideology of Marx, whether or not he followed them exactly. He went forth with the ideology, distributing wealth and taking from the kulaks. How is this fascist? He was merely acting upon communist ideology to make everyone equal. He may have been taking from some, but he was in no means favoring another group, he was making all groups equal.

[tehpevis]

I voted State Capitalism, but it was also someting of A degenerated Worker's State, Also. However, the CCCP was only a Worker's State under Lenin as far as "Getting There" Socialism, not true Marxist, as the Bolshevik vanguard had a strong influence on Lenin's revolutionary government.

[tehpevis]

And, if you are regarding Stalinism, as opposed to communism, let me make that clear as well. There is a lot of sketchy discussions on what Stalin did, but he followed the teachings of Marx. In the end, agree or not, he was true to the actual ideology of Marx, whether or not he followed them exactly. He went forth with the ideology, distributing wealth and taking from the kulaks. How is this fascist? He was merely acting upon communist ideology to make everyone equal. He may have been taking from some, but he was in no means favoring another group, he was making all groups equal.
He certainly wasn't favoring anyone in the Gulags, or the exploited workers during his rule, or the old Bolsheviks he did away with, or his own Allies (Same be said for America), or anyone else who his regime-to say the least-was put on the back end of.

Stalin was certainly not a fascist, I agree on that, but he was stil Totalitarianist. One of the few qualities I see in him is his hatred of big business & Capitalism, the one key detail keeping him from being a fascist.

[AtteroDominatus]

He certainly wasn't favoring anyone in the Gulags, or the exploited workers during his rule, or the old Bolsheviks he did away with, or his own Allies (Same be said for America), or anyone else who his regime-to say the least-was put on the back end of.

Stalin was certainly not a fascist, I agree on that, but he was stil Totalitarianist. One of the few qualities I see in him is his hatred of big business & Capitalism, the one key detail keeping him from being a fascist.
I can't blame the man for hating big business. In the United states, thanks to the liazzes Faire deal, it ended up bringing the Steel, Oil, and Rail Road industries to power. they pretty much ran the government for awhile, doing anythign they wanted without anyone stopping them. No doubt, Stlain saw that these big time companies cared nothign for their workers, making them work ridicuous hours for not enough to be able to sustain themselves. No matter how many jobs there are, there never seems to be enough. And, left to big buisness, even those who can get jobs are treated unfairly and unequally.

and yes, the goal of every government is to stay in power. Because obviously, the USSR wans;t fully communist, it was still on its way, and in order to even get close to that direction, precautions had to be made. not saying killing opponents or scaring them into things was right, but in all, a lot of governments do it. It doesn't lessen or strenghten the result in that respect. It really gets a bad reputatation for what it did, but many other nations have done things to that amount as well. In the end, all lives lost are tragic, but sometimes in order to progress, people must be forfeit. Not saying ends justify the means, but I'm pretty sure I made my point to my veiws.

[Comrade_Red]

Actually i do. Is there anything i missed post-1924/25 that indicates it was anything but fascism? They were murdering revolutionaries into the 30's to suppress the revolution! (you can kill the revolutionary, and if you kill enough, you actually kill the revolution)

They weren't revolutionaries, gotdamnit. They were counter-revolutionaries. Just because they had arms and fought against the government doesn't automatically make them the good guys. had they obtained power, you'd be going off about how they were reactionaries.

[ZeroNowhere]

There is a lot of sketchy discussions on what Stalin did, but he followed the teachings of Marx. In the end, agree or not, he was true to the actual ideology of Marx, whether or not he followed them exactly.
Oh, did he, now?
I would be interested in what these teachings of Marx that he was following were.


He went forth with the ideology, distributing wealth and taking from the kulaks. How is this fascist?
I would dismiss any chance of him being true to the anarchism of Marx by the fact that he went forth with the ideology, he distributed wealth, and he took from the kulaks.


They weren't revolutionaries, gotdamnit. They were counter-revolutionaries. Just because they had arms and fought against the government doesn't automatically make them the good guys. had they obtained power, you'd be going off about how they were reactionaries.
Wait, how were they counter-revolutionary? They were feudalist?

[AtteroDominatus]

Oh, did he, now?
I would be interested in what these teachings of Marx that he was following were.
It's quite obvious. I can't say I know a great deal, I don't have the best background. But from what I have read, was he not trying to make everyone equals as Marx said? Like Marx wanted, Stalin waned to wipe out the class system, and make them part of the greater good. I don't agree with what he did, in the ways of sending opposition to die (much like the Nazis in that respect) from starvation in labor camps or shipped them off to asia, etc. He gave lower men and workers a chance at new lives


I would dismiss any chance of him being true to the anarchism of Marx by the fact that he went forth with the ideology, he distributed wealth, and he took from the kulaks.well, who said it would have stayed that way? In order to get there, someone has to do it. I admit, it isn't anarchism, but he was still helping it along by forcing people to begin to change. By regulating it, he could make sure it began to happen. Was this better then if people had done it themselves? I don't honestly know. But I do believe, either way, Stalin worked towards communism.

[ZeroNowhere]

I admit, it isn't anarchism, but he was still helping it along by forcing people to begin to change.
Which, interestingly, is a part of an ideology named Blanquism, which Marx and Engels were opposed to. Crud, mutualists want to abolish class systems too, is Stalin now a mutualist?


But from what I have read, was he not trying to make everyone equals as Marx said?
Marx never said that some guy should try to 'make everyone equals'. Crud, 'making everyone equals'... What does that even mean?


Like Marx wanted, Stalin waned to wipe out the class system, and make them part of the greater good.
Make who part of 'the greater good'? Also, Stalin did not wipe out the class system, nor did he work towards doing so somehow, he simply acted in his material interests as a member of the rising Russian bourgeoisie.

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

If the fucker wouldnt have had a shitload of army officers shot the red army would have been ready in '39. Also, are you saying russia wasnt taken by surprise by the german invasion? Damn.

The people executed were sentenced to death by court for trying to destroy the People's state. Any other nation would have done the same. If you conspire to kill the president in the USA, you'll be executed too.


Terrorised more likely. If stalin said something, people did it, or got shot/sent to the gulag.
Stalin was very popular in Russia in his days.The hate against Stalin started along with the destalinisations in 1956, after his death. Wether you like him or not, it was a fact that he was loved.




By not holding childish grudges. Also, when did the SPD outlaw the KPD?

The SPD collaborated with the capitalist regime of Weimar. The Communist of course didn't. The government outlawed the Rotfrontkämferbund while the Brown Army of Hitler was allowed to remain legal.



I didnt get it just from wikipedia, i just used it to illustrate my point. Also, wikipedia is as accurate as the encyclopedia brittanica.
But ofcourse, you prefer books written by people with a stalin fetish.

History books are good enough. People who despise Communism such as yourself are obviously not happy with the "lack" of anti-communism in history books.



Fuck off to North Korea would ya. Better yet, shoot yourself, one less fascist with a red flag to worry about.

If you want to know, I think every fascist should die and fascists are not worth life.
Your insults are just ridiculous. I'm starting to wonder wether you're only on this forum to insult Communists, because obviously you are a capitalist.

[Woland]

On the theme of SPD and KPD-

I seriously doubt that even if they were one party, any substancial change would have taken place- Before Hindenburg's appointment of hitler as chancellor, everything would have likely have been the same, the coalition would have collapsed, after all, KPD was not that big of a party, and a coalition would need an outright majority. And they would never even try to actually ban the nazis anyway, at times they werent seen as a threat, and then these parties actually ''played by the rules'', they would not do something like banning a party and starting to repress political opponents. After hitler became chancellor, he would have still used the Reichstag fire to jail opponents, just like all of the communists and some social democrats were jailed. The only big chance to stop the nazis would have been the voting on the Enabling Act of 1933, but with the jailing of communists and socdems, it would still have passed, as ALL parties (liberals, christians, etc.), in reality, besides the SPD, voted for it (some respect for the SPD here, as I heard, they were hit and spat at while they were voting), communists were jailed and could not vote, and hitler also passed a law which made such voting legal. This Act banned the communist party completely and made hitler and his party even more powerful, with SPD banned not so long afterwards.
So what Im saying is, even if they were united, they still wouldnt have stopped the Nazis or even this law; With all the peculiarities of Weimar Republic's politics (for example, for killing a right-winger you might get 10 years in prison, but for killing a leftist you might be released just after weeks) and tactics used by hitler, it would have still passed. SPD and KPD united maybe would have won some time, but they would eventually lose. For hitler to not come to power, other things would have to have happened, which sadly didnt, and too many things worked for him to get this far.

[Valeofruin]

If the fucker wouldnt have had a shitload of army officers shot the red army would have been ready in '39. Also, are you saying russia wasnt taken by surprise by the german invasion? Damn.



Terrorised more likely. If stalin said something, people did it, or got shot/sent to the gulag.



By not holding childish grudges. Also, when did the SPD outlaw the KPD?



I hate you.



I didnt get it just from wikipedia, i just used it to illustrate my point. Also, wikipedia is as accurate as the encyclopedia brittanica.
But ofcourse, you prefer books written by people with a stalin fetish.

Fuck off to North Korea would ya. Better yet, shoot yourself, one less fascist with a red flag to worry about.

Yea you got us big boy, Stalin was a grade a Anti-Semite!



National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.
Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism.
In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.
J. Stalin
January 12, 1931

[Die Neue Zeit]

I think that Khrushchev would have been better to live under than Stalin, because he wasn't a brutal dictator with a ridiculous personality cult. "De-Stalinization" improved the lives of many people in the USSR. Furthermore, under Khrushchev peasants were finally liberated from their position. Even the invasion of Hungary, which Khrushchev gets a lot of criticism for, he initially opposed but was pressured by the Stalinist elements (Brezhnev, Andropov, who would later replace Khrushchev to begin their own dictatorships).

This doesn't mean that Khrushchev was a swell guy, but compared to Stalin he sure seems like one. Still, he descended out of Stalinism, the rule of a new capitalist class over the proletariat in the name of "socialism".

It is important, however, that Brad sees some discontinuity between the pre-war Stalinist bureaucracy and the late Stalin-era bureaucracy:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/term-stalinism-and-t80286/index.html
http://www.revleft.com/vb/nikita-khrushchev-t79868/index.html?p=1158633
http://www.revleft.com/vb/nikita-khrushchev-t79868/index3.html

[Floyce White]

http://www.geocities.com/antiproperty/

. . . . Communists must abandon and criticize the “Marxist-Leninist” concept that the dispossessed laboring class could, should, or did create a state to defend its property interests. In doing so, we must also abandon and criticize its evil twin brother: the idea that a class of “state capitalists” was created by the government in the USSR. Socialism is a desperate attempt to save capitalism by maximizing state ownership and calling it “workers’ rule.” “State capitalism” is a sales pitch for those who didn’t buy it the first time around. (Alphabet Soup Spells Capitalism, January 1, 2002).

. . . . The false method of defining classes by known occupation puts blinders on any analysis of socialist countries such as the former Soviet Union. Socialist countries have money, wage labor, commodity exchange, and all the other forms of capitalism–so they must have the substance of capitalism. Who are the capitalists? The lot of hired bureaucrats are arbitrarily labeled “capitalists” because their jobs have well-known perquisites and involve known managerial tasks. Meanwhile, tens of millions of family-owned small businesses circulate and accumulate capital in petty-capitalist agriculture, and in the “free,” parallel, underground, or black markets of the little-monitored “informal economy.” This actual class of capitalist families is ignored because their reported business activity seems so small compared to the gross exaggerations of production in state-owned business. The massive corruption, theft, wastage, and spoilage in state-owned industry is the wink-and-nod subsidy to family-owned business, whose members get into management jobs so that they too can steal raw materials to resell as finished consumer goods. It is putting the cart before the horse to say that employment as government or state-business bureaucrats is the cause of being capitalists, and once they become capitalists, some start little businesses on the side. The Soviet system was not a degeneration, feudalism, or a troubled new system as many socialists suggest. The Soviet economy was the finest example of the normal functioning of socialism: to assist capital accumulation while hiding the extent of family-owned business under the guise of “workers’ rule.” Nationalized property in any country is owned by the state on behalf of whatever capitalists there are. Nationalizations of heavy industry are especially useful when capitalists are tiny and scattered. The petty-bourgeois socialist movement predictably and chronically fails to develop a logically-true analysis of the Soviet Union due to foggy definitions of classes. (No Compromise With Capitalism, March 1, 2002).

. . . . As long as there are capitalists, they will recruit working-class activists to do political labor. Many lower-class anarchists, socialists, and radical liberals struggle to raise broad anti-property demands instead of the intrigues of petty-capitalist interests. This is one form of the struggle for communism. The existence of communist struggle within the anarchist movement does not prove that “anarchism is communism” any more than the existence of lower-class struggle within the radical-liberal movement proves that “radical liberalism is communism.” In conflict with the idea that anarchism is a form of capitalism, a few comrades counterpose the expression “anarcho-communism.” This phrasing does not work–precisely because it defines “anarchism” as meaning “no state.” Along with its corollary, “state capitalism,” these terms induce the pair of false opposites “stateless capitalism” and “state communism.” False opposite proves false posit. Anyone can compound words as a rhetorical device, but it does not imply any reasoning. (Whose Class Struggle? October 1, 2005).

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

Yea you got us big boy, Stalin was a grade a Anti-Semite!

[/i]
NewkindofSoldier has no idea what he's talking about whatsoever...

[Wild_Fire]

I have finally been able to work out what the USSR was.:closedeyes:

It was definitely a degenerated Workers State. :(

The Bolsheviks got rid of the Capitalists, but it was still a State run by Lenin's party, in the interest of the people.:rolleyes:

It wasn't Socialist, nor Communist.:mad:

Lenin prolonged the temporary Workers State, until Stalin could come and make it a Totalitarian State.:cursing:

[DancingLarry]

This 53-year-old "teen" anarchist holds a position very similar to serpent's, that the Soviet Union quite quickly became a traditional despotism due to its backwardness, isolation, the the small size, geographic isolation and immaturity of its working class in such a huge nation, and the deeply backwards authoritarianism of its leadership. Any objective Marxist analysis quickly recognizes that Russia was utterly unfit as a prospect for any meaningful socialist development, in 1917 it lacked the economic foundation and the political advancement necessary even for a bourgeois liberal nationalist development. My great-grandfather, a revolutionary socialist in Chicago, wrote at the time that "they cannot possibly make Russia communist, the great danger is that they will make communism Russian." He was all too prescient, being the serious Marxist he was. I find it ironic that there is a self-defined category of "non-revisionist Marxist-Leninists" when Lenin was the greatest revisionist in the entire Marxist tradition, arguing that socialism could be created in a nation where none of the preconditions Marx's research indicated as necessary had been met.

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

I have finally been able to work out what the USSR was.:closedeyes:

It was definitely a degenerated Workers State. :(

The Bolsheviks got rid of the Capitalists, but it was still a State run by Lenin's party, in the interest of the people.:rolleyes:

It wasn't Socialist, nor Communist.:mad:

Lenin prolonged the temporary Workers State, until Stalin could come and make it a Totalitarian State.:cursing:
The Party did rule the nation in the best interests of the People. The main organs of power were the People's Soviets, which were councils of the People.

Stalin did nothing more or less than what was necessary to make sure the nation survived the attacks by domestic and foreign threats.

[Lamanov]

State capitalist. I don't think there's such a thing as a non-capitalist state.

Oh, for fuck's sake. What about feudalism or slaveholding?


Don't be daft. What would you call those social, political and economic structures that existed for all those millennia before capitalism. Your argument is basically anarchist, and misses entirely the point of the question. I strongly advise reading some Marx, and Lenin.

His argument isn't "anarchist". It's just stupid.

[Bolshevik-Leninist]

I am a supporter of the League for the Revolutionary Party. We believe the Soviet Union was a degenerated workers state until the completion of the Stalinist counterrevolution. We believe this culminated in 1939 with the purges.

For Marxists, the economy in a workers state is still governed by the law of value, meaning that production is still carried out for value, rather than social use-value. Thus a workers state is a transitional state -- a state built only by the social revolution of the working class, used as a tool to suppress the oppressors and build international socialism. That is, a state controlled by the working class. The purges, culminating in 1939, decimated every last remnant of proletarian leadership in the Soviet state, leaving only the Stalinist bureaucracy to consolidate its stranglehold over the state. The purges let the Stalinists use the full force of the state against the international socialist revolution and become the new capitalist class of a statified capitalist Soviet Union.

Our theory predicted the downfall of the Soviet Union. We pointed out that the Soviet state was subject to the tendency of the law of value to fall, and we noted that its nationalized property limited its ability to raise the level of exploitation. So we see the events of the 1990s as a political revolution of an already capitalist state, changing only the ruling circle and not the class holding state power.

[Kassad]

It was a revolutionary state that was taking steps towards socialism and it was sidetracked by poor leadership, lack of industrialization and resources and Western colonialism. In a world where the bourgeoisie cooperate quite well to remain at the reins, they can maintain their grip under most circumstances.

There's a point in which preventing counterrevolution becomes counterevolutionary in itself. The early Soviet Union was filled with power struggle, disagreements and bourgeoisie puppets continually attempting to make power graps. That's a substantial reason as to why I can fathom parts of the Red Terror. Still, Stalin's purges were delusional and counter-productive, as they only saught to continue his oppressive bureaucracy. I think it's plausible to say that it was an attempted workers state that had a revolutionary impact on the workers class and history, but it was far from successful.

[Bolshevik-Leninist]

It was a revolutionary state that was taking steps towards socialism and it was sidetracked by poor leadership, lack of industrialization and resources and Western colonialism. In a world where the bourgeoisie cooperate quite well to remain at the reins, they can maintain their grip under most circumstances.

There's a point in which preventing counterrevolution becomes counterevolutionary in itself. The early Soviet Union was filled with power struggle, disagreements and bourgeoisie puppets continually attempting to make power graps. That's a substantial reason as to why I can fathom parts of the Red Terror. Still, Stalin's purges were delusional and counter-productive, as they only saught to continue his oppressive bureaucracy. I think it's plausible to say that it was an attempted workers state that had a revolutionary impact on the workers class and history, but it was far from successful.

Unlike the PSL and other Stalinoid groups, we do not blame the counterrevolution in the Soviet Union on the working class. We lay the blame squarely on the counterrevolutionary Stalinist bureaucracy. What do you mean that the USSR was a "revolutionary state"? Your choice of words is clever, covering for such Stalinist monstrosities as Cuba and China by saying "revolutionary" rather than describing the state in class terms.

But the state is a tool used by a class for the suppression of other classes. What class held state power in the Soviet Union? We agree that the USSR was "revolutionary" while the working class held state power. But the working class was ousted entirely from the state apparatus through the purges. This was not a failure, this was a defeat, prepared for by the defeats of revolutions internationally -- defeats that Stalinism also deserves the blame for. The working class, and all of its leadership, was crushed by the purges in the USSR.

You say, "There's a point in which preventing counterrevolution becomes counterevolutionary in itself." This only confuses things. Because you fail to see the nature of the Stalinist counterrevolution, you defend the purges as "preventing counterrevolution" while acknowledging that they were "delusional and counterproductive." That is, you support the Stalinist bureaucracy, though you shy away from supporting the purges in order to score points as a moralist.

[Kassad]

Unlike the PSL and other Stalinoid groups, we do not blame the counterrevolution in the Soviet Union on the working class. We lay the blame squarely on the counterrevolutionary Stalinist bureaucracy. What do you mean that the USSR was a "revolutionary state"? Your choice of words is clever, covering for such Stalinist monstrosities as Cuba and China by saying "revolutionary" rather than describing the state in class terms.

But the state is a tool used by a class for the suppression of other classes. What class held state power in the Soviet Union? We agree that the USSR was "revolutionary" while the working class held state power. But the working class was ousted entirely from the state apparatus through the purges. This was not a failure, this was a defeat, prepared for by the defeats of revolutions internationally -- defeats that Stalinism also deserves the blame for. The working class, and all of its leadership, was crushed by the purges in the USSR.

You say, "There's a point in which preventing counterrevolution becomes counterevolutionary in itself." This only confuses things. Because you fail to see the nature of the Stalinist counterrevolution, you defend the purges as "preventing counterrevolution" while acknowledging that they were "delusional and counterproductive." That is, you support the Stalinist bureaucracy, though you shy away from supporting the purges in order to score points as a moralist.

Okay... I do like people fabricating false assertions of my ideology. The PSL isn't Stalinist. In fact, if you can find one piece of support or advocacy on the website (www.PSLWeb.org (http://www.PSLWeb.org)) that comes out openly in praise of Stalin, I will concede this thread and walk away. Still, it is not true. The PSL and myself do not blame the working class. I, for one, blame a mixture of disenfranchisement, counterrevolution and Western Colonialism.

When I say revolutionary state, I mean that it tore down the bourgeoisie state and in its place, they transfered power to the working class by working for social reform. Such as in Cuba where the 26th of July Movement tore down the Batista regime and created a revolutionary workers democracy based on people, not profit.

Okay, I feel like I'm losing you now. I never blamed the USSR's failures on the working class. I said specifically that Stalin's purges were executed due to his delusion and lack of regard for the proletariat. He forged a state-based bureaucracy that destroyed everything Lenin and his supporters had worked for. Though Stalin was only one man and those beside him should also be blamed, I do pin a lot of the blame on Stalin's bureaucracy and oppressive Party on the failure of the Soviet Union.

And by the end, you're just plain lying. You are fabricating evidence and producing blatantly false assertions. I never said I supported Stalin's Union or the Union under Stalinist control. I think a lot of advancements were made, but none of them were worth the destruction of the working class and the destruction of the Revolution. I've said that 100 times, but people like you are obsessed with your delusional fantasies. You've spouted off more than a few lies in your post and honestly, I can't believe I had to address some of the things I did because of your ignorance.

[Dave B]

I think when dealing with this kind of thing it is important to read your Lenin.

There is often some understandable ‘ideological confusion’ amongst many due to a lack of comprehension when it comes to Lenin’s 1922 new terminology, or Orwellian new-speak.


And this is very important if one wants to properly understand what Lenin is on about. For instance if people think that for Lenin the workers and the real proletarians are people who work in factories they are likely to get themselves in a muddle

In Bolshevik Russia of 1922 the ‘real proletarians and workers’ for Lenin are members of the Bolshevik party and the people who work in the factories are another class that Karl omitted from his theory because he didn’t foresee the ‘social and economic conditions’ in Lenin’s Russia.

According to Lenin the people who worked in factories in Bolshevik Russia are a new ‘class of casual elements’.

By a mutually exclusive process, ‘the real proletarians and workers’ are in and are the Bolshevik Party and the ‘casual elements’ work in the factories.

Thus March 27-April 2, 1922 at the Eleventh Congress Of The R.C.P.(B.);



There we have to deal with workers. Very often the word "workers" is taken to mean the factory proletariat. But it does not mean that at all. During the war people who were by no means proletarians went into the factories; they went into the factories to dodge the war.
Are the social and economic conditions in our country today such as to induce real proletarians to go into the factories? No.

It would be true according to Marx; but Marx did not write about Russia; he wrote about capitalism as a whole, beginning with the fifteenth century. It held true over a period of six hundred years, but it is not true for present-day Russia. Very often those who go into the factories are not proletarians; they are casual elements of every description.



Once we understand this and that therefore ; proletarian, proletariat, the vanguard of the working class, workers, advanced section of the workers, the vanguard and the Bolshevik party; are all the same thing ie non factory workers, we can by making the appropriate substitutions therefore make sense of the following statement in the same speech;




But ours is a Bolshevik state it rests on the the Bolshevik party; (bourgeois intelligentsia), it gives the Bolshevik party (bourgeois intelligentsia) all political privileges; and through the medium of the Bolshevik party (bourgeois intelligentsia)it attracts to itself the lower ranks of the peasantry (you remember that we began this work through the Poor Peasants Committees). That is why very many people are misled by the term state capitalism.

To avoid this we must remember the fundamental thing that state capitalism in the form we have here is not dealt with in any theory, or in any books, for the simple reason that all the usual concepts connected with this term are associated with bourgeois rule in capitalist society. Our society is one which has left the rails of capitalism, but has not yet got on to new rails.

The state in this society is not ruled by the bourgeoisie, but by the Bolshevik party (bourgeois intelligentsia). We refuse to understand that when we say "state" we mean ourselves, the Bolshevik party (bourgeois intelligentsia). State capitalism is capitalism which we shall be able to restrain, and the limits of which we shall be able to fix. This state capitalism is connected with the state, and the state is the Bolshevik party (bourgeois intelligentsia). We are the state.



The people who work in the factories or the casual elements are in fact not required to play any meaningful role in the running of this kind of capitalism apart from at the end of a 'transmission belt' or as 'small cogs'. The ‘tag tail’ or ‘tail enders’ of the state capitalist class (bourgeois intelligentsia), even if they have the vote.




The Bolshevik party of the bourgeois intelligentsia, having got rid of the bourgeoisie, or more accurately replaced them, their role became keeping the ‘casual element class’ like myself in their place.

So to repeat from James Burnham’s Managerial Revolution,Chapter 13. That actually was the inspiration for Orwells 1984;




"Both communism (Leninism) and fascism claim, as do all the great social
ideologies to speak for the people as a whole for the future of
mankind. However it is interesting to notice that both provide even
in their public words for an elite or vanguard. The elite is of
course the managers and their political associates the rulers of the
new society.

Naturally the ideologies do not put it this way. As they say it the
elite represents, stands for, the people as a whole and their
interests. Fascism is more blunt about the need for the elite,
for `leadership'. Leninism worked out a more elaborate
rationalisation. The masses according to Leninism are unable to
become sufficiently educated and trained under capitalism to carry in
their own immediate persons the burdens of socialism

The mases are unable to understand in full what their interests are.
Consequently, the transition to socialism will have to be supervised
by an enlightened vanguard which `understands the historic process as
a whole' and can ably and correctly act for the interests of the
masses as a whole; like as Lenin puts it, the general staff of an
army.

Through this notion of an elite or vanguard, these ideologies thus
serve at once the two fold need of justifying the existence of a
ruling class and at the same time providing the masses with an
attitude making easy the acceptance of its rule.

This device is similar to that used by the capitalist ideologies when
they argued that capitalist were necessary in order to carry on
business and that profits for capitalists were identical with
prosperity for the people as a whole…………….The communist and fascist
doctrine is a device, and an effective one, for enlisting the support
of the masses for the interests of the new elite through an apparent
identification of those interests with the interests of the masses
themselves."


And from

Frederick Engels
Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State
Chapter IX: Barbarism and Civilization





We are now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production at which the existence of these classes has not only ceased to be a necessity, but becomes a positive hindrance to production. They will fall as inevitably as they once arose. The state inevitably falls with them. The society which organises production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong - into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze ax.

[Bolshevik-Leninist]

Okay... I do like people fabricating false assertions of my ideology. The PSL isn't Stalinist. In fact, if you can find one piece of support or advocacy on the website that comes out openly in praise of Stalin, I will concede this thread and walk away. Still, it is not true. The PSL and myself do not blame the working class. I, for one, blame a mixture of disenfranchisement, counterrevolution and Western Colonialism.

Referring to the PSL as “Stalinoid,” I chose my word carefully. The politics of the PSL mirror those of Stalinism, having arrived at highly similar conclusions through breaking with Trotskyism. Granted: you do not come out “openly in praise of Stalin,” but as you say, “Stalin was only one man.” You blame counterrevolution? Whose? You have not explained when this was completed or by whom it was carried out. I have noted my organization’s position (further elaborated in our book, The Life and Death of Stalinism) that the counterrevolution was carried out by the Stalinist bureaucracy, as predicted by Trotsky, and completed (though here we openly differ with Trotsky) by 1939. Let us not forget that your tendency broke with Trotskyism in order to support the Stalinist crushing of the Hungarian Revolution.


When I say revolutionary state, I mean that it tore down the bourgeoisie state and in its place, they transfered power to the working class by working for social reform. Such as in Cuba where the 26th of July Movement tore down the Batista regime and created a revolutionary workers democracy based on people, not profit.

The problem here is that for you, it seems as though there were no fundamental changes in the nature of the state in the USSR under Stalinism. I argue that power was taken by the working class in the October Revolution of 1917. This power seizure was not made “by working for social reform,” it was made by a conscious linking of reform demands to the need for socialist revolution. The reforms that were made were made through the workers’ state established by the proletarian social revolution. (As an aside, I suspect that ‘transferred’ is a problematic word to use here, as the seizure of power was an act carried out by the working class itself; ‘transferred’ implies a passive reception of this power. Though perhaps we do not actually disagree on this, and it may simply be a matter of semantics.)

Cuba is another debate entirely, though very relevant. The revolution in Cuba was not a proletarian revolution, so when you say that it “created a revolutionary workers democracy,” I believe you are the one being dishonest. The Cuban revolution was a petty-bourgeois revolution. Its leaders did not even identify as ‘communist,’ let alone working class, until pressure by U.S. imperialism compelled them to seek out the USSR as another imperialist backer. At no point has the Cuban working class ever held state power, and this is precisely the defining characteristic of a state.

You say that the Cuban state was “based on people, not profit.” As Lenin and Trotsky knew, production in a genuine workers state is still production for value, rather than for use-value. Only in a socialist society (which must be international!) can production “based on people” mean anything other than “production for profit,” because only in socialism will “people” cease to be divided into classes. Let me be clear: we in the LRP advocate socialist revolution in Cuba to overthrow the Stalinist regime and establish a genuine workers state, which can only be built by a conscious act of the proletariat. The fact is that you hand the reigns of the social revolution over to petty-bourgeois misleaders who in fact crush and oppress workers in the Stalinist states.


Okay, I feel like I'm losing you now. I never blamed the USSR's failures on the working class. I said specifically that Stalin's purges were executed due to his delusion and lack of regard for the proletariat. He forged a state-based bureaucracy that destroyed everything Lenin and his supporters had worked for. Though Stalin was only one man and those beside him should also be blamed, I do pin a lot of the blame on Stalin's bureaucracy and oppressive Party on the failure of the Soviet Union.

Lenin and his supporters (including and especially those who stood by the Left Opposition as it struggled against Stalinism) worked to build a revolutionary workers state. If Stalin (I would of course prefer “Stalinists” or “Stalinism”), as you “forged a state-based bureaucracy that destroyed everything Lenin and his supporters had worked for.” I do not disagree, though I suspect your own line does. I believe that Stalinism crushed and destroyed the workers state by 1939. Contrary to you, I believe that this was hardly “delusional and counter-productive,” but rather in the objective interests of the Stalinist bureaucracy. If Stalin’s personal psychology shows delusion, I wonder why a state directly created and controlled by the working class could fall victim to the delusions of one man.

When do you believe that the USSR ceased to be a workers state? If after 1939, then to what social counterrevolution can you point? We must remember, of course, that for a social counterrevolution to destroy a workers state, the state apparatus itself must be destroyed and refashioned to accommodate the new capitalist ruling class. Manipulations and coups in top circles do not change the class that holds state power, only its chief representatives.


And by the end, you're just plain lying. You are fabricating evidence and producing blatantly false assertions. I never said I supported Stalin's Union or the Union under Stalinist control. I think a lot of advancements were made, but none of them were worth the destruction of the working class and the destruction of the Revolution. I've said that 100 times, but people like you are obsessed with your delusional fantasies. You've spouted off more than a few lies in your post and honestly, I can't believe I had to address some of the things I did because of your ignorance.

Once again – did you support the Stalinist crushing of the Hungarian Revolution? When was the working class in the Soviet Union destroyed? Though I agree that all vestiges of proletarian leadership in the state apparatus were destroyed or removed, I believe that nonetheless, a working class remained in the Soviet Union, exploited by the Stalinists consolidated into state power as a new capitalist class. I agree that the revolution was destroyed, but you neglect to point out when this happened.

I pride myself on political honesty. If you believe I have lied, you should point to exactly where you believe this happened so that I can clarify, justify, or rescind. Similarly, if I am “delusional,” which coincidentally is the only explanation you can offer for the Stalinist counterrevolution, you should justify this with direct quotes and logical explanations. Perhaps you could also entertain the possibility of explaining how I am both delusional, convinced of my correctness, and lying, deliberately misstating facts.

[P.S. I have edited out the link you posted only because my account is unable to post links, even in quotes.]

[Kassad]

Referring to the PSL as “Stalinoid,” I chose my word carefully. The politics of the PSL mirror those of Stalinism, having arrived at highly similar conclusions through breaking with Trotskyism. Granted: you do not come out “openly in praise of Stalin,” but as you say, “Stalin was only one man.” You blame counterrevolution? Whose? You have not explained when this was completed or by whom it was carried out. I have noted my organization’s position (further elaborated in our book, The Life and Death of Stalinism) that the counterrevolution was carried out by the Stalinist bureaucracy, as predicted by Trotsky, and completed (though here we openly differ with Trotsky) by 1939. Let us not forget that your tendency broke with Trotskyism in order to support the Stalinist crushing of the Hungarian Revolution.

Counterrevolution wasn't achieved at one specific time or at one specific place. It started when Lenin removed democratic measures in the Soviet Union. It continued due to the fact that Western colonialism made it necessary for the Union to industrialize rapidly, thus putting the working class in the backseat and allowing for them to be manipulated, oppressed and eventually purged. Now, don't link me with a 'tendency.' My tendency is the one of unconditional love, so I'm not a big fan of petty divisive labels. You're not going to find me agreeing with a lot of things that Marxist-Leninists chose to do in the course of history, but you've still not shown me one speck of evidence that the Party for Socialism and Liberation reveres, respects or advocates Stalin and any of his bureaucracy.


The problem here is that for you, it seems as though there were no fundamental changes in the nature of the state in the USSR under Stalinism. I argue that power was taken by the working class in the October Revolution of 1917. This power seizure was not made “by working for social reform,” it was made by a conscious linking of reform demands to the need for socialist revolution. The reforms that were made were made through the workers’ state established by the proletarian social revolution. (As an aside, I suspect that ‘transferred’ is a problematic word to use here, as the seizure of power was an act carried out by the working class itself; ‘transferred’ implies a passive reception of this power. Though perhaps we do not actually disagree on this, and it may simply be a matter of semantics.)

Cuba is another debate entirely, though very relevant. The revolution in Cuba was not a proletarian revolution, so when you say that it “created a revolutionary workers democracy,” I believe you are the one being dishonest. The Cuban revolution was a petty-bourgeois revolution. Its leaders did not even identify as ‘communist,’ let alone working class, until pressure by U.S. imperialism compelled them to seek out the USSR as another imperialist backer. At no point has the Cuban working class ever held state power, and this is precisely the defining characteristic of a state.

You say that the Cuban state was “based on people, not profit.” As Lenin and Trotsky knew, production in a genuine workers state is still production for value, rather than for use-value. Only in a socialist society (which must be international!) can production “based on people” mean anything other than “production for profit,” because only in socialism will “people” cease to be divided into classes. Let me be clear: we in the LRP advocate socialist revolution in Cuba to overthrow the Stalinist regime and establish a genuine workers state, which can only be built by a conscious act of the proletariat. The fact is that you hand the reigns of the social revolution over to petty-bourgeois misleaders who in fact crush and oppress workers in the Stalinist states.

Ridiculous. To transfer something is to pass it on. It doesn't imply violence or passive means. The workers revolution transferred power from the bourgeoisie elite into the hands of the workers. In their desire for social reform, the proletariat established a workers state. It seems like you're trying to say that I disagree with this or that I see Stalin's bureaucracy as necessary, proper or justified. Never said that. Never will.

This argument against Cuba never seems to stop being entertaining. Fidel Castro and the 26th of July Movement were not openly communist or Marxist-Leninist because if they had come right out and said it, it would have been very likely that the United States would have sent in military forces to crush the workers uprising. Your assertion is ridiculous because you fail to note that when the Movement sent its forces into Cuba, by the time they reached the capital, they were down to much less than one hundred men. By the time they were ready to take capital, they had rallied hundreds of supporters. Batista's regime was an American puppet that oppressed the working class in Cuba. Fidel Castro liberated those people. The revolution was made by the people and it still stands today as a workers democracy. You can't change that no matter what fancy terminology you prefer to use. The revolution has created a revolutionary example of socialist success, in which Cuba surpasses the United States in literacy, employment, patients-per-doctor, teachers-per-classroom and infant mortality. I think you're about done.


Lenin and his supporters (including and especially those who stood by the Left Opposition as it struggled against Stalinism) worked to build a revolutionary workers state. If Stalin (I would of course prefer “Stalinists” or “Stalinism”), as you “forged a state-based bureaucracy that destroyed everything Lenin and his supporters had worked for.” I do not disagree, though I suspect your own line does. I believe that Stalinism crushed and destroyed the workers state by 1939. Contrary to you, I believe that this was hardly “delusional and counter-productive,” but rather in the objective interests of the Stalinist bureaucracy. If Stalin’s personal psychology shows delusion, I wonder why a state directly created and controlled by the working class could fall victim to the delusions of one man.

When do you believe that the USSR ceased to be a workers state? If after 1939, then to what social counterrevolution can you point? We must remember, of course, that for a social counterrevolution to destroy a workers state, the state apparatus itself must be destroyed and refashioned to accommodate the new capitalist ruling class. Manipulations and coups in top circles do not change the class that holds state power, only its chief representatives.

Stalin was one man. Anything that happened under him was managed by groups of people under Stalin, but he cannot be given responsibility for every little thing that happened in the Soviet Union while he was in power. You consistently say that "you" forged state-bureaucracy, assuming that I support it. Is that all you Trotskyists can say anymore? Just putting words into my mouth? Assuming that because I support the ideology of Marx and Lenin, I must then support Stalinist oppression and manipulation? Also, are you trying to claim that Stalin didn't have psychological disorders? That's quite an astounding statement, seeing as the man had many of his closest friends and supporters murdered, along with millions of others.

The Soviet Union failed to be a workers state when the needs of the Party were placed over the needs of the people. In which, a workers democracy failed to be established and the Party leaders made decisions for the people.


Once again – did you support the Stalinist crushing of the Hungarian Revolution? When was the working class in the Soviet Union destroyed? Though I agree that all vestiges of proletarian leadership in the state apparatus were destroyed or removed, I believe that nonetheless, a working class remained in the Soviet Union, exploited by the Stalinists consolidated into state power as a new capitalist class. I agree that the revolution was destroyed, but you neglect to point out when this happened.

I pride myself on political honesty. If you believe I have lied, you should point to exactly where you believe this happened so that I can clarify, justify, or rescind. Similarly, if I am “delusional,” which coincidentally is the only explanation you can offer for the Stalinist counterrevolution, you should justify this with direct quotes and logical explanations. Perhaps you could also entertain the possibility of explaining how I am both delusional, convinced of my correctness, and lying, deliberately misstating facts.

No. Stalin merely sent forces in there because they were advocating policies and ideas that were separate from his oppression. What kind of communist would advocate the destruction of a people's revolution? Still, your ideology is so narrow. There wasn't one morning when the sun shined on the Soviet Union and they realized the revolution was gone. The revolution failed with the destruction of the workers democracy, which started even before Lenin's death when workers and peasants were killed in the Red Terror. It continued through Stalin's purges and oppression.

You are lying in your stance that my Party is 'Stalinist', which it isn't. But fuck if I've seen a Trotskyist debate a Marxist-Leninist without them making the rash, fabricated and false assertion that the Marxist-Leninist is a 'Stalinist' or someone who supports state control.

[iraqnevercalledmenigger]

Democracy is not the defining characteristic of the class nature of a state. Why the emphasis on workers' democracy Kassad?

[Kassad]

Democracy is not the defining characteristic of the class nature of a state. Why the emphasis on workers' democracy Kassad?

Because without workers democracy, the proletariat allow bureacracy, party, oligarchy and bourgeoisie elitism take form. If we allow the majority of workers to be ignored, much like they are across the world, we disregard the core of our revolution.

[Red Dreadnought]

In every case, at first 2O's, like even Lenin had recognised: "We are an Worker's and Peasant's Deformed State". But with Stalinist hegemony in middle 20,s, there are no threads of Worker's State:mad:.

Well, I have to go. I will return.

I'm celebrating Bolshevist-Leninist position, that is different to another troskist. But, I'll explain myself later.

[Red Dreadnought]

only the proletariat can make the socialist revolution. The notion that non-working-class forces could carry out the socialist revolution -- that is, create workers’ states -- became the view not just of Stalinists; it signaled the material degeneration of the Fourth International (FI) in the post-World War II years. Under the leadership of Michel Pablo and Ernest Mandel, the FI came to reflect the views of the vast new bureaucratic middle class and labor aristocracy which arose in the imperialist countries during the prosperity boom of the late ’40’s and the ’50’s. Whereas Trotsky had considered the Stalinist and social-democratic purveyors of class collaborationism to be counterrevolutionary, the Pabloites (the defenders of “deformed workers states”) saw them as too-limited progressives who could create workers’ states if prodded by the mass struggle and the urgings of “Trotskyists.”

Well, Bolshevist-Leninist, I celebrate this position, but only in part. I think the Urss passed to anti-proletarian field earlier, in some moment of middle 20,s, but there was great deformations years before, like Rosa Luxembourg quoted, and Lenin recognised in 1921. But you must take conclusions of this positions, you must reject all possition of "Defense of URSS" and support to "Red" Army in II World War. There's a qualitative step in relationship to Trotsky's espectations at the end of his life.

[Leo]

There was a proletarian revolution in Russia and there was a proletarian dictatorship in the beginning. Due to the failure of the revolution to spread sufficiently, the revolution degenerated and the degeneration lead to counter-revolution and the re-establishment of the Stalinist form of capitalism which was one of the strongest expressions of the international tendency towards state-capitalism.


Oh, for fuck's sake. What about feudalism or slaveholding?

Those modes of production do not exist anymore in any meaningful sense.

[Dave B]

From Lenin to Stalin’s ‘Show’ Trials

Lenin to D. I. Kursky

ON THE TASKS OF THE PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT FOR JUSTICE UNDER THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY

February 20, 1922



Copies to:
1)Molotov for members of the Political Bureau
2) A. D. Tsyurupa
3) Rykov (when he returns)
4) Comrade Yenukidze for members of the
Presidium of the All-Russia Central
Executive Committee

Special request: Please, do not duplicate; let read and sign; prevent divulging; prevent blabbing out to enemies.



So here it is as ‘our enemies’ have it.





Intensification of reprisals against the political enemies of the Soviet power and the agents of the bourgeoisie ( specifically the Mensheviks and S.R.s); mounting of these reprisals by revolutionary tribunals and people’s courts in the swiftest, most revolutionary and expedient manner; compulsory staging of a number of model (as regards speed and force of repression, and explanation of their significance to the masses of people through the courts and the press) trials in Moscow, Petrograd, Kharkov and several other key centres; influence on the people’s judges and members of revolutionary tribunals through the Party in the sense of improving the activity of the courts and intensifying the reprisals—all of this must be conducted systematically, persistently, with doggedness and mandatory reports (in the most concise, telegraphic style but business-like and exact, with obligatory statistics of how the P.C.J. chastises and learns to chastise the "communist" scoundrels who predominate among us

[Bolshevik-Leninist]

Counterrevolution wasn't achieved at one specific time or at one specific place. It started when Lenin removed democratic measures in the Soviet Union. It continued due to the fact that Western colonialism made it necessary for the Union to industrialize rapidly, thus putting the working class in the backseat and allowing for them to be manipulated, oppressed and eventually purged. Now, don't link me with a 'tendency.' My tendency is the one of unconditional love, so I'm not a big fan of petty divisive labels. You're not going to find me agreeing with a lot of things that Marxist-Leninists chose to do in the course of history, but you've still not shown me one speck of evidence that the Party for Socialism and Liberation reveres, respects or advocates Stalin and any of his bureaucracy.
I agree that these factors contributed to the counterrevolution in the Soviet Union. I also agree that counterrevolution is not an instantaneous process. I believe that the USSR faced serious bureaucratic degenerations very early on—though, I ascribe this to the Stalinist bureaucracy and not to Lenin. However, this was decisively consolidated into counterrevolution when the working class was removed from state power. We believe this was complete by 1939, not carried out in 1939 alone. You have not said when you believe the counterrevolution was completed. Even if counterrevolution is a question of quantity turning into quality, it must eventually turn into a qualitative change. When was this change completed?

You identify as part of the PSL. In case you were unsure, the PSL split—with very little or no perceptible political differences—from Workers World Party, which broke from Trotskyism in order to defend the Stalinist crushing of the Hungarian Revolution. Saying your tendency is “the one of unconditional love” means nothing. Either deny my accusation directly or drop it.

I am tiring quickly of repeating myself. I have not called you or your party Stalinist. I have called you ‘Stalinoid’ in order to indicate that you do not embrace Stalin as a persona. However, your politics are not fundamentally different than those of Stalinism—socialism in one country, crushing workers’ revolution in Hungary. Perhaps you could elucidate how your politics are different rather than repeatedly and excessively distancing yourself from Stalin the person.


You consistently say that "you" forged state-bureaucracy, assuming that I support it. Is that all you Trotskyists can say anymore? Just putting words into my mouth?
I apologize. This was a typo. What I wrote: “If Stalin (I would of course prefer “Stalinists” or “Stalinism”), as you “forged a state-based bureaucracy…” This should have read, “If Stalin (I would of course prefer “Stalinists” or “Stalinism”), as you say “forged a state-based bureaucracy…”


Assuming that because I support the ideology of Marx and Lenin, I must then support Stalinist oppression and manipulation? Also, are you trying to claim that Stalin didn't have psychological disorders? That's quite an astounding statement, seeing as the man had many of his closest friends and supporters murdered, along with millions of others.

The Soviet Union failed to be a workers state when the needs of the Party were placed over the needs of the people. In which, a workers democracy failed to be established and the Party leaders made decisions for the people.

Trotskyists believe that we are Marxist-Leninists also, so simply asserting that such is so is not enough. We have a long history of pointing out Stalinist betrayals both of Marxism and Leninism—a history that you should probably familiarize yourself with, given that I have pointed out your organization’s original roots in Trotskyism, rather than “unconditional love.”

On Stalin’s personal deficiencies, I have not said anything except noting that no healthy workers’ state (nay, not even a healthy revolutionary organization!) would succumb to the failings of one leader. Stalin was merely a representation of underlying interests of the bureaucracy that ousted the workers from state power by 1939.


No. Stalin merely sent forces in there because they were advocating policies and ideas that were separate from his oppression. What kind of communist would advocate the destruction of a people's revolution?
Perhaps you should check your history on two counts. First, Stalin was dead in 1953, three years before the defeat of the Hungarian revolution. So he did not, as you say, “merely [send] forces in there because they were advocating policies and ideas that were separate from his oppression.” The Stalinist state, yes, did crush the Hungarian revolution. But Stalin did not. Second, as I have pointed out repeatedly, you are in an organization that stems from a break from Trotskyism in order to support the Stalinist crushing of the Hungarian revolution. How many times do I need to say this? Regarding the Workers World Party, with which your organization split over no perceptible political differences, I quote from our article, “Death Agony of a Deformed Theory” from our magazine, Proletarian Revolution #38 (Winter 1991):

The true logic of the deformed workers' state theory is represented by the Workers World Party in the U.S., which consistently credits Stalinist butchery with defending "socialism." The WWP began life by supporting the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, then Czechoslovakia in 1968; it naturally admired Jaruzelski's smothering of the Polish workers in 1981. Along the line, thankfully, it abandoned its pretense to Trotskyism -- and landed in the Rainbow room of the Democratic Party. Recently it sided with the Chinese rulers' murderous crackdown against workers and students in Beijing, and then with those beloved working-class heroes, the Ceausescus of Romania.(The article is online, though I still can't post the link to it yet.)

[Bolshevik-Leninist]

Well, Bolshevist-Leninist, I celebrate this position, but only in part. I think the Urss passed to anti-proletarian field earlier, in some moment of middle 20,s, but there was great deformations years before, like Rosa Luxembourg quoted, and Lenin recognised in 1921. But you must take conclusions of this positions, you must reject all possition of "Defense of URSS" and support to "Red" Army in II World War. There's a qualitative step in relationship to Trotsky's espectations at the end of his life.
We believe, as Trotsky, that the USSR remained a degenerated workers' state through the 1930s, because the proletariat had not yet been removed from the state apparatus.

We do differ from Trotsky in some respects. Trotsky died in 1940, still believing that the USSR was a degenerated workers' state. We believe he missed the counterrevolution, although his general consistency leads me to speculate that he might have seen the change had he lived longer and had better information.

We do believe that the gains made by the proletariat in the Russian Revolution were co-opted by the new Stalinist capitalist class. The immense gains allowed the Stalinists to consolidate their power not only as capitalists, but as imperialists, oppressing Eastern Europe in order to gain the use-value their economy was failing to produce (without the market mechanism, production for exchange-value corresponds less directly to use-value). The state-capitalist regimes established in Eastern Europe represented no fundamental change in the class nature of the states. Further, our position defends Eastern Europe--like Hungary and Poland--and other oppressed nations from the imperialist USSR.

[Kassad]

I agree that these factors contributed to the counterrevolution in the Soviet Union. I also agree that counterrevolution is not an instantaneous process. I believe that the USSR faced serious bureaucratic degenerations very early on—though, I ascribe this to the Stalinist bureaucracy and not to Lenin. However, this was decisively consolidated into counterrevolution when the working class was removed from state power. We believe this was complete by 1939, not carried out in 1939 alone. You have not said when you believe the counterrevolution was completed. Even if counterrevolution is a question of quantity turning into quality, it must eventually turn into a qualitative change. When was this change completed?

You identify as part of the PSL. In case you were unsure, the PSL split—with very little or no perceptible political differences—from Workers World Party, which broke from Trotskyism in order to defend the Stalinist crushing of the Hungarian Revolution. Saying your tendency is “the one of unconditional love” means nothing. Either deny my accusation directly or drop it.

I am tiring quickly of repeating myself. I have not called you or your party Stalinist. I have called you ‘Stalinoid’ in order to indicate that you do not embrace Stalin as a persona. However, your politics are not fundamentally different than those of Stalinism—socialism in one country, crushing workers’ revolution in Hungary. Perhaps you could elucidate how your politics are different rather than repeatedly and excessively distancing yourself from Stalin the person.

Well, I see two differences between Stalin and Lenin. When Lenin promoted some authoritarian measures, such as the Red Terror and the lack of freedom of the press, I believe it was merely a transitionary period. Lenin was forced to make some very radical decisions, due to disunity and counterrevolutionary forces. I seriously doubt he meant for these things to be permanent. Stalin, on the other hand, with his suppression of the working class, meant for those things to be very much permanent. He placed the Party above the proletariat and allowed a state-capitalist bureaucracy to take form. I'd say that the final stages of counterrevolution, forged by Stalin, were complete and almost irreversably by the 1930s. Again, like you said and I completely agree, it didn't just end or all happen there, but that time period was a significant factor.

Yes, I am very aware of my Party's history. As I said, I didn't support the suppression, but I advise you to listen to the long 'Killing in the Name of' by Rage Against the Machine. It repeats many times "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me." That's pretty much what I have to say at the current time. I will not align with a tendency or a party because someone tells me I have to. I don't have to associate with anything. I differ with the PSL on dialectics, but I'm still going to be a member and a potential candidate for office. Many people I have had discussions with are avid supporters of Chavez, whereas I am not. It's not a party of dogma, for dogma is the antithesis of the emancipation we seek.

We don't advocate crushing any workers revolutions? We don't support Stalin's genocide and suppression of the workers? We advocate socialist revolutions and the emancipation of the working class through proletariat revolution, which Stalin completely countered through authoritarian practices. The reason I don't agree with Trotsky's world revolution idea is because I believe that the idea of a world revolution will serve as justification for militarization and colonialism. Instead of merely advocating it, where do we draw the line of 'spreading the revolution?'


Trotskyists believe that we are Marxist-Leninists also, so simply asserting that such is so is not enough. We have a long history of pointing out Stalinist betrayals both of Marxism and Leninism—a history that you should probably familiarize yourself with, given that I have pointed out your organization’s original roots in Trotskyism, rather than “unconditional love.”

On Stalin’s personal deficiencies, I have not said anything except noting that no healthy workers’ state (nay, not even a healthy revolutionary organization!) would succumb to the failings of one leader. Stalin was merely a representation of underlying interests of the bureaucracy that ousted the workers from state power by 1939.

Oh God. This is absurd. Yes, I know you call yourselves Marxist-Leninists. So do Maoists. So do Hoxhaists. So do Stalinists and a massive assortments of other Marxists and socialists. What's your point? I've also pointed out Stalin's betrayal of the revolution. I haven't advocated anything Stalin, Stalinist or bureaucratic. You're merely playing with words now. If you can find places where the Party for Socialism and Liberation, our supporters and myself directly advocate Stalinist bureacracy, then I will walk out of this thread with my tail between my legs. Until then, which you will not be able to do, I will be right here continually reminding you that you are making false assertions about our ideology. It's great that you can point out our former affiliation. We chose to leave those days behind. I didn't say the PSL's tendency is unconditional love. I said that my tendency; the tendency that my consciousness admires and abides by is unconditional love. That means that petty, divise and destructive labels are irrelevant. They can apply at times, but in all honesty, when you submit totally to a label, you become dogmatic, much like the religious fundamentalists we criticize. You can tell me what you think I was, am and will be, but it doesn't matter because it's completely and totally irrelevant.


Perhaps you should check your history on two counts. First, Stalin was dead in 1953, three years before the defeat of the Hungarian revolution. So he did not, as you say, “merely [send] forces in there because they were advocating policies and ideas that were separate from his oppression.” The Stalinist state, yes, did crush the Hungarian revolution. But Stalin did not. Second, as I have pointed out repeatedly, you are in an organization that stems from a break from Trotskyism in order to support the Stalinist crushing of the Hungarian revolution. How many times do I need to say this? Regarding the Workers World Party, with which your organization split over no perceptible political differences, I quote from our article, “Death Agony of a Deformed Theory” from our magazine, Proletarian Revolution #38 (Winter 1991):

My mistake, thank you. Firstly, there has been no real consensus, statement or reasoning behind why Workers World split and the Party for Socialism and Liberation was formed, so unless you're a member of either, I don't know where your sources are coming from. Anyway, you won't find anything condoning the suppression of the rebellion on the Party for Socialism and Liberation's website or writings. You may find some statements saying that the uprisings and counterrevolutionary forces led to the rise of capitalist in the nation, but that is a pretty generalized statement on its own. Again, you totally miss the point. I'm sure some members of the PSL condone the suppression of the rebellion, as well as vice versa. I'm sure some look down on Fidel Castro, as well as vice versa. When I mentioned to a member of the Party my intent to run for office and I asked him about my views that differ from the Party's platform, he kind of laughed and showed me some of the debates between party members. There are many divergent views. We do not claim credit for anything that Workers World has done, so I see no point in even mentioning them. That's how the proletariat and the working class revolutionaries are as well, aren't we? Very different and divergent. Still, those issues are menial in comparison to the oppression of the capitalist hegemony.

[core_1]

It be state capitalist! If their is a state ruling for the proletariat then they aren't properly emancipated, "Workers State" is an oxymoron.

[Pogue]

Okay... I do like people fabricating false assertions of my ideology. The PSL isn't Stalinist. In fact, if you can find one piece of support or advocacy on the website (www.PSLWeb.org (http://www.PSLWeb.org)) that comes out openly in praise of Stalin, I will concede this thread and walk away. Still, it is not true. The PSL and myself do not blame the working class. I, for one, blame a mixture of disenfranchisement, counterrevolution and Western Colonialism.

When I say revolutionary state, I mean that it tore down the bourgeoisie state and in its place, they transfered power to the working class by working for social reform. Such as in Cuba where the 26th of July Movement tore down the Batista regime and created a revolutionary workers democracy based on people, not profit.

Okay, I feel like I'm losing you now. I never blamed the USSR's failures on the working class. I said specifically that Stalin's purges were executed due to his delusion and lack of regard for the proletariat. He forged a state-based bureaucracy that destroyed everything Lenin and his supporters had worked for. Though Stalin was only one man and those beside him should also be blamed, I do pin a lot of the blame on Stalin's bureaucracy and oppressive Party on the failure of the Soviet Union.

And by the end, you're just plain lying. You are fabricating evidence and producing blatantly false assertions. I never said I supported Stalin's Union or the Union under Stalinist control. I think a lot of advancements were made, but none of them were worth the destruction of the working class and the destruction of the Revolution. I've said that 100 times, but people like you are obsessed with your delusional fantasies. You've spouted off more than a few lies in your post and honestly, I can't believe I had to address some of the things I did because of your ignorance.

Your website is really good. One of the best leftist websites I've found. Easy to read and navigate.

[iraqnevercalledmenigger]

WSWS is better. Ergo their analysis of the Stalinist state wins :)

[Leo]

The PSL isn't Stalinist. In fact, if you can find one piece of support or advocacy on the website (www.PSLWeb.org (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.PSLWeb.org)) that comes out openly in praise of Stalin, I will concede this thread and walk away.

I'm have to bust the myth here. Stalinism is a political term which does not mean praising Stalin the individual. Marxists have considered the Khrushchev era USSR to be Stalinist as well as Mao's China for example. Stalinism means the ideological germs of the counter-revolution in all it's nationalism, it's declaration of the possibility of socialism in one country and call for support of socialist motherlands that is the Stalinist regimes.

Now, here's the things I came up with from the PSL website in about five minutes:


...there have been many cases where the working class has been able to lead successful revolutions, removing the capitalist class from power. The 1917 Russian Revolution, the 1945 Korean Revolution, the 1949 Chinese Revolution and the 1959 Cuban Revolution all gave new experiences and lessons in the possibilities of building socialism—inspired by the Paris Commune.

Some important lessons have emerged from all these experiences in building socialism. In the first place, all these revolutions took the ownership of the means of production away from private owners and made them publicly owned. The revolutionary governments sought to steer the economy not through capitalist commodity relations but by means of a planned economy. Foreign trade, once the business of the biggest companies conducted for the purpose of private profit, remained exclusively in the hands of the state.

All of these means were viewed by the working-class leaders and governments as means to achieve socialism (...)

The countries that have tried and are trying to build socialism are not utopias, nor are they paradise on earth. They all face enormous problems, including scarcity and aggression by U.S. imperialism. The science of rational economic planning has progressed in fits and starts. Some socialist projects, like the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist camp, were not able to withstand the pressures and have, like the Paris Commune, been defeated.

Nevertheless, these revolutions show the outlines of a new society where the working class is the ruling class. The Soviet Union lasted over 70 years without unemployment or economic recessions or depressions. China was able to feed its huge population for the first time in history. Cuba has maintained educational levels unseen in Latin America—not to mention in much of the developed world.

Emphasis mine. Source: http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5125

Besides from the support given to various Stalinist regimes, the more public support given to the Castroist regime and the glorification of Stalinists such as Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh which can be seen in the website too sort of hints the direction as well as the tradition.

Now, it is true, the PSL does not seem to be praising Stalin in their website, infact when you search Stalin in the website, only one article, which attempts to analyze the United Nations comes up that even mentions Stalin. Nothing negative is said of him in it either:


The Soviet government under Stalin’s leadership feared that the United Nations would create a "new world order" under the control of the United States, Britain and other imperialist countries. Toward the end of World War II, long and complex negotiations took place between the U.S. and Soviet governments regarding the United Nations. The two countries were wartime allies against Hitler’s Germany and Japan, but the outlines of the postwar U.S.-Soviet confrontation were already taking shape in 1944-45.

Stalin wanted to prevent the wartime alliance from devolving into open conflict in 1945. Thus, the Soviets acquiesced to the formation of the United Nations but only with the condition that the Soviet Union would be included in a Security Council and as one of five permanent members who wield a veto for any decision. The arrangement was designed to prevent the imperialist countries from using the United Nations to gang up on the one socialist country, using a supposedly "world body" to impose imperialist dictates that threatened the Soviet Union or its allies.
Later, after the Soviet government was overthrown in 1991, the United Nations reverted to its originally intended function as an essentially unfettered instrument of U.S. global policy.


Emphasis mine. Source: http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5787

I think it is quite clear that the PSL is a Stalinist party in every meaningful political sense. I am inclined to think that the reason why Mr. Moustache isn't praised in the website is because defending him nowadays makes it a little more harder to attract young liberals to party ranks. If I recall correctly the poster claiming his party is not a Stalinist had a young Stalin as his avatar when he first came to this forum as well.

[Cumannach]

I think it is quite clear that the PSL is a Stalinist party in every meaningful political sense. I am inclined to think that the reason why Mr. Moustache isn't praised in the website is because defending him nowadays makes it a little more harder to attract young liberals to party ranks.

A erroneous tactic,since Stalin demonology is the centerpiece of all anti-socialist and anti-communist propaganda.

[Woland]

Oh my. I'll respond to this later.

[Leo]

I think it is quite clear that the PSL is a Stalinist party in every meaningful political sense. I am inclined to think that the reason why Mr. Moustache isn't praised in the website is because defending him nowadays makes it a little more harder to attract young liberals to party ranks.
A erroneous tactic,since Stalin demonology is the centerpiece of all anti-socialist and anti-communist propaganda.

Things were very different in the past: there was a time when Stalin and his friends were butchering a number of communists which the Western imperialist powers were not even capable of fantasizing about. And surely afterwards Mr. Mustache got along quite well with his fellow European imperialists, first with Nazi Germany, then with England and America.

Yeah, things didn't go well after the War and the imperialist block he helped built kept losing credibility, suffering splits and lost the war eventually, the victors wrote the history of it and now Mr. Mustache isn't popular anymore, but make no mistake he was one of the greatest anti-communists and anti-socialists of his time and very popular among the world bourgeoisie.

[Bolshevik-Leninist]

My mistake, thank you. Firstly, there has been no real consensus, statement or reasoning behind why Workers World split and the Party for Socialism and Liberation was formed, so unless you're a member of either, I don't know where your sources are coming from. Anyway, you won't find anything condoning the suppression of the rebellion on the Party for Socialism and Liberation's website or writings. You may find some statements saying that the uprisings and counterrevolutionary forces led to the rise of capitalist in the nation, but that is a pretty generalized statement on its own. Again, you totally miss the point. I'm sure some members of the PSL condone the suppression of the rebellion, as well as vice versa. I'm sure some look down on Fidel Castro, as well as vice versa. When I mentioned to a member of the Party my intent to run for office and I asked him about my views that differ from the Party's platform, he kind of laughed and showed me some of the debates between party members. There are many divergent views. We do not claim credit for anything that Workers World has done, so I see no point in even mentioning them. That's how the proletariat and the working class revolutionaries are as well, aren't we? Very different and divergent. Still, those issues are menial in comparison to the oppression of the capitalist hegemony.

First: given that there have not been any elucidations, justifications, or explanations publicly over the nature of the split, it can only be called sectarian. Splitting is not inherently unprincipled, but such a break in continuity must be explained openly and honestly. The fact is, the PSL was founded by former members of WWP who had previously considered it to be a revolutionary organization. If the PSL believes it has ceased to be one, then it must explain this to the workers. I challenge you to explain this split or rationalize your membership in the PSL.

Second: since you have not posted your own organization's material on the Hungarian revolution, I will do it for you. I must admit that you are partially correct: indeed, Jon Britton's article "The real lessons of the 1956 uprising in Hungary" (1 Nov. 2006) takes up contradictory views of the revolutionary defeat. But the real substance of the article supports it--and this is the only article mentioning it on your website.

I quote: "legitimate grievances on the part of the working classes were exploited and channeled into counterrevolutionary movements. Absent a clear anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist leadership, such a degeneration is inevitable in a world dominated by imperialism." Granted, U.S. imperialism attempted to play up the counterrevolutionary elements in Hungary. And indeed, these elements would necessarily exercise greater ideological hegemony in the absence of revolutionary leadership. But the article claims that the Stalinist Red Army in WW2 "abolished capitalism" in Hungary, that there was a "revolutionary overturn of capitalist property relations", and that "The only party that stood firmly for the overturn of capitalist property relations was the Hungarian Communist Party". The PSL considers Hungary to have not only been a workers state, the economy of which would still necessarily be governed by the law of value, but also socialist--a society free of class divisions. That the PSL believes socialism can be built in one country is a fundamentally Stalinist and reactionary nationalist conception.

[Kassad]

Leo, I'm aware of what Stalinism is. Still, with the reverence towards Stalin's ideals usually comes a cult of personality or idolatry of the person himself. Not always, but they usually go hand in hand. You mentioned the 'What is Socialism?' page, which I think is perfectly accurate and fine for my ideology and other Marxist-Leninists. The Party for Socialism and Liberation is an advocate of socialist revolutions worldwide. Upon research, you will usually find that the Party supports initial revolutions, but criticizes the counterrevolutionary tactics that usually take place. In all honesty, I will concede and say that the Party's website does not spend enough time criticizing some of the counterrevolutionary actions that have occured, but our ideology centers around the right to self-determination, so you will not see my criticizing Guevara or Castro very much. I view the Chinese and Russian revolutions positively. It is the counterrevolutionary procedures I criticize.

Stalinism centers around the Party and the cult of personality. The Party for Socialism and Liberation does not condone or advocate these. Marxism-Leninism does not mean Stalinism. It can if worship and praise is given to Stalin's cult, procedures and genocide. Like I said, in a party of varying ideologies, some may support Stalin. The Party's platform does not focus on it, however. I, for one, revere Stalin's earlier writings and his contributions to Marxism-Leninism, the national question and so forth. I don't condone his genocide, or else my avatar would have been an older Jospeph Stalin. :)

Bolshevik-Leninist, I am in school, but when I find a little more time, I wll address your post. Thank you to everyone for their responses, though. I think there's a lot that needs to be clarified on the Party and I hope to find some supporters out of it.

[Das war einmal]

Marxists have considered the Khrushchev era USSR to be Stalinist as well as Mao's China for example.

No, not marxists, sectarian left 'communist' invented 'Stalinism' as a term, to smite marxist-leninists.

[Cumannach]

Things were very different in the past: there was a time when Stalin and his friends were butchering a number of communists which the Western imperialist powers were not even capable of fantasizing about. And surely afterwards Mr. Mustache got along quite well with his fellow European imperialists, first with Nazi Germany, then with England and America.

And what Universe was this in?



Yeah, things didn't go well after the War and the imperialist block he helped built kept losing credibility, suffering splits and lost the war eventually, the victors wrote the history of it and now Mr. Mustache isn't popular anymore, but make no mistake he was one of the greatest anti-communists and anti-socialists of his time and very popular among the world bourgeoisie.
Right. Stalin was once the toast of the Bourgeoisie.

[Leo]

Leo, I'm aware of what Stalinism is. Still, with the reverence towards Stalin's ideals usually comes a cult of personality or idolatry of the person himself. Not always, but they usually go hand in hand.

Indeed, and it seems to be Che Guevara's for your party.


Marxism-Leninism does not mean Stalinism.

But it does exactly: it was Stalin and his regime who invented the terms "Leninism" and "Marxism-Leninism", which would be nothing but shockingly offensive to Lenin himself and is insulting to his revolutionary legacy.

[Kassad]

Okay, I'm back.

Bolshevik-Leninist,

I am a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation because I believe that it is the most active, principles and organized Marxist_Leninist party in the United States. The Party has organized some of the largest rallies, protests and demonstrations against police brutality, imperialism and oppression, as well as some of the largest demonstrations for LGBT equality and for the release of unustly held prisoners, such as the Jena 6 and the Cuban 5.

I mean, I don't know what to tell you. I cannot explain the split because very few people know why. I definitely understand your position and would love to have the Party elaborate on it, but I don't find it to be a top priority.

In the article you listed, where does it state that Hungary was completely free of class divisions and was a total socialist state. It doesn't, because it is commonplace knowledge that true revolutionary socialism has never been achieved.

Still, I am consistently confronted by the ideology that imperialism and the bourgeoisie are still not present in revolutionary governments. The United States government, since it sees that its business interests are potentially threatened, always allies with reactionary and conservative movements. Counterrevolutionary movements were present in the Soviet Union and revolutionary China as well. THe question I have for you is this: if a group of workers or peasants began calling for capitalism in a socialist state and presented significant counterrevolutionary presence that had potential to destroy the revolutionary gains, what would the solution to that problem be?

I am in no way advocating the Soviet miliarism in Hungary, but I am curious as to where you stand on counterrevolutionary procedures.


Indeed, and it seems to be Che Guevara's for your party.

This is ridiculous. We don't preach Guevara's ideology in a dogmatic manner. We express solidarity with his struggle.


But it does exactly: it was Stalin and his regime who invented the terms "Leninism" and "Marxism-Leninism", which would be nothing but shockingly offensive to Lenin himself and is insulting to his revolutionary legacy.

If you see all Marxist-Leninists as Stalinists, then I think nothing even remotely relevant will come out of our continued discussion. It's just plainly not true.

[Leo]

And what Universe was this in?Ours:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov-Ribbentrop_Pact

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland_(1939 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland_%281939))

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Boundary_and_Friendship_Trea ty

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allies_of_World_War_II

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehran_Conference

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percentages_agreement

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6f/Stalin_TIME.jpeg

[Leo]

This is ridiculous. We don't preach Guevara's ideology in a dogmatic manner. We express solidarity with his struggle.

I don't think anyone who puts a Stalin or Mao picture on the top of their website and banners would phrase it differently.

[Kassad]

I don't think anyone who puts a Stalin or Mao picture on the top of their website and banners would phrase it differently.

Stalin: Led a working class revolution into the ground with hyper-industrialization and oppression. Millions dead.

Mao: Led a working class revolution into the ground with hyper-industrialization and oppression. Millions dead.

Che Guevara: Assisted in a working class liberation of Cuba and established massive reforms which have freed Cuba from the claws of imperialism hegemony. Those reforms still stand today and benefit people in Cuba and across Latin America. I see no problem in respecting him.

The more you know...

[Leo]

Che Guevara: Assisted in a working class liberation of Cuba and established massive reforms which have freed Cuba from the claws of imperialism hegemony. Those reforms still stand today and benefit people in Cuba and across Latin America. I see no problem in respecting him.

I'd suggest this article: http://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2007/che-guevara

[Das war einmal]

^This is contra-revolutionary betrayal at its highest level, these blatant lies fall in the same category as fascist and libertarian capitalist telling lies about Che Guevara, in fact I cant really tell the difference:

Link to a Belgian fascist site, condemning Che Guevara: http://www.chegevaar.info/ (gevaar means 'danger' in Dutch)

Link to capitalist libertarians site: http://www.meervrijheid.nl/index.php?pagina=1551

[Cumannach]

Wait a minute- Stalin was on the cover of a magazine? This changes everything. And he was TIME magazine man of the year for halting the Nazis at Stalingrad?! It's all clear now- the Western Bourgeoisie adored him.

And it seems TIME magazine later went on to select Khrushchev as man of the year. And Andropov- what was that cold war thing?

Hitler also got the coveted man of the year title, in 1938 when it looked for all the world like he was going to fulfill the wishes of the Western Imperialists and focus all his energy on destroying the Soviet Union in a genocidal assault- an event they had worked tirelessly trying to bring about. Well they miscalculated slightly on that one.

And one more;

7188

I guess that whole Vietnam War thing was just a choreographed stage-piece -clearly the western bourgeoisie adored old Ho.

[Das war einmal]

No man the whole cold war, the Berlin wall and Vietnam war was just a bourgeois plot to keep the workers from controlling the means of production, while the new class of 'bureaucrats' took everything. Every true communist knows this. I bet Castro gets loads of money for keeping the blockade in tact

[Leo]

Wait a minute- Stalin was on the cover of a magazine?Uh actually he was elected person of the year, twice.


And he was TIME magazine man of the year for halting the Nazis at Stalingrad?!Actually he was elected Time person of the year about a moth before the end of the Stalingrad war.


It's all clear now- the Western Bourgeoisie adored him. They certainly had quite good relations. Your lack of response to other incidents sort of point out to that as well.


And it seems TIME magazine later went on to select Khrushchev as man of the year. And Andropov- what was that cold war thing? Actually it is quite obvious that all soviet leaders picked after Stalin were picked because of the moves they made from post War soviet imperialist policies and rhetoric, including Khrushchev and Andropov as well as Gorbachev.


Hitler also got the coveted man of the year title, in 1938 when it looked for all the world like he was going to fulfill the wishes of the Western Imperialists and focus all his energy on destroying the Soviet Union in a genocidal assault- an event they had worked tirelessly trying to bring about. Well they miscalculated slightly on that one.Yes, they did. Once again:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov-Ribbentrop_Pact (http://www.anonym.to/?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov-Ribbentrop_Pact)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland_(1939 (http://www.anonym.to/?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland_%281939))

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-Soviet_Boundary_and_Friendship_Treaty


I guess that whole Vietnam War thing was just a choreographed stage-piece -clearly the western bourgeoisie adored old Ho.A certain faction was clearly more sympathetic of him.


^This is contra-revolutionary betrayal at its highest level, these blatant lies fall in the same category as fascist and libertarian capitalist telling lies about Che Guevara, It is interesting to see your idea of being a revolutionary or counter-revolutionary depends on whether someone glorifies or insults a specific individual.

In any case, telling what is written in an article is lies does not make it lies, and you have to also try to prove your allegations.

On the other hand, it is of course true that fascists and libertarian capitalists tell lies about Che Guevara, the most significant one being the "allegation" of him being a real communist.


in fact I cant really tell the difference:That is your problem.


I bet Castro gets loads of moneyHe clearly lives a very privileged life compared to Cuban workers with his cars, villas, private tennis and basketball courts and so forth.


No man the whole cold war, the Berlin wall and Vietnam war was just a bourgeois plot to keep the workers from controlling the means of production, while the new class of 'bureaucrats' took everything.

We don't regard the cold war as a plot, we regard it as an inter-imperialist conflict, that is surely a real one but one that took place among different imperialist blocks.

[Red Dreadnought]

¡Olé, Leo!

And thankyou to B-Leninist although the differences.

Kassad, this way of analysis is eclectical, no scientific. You don't use the analysis of "fight of classes". You say "Well probably the URSS, weren`t perfect but at some degree...there was any degree of Socialism", here you have the problem: ¿Which class ruled in the URSS, or Cuba, or Korea?. The answer must be concrete, not ecléctical. A new bureaucrathic bourgesy did it. There is a theorethical analysis made by revolutionaries of left wing communist, council communist, luxembourguists and even the better faction of "trotskists" about it. And cause this position they were sent to Siberia. And then you have to choose your party.

What makes the difference beetween Che, Stalin or Mao. Well, probably they didn't make masse killings at such a level. But he directed "Revolutionary Courts" that killed hundred or thousands, theorically "reactionaries", but also homosexuals for exemple. Or he defended "Socialist" Field in nuclear conflict with "Occident", thus, extend "socialism" by means of nuclear weapons:cursing:: "Krushev mariquita, lo que se da no se quita" (if you undestand that...well is awful).

[Cumannach]

Starting with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.

France and Britain having repeatedly turned down Stalin's offer of an anti-Nazi alliance with the Soviet Union, having allowed Hitler to take Austria, having given the Nazis the Sudetenland (the Hitler-Chamberlain pact), having then allowed them gobble up the rest of Czechoslavakia, further nudging Hitler east, in the right direction, it was left to Stalin to pull off maybe the greatest coup in diplomatic history. The Molotov-Ribbentrop 'pact' smashed the designs of the Western imperialists, who had so diligently 'appeased' the Nazis, allowing them to rebuild a modern war machine with the well founded expectation that Hitler would unleash it on the Socialist Soviet Union, probably seriously weakening their great imperialist rival, Germany, enough in the process to allow them to pick up the pieces afterwards.

By signing a non-aggression treaty with the Nazis, Stalin had divided the imperialist camp in two by turning Hitler west for a little detour, making sure the Western Imperialists would not be able to stand by and watch the show unfold- he had obliged them to become his allies in the anti-fascist war- though they would contribute as little as possible.

The 'pact' allowed the Soviet Union to retake the territories that had been seized by the Polish during the Civil War and were in the hands of the reactionary Polish military dictatorship, as well as the Baltic states. The Red Army could now push forward to the eastern reaches of Poland in preparation for the inevitable Nazi offensive- a crucial advantage.

It gave the Soviet Union two invaluable extra years for preparation, for building up their War Industry, for producing tanks and guns to face down the Wermacht and it allowed Stalin to concentrate on crushing the Japanese imperialists that had invaded the Soviet Union in the east, a task speedily completed.

In short it secured the conditions for the defeat of fascism.

[Socialist Scum]

I can't really come to think how the USA would see Stalin named man of the year in time magazine for (1942 or 43? I guess 43.) and then go on to be taught to hate him. It's pretty odd how the USA was doing as "Use them till their used up" policy. Pretty much just pretending to be great buddies with the USSR until they realised they were a threat to their strength and global dominance. :closedeyes:

[Cumannach]

Stalin: Led a working class revolution into the ground with hyper-industrialization and oppression. Millions dead.

Mao: Led a working class revolution into the ground with hyper-industrialization and oppression. Millions dead.



Stalin: Built up heavy Industry at all cost to be strong enough to fend off capitalist aggression. Defeated capitalist Nazi Germany. Incalculable millions saved.

Mao: Kicked all imperialists out of China, who had killed hundreds of millions over a hundred year period. Finally put an end to the periodical famines in China. Incalculable millions saved from starvation.

[Kassad]

Stalin: Built up heavy Industry at all cost to be strong enough to fend off capitalist aggression. Defeated capitalist Nazi Germany. Incalculable millions saved.

Mao: Kicked all imperialists out of China, who had killed hundreds of millions over a hundred year period. Finally put an end to the periodical famines in China. Incalculable millions saved from starvation.

I've defended Stalin and Mao multiple times, so you aren't telling me anything unknown to me. In fact, I've echoed the same phrases before. I was merely pointing out the negative aspects of two men compared to that of Che Guevara's, since I am at a loss about what people find so negative about him.

[Cumannach]

I've defended Stalin and Mao multiple times, so you aren't telling me anything unknown to me. In fact, I've echoed the same phrases before. I was merely pointing out the negative aspects of two men compared to that of Che Guevara's, since I am at a loss about what people find so negative about him.

Are you saying you're prone to self-contradiction?

Che was a great comrade but achieved very little compared to Mao or Stalin, material conditions and circumstances notwithstanding.

[Kassad]

I'm not saying anything of the sort. I'm saying that if we observe the negative aspects of the communist leaders and revolutionaries throughout time, I am amazed that Guevara is painted in a negative light. I can see where criticism of Mao and Stalin come, due to their repression of freedom of speech and the like, so I can comprehend disfavorable outlooks in that situation. No self-contradiction. I respect Stalin and Mao for their contributions, but I don't see the repression they took part in, especially murdering workers and peasants who supported them, as part of what our revolution should stand for. We stand for emancipation and liberation, not destruction.

[Cumannach]

I'm not saying anything of the sort. I'm saying that if we observe the negative aspects of the communist leaders and revolutionaries throughout time, I am amazed that Guevara is painted in a negative light.

Hmm maybe it has something to do with lapping up horror stories without asking for any proof?

[NecroCommie]

Making a single verdict on soviet union in general is highly ignorant. The history of the soviet union is a rich one, representing numerous views and politics. Also any statements on the class nature of the soviet union must be either complicated or ignorant. For my opinion, Lenin is a great example to follow. We should heed his words, and condemn the revisionist politics of the other bolshevists in his era (Lenin was not allpowerful no matter what they say, The party officials held vast power). Also Stalin had certain socialist elements in his politics, but it was ultimately him that started the downfall of the union.

[Comrade Anarchist]

it was state capitalist because the government ran the economoy as if it were a corporation. The people didnt control the means of production

[robbo203]

Making a single verdict on soviet union in general is highly ignorant. The history of the soviet union is a rich one, representing numerous views and politics. Also any statements on the class nature of the soviet union must be either complicated or ignorant. For my opinion, Lenin is a great example to follow. We should heed his words, and condemn the revisionist politics of the other bolshevists in his era (Lenin was not allpowerful no matter what they say, The party officials held vast power). Also Stalin had certain socialist elements in his politics, but it was ultimately him that started the downfall of the union.

Lenin certainly had his good points and in some respects and at certain points in his life his views (or some of them) were quite close to marxism. However he fundamentally broke with marxism in my view on so many counts and in the end his role was to preside over the introduction of a system of state capitalism in Russia which he tried to rationalise in marxian terms but utterly unconvincingly. In the end Lenin proved to be just another bourgeois revolutionary with a few saving graces.

Stalin on the other hand was an outright fascist and megalomaniac who brutally consoldiated a vicious class system in which a tiny clique of apparatchiks and state managers exerted complete class control and ownership of the means of production via their absolute stranglehold on the state apparatus. Stalin railed against the evil of equality and his regime the tiny minoroity of rich parasites prospered at the expense of the russian working class.

How anyone can regard Stalin or the stalinist regime as anything but a despicable state capitalist dictatorship is beyond comprehension. It is high time some people contemplated extracting their heads out of the sand in which they have embedded them ostrichlike for far too long

[Cumannach]

Thanks for regurgitating Nazi propaganda yet again.

[robbo203]

Thanks for regurgitating Nazi propaganda yet again.

Nazi propaganda? Pray do tell - how exactly is calling the soviet regime a brutal elitist state capitalist regime that ruthlessly oppressed the Russian working class, a peice of "nazi propaganda"? I am all ears. I would just to love hear how you propose to talk your way out of this one!

There are none so blind as those who do not wish to see the Soviet reality for what it was.

[JimmyJazz]

Proponents of the second theory [degenerated workers' state]argue that even though a bureaucracy did emerge within the party and eventually take control of the state by abolishing political democracy, the economy was still based on the state ownership of property and so the bureaucracy should not be seen as a class, merely as a social stratum. In terms of practical implications, this theory obligates its proponents to call for the unconditional military defense of countries which they categorize as degenerated workers states, including China, Vietnam, North Korea, etc.

This distinction between private ownership and bureaucratic ownership is a crucial one. I've heard it described as the difference between *expropriation*, which happens under capitalism (wealth squirreled away into disparate private hands), and *skimming*, wherein the overall infrastructure remains collectivized and internally coherent even if some of the gross surplus value is skimmed off by the bureaucratic elite for personal aggrandizement.

That's not a good characterization of the difference between a bureaucratic caste and an expropriating class. Not even under capitalism does the amount of surplus value directly consumed by the idle ruling class add up to anything significant. The great bulk of it is reinvested to increase relative profitability ("relative" to other firms). The crucial difference between a capitalist and non-capitalist society is not the amount of surplus value consumed by those who do no work, but with the large remainder of the surplus value, and what it gets used for: is it reinvested to make capital turn a further profit (as a capitalist class does), or is it used for something else? In any non-capitalist society, that is any classless society--be it genuinely socialist or highly bureaucratic--this non-consumed surplus value would not be reinvested for profit.

But there are important distinctions beyond that; that's where the topic of this thread becomes important. In a truly socialist society, it would be democratically decided by the workers how to reinvest it for a moderate level of growth that is compatible with an enjoyable labor environment and sufficient leisure time; and the things it gets reinvested in would not simply be those that turn a profit, but those that the people democratically determine to be important for their happiness. In a bureaucratic post-capitalist state, on the other hand, it might be invested in any number of things that the bureaucracy finds necessary, such as an arms race with the West, a breakneck pace of industrialization, etc. But in no case other than a capitalist society would it be invested simply with a mind to chasing profit: that is something that only a class does.

[Glenn Beck]

That's not a good characterization of the difference between a bureaucratic caste and an expropriating class. Not even under capitalism does the amount of surplus value directly consumed by the idle ruling class add up to anything significant. The great bulk of it is reinvested to increase relative profitability ("relative" to other firms). The crucial difference between a capitalist and non-capitalist society is not the amount of surplus value consumed by those who do no work, but with the large remainder of the surplus value, and what it gets used for: is it reinvested to make capital turn a further profit (as a capitalist class does), or is it used for something else? In any non-capitalist society, that is any classless society--be it genuinely socialist or highly bureaucratic--this non-consumed surplus value would not be reinvested for profit.

But there are important distinctions beyond that; that's where the topic of this thread becomes important. In a truly socialist society, it would be democratically decided by the workers how to reinvest it for a moderate level of growth that is compatible with an enjoyable labor environment and sufficient leisure time; and the things it gets reinvested in would not simply be those that turn a profit, but those that the people democratically determine to be important for their happiness. In a bureaucratic post-capitalist state, on the other hand, it might be invested in any number of things that the bureaucracy finds necessary, such as an arms race with the West, a breakneck pace of industrialization, etc. But in no case other than a capitalist society would it be invested simply with a mind to chasing profit: that is something that only a class does.

So your proposition is essentially that the primary difference between a non-capitalist state ruled by a bureaucracy, as in the USSR, and a genuine socialist state is who ultimately determines what is done with the social surplus?

[JimmyJazz]

Yeah. It seems like a good way of summing it up to me. Workers' control over the process production (workplace conditions, working hours, etc) and the direction of production (how much of society's produce gets reinvested rather than consumed, and invested in what types of things). To me that defines a socialist society. I don't think the USSR ever had workers' control over either of those things, but then they never really had time to, they were busy defending the revolution, and trying to export it. Without a world revolution they really couldn't have no matter how much they'd tried.

Of course I was only calling it "surplus" for shorthand. There wouldn't necessarily even be a surplus in a socialist society, because if the workers (i.e. everyone) decided to consume everything they produced rather than reinvest it, they'd be allowed to do that. The same goes for a country where a bureaucratic caste controls production. Capitalism otoh does necessitate a surplus value. If the working class consumed everything it produced and didn't produce a surplus, the wealthier classes would have nothing to gain from even engaging in commodity production or hiring wage labor. There would be no profit in it, no increase in their wealth.

Full disclosure: I haven't read any of the full texts on either the state capitalist or degenerated workers' state theories, like Tony Cliff or Trotsky's Revolution Betrayed. I've just read the thumbnail sketches of each analysis, plus this (http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1967/intromet/index.htm) which was really useful.

[robbo203]

Full disclosure: I haven't read any of the full texts on either the state capitalist or degenerated workers' state theories, like Tony Cliff or Trotsky's Revolution Betrayed. I've just read the thumbnail sketches of each analysis, plus this (http://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1967/intromet/index.htm) which was really useful.

Or for an alternative viewpoint try this one http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/etheory/96-97/html/97Russia.html

[Brother No. 1]

In the CCCP life was better for the People. Now life is pretty much worthless in the Capitalist Eastern Europe and Russia. Infact most People liked Stalin rule even though he was killing people they say. "There was no worries." the Revolution betrayed seemed good for the CCCP only.

[iraqnevercalledmenigger]

Well it was Marx's assertion that various societies are distinguished by the method by which surplus value is extracted, no?

[Brother No. 1]

True comrade but still my point stands.

[Bolshevik-Leninist]

True comrade but still my point stands.

Your point didn't have any evidence supporting it

[Brother No. 1]

My evidence is the People they said it and really does Capitalist Russia have a better life stlye for the People. The CCCP had good and bad sides to it. I would really only count it as a Socialist state it wasnt perfect but has anything gone perfect.

[Bolshevik-Leninist]

Two things: 1) "the People they said it" is not evidence supporting your claim; 2) you have provided no evidence that any of these countries were socialist

[Brother No. 1]

Evidence for wikipedia.



Soviet constitutions declared certain political rights, such as freedom of speech (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech), freedom of assembly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_assembly), and freedom of religion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion). They also identified a series of economic and social rights, as well as a set of duties of all citizens. Nevertheless, Soviet constitutions did not contain provisions guaranteeing the inalienable rights of the citizenry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights), and they lacked laws to protect these rights. Thus, the population enjoyed political rights only to the extent that these rights did not conflict with the goal of building communism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism). The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union) alone reserved the authority to determine what lay in the interests of Communism. Finally, Soviet constitutions specified the form and content of state symbols, such as the arms, the flag (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_Soviet_Union), and the state anthem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Anthems_of_the_USSR_and_Union_Republics).



I will try to find more to support my claim.

[Philosophical Materialist]

It was a socialist state, but one deformed by bureaucratic parasitism. I chose option 2 above as being the closest to my opinion.

Bureaucratic parasitism, the material conditions of the early USSR, and the pressures of continued geo-political hostility from foreign powers all helped to divert the Soviet Union from building a socialist state on Marxist terms,

The crushing of the post-WW1 revolutions in industrialised central and eastern Europe were the greatest blows to building socialism in Soviet Russia. From here on in, the task of building a socialist state was made much harder than it would have been.


I can't really come to think how the USA would see Stalin named man of the year in time magazine for (1942 or 43? I guess 43.) and then go on to be taught to hate him. It's pretty odd how the USA was doing as "Use them till their used up" policy. Pretty much just pretending to be great buddies with the USSR until they realised they were a threat to their strength and global dominance. :closedeyes:

I think Time magazine's Man (now, 'Person') of the Year is decided on the most newsworthy person in that particular year, rather than a particular endorsement of that person. Stalin was first given that title in 1939 when the USSR was seen with hostility by the USA. Ayatollah Khomeini, Vladimir Putin and Mohammed Mossadegh were all given that title but none of whom were endeared to the United States.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayatollah_Khomeini)

[grok]

Originally Posted by zimmerwald1915
Why the artificial distinction between the state capitalism pre-1991 and the state capitalism post-1991? The degree to which a system is applied is unimportant in understanding the fundamental nature of the system.

Excellent point comrade.

No it isn't. Certainly there is and was class exploitation on both sides of this world-historical event; but the point youse is overlooking in your collective eagerness to advance your pet theories here, is that there has most certainly been a qualitative change in the mode of production in the former CCCP from then till now. Today's "Russia" is clearly not yesterday's Soviet Union. Not by a long shot. Even tho' the working-class in Russia is still very much at the bottom of the heap... but that doesn't make things essentially the same, either. Even if it might feel the same from the workers' POV.
:p

However, exploitation does remain exploitation, sure -- and so instead of mere stalinist bureaucrats to overthrow, we now have thieving, vulgar, mafioso comprador "capitalists" to get rid of there. Some difference indeed. And there would be your point.
:crying:

[grok]

I can't really come to think how the USA would see Stalin named man of the year in time magazine for (1942 or 43? I guess 43.) and then go on to be taught to hate him. It's pretty odd how the USA was doing as "Use them till their used up" policy. Pretty much just pretending to be great buddies with the USSR until they realised they were a threat to their strength and global dominance. :closedeyes:

It's very simple why this double game was going on: the U.S. ruling-class' wartime propaganda requirements. Nobody was fooling anybody, understand? Except maybe the workers.

Just go watch some of those old wartime Hollywood propaganda films featuring references to good ol' "Comrade Joe". The wooden hypocrisy is more than enuff to make you barf in your popcorn bucket. Anyone with their feelers out can get the message, loud and clear: "We're only saying this because we have to, capisce? First opportunity -- we're calling it off with 'Comrade Joe' and his Commie Crusade. Frankly, we can't wait!"

[grok]

Two things: 1) "the People they said it" is not evidence supporting your claim; 2) you have provided no evidence that any of these countries were socialist

The first thing I notice here is (the IMO usual) apparent lack of historical context -- i.e. complex dynamic development -- in yet another political argument. On any end of the political spektrum. The history of countries and movements -- or of individuals, for that matter -- are not set pieces, komrad. That would be bourgeois-type thinking, there.

Certainly the CCCP started out as a socialist project. The issue is, rather, what became of that project, right..?

[Brother No. 1]

The project has been destroyed by the many mistakes its leaders have made.
From Stalin to Mikhail.they all ruined the CCCP in their own way.

[Small Geezer]

Isn't 'CCCP' cyrillic for USSR?

[rararoadrunner]

Comrades:

I have another possibility I'd like to offer here, on this thread, which is its logical home:

If we are of the opinion that the USSR fell from socialism, why do we need an excess concept, "State Capitalism?"

Wasn't the "union of state and corporate economic power" precisely the basis of...fascism?

If we draw back and look at the direction in which Stalin took the Soviet Union, can we not opine that Soviet Socialism felll all the way into fascism?

This may seem, and indeed is intended to seem, "extreme" on my part: what I'm asking is if we can't apply Occam's Razor to the excess concept of "State-Capitalism." How is it any different from fascism?

Back to you, comrades!

[robbo203]

Good to see that poll is showing "state capitalism" to be the most fitting epithet of the the ex-USSR. It could hardly be otherwise. Anyone with a minimal grasp of marxian economics would be bound to come to the same conclusion since the old USSR exhibited all of the primary features of capitalism enumated by Marx - above all generalised commodity production and wage labour.

Even Lenin conceded state capitalism would be a step forward and that is precisely what the USSR got

[ZeroNowhere]

Lenin certainly had his good points and in some respects and at certain points in his life his views (or some of them) were quite close to marxism. However he fundamentally broke with marxism in my view on so many counts and in the end his role was to preside over the introduction of a system of state capitalism in Russia which he tried to rationalise in marxian terms but utterly unconvincingly.
Technically, IIRC, the NEP wasn't pure state capitalism, it had some private capitalist elements (though only in small businesses, generally)

[robbo203]

Technically, IIRC, the NEP wasn't pure state capitalism, it had some private capitalist elements (though only in small businesses, generally)

Sure but I think generally speaking the USSR can accurately be described as state capitalist. There was also of course the complicating factor (more so later on) of foreign companies operating within the USSR in partnership deals and so on which you could characterise as a decision on behalf of the Soviet authorities to permit outside capitalists to participate, (along with the Soviet capitalist class itself) in the process of exploiting the workers

[Philosophical Materialist]

...since the old USSR exhibited all of the primary features of capitalism enumated by Marx - above all generalised commodity production and wage labour.

Where was the bourgeoisie, and were was the capitalist class?

[robbo203]

Where was the bourgeoisie, and were was the capitalist class?


In brief, those who exercised de facto control and therefore ownerships rights over the means of production via their complete control of the state apparatus.

I am talking about a tiny class of individuals here - party apparatchiks in the upper echelons of the party , state managers and so on - who made all the important production decisions and imposed these downwards on the working class through a hierarchy of management. This class therefore decisively controlled the economic surplus and its allocation -most of which went into relentless capital accumulation , the uncapitalised part being siphoned off and disguised in the form of enormous fat cat salaries and numerous perks which only entry to this tiny class of economic parasites, some of them rouble millionaires even back in the 1950s, could permit.

This set up is well explained in Buick & Crumps book "State Capitalism: The Wages System under New Management" (Macmillan Press, 1987) with detailed and indisputable empirical evidence to back up the claim that the Soviet Union was based on a system of state capitalism (as Lenin had earlier acknowleged) in which this tiny privileged minority constituted a de facto capitalist class.

[Revo_Socialista]

I can't really come to think how the USA would see Stalin named man of the year in time magazine for (1942 or 43? I guess 43.) and then go on to be taught to hate him. It's pretty odd how the USA was doing as "Use them till their used up" policy. Pretty much just pretending to be great buddies with the USSR until they realised they were a threat to their strength and global dominance. :closedeyes:




The U.S.S.R was a diseased, totalitarian society. Intellectuals were persecuted, the press was heavily censored, and free-thinkers were tortured in gulags. An internal passport system was set up to to stop people from emigrating to the West for freedom.

[robbo203]

The U.S.S.R was a diseased, totalitarian society. Intellectuals were persecuted, the press was heavily censored, and free-thinkers were tortured in gulags. An internal passport system was set up to to stop people from emigrating to the West for freedom.


I agree with this assessment completely. But I would say though that many of those emigrating to the West blindly fell for the insidious propaganda of western capitalist powers and all the crap that it peddled about upholding democracy, freedom and so on and so forth. As communist we need always to make absolutely clear that we reject completely BOTH sides of what was once the Iron curtain

[Dave B]

It is not unusual for national capitalist gangs eg states, to form unlikely alliances only to fall out with each other later and have to re-write the script for the saps, and for the intellectual lickspittles to ‘manufacture consent’.

The Nazi’s and the Stalin’s gang formed perhaps a not an unlikely alliance to invade Poland and divvy up the loot in 1939.

As I remember it the Stalinist CPGB at the time opposed the UK going to war with fascist Germany and produced a pamphlet to that effect. Later of course the position was reversed and the original pamphlet was actively withdrawn and another more ‘up to date one’ produced.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland_(1939 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland_(1939))

Other more contemporary examples are legion of course and not without their own irony.

So in 1984, the title of a book on Stalinism, an editorial of The New York Times of January 1st stated that.



"The Afghans need no encouragement to resist. But they could use
better weapons especially against warplanes." And given the
difficulties of supplying such weapons " Airdrops . . . might be one
way round the problem."


On April 26th, same year


"Afghans look upon Russians not only as invaders but also infidels
and take up their arms for both nation and Islam. Even if Soviet
brutality prevails it can give powerful impetus to Islamic
fundamentalism throughout the region."

Unfortunately Bin Laden never quite made man of the year in 1984.

Orwell of course recognising perhaps the childishness of the Leninist and Stalinist left at the time, attempted to address the complex issue by lowering the debate to a level that they might understand by writing a fairy tale that a child could understand.



"No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The
creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and
from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which
was which."


http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/animalfarm/10/ (http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/animalfarm/10/)

A futile project given some of the contributions on this list.

On the similarity between Stalinism and fascism, much of Orwell’s inspiration for his classic novels drew from Burnham, eg;


http://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/burnham/english/e_burnh (http://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/burnham/english/e_burnh)

and Burnham got it from Bruno Rizzi’s La bureaucratisation du monde (1939) which led to a lively internecine Trot debate.

According to an observer at the time, when Trotsky read it he apparently;

‘howled like a banshee and swung it around his head like a dead cat’.

[Cumannach]

If only you guys hated capitalism even half as much as you hate the Soviet Union, 20 years after it was overthrown...

[robbo203]

If only you guys hated capitalism even half as much as you hate the Soviet Union, 20 years after it was overthrown...


It is because we hate capitalism that we detest the state capitalist Soviet Union and the reactionary role it played in deceiving gullible workers like you who thought it had something to do with socialism. And who overthrew the Soviet Union anyway? If it was a fraction as great as you naively make out it would still be here, wouldnt it?

[Dave B]

I agree with Robbo

It is you that hates capitalism by halves.

You hate state capitalism half as much as capitalism

[Woland]

And who overthrew the Soviet Union anyway?

Gorbachev, an admitted anticommunist who wanted ''market socialism''; Yeltsin, Russian nationalist, revisionist party members from the time of Kruschev. Right before the dissolution, there was a vote. Over 75% wanted to keep the Union. It was, of course, ignored. Your shit fails.

[Cumannach]

The term 'State Capitalism' as used by all of you revisionists has no real meaning, other than being an anti-communist slander. This has been demonstrated in several threads. Your only response is in making up facts about secret and not-secret Soviet billionaires and spouting vitriolic and always unsubstantiated nonsense about the horrors of 'totalitarianism', another favourite bourgeois catchword.

[Coggeh]

Good to see that poll is showing "state capitalism" to be the most fitting epithet of the the ex-USSR. It could hardly be otherwise. Anyone with a minimal grasp of marxian economics would be bound to come to the same conclusion since the old USSR exhibited all of the primary features of capitalism enumated by Marx - above all generalised commodity production and wage labour.

Even Lenin conceded state capitalism would be a step forward and that is precisely what the USSR got
Anyone who takes something at face value and doesn't use marxist analysis comes to the conclusion of state-capitalism . Its way to simplified and is just used by many to completely write off the soviet union , disregarding all the economic gains.

The bureaucracy were not a class , the economic basis lay in nationalised property , the bureaucracy did not own it . Their political dominance did not extend to it .



Degenerated workers state

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

it was state capitalist because the government ran the economoy as if it were a corporation. The people didnt control the means of production
Sigh...
The Workers controlled the factories.
The government set out the production goals that were necessary for the population.

[robbo203]

Anyone who takes something at face value and doesn't use marxist analysis comes to the conclusion of state-capitalism . Its way to simplified and is just used by many to completely write off the soviet union , disregarding all the economic gains.

The bureaucracy were not a class , the economic basis lay in nationalised property , the bureaucracy did not own it . Their political dominance did not extend to it .



Degenerated workers state


Not so. The nomenklatura owned the nationalised property in the only real sense that counts - de facto ownership. THey owned is BECAUSE they exerted absolute control over it and the allocation of the surplus produced. It was via their strangehold on the state that they owned the means of production and therefore constituted a ruling class in the marxian sense.

People who ignore this argument overlook the decisive point that ultimate control and ownership cannot possibly be separated. The one is an aspect of the other

[robbo203]

The term 'State Capitalism' as used by all of you revisionists has no real meaning, other than being an anti-communist slander. This has been demonstrated in several threads. Your only response is in making up facts about secret and not-secret Soviet billionaires and spouting vitriolic and always unsubstantiated nonsense about the horrors of 'totalitarianism', another favourite bourgeois catchword.


Oh dear. I suppose next you will be saying that Lenin did not say anything about state capitalism being a step forward for Russia or that "socialism" in his view was state capitalist monopoly. You are living in a dreamworld, not willing to face the facts or accept the overwhelming arguments that contradict you

[Cumannach]

Robbo let's get to the heart of the matter. After the working class (of if you prefer, the Bolsheviks) seized state power from the czarists and the capitalists, they were faced with the task of transforming a capitalist country into a socialist/communist country. You claim that the Bolsheviks did not wield the state power in an effort to accomplish this task, but rather in order to serve their own interests. What interests were these? You say, to enrich themselves with the surplus value, the profit, which had formerly gone into the Capitalist's pocket, but with them gone, could now flow into the Bolsheviks' purse.

Essentially, you say, the Bolsheviks were just capitalists masquerading as communists, in order to oust the incumbent capitalists from their wealth and power, and grab that enviable position for themselves.

So, can you cite any evidence (referenced quotes) to support this claim? For example, can you cite evidence of the personal enrichment of the Bolshevik cadres? Remember now, we're not talking about little country dachas or fancy cigars here, but enormous capitalist wealth. If there's no evidence for this, the surplus value must have gone either to the workers, or to the expansion of production, if it didn't go to the Bolsho-Capitalists.

I'm very interested to see this all-persuasive evidence.

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

Oh dear. I suppose next you will be saying that Lenin did not say anything about state capitalism being a step forward for Russia or that "socialism" in his view was state capitalist monopoly. You are living in a dreamworld, not willing to face the facts or accept the overwhelming arguments that contradict you
Arguments? Which arguments?

[Dave B]

So, can you cite any evidence (referenced quotes) to support this claim? For example, can you cite evidence of the personal enrichment of the Bolshevik cadres? Remember now, we're not talking about little country dachas or fancy cigars here, but enormous capitalist wealth. If there's no evidence for this, the surplus value must have gone either to the workers, or to the expansion of production, if it didn't go to the Bolsho-Capitalists.

I'm very interested to see this all-persuasive evidence.


Cooption and Repression in the Soviet Union

2. The Nomenkatura And The Communist Party

Page 35;



Under the communist system of resource allocation and income distribution although the nomenklatura received relatively modest money incomes they enjoyed a variety of lavish perquisites such as high quality apartments, access to special stores and superior healthcare.


The high standard of living of the nomenKlatura mainly reflected these perquisites.





http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/Papers/1999/1999-25.pdf (http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/Papers/1999/1999-25.pdf)

[Dave B]

The Fourteenth Congress of
the C.P.S.U.(B.)
December 18-31, 1925

(Sokolnikov was the Finance minister, you would think he should have known better!)

7. Concerning State Capitalism




Connected with this question is Bukharin's mistake. What was his mistake? On what questions did Lenin dispute with Bukharin? Lenin maintained that the category of state capitalism is compatible with the system of the proletarian dictatorship. Bukharin denied this. He was of the opinion, and with him the "Left" Communists, too, including Safarov, were of the opinion that the category of state capitalism is incompatible with the system of the proletarian dictatorship. Lenin was right, of course. Bukharin was wrong. He admitted this mistake of his. Such was Bukharin's mistake.


But that was in the past. If now, in 1925, in May, he repeats that he disagrees with Lenin on the question of state capitalism, I suppose it is simply a misunderstanding. Either he ought frankly to withdraw that statement, or it is a misunderstanding; for the line he is now defending on the question of the nature of state industry is Lenin's line. Lenin did not come to Bukharin; on the contrary, Bukharin came to Lenin. And precisely for that reason we back Bukharin. (Applause.)


The chief mistake of Kamenev and Zinoviev is that they regard the question of state capitalism scholastically, undialectically, divorced from the historical situation. Such an approach to the question is abhorrent to the whole spirit of Leninism. How did Lenin present the question? In 1921, Lenin, knowing that our industry was under-developed and that the peasantry needed goods, knowing that it (industry) could not be raised at one stroke, that the workers, because of certain circumstances, were engaged not so much in industry as in making cigarette lighters — in that situation Lenin was of the opinion that the best of all possibilities was to invite foreign capital, to set industry on its feet with its aid, to introduce state capitalism in this way and through it to establish a bond between Soviet power and the countryside.

That line was absolutely correct at that time, because we had no other means then of satisfying the peasantry; for our industry was in a bad way, transport was at a standstill, or almost at a standstill, there was a lack, a shortage, of fuel. Did Lenin at that time consider state capitalism permissible and desirable as the predominant form in our economy? Yes, he did. But that was then, in 1921. What about now?
Can we now say that we have no industry, that transport is at a standstill, that there is no fuel, etc.? No, we cannot. Can it be denied that our industry and trade are already establishing a bond between industry (our industry) and peasant economy directly, by their own efforts? No, it cannot.

Can it be denied that in the sphere of industry "state capitalism" and "socialism" have already exchanged roles, for socialist industry has become predominant and the relative importance of concessions and leases (the former have 50,000 workers and the latter 35,000) is minute? No, it cannot. Already in 1922 Lenin said that nothing had come of concessions and leases in our country.

What follows from this? From this it follows that since 1921, the situation in our country has undergone a substantial change, that in this period our socialist industry and Soviet and co-operative trade have already succeeded in becoming the predominant force, that we have already learned to establish a bond between town and country by our own efforts, that the most striking forms of state capitalism — concessions and leases — have not developed to any extent during this period, that to speak now, in 1925, of state capitalism as the predominant form in our economy, means distorting the socialist nature of our state industry, means failing to understand the whole difference between the past and the present situation, means approaching the question of state capitalism not dialectically, but scholastically, metaphysically.
Would you care to hear Sokolnikov? In his speech he said:

"Our foreign trade is being conducted as a state-capitalist enterprise. . . . Our internal trading companies are also state-capitalist enterprises. And I must say, comrades, that the State Bank is just as much a state-capitalist enterprise. What about our monetary system? Our monetary system is based on the fact that in Soviet economy, under the conditions in which socialism is being built, there has been adopted a monetary system which is permeated with the principles of capitalist economy."

That is what Sokolnikov says.

Soon he will go to the length of declaring that the People's Commissariat of Finance is also state capitalism. Up to now I thought, and we all thought, that the State Bank is part of the state apparatus. Up to now I thought, and we all thought, that our People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade, not counting the state-capitalist institutions that encompass it, is part of the state apparatus, that our state apparatus is the apparatus of a proletarian type of state. We all thought so up to now, for the proletarian state is the sole master of these institutions.


But now, according to Sokolnikov, it turns out that these institutions, which are part of our state apparatus, are state-capitalist institutions. Perhaps our Soviet apparatus is also state capitalism and not a proletarian type of state, as Lenin declared it to be? Why not? Does not our Soviet apparatus utilise a "monetary system which is permeated with the principles of capitalist economy?" Such is the nonsense a man can talk himself into.

Permit me first of all to quote Lenin's opinion on the nature and significance of the State Bank. I should like, comrades, to refer to a passage from a book written by Lenin in 1917. I have in mind the pamphlet: Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? in which Lenin still held the viewpoint of control of industry (and not nationalisation) and, notwithstanding that, regarded the State Bank in the hands of the proletarian state as being nine-tenths a socialist apparatus. This is what he wrote about the State Bank:

"The big banks are the 'state apparatus' we need for bringing about socialism, and which we take ready-made from capitalism; our task here is merely to lop off what capitalistically distorts this excellent apparatus, to make it still bigger, still more democratic, still more all-embracing. Quantity will be transformed into quality. A single State Bank, the biggest of the biggest, with branches in every volost, in every factory, will already be nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus. That will be nation-wide bookkeeping, nation-wide accounting of the production and distribution of goods, that will be, so to speak, something in the nature of the skeleton of socialist society" (see Vol. XXI, p. 260).

Compare these words of Lenin's with Sokolnikov's speech and you will understand what Sokolnikov is slipping into. I shall not be surprised if he declares the People s Commissariat of Finance to be state capitalism.

What is the point here? Why does Sokolnikov fall into such errors?

The point is that Sokolnikov fails to understand the dual nature of NEP, the dual nature of trade under the present conditions of the struggle between the socialist elements and the capitalist elements; he fails to understand the dialectics of development in the conditions of the proletarian dictatorship, in the conditions of the transition period, in which the methods and weapons of the bourgeoisie are utilised by the socialist elements for the purpose of overcoming and eliminating the capitalist elements.
The point is not at all that trade and the monetary system are methods of "capitalist economy."

The point is that in fighting the capitalist elements, the socialist elements of our economy master these methods and weapons of the bourgeoisie for the purpose of overcoming the capitalist elements, that they successfully use them against capitalism, successfully use them for the purpose of building the socialist foundation of our economy. Hence, the point is that, thanks to the dialectics of our development, the functions and purpose of those instruments of the bourgeoisie change in principle, fundamentally; they change in favour of socialism to the detriment of capitalism. Sokolnikov's mistake lies in his failure to understand all the complexity and contradictory nature of the processes that are taking place in our economy.

Permit me now to refer to Lenin on the question of the historical character of state capitalism, to quote a passage on the question as to when and why he proposed state capitalism as the chief form, as to what induced him to do that, and as to precisely under what concrete conditions he proposed it. (A voice: "Please do!")

"We cannot under any circumstances forget what we very often observe, namely, the socialist attitude of the workers in factories belonging to the state, where they themselves collect fuel raw materials and produce, or when the workers try properly to distribute the products of industry among the peasantry and to deliver them by means of the transport system. That is socialism. But side by side with it there is small economy, which very often exists independently of it. Why can it exist independently of it? Because large-scale industry has not been restored, because the socialist factories can receive only one-tenth, perhaps, of what they should receive; and in so far as they do not receive what they should, small economy remains independent of the socialist factories.


The incredible state of ruin of the country, and the shortage of fuel, raw materials and transport facilities, lead to small production existing separately from socialism. And I say: Under these circumstances, what is state capitalism? It will mean the amalgamation of small production. Capital amalgamates small production, capital grows out of small production. It is no use closing our eyes to this fact. Of course, freedom of trade means the growth of capitalism; one cannot get away from it.


And whoever thinks of getting away from it and brushing it aside is only consoling himself with words. If small economy exists, if there is freedom of exchange, capitalism will appear. But has this capitalism any terrors for us if we hold the factories, works, transport and foreign trade in our hands? And so I said then, and will say now, and I think it is incontrovertible, that this capitalism has no terrors for us. Concessions are capitalism of that kind" (see Vol. XXVI, p. 306).

That is how Lenin approached the question of state capitalism.

In 1921, when we had scarcely any industry of our own, when there was a shortage of raw materials, and transport was at a standstill, Lenin proposed state capitalism as a means by which he thought of linking peasant economy with industry. And that was correct. But does that mean that Lenin regarded this line as desirable under all circumstances? Of course not. He was willing to establish the bond through the medium of state capitalism because we had no developed socialist industry. But now?

Can it be said that we have no developed state industry now? Of course not. Development proceeded along a different channel, concessions scarcely took root, state industry grew, state trade grew, the co-operatives grew, and the bond between town and country began to be established through socialist industry. We found ourselves in a better position than we had expected. How can one, after this, say that state capitalism is the chief form of managing our economy?
The trouble with the opposition is that it refuses to understand these simple things.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1925/12/18.htm#7._Concerning_State_Capitalism_ (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1925/12/18.htm)

[NecroCommie]

The Nazi’s and the Stalin’s gang formed perhaps a not an unlikely alliance to invade Poland and divvy up the loot in 1939.


This was not only because Soviet union still tried to look isolationist to the outside world (a policy highly implemented in earlier years of SU), but also because Stalin was a political realist, not wanting to incite suicidal wars.

This does not justify the unwise pact, but your argument does not render soviet-union capitalist, or imperialist.

[Dave B]

Yes hi Necrocommie

Sorry for forgetting about the Finnish thing, as a case of soviet imperialism perhaps.

For the others, the invasion of little Finland by Stalin in November 1939 which was part of the pact with Adolf I think.

Something that even the capitalist club of the league of nations regarded as bad behaviour.

Even some of the Trot intellectuals took that to heart, particularly Leon’s attitude to it .

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/04/finnish.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/04/finnish.htm)

Burnham didn’t like it at all at the time. Hard to believe that he ended up being awarded the a congressional medal of honour by Ronald Reagan

[Cumannach]

Dave,

'scholarly' papers by IMF researchers and Brown University bourgeois economists, that, quite laughably, attempt to use mathematical formulas to describe the bureaucratic repression of the Soviets, and which in any case start from the assumption of a corrupt repressive 'nomenklatura', somehow fail to convince me with their arguments that the Soviet Union was capitalist.

As for your other quote, you didn't make any arguments with it. Can you point out why you believe it proves the SU was a capitalist state and not a socialist state? It seems to me a handy argument against that claim. Have you confused a capitalist state with a socialist state using a set of policies called 'state capitalism' in their construction of socialism/communism?

[Dave B]

Well if we are talking of special privileges that the bureaucracy siphons off as surplus value etc we could turn to Trotsky if you like, and as they are always quick to run to his defence. You can perhaps argue with them;


"Always and in every regime, the bureaucracy devours no small portion of surplus value. It might not be uninteresting, for example, to compute what portion of the national income is devoured by the fascist locusts in Italy or Germany!"


http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1933/10/sovstate.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1933/10/sovstate.htm)

The whole article is in fact quite interesting, not that I would expect many on this list to read it.

[NecroCommie]

Yes hi Necrocommie

Sorry for forgetting about the Finnish thing, as a case of soviet imperialism perhaps.

For the others, the invasion of little Finland by Stalin in November 1939 which was part of the pact with Adolf I think.

Something that even the capitalist club of the league of nations regarded as bad behaviour.

Even some of the Trot intellectuals took that to heart, particularly Leon’s attitude to it .

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/04/finnish.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/04/finnish.htm)

Burnham didn’t like it at all at the time. Hard to believe that he ended up being awarded the a congressional medal of honour by Ronald Reagan


Now you are walking a dangerous path, arguing Finnish history with a native. Sure they attacked, and for whatever reason it was, the fact remains that the Finnish government was fascist. Toppling such government is a good thing regardless of intentions. If you want to point out "evils" of SU I would rather look at the invasion of poland earlier that year.

Even that does not prove SU capitalist, only interventionist.

[Dave B]

Hi Necrocommie

Well I thought I did tread carefully when it came to Finnish history.
I did include ‘I think’ and ‘perhaps’ and didn’t say anything that was untrue, I think, otherwise I am sure you would have corrected me.

There was a contemporary article by Burnham, as I mentioned him, on this issue. He was one of your lot, a Leninist or just about still, at the time.

http://marxists.anu.edu.au/history/etol/writers/burnham/1940/01/poldes.htm (http://marxists.anu.edu.au/history/etol/writers/burnham/1940/01/poldes.htm)


I wouldn’t dream of teaching Finnish history to a Finn, but would prefer to just ask questions.

Although, as I understand it, the Finnish communist party was banned at the time, did not the Social Democratic Party of Finland’s Kyösti Kallio win the presidential elections in 1937-40 under a ‘democratic system’?

Was the Social Democratic Party of Finland really fascist?

Presumably the following statement is completely false as well;



"Finnish political development in the 1930s differed from that of many other Central and Eastern European countries which had gained independence after the First World War. One after another, they succumbed to right-wing dictatorships. In Finland the parliamentary system remained effective and democracy actually became stronger. National unity was not achieved on the terms of the right, by forcing the labour movement to confrom. Instead, the Social Democratic labour movement won recognition as a legitimate element of the democratic system."

[NecroCommie]

Well the "official" government was parliamentary, but in the thirties the military gained more and more control over the country. This ended up in a total government sanctioned military coup slightly before the war, which on the other hand led to mass executions and persecutions of all leftists, even social democrats within the official government. This type of military rule extended to the time between the wars (read continuation war and winter war) and slightly after the wars.

The militarys rise in power was orchestrated by Field marshal C.G. Mannerheim, who was the leader of the Finnish whites in the civil war, and hardcore capitalist. He asked the transfer of economical powers to the military in the early 1939, but due to the resistance of the government such powers were only granted during mid-autumn. Power transfer was readoned with the upcoming soviet attack which was a real "threath" indeed, but did not require the executions of countless innocent civilians, most of whom refused military service simply because of religious reasons. Nor was the right wing ready to give up their powers after the war, but continued to make alliances with the nazi germany and prepare for another, this time offensive war. This was ofcourse against the will of the masses, communist support having peaked during this time. Thus with the fascist alliances, the military percecuted all opposition without mercy, and late in the war even their own soldiers to "show an example to cowards" Jews and gypsys were given to the nazis, and all critisism of the military coup outlawed. This did not end until the peace terms with the soviet union legalized leftist activity, national dissent and freedom of speech. This all resulted in massive increase of communist partys support.

[Dave B]

Hi Necrocommie

Is there any chance of you providing some reference material for your interpretation. As it doesn’t seem to fit in very well with other sources of information.

We were talking about 1937-9 I thought.

I know Wikipedia sources can be a bit dodgy when it comes to political history however;


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapua_Movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapua_Movement)



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriotic_People%27s_Movement_(Finland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriotic_People%27s_Movement_(Finland))


Did the Fascists really take their political prisoners to Soviet Russia as a form of punishment ?

[LOLseph Stalin]

I voted degenerated worker's state.

[Dave B]

I vote with Lenin and the first People's Commissariat of Finance, educated at the Sorbonne in economics, Sokolnikov – State Capitalism

[Cumannach]

glad you've finally come round dave. See that wasn't so hard was it.

[Louise Michel]

The term Degenerate Workers State as I understand it describes a process. Does the state ever reach a point at which it ceases to degenerate? Or does it via a succession of purges of personel and increasing bureacratic control cease to be a workers state in any sense?

The Paris Commune was a model for a new form of state - one that was controled by the working masses. Previously all states had been controled by a minority class and used to supress the masses so the role of the social revolution is/was to destroy the old state form and replace it with a state of the new type.

It's hard to see how the Soviet state was a state of the new type. It was controled by a bureacratic elite and not by the workers. Sure the economy was centralised but the lack of workers democracy (that should replace the market) meant that the bureaucracy was working in the dark most of the time ie without either a market or information from the workers it was impossible to plan effectively. Thus production never approached the levels of western capitalism and the system imploded.

It wasn't capitalist - where was the market either in goods or labour? The term bureaucratic collectivist kind of describes it though I think it has a bad history.

[Janine Melnitz]

Thus production never approached the levels of western capitalism
Even bourgeois historians will admit this is wildly untrue. Why are you repeating this?

[Louise Michel]

Even bourgeois historians will admit this is wildly untrue. Why are you repeating this?


Okay, we're on the verge of another very big subject here which is why did the Soviet Union collapse? And along with that why did the regimes of eastern Europe collapse?

We can get into statistics if you like but the Soviet Union's failure to match the USA economically was a major factor (if not the major factor) in its collapse. Or do you disagree with this?

The term "production levels" is shorthand but however much was produced the Soviet Union was dogged from its industrial inception (1928 onwards roughly) by the problems of distribution, quality, pricing, a massive military budget (driven by a desire to match or overtake the west) and failures in agriculture.

I'm not repeating anything with some sinister motive and I'm not at all sure who these bourgeois historians are, but perhaps you could explain where you are coming from and why you took such exception to my observation.

[Janine Melnitz]

We can get into statistics if you like but the Soviet Union's failure to match the USA economically was a major factor (if not the major factor) in its collapse. Or do you disagree with this?
Of course I don't, that would be silly. But it's just as silly to say "production never approached the levels of western capitalism", or, for that matter, never exceeded them.


The term "production levels" is shorthand but however much was produced the Soviet Union was dogged from its industrial inception (1928 onwards roughly) by the problems of distribution, quality, pricing, a massive military budget (driven by a desire to match or overtake the west) and failures in agriculture.
Your "shorthand" is pretty misleading! I agree with everything you say here though.

[Louise Michel]

Your "shorthand" is pretty misleading! I agree with everything you say here though.

I really don't understand what your point is. Could you please explain.

[Cumannach]

The Soviet Union didn't 'collapse', it was sabotaged, then overthrown. The major factor in the 'collapse' of the Soviet Union was the undemocratic overthrow and dismemberment of it.

[Louise Michel]

The Soviet Union didn't 'collapse', it was sabotaged, then overthrown. The major factor in the 'collapse' of the Soviet Union was the undemocratic overthrow and dismemberment of it.

This is a very interesting discussion. I'm not sure how things work here exactly but do we need another thread or can I reply here (don't want to derail the existing discussion).

[rararoadrunner]

...Courtesy of the Marxist Internet archive.

1) Of the various analyses of the question by Lenin, here was the best I could find:



Role and Functions of the Trade Unions

Under The New Economic Policy

Decision Of The C.C., R.C.P.(B.), January 12, 1922[1] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/dec/30.htm#fw01)

1. The New Economic Policy And The Trade Unions
The New Economic Policy introduces a number of important changes in the position of the proletariat and, consequently, in that of the trade unions. The great bulk of the means of production in industry and the transport system remains in the hands of the proletarian state. This, together with the nationalisation of the land, shows that the New Economic Policy does not change the nature of the workers’ state, although it does substantially alter the methods and forms of socialist development for it permits of economic rivalry between socialism, which is now being built, and capitalism, which is trying to revive by supplying the needs of the vast masses of the peasantry through the medium of the market.
Changes in the forms of socialist development are necessary because the Communist Party and the Soviet government are now adopting special methods to implement the general policy of transition from capitalism to socialism and in many respects are operating differently from the way they operated before: they are capturing a number of positions by a "new flanking movement", so to speak; they are retreating in order to make better preparations for a new offensive against capitalism. In particular, a free market and capitalism, both subject to state control, are now being permitted and are developing; on the other hand, the socialised state enterprises are being put on what is called a profit basis, i. e., they are being reorganised on commercial lines, which, in view of the general cultural backwardness and exhaustion of the country, will, to a greater or lesser degree, inevitably give rise to the impression among the masses that there is an antagonism of interest between the management of the different enterprises and the workers employed in them.
2. State Capitalism In The Proletarian State And The Trade Unions
The proletarian state may, without changing its own nature, permit freedom to trade and the development of capitalism only within certain bounds, and only on the condition that the state regulates (supervises, controls, determines the forms and methods of, etc.) private trade and private capitalism. The success of such regulation will depend not only on the state authorities but also, and to a larger extent, on the degree of maturity of the proletariat and of the masses of the working people generally, on their cultural level, etc. But even if this regulation is completely successful, the antagonism of class interests between labour and capital will certainly remain. Consequently, one of the main tasks that will henceforth confront the trade unions is to protect in every way the class interests of the proletariat in its struggle against capital. This task should be openly put in the forefront, and the machinery of the trade unions must be reorganised, changed or supplemented accordingly (conflict commissions, strike funds, mutual aid funds, etc., should be formed, or rather, built up).
3. The State Enterprises That Are Being Put On A Profit Basis And The Trade Unions
The transfer of state enterprises to the so-called profit basis is inevitably and inseparably connected with the New Economic Policy; in the near future this is bound to become the predominant, if not the sole, form of state enterprise. In actual fact, this means that with the free market now permitted and developing the state enterprises will to a large extent be put on a commercial basis. In view of the urgent need to increase the productivity of labour and make every state enterprise pay its way and show a profit, and in view of the inevitable rise of narrow departmental interests and excessive departmental zeal, this circumstance is bound; to create a certain conflict of interests in matters concerning labour conditions between the masses of workers and the directors and managers of the state enterprises, or the government departments in charge of them. Therefore, as regards the socialised enterprises, it is undoubtedly the duty of the trade unions to protect the interests of the working people, to facilitate as far as possible the improvement of their standard of living, and constantly to correct the blunders and excesses of business organisations resulting from bureaucratic distortions of the state apparatus.
4. The Essential Difference Between The Class Struggle Of The Proletariat In A State Which Recognises Private Ownership Of The Land, Factories, Etc., And Where Political Power Is In The Hands Of The Capitalist Class, And The Economic Struggle Of The Proletariat In A State Which Does Not Recognise Private Ownership Of The Land And The Majority Of The Large Enterprises And Where Political. Power Is In The Hands Of The Proletariat
As long as classes exist, the class struggle is inevitable. In the period of transition from capitalism to socialism the existence of classes is inevitable; and the Programme of the Russian Communist Party definitely states that we are taking only the first steps in the transition from capitalism to socialism. Hence, the Communist Party, the Soviet government and the trade unions must frankly admit the existence of an economic struggle and its inevitability until the electrification of industry and agriculture is completed—at least in the main—and until small production and the supremacy of the market are thereby cut off at the roots.
On the other hand, it is obvious that under capitalism the ultimate object of the strike struggle is to break up the state machine and to overthrow the given class state power. Under the transitional type of proletarian state such as ours, however, the ultimate object of every action taken by the working class can only be to fortify the proletarian state and the state power of the proletarian class by combating the bureaucratic distortions, mistakes and flaws in this state, and by curbing the class appetites of the capitalists who try to evade its control, etc. Hence, the Communist Party, the Soviet government and the trade unions must never forget and must never conceal from the workers and the mass of the working people that the strike struggle in a state where the proletariat holds political power can be explained and justified only by the bureaucratic distortions of the proletarian state and by all sorts of survivals of the old capitalist system in the government offices on the one hand, and by the political immaturity and cultural backwardness of the mass of the working people on the other.
Hence, when friction and disputes arise between individual contingents of the working class and individual departments and organs of the workers’ state, the task of the trade unions is to facilitate the speediest and smoothest settlement of these disputes to the maximum advantage of the groups of workers they represent, taking care, however, not to prejudice the interests of other groups of workers and the development of the workers’ state and its economy as a whole; for only this development can lay the foundations for the material and cultural welfare of the working class. The only correct, sound and expedient method of removing friction and of settling disputes between individual contingents of the working class and the organs of the workers’ state is for the trade unions to act as mediators, and through their competent bodies either to enter into negotiations with the competent business organisations on the basis of precise demands and proposals formulated by both sides, or appeal to higher state bodies.
In cases where wrong actions of business organisations, the backwardness of certain sections of workers, the provocations of counter-revolutionary elements or, lastly, lack of foresight on the part of the trade union organisations themselves lead to open disputes in the form of strikes in state enterprises, and so forth, the task of the trade unions is to bring-about the speediest settlement of a dispute by taking measures in conformity with the general nature of trade union activities, that is, by taking steps to remove the real injustices and irregularities and to satisfy the lawful and practicable demands of the masses, by exercising political influence on the masses, and so forth.
One of the most important and infallible tests of the correctness and success of the activities of the trade unions is the degree to which they succeed in averting mass disputes in state enterprises by pursuing a far-sighted policy with a view to effectively protecting the interests of the masses of the workers in all respects and to removing in time all causes of dispute.
5. Reversion To Voluntary Trade Union Membership
The formal attitude of the trade unions to the automatic enrolment of all wage-workers as union members has introduced a certain degree of bureaucratic distortion in the trade unions and has caused the latter to lose touch with the broad mass of their membership. Hence, it is necessary most resolutely to implement voluntary enrolment both of individuals and of groups into trade unions. Under no circumstances must trade union members be required to subscribe to any specific political views; in this respect, as well as in respect of religion, the trade unions must be non-partisan. All that must be required of trade union members in the proletarian state is that they should understand comradely discipline and the necessity of uniting the workers’ forces for the purpose of protecting the interests of the working people and of assisting the working people’s government, i. e., the Soviet government. The proletarian state must encourage the workers to organise in trade unions both by juridical and material means; but the trade unions can have no rights without duties.
6. The Trade Unions And The Management Of Industry
Following its seizure of political power, the principal and fundamental interest of the proletariat lies in securing an enormous increase in the productive forces of society and in the output of manufactured goods. This task, which is clearly formulated in the Programme of the Russian Communist Party, is particularly urgent in our country today owing to post-war ruin, famine and dislocation. Hence, the speediest and most enduring success in restoring large-scale industry is a condition without which no success can be achieved in the general cause of emancipating labour from the yoke of capital and securing the victory of socialism. To achieve this success in Russia, in her present state, it is absolutely essential that all authority in the factories should be concentrated in the hands of the management. The factory management, usually built up on the principle of one-man responsibility, must have authority independently to fix and pay out wages, and also distribute rations, working clothes, and all other supplies on the basis and within the limits of collective agreements concluded with the trade unions; it must enjoy the utmost freedom to manoeuvre, exercise strict control of the actual successes achieved in increasing production, in making the factory pay its way and in increasing profits, and carefully select the most talented and capable administrative personnel, etc.
Under these circumstances, all direct interference by the trade unions in the management of factories must be regarded as positively harmful and impermissible.
It would be absolutely wrong, however, to interpret this indisputable axiom to mean that the trade unions must play no part in the socialist organisation of industry and in the management of state industry. Their participation in this is necessary in the following strictly defined forms.
7. The Role And Functions Of The Trade Unions In The Business And Administrative Organisations Of The Proletarian State
The proletariat is the class foundation of the state accomplishing the transition from capitalism to socialism. In a country where the small peasantry is overwhelmingly predominant the proletariat can successfully fulfil this function only if it very skilfully, cautiously and gradually establishes an alliance with the vast majority of the peasantry. The trade unions must collaborate closely and constantly with the government, all the political and economic activities of which are guided by the class-conscious vanguard of the working class—the Communist Party. Being a school of communism in general, the trade unions must, in particular, be a school for training the whole mass of workers, and eventually all working people, in the art of managing socialist industry (and gradually also agriculture).
Proceeding from these principles, the trade unions’ part in the activities of the business and administrative organisations of the proletarian state should, in the immediate period, take the following main forms:
1. The trade unions should help to staff all the state business and administrative bodies connected with economies: nominate their candidates for them, stating their length of service, experience, and so forth. Right of decision lies solely with the business organisations, which also bear full responsibility for the activities of the respective organisations. The business organisations, however, must give careful consideration to the views on all candidates expressed by the trade unions concerned.
2. One of the most important functions of the trade unions is to promote and train factory managers from among the workers and the masses of the working people generally. At the present time we have scores of such factory managers who are quite satisfactory, and hundreds who are more or less satisfactory, but very soon, however, we must have hundreds of the former and thousands of the latter. The trade unions must much more carefully and regularly than hitherto keep a systematic register of all workers and peasants capable of holding posts of this kind, and thoroughly, efficiently and from every aspect verify the progress they make in learning the art of management.
3. The trade unions must take a far greater part in the activities of all the planning bodies of the proletarian state, in drawing up economic plans and also programmes of production and expenditure of stocks of material supplies for the workers, in selecting the factories that are to continue to receive state supplies, to be leased, or to be given out as concessions, etc. The trade unions should undertake no direct functions of controlling production in private and leased enterprises, but participate in the regulation of private capitalist production exclusively by sharing in the activities of the competent state bodies. In addition to participating in all cultural and educational activities and in production propaganda, the trade unions must also, on an increasing scale, enlist the working class and the masses of the working people generally for all branches of the work of building up the state economy; they must make them familiar with all aspects of economic life and with all details of industrial operations—from the procurement of raw materials to the marketing of the product; give them a more and more concrete understanding of the single state plan of socialist economy and the worker’s and peasant’s practical interest in its implementation.
4. The drawing up of scales of wages and supplies, etc., is one of the essential functions of the trade unions in the building of socialism and in their participation in the management of industry. In particular, disciplinary courts should steadily improve labour discipline and proper ways of promoting it and achieving increased productivity; but they must not interfere with the functions of the People’s Courts in general or with the functions of factory managements.
This list of the major functions of the trade unions in the work of building up socialist economy should, of course, be drawn up in greater detail by the competent trade union and government bodies. Taking into account the experience of the enormous work accomplished by the unions in organising the economy and its management, and also the mistakes which have caused no little harm and which resulted from direct, unqualified, incompetent and irresponsible interference in administrative matters, it is most important, in order to restore the economy and strengthen the Soviet system, deliberately and resolutely to start persevering practical activities calculated to extend over a long period of years and designed to give the workers and all working people generally practical training in the art of managing the economy of the whole country.
8. Contact Wlth The Masses—The Fundamental Condition For All Trade Union Activity
Contact with the masses, i. e., with the overwhelming majority of the workers (and eventually of all the working people), is the most important and most fundamental condition for the success of all trade union activity. In all the trade union organisations and their machinery, from bottom up, there should be instituted, and tested in practice over a period of many years, a system of responsible comrades—who must not all be Communists—who should live right among the workers, study their lives in every detail, and be able unerringly, on any question, and at any time, to judge the mood, the real aspirations, needs and thoughts of the masses. They must be able without a shadow of false idealisation to define the degree of their class-consciousness and the extent to which they are influenced by various prejudices and survivals of the past; and they must be able to win the boundless confidence of the masses by comradeship and concern for their needs. One of the greatest and most serious dangers that confront the numerically small Communist Party which, as the vanguard of the working class, is guiding a vast country in the process of transition to socialism (for the time being without the direct support of the more advanced countries), is isolation from the masses, the danger that the vanguard may run too far ahead and fail to "straighten out the line", fail to maintain firm contact with the whole army of labour, i. e., with the overwhelming majority of workers and peasants. Just as the very best factory, with the very best motors and first-class machines, will be forced to remain idle if the transmission belts from the motors to the machines are damaged, so our work of socialist construction must meet with inevitable disaster if the trade unions—the transmission belts from the Communist Party to the masses—are badly fitted or function badly. It is not sufficient to explain, to reiterate and corroborate this truth; it must be backed up organisationally by the whole structure of the trade unions and by their everyday activities.
9. The Contradictions In The Status Of The Trade Unions Under The Dictatorship Of The Proletariat
From all the foregoing it is evident that there are a number of contradictions in the various functions of the trade unions. On the one hand, their principal method of operation is that of persuasion and education; on the other hand, as participants in the exercise of state power they cannot refuse to share in coercion. On the one hand, their main function is to protect the interests of the masses of the working people in the most direct and immediate sense of the term; on the other hand, as participants in the exercise of state power and builders of the economy as a whole they cannot refuse to resort to pressure. On the one hand, they must operate in military fashion, for the dictatorship of the proletariat is the fiercest, most dogged and most desperate class war; on the other hand, specifically military methods of operation are least of all applicable to the trade unions. On the one hand, they must be able to adapt themselves to the masses, to their level; on the other hand, they must never pander to the prejudices and backwardness of the masses, but steadily raise them to a higher and higher level, etc., etc. These contradictions are no accident, and they will persist for several decades; for as long as survivals of capitalism and small production remain, contradictions between them and the young shoots of socialism are inevitable throughout the social system.
Two practical conclusions must be drawn from this. First, for the successful conduct of trade union activities it is not enough to understand their functions correctly, it is not enough to organise them properly. In addition, special tact is required, ability to approach the masses in a special way in each individual case for the purpose of raising these masses to a higher cultural, economic and political stage with the minimum of friction.
Second, the afore-mentioned contradictions will inevitably give rise to disputes, disagreements, friction, etc. A higher body is required with sufficient authority to settle these at once. This higher body is the Communist Party and the international federation of the Communist Parties of all countries—the Communist International.
10. The Trade Unions And The Specialists
The main principles of this question are set forth in the Programme of the Russian Communist Party; but these will remain paper principles if constant attention is not paid to the facts which indicate the degree to which they are put into practice. Recent facts of this kind are: first, cases of the murder of engineers by workers in socialised mines not only in the Urals, but also in the Donets Basin; second the suicide of V. V. Oldenborger, Chief Engineer of the Moscow Waterworks, because of the intolerable working conditions due to the incompetent and impermissible conduct of the members of the Communist group, as well as of organs of the Soviet government, which prompted the All-Russia Central Executive Committee to turn the whole matter over to the judicial authorities.
The Communist Party and the Soviet government as a whole bear a far greater share of the blame for cases of this kind than the trade unions. But the present issue is not one of establishing the degree of political guilt, but of drawing certain political conclusions. Unless our leading bodies, i. e., the Communist Party, the Soviet government and the trade unions, guard as the apple of their eye every specialist who does his work conscientiously and knows and loves it—even though the ideas of communism are totally alien to him—it will be useless to expect any serious progress in socialist construction. We may not be able to achieve it soon, but we must at all costs achieve a situation in which specialists—as a separate social stratum, which will persist until we have reached the highest stage of development of communist society—can enjoy better conditions of life under socialism than they enjoyed under capitalism insofar as concerns their material and legal status, comradely collaboration with the workers and peasants, and in the mental plane, i. e., finding satisfaction in their work, realising that it is socially useful and independent of the sordid interests of the capitalist class. Nobody will regard a government department as being tolerably well organised if it does not take systematic measures to provide for all the needs of the specialists, to reward the best of them, to safeguard and protect their interests, etc., and does not secure practical results in this.
The trade unions must conduct all the activities of the type indicated (or systematically collaborate in the activities of all the government departments concerned) not from the point of view of the interests of the given department, but from the point of view of the interests of labour and of the economy as a whole. With regard to the specialists, on the trade unions devolves the very arduous duty of daily exercising influence on the broad masses of the working people in order to create proper relations between them and the specialists. Only such activities can produce really important practical results.
11. The Trade Unions And Petty-Bourgeois Influence On The Working Class
Trade unions are really effective only when they unite very broad strata of the non-Party workers. This must give rise—particularly in a country in which the peasantry greatly predominates—to relative stability, specifically among the trade unions, of those political influences that serve as the superstructure over the remnants of capitalism and over small production. These influences are petty-bourgeois, i. e., Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik (the Russian variety of the parties of the Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals) on the one hand, and anarchist on the other. Only among these trends has any considerable number of people remained who defend capitalism ideologically and not from selfish class motives, and continue to believe in the non-class nature of the "democracy", "equality", and "liberty " in general that they preach.
It is to this socio-economic cause and not to the role of individual groups, still less of individual persons, that we must attribute the survivals (sometimes even the revival) in our country of such petty-bourgeois ideas among the trade unions. The Communist Party, the Soviet bodies that conduct cultural and educational activities and all Communist members of trade unions must therefore devote far more attention to the ideological struggle against petty-bourgeois influences, trends and deviations among the trade unions, especially because the New Economic Policy is bound to lead to a certain strengthening of capitalism. It is urgently necessary to counteract this by intensifying the struggle against petty-bourgeois influences upon the working class.
Central Committee
Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Endnotes

[1] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/dec/30.htm#bk01) The role and tasks of the trade unions under the conditions created by the New Economic Policy were examined at a Plenary Meeting of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) on December 28, 1921. The draft of the decision on the trade unions adopted by the C.C., R.C.P.(B.) was written by Lenin.
The theses of January 12, 1922 were examined by the Political Bureau of the Central Committee which unanimously approved them and submitted them without amendments to the Eleventh Party Congress. They were unanimously passed at that Congress (see KPSS v rezolyutsiakh i resheniyakh syezdov, konferentsi i plenumov Ts.K. [C.P.S.U. in Resolutions and Decisions of Congresses, Conferences and C.C. Plenary Meetings ], Part 1, 1954, pp. 603-12)



2) Here, on the other hand, is Trotsky's analysis from Revolution Betrayed:



Leon Trotsky

The Revolution Betrayed

Chapter 9
Social Relations
in the Soviet Union



Not Yet Decided by History (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch09.htm#ch09-0)
State Capitalism (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch09.htm#ch09-1)
Is the Bureaucracy a Ruling Class? (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch09.htm#ch09-2)
The Question of the Character of the Soviet Union (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch09.htm#ch09-3)
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; (c) 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.


3) In sum: we see both Lenin and Trotsky had a profoundly dialectical approach to the reality of the USSR: indeed, Trotsky predicted the fall of the Soviet Union as an alternative to the Soviet workers overthrowing the various Soviet bureaucracies.

4) That having been said, however, there is another nexus for the application of dialectical thinking which, if properly applied, might help us to progress even further in our analysis: namely, between the categories corporation vs. government.

In a capitalist corporation, it is responsible to its shareholders; in a government, it is responsible to its political masters.

Our critique of "bourgeois democracy" begins, does it not, with our assertion that behind the democratic form of responsibility to its constituents hides the reality of capitalist control over access to the political process?

How could this be any different if the government controlled the means of production: indeed would not government control over the means of production, absent workers' control of the government, actually intensify class divisions?

Further: in a capitalist world-system, in which all economic enterprises, whether in "private" or "public" hands, were forced to compete under capitalist terms, wouldn't state enterprises not controlled by the producers of necessity function as capitalist enterprises?

4) Therefore, the only way out would be for workers to wrest effective control over economic entities from all external control: this would, of necessity, be a worldwide revolutionary process...in other words, Permanent Revolution in action.

5) In order for the workers to enforce their economic control in the revolutionary epoch, they would also have to be able to apply governmental power against capitalist encroachments on their power: hence the characterisation of this transition as "dictatorship of the proletariat."

6) If we look at the Soviet case, we find distinct forms of that control, each progressively weaker than the previous:

a) In the original Soviet of 1905, we find the first Soviets convening precisely to organise production in the wake of the General Strike of 1905: that is, direct, democratic economic decision making, right on the floor of the Soviet.

b) In the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution of November, 1917, we have the foundation of the All-Union Council (Soviet) of the Peoples' Economy (BCHX), in which a Soviet is set up with the specific ambit of economic planning: of course, by this time, the organic unity of functions of the Soviets was already beginning to weaken.

c) In the aftermath of the end of the New Economic Policy, coniciding roughly with the onset of the Great Depression of 1929, we have the founding of Gosplan:a thoroughly top-down instrument of the tyranny that was being founded to suppress the Soviets.

Could this degeneration have been avoided? Although differences in, say, the leadership of Stalin vs. Trotsky might have indeed made a difference, ultimately, the question lay in the hands of the working class outside of the Soviet Union: the failure of the USSR to grow beyond the borders of the Russian Empire was a problem for which any Soviet leadership would have been hard-pressed to find socialist solutions.

Back to you, comrades!

[Dave B]

V. I. Lenin

SESSION OF THE ALL-RUSSIA C.E.C.

APRIL 29, 1918


From V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th English Edition,
Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965
Vol. 27, pp. 279-313.




What is state capitalism under Soviet power? To achieve state capitalism at the present time means putting into effect the accounting and control that the capitalist classes carried out. We see a sample of state capitalism in Germany. We know that Germany has proved superior to us.

But if you reflect even slightly on what it would mean if the foundations of such state capitalism were established in Russia, Soviet Russia, everyone who is not out of his senses and has not stuffed his head with fragments of book learning, would have to say that state capitalism would be our salvation.

I said that state capitalism would be our salvation; if we had it in Russia, the transition to full socialism would he easy, would be within our grasp, because state capitalism is something centralised, calculated, controlled and socialised, and that is exactly what we lack:

[robbo203]

Dave

There is a good article on Soviet State capitalism here http://www.wspus.org/in-depth/russia-lenin-and-state-capitalism/ Presumably you have come across it before

Cheers

[Dave B]

Hi Robbo

No, in fact I hadn’t really,

When I found the quote that I gave whilst trawling through Lenin’s stuff some time ago, I did a google search on it, and to my surprises I landed on the stuff produced by my brothers across the water on the link you gave.

Miffed

[China studen]

Khrushchev came to power are revisionist.

[NecroCommie]

Hi Necrocommie

Is there any chance of you providing some reference material for your interpretation. As it doesn’t seem to fit in very well with other sources of information.

We were talking about 1937-9 I thought.

I know Wikipedia sources can be a bit dodgy when it comes to political history however;


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapua_Movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapua_Movement)



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriotic_People%27s_Movement_(Finland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriotic_People%27s_Movement_%28Finland))


Did the Fascists really take their political prisoners to Soviet Russia as a form of punishment ?


Unfortunately most referance is in finnish, but I will try to find some in english once I get home (i'm at work now) I grant you the fact that parliamentarism did prevail during the first pre-war years, but the military powers were superior to the governments already months before any signs of war were obvious.

Wikipedia offers the government approved version tought in schools, and all finnish leftists (not communists and anarchists alone) share more or less similar interpritations with me.

And yes, secret abductions and exiles were an underground way of punishing leftists for being "non-patriotic". Fascists ofcourse counted even social-democrats as communists, and sometimes even murders were commited. These means of "politics" were officially condemned by all parties, but many right-wingers (sometimes even the "moderate" ones) still think this was the right way to go.

[robbo203]

We all know that Lenin advocated state capitalism and saw it as a step forward for Russia. Never mind the contrived distinction that some Leninists attempt to make between their kind of state capitalism and the state capitalism of the the bourgeoise as they like to call (actually Lenin favoured the example of German state capitalism under Bismarck - yeah very "proletarian" that was)

We also know that Lenin distorted Marx by describing socialism as the lower phase of communism when Marx made no such distinction, and then gradually assimilated the word "socialism" to his version of state capitalism.

What interests me is the claim that is sometimes made by Leninists that in "socialism" (AKA state capitalism) you still have the bourgeoisie who have been overthrown but threaten to come back to power. However, reading through some of Lenin´s stuff I came across this

"The bourgeoisie in our country has been vanquished, but it has not yet been uprooted, not yet destroyed, and not even utterly broken. That is why a new and higher form of struggle against the bourgeosie is on the order of the day, the transition from the simple task of further expropriating the capitalists to the much more complicated and difficult task of creating conditions in which it will be be impossible for the bourgeosie to exist , or to arise anew. Clearly this task is immeasureably higher in importance, and unless it is fulfilled there is still no socialism"

V I Lenin The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government (March-April 1918)

So here Lenin is admitting in 1918 (he opportunistically altered his definition of "socialism" later ) that there is no socialism while the bourgeosie continue to exist. Will all those leninists finally also admit this and agree that even on their own terms there was no way in which you could reasanably describe the Soviet Union as socialist. It was state capitalist and state capitalism is a form of capitalism QED

[Das war einmal]

The government of the USSR did a great effort in abolishing the bourgeois classes. But not only out of its own interest. The collectivization of the farms was a spontaneous action by the farmers against the land owners. The communist party sent over 20.000 educated workers to see that these collectivization went right. Mostly all farmers were undereducated and therefor easily influenced by the former kulaks who had the knowledge of organizing and farming in general.

Despite what all left anti-ml claim, the party did everything they could to fight bureaucratization, supported and guided the pro-collectivization tendency at the farmers and put a great effort in spreading democracy all across the USSR for a long time. This is required for a healthy workers state.

[The Author]

We also know that Lenin distorted Marx by describing socialism as the lower phase of communism when Marx made no such distinction, and then gradually assimilated the word "socialism" to his version of state capitalism.

What interests me is the claim that is sometimes made by Leninists that in "socialism" (AKA state capitalism) you still have the bourgeoisie who have been overthrown but threaten to come back to power.

"...defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" -- Karl Marx.

[tehpevis]

The Soviet Union didn't 'collapse', it was sabotaged, then overthrown. The major factor in the 'collapse' of the Soviet Union was the undemocratic overthrow and dismemberment of it.

Micht I add that the CCCP's leaders, after the fall, would become very, very Rich-at least, rich-er than they were leading the Soviet Union.



It wasn't capitalist - where was the market either in goods or labour? The term bureaucratic collectivist kind of describes it though I think it has a bad history.
I voted State Capitalist because the Soviet Union was structured like a corporation, with a Bourgeois CEO/Company Owner at the top, then Executives, then on down, eventually to it's Workers/Employees. The Soviet Union was structured in exactly the same way, with the Leaders, Supreme Soviet, Party Members, Bureaucracy, etc. etc. on down to the average Proletariat. Hence: State Capitalist.

[Joffe]

The term 'State Capitalism' as used by all of you revisionists has no real meaning, other than being an anti-communist slander. This has been demonstrated in several threads. Your only response is in making up facts about secret and not-secret Soviet billionaires and spouting vitriolic and always unsubstantiated nonsense about the horrors of 'totalitarianism', another favourite bourgeois catchword.



Lenin:


"No one, I think, in studying the question of the economic system of Russia, has denied its transitional character. Nor, I think, has any Communist denied that the term Socialist Soviet Republic implies the determination of Soviet power to achieve the transition to socialism, and not that the new economic system is recognised as a socialist order.

But what does the word “transition” mean? Does it not mean, as applied to an economy, that the present system contains elements, particles, fragments of both capitalism and socialism? Everyone will admit that it does. But not all who admit this take the trouble to consider what elements actually constitute the various socio-economic structures that exist in Russia at the present time. And this is the crux of the question.

Let us enumerate these elements:

1) patriarchal, i.e., to a considerable extent natural, peasant farming;

2) small commodity production (this includes the majority of those peasants who sell their grain);

3) private capitalism;

4) state capitalism;

5) socialism.

Russia is so vast and so varied that all these different types of socio-economic structures are intermingled. This is what constitutes the specific features of the situation.

The question arises: what elements predominate? Clearly in a small-peasant country, the petty-bourgeois element predominates and it must predominate, for the great majority of those working the land are small commodity producers. The shell of our state capitalism (grain monopoly, state controlled entrepreneurs and traders, bourgeois co-operators) is pierced now in one place, now in another by profiteers, the chief object of profiteering being grain.

It is in this field that the main struggle is being waged. Between what elements is this struggle being waged if we are to speak in terms of economic categories such as “state capitalism"? Between the fourth and the fifth in the order in which I have just enumerated them. Of course not. It is not state capitalism that is at war with socialism, but the petty bourgeoisie plus private capitalism fighting together against both state capitalism and socialism. The petty bourgeoisie oppose every kind of state interference, accounting and control, whether it be state capitalist or state socialist. This is an absolutely unquestionable fact of reality, and the root of the economic mistake of the “Left Communists” is that they have failed to understand it. The profiteer, the commercial racketeer, the disrupter of monopoly—these are our principal “internal” enemies, the enemies of the economic measures of Soviet power. A hundred and twenty-five years ago it might have been excusable for the French petty bourgeoisie, the most ardent and sincere revolutionaries, to try to crush the profiteer by executing a few of the “chosen” and by making thunderous declamations. Today, however, the purely rhetorical attitude to this question assumed by some Left Socialist-Revolutionaries can rouse nothing but disgust and revulsion in every politically conscious revolutionary. We know perfectly well that the economic basis of profiteering is both the small proprietors, who are exceptionally widespread in Russia, and private capitalism, of which every petty bourgeois is an agent. We know that the million tentacles of this petty-bourgeois hydra now and again encircle various sections of the workers, that, instead of state monopoly, profiteering forces its way into every pore of our social and economic organism.

Those who fail to see this show by their blindness that they are slaves of petty-bourgeois prejudices. This is precisely the case with our “Left Communists”, who in words (and of course in their deepest convictions) are merciless enemies of the petty bourgeoisie, while in deeds they help only the petty bourgeoisie, serve only this section of the population and express only its point of view by fighting—in April 1918!!—against . . . “state capitalism”. They are wide of the mark!" (Left-wing childishness, 1918)

[tehpevis]

It's not so much the Petit-Bourgeois we should be worried about so much as the Actual-Bourgeois.

[rararoadrunner]

Thank you for this posting: it clearly evinces that, in contradistinction to the other leading socialists and communists of his day, Karl Marx (and with him, Friedrich Engels) had a notion of communism developing itself out of capitalism.

Let's begin with the quotes you cited, from Critique of the Gotha Programme:


"...defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" -- Karl Marx.

This was pretty much the extent of what was available, in Marx' published works, during Lenin's time: nevertheless, it clearly evinced that Marx held that, even after a seemingly revolutionary break with capitalism, communism would have no choice but to evolve away from its capitalist forbear via a protracted developmental process: hence Lenin's characterisation of the initial situation as socialism, the aim of which was communism (here also Lenin was taking a middle position between Marx, who preferred the term communism to the already fraught term socialism, and Engels, whose saw continued use of the term socialism as a way to build a bridge to the balance of the workers' movement).

What we now know, thanks to the discovery and publication of Marx's notes, is that, from the get-go, Marx was already head-and-shoulders ahead of his contemporaries, with their idees fixes of what socialism, communism, etc. should be: from the time he first embraced communism, in Paris of 1844, Marx saw that the road ahead would be a bumpy one.

From The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844:



The transcendence of self-estrangement follows the same course as self-estrangement. Private property is first considered only in its objective aspect – but nevertheless with labour as its essence. Its form of existence is therefore capital, which is to be annulled “as such” (Proudhon). Or a particular form of labour – labour levelled down, fragmented, and therefore unfree – is conceived as the source of private property’s perniciousness and of its existence in estrangement from men. For instance, Fourier, who, like the Physiocrats, also conceives agricultural labour to be at least the exemplary type, whereas Saint-Simon declares in contrast that industrial labour as such is the essence, and accordingly aspires to the exclusive rule of the industrialists and the improvement of the workers’ condition. Finally, communism is the positive expression of annulled private property – at first as universal private property.

By embracing this relation as a whole, communism is:

(1) In its first form only a generalisation and consummation of it [of this relation]. As such it appears in a two-fold form: on the one hand, the dominion of material property bulks so large that it wants to destroy everything which is not capable of being possessed by all as private property. It wants to disregard talent, etc., in an arbitrary manner. For it the sole purpose of life and existence is direct, physical possession. The category of the worker is not done away with, but extended to all men. The relationship of private property persists as the relationship of the community to the world of things...

...
General envy constituting itself as a power is the disguise in which greed re-establishes itself and satisfies itself, only in another way. The thought of every piece of private property as such is at least turned against wealthier private property in the form of envy and the urge to reduce things to a common level, so that this envy and urge even constitute the essence of competition. Crude communism is only the culmination of this envy and of this levelling-down proceeding from the preconceived minimum. It has a definite, limited standard.

How little this annulment of private property is really an appropriation is in fact proved by the abstract negation of the entire world of culture and civilisation, the regression to the unnatural simplicity of the poor and crude man who has few needs and who has not only failed to go beyond private property, but has not yet even reached it.

The community is only a community of labour, and equality of wages paid out by communal capital – by the community as the universal capitalist. Both sides of the relationship are raised to an imagined universality – labour as the category in which every person is placed, and capital as the acknowledged universality and power of the community...

...The first positive annulment of private property – crude communism – is thus merely a manifestation of the vileness of private property, which wants to set itself up as the positive community system.



(2) Communism (a) still political in nature – democratic or despotic; (b) with the abolition of the state, yet still incomplete, and being still affected by private property, i.e., by the estrangement of man. In both forms communism already is aware of being reintegration or return of man to himself, the transcendence of human self-estrangement; but since it has not yet grasped the positive essence of private property, and just as little the human nature of need, it remains captive to it and infected by it. It has, indeed, grasped its concept, but not its essence.

(3) Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man; communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being – a return accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development. This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.

So, from Marx onward, students of scientific socialism have maintained that the revolutionary break from capitalism only begins, rather than ends, the process of the communist development: if, as such, the process of communist development is endangered by survivals of capitalism even after the seemingly complete revolutionary break with capitalism, how can it be less vulmerable during the revolutionary process itself?

OK, as Lenin enumerated, we have, during the revolutioary process, privately-owned capitalism, state capitalism, and socialism competing against one-another: if we accept this taxonomy, however, we see clearly that state-capitalism is neither merely "capitalism regulated by a socialist government," nor socialism: this leaves state-sponsored capitalism as the only entity which isn't assimilated to the entities before (private-property capitalism) and after it (socialism).

As long as this state-capitalism is held accountable to the working class as a whole, they're in a position to thwart any moves by it to act against their class-interests...

...However, what if the working class loses control of this state-capitalism to this or that party, faction, etc.?

Uh-oh! Now we have the power of the state married to the unaccountability of capitalist enterprise to anyone other than its shareholders: even though Mussoulini may not have actually opined that this was the essence of the political economy of fascism (the provenence of the infamous quote is in dispute), nevertheless this marriage has been widely accepted, including among students of scientific socialism, as constituting the kernel of fascist political economy: state power married to corporate unaccountability.

This is the essence of my assertion that Stalin completed the process of transition, not to socialism, but to fascism in the USSR: his Soviet Union married State power to corporate unaccountability, and was hence an antithesis to socialism, rather than its realisation.

Having thus laid the groundwork for this argument, let me now take it to the discussion of Stalin's fascism now ongoing, see if it helps clear up things on that thread...

[Il Medico]

Sate capitalism after Stalin got his hands on it!

[Velkas]

State capitalism.

[Nwoye]

State capitalism.
this

[Agrippa]

I voted "state-capitalist", reluctantly.

I say reluctantly because I have seen many refer to Leninism or Stalinism as "state-capitalism" to differentiate it from, say, fascism or liberal democracy. Which is asinine. All forms of capitalism are "state-capitalist".