State Capitalism vs. Orthodox Trotskyist
- Thread starter Udo Erasmus
- Start date
Fruitloop said:
But if you then go off into a long wibbling rant about Trotsky's theory of the degenerated worker's state, Bruno Rizzi's stuff about 'beaureaucratic collectivism' and then launch into an ernest defence of Tony Cliff, most people's eyes are going to start glazing over...
Roadkill said:
In a very real practical sense these differences (and more significant ones too) have been set aside in terms of day to day activity. What divides the small left parties is sectarianism first and foremost. The SWP happily work with people who had even greater illussions in the old Soviet Union than orthodox Trots had. It is not a shiboleth! However, unltimately the question of reform or revolution, of the emancipation of the workers being the act of the workers themselves will be of central importance in the struggles ahead.
Groucho said:
Have they fuck. Sorry if that's harsh, but the fate of the old Socialist Alliance should be enough to blow that point out of the water.
I'm ex-SWP, and I studied Trotsky and his followers a fair bit some years ago. In fact, back at my dad's hjouse the other weekend I stumbled across my old BA dissertation on the subject: it was dire. When I started on u75, I'd have been arguing the same line as you do. These days I just cannot be arsed. The Trot left are a complete irrelevance.
Roadkill said:
I don't believe that the failure of the SP to work with the SWP in the SA is down to disagreements over the nature of the former Soviet block. Of course within the PCS, and in other arenas such as Solidarity in Scotland, SP (CWI) and SWP members work uneasily together.
The SWP does work with people to the right of us, including with those who had illussions in the old Soviet Union - e.g. Galloway is an old Tanky...
Fruitloop said:
I'll say one thing for the old boy. He was a superb speaker.
But the point is, the reason those different parties exist in the first place is doctrinal splits over the nature of the USSR. Of course there are other disagreements, but the Trot movement effectively grew up defining itself in opposition to the USSR and they haven't moved on since. Looking back, SWP events, although they felt ernest and inspiring at the time, were laughable.
I don't regret having been in the SWP and I met some great people through it and read a lot of stuff I otherwise wouldn't. But I'm not about to go pretending I still think they're ever going to achieve much.
Groucho said:..and that's where we disagree.
Indeed.
The swappies can be useful, in terms of mobilising large numbers of people around a cause, but beyond that they're nothing.
In any case, since they went allying themselves with a bunch of religious fundies they've slipped completely beyond the pale as far as I'm concerned.
Donna Ferentes
jubliado
Mmmm, but they seem to me to do a lot more constructive work than most of their critics.
Actually this is absolutely relevent today. The expansion of capitalism with the overthrow of the degenerate workers states "centrally planned economies", whatever you want to call them, was the pre-condition for globalisation and enabled capitalism to gain a new least of life compared with the crisis years of the 1970s/80s. The state capitalist theory (in fact not much of a theory if you go into it in detail) by asserting that these states were already capitalist before 1990, is incapable of explaining globalisation. If anyone can be bothered they can check this out in Rees book about imperialism, that he recently published.
fanciful said:
Can you give us a quick summary of why he thinks that? I can't see it, myself. Except I guess that the planned economies didn't really take part in global capitalist trade on a large scale, but then I think most advocates of the state-capitalist theory acknowledge this already.
Essentially if you regard the non-capitalist planned economies of the Stalinist states as capitalist before 1990 you do not measure the addition of the output of these states as an addition to the world market when capitalism was restored.
If you regard these non- capitalist states as capitalist before 1990, the collapse in the centrally planned economies, in fact the creation of capitalism, production for profit, is measured as a decline in capitalist output. The figures describe the opposite of the real process.
A huge expansion in the world capitalist economy is measured as reduction in it.
It is difficult to say how much this addition was worth but reasonable estimates are by around 15-30%.
Because of this really elementary confusion, Rees asserts that the world economy today is in a deeper crisis now than it was during the 1970s/80s, in fact in his book he says the evidence for this stagnation is "irrefutable".
In fact the only thing that's "irrefutable" is Rees idea of what capitalism is and that he confuses addition with subtraction.
His theory leads him to assert that when the world market expands into economies including a third of the world's population in fact it has shrunk.
This mistake is absolutely common across the left and explains why they have basically given up on Marxist economics. Rob Hoveman for example in a recent review of Glynn's book "Capitalism Unleashed" says that the world economy is now "too complicated" to understand.
In fact the problem isn't with the world it's with Rees and Hoveman.
Clearly if the world economy is stagnant (according to the figures) its impossible to explain why its growing so much! A better approach I think is to recognise that the figures are wrong because they fail to differentiate between the output of the non-capitalist planned economies (call them what you will its irrelevent for these purposes - although personally I find Trotsky's description fine) and the capitalist economies before 1990.
All of which shows how these crap theories come back to bite their proponents bums just at the moment they're convinced they are "irrelevent."
As for the rest of Rees' book its no better.
If you regard these non- capitalist states as capitalist before 1990, the collapse in the centrally planned economies, in fact the creation of capitalism, production for profit, is measured as a decline in capitalist output. The figures describe the opposite of the real process.
A huge expansion in the world capitalist economy is measured as reduction in it.
It is difficult to say how much this addition was worth but reasonable estimates are by around 15-30%.
Because of this really elementary confusion, Rees asserts that the world economy today is in a deeper crisis now than it was during the 1970s/80s, in fact in his book he says the evidence for this stagnation is "irrefutable".
In fact the only thing that's "irrefutable" is Rees idea of what capitalism is and that he confuses addition with subtraction.
His theory leads him to assert that when the world market expands into economies including a third of the world's population in fact it has shrunk.
This mistake is absolutely common across the left and explains why they have basically given up on Marxist economics. Rob Hoveman for example in a recent review of Glynn's book "Capitalism Unleashed" says that the world economy is now "too complicated" to understand.
In fact the problem isn't with the world it's with Rees and Hoveman.
Clearly if the world economy is stagnant (according to the figures) its impossible to explain why its growing so much! A better approach I think is to recognise that the figures are wrong because they fail to differentiate between the output of the non-capitalist planned economies (call them what you will its irrelevent for these purposes - although personally I find Trotsky's description fine) and the capitalist economies before 1990.
All of which shows how these crap theories come back to bite their proponents bums just at the moment they're convinced they are "irrelevent."
As for the rest of Rees' book its no better.
danny la rouge
Ninja swords for all disabled people
Funniest post of the year!Udo Erasmus said:
The working class exploited by capital increased by around a third with the restoration of capitalism in the Stalinist states.
This had several effects
It enabled profitability to be restored across the world economy, profits are at their highest levels since the late 1960s
It enabled the application of previously unprofitable inventions which enabled a revolutionising of production massively increasing productivity and so reducing the cost of reproduction of labour power - this meant living standards could rise - alongside increasing income inequality and profits
It meant that crises became much shallower, booms longer and more sustained
It meant when combined with the ideological defeats of the working class in the 1970s/80s that the working class movement worldwide has not recovered to its levels of that crisis period, but remains generally in retreat
It explains the marginalisation and isolation of the left.
And that's why the theory of state capitalism is relevent today.
This had several effects
It enabled profitability to be restored across the world economy, profits are at their highest levels since the late 1960s
It enabled the application of previously unprofitable inventions which enabled a revolutionising of production massively increasing productivity and so reducing the cost of reproduction of labour power - this meant living standards could rise - alongside increasing income inequality and profits
It meant that crises became much shallower, booms longer and more sustained
It meant when combined with the ideological defeats of the working class in the 1970s/80s that the working class movement worldwide has not recovered to its levels of that crisis period, but remains generally in retreat
It explains the marginalisation and isolation of the left.
And that's why the theory of state capitalism is relevent today.
rhys gethin
New Member
zion said:
I didn't say it WAS a capitalist firm - but, not being cut off from the world market - it had to sell and buy within it, exploit the working class to 'modernise' so that it could do so and quite quickly develop a boss-class to run everything, since democracy, in that post-revolutionary world, would have meant a disappearance of Party control. I said it was in effect a large capitalist firm. Quite clearly though, as others have pointed out, the (unchanged) ruling class was, by not-long-since adopting full-scale capitalism (in a gangster/stalinist form) able very greatly to increase the rate of exploitation, with the consequences mentioned. We have, clearly, in an economically advanced world, been wrecked back into one that is politically archaic, and it is, however 'modern' an ancient pain in the arse.
Actually no it didn't have to buy and sell within it. Resources were distributed according to a bureaucratic central plan. Only a very small proportion of output were produced as commodities, i.e. things produced for sale and therefore it is very misleading to say the least to describe it as capitalist. And indeed both the World Bank and IMF didn't think it was and given that they're capitalists surely they should know?
Idris2002
Stay Alive in '25
In the late 1970s there was a famous sting operation where the USSR, facing a bad harvest from the kolkhoz, bought up a lot of western wheat using front companies in New York.
The cloak and dagger nature of this operation is not equivalent, IMO to the normal actions of firms and individuals in a normal capitalist market. More evidence that the USSR was not a form of capitalism, 'state' or otherwise.
The fact that this was inspired by the inherent defects in Soviet agriculture, defects which were *not* shared by capitalist agriculture, also indicates that the USSR was not a form of capitalism, 'state' or otherwise.
The cloak and dagger nature of this operation is not equivalent, IMO to the normal actions of firms and individuals in a normal capitalist market. More evidence that the USSR was not a form of capitalism, 'state' or otherwise.
The fact that this was inspired by the inherent defects in Soviet agriculture, defects which were *not* shared by capitalist agriculture, also indicates that the USSR was not a form of capitalism, 'state' or otherwise.
Donna Ferentes
jubliado
Marx writes in, I think, Wages Price and Profit, that overproduction is far more common in capitalism than underproduction. The opposite was (and is) true of the command economies.
Obviously the advocates of the state capitalist theory know and understand this and have answers to it, which is why the debate then tends to disappear into a theoretical fog which I am ill-equipped to enter...
Obviously the advocates of the state capitalist theory know and understand this and have answers to it, which is why the debate then tends to disappear into a theoretical fog which I am ill-equipped to enter...
Idris2002
Stay Alive in '25
Fruitloop said:
It's always Friday afternoon in my world, baby.
1. The forced collectivisation of agriculture in the USSR was intended to, and achieved, an abolition of peasant agriculture based on production of commodities for sale in the market.
2. The nature of the change - it's imposition on the peasantry by force - doomed collectivised agriculture in the USSR from the very beginning. Peasants resisted in the only way open to them, by underproducing. This compounded the structural inefficiencies that existed in the wider command economy, leading to a Soviet agriculture system that was peculiarly inefficient - more so than even the most inefficient western system.
3. Capitalist firms may indeed engage in cloak and dagger, industrial espionage etc. The Great Soviet Grain Sting of the late 70s is different, and significant for what it says about the nature of relations between east and west. There may have been trade between the two camps, but that trade was always in the context of political, not economic, rivalry, competition and conflict between the camps. This is something different from market relations between firms.
1. The collectivisation of agriculture was the abolition of the market, not its creation. Stalin had allowed the growth of NEP men, Kulaks and richer peasants through the 1920s, the growth of this class of rural capitalists threatened his continued rule by 1930, so he abolished them as a class. After that the state set targets for agricultural production, which was then removed and distributed to the cities, but in its overwhelming bulk was not sold as commodities.
2. The Soviet system of agriculture may have been inefficient, more proof it wasn't capitalist.
3. There was as tiny quantity of trade between the USSR/Eastern block and the capitalists, so that for example, although the economies of these transition economies declined in size by about half during the 1990s, the proportion of trade from them doubled, in other words the proportion of trade to output quadrupled, as they made the transition from central planning to economies based on commodity production, i.e. things produced for sale.
Where there was trade i.e. in some consumer goods, then the capital did not circulate, it did not determine production decisions but was used as income by the state.
Contrasting China a centrally planned economy with that of China as a capitalist one, then we find that in 1978 no means of production, which account for the bulk of output in a capitalist economy where sold at market prices and only 3% of consumer goods were. By 2003 in contrast 87% of producer goods were and 96% of consumer goods were. (Source www.oecd.org/eco)
2. The Soviet system of agriculture may have been inefficient, more proof it wasn't capitalist.
3. There was as tiny quantity of trade between the USSR/Eastern block and the capitalists, so that for example, although the economies of these transition economies declined in size by about half during the 1990s, the proportion of trade from them doubled, in other words the proportion of trade to output quadrupled, as they made the transition from central planning to economies based on commodity production, i.e. things produced for sale.
Where there was trade i.e. in some consumer goods, then the capital did not circulate, it did not determine production decisions but was used as income by the state.
Contrasting China a centrally planned economy with that of China as a capitalist one, then we find that in 1978 no means of production, which account for the bulk of output in a capitalist economy where sold at market prices and only 3% of consumer goods were. By 2003 in contrast 87% of producer goods were and 96% of consumer goods were. (Source www.oecd.org/eco)
Donna Ferentes
jubliado
You know the episode of Citizen Smith in which Wolfie spray-paints a wall, ending with the phrase THINK AHEAD - and runs out of space to finish it?
rhys gethin
New Member
Nigel said:That's because its Bollox
What is?
Nigel
For A Degenerates' Workers State
Shit Wind & Piss
Tony Cliff's State Capitalism In Russia
There was no chance of internal democracy in Russia after the Tenth Party Conference(1921); with the abolition of factions in the Communist Party, and the outlawing of political parties outside of the CPSU.
Internally this meant that elements like the Kronstadt sailors asking for measures put forward by the NEP were cotrolled by a centralised beaurocracy and could not be controlled by a workers movement. This with the liquidation of Workers Opposition(good pamphlet put out by Solidarity by A. Kollantai) meant a gradual growth of petty bourgeious tendencies within Russian society, of which Stalin using his 'butchers mallet rather than surgeions scalpel' brutally crushed the peasntry and created chaos through his fucked up programme of collectivisation(the way he did it not colllectivisation itself),along with his corrupted and lumpen analysis of 'scientific socialism' e.g. Lysencho's false acceptence of Lamarckian Eugenics in Agriculture(see D.Dennet possibly(not sure) Darwins Dangerous Idea for references on this.
After his hand was forced by rich peasantry culling all the livestock.
However warped,degenerated & deformed the USSR was Authoritarian & Beaurocratic it still had the basic skeleton of a planned economy. However much the people specifically the working class were repressed beyond any resemblence of democracy and freedom of expression: There was still the framework of workers control and a socialist constitution within the USSR, and with this genuine class consciousness: an example of this which changed my perspective years ago in a deformed workers state was that of the Tuzla Miners in the Yugoslavia. Howevermuch the Beaurocracy had fucked them over they still had a genuine spirit of class consciousness.
The USSR has almost no resemblence of what I would consider a Socialist Society by the time of its eventual downfall but kept within its framework the essence of a workers' state. It was never capitalist by a Marxist definition.However beaurocratised and deformed it was more proggressive than what has replaced it.
I'd be interested from prople on this notice board on their opinions on the influence of Kruschaev in my opinion he progressive in not being so much of a butcher or authritarian as Uncle Joe but his revisions on how a socialist planned economy is run were regressive!
rhys gethin said:
Tony Cliff's State Capitalism In Russia
There was no chance of internal democracy in Russia after the Tenth Party Conference(1921); with the abolition of factions in the Communist Party, and the outlawing of political parties outside of the CPSU.
Internally this meant that elements like the Kronstadt sailors asking for measures put forward by the NEP were cotrolled by a centralised beaurocracy and could not be controlled by a workers movement. This with the liquidation of Workers Opposition(good pamphlet put out by Solidarity by A. Kollantai) meant a gradual growth of petty bourgeious tendencies within Russian society, of which Stalin using his 'butchers mallet rather than surgeions scalpel' brutally crushed the peasntry and created chaos through his fucked up programme of collectivisation(the way he did it not colllectivisation itself),along with his corrupted and lumpen analysis of 'scientific socialism' e.g. Lysencho's false acceptence of Lamarckian Eugenics in Agriculture(see D.Dennet possibly(not sure) Darwins Dangerous Idea for references on this.
After his hand was forced by rich peasantry culling all the livestock.
However warped,degenerated & deformed the USSR was Authoritarian & Beaurocratic it still had the basic skeleton of a planned economy. However much the people specifically the working class were repressed beyond any resemblence of democracy and freedom of expression: There was still the framework of workers control and a socialist constitution within the USSR, and with this genuine class consciousness: an example of this which changed my perspective years ago in a deformed workers state was that of the Tuzla Miners in the Yugoslavia. Howevermuch the Beaurocracy had fucked them over they still had a genuine spirit of class consciousness.
The USSR has almost no resemblence of what I would consider a Socialist Society by the time of its eventual downfall but kept within its framework the essence of a workers' state. It was never capitalist by a Marxist definition.However beaurocratised and deformed it was more proggressive than what has replaced it.
I'd be interested from prople on this notice board on their opinions on the influence of Kruschaev in my opinion he progressive in not being so much of a butcher or authritarian as Uncle Joe but his revisions on how a socialist planned economy is run were regressive!
rhys gethin
New Member
Nigel - If a planned economy were the definition of a workers' state, then ancient Egypt was one, surely? If the working class doesn't control a state, it isn't socialist, surely? If it isn't socialist, what are we to call it? The USSR certainly wasn't feudal, was it? So, ok, it was not classically capitalist - but nor was nazi Germany, and that was no deformed workers' state. State Capitalism seems as near as any other term I've heard of to describe the USSR for most of its existence.
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