SWP march for poland.
- Thread starter herman
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poster342002
PROPER leftwing socialist
In order to defend the revolution, it was necessary to destroy it, in other words.Groucho said:
poster342002 said:
I might use that against those who would make a virtue out of necessity. But you only have to look at the rabid bloodlust of the Whites and their thirst for revenge and virulant anti-semitism to grasp the desperate and fragile nature of a revolution under siege. But those who base their concept of a workers state on the more drastic measures resorted to rather than the highpoint of workers democracy do neither themselves, nor the revolutionary tradition any favours.
neprimerimye
Well-Known Member
cockneyrebel said:
Replying to those parts of cockers post directed towards myself only.
1/ Accumulation of capital. Theres this book......
2/ Russia was a bureaucratically deformed Workers State in the estimation of Lenin. A DWS in which the Bolshevik Party was temporarily forced to substitute itself for the role of the workers due to the atomised state the latter was left in due to the wars of intervention and civil war. As such it was not moving towards a planned economy as you assert but was treading water in the hope of the revolution in the west coming to its aid. This being the established position of the Bolshevik Party prior to say 1923 and of the Left Opposition after that year.
It makes little sense to assert that Russia was moving towards a planned economy under Lenin and Trotsky as there was no plan in any real sense prior to the First Five Year Plan under Stalin! The Bolsheviks represented the New Economic Policy as a retreat from the goal of a socialist planned economy.
3/ Revolutionary Socialists, inclding those in the SWP, rightly refuused to 'defend' the so called planned economies of the Stalinist states for a number of reasons. Not least because planning in and of itself is of no importance. What matters in relation to such plans is what goals they aim to fulfil and in the case of the economies of the Stalinist states the goal was the accumulation of capital. Not that revolutionary socialists need accept the claims of the Stalinist states to be planned either given that their plans were never in practice adhered to and were at best loose goals which the various enterprises aimed to hit and never did. There is an abundant literature on this but the bottom line is that the planned economies weren't.
cockneyrebel
New Member
Sorry am busy at work, so will have to come back another time! Maybe one of the SPers could step in for a day 
neprimerimye
Well-Known Member
Groucho said:
Given that you now claim that you knew all along that private property existed in Russia why did you not point this out to the comrade putting the pabloite position? Surely the existence of private property in Russia is a fundamental aspect of the bureaucratic state capitalist analysis of the Stalinist states?
The reason why the restoration of capitalism in the former workers states is so important today, is not basically an argument around Marxist categories, surplus value vs surplus labour, but because it is impossible to understand the world capitalist economy today and globalisation without it.
The restoration of capitalism fundamentally changed the world economy today, with massive increases in trade and profits as a result. Profits as a proportion of GDP in the USA are at its highest point in 75 years.
And it is a legitimate point to say that all of the institutions of capitalist economics, OECD, World Bank, IMF etc. all regarded the former workers states as non-capitalist economies before the restoration of capitalism in 1990, for a simple reason, these economies did not produce for profit, exchanges did not take place at market prices, they were a fundamentally different mode of production from capitalism. The reason world imperialism hated these states so profoundly was because they were excluded from capitalist exploitation.
All this changed after restoration in 1990. After an initial slump between 1990 -1995 as the plan was destroyed, capitalist production for profit began, a recent OECD report for example shows that it was only in 1995 that the majority of all exchanges in the Chinese economy were at market prices, (it is now around 90% of exchanges). The same phenomenon applied across all the former workers states.
As capitalism was restored these economies provided a significant addition to the size of the world market. (It depends on who's estimates you use but for the OECD for example it is an increase of 23% in the year 2000.)
Since then the size of this proportion of world production has continued to increase, with China now the fourth largest economy in the world (by value GDP) estimated on current trends to overtake Germany in 2008.
Globalisation could not have occured without the restoration of capitalism. Capitalism could not have been restored if these states were already capitalist.
The restoration of capitalism fundamentally changed the world economy today, with massive increases in trade and profits as a result. Profits as a proportion of GDP in the USA are at its highest point in 75 years.
And it is a legitimate point to say that all of the institutions of capitalist economics, OECD, World Bank, IMF etc. all regarded the former workers states as non-capitalist economies before the restoration of capitalism in 1990, for a simple reason, these economies did not produce for profit, exchanges did not take place at market prices, they were a fundamentally different mode of production from capitalism. The reason world imperialism hated these states so profoundly was because they were excluded from capitalist exploitation.
All this changed after restoration in 1990. After an initial slump between 1990 -1995 as the plan was destroyed, capitalist production for profit began, a recent OECD report for example shows that it was only in 1995 that the majority of all exchanges in the Chinese economy were at market prices, (it is now around 90% of exchanges). The same phenomenon applied across all the former workers states.
As capitalism was restored these economies provided a significant addition to the size of the world market. (It depends on who's estimates you use but for the OECD for example it is an increase of 23% in the year 2000.)
Since then the size of this proportion of world production has continued to increase, with China now the fourth largest economy in the world (by value GDP) estimated on current trends to overtake Germany in 2008.
Globalisation could not have occured without the restoration of capitalism. Capitalism could not have been restored if these states were already capitalist.
neprimerimye
Well-Known Member
fanciful said:
An interesting post in some ways. But at bottom what you are saying is that the Stalinist states were outside of world markets and that since their integration into said markets have been the cause of a boom in production.
In short you suggest that the autarkic nature of their economies before 1989/91 is enough to describe them as 'Workers States'. Of course exactly the same thing can be said of the autarkic national economies of many countries in Latin America and, for that matter, of Britains economy prior to the introduction of IMF sanctions in 1977 by Healey.
In which case it is far more truthful to point out that globalisation could not have happened without the integration of autarkic national economies into the world market. Whether or not the national ecopnomies were 'DWS' is besides the point.
cockneyrebel
New Member
Do you really think that the ex stalinist states were the same as countries in Latin America and countries like the UK that had a proportion of their economies that were nationalised?
The capitalist economists certainly didn't agree, as while countries like the UK and Latin American figures were included in the global figures ex DWSs weren't.
neprimerimye said:
You know, I am deliberately not going to get myself hung up on definitions and jargon. For me the issue is not an abstract academic one, not even now that the State Capitalist regimes are no more. Principally ownership of the means of production rested with the state and not with individual private capitalists or Companies.
My principle argument, and my main concern, is not to score a few points for one theory and set of descriptions over another. My concern is to establish that any definition of a workers state has to involve a high level of workers democracy. Thus my stance on Surplus Value you may find a little unorthodox. I am really not concerned with debating definitions of suprlus value as such. My concern is about democracy. In a capitalist system a suplus is extracted over and above that produced by a worker. This surplus is owned and controlled (it has been stolen) by the capitalist class. It is used a little to enrich the rich but mostly it is used to accumulate capital.
In a Workers State the surplus produced over and above the direct wage received by the worker goes into a pot of collectively owned wealth - the use of which is determined collectively. In that sense it still belongs to the class that produced it, it has not been stolen, and is only surplus in relation to an individual worker, not the class as a whole. The difference between this and Communism is simply that a workers state, as it is a transition, also contains antagonistic features of capitalist society, which it seeks to erode.
The 'State' is owned and controlled democratically and collectively by workers. As Engels pointed out in a sense a workers state is hardly a state at all since it is not a coersive body as far as the majority are concerned. This state is envisaged as a democratically organised transition from a capitalist mode of production to a communist system. Elements of capitalist relations of production, of exploitation, of division of labour, of alienation, belong to the previous epoch; elements of democracy, collective ownership, bridgeing the division of labour - these belong to the new epoch. Insofar as one aspect exists alongside the other in a workers state they are counterposed, in conflict, and the aim is to surplant one with the other and quickly (the State withers away).
My objection to the DWS theory begins with the insane notion that a workers state can exist with workers as oppressed subjects of that state. Even were we to accept the belief that state ownership and undemocratic inefficient centralised planning constitutes a halfway house between capitalism and a workers state, the term 'workers state' whether buggered, fucked, deformed, or degenerate, would not be adopted in reference to the USSR, Communist Poland, Hungary or Romania etc, by anyone who understood the tyranny of these regimes, and who wanted to inspire workers anywhere to fight for a better world.
At 16 I declared myself a Communist but with rudementary knowledge based on the Communist Manifesto, Orwell's Homage to Catalonia and the military parades in Moscow, I simultaneously declared that the USSR was not. If anyone had said to me that these repressive systems were in any way progressive workers', albeit buggered etc, states I would have either have said 'bollocks' or I would have decided that a workers state was not a good thing, even if you were to unbugger it.
The principle value of State Cap.. is that it reasserted the centrality of workers self emancipation.
neprimerimye
Well-Known Member
cockneyrebel said:
Curious that you should mention the degree of state ownership in a given national economy. My point concerned the autarkic nature of the given national economy not state ownership as such. But do you consider state ownership the criteria as to whether a state is a 'workers state'?
Clearly the former Stalinist states, countries in Latin America and UK PLC were not identical and no suggestion was made to that effect. The point was that at given points each had resort to a greater or lesser degree of autarky in relation to world markets. And that when they were reinserted into world markets their national economies were forced to undergo a process of restructuring.
This goes to your argument that by reason of standing outside world markets the Comecon area states were DWS. In fact all it proves is that in relation to other trading blocs Comecon and the USSR in particular were weak. Isolation in itself from world markets neither proves nor disproves the class nature of either state or society.
Could it be that the western imperialism was unable to compile statistics for the Stalinist states because even the figures the authorities in those states relied on were fictitious? Does the failurre of say the World Bank or the IMF to compile such stats prove that the Stalinist states were not capitalist? if you believe that.........
neprimerimye
Well-Known Member
Groucho said:
Comrade i do not wish to get into a fruitless argument when fundamentally we share very similar positions with regard to the former Stalinist states. The reason I picked up on your earlier post was because I felt you were confused a few points concerning state capitalism. I still feel that in relation to the term 'Workers State' that you are somewhat confused.
Put bluntly I feel that you and the others who have contributed to this thread confuse the class nature of the state with the dominant mode of production in the territory of the state. Thus in your third para above you describe what for you a Workers State might be. From the viewpoint of marxism however what you are describing is not a Workers State but socialism a society already well on the road to the future communist society.
But look at the writings of Marx on the Paris Commune which he saw as a Workers State and does it coform to your model? Again look at Russia in 1918 and it too fails to confiorm to your model. Or Russia under War Communism? The NEP? No, none of those periods of workers rule in Russia conform to your model do they? But Trotskyists, including those who adhere to the IS tradition, do consider Russia in all those periods to have been a Workers State.
Now the thing of it is that Russia in 1918 was a Workers State with a healthy workers democracy until it was destroyed as the class itself was atomised due to war. But there was no plan, no nationalisation and the law of value was not touched. But as the workers actually ruled over the state it was a Workers State in my opinion. it remained a Workers State during the period of War Communism when the RCP(B) was forced to lay a substitutionist role due to the aforementioned atomisation of the class. In any event this period was unique and as far from the any norm as can be imagined.
Obviously you know that NEP was a set back towards capitalism in that it brought back the market in many areas of economic life and effectively granted property rights to the peasantry. Efforts were made to open up international trade too I note - Lenin knew how reactionary any notion of autarkic development was - although the imperialist powers generally resisted this. In short the mode of production in Russia at this time was bourgeois combining private capitalism and state capitalism under the aegis of the Workers State. A state which Lenin described as a Bureaucratically Degenerated Workers and Peasant State.
Lenins argument was that the Russian state was a Workers State despite it standing on the foundations of a bourgeois capitalist economy and despite the effective lack of workers democracy because the RCP(B) acted as a substitute for the missing working class. This was regarded as an extraordinary situation which was inherently unstable and could not last for any considerable period of time. Trotsky of course took over this analysis in toto adhering to it, adding only some further confusions of his own, until his death. Rather missing the point that from 1928 the ruling bureaucracy adopted a policy of breakneck accumulation of capital at the expense of a new working class while waging a one sided civil war that liquidated the Bolshevik Party. In short its plan was dedicated to the same goal as any plan drawn up by a Zaibatsu or MNC.
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
Unlike Groucho I am mainly interested in the abstract academic economic discussion. However, I cannot claim to be the most learned of people, and so here is my simplistic rendition of an explanation of why I believe the Soviet bloc China and Cuba etc, and the Western bloc, were fundamentally opposites side of the same coin. Yes there were degrees of difference, but these were not different modes of production, deformed or otherwise, they merely represented to extremes of the same system, capitalism.
I have to say that I absolutely agree with neprimerimye. The quote from Marx is absolutely crucial;
Somebody was saying above how primitive accumulation in feudal society was limited to what the king/rulers could consume. The king/rulers may have an awful big capacity to consume, but nevertheless production was really production for consumption. What distinguished capitalism from feudalism is that the accumulation takes place to fund accumulation.. "Accumulate, accumulate that is their Moses and their prophets".
Now as neprimerimye says, what distinguishes Russia in the early part of the revolution from Russia in 1928 onwards is not who controls the surplus value, but what the surplus value was used for. (I wasn't trying to suggest that surplus value will not be produced in a workers society. It is highly possible that surplus value will be created in a communist society, because it is communally controlled this is rechristened "social surplus".) All the Russian leaders from Stalin and his 10 years plans through to Khrushchev in his famous speech and the others all make it absolutely clear what they are doing, accumulating accumulating in order to compete with the West.
None of this means that Russian capitalism and American capitalism had to be exactly the same. It is true that apparently in Russia the price mechanism in work. You can print to all kinds of industries where production wasn't for profit, it often ran at any economic loss, production was for "need", but the need to? The need of the Russian ruling class to compete with the west, not the need of workers.
In a communist society there could possibly be surplus value. If en masse people decided to live and more frugal lifestyle, less materialistic and consumptive, then the potential for producing surplus value/social value would be massively higher. But because in that society we would not be competing with anybody (militarily AND SO economically, more of that later) we could simply reduce the amount of surplus value produced by working less hours. I can see no reason why not, people could be working just a couple of hours a day in communist society (if that's what they choose). This is what distinguishes a workers society from what existed in Russia.
The price mechanism and military competition.
It is not true that the obvious price mechanism is omnipresent in western capitalist society. Yes health workers produce surplus value by producing healthy workers, but they only do so after being funded from taxes on the surplus value created by commodity value creating workers. Not only that, many private companies who can run one section at a loss. I suppose most people will have heard of the "loss leader", the commodities sold at a loss in order to break into markets. What is important is not that one section is making a loss, what is important is the overall production of surplus value within the private enterprise. The same is true for the Russian empire.
Secondly, isolation does not make any economy a workers state. But even if it did, Russia was not isolated from economic competition. What becomes quite easily recognisable when you study world-class war two that modern war is not a military competition so much as a economic competition. It is that the economy which is most able to satisfy the voracious needs of the one machine which wins the war, not the one with the most wizardry in military strategy. And THAT's what tied/integrated Russia into the global economy was its military competition. I hate to quote Reagan as any sort of an economist, but they were quite right that what broke the Russian economy was its military/economic competition with America.
And so in my opinion, it is this production of surplus value for accumulation and competition, rather than the accumulation of social service for human need as in a workers state, that makes Russia a capitalist state.
I have to say that I absolutely agree with neprimerimye. The quote from Marx is absolutely crucial;
this was a phrase I was thinking of when I asked a question about surplus value. I think if somebody asked me to define capitalism in a sentence, I don't think you can pick a better sentence than this.neprimerimye said:
Somebody was saying above how primitive accumulation in feudal society was limited to what the king/rulers could consume. The king/rulers may have an awful big capacity to consume, but nevertheless production was really production for consumption. What distinguished capitalism from feudalism is that the accumulation takes place to fund accumulation.. "Accumulate, accumulate that is their Moses and their prophets".
Now as neprimerimye says, what distinguishes Russia in the early part of the revolution from Russia in 1928 onwards is not who controls the surplus value, but what the surplus value was used for. (I wasn't trying to suggest that surplus value will not be produced in a workers society. It is highly possible that surplus value will be created in a communist society, because it is communally controlled this is rechristened "social surplus".) All the Russian leaders from Stalin and his 10 years plans through to Khrushchev in his famous speech and the others all make it absolutely clear what they are doing, accumulating accumulating in order to compete with the West.
None of this means that Russian capitalism and American capitalism had to be exactly the same. It is true that apparently in Russia the price mechanism in work. You can print to all kinds of industries where production wasn't for profit, it often ran at any economic loss, production was for "need", but the need to? The need of the Russian ruling class to compete with the west, not the need of workers.
In a communist society there could possibly be surplus value. If en masse people decided to live and more frugal lifestyle, less materialistic and consumptive, then the potential for producing surplus value/social value would be massively higher. But because in that society we would not be competing with anybody (militarily AND SO economically, more of that later) we could simply reduce the amount of surplus value produced by working less hours. I can see no reason why not, people could be working just a couple of hours a day in communist society (if that's what they choose). This is what distinguishes a workers society from what existed in Russia.
The price mechanism and military competition.
It is not true that the obvious price mechanism is omnipresent in western capitalist society. Yes health workers produce surplus value by producing healthy workers, but they only do so after being funded from taxes on the surplus value created by commodity value creating workers. Not only that, many private companies who can run one section at a loss. I suppose most people will have heard of the "loss leader", the commodities sold at a loss in order to break into markets. What is important is not that one section is making a loss, what is important is the overall production of surplus value within the private enterprise. The same is true for the Russian empire.
Secondly, isolation does not make any economy a workers state. But even if it did, Russia was not isolated from economic competition. What becomes quite easily recognisable when you study world-class war two that modern war is not a military competition so much as a economic competition. It is that the economy which is most able to satisfy the voracious needs of the one machine which wins the war, not the one with the most wizardry in military strategy. And THAT's what tied/integrated Russia into the global economy was its military competition. I hate to quote Reagan as any sort of an economist, but they were quite right that what broke the Russian economy was its military/economic competition with America.
And so in my opinion, it is this production of surplus value for accumulation and competition, rather than the accumulation of social service for human need as in a workers state, that makes Russia a capitalist state.
actually that so called quote from Marx "accumulate, accumulate, accumulate" is a quote from Adam Smith! (look it up if you don't believe me.)
But anyway this ignores the decisive point accumulate what? Profits of course. Capital is money which enters production to produce more money m-c-m' by accumulating a profit. The basis of capitalist production is self valorizing value or capital. Generalised commodity production. That was not the basis of production in the former workers states and therefore they were not capitalist.
This is not only an argument of the Trotskyists, the capitalists didn't think they were capitalist either, that's why they celebrated when capitalism was restored. The failure of the Cliffites to understand capitalist restoration explains why they have such a pathetic analysis of the world economy today.
Surplus value is simply another name for profit, distinguished by Marx because surplus value is measured by its relationship to variable capital, rather than profit which is measured against the entire capital C+V.
Therefore obviously there can be no surplus value in a socialist society because there are no profits, similarly of course because there are no profits in the former workers states, there is no surplus value.
But anyway this ignores the decisive point accumulate what? Profits of course. Capital is money which enters production to produce more money m-c-m' by accumulating a profit. The basis of capitalist production is self valorizing value or capital. Generalised commodity production. That was not the basis of production in the former workers states and therefore they were not capitalist.
This is not only an argument of the Trotskyists, the capitalists didn't think they were capitalist either, that's why they celebrated when capitalism was restored. The failure of the Cliffites to understand capitalist restoration explains why they have such a pathetic analysis of the world economy today.
Surplus value is simply another name for profit, distinguished by Marx because surplus value is measured by its relationship to variable capital, rather than profit which is measured against the entire capital C+V.
Therefore obviously there can be no surplus value in a socialist society because there are no profits, similarly of course because there are no profits in the former workers states, there is no surplus value.
neprimerimye
Well-Known Member
fanciful said:
Accumulation of what? A very good question. Not profits that is for certain. Frankly I don't know where to begin commenting on your post which is abstract and removed from the real process of accumulation.
Perhaps its best to begin by pointing out that you omit entirely any role for Labour in your little schema of capital accumulation. But for Marx living labour was the source of dead labour or as he called it Capital. In which case of what worth is the rest of your erudite nonsense when for Marxists bourgeois society is based upon the exploitation of the proletariat, the embodiement of labour, by the bourgeoisie the personification of capital.
Note that Marx was concerned with this relationship and not with profit as such. Profit in itself being nothing but a means to the accumulation of ever greater quantities of capital which would then be reinvested. That is to say used to exploit workers.
But all of this you totally omit in order to claim that profits as such are accumulated! But it is not profit which is acumulated but capital. It is not profit which is invested in new machinery and wages it is capital.
Which is why the ruling classes in the Stalinist states kept books which showed which enterprises were making profits and which were not. A little fact which the erudite economist Mandel was well aware of and commented upon I believe. And why was this? Well you see the bureaucracy, that ersatz bourgeoisie, needed to know what quantities of capital it had ready to invest in its efforts to accumulate capital.
One last point. You write "Therefore obviously there can be no surplus value in a socialist society because there are no profits, similarly of course because there are no profits in the former workers states, there is no surplus value." from which it follows that for you there is no difference between a socialist society and a workers state in which the mode of production remains capitalist. in other words you are openly revising the positions of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky on this question and adopting the viewpoint of Stalin! It also follows from your remarks that as surplus value does not exist that the class which prduces it cannot exist either. You have arrived at a position whereby you have 'deformed workes states' but no workers!
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
Just been on the phone to a guy who is in workers Power. And the nub of the argument is, the dead labour that is produced by living labour in the former Soviet union was not sold on the open market, and therefore it wasn't a commodity, and therefore capital accumulation didn't take place.
Needless to say, accepting the truth in that statement I was not convinced of the entire argument, and though I tried to counter the supposition I did not sway him from this opinion.
A very interesting speech on my website covering the importance of this topic to an understanding of the world today is;
The Role Of The State In Contemporary Capitalism Mike Haynes 2005 Discussion Summing Up
http://mp3.lpi.org.uk/resistancemp/m2005home.htm
fraternal greetings. ResistanceMP3
Needless to say, accepting the truth in that statement I was not convinced of the entire argument, and though I tried to counter the supposition I did not sway him from this opinion.
A very interesting speech on my website covering the importance of this topic to an understanding of the world today is;
The Role Of The State In Contemporary Capitalism Mike Haynes 2005 Discussion Summing Up
http://mp3.lpi.org.uk/resistancemp/m2005home.htm
fraternal greetings. ResistanceMP3
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
No your wrong.fanciful said:
labour is the source of all value. dead labour, that which has been produced by Labour, is value in its raw form. Money is merely an abstract representation of value. and capitalist in time of crisis go back to gold as the best form of money precisely because the amount of labour it enbodies correlates with its value, where as the amount of labour in a piece of paper, money, does not correlate with its socially agreed value.
fraternal greetings. ResistanceMP3
neprimerimye
Well-Known Member
fanciful said:
No comrade i do not fetishize machinery. In point of fact I have not even mentioned machines.
What I pointed to as the central theme of Marx's political economy was the exploitative relationship between living and dead labour.
PS Don't fetishize bling we are no longer on the Gold Standard you know.
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
mike, if you get time to have a listen to the link to the Marxism 2005 file, I would be interested in your views. It was presented in quite a novel and entertaining way, but nevertheless made some very good points.
fraternal greetings comrade
fraternal greetings comrade
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