--- On Mon, 2/23/09, Phil Walden
> Date: Monday, February 23, 2009, 7:26 PM
> Phil Walden: It was a bourgeois state because it was part of
> a world system
> of bourgeois relations - all states extracting a surplus
> from their
> populations. Thus the Soviet Union could not have been
> some form of workers
> state. But it wasn't capitalist because the surplus
> extracted in the Soviet
> Union was not surplus value.
^^^^^^^
CB: Extracting surplus use-values ? I don't
know if you are analyzing this based on
the Marxist classics, but I believe
that they contemplate that there are
still surpluses generated during socialism,
but that these are used to provide for
social welfare funds for the eldersly,
children, childcare, sick,intellectual
workers, soldiers, etc.
^^^^^^^^^
>
> CB: Why use the term "bourgeois" if it wasn't
>
> form of capitalism ?
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: marxism-thaxis-boun...@lists.econ.utah.edu
> [mailto:marxism-thaxis-boun...@lists.econ.utah.edu] On
> Behalf Of Charles
> Brown
> Sent: 23 February 2009 14:06
> To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu
> Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away
> ?
>
>
>
> Phil Walden
> I would agree with Jim F that present day Russia is some
> form of state
> capitalism.
>
> On the nature of the former Soviet Union I think it was
> none of the
> alternatives offered by Jim (and by Trotskyism in the
> post-war period). It
> was a bureaucratic bourgeois state in which a surplus was
> extracted from the
> peasantry and workers but not surplus value (so it could
> not have been a
> form of capitalism).
>
> It ceased to be a degenerated workers state when the
> possibility of a democratic opposition to Stalin within the
> CPSU based on
> Trotskyists/Bukharinists expired (1930).
>
> I had been thinking of doing work on globalisation since
> the 1970s because
> none of the Trotskyist groups seems to understand what has
> happened or its
> significance. But then I realized that I have to go even
> further back to the
> Cold War, because post-war Trotskyism tried to impose its
> own schemas onto
> it and unfortunately no group built a developed
> understanding of the Cold
> War. Adam Westoby's COMMUNISM SINCE WORLD WAR TWO is
> however a good start,
> despite faults.
>
> Phil Walden
>
>
>
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