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: Why use the term "bourgeois" if it wasn't
form of capitalism ?
Comment
Here in a nutshell is the political and ideological divergence. Anyone
"truly revolutionary" self appointed task is organize the workers to overthrow
the
bourgeois state. Since the Soviet state was an organization of violence in
the hands of the bourgeoisie, it was the task of those who viewed the Soviet
State as bourgeois, to overthrow it.
Therefore, the functionaries making manifest the organization of the
proletarian state;
that did not think it was the organization of violence protecting the value
relationship and anarchy of production,
hunted down those who sought to overthrow the state and restore . . .
exactly what?
Such is how the functionaries of the state - not the state as such, thought
things out.
I do agree that the Soviet state was not a worker state. The workers state
is an abstraction, according to Lenin. I would prefer Lenin's language on this
matter.
It was a proletarian state, "learning on the peasants." The worker-peasant
alliance. ("Leaning on the peasants" is Trotsky precise formulation).
The task of the proletarian state as state is to protect the proletarian
property relations. The role of the government which sits upon the proletarian
state - as a superstructure, is to implement the economic and political agenda
in conformity with the property relations. And in the Soviet Union this
included hunting down the counterrevolution, whose stated aim was the
overthrow of
the state, rather than changing the government. .
WL.
Post S.
Extracting a surplus does not define the property relations in as much as
every society on earth, outside of the initial communist organization of
society, extracts a surplus.
What was the surplus extracted in the Soviet Union?
What was this surplus material physical appearance?
Surplus product?
If by change some of these "things" that are the "surplus," . . . was food
stuff, . . . . then this "thing" . . .had a use-value and exchange-value,
or a commodity form;
because of the nature of small scale agricultural production, and the law of
commodity exchange. Wheat was sold as a commodity in the Soviet Union.
However, commodity production predates capitalism, which is to say, all
commodity
production does not = capitalist commodity production.
The surplus extracted was perhaps a . . . . surplus product? Money?
That is to say one runs backwards into the theory of value.
The bourgeoisie appropriates the SURPLUS PRODUCT, which CONTAINS the value
manifestation, over and above, the value equivalent in wages, paid to the
total laborers. That is to say, the workers create a total mass of commodities
and the bourgeoisie pays them a value well below the value in the total
commodities they create.
Hence surplus value.
There is no other way to extract surplus value outside the surplus product,
(that I am aware of) as the act of bourgeoisie production, distribution and
circulation of commodities.
WL
**************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your
neighborhood today.
(http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004)
_______________________________________________
Marxism-Thaxis mailing list
Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
