====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ======================================================================
Here's where I have problems with Chattopadhyay and others: "For him, even though the form of accumulation was not classical in the sense that it was based largely on accumulation of absolute surplus value," : 1. absolute surplus value is indeed a classical form of accumulation; perhaps the most classical form, one to which the bourgeoisie always turn and return when push comes to shove. 2. to accumulate absolute or relative surplus VALUE, value must be the organizing principle of property and labor; the production and reproduction of value for nothing other than the reproduction and accumulation of value must be the purpose, the necessity, the essential axis upon which everything rotates. 3. Can we actually say that the production of value was that organizing principle of property and labor? If so, we need to know not just why the Soviets did such a piss-poor job of it, but how they did it without embracing the international bourgeoisie, without in essence doing in 1933 what it did do in 1991. To say that the Soviets were permeable to the eruption of millions of pockets of petty capitalist reproduction; that the Soviets were eroded from the inside by the failure to overcome the laws of value is different than saying that the Soviets were engaged in a system of value reproduction. We might want to make a distinction between surplus labor and surplus value. Certainly the USSR developed through the accumulation of surplus labor and surplus product; but did that mechanism of accumulation take on the identity of surplus VALUE? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Leonardo Kosloff" <holmof...@hotmail.com> I don’t have much time to elaborate but I wanted to make a reference to ’s book, ‘The Marxian concept of Capital, and the Soviet experience’. Chattopadhyay, who was a student of Charles Bettelheim and friends with Sweezy, argues that the Soviet Union was capitalist even to the extent that there was in fact no restoration of capitalism. For him, even though the form of accumulation was not classical in the sense that it was based largely on accumulation of absolute surplus value, the dynamic of competition between state enterprises and the characteristic problems of a mass of relative surplus population and overaccumulation of capital were still pungent in the USSR, with their own particularities. He relies quite a bit on the work of Janos Kornai. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
