Hey, Jim, nice post, you took the words right out of my mouth (and then
added depth and clarity). I was going to say that 1) it is absurd to talk
about the USSR and other authoritarian state socialisms as "state capitalist"
when the very bedrock of capitalism, commodified labor-power, did not exist,
and 2) it is equally absurd to assert that USSR and other authoritarian state
socialisms were non-class societies that, however imperfectly, catered to
meeting "social needs."
John Gulick
At 05:34 PM 10/8/97 -0700, you wrote:
>Louis writes: >News and Letters shares the Johnson-Forest "state capitalist"
>theory
>which, if anything, is a completely undialectical understanding of states
>like Cuba and the former Soviet Union. This theory won't accept anything as
>deserving of the name socialism unless it is blemish-free. There has to be
>full democracy, worker's control of the economy, equality of income, etc.
>The problem is that these societies come into being when there are a million
>mitigating circumstances. Whatever flaws they had, they did not produce on
>the basis of profit, but social need.<
>
>I don't have any brief to make in defense of the Johnson-Forest tendency or
>News and Letters. I can't say whether the "state cap" analysis is
>"undialectical" or not (though simply asserting that it is "completely
>dialectical" doesn't make it so).
>
>To me, however, it just doesn't make sense to lump the old USSR in the same
>category as Algeria or the US TVA, a clear "state capitalist" enterprise.
>There really is a difference between a planned economy with the vast
>majority of the means of production owned by the state, on the one hand, and
>an unplanned capitalist economy with some means of production owned by the
>state (state capitalism), on the other.
>
>It also doesn't much make sense to simply assert that the old USSR was
>"socialist" and then ignore how the lack of full democracy, workers' control
>of the economy, etc. affect the _nature_ of that socialism, the goals of the
>central plan, and the definition of what is meant by "social need." We can
>see a thoroughly corrupt socialism with a central plan aimed at serving a
>small minority that defines "social need" as preserving their rule. We have
>to remember that when Marx and Engels used the word "socialism" in THE
>COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, it did not always refer to something good. (In fact, it
>may have never referred to something good, since they described themselves
>as communists.)
>
>The News & Letters folks, despite their obvious limitations, were and are
>concerned with the key issue of _state power_ in the old USSR. This issue is
>expecially important when the state owns the vast majority of the means of
>production and employs the vast majority of the workers (as in the old USSR).
>
>Who "owned" the state? Absent workers' democracy, the only obvious owner is
>the party bureaucracy. This party became as entrenched as the mandarins of
>Imperial China, even if individual party bureaucrats never were secure in
>their tenure. Somewhere Lenin wrote that classes define themselves in
>struggle with each other. Even if he never said it (and there's little point
>in citing his tarnished authority), it seems to be a valid point. There are
>many examples where the state's party bureaucracy fought like hell with
>military force to maintain its power. The party bureaucracy defined itself
>as a ruling class, one not that different from the theocratic rulers of
>Pharoanic Egypt.
>
>Maybe "mitigating circumstances" explain the rise of this type of class
>society (what I call "bureaucratic socialism," BS). But we have to face the
>fact that it was a class society.
>
>Jim Devine
John Gulick
Ph. D. Candidate
Sociology Graduate Program
University of California-Santa Cruz
(415) 643-8568
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
