Re: AUT: State capitalism?

["Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: <Montyneill@xxxxxxx>
To: <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 24. juli 2002 03.21
Subject: Re: AUT: State capitalism?



"The correct designation' of this State should not be U.S.S.R. ,
but U.S.C.R, meaning the Union of State Capitalists republics."

                    Voline: "The Unkown Revolution"  (1947)


"' ... But you the Russian social-democrats, what do you want?
For the last ten years you have drifted from prison to prison. Is it
to restore capitalism and the parlaimentary republic in Russia?
It surely is not worth while? I cannot understand you.'"
    "They were much taken aback at first by the way in which I
stated the problem; then one of them answered, 'It would indeed
be perfectly futile to wish to restore capitalism in Russia, for the
good reason that that capitalism, though in a modified form,
exists there and has never ceased to exist....'"

        From the chapter "On the Road to exile [Siberia in 1930]"
        in Ante Ciliga's "Russian Enigma". Social-democrats quite
        obviously is a reference to Mensheviks.

Monty, you wrote "I think the first argument that USSR was
state capitalist was "Johnson-Forrest" (James and Dunayevskaya)
tendency work -- eg State Capitalism and World Revolution by CLR
James, a facing reality pamphlet ...

The "Johnson-Forrest" tendency certainly were not the first.
They were very late comers. This debate started in 1918. Of
course Lenin was one of the contributors then, so where
Mensheviks and others. Unlike the former,  other were not to
happy with that. The anarcho-syndicalist paper, Vol'nyi, at
least from September 1918 began writing that Russia had
entered a period of state capitalism rather than socilaism.
State capitalm was according to an article probably written
by G.P. Maximoff "the new dam before the waves of our
social revolution".  But it was hardly only anarchists who used
this term in negative sense. I am sure I could easily find
similar statements from other parts of the workers opposition.

Far closer to home for Per Anders, it might be useful to look
up the the writings of Albert Jensen (a Swedish revolutionary
syndicalist, for non-Scandinavians). He might very well be the
first revolutionary outside of Russia who publicly referred to
the new Bolshevik state under the rule of Lenin as state
capitalist, well informed as he was due to geography and other
reasons. I seem to remember he used the term stat capitalism
of the time, but I am not 100 per cent certain now.

To what degree it was kept in use within in some Menshevik
circles, I am not sure. The quote from Ciligia's book testifies
for the existence of state capitalist theory within Menshevik
circles though. I know that the position of the so-called Right
Menshevik however was that Bolshevik state was a societal
formation of a whole new order that was neither socialist not
capitalist.

Otherwise, there is also the book "Capitalism and Class
Struggle in the USSR. A [autonomist] Marxist Theory," written
by Neil C. Fernandez, it costs a fortune, however, so try the
library, if you are interested, Per Anders.  It also contains
an overview and critique of various marxists theories on the
character of the late USSR. Fernandez actually end up
employing the term bureaucratic capitalism.

[You should also be able to get through the library the latest
book of the Norwegian Marxist, Jørgen Sandemose,
called "Stat, religion and økonomi" which contains a chapter
"Tilbake til USSR" ,on his state capitalist theory.  Bukharin's,
Preobrazhenskiis's, both Bolsheviks are also very interesting
(and revealing) in a particualr sense. "Building socialsim
in Bolshevik Russia: Ideology and Industrial Organization
1917-1921" by Thomas F. Remington,  and "The Economic
Organization of War Communism 1918-1921 by Sylvana
Malle," together with  Orlando Figes' "peasant Russia,
Civil War: The Volga Country side in Revolution 1917-21"
should  give you a good background on which foundation
the new economical structure was built, if you should want
to dig deeper.]

And then there is of course the council communist tradition.
I am not sure though when they started to use the term state
capitalism. The Socialist Party of Great Britain might have
used it for a very long time. Or do they just use simply capitalist?
Anybody who knows.

But of course, this is not primarily about the use of the label.
And I suspect that the more "capital-logical" debate Monty
was primarily referring to. More knowledge about the under-
ground discussions in Russia around the character of the
new state would have been interesting though.

Personally I am convinced, and I think Monty might agree with
me on this, that the key terms for the understanding of the
character of the late USSR, China etc, whatever the label,  is
primitive accumulation and the production of the proletariat.

Harald







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