Re: AUT: state capitalism

[Michael Pugliese <debsian@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

   Apologies if this has already been given out.
>http://www.geocities.com/wageslavex/unstatcap.htm

UNDERSTANDING STATE CAPITALISM


One of the tasks that Internationalist Perspective  has given itself is to develop theoretical
contributions deepening marxist revolutionary thought. This text on state capitalism is the product of
discussions in our Fraction. Far from being a mere academic concern, the question of state capitalism
raises a whole series of issues vital to the understanding of the evolution of capitalism and its
effects on the working class. The revolutionary milieu suffers from many errors and confusions on this
subject and this has a negative effect on intervention in the working class. The following text does
not represent a totally worked out position of our Fraction; it is presented as a contribution to the
debate. We hope that it will provoke reactions and discussions in the milieu.


An understanding of state capitalism as a universal tendency in the decadent phase of the capitalist
mode of production is an absolute precondition for revolutionary intervention in the class struggle.
State capitalism and the decadence of capitalism are two sides of the same coin, and, therefore, it is
no surprise that revolutionary organizations which reject the concept of the decadence of capitalism,
such as the Bordigists, cannot begin to grasp the reality of state capitalism. However, the balance
sheet of the whole revolutionary milieu today, as far as its understanding of state capitalism is
concerned, is largely negative, as even a brief survey will show.

The Scandinavian Council Communist groups which arose during the 1970s as a direct result of the
influence of Paul Mattick, have generally adopted the position articulated in Marx and Keynes
[Mattick?s book published in 1969] which sees Russia as an exploitative but non-capitalist society, a
society which Mattick designates as ?state socialist?, in which the capitalist law of value no longer
regulates the economy. As far as the advanced industrialized countries of the West are concerned, for
Mattick, these societies are examples of monopoly capitalism, in which the law of value operates in
basically the same way as it did before 1914; the modifications introduced by Keynesianism merely
delay the outbreak of economic crises, but do not bring about a change in the operation of the laws of
motion of capitalism (not even one comparable to that brought about by the formation of the average
rate of profit in ascendant capitalism).

The Bordigists have dealt with the issues raised by the phenomenon of statification purely in terms of
the class nature of the Stalinist regime. In contrast to the Trotskyists, Bordiga, in the late 1940s,
concluded that Stalinist Russia was capitalist, but he denied the very existence of state capitalism.
As a capitalist state, for Bordiga, the Stalinist regime could only be the instrument of the
bourgeoisie. Thus Bordiga posed the question of the Stalinist regime solely in terms of who
constituted the bourgeoisie on Russian soil. Bordiga first discovered this bourgeoisie in Stalinist
Russia in what he thought were incipient tendencies towards the restoration of ?private property?
through the sale of interest bearing bonds to high- salaried functionaries, scientists, artists, etc.,
who constituted the embryo of a bourgeois class. A few years later, when it was clear that these
strata had obviously not become a full-fledged bourgeoisie, Bordiga decided that the ruling class in
Russia was in fact the American capitalist class (?Wall Street?), to whom Stalin had ?sold? the USSR
via huge state debts. In the 1950s, when it was obvious that Stalin and his heirs could not be
construed as the tools of American imperialism, Bordiga put forward a new theory according to which
each enterprise in Russia ? despite nationalization, despite the role of the state and its plan ? was
an autonomous capitalist entity, the relations between which were determined by the operation of the
law of value in exactly the same form as had existed throughout the history of capitalism (competition
on the market between enterprises acting as independent capitalist entities). In this vision, the role
of the state in the economy was only transitory, corresponding to a period of youthful capitalism,
analogous to the role played by the state in the West during the formation of a national market (from
the Renaissance to the latter part of the 19th century, depending on the country), and destined to
diminish as Russian capitalism reached its maturity.1
<snip>
>http://www.geocities.com/wageslavex/unstatcap.htm





     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---