Re: AUT: State capitalism?

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

----- Original Message -----
From: "Battaglia comunista" <batcom@xxxxxxxx>
To: <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 25. juli 2002 00.48
Subject: Re: AUT: State capitalism?


> On 23 Jul 2002, at 21:21, Montyneill@xxxxxxx wrote:
>
> >  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,
> > have
> > no idea where it might be available.
> >
> > Monty
> >
> Probably, that's right for the Usa, but despite the diffused thought
> that USA is the real world, is not for the ... rest of the world.
> Even if they are not the inventors of the term, the comrades of the
> Left Communist Fraction in the '30s are probably the first to
> elaborate on it.

The interesting thing is how :very late_ this was. And the reason
for this we find in the following stupidity: "Thus the material,
objective reality of Russia prevailed on the subjective element
represented by the vanguard of the working class, decimated
in the Civil War. Stalin has been the representative of new
collective interests, outside and against the working class,
infiltraded inside the party of the working class." Who can take
this seriously. It only reveals how far this Left Communist Fraction
was still tied to state capitalist ideology, that is to Bolshevism.
So what we are talking about is some kind of Protestantism
which while freeing itself from the Catolic Church, clings
all the harder to God. As such it stand much more respect of the
Socilaist Party of Great Britian that never succumbed to the
Boshevik illusion, and rightly claims that capitalism has always
existed in post revoluitonary Russia and that the working class
there has never had political power," or Adam Boick and John
Crump who argue (I am told) in "State Capitalism" (1984) that
the Russian revolution was a state capitalist revolution.

Any way, Otto Rühle, argued  in 1924 in  "From the Bourgeois
to the Proletarian Revolution" that the state capitalism of Russia
was an aspect of the development of capitalism on a world
scale. In 1931 he develops these thoughts further in "The
World Crisis, or towards State Capitalism". Neil Fernandez's
book contains a brief presentation of Rühle's perspective.

Then there is "Theses of Boshevism" (1934) from the councilist
Group of International Communist  (GIK) which introduces the
interesting (if prety self-evident) notion that Russian industry
was organised on the basis of "capitalist serfdom". Industrial
feudalism is then also a concept that comes close to mind
when talking about the Bolshevik project.

A historical study I found very interesting and relevant to the
subject is the the refugee-scholar S. Swianiewicz's "Forced
Labour and Economic Developement: An Enquiry into the
Experience of Soviet Industrialization" (Oxford University
Press, 1965)

Anyway again, what went wrong and what were the forces
withing the working classes that, if they had found a broader
organisational expression, could have turned the tide in
another direction? To me it seems that marxism lacks a
language to talk about such things.

Harald








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