Re: state capitalism?

[djones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (rakesh bhandari)]

Quoting Trotsky, Walter Daum wrote:
>
>"To aim at the construction of a *nationally isolated* socialist
>society means, in spite of all temporary successes, to pull the
>productive forces backward even as compared to capitalism. To
>attempt, regardless of the geographic, cultural and historical
>conditions of the country's development, which constitutes a part
>of the world whole, to realize a fenced-in proportionality of all
>the branches of economy within national limits, means to pursue a
>reactionary utopia."

Adam Smith found the key to increased productivity in an expanded division
of labor and the limit to that expansion in the size of the market.  While
the ancient philosophers pointed to improvements in quality or in the use
value aspects of production which resulted from productive specialization
in a more developed division of labor, Smith found in the division of labor
a productive force to decrease unit costs or the value of commodities.
Marx found in Smith's concern with  quantitative improvements an insignia
of capital as a socio-historical mode of production.

Like Adam Smith, Trotsky seems to find in the international division of
labor a productive force as well; moreover he seems here to be echoing
nothing but Ricardo's static theory of comparative advantage based as it is
on the  immeidate advantages which may be derived from the international
division of labor.

But as the epoch of relative surplus value has proven, great leaps in
productivity  result from the application of machinery, not simply--as in
Adam Smith's time--the development of the division of labor as such.

Moreover, for complex reasons, an imperialist redistribution of value may
result from the international division of labor; this is of course a very
complicated debate (not as difficult as advanced physics, however), and I
rely here on Carchedi's theorization of this in general and in his critique
of China's reentry into the world market in particular, something it seems
Trotsky would have approved of.

(Though I remember the excitement I felt when I grasped Carchedi's critique
of Ricardian trade theory and radical unequal exchange theory, I must say
that I have forgotten his proof procedure--so here I can only point to the
argument.)

What I am suggesting, contra Trotsky,  is that national isolation of some
sort may not be regressive from the point of view of productivity gains if
such isolation enables  the domestic development of the appropriate means
of production by which productivity could well be increased in the long run
beyond the immediate advantages of Ricardian comparative specialization
through participation in the international division of labor, as
recommended by Trotsky in the manner of classical economics.  In other
words, the temporary successes Trotsky rails against would actually be the
result of his embrace of the world market.

Even if a larger market is required in order to increase productivity
through a more developed division of labor, this is no reason to embrace
the world market.  Regional cooperation among underdeveloped countries may
well be sufficient.

Moreover, the underdeveloped country would also enjoy  freedom from the
international division of labor in which  capital goods can only be
obtained through  value transfers,  which may well drain the underdeveloped
country of the capacity to develop itself and sustain productivity
increases in the long run.

This is to say nothing of the inappropriateness of the capital goods which
can be obtained from the international division of labor, extrication from
which Trotsky seems to denounce in an one-sided manner.

Carchedi for example does not so much emphasize the inappropriateness of
such technology in a labor surplus country ( a real problem of course) but
rather the limits of  technical fixes to increase productivity and quality
through the import of ever more advanced capital goods, instead of through
the democratization of work and the initiative of workers themselves.

In short, I don't think the problem with socialism in one country is the
economic one of foregone productivity through participation in the
international division of labor.  The problem is political: one the one
hand, in the sabatoge of the actual technical possibilities to increase
productivity and improve life by imperialist adventure and terrorism and on
the other hand, in the control of revolutionary political parties in the
imperialist countries by single "socialist" countries.

Rakesh




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