STATE CAP AND NEIL

["Karl Carlile" <joseph@xxxxxxxxx>]

Karl:
Neil I welcome your message on my post on Walter Daum's piece
concerning state capitalism. Below is a brief riposte

Neil:
Karl C.  says "the elimination of private property form and the
retention of the the form of capitalist property is impossible....."

Karl is confusing  form with essence. The continued promotion of wage
labor and hence capitalism  is the quintessence of all capitalist social
relations!

Karl:
The quotation you take from my post is not quite correctly quoted and
significantly you omit from it the next sentence. Below is the corrected
quotation with the sentence that immediately follows added on:

"The elimination of the private property form and the retention of the
form of capitalist property is impossible. Capitalist property is a
specific form of private property."

Capital is a form. It is a social from through which the development of
the forces of production are facilitated or hindered. Wage-labour is
premised on the existence of labour power in the form of a commodity.
Since by its very nature a commodity if a form of private property it
follows that labour is a from of private property. This being so it
follows that the "elimination of the private property form and the
retention of the form of capitalist property is impossible."

The owner of this specific private property, the commodity labour power,
is the worker. If private property is abolished then labour power as a
commodity, as a form of private property, is abolished.

Neil:
Mere nationalisations of means of production are not incompatible with
capitalism was seen by socialists from Engels to Bebel  to Bukharin up to
present day marxists.

Karl:
If by "compatible" you mean capable of co-existing together then I have
not suggested otherwise. The  existence of the Soviet Union  provides
primary evidence of this.

Neil:
Engels states ; "the transformation into joint-stock companies , or into
state ownership does not do away with the capitalist nature of the
productive forces...The modern state, no matter what its form , is
essentially a capitalist machine the ideal personification of the total
national capital ..The workers remain wage laboreers, proletarians . The
capitalist relation is not done away with." Anti-Duhring, Pg329

Engels also stresses this key point  in "Socialism -Utopian & Scientific,
Pg39-40 International Publ, 1935 ed.

There is still much confusion amongst marxists (vs. social democrats  &
other capitalist refromers) over this issue . This needs to be clarified
that nationalisation does not equal socialization -ESP AS CARRIED OUT BY
PROLETARIAN REV. MOVEMENTS AND ORGANIZATIONS IN MASS STRUGGLE. (capitals
mine)

Karl:
In contradistinction to this conclusion of yours I quote below from text
that follows close behind your quoted material from Engels:

"The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production
in the first instance into STATE PROPERTY....But IN DOING THIS IT
ABOLISHES ITSELF AS PROLETARIAT, abolishes all class distinctions and
class antagonisms, abolishes also the state as state....The first act by
virtue of which the state really constitutes itself the representative of
the whole of society -the taking possession of the means of production in
the name of society- this is, at the same time, its last independent act
as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain
after another, superfluous, and then withers away of itself;..." (F.
Engels: Anti-Duhring; pp. 332,333. L&W 1969).

Incidentally the substitution of quotations for argument is not a very
helpful way of developing debate on the question of state capitalism.






Yours etc.,


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