Re: Query to Tom O'Lincoln on state capitalism

[Xxxx Xxxxxx <xxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Hello Xxxx
>
> Yes I know the pamphlet, but haven't looked at it in over ten years. It's
> also on the web in German -- fame at last!
>
> I remember thinking I couldn't quite understand the logic of their theory.
> They are a very loopy crowd! Although Sy Landy, who gave me a copy of the
> article on a visit to Australia in the last eighties, was very pleasant when
> we met.
>
> I don't have the time to plow through it again,  - it's so long -- but if
> you are interested in raising specific questions, here or by private e-mail,
> feel free.
>
>
Well, the Dahl pamphlet argues that there is a contradiction between
Cliff's analysis of Russa and Callinicos' position on wage labour under
state capitalism which cannot coexist but which you (Tom O'Lincoln)
attempt to reconcile in your pamphlet. Callinicos argues that wage
labour exists in the USSR and is not just an accidental form "masking a
really non-proletarian content" and that wage labour is necessary in a
capitalist society while Cliff excludes these points leading him open to
the accusation that under his analysis Russian workers are not
proletarians in the Marxist sense.

Dahl argues that Cliff's state capitalism is in fact a reworked version
of Shachtman's theory of bureaucratic collectivism with the sole
difference being Cliff's argument that the law of value is imposed on
the USSR from outside. However, this still would mean (Dahl says) that
the Soviet mode of production is not capitalist. However, while Cliff
argues that the law of value is not generated internally., Callinicos'
modifications suggest that, in fact, it is.

Dahl goes on to say: "O'Lincoln has a somewhat different problem... he
first describes Cliff's theory as a sort of 'USSR Ltc.' competing
internationally, that is the only way accumulation and the production of
value can be explained if wage labor is denied. But then he withdraws
this analogy in favor of a war economy model, citing Bukharin's
'Imperialism and World Economy' and noting that in it 'the national
economies...remained capitalist because the underlying dynamic of
competitive accumulation remained the same.' This reasoning, however,
does not work for Cliff's theory since for Cliff the underlying internal
economy is NOT capitalist. Since his desired conclusion does not follow,
O'Lincoln is left with a system driven by international military
competition to accumulate use-values out of its international military
competition to accumulate use-values out of its internal non-capitalist
economy. This doesn't make the Soviet economy capitalist, unless the
external pressures compel internal changes such as the introduction of
wage labor. Cliff doesn't accept this, but O'Lincoln does; hence he ends
up with a very different theory, even though he doesn't say so
explicitly."

"The Callinicos-O'Lincoln 'amendment' to Cliff's theory has further
consequences. Cliff makes much of the fact that Stalin decreed in 1943
that the law of value applied in the USSR. He takes this as a
recognition of reality and argues that it means the USSR is capitalist.
But this reasoning is wrong and not for the reason O'Lincoln gives (pg
21). A workers' state also operates under the law of value since the
laws of capitalism cannot be abolished overnight by the transitional
society, any more than the state can be abolished. A workers' state as
backward and isolated as the early Soviet Union would necessarily be
under the constant threat of domination by the law of value and, by
itself, could only take the most limited steps to combat it. Thus the
law of value (in different ways) in the Soviet economy. Stalin's 1943
pronouncement was significant, but not because it proved the USSR was
capitalist. It simply ended the pretensions of the 1930s that Soviet
'socialism' had done away with the law of value."