Re: Query to Tom O'Lincoln on state capitalism

["Tom O'Lincoln" <red_sites@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Andy

I'll try to reply based on what you sent. Bear in mind I haven't looked at
these issues in a long time, and I reserve to right to change my mind at any
time in this exchange! (Since one never knows where a post like this will
end up, maybe I should also state here that these are personal views only
and I am not a leader of the ISO any more.)

In fact I've already changed my mind on one quite important issue. The
original "Cliffite" tradition was indeed "Bukharinite" in important ways
that I accepted. Cliff's assumption was that the tendency to state
capitalism would go on and on, and that this was laying the basis for
socialism. Just as Lenin saw the German Post Office as signifying a trend to
socialism -- but (as Cliff put it) "this side of the socialist revolution".

Such a view was reasonable up to the seventies. That I continued to accept
it in my pamphlet written in the early eighties is embarassing. It would be
silly now in view of the international move away from state ownership of
industry.


>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.

There is probably something in this. The Socialist Review group looked to
Shachtman (and Natalia Trotsky) at one stage. Later however Cliff made sharp
criticisms of Shachtman, specifically on the issue of wage labour. It may
well be that Cliff's work on Russia bears the marks of a certain
Shatchtmanite influence. Cliff presumably moved away from this without
revisiting the Russia book. Doctrinaires may be scandalised by this
inconsistency; personally I prefer Cliff's messy and pragmatic attempts at
serious rethinking to the Talmudical practices of some others. "A foolish
consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

>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.

Cliff overdoes it, as Bukharin does in his Imperialism. There were elements
of "many capitals" in the Soviet system. However in the hypothetical case
where the USSR really were totally monolithic, Cliff would be right.

>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,

I set up the first analogy as a step in the argument, but clearly the USSR
was a national economy, not a company. That's why it couldn't be totally
monolithic.

>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;


Exactly. So I'm consistent, even if Cliff isn't. :-)


>hence he ends
>up with a very different theory, even though he doesn't say so
>explicitly."

It's the same theoretical tradition, but not the exact same construct. We
are not a church. I think anyone reading what I wrote will see immediately
that I'm challenging Cliff on some points; there is no attempt to conceal
it, quite the contrary. Whether it's "very different" would depend on where
you're coming from.

>"The Callinicos-O'Lincoln 'amendment' to Cliff's theory has further
>consequences.

>From memory, it's not correct to amalgamate me and Alex. Alex did force me
to confront the issue.

>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
>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.

Don't see any disagreement here. The day after the revolution, we still live
under capitalism. It is a workers' state because we have "raised the
proletariat to the position of ruling class and won the battle for
democracy." Conversely, where this battle has been lost there is no workers'
state, even if industry is nationalised as in (for example) the later USSR
or Libya -  because the law of value will continue to impinge in some way.

>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.

Correct, even if all industry was nationalised. Thus the law of value
impinges under whatever conditions.

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."

Of course. But which of us hasn't seized gleefully on something said by our
enemies, and blown it out of proportion? Indeed it strikes me that Walter is
doing this very thing himself.
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