RE: Forwarded from Tom O'Lincoln (state capitalism)

[Greg Schofield <gschofield@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Comrade Tom, more needs to be discussed more widely about socialism and
state capitalism, it is far more pertinent than is generally acknowledged.

Recently I submitted a very odd (from most positions) article on topics
arising from the state-capitalist thesis, available at the UCC site
(http://www.ucc.org.uk/) it is included in The Red Star PDF
(http://www.ucc.org.uk/RS/RS1.pdf) and a message board for discussion has
just this morning been put up (http://disc.server.com/Indices/153947.html).

I would therefore agree in general with your last paragraph:

"Neither the Cliff version or the Trotsky version of this is entirely
satisfying now, given Russian stalinism proved to be a transition back to
market capitalism; but that's another discussion."

But how far has Russia actually receded?

Perhaps there are more historical ironies than we supposed?

We live in an age when nearly all the means of production have become
mediated through the state via public companies. The old bourgeoisie have
expropriated themselves:

 From the Grundrisse "The Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation"

"One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralization,
or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an
ever-extending scale, the co-operative form of the labour process... Along
with the constantly diminishing number of magnates of capital, who usurp
and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the
mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degredation, exploitation; but with
this too grows the revolt of the working-class... The monopoly of capital
becomes a fetter upon THE MODE OF PRODUCTION [my emphasis] which has sprung
up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of
production and the socialzation of labour at last reach a point where they
become incompatible with their capitalist integument [skin shell]. This
itegument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property
sounds. The expropriators are expropriated."

I consider that while we talk about and think about capitalism more in
terms of its classical past than of its present, we have not as whole taken
into account, politically and theoretically, what has happened over the
last fifty years - the effective socialisation of the means of production
by capitalists and their transformation into a share-holding rent class.

If anyone is interested in such a topic I would only be too willing to respond.

Greg Schofield
Perth Australia