Re: of interest, part 4/notes and thinking

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

>'Over the next three to five years all the oligarchs will either sell the 
assets and leave Russia, or they will joint-venture these assets like BP-TNK,' 
says Stephen Jennings, head of Renaissance Capital, a Moscow-based investment 
bank. 'Most Russian businesses are for sale at the right price right now.'

The oligarchs ... used their connections and skills to grab control of the 
lion's share of Russia's national resources.  In some companies, Soviet-era 
bosses known as 'red directors' managed to transfer their de factio control 
into 
real ownership....[talk about administering the impulse to capitalist 
restoration.....]. <


Comment

And knowledge gained from administering is a material force. Then all these 
ingredients required military force - private armies, to effect a change in the 
property relations. The state of the Soviet Union did not collapse on the 
basis of just internal pressure for change but under the ideological assault of 
imperialism, escalating military threats and aggressions from imperialism, the 
inability to leap from the industrial phase to post industrial society and the 
spontaneous regeneration of the caricature of the bourgeoisie.

That is the state broke down and fractured. Th insurrectionary movement took 
place that brought a political grouping to power. The laws governing property 
relations had to be overturned and "they" still fighting with the former 
Soviet peasantry over land as private property. None of this is in "the book." 
How 
are the peasantry going to allow themselves to be disposed from the land by 
capital when that is their fight as petty bourgeois producers? It is one thing 
to be compelled into unequal exchange and a lot different to be kicked off the 
land and sent into the city where you already know employment opportunity is 
limtited to non-existent. 
 
Private armies were organized, that often competed with a section of military 
intelligence - KGB, over ownership of properties in the infrastructure. The 
agencies of the state fractured into groupings, with oil emerging as dominate 
because of its material connection with the world value producing system and 
its fundamentality to industrial production. One of the lessons for us is that 
intelligence is in the last instance loyal to itself. This fact of life will 
help us and hurt us, but in the last instance "intelligence" will "flip." 

I agree with and like the formulation "administering the impulse to 
capitalist restoration..." as applied to the bureaucracy and the historic 
reality of 
Soviet life: "administer," "impulse" and "restore." The impulse is the law of 
value, which comes into existence as a feature of property and evolves through 
various phases and stages of human history. Public property in the industrial 
infrastructure - organized as state ownership of means of production and land, 
and even its political form as the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is still 
a property relationship.  Public property relations in industry - protected by 
the state, and administered through government and non-government form of 
organizations, cannot halt the law of value but limit its scope in society. 

Communism is the positive abolition of all property and not just private 
property. It was Frederick Engels who discovered the trajectory of the law of 
value and its residual existence in the administration of things and stated 
such 
in "The History of the Working Class In England" and repeated this in a 
footnote in "Anti-Dühring."  It was Marx who unraveled the entire process - law 
of 
value, as it evolved on the basis of bourgeois property. 

The "red directors" - bosses, in the Soviet Union were "red" because they 
were compelled under the threat of force to administer and not because they 
were 
ideological communists or Marxist for that matter. Anyone can get a "party 
card" in any country on earth by requesting one and carrying out the minimum 
responsibility. In history the "Red director" is an excretion of the state - 
shit, 
as is all administrators. 

Administration by definition means the organization of a layer of society 
empowered with the right to impact the life of the individual. In this sense we 
are dealing with a historical category. 

Engels and the Marxists criticized the anarchists, not for their views but 
for their practical politics, which made their views concrete. Today the issue 
is clear. Technology destroys bureaucracy in human history as opposed to simply 
the intense "ideological struggle." 

Putin - loyal soldier of the state and representative of the bourgeoisie and 
bourgeois property relations in Russia, has his back to the ocean. As a man of 
the intelligence apparatus of the state, he is not going to get "his feet 
wet." A struggle against corruption has the potential to open a can of worms 
and 
unleash powerful social forces in Russia. The oligarchy of money did not 
spontaneously find themselves in possession of wealth as property, but stole 
the 
wealth and property using military force. The oligarchy is terrified of the 
state and the masses. These former administrators are in fact an excretion of 
the 
state, existing more than less outside the boundary of this organization of 
violence, although the legendary bribery continues. 

The money - capitalist/bourgeois oligarchy is not the state and they 
understand this better than we do. In yesteryear the state proper and 
government - a 
different administrative agency, appeared combined on the basis of the 
intelligence apparatus and the personnel of the Soviet party. 

I am not very clear on this currency matter yet, but without the ruble being 
convertible on a world scale as a store of value - "fictionist value," opting 
for the Euro as the conduit for international trade in oil seems desirable to 
the rats - as they exist under the looming power of the state proper. Even if 
the ruble were declared the medium of exchange for Russian oil this would only 
strengthen the Russian economy - exchange between the consumers and owners 
and broaden the basis for taxes on the Russian people. This would happen 
because 
the countries purchasing Russian oil only have material goods to trade - the 
technological transfer, no matter what currency is used. 

In other words I think we are hitting the historical wall. If money is not 
worth anything except the paper it is printed on and no universal substance - 
gold that represents human laboring, underlay money, then what are we talking 
about? We are talking about exchange that has become polarized from value or 
you 
would say price has become polarized - separated, from value. 
__________________

Yes, I ruled out an inter-imperialist struggle for most of my life but things 
change. This is not the era of Nixon or even the 1980s or 1990s. Regional 
blocks are drifting together. 
I do not understand this matter of currency where I am comfortable but don't 
have to. Screw the currency in a pinch and look at the property relations.  


>.As owners, the Russians now have a strong incentive to bring foreigners in 
and convert their winnings from the great privatization scramble into cash.  
Mr. Jennings...[said]:  'These guys had a particular advantage in stealing 
assets, in grabbing assets, in controlling assets... But they don't have the 
skill 
to manage these assets to international quality.' <


"They" do not have the skill or apparatus to manage their assets and money in 
the international capital markets. I am betting that short term Putin is 
going to take some of their money and ensure his reelection, i.e., crack down 
on 
corruption. The rats are ensuing they have an escape hatch. The struggle 
between the workers and the bourgeoisie has been very violent in the former 
Soviet 
Union. 


Melvin P. 





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