[Marxism] What is capitalism? Reply to Jurriaan

["Jurriaan Bendien" <andromeda246@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks very much Tom for your extensive reply - obviously it wil take me a
while to respond to it... just as you took a while to respond to my brief
notes. But I will do so as soon as I am able.

I don't claim to have any monopoly of the truth here or a special hotline to
what Marx really thought, but regardless of whether I am right or wrong, it
seems to me we ought to be able to say what capitalism (the capitalist mode
of production) consists of and when it exists, and doesn't exist. After all,
if most citizens in the Soviet Union as well as in the West believed this
society was some kind of (state-) socialist system, at the very least since
the Brezhnev era, whereas in truth it was state capitalist (as Cliff
argued), there is a serious problem, i.e. these Soviet people were incapable
of understanding the basic nature of their own society, and most Western
critics were wrong too.  By implication, if this is true, in future people
could also be thinking they were building socialism whereas in reality they
were building a form of capitalism, and in that event, socialist strategy
lacks any credible foundation, it's more a kind of hoax or delusion.

However, as I think I commented before, the trouble with state capitalism
theories (which incidentally date back to the late 19th century in Germany,
and of which there were many versions, not just Cliff/Gluckstein's) is that
even if it cannot be proved that they meet Marx's criteria for what
capitalism is, then it can still be argued that the state capitalism is just
another form of capitalism. So in that sense, the debate cannot be
definitely resolved I think, since in that case, any industrialised society
lacking workers' democratic control of the state and industry must by
definition be some kind of capitalism. But more about that later...

Jurriaan


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