Re: [Marxism] If Marxism is a Science...

[Jscotlive@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 02/12/2005 05:12:48 GMT Standard Time,
deeseekyou@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:

> The conclusion
> Cliff came to was that, despite the many differences, there was a
> fundamental similarity in the extraction of surplus value from a
> working class alienated from the means of production by a privileged
> caste of people. More specifically, Cliff recognized that bureaucratic
> state capitalism was, in his word, a partial negation of capitalism


Reply:

The question of whether or not the Soviet Union was in transition from
semi-fuedalism and embryonic capitalism to socialism is fundamental to this
discussion. Without taking into account the starting point of the former SU 
there can
be no principled analysis of what it became. It was a backward, semi-fuedal
state with no heavy industry to speak of and only a smattering of light
industry. In short order it went through a major imperialist war, a revolution, 
 a
civil war and then, some twenty years later, another war for its very survival.
State Cappers never seem to attribute much importance to any one of these
seismic events, never mind all four, in how the country's political, economic 
and
social structures developed. The point wasn't to extract surplus value from
workers alienated from their labor. This is a lazy resort to Marxist-speak, 
which
is non-Marxist in application and design. Surplus Value is profit extracted
by those who control the means the production. Capitalism is the private
ownership of those means or it is nothing. The Soviet Union was a command 
economy
where labor was militarized in order to develop the nations ability to crush the
external, and real, threat of both military and economic intervention. The
Surplus Value of which you speak, where did it go? Did it go into high interest
bank accounts overseas? Did it go into financial markets to generate more
capital? Did it do any of the things which surplus value actually does in order 
to
self perpetuate?

The answer is no. In the former SU there was no internal market as such.
Consumer goods were produced and distributed, using price controls, under a
planned system. Currency was generated by producing export goods for trade
externally with the West. A high social wage substituted and bolstered the 
income of
workers, which was pegged according to prices (at least until the bubble burst
due to the continued focus on heavy industry and weapons production and the
resulting scarcity of consumer goods which sent prices sky high in relation to
income).

The former SU was a post-capitalist society, defined by the militarization of
labor and rigid control of production, distribution and prices. It was a
garrison state, configured to meet the threat posed by capitalist encirclement, 
in
which a bureaucracy enjoyed a privileged existence that wasn't tied to income
or control of the economy, but rather was tied to access and usage of State
property and amenities.

JD
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