[PEN-L:32370] Re: Resnick and Wolff on USSR (from A List)

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

 In a message dated 11/18/02 3:34:57 AM Pacific Standard Time, michael.keaney@xxxxxx writes:

> John Gulick wrote:
>
> the "state capitalism" thesis (advanced by both the News and Letters gang
> and the Rethinking Marxism crowd, among others) is a sorry artifact of
> political convenience and intellectual laziness. Basically, the line is
> argued by the type of person who (for reasons good or bad) acknowledges that
> the USSR was never a classless society, and at the same time (for reasons
> good or bad) worries that acknowledging this will discredit socialism as
> inherently authoritarian-bureaucratic, hence the not-so-clever device of
> "state capitalism." But holy hell, how could the USSR be capitalist? This
> is an utterly absurd proposition. We could probably argue until we're blue
> in the face about what the underlying organizational principle of a
> capitalist economy and society are, but let it be said that a capitalist
> economy and society requires some combination of the following institutional
> features, none of which the USSR (to my admittedly scanty knowledge) had.
>
> See http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/a-list/2002w36/msg00035.htm
>
> -----
>
> Stan Goff also raised this book a while ago, but no one has come back to
> provide a review of it, yet. Maybe I can encourage someone to do so. The
> latest Monthly Review features a page advert for Resnick &Wolff's study of
> the USSR, "Class Theory and History", featuring laudatory quotes from
> prominent Marxist academics including Howard Sherman, Victor Lippit, Bertell
> Ollman and Guglielmo Carchedi -- author of what I think must be the most
> tedious and unnecessarily scholastic book I have ever read, cover to cover
> ("For Another Europe"). Carchedi describes it as "class analysis at its
> best". Since "For Another Europe" was supposed to be a class analysis of
> European integration, this endorsement ranks lowly on my scale, but Ollman's
> strong recommendation makes me wonder. Has anyone here taken the plunge?
>
> Michael


Comment

Those claiming a Marxist approach or standpoint to examining the material life of society are burdened with the task of referencing Karl Marx and Frederick Engels writings to substantiate their assertion. Marx and Engels were of course revolutionaries, dividing their activity between study - theoretical work, and the practical activity of various social groups in society striving to reform or recast the "system" in their perceived favor. Marx and Engels took part in joining or forming organizations fighting to improve the lot of working people. 

This division between practical theoretical work and practical organizational activity means that Marxism as the science of society can be understood as consisting of theory - the historical abstraction or abstract understanding of why society changes, and a doctrine - the set of policy one uses to effect social change at a given point in time. 

Marx theory or approach to the self movement of matter has triumphed in every field of scientific thought and the term "dialectic" have entered the world lexicon on the street level. The world masses speak of "contradictions" as part of the world culture and revolutionary and reactionary alike openly embrace materialist dialectics. 

The doctrine of Marx, that is the policy aimed at giving organizational direction within the class struggle has not faired as well as Marx's theory. The reason is simple: as society changes in its fundamentality one policy must change in conformity. Then there is the very real question of the ideological sphere or the specific manner in which large groups of people in various countries and cultures think things out. Policy must speak in terms that people think things out or one ends up with an ineffective policy. 

It is of course absurd to present as a form of Marxist theory the proposition that the Soviet Union was a capitalist country or the ideological category called "state capitalism."  From the standpoint of the historical abstraction Marx is rather clear about the specific make-up of a society that is passing from the industrial production of the social product to a new mode of production wherein the sell and purchase of labor power is no longer the underpin for societal production. 

>From the standpoint of Marxist doctrine, J.V. Stalin's "Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR," describes in detail the policy of the proletariat in power, as it fights to give direction to the evolutionary development of the material power of the productive forces within the framework of industrial production. 

An industrial economy by definition is a value producing social formation - in transition, due to its historical emergence. Industrial society emerges from manufacturing, which emerges within the framework of a society undergoing transition in forms of wealth and societal production. All the revolution of the 20th century contains a common content: they were social responses to the transformation from agricultural society to industrial society. This century was an era of social and political revolutions as the transformation from agriculture to industry reached the economically less developed areas of the world. No matter what ones doctrine this general conclusion can hardly be disputed. 

Agriculture or a society in which the primary form of wealth is stored in land and the ownership of land constitutes a distinct mode of production whose political shell is called feudalism. The industrial revolution grew out of changes taking place within manufacturing and began its evolutionary leap as the result of Europeans landing in the Americas. Can you imagine the significance of transferring the form of wealth from the ownership of land to the ownership of gold? That's what really broke up feudalism and led to the development of heavy manufacturing. Shipbuilding, iron, steel industries and the enormously profitable slave trade - as well as navigation and the sciences in general, all developed as a means to exploit the riches of the Americas. 

The point is that industrial society emerged from manufacturing, in stages or underwent qualitative and quantitative expansion and growth. Capitalism as a distinct form of accumulation emerges on the basis of manufacturing and achieves world domination with the expansion of the industrial system of production. 

Marx and Engels hammered out a policy - doctrine, aimed at winning political power in society on behalf of the working class, as society underwent this profound transition from one mode of production to another. The Soviet revolution was the seizure of political power in Russia by representatives of the working class who sought to give a distinct political direction to the industrial revolution unfolding on Russian soil. 

Marx of course describes such a phase and political transition is his famous "Critique of the Gotha Program."  In Section 1:3, Marx is very clear in outlining the historical abstraction - the evolution of the value form, and the distinct difference between a lower and higher phase of the development of the material power of the production forces as it impact and organizes social relations - the laboring process. 

I cannot reframe from directly quoting Marx's words as theoretical justification of the above.

"What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor, which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another. 

"Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form."
(End of quote) 


Here is what I consider fundamental in assessing the actual state of production in the Soviet Union:

"the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, (but) . . . Content and form are changed, because (!!!) under the altered (!!!) circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption." 

"nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals," demand that the word "nothing" is defined. "Nothing" in this context means ownership of socially necessary means of production. That is to say no amount of money or wealth possession can be used to transfer ownership rights of socially necessary means of production to the individual. 

The idea that the Soviet Union was a "capitalism of a new type" or "state capitalism" - a purely ideological category, is not merely a misunderstanding but rejection and contempt for materialist dialectic as a method for unraveling transition. It is also a refusal to read what Marx has written and his theoretical standpoint as a frame of reference. 

The other various critiques of the Soviet Union's industrial economy runs from the absurd to the more absurd and are generally the ranting of ideological groups that prefer slogans like bureaucratic, degenerate workers state, socialism in one country and other such childishness. These ideological groups lack a Marxist standpoint on the commodity form, the evolution of value - which Engels observed as far back as 1845, and what is meant by transition from one mode of production to another. Socialism is not a mode of production, although one can state such - 50 years ago, within the realm of policy. 

There is of course the lame argument, which equates control of the means of production with ownership. Control is a function of bureaucracy called administration that in history evolves with the "feudal system" and reaches its highest state of evolution with the passing over from industrial production to the triumph - on a world scale, of a new mode of production, then control as such dies.   Ownership is a property right. 

None of this is to say that commodity production did not exist in the Soviet Union in its internal economy or its external trade relations with various capitalist states. This is another matter altogether. 

State capitalism as the Soviet Union? Gimme a break! 



Melvin P.