PEN-L message, Re: Soviet

Hi M,

You said:

I do not belive a transition to socialism is possible. I believe the transition is to communism and what happened in the Soviet union was the development of an industrial infrastructure where the social power of capital was not organized in the form of individual owners in competition and whose competition creates the circuit of investment for capital.

Reply:

So then what would the salient difference between socialist transition and communist transition be ?

You said:

That is to say I do not subscribe to the idea that socialism is an economic system. Socialism is at best a political form of property relations. I do not mind the tag of Stalinist, although 99% of what I write has nothing to do with Stalin or his formulations. All industrialization is "forced."

Reply:

Perhaps you could argue that all industrialisation up till now has been forced, even so, (1) there is a big difference between free wage labour, forced labour, prison labour and slave labour, and (2) future industrialisation might have quite a different pattern. Let me put it this way: there are a number of branches of industry now where one corporation operating in one or a few countries can produce the output requirements of the entire world at a level of productivity that's difficult to beat. That changes the whole pattern of industrialisation for newly industrialising countries by that fact alone. At stake is the amount of freedom and development opportunities which the worker actually has. Basically Soviet industrialisation was achieved to a large extent at the expense of workers' consumption and civil rights, causing not only a large amount economic irrationality and waste, human misery etc. but also terrible ecological problems; i.e. maximising popular democracy isn't simply a luxury, but essential to wellfunctioning social planning and a population motivated to improve society. Socialism in my view isn't simply about property relations, it's about creating a society fit for people to live in, optimising human development and raising the cultural level of humanity.