i used to agree with the theory of state monopoly capitalism, but right now I have some problems with it:

I understand that the most well thought version of that theory, which is the left communist one, is that rather than it being just an isolated phenomenon of past "socialist" countries, state-capital (nationalized industries and welfare) is a widespread phenomenon adapted by most countries today. however, the only state capitalist nation states are the ones that adopt state capital as its main economic base, this includes late 19th century and early 20th century Japan, late 19th century Russia, and every-nation were most of the bourgeosie was merged with the state. Fascist Italy and perhaps Nazi Germany (dont know much about nazi economics) also were predominantly state capitalist counties.

However, the thing is that countries like Japan differed in their economic model with "socialist" countries in the sense that economy was driven by market values rather than by what was needed inside the nation Stalinist industralization was not driven by external market prices, it was driven by the resources needed by the soviet population at that time. This is a fundamental difference, and this is why state-bourgeosie in places like Japan and early russians were much more richer than soviet bureacrats.

Another difference is that socialist bureacrats were never that rich to other type of capitalists. If those bureacrats would be driven entirely by profit as normal capitalists, they would certainly would have been a hell of a lot richer.

Don't misinterpret me though, I dont think past "socialist" countries were really socialist, because there wasn't much workers' control. Today's dictatorship, the dictatorship of the bourgeosie, does have direct bourgeois control, were the bourgeosie directly CONTROLS the means of production, not through mediation, but through direct control.

This raises an important question:

What were past "socialist" experiments then?

^^^ I think there's a thread on this already (mine on stamocap). October was revolutionary-democratic, as I reiterated in the stamocap thread. However, I pointed out the need for the socialist revolution to make uniform across the world the ownership structure in that thread. Feel free to comment.



One more thing: there is a HUGE difference between "state capitalism" and "state MONOPOLY capitalism."

no there is not. state monopoly capitalism is its full name. state capitalism is a meaningless term because all capitalist countries need a state to act as the muscle of the bourgeosie.

edit: actially nvm it is, i was talking about state capitalism. still, i think it should be called stamocap too, because state capitalism sounds redundant.

^^^ IMO, modern stamocap is where the state has ALL means of production and ALL other commanding heights at its disposal, but has not reached socialism yet. Furthermore, primitive stamocap states need not pursue a road to socialism. Hence, Nasser, whom Khrushchev opportunistically called a "socialist," was merely a primitive stamocap person (51% ownership schemes similar to mine, minus the additional leverage and the explicit desire to enact DOP).

Otherwise, I do agree with you on your problems with the ORIGINAL stamocap theory. To call even Roosevelt's New Deal "stamocap" is really wrong (no nationalizations, and not as much effective control as Fascist Italy and ESPECIALLY Nazi Germany).

Now, what about my stuff?

[There's my "paramount contribution" to socialist theory - NOT! ]

The absence of a large market economy does not preclude it from being capitalist. If there was capital--and there was--then the economy was capitalist.

Well, I am not really familiar with early 20th/late 19th century Japan's economic history, and I would really question whether it was state capitalist or not.

Regardless, you still have Italy and Germany to fall back on as examples.

One flaw with this problem you have is that: just because Germany and Italy exported goods and imported goods does not equate to there being a "freer" market.

The state still ran the show for domestic industry in Italy and Germany.

The "socialist" nations were a little different because they didn't have this export/import market. They didn't really have the option to have one with the West, so they kind of had one among themselves.

Does that really change the fact that there was wage-labor and surplus value? No. So it doesn't really change the fact that this was capitalism.

But "being rich" doesn't change the bureaucrat's class status.

If you live off of the labor-power of the workers alone, you're bourgeois.

Arguably, the bureaucrats were petit bourgeoisie because they also "worked"; however, their "work" would be no different than any other capitalist's: try and get the capital to be as effective as possible.

But as I've said, being rich is irrelevant to your relation to the means of production and labor!

And that is what determines what class you are, not wealth!

Interesting. You recognise that it is the relation to the means of production that is important in determining class, and yet, you still think Russia was state capitalist in the Stalinist period. The bureaucrats did not own the means of production. They could not do as they wished with the means of production, and their children could not inherit their advantages. Indeed, the restoration of capitalism was part driven by the very desire for bureaucrats to be able to pass down their privilege. If a bureaucrat wanted to use their administrative powers in the way that a capitalist is able to, a new bureaucrat would most likely be appointed in his place. This relation to the means of production is completely different from the relation of the capitalist to the means of production.

In the soviet union we have no internal market, no external market, but a planned economy. These "wages" that workers received for their "labour-power" were not based upon the laws of value as Marx described it. The fact is that the Soviet Union had 100% employment virtually. There was no industrial reserve army. Capitalism could not survive under such circumstances, as the reserve army is the only thing capable of driving down wages in the anarchy of capitalism. This was a planned economy.

In no manner is this capitalism. We have similarities, yes. We have a world-power playing politics. We have a group in society leeching off privileges. But the law of value is not realised, and for all intents and purposes we have a socialist economy in which the political power of the proletariat has been usurped by bureaucrats. This is called the deformed worker's state.

It is not about it being a "freer market", it is about commodity production being influenced by the market, rather than what is needed by society.

Hm.

Yes, and the state also ran the economy in Ancient Sumeria and in the Incan Empire.

You are right, and I didn't deny that there was an opressed proletariat.

However, wouldn't it be more sensical to establish a different mode of production for past "socialist" societies, because they differed in some fundamental ways to the other "freer market" societies?

Even the socialist revolutions werent carreed on by bourgeois cadre, they were lead by petty bourgeois cadre. In the capitalist revolution, it was the merchants who actually funded those revolutions.

And this is where I disagree and where my problem with state capitalism is.

They werent trying to get capital as effective as possible, because if they had tried doing this, they would have been much more richer. You could argue they were benevolent to much of the proletariat...

However, a benevolent bourgeois is still a bourgeois, but still, you dont see that kind of nature in the bourgeosie as a class.

[Quote[
And that is what determines what class you are, not wealth![Quote]

Yes, and noblemen also lived from peasants' labor.

Living from someone's labor is not enough to make someone bourgeois. A big difference between noble landowners and the bourgeois is that landowners didn't produce commodities to sell, and thus buy more capital in order to have more profits. They just had many people working for them and building their shit etc.

Still, you may be right though, but what bothers me is that the soviet bureacrats behaved very differently in the way that they weren't as profit driven as capitalists in other countries.


hmmmm

I still need to think about this.

Think of the USSR as a giant bureaucrat corporation with no capitalist at the head, the managers not found of the idea of turning power to the workers focus on maintaining (and sometime expanding) their privileged positions.

Khrushchev was trying to make the USSR focus on the accumulation of capital (he told the west the USSR would bury the west in productivity) that led to Brezhnev that represented ruling class of the USSR that wanted stability, over time that stability was taken away when the profits for the USSR fell and the ruling class nothing to lose with fully embracing capitalism.

I think the best way to describe the USSR is a co-op capitalist state where the ruling class shared the the profit. As for workers, during the 60's the workers in the west saw gains so was the west becoming less capitalist?

Darg this is a long post.
Well if you say so

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They could not do as they wished with the means of production, and their children could not inherit their advantages.

No, it was bequeathed to other party bureaucrats.

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Indeed, the restoration of capitalism was part driven by the very desire for bureaucrats to be able to pass down their privilege. If a bureaucrat wanted to use their administrative powers in the way that a capitalist is able to, a new bureaucrat would most likely be appointed in his place.

The bureaucrat's handbook (I kid you not) says otherwise, quoted below.

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This relation to the means of production is completely different from the relation of the capitalist to the means of production.

Do you have any statistics to back this assertion up?

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In the soviet union we have no internal market, no external market, but a planned economy. These "wages" that workers received for their "labour-power" were not based upon the laws of value as Marx described it.

The "wages" that people were given were based on what then?

How do you explain the Base Wage Differential then?

As Neumann pointed out: "The preponderance of the performance wage brings the problem of wage differentials into the forefront of social policy. It is essential that this problem be understood not as an economic question but as the crucial political problem of mass control ... Wage differentiation is the very essence of National Socialist wage policy ... the wage policy is consciously aimed at mass manipulation." (Emphasis added; See F. Neumann, Behemoth, London 1942, pp.353.)

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The fact is that the Soviet Union had 100% employment virtually. There was no industrial reserve army. Capitalism could not survive under such circumstances, as the reserve army is the only thing capable of driving down wages in the anarchy of capitalism.

Hey hey, guess what? The Soviet Union didn't survive.

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But the law of value is not realised, and for all intents and purposes we have a socialist economy in which the political power of the proletariat has been usurped by bureaucrats. This is called the deformed worker's state.

Well, gee, the political environment couldn't be a reflection of the economy.

Is that why Soviet Economics textbooks started including things like “One-man management [is] the most important principle of the organisation of socialist economy” (See L. Gintzburg and E. Pashukanis, Course of Soviet Economic Law (Russian), Moscow 1935, Vol.1, p.8.)?

They were just retaining power in the hands of one man...the proletariat?

Hell, look at the plant manuals (how cute is that, a manual on how to run a factory!): "Each plant has a leader – the plant manager – endowed with the full power of decision, hence fully responsible for everything.” (See E.L. Granovski and B.L. Markus (eds.) The Economics of Socialist Industry (Russian), Moscow 1940, p.579.)

The workers really do run the show! Oh, no wait, this sounds little more than having a class of petit bourgeoisie!

But they can't give inheritance. As though that were the determinant factor between socialism and capitalism: inheritance!

Sure, you can keep exploitation, effective ownership of property, wage-slavery...but not inheritance.

Only then have you "gone too far".

Marmot

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Marmot

Well then Nazi Germany wasn't capitalist because of it's four year plans apparently.

But surplus value is unique only to the capitalist mode of production, which is why state run

Perhaps, but the various modes of production aren't supposed to be rigid, impermeable epochs.

Even then, what would it be?

Given that the Soviet Union industrialized a feudal nation, and essentially delivered a capitalist state (I'm referring here to "modern" Russia), it had something in common with capitalism.

Take into account that how this was done was very much similar to how Marx described the Division of Labour and Manufacture.

Well, "kind nature" didn't really exist for the party bureaucrats.

Considering that "Any change in wages ... may be brought about only by government decision." (See Professionalnye Soiuzy (monthly organ of the trade unions), Moscow 1947, Nos.2.)

But the feudal aristocracy lived by owning laborers and having them work agricultural jobs on large tracts of land.

On the other hand, capitalists purchase labor-power and have workers produce commodities.

It's really more of a matter of living off of labor-power as opposed to labor (a distinction made at least in Marxist economics).

Further, from the looks of the data from the Soviet Union, it does appear that they were concerned with the accumulation of capital more than the well being of a proletariat.

Just look at the following plans for the accumulation of capital:
(See I Plan, Vol.I, p.20; V.P. Diachenko (ed.) Finance and Credit in USSR (Russian), Moscow 1938, p.184; IV Plan, p.9; National Economy of USSR (Russian), Moscow 1948, Vol.II, p.185)

Oddly enough, the productivity of the worker was going up as the average number of "food baskets" was going down:
But this second statistic is just a fancy aside.

If there are wage-laborers, there must be capitalists (petit bourgeois or bourgeois). Who else are they selling their wage-labor to?

And labor-power is considered a commodity when two conditions are fulfilled: 1) when the laborer has no other means to survive other than selling his labor, and 2) the wage-laborer is free to sell his labor-power (as opposed to feudal systems where the laborer was owned and he had no choice).

Considering that the party bureaucrat did not render any productive labor, that would disqualify him from the first condition of selling his labor-power as a commodity.

The manufacturing (and later, industrial) worker had no choice but sell his labor-power in order to survive. He was also free to work in whatever sector he wished, though ultimately it's akin to working at any company that's owned by the same corporation.

Regardless, he had to sell his labor-power to live, but he was "free" to decide how to expend his labor-power. Those are the conditions for labor-power to be considered a commodity.

It's irrelevant whom owns the means of production. If production involves wage-labor, exchange, surplus value, etc. then the form of production is capitalist.

ComradeRed, your naysaying sounds too much like Desai's Marx's Revenge, no?

Actually, this is the first I'm hearing about it. But from what I google searched, the reviews seem to indicate that it's more of a bourgeois economist adopting the tools of Marxism to apologize for capitalism rather than anything serious.

I'm just assessing this situation with a critical mindset using empirical data.

You know what they say: the truth hurts.

It's easy to throw history in the dustbin and talk about capitalism in the Soviet Union, but it's an abdication of our responsibility to treat the history of the last great period of revolutions seriously.

In your opinion, are unions capitalist corporations? The bureaucrats, parasites as they are, live off the productive labour of their members. The unions are even legally registered as corporate entities.

Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, there's more to this than meets the eye? Would a union that has been hijacked by a parasitic caste and attacks all the democratic structures within count as a degenerated organ of working class power? Or is it bourgeois?

In the Soviet Union, there wasn't something that could be colour-coded simply, here this makes them capitalist, oh and that over... that makes them state-capitalist! This was a living society, with an actual balance of powers within. Limits of the social structure were stretched, to the point were it took on certain elements of the old world. The right wing took over in a workers' state, and degenerated it. But overthrowing the very economic foundations of that state did not come easily, and was not on the agenda until very late on.

Skimming off the top is not the definition of capitalism, corruption exists in a workers' state where workers are on the retreat and parasites fill the void. Where inheritance comes in, is when skimming off the top is transformed to an actual class dynamic of ownership. The issue of petty-bourgeois state managers vs. bourgeois owners of the means of production, which you paper over, is an essential one. The existence of the petty-bourgeoisie in Russia is not denied, and its vast power in the role that it took as a bureaucratic caste is a symptom of, and contributed to, the degeneration of the workers' state. Socialism was never reached in the Soviet Union, but it was a society that was clearly in a state of flux which had broken with capital, but had not solidified its gains.

The petty-bourgeoisie took the perspective of power, of transforming themselves into a full-blown owner class, but only after 50 years of their defacto rule in the state and constant hammering at the working class to ensure no one would challenge them when they did it.

But until then, no capitalist class existed.

If the bureaucrats in the Soviet Union constituted a new ruling class, then they were the first ruling class in the history of earth to give up their power peacefully.

Attempts to construct and maintain socialism under very poor conditions.

So they gave power to the workers after they stole it in the first place?

If one-man management and all of the "experts" and "advisors" are not petty-bourgeois and ruling over the working class, then I don't know what it is then.

It seems they gave up power to the bourgeoisie... and also that they merged into it.

Luís Henrique

Well, taking a class outlook, I'm not sure that that can be contested.

But the bourgeoisie? I mean, take Stalin for example, he was the petty-bourgeoisie in flesh and blood!

Stalinists gripe about him being so glorious because he fought the Kulaks, but they fail to understand that since the Kulaks were part of the rural petty-bourgeoisie, Stalin's class interests sided with the urban petty-bourgeoisie.

Everyone here I think is taking this last period of bourgeois revolutions in feudal nations very seriously.

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In your opinion, are unions capitalist corporations? The bureaucrats, parasites as they are, live off the productive labour of their members. The unions are even legally registered as corporate entities.

The unions of the soviet system were actually the inspiration for modern corporate practices, curiously enough.

I would consider a union more like a corporate state than a corporation.

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Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, there's more to this than meets the eye? Would a union that has been hijacked by a parasitic caste and attacks all the democratic structures within count as a degenerated organ of working class power? Or is it bourgeois? In the Soviet Union, there wasn't something that could be colour-coded simply, here this makes them capitalist, oh and that over... that makes them state-capitalist! This was a living society, with an actual balance of powers within. Limits of the social structure were stretched, to the point were it took on certain elements of the old world. The right wing took over in a workers' state, and degenerated it. But overthrowing the very economic foundations of that state did not come easily, and was not on the agenda until very late on.

This supposes that the union was socialist to begin with.

Were the material conditions for Russia at the time of the revolution really suitable for socialism?

Marx himself notes that the conditions necessary are:

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This "alienation" [caused by private property] can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an "intolerable" power, i.e. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity "propertyless", and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development. And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced; and furthermore, because only with this universal development of productive forces is a universal intercourse between men established, which produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of the "propertyless" mass (universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of the others, and finally has put world-historical, empirically universal individuals in place of local ones. Without this: (1) communism could only exist as a local event; (2) the forces of intercourse themselves could not have developed as universal, hence intolerable powers: they would have remained home-bred conditions surrounded by superstition; and (3) each extension of intercourse would abolish local communism.

Karl Marx, The German Ideology --emphasis added

The empirical data out on the economic power of Tsarist Russia in the early 20th century seems to indicate that it is far from having an advanced productive power.

From An Economic History of Twentieth-Century Europe by Ivan T. Berend:

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Originally posted by Berend+ pg. 34--> (Berend @ pg. 34)Russia, a great European power and military giant, preserved its traditional agriculture (Liashchenko, 1952). It more or less stagnated in the 1890s, and output even decreased on a per capita basis. Overtaxed and exploited by the state, it provided a rather weak and fragile domestic market. [...] [Russian] GDP levels were still rather low in 1913, at only 71%, 60%, and 40% of the Hungarian, Italian, and average Western European levels, respectively. Russian modernization was thus a partial failure, but at least industrialization had begun.[/b]

--emphasis added

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Originally posted by Berend+ pg. 34--> (Berend @ pg. 34)Poland, Finland, and the Baltic counties [...] began to industrialize in response to export opportunities presented by Russian markets. Measured by per capita output, these countries also achieved growth rates twice as high as their Russian counterparts and were able to build agrarian-industrial economies.[/b]

--emphasis added

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Originally posted by Berend@ pg. 38 The gap between the West on the one hand and Southern and Eastern Europe on the other remained wide and, regarding Southern Europe, even broadened. Industrialization had more or less failed in this region. Agricultural employment continued to dominate, at 75-80% of the active population in Russia and the Balkans, and 55-70% in Italy, Portugal, Hungary, Poland, and Spain. Industrial employment remained below one-fifth of total employment, and industrial output accounted for less than one quarter of GDP by 1910 (Berend and Ranki, 1982: 159).

--emphasis added

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Originally posted by Berend@ pg. 39 Most the the countries of Southern and Eastern Europe, though they tried to adopt the Western model of laissez-faire policies, were increasingly unable to generate successful industrialization.

--emphasis added

From these excerpts alone, it appears that Tsarist Russia didn't have the proper material conditions to bring about a worker's revolution (particularly because 80% of the population was peasantry).

Why would there be a worker's revolution in a feudal nation? There has never been a coherent answer to this question. Marx seemed to point out what follows from feudalism is capitalism.

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Marx Although the formation of capital and the capitalist mode of production rest essentially on both the ending of the feudal mode of production and the expropriation of the peasants, handicraftsmen, and in general on the ending of the mode of production which rests on the private property of the direct producer in his conditions of production; although the capitalist mode of production, once it is introduced, develops in the same proportion as that form of private property is done away with, along with the mode of production founded on it, hence to the degree that those direct producers are expropriated in the name of the concentration of capital (centralisation); although that process of expropriation which is later repeated systematically in the clearing of estates, in part introduces; as an act of violence, the capitalist mode of production, both the theory of the capitalist mode of production (political economy, the philosophy of law, etc.) and the capitalist himself in his conception of the matter like to confuse the capitalist's form of property and appropriation, which rests on the appropriation of alien labour in its progress and, essentially, on the expropriation of the direct producer, with the above-mentioned mode of production which on the contrary presupposes the private property of the direct producer in his conditions of production — a presupposition under which the capitalist mode of production in agriculture and manufacture, etc., would be impossible — and therefore also like to present every attack on the capitalist form of appropriation as an attack on the other kind of property, the property that has been worked for, indeed an attack on all property. Of course they always experience great difficulty in presenting the expropriation of the mass of working people from their property as the vital condition for property which rests on labour. [By the way, private property of that form always implies at least slavery for the members of the family, who are used and exploited to the full by the head of the family.] The general legal conception, from Locke to Ricardo, is therefore that of petty-bourgeois property, while the relations of production they actually describe belong to the capitalist mode of production. What makes this possible is the relation of buyer and seller, which remains the same formally in both forms. With all these writers one finds the following duality: 1) economically they oppose private property resting on labour, and show the advantages of the expropriation of the mass [of workers] and the capitalist mode of production; 2) but ideologically and legally the ideology of private property resting on labour is transferred without further ado to property resting on the expropriation of the direct producer.

--emphasis is Marx's, from Marx's 1864 Manuscripts on the Results of the Direct Production Process.

Or perhaps maybe just maybe, based on the figures on Tsarist Russia and the empirically observed outcome of the various revolutions bringing the Bolsheviks to power, it looks like it's a capitalist state because it is a capitalist state.

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CyM

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@ Skimming off the top is not the definition of capitalism, corruption exists in a workers' state where workers are on the retreat and parasites fill the void. Where inheritance comes in, is when skimming off the top is transformed to an actual class dynamic of ownership. The issue of petty-bourgeois state managers vs. bourgeois owners of the means of production, which you paper over, is an essential one. The existence of the petty-bourgeoisie in Russia is not denied, and its vast power in the role that it took as a bureaucratic caste is a symptom of, and contributed to, the degeneration of the workers' state. Socialism was never reached in the Soviet Union, but it was a society that was clearly in a state of flux which had broken with capital, but had not solidified its gains.

Perhaps, but considering 80% of the population was peasantry, that would prevent capitalist production from occurring as Marx noted:

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Marx

(Das Kapital, Chapter 13). Supposing that the other 20% of the population of pre-Soviet Russia was entirely industrial proletariat, it wouldn't be a capitalist mode of production.

Well, making all party members simply petit bourgeoisie is a bit unjustified. They were at the very least petit bourgeois, the higher ranking party members were bourgeois.

Just looking over a few statistics here: in 1923, a mere 29% of the factory directors were in the party. Whereas in 1925 (you know, after that small victory for Stalin), 73.7% of the members of the members of the managing boards of trusts, 81.5% of those on the boards of syndicates, and 95% of the directors of large enterprises were party members(!). (See A.S. Bubnov and others, The All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (Russian), Moscow-Leningrad 1931, page 626)

Wait, it gets better! In 1936 this figure raises to somewhere in between 97.5% to 99.1% of these chaps were in the party, and for the chiefs of trusts this figure is 100% (See USSR, The Land of Socialism (Russian), Moscow 1936, p.94.)

These aren't petit bourgeois positions that I'm telling you about, these are bourgeois positions.

They did their jobs phenomenally well for a young capitalist state, fastest job done in history.

Again then, they were a bourgeoisie that was the first bourgeoisie in the history of capitalism to give up their power peacefully.

They simply gave up their state without a fight, against all historical precedent.

It was semi-feudal, for one..

Then there's thing about imperialism, which Lenin pointed out (in his most significant contribution to communist theory).

He wasn't as mechanical in his application of historical materialism as you are.. He saw for the possibility of revolutions happening in less developed countries, but said they must spread to the more developed countries to be successful: "Any upheaval in economic relations in any country of the European continent, in the whole European continent without England, is a storm in a teacup. Industrial and commercial relations within each nation are governed by its intercourse with other nations, and depend on its relations with the world market. But the world market is dominated by England and England is dominated by the bourgeoisie." (Marx, 1849)