Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 08:47:21 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: M-TH: Stalin and industry



I have never understood the Cliffite version of the state capitalism
intrerpreetation of the USSR. Marx defines capitalism, itr seems to me
correctly, in terms of geberalized commodity production in which a
dispossesed working class produces stuff for wages that is sold by a
possessing class that owns the productive assets. Capitalism therefore
requires:

	1. Private ownership of productive assets
	2. Wage labor
	3. Markets (generalized commodity production).

The USSR did not have (1) or (3). Instead it had:

	1. State ownership of productive assets
	2. Wage labor.
	3. A command, nonmarket economy, governed by a plan.

The Cliffite line treats military conmpetition with the West as a
functional equivalent for markets. While such competition doubtless was
part of the motive for economic development in the USSR, it was not market
competition. It did not operate, for example, to minimize costs, increase
productivity, or put inefficient enterprises out of business. Its dynamics
were quite different from those of markets.

The Cliffite line also treats state ownership as sort of "collective"
private ownership of productive assets. The gain of truth in this idea is
that the productive assetrs were not opwned and controlled by the workers,
who had no real say in their management at either the point of production
or at the investment level. But this is not enough to make the ownership
and control of these assets private. While state officials did cream off
some of the surplus for their own private use, this was in the nature of
consumption rather than investment. They were more like rentiers than
xcapitalists.

I agree that the USSR was niot socialist. Socislism involves:

	1. Worker control of production
	2. Collective ownership of productive assets
	3. The abolition of wage labor.

The USSR lacked (1) and (3) and only approximated (2). Its nature is, in
my view, still invompletely understood. I do not think we can say with
confidence whether Stalinism was a mode of production (Tikthin denies that
it was); whetrher the bureaucracy was a class in the proper sense; or what
its basic dynamics were. I think the best study we have of its nature is
Janos Kornai's The Socialist System. Kornai is a former Hungarian Marxist
turned ritght winger who calls collective or state ownership "socialist"
and who is skeptical of worker's control., But huis is best analytical
story about the way Stalinism actuaklly worked.

JCM's account below contains an odd fallacy. He argues: Capitalism creates
centralization of capital and population and industrial discipline;
Stalinism created centralization, etc. So Stalinism was capitalist. You
might as well say that Mafia guys drive big black cars and commies drive
big black cars, so commies are Mafia guys. If the argument is put in the
form of the propositional calculus, the fallacy is technically "affirming
the consequent."

--Justin



On 28 Oct 1996, jc mullen wrote:

> It's a little amusing to see two threads : one on Marx and capital, and another
> one on Stalin which seems to ignore everything Marx said about capital (well
> it's Monday morning and I feel mean). Stalin's state terrorism was the
> capitalist industrial revolution in Russia; Concentration of capital into large
> lumps, concentration of populationinto countryside, teaching peasants the
> discipline in their millions of being proletarians.
> 	Because there was world military pressure, Stalin wanted to do the
> industrial revolution five or ten times faster than Britain or France did it.
> This is why it was so violent.
> 	We were talking about promises and reality. I don't see any basis for
> taking Stalin's use of words like socialism as evidence that there was any at
> all in the uSSR.
> John Mullen
> Socialisme International
> France
> 
> 
> 
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