Date: Wed, 01 May 1996 04:59:44 +0200
Subject: Class nature of stalinist Russia (was Re: service workers)


Hugh Rodwell wrote:
> 
> It is good to keep the economic definition of exploitation (donating unpaid
> labour to the capitalist) apart from the more common-sense definition of
> brutally driving people to produce things or services for you. The one is
> historical and precise, the other is universal and a bit moralizing -
> depending on who uses it.

Jorn:
I agree that we should keep definitions apart. We should 
distinguish between exploitation as an economic term
and oppression as a political (power) term.
But we should also distinguish between capitalist
exploitation and non-(pre-) capitalist exploitation.
Peasants, slaves were exploited very hard at times.

This was not capitalist exploitation mainly because
the "surplus value" was not used for accumulation
of productive capital ("capitalized"), rather it was
consumed by the rich. To the extent that some of it was
accumulated this was not forced upon the "exploiter"
by competition. It was "voluntary".

Some might object to this, and I don't intend this to be
hairsplitting about words - the important thing is that
expoitation takes place in different forms. When we
the drive to accumulate is forced on the oppressing
and exploiting class by competition then the terms of
capitalist value, of surplus value, of profit, of
capitalist exploitation are to be applied.
I.e.: The exploiting class is a capitalist class, and
there exists a substantial oppressed working class as the
base for this exploitation.

Hugh:
> The confusion of the two has caused huge problems 
> in relation to Stalinism and its exploitation (common-sense
> definition) of Soviet labour. The whole of the State
> Capitalist theory is predicated on this confusion!

Jorn:
I think you are wrong here. It is true that this has
caused confusion "in relation to Stalinism and its
exploitation" - but the State Capitalism theory is
IMO the only theory that avoids this confusion.

Stalinist exploitation was capitalist exploitation and
not "common sense" (i.e. non-capitalist) exploitation.
For the stalinist bureaucracies accumulation was forced
upon them by competition. Or as Marx said:
  "competition [made] the immanent laws of capitalist
  production be felt by each capitalist, as external
  coercive laws"

The bureaucracy could not choose to accumulate or not.
Stalin was very well aware of this. In 1931 he said:
  "To slacken the pace would be to lag behind; and those
  who lag behind are beaten ... We are fifty or hundred
  years behind the advanced countries. We must make good
  this lag in ten years. Either we do it or they crush
  us."

Thus competition (which in essence was military -
especially for the first many years) forced upon the
bureaucrats the need to accumulate, modernize at a pace
then unseen. This explains the brutality of the regime,
the forced collectivization etc. - i.e. it explains the
dynamics of the system.

High accumulation was achieved by getting more and more
people into industrial production (a proces that in
England took maybe 200 or 300 years took in Russia only
15 or 20) and by forcing workers to work longer and
faster.

But these options had a limit and to maintain accumulation
profit *rate* considerations became the main trouble (up to
then it had been the absolute mass of profit that was
interesting). That's why we got first Kruschev's and later
Gorbatjov's and Jeltsin's attempts at reform.

Where the theory of State Capitalism has it's explanatory
power is not about whether there is exploitation or not -
but in this that it is *capitalist* exploitation. By this
it can explain why Russia was hit by the same economic
contradictions as the rest of the world - i.e. why high
growth rates came to a stop from the late 60's on.

This very unlike the theorists like Ernest Mandel who in
1956 could write:
  "The Soviet Union maintains a more or less even rhytm of
  growth, plan after plan, decade after decade, without
  the progress of the past weighing on the possibilities
  of the future ... All the laws of development of the
  capitalist economy which provoke a slow down in the
  speed of economic growth are eliminated."

Mandels theory of "degenerated/deformed workers' states
confuses formal relationships of ownership of the forces
of production with the real social content of this
relationship, i.e. between a class of workers and a class
of capitalist exploiters competing internationally with
other capitalists in the economic as well as the military
field.

The State Capitalist theory avoids this confusion!


Yours

Jorn Andersen

IS
Denmark



     --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---