Date: Tue, 24 Dec 1996 21:08:46 -0500
From: Vladimir Bilenkin <"achekhov-AT-unity.ncsu.edu"-AT-ncsu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-G: defense of marxism 


Just a few comments on Dave B.'s excellent defence and exposition of
Trotsky's theory of the Soviet state.

dr.bedggood-AT-auckland.ac.nz wrote:

> 
> What Neil does not recognise is that the concept of the DWS
> necessarily considers the working class to be the ruling class. The
> state reproduces workers property. Even though state power is usurped
> by the bureaucracy, their privileges depend on reproducing [however
> badly] workers property.  Therefore there is no conflict with Marxism
> about the class nature of the state. There is however  a conflict
> between state cap theory and Marxism on the same count. How can the
> bureaucracy be a capitalist ruling class when it has no private
> property in the means of production which is necessary pre-condition
> for wage-labour as a commodity i.e. the capital-labour relation?


It was common in the late Soviet period for people of diverse social 
strata to call everything not privately/personally owned - "nobody's
property." I think there was a rational kernel in this commonsensical
view. "Transitional," "intermediate," "undecided" were the words Trotsky
used to grasp the unique social nature of the DWS. And he used the 
categories of classical marxism, like (private) property  or class primarily
as heuristic devices to discover that its social reality renders them 
inadequate.  "Nobody's property" is not a non-property. It's rather a property
whose fate has not been decided yet. If the concept of property presupposes 
one's sovereign power to use it in one's own interests then I don't see how
the Soviet working was the owner of the means of production. Yet the power
of the bureaucracy over them was anything but sovereign. Trotsky emphasized
the fact that nationalised property was inimical to the reproduction
of the ruling class (right of inheritance = right of private property). This
is a point of immense theoretical importance for it establishes a nexus 
between economical, social, and political categories. In a parallel-like
fashion with the bureaucracy who was not already/yet a class, the Soviet workers 
were already/yet not the proletariat for, as Dave argued, they were not labor. 


> The last sentence in this sentence is very significant.  It shows
> that Neil recognises the fact that workers property in the USSR,
> originated in a socialist revolution which expropriated capitalist property.
> Therefore the concept of the original WS is NOT the same as nationalised property
> under capitalism because it originated in a revolutionary overturn.
> Trotskyists always argued that DWS are precisely that, DEGENERATED,
> but still workers states, so the equation of workers property with
> nationalised property has never been a source of confusion among post-war
> Trotskyism.  

This is a very witty line of argumentation.  But it's somewhat formal.  The 
concept of the WS re early SU is mostly social-political. Economically, petty-
bourgeois production was predominent while based on nationalised property 
(land). It could be called the WS only insofar as the working class excercised 
political leadership through the block with the poor and middle peasantry
and had control over the state. But in the end, both could rest only on workers
control over productive forces and their sufficient level of development. And
these were lacking.

Vladimir


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