Date: 28 Jan 97 02:18:49 EST
Subject: M-G: Hugh's deformed workers state muddle


dear Hugh,

You castigate Dave McMullen  for merely in an off the cuff
 fashion pointing  out one of many contradictions 
and absurdities of the defenders of the ex-USSR
as some kind of  progressive workers state.

You say "state-cap dogma refuses to distinguish 
between the economic foundations of a state and
its superstructure".
Hugh, let me remind you that the political state 
is a big part of the superstructure. To marxists
it is the economic base (property relations, etc.)
 that  provides the girders for it.

It is precisely your "deformed workers state'
pap which avoids (quite dishonestly) any kind
of discription of the economy!

Here is my  materialist  battle line drawn  on this issue:
I say ex-USSR  degenerated  since the early 20s 
and developed  a state capitalist  ruling class economy 
and an authoritarian political  state to protect and
 serve this ruling class against  its workers
 (and any   bourgeois competitors).


Your line completely fudges the issue  & never names the 
precise  nature of the property relations in the economic base.
You do name only the political superstructure which you  say
 in  trotskese that the ex-USSR was a" degenerated  workers
state '" where  those in controll are NOT a class but a "caste'!

Thus your trotsky trend has also been making a mockery of 
the basic marxist conception of the state ( organ of
class domination -not a "caste" Hugh) and your view, if
you finally  decide (after 60+ years!) to identify what YOU think the economy is

and you don't think it is capitalist but something else, then to be consistent
with dialectic  materialism you would also owe the workers a re-working 
of marxist   historical materialism  concerning the developmetnt
of society in the period of capitalism to socialism. 

Don't just quote Trotsky from  "The Revolution Betrayed--(1936),
Though it is revealing in some ways and should be read,
it mainly ends up being bible thumping methodology today, a la Malecki's.
Trotsky was murdered in 1940, its time his epigonies do some 
original thinking on their own, as a few like LRP-US and SWP-UK
have on this issue (even though I don't  agree with them either).

Neil
For the Communist-left





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