Date: Fri, 21 Mar 1997 20:57:21 +0000
Subject: M-G: albania and state capitalism



Walter Daum corrects my  mis-statement of his position on the law of 
value. It is clear from his response that he sees the law of value 
operating in the 1930's.  It is interesting that he takes Stalin's 
word for this given Stalin's view that the LOV was not necessarily 
limited to capitalism. Trotsky disagreed.  
Paul asks for my definition of the LOV. 
Shane comes up with a definition  from Marx that I won't quibble with.
 It states that the LOV is the means by which social labour is 
allocated under capitalism. It is specific to capitalism, since VALUE 
is a form specific to capitalism. For the LOV to operate as the 
mechanism of allocation of social labour, value as abstract labour 
presupposes labour-power as a commodity which a use-value and 
exchange value, its use-value being its capacity to satisfy the need 
of capital to extract surplus-value. 

As I understand bureaucratic planning in the SU, the LOV was not the 
mechanism of allocation of social labour,  planning was.  Production 
was of use-values not exchange-values. The fact that planning was 
inefficient and wasteful [by the standards of a healthy workers plan]
and was augmented by "incentives" to labour and management etc 
does not change this. The prices attached to goods did not gravitate 
around "value" as abstract labour,  since no extraction of value in 
exchange was possible.  Prices in fact were set by the bureaucracy 
and did not represent "socially necessary labour time" but centrally 
determined allocative priorities. This was why the plan as a 
mechanism for the allocation of labour time was as failure, 
squandering labour power as waste production. The extraction of 
surplus-labour which formed the basis of the bureaucracy's privileges 
was in the consumption of more and better use-values. This is why the 
form that "exploitation" took under the bureaucracy cannot be fitted 
into the straight-jacked  concept of capitalist exploitation as Neil suggests. 

The resistance to this form of exploitation put up by the working 
class, representing the  conservation of social labour, coming into 
contradiction with the self-defeating limits of bureaucratic planning 
is the closest we can get to a `law of motion' in the SU. It was a 
contradiction that mediated the contradiction between the plan as 
workers property and the gains of the revolution on the one hand, and 
the law of value internationally on the other. This is what is fundamental 
in deciding between the SC or DWS explanation of the SU.  Not as Shane
says, and as Walter also claims, the failure of the working class to defend 
state property after 1989. 

I would argue that it was because Trotsky was able to foresee the further 
incursion of bourgeois forms  spreading from the superstructure 
into state property, that he considered  the possiblity of political revolution 
failing, and a "cold stroke" restoration i.e. a restoration without a 
civil war.   Far from confirming the strength of the SC theory, the restoration 
of capitalism in the SU does the opposite. It confirms Trotsky's view that the 
SU was a transitional regime which could with the overthrow of the bureaucracy 
move towards socialism, or with the collapse of the planned economy restore 
capitalism. Restoration became inevitable because the stagnation and 
collapse took the form of underproduction.  Workers opted for a 
"democratic counter-revolution" which promised them plenty in the 
place of scarcity. The shift to the market and the LOV as the dominant 
mechanism for the allocation of social labour, saw the massive "devaluation" 
of  soviet "congealed labour" in plant and goods and in wages.  
Now there was a market in labour and in commodities, and of course, 
overproduction. 

The suggestion that the restoration of market capitalism in the SU is 
analogous to the neo-liberal attacks on state intervention in the 
West is a classic instance of empiricism.  The appearances are not 
the concrete truth. The SU collapsed because of its internal stagnation.  
The attacks on state intervention in the West resulted from the TRPF 
and the fact that state spending was a drain on already falling profits. 
 It is the same method which separates the LOV from capitalist social 
relations and stretches Marx's concepts to fit a bureaucratically planned 
economy. How can a mechanism of social labour allocation which does 
not base itself on value as abstract labour possibly be considered the LOV?  
How can a distributional method of surplus-labour extraction be confused with 
the LOV?

The answer is "In Defence of Marxism".  Because the petty bourgeois 
cannot advance a concept of socialism that does not evolve out of 
bourgeois democracy, it could not defend the SU when the bureaucracy 
was busy persecuting people and invading tiny "democracies".  
Unconditional defence of the SU was not popular so those who 
adapted to democratic imperialism devised the theory of state 
capitalism to justify their position. In the process the "gains" of 
the revolution were recast as the trade union and economic gains of a 
working class in a capitalist society. Now after decades of writing off 
the "gains" of  October, this position is vindicated by pointing to the 
failure of SU workers to defend these gains!  This position is a variety 
of Menshevism, because it repudiates the unconditional defence of October,
 says "neither Washington nor Moscow" etc, and puts in its place
an historic schema based on an empiricist methodology.
   
If we apply this analysis to Albania it becomes clear that capitalist 
restoration in the DWS's have created the most miserable collapsed 
semi-colonies which have to take imperialisms terms for any economic 
recovery.  Unless you understand that this represents an historic 
defeat for the worlds workers you cannot see the importance of these 
events. Hence the shocks and massive social disruption, made worse 
in Albania by the low level of development because of the history of 
Albanian autarky during its DWS period,  and the shocking connivance 
of the IMF representing western finance capital in the get-rich-quick 
investment schemes.  Thus to explain the uprising in Albania, we must 
trace the root causes back through restoration to the DWS and beyond 
to see why an historical conjuncture of "concrete truth" takes on 
these forms. 

Dave.



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