Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 17:16:52 +0000
From: David Jones <djones-AT-borve.demon.co.uk>
Subject: M-G: Autonomist Marxist book on the USSR


The following book on the USSR - the first by an Autonomist Marxist - has
recently been published.

=46or ordering details please e-mail the publishers at ashgate-AT-cityscape.co.uk

Any problems, you can also e-mail me at djones-AT-borve.demon.co.uk

David Jones


*********

Neil Fernandez, Capitalism and Class Struggle in the USSR: A Marxist Theory
(Aldershot: Ashgate, November 1997). 375pp. ISBN 1 84014 186 7


This is the first full-length study of the political economy of the USSR to
appear within Autonomist Marxism. Given the interest of this school in the
'refusal of work', and bearing in mind some of the well-known features of
Soviet workplace relations, it might justifiably be described as long
overdue. Breaking considerable new ground, it will be of relevance not just
to scholars interested in the critique of the social relations of the USSR,
but also to those with a more general interest in the development of the
overall Marxist critique of capital.

After a description of the main characteristics of the theoretical approach
adopted, with reference to Marx, Pannekoek, Debord, and Negri (Chap. 1),
the previous theories of Soviet capitalism (or 'state capitalism') are
considered in depth. (Chap. 2). Two questions are borne in mind throughout.
Why is the USSR described as capitalist? And how was it specific? Various
weaknesses are noted, but in particular the theories are shown to be
inadequate insofar as they fail to demonstrate satisfactorily the
predominance in the USSR of the political-economic category of capital.
This is by no means a quibble: it implies very clearly that no previous
theory of Soviet capitalism has really made the grade.

If it is to stand up, the view that the USSR was capitalist, no less than
the understanding of capitalism as a whole, must rest on an understanding
of the category of capital. And since capital is self-expanding value, this
means we require a profound understanding of both value and its
self-expansion. Only on such a foundation can the hypothesis of the
'non-classical development of capitalism' in the USSR be properly
considered. The consideration itself will then demand an analysis of the
dominant relations of consumption, distribution, and production, and their
role within social production and reproduction as a whole.

Categories of the commodity, wage-labour, production for profit, value,
abstract labour, and the M-C-M=B4 cycle (capital) are therefore elaborated
with care. It is then shown that relations in the USSR were indeed based on
the generalisation of exchange and the operation of a drive for growth, on
value and the self-expansion of value, and therefore on capital. In the
course of the analysis which demonstrates this a new concept is introduced.
This is the concept of bureaucratic exchange-value, understood to be the
form often taken by Soviet exchange-value, particularly in the producer
goods sector. An interesting problem then arises in the consideration of
the category of capitalist money; and in dealing with this problem an
advance is made which significantly enhances the overall Marxist critique
of capital. If capitalist money, or more specifically, money-capital, is
defined, according to Marxian methodology, as a necessary form or state of
capital, then a consideration of Soviet economic relations leads to the
observation that money-mediated quantitative comparison - even generalised,
as it must be if money is to play the role of money-capital - does not
necessarily imply generalised denominability. So how did capitalist money
actually work in the USSR? In answer to this question there is developed
the new concept of bureaucratic money: not as a 'political' concept, but on
the firm basis of the Marxian critique of political economy, of the
relations of social production and reproduction. (Chap. 3). This is held to
be of importance not only to the critique of the political economy of the
USSR, but also to the overall Marxian critique of capitalist money. If it
is the first area which is of relevance here, it is certainly intended that
the second area be investigated in depth in the future. It is hoped in
particular that this work will contribute to the development of the
critique of money-capital in a broader context: for example, in relation to
the development of capitalism in the more advanced areas of the world, in
relation to capitalism's technological revolutions, and at a global level.

In the following chapters attention is turned to the class struggle. First,
consideration is given to a wide range of existing theories (Chaps. 4-6),
with the emphasis being placed on identifying the link, if any, that is
drawn between the understanding of the nature of Soviet political economy
and the understanding of class conflict. (Since the interest is in work
deemed to be critical, the official 'Communist' ideologies, seen as
apologetic and propagandistic, are not considered). As with the earlier
consideration of the various 'Marxist' theories of Soviet capitalism, the
consideration of what the various theories have to say about the working
class and the class struggle is more comprehensive than in any previous
work. It is found that  of those who have presented theoretical views of
the nature of Soviet political economy, only a very few have brought into
their theorisation a consideration of working class struggle. And although
a certain amount of work has been done by Dunayevskaya, Castoriadis,
Ticktin, and Chattopadhyay on the importance to the political economy of
the dynamic opposition between classes, there remains to be conducted an
adequate theoretical investigation of that importance with specific
reference to working class subjectivity and autonomy.

This, then, is the task of Chapter 7, of which the overall structure is
similar to that of Chapter 3. First, expanded Autonomist Marxist
definitions are given of the underlying categories of the class struggle
under capitalism in general. An understanding is then developed of the
significance of that struggle in the USSR. Special attention is paid to the
form of the capitalist subsumption of labour (formal or real). Once it is
established that subsumption was real rather than simply formal, the
consideration moves to the respective roles of productivity growth and
labour intensification within  the overall dynamic of Soviet capitalist
growth. In the course of the analysis, Marx's concepts of the reproduction
of labour-power and the relationship between small-scale circulation and
capital accumulation, which Negri has shown to be of such importance, are
seen as indispensable. This is the first time in a Soviet context that the
categories of relative and absolute surplus value, along with the
distinction between productivity growth and labour intensification, have
been considered in relation to class antagonism.

The view is reached that the country knew an inefficient form of real
subsumption, based upon productivity growth but not upon labour
intensification. Workers made concessions to the capitalist need for
increased output, but only at the expense of any real co-operation on
labour intensification. Wages and productivity rose, but there was no
significant increase in labour intensity and in fact there may even have
been a deintensification. There was capitalist vitality for an entire
period, but as the ruling class - the controllers of capital - came to rely
on productivity growth as an alternative to labour intensification, under
pressure from the workers, growth declined and eventually came to a halt.
This explanation of the onset of economic crisis is backed up with brief
reference to some of the strategic writings which appeared in the USSR in
its final period (under Gorbachev), and in particular with reference to
such concepts as acceleration (uskorenie), the need to 'interest'
(zainteresovat=B4) workers in their work, and the importance of the 'human
factor' (chelovecheskii faktor).

The crisis is understood as crisis of a specific form of capitalist
development associated with specific forms of class struggle. In a
consideration of the form of this crisis, the issues of class antagonism
and the efficiency (or inefficiency) of bureaucratic money are seen as
inseparable. The crisis was heralded by the large-scale 'inflation' or
'depreciation' of bureaucratic money and it took the form of the eventual
collapse of its fluidity and coherence. No viable new form of money-capital
has so far been established, and in fact a major division is apparent among
the controllers of capital between, on one side, the controllers of
abstract capital or money (government officials and mafia bosses); and on
the other, the controllers of concrete capital (industrial officials and
directors). In the absence of a new form of development, even the
convertibilisation of the rouble for hard currency has necessarily had a
very restricted effect. What capital requires much more is the
establishment of a new form of money internally, as a moment of productive
capital, and this demands first and foremost a revision of the organisation
of labour.

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