Date: 20 Dec 96 03:11:39 EST
From: neil <74742.1651-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: M-I: sect feuding (or defense of marxism)


dear friends,
RE: The Chegitz in  denial of commodity production in the 
USSR.
I think the Chegitz G. needs to re-examine  both the
form but especially the inner essence of the laws
of motion operative inside the  collapsed ex-USSR bloc.
This will lead forward to a materialist and not an 
impressionistic  understanding of the real class
essence of these failed state capitalist  regimes.

The Chegitz denies that yhere was commodity production 
in the ex-USSR!!
But a commodity is a good or service produced for  the 
purpose of exchange rather than directly for the  main
purpose of use.
There is no doubt that it  was extremely widespread in the
ex-USSR and the other state capitalist counries.
Except for peasants and  collective farmers, who did
produce partly for their own needs , popular consumption 
was in the main, dependent on purchase!
Food, clothing,  consumer durable goods were/are openly
marketed in retail outlets., which meant that  the commodity
nature of most agricultural produce and light industrial
goods is beyond question.
As concerns a number of  industries even die-hard defenders 
of state capitalism a la the late E. Mandel admit that 
numerous categories of consumer goods were bought
and sold on the market.
(See Mandel--Marxist Economic Theory--London /Merlin 1968)
But defenders of the state cap model a la Mandel, et. al. usually 
cover up the fact that even in heavy industry, USSR
means of production were bought and sold --
or  "transferred" from one industry to another and 
within the same industry .

But the kicker on the state caps commodity production
is that  obviously labor power itself was/is a commodity
and this  reveals powerful &  overwhelming evidence that in the
state cap economies (collapsed  and collapsing), that
commodity production and ruthless exploitation are 
an integral part of the  economic base of the state cap ruling 
classes.

An anecdote was the famous  Q&A at Moscow Univ . in 1949
between Stalin and a handful of bright (and brave!) Russian economics
students  who asked Stalin how the USSR could have reached
"Socialism" and still have commodity production abundant,
when Marx in Capital clearly points out that  in Socialism,
Commodity production (as well as money and wage labor)
is phased out completely. Stalins answer " Well this is true,
but in capitalism you have capitalist commodity production
whereas in the USSR we have achieved socialist commodity
production". And this  was not the only time Stalin and his
minions used this kind of doubletalk!

It's high time that if  a new marxist left wing will be taken
seriously by the workers again in their battles with capital-
east and west, that communists also  get rid of illusions
in this now rancid state cap baggage/regimes and stop trying to
dress it up as marxism or any kind of pro-worker society!
It only gives socialism a bad name. Don't give  a left-cover
to bourgeois propaganda.


Neil





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