File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1996/96-12-27.212, message 21


Date: 23 Dec 96 20:00:55 EST
From: neil <74742.1651-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: M-I: state caps. vs. worker socialism


dear friends,

the issue of commodity production has much to do with
the analysis of economic base and class realtions of
exploitation in a given society or world system in the
production relations..

Commodity production identifies relations of class
exploitation. Commodities have both use value and
exchange value. People need them , they are acquired
by buying and selling.
 In Capitalism even human labor power takes the form
of commodities bought and sold (& worn out and dumped!)
by the capitalist wages system, east and west.

One of the key aspects of the communists programme is
to  do away with buying and selling in the transition to
socialism.
The working people will directly and indirectly get back the
full value of their labor andwill ceased to be robbed and
dominated over by parasites.
In other words in  building real socialism , there will
be no commodity production  or production for sale and
profit and workers will not be worked like cattle and 
driven as appendages to machines and computers, etc.

Workers will get free access under socialism.
There will be no ruling classes under communism.
The point about Stalin & Co. claiming Russia had
"achieved socialist commodity production" was 
another of his ideological cover-ups for the 
Russian bloc state cap rulng class regimes.

On the distortion of the state cap analysis by the
Maoists trends, I merely wanted to show  how absurd
they were/are.
Saying Russia was socialist under Stalin and
then capitalist under Khrushchev is no marxist
analysis at all.
My previous analogy was extreme using 
consecutive dates-- but there just was no
QUALITATIVE change in the actual production realtions
between Stalin and Khrushchev-Gorbachev.
Where was the revolutionary overthow/change in the 
ECONOMY? Thre was a change of ruling class
exploiter groups fighting for political power--
Russia had been state capitalist under Stalin
since the mid 20s and reamained so under
the Khrushchev-Brezhnev-Gorbachev era.
Today most the state cap ruling class has easlily
moved over to embrace western style capitalism 
in the ex-USSR bloc.
The workers are still getting royally screwed.
In some cases they hve to fight like hell to get paid even paltry wages!!

Neil





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