From: dr.bedggood-AT-auckland.ac.nz
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 1996 15:36:27 +0000
Subject: Re: M-I: sect feuding (or defense of marxism)


> From:          "R Pearson" <spectres-AT-innotts.co.uk>
> To:            <marxism-international-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU>
> Subject:       Re: M-I: sect feuding (or defense of marxism)
> Date:          Mon, 23 Dec 1996 19:48:21 -0000
> Reply-to:      marxism-international-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU

> 
> Russell writes:
> A commodity is the unity of two, contradictory opposites: use and exchange
> value. In simple if vulgar terms the use defines the good's utlitity, while
> exchange its value as an exchangeable item vis a vis other commodities.
> This exchange is not any old exchange, but one taking place in the market,
> and usually via the 'universal equivalent' of all commodity values, money.
> It thus takes place usually at a distance from those who originally
> produced the commodity and is exchanged not for the use value of an other
> commodity, but for that special commodity of money.
> 
> Whether commodities existed in Stalinism is a moot point. Note however that
> there are 'two ways to run a railroad'. The first is via commodity exchange
> and the market- that blind chaos of conflicting needs, desires and
> outcomes. This is a very efficient mode of production (if we ignore crises
> and war!), and the borgeoisie deserve their full due on this score... 
> The second way to organise a society is via the conscious planning of those
> who create wealth (ie the working class). 
> Out of these two possibilities, the market or planning, Stalinism
> represents neither. And without either, we end up with the reality of
> Stalinist production: the marriage of  brute force and crass bureaucratic
> stupidity.

A couple of points on the above. 
First, I don't think the bourgeoisie get any credit for the market. 
They are just as much under the duress of the law of value as workers. 
It is the class struggle of workers fighting to get access to the use-values 
they produce,  against the bosses who limit workers access to commodities 
equivalent to the value of labour-power, which activates competition and 
the role of the law of value in allocating social labour under capitalism.
 If a class deserves any credit it is the working class for struggling to improve its 
living standards.
Second, while I agree with the opposition of planning to the market 
as you pose it,  I don't think you explain the character of Stalinism 
by saying it was neither,  and then equating  Stalinism  with "brute force" 
and "crass bureaucratic stupidity". Taken by themselves these qualities
 could describe any bureaucratic dictatorship in history. 
 As you define it, Stalinism was neither market or plan, but the real 
world doesn't always match such pure  concepts. This is why I think 
Trotsky's view is a better fit with reality. 
Trotsky thought that the Stalinist bureaucracy was a Bonapartist 
caste balanced precariously between the world bourgeoisie and world 
proletariat. In that sense, while Stalinism was neither a pure 
capitalism nor a pure workers plan, it was a transitional form 
between both. For Trotsky the trick was to decide which side of this 
contradiction was dominant. For him it was the plan and not the market 
 because the bureaucracy, while it extracted surplus-labour from 
the working class in the form of privileges, did not own the statified 
means of production. It could not separate the working class from the 
means of production and turn wage-labour into a commodity. To do this 
it would have to constitute itself as a ruling class. It was not a ruling class
and so long as it depended upon state property, its role was historically 
superfluous. Rather than develop the forces of production through an efficient 
allocation of social labour, it suppressed them by its inefficient, 
crude allocative planning.  This contradiction could only be resolved 
by, either,  workers overthrowing the bureaucracy and taking control of the 
plan, or,  the system collapsing back into the market as the law of 
value reasserted its dominance. Unfortunately, the latter was the 
case as the Stalinist states  in Eastern Europe and the USSR collapsed 
and were replaced by state capitalist regimes from 1990 onwards.  
It was very noticable in this transition back to the market that 
"brute force" and  "crass planning" were abandoned?  Why? 
Because the Stalinists could no longer extract their privileges from 
the  collapsing economies by these means.  The unstable Bonapartist
caste had liquidated itself as no ruling class ever did and took its 
chances on becoming part of a new bourgeoisie.
I think it is important to understand the character of Stalinism as a 
test of our understanding of Marxism as a guide to action in the real 
world.. If we fail in this then no revolutionary movement will develop 
at the head of the escalating class struggles in the future capable of 
winning the fight against the hosses next time.
Dave.


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