Date: 13 Mar 97 01:37:51 EST
From: neil <74742.1651-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: M-I: state capitalism


dear friends,

Paul Z's research and digging into the  state capitalist
nature of the exUSSR & blocs economic base has him
getting warm and close up  near the mark .

However, to unearth and expose the great fraud of 
Russian  and bloc "socialism" or 'degenerated/deformed workers states"
(not even a description of economy but of  a political superstructure!!),
 i think the areas of the promotion of hired  wage labor-capital realtions,
 the  continued use of money in exchange, the continuance of 
the open markets in agriculture  and the "controlled' markets
in  light and heavy industry plus the dominace of commodity
realtions over the workers  as one Russian teacher said "sure 
smells like capitalism to me".

Also later on under Stalin's ruling class , russian industries were allowed
to "defy" their own state-cap " planning"  and industires and
state-cap managers went for "high profit' production to make up
for those with a ' lower-falling rate of profits". So in the old USSR,
 and bloc. ,you had statecap   companies that may be producing
steel under the "plan" but also say using capital to invest/build 
construct, say industries for making refrigerators or TVs, etc. on
 the side to boost the   managers profit ledgers , etc.
There  was never any   "Russia, Inc. " with planned production
for need but mainly for  profits were the bottom line -- 

I would argue that it was ex-USSR blocs inability to compete on a 
capitalistic basis successfully  with the west also speeded  its decline
in rates of profits  esp. in the mid 70s  onward to its collapse in the late
80s..
This also had much to do with the decline in Russian capital
 accumulation of course. 
As with the west the dominance of dead labor over living labor
in solidified capitalist class realtions of exploitation.

The 'state-capitalist ' analysis  of the exUSSR & bloc is  
much more materialist and dialectical than the bankrupt
left swampers groups cover ups for  this exploitation and tyranny 
which have done huge damage to discredit Marxism.

Just witness the anger /disgust of the capitalist media
when Clinton "slipped" last week and said China was
not "communist" and was moving to a "free economy'--
read dominace of capitalism and wage slavery over workers.
The bourgeoisie loves to use the bankrupt state-cap 
regimes as a  political/ideological club to depress workers
and beat them more into ideological submission to  western 
caps  vicious  austerity drives/campaigns. 

Honest marxists should fight back and not let  
the rancid state-cap  baggage of stalinism and trotskyism as well as
 social democracy  continue to defile marxism.

For the Communist-left
Neil




 



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