Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 12:46:24 -0500 (EST)
From: Paul Zarembka <zarembka-AT-acsu.buffalo.edu>
Subject: M-I: state capitalism--reply to Walter Daum


On Tue, 25 Mar 97 Walter Daum wrote, reacting to some 
questions of mine:   "A workers' state, transitional between 
capitalism and communism, cannot abolish its capitalist
heritage at once. Just as the state can only "wither away" over
time, so the economic trappings of capitalism -- markets, value,
etc -- cannot just be done away with by fiat. This was especially
true for the early Soviet Union: economically backward in
numerous respects, and isolated by imperialism from the world
economy. So the existence of value doesn't prove that a workers'
state has been overthrown; the workers' state embodies a struggle
to overcome the effects of the law of value.

"Limited progress had been made in overcoming the effects of the
law of value -- towards equality among workers, shortening the
working day, etc...." 

	I [P.Z.] responds:
	
	Walter, I guess your response sends us back a decade.  You state
	that the workers' state cannot abolish a workers' state all at
	once and that is surely correct.  And you indicate that equality
	among workers and shortening of the working day are aspects, I
	believe, of why the Soviet state was a workers' state.  What
	other aspects made the Soviet state a workers' state in the
	1920s?  Maybe this is key to understanding your position.  If we
	know more exactly what was "destroyed" in the 1930s, we can have
	a better understanding of how and when it happened.  For
	example, "full employment" was maintained for decades AFTER 1939;
	isn't that a more symptomatic of the continued existence of a
	workers' state, than capitalist restoration FROM YOUR THEORETICAL
	POINT OF VIEW of the important of the Law of Value? In other
	words, the kinds of things you write can lead to a 
	counter-argument by critics that you choose some capitalist
	elements (within LOV) which sustain your position and set aside
	others which do not.

"For us, the decisive question was the creation of a ruling
class out of elements of the workers' state's ruling bureaucracy.
This took the form of the mass purge of the late 1930's. The CP's
once-proletarian base had already been eroded in the 1920's; by
the 30's recruitment from the intelligentsia and management had
become the policy. The party Congress of 1939 codified this
change, itself a change from the 1936 constitution, which had
given power to the "whole people" (no longer the proletariat).
With the ruling class consolidated, there still remained gains of
the working class that hadn't been erased, but the state was no
longer an instrument for defending them.
	
	This suggests that the final criterion for you is what happened
	at the so-called "superstructural" level (I don't much like the
	word but will use it for this occasion).  I'm not convinced.  Why
	should you priorize that level, not the "base" for deciding when
	a mode of production is a capitalist mode of production? 
	Actually, I always felt that priorizing the political level over
	the base was a characteristic of Maoism, not Trotsky, but maybe
	there is a similarly here I had heretofore missed.

"In all this, the point is to not write off the workers' state
prematurely. There's an analogy to those on the left who write
off the trade unions today as thoroughly bourgeois institutions,
even though it remains possible for workers to revive them as
instruments of struggle."

	I suppose few Marxists would disagree with this as a point of
	departure for analysis.

"Paul asks [regarding whether the Soviet post-WWI was too fast 
to be possible under a capitalist system]:
>I do not want to list now a series of counter-examples, but how
do you react to either post-WWII Germany or post-WWII Japan as
counter-examples vis-a-vis post-WWI Soviet Union? ... You would
certainly take those two as capitalist.>
Post-WW2 Germany and Japan benefited from U.S. aid, for one
thing, and were imperialist powers in their own right, for
another. The USSR in contrast pulled itself up with little
external capital aid (although a lot of technology was imported,
but paid for). That could not have been done without the full-
scale centralization that the workers' revolution made possible."

	Russia was ruined by World War I and Civil War.  Germany was
	ruined by World War II.  Japan was ruined by World War II.  All 
	had very high growth rates after those respective wars, socialist
	or capitalist.  
	
	You are arguing that Germany and Japan, 1945-1960, grew rapidly,
	as did the Soviet Union 1923-1938, because of "extenuating
	circumstances" of the Marshall Plan and their own imperialisms
	(in those years), otherwise they could never have achieved the
	Soviet levels?  Therefore the Soviet levels are a manifestation
	that the Soviet state 1923-1938 as a workers' state? 
	
	Remember that the Soviet Union was probably even more destroyed
	in 1923 than Germany or Russia in 1945 and so had more "to catch
	up" (I'd have to verify this objectively, somehow).  In any case,
	your argument may have merit but it would require pretty careful
	analysis of the available data, and correction of those data for
	the "quality" of the products produced, etc.  This may very well
	be worth investigating (and I might even begin to look at it),
	but are we in agreement of what is to be analyzed?  I don't want
	to begin this empirical task, only to find out later we don't
	agree on the questions being asked.
	
	Thanks for your response, Paul

*************************************************************************
Paul Zarembka, supporting the  RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY  Web site at
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka,  and using OS/2 Warp.
*************************************************************************




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