Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 19:39:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: Paul Zarembka <zarembka-AT-acsu.buffalo.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: state capitalism (Reply to Yoshie)




Andy,

I think your response is running ahead of the game.  You want to demolish 
the 'state capitalist' interpretation of the Soviet system.  But before 
doing that we have to be clear on the theoretical concepts.  So please 
forget about the Soviet Union for the time being.

You write "it is the private ownership of and ultimate control over the 
means of production and the labor process that permits the owning class to 
codify and implement their rule in the legal system."  What is "ownership 
OTHER THAN a legal concept?  If ownership is a legal concept, then you 
have a partly circular sentence here?  If it is not a legal concept, then 
what do you mean by "ownership" (I presume it cannot be "control")?

You go on: "It is the structure of private control over the productive 
forces that makes the owning class the ruling class in capitalist 
societies."  Do you mean "means of production"? Also, elaborate what 
"private" means here.  Otherwise, I could accept that sentence if it is 
understood that "owning" comes logically after "control".

Paul Z.

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Paul Zarembka, supporting the  RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY  Web site at
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On Tue, 10 Jun 1997, Andrew Wayne Austin wrote:

> Paul,
> 
> It appears you have reversed the causal ordering in your argument
> concerning the production of law, although I would need to see more of
> your argument. Clearly there is feedback between base and superstructure.
> However, it is the private ownership of and ultimate control over the
> means of production and the labor process that permits the owning class to
> codify and implement their rule in the legal system. It is the structure
> of private control over the productive forces that makes the owning class
> the ruling class in capitalist societies. Those who control the means of
> production and the labor process, and the political and juridical
> superstructure (ruling elites, i.e., the politically active segments of
> the ruling class and their cadres) control those means for the owning
> class, despite the relative autonomy of the state apparatus. This is the
> weakness of the state capitalist argument; it moves away from a
> class-dialectical analysis by locating power somewhere else, since private
> ownership and control over the productive forces have been eliminated in
> socialist society. The state capitalist argument, like much of
> neo-Marxism, is relying on a more Weberian/neo-Weberian model of
> status-"class" relations. The question for state capitalist, then, is if
> the ruling class in Soviet society was not the ownership class, and if
> capitalist relations were generally abolished, then how can the Soviet
> Union be said to be capitalist? The state and the law in capitalist
> society have a specific class character because the coercive apparatus
> arises upon the foundation of the class structure which is fundamentally
> rooted in private ownership and control. Again, the Soviet Union might
> correctly be theorized as something other than socialism, but that does
> not make it a form of capitalism, despite elements of bourgeois
> arrangements. 
> 
> Peace,
> Andy Austin
> 
> 
> 
> 
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