File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9706, message 89


Date: Sat, 7 Jun 97 5:04:19 EDT
From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-I: state capitalism





		Andy,


	The only difference between the Soviet Union and capitalism,
structurally, is that in the Soviet Union the party pre-owned all the
means of production.  To become a member of either ruling class only meant
a somewhat different series of tests.  A capitalist has either to have
already exploited workers himself (a business owner), have proven helpful
in exploitation (an executive), have been a paradigm of capitalist culture
(an executive or politician), have been a thug (Mafia, etc.), or have
descended from such people.  A party member or bureaucrat had to have
proven himself a skillful political manipulator/exploiter, or proven
himself helpful to the cause of party manipulation/exploitation, or have
been a paragon of party virtue, have been a thug, or have curried favor or
nepotism from such people.  Sometimes both systems let in people who
provided new technologies for business and science. Sometimes not.  


	The economics of the Soviet Union were not re-distributive or even
distributive, they were appeasative.  This was their feudalist character. 
Yet, there was also value for the party in businesses (such as gasoline
and morphine) that could bring hard or black-market currency to party
fixers and operators.  The Soviet Union paid wages based on performance
for the party.  There was certainly a market for goods from which the
party bosses and bureaucrats derived their livelihoods, just like anybody
else in the economy.  It is not as if the Soviet bureaucrats were paid by
the proletariat, as the result of a universal affirmation of the necessity
for their services.  They paid themselves.  They were able to do so, for
the same reason that capitalists and corporate executives can pay
themselves roughly what they want.  They were the outright, legal owners
of nearly the entire means of production, or the employees and operatives
of those people.  The party and the rest of the state apparatus then paid
workers, just as corporations do.  Did Soviet workers set their own wages?
...of course not, by what authority would they do so? 


	If the proletariat does not own or control the means of
production, it is not socialism.  How much the ruling class paid
themselves for their privilege is completely moot.  This particular
"dictatorship of the proletariat" separated the proletariat from their
legal and rightful authority over the means of production.  No such
dictatorship can be called socialist.






	peace





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