Date: Fri, 28 Apr 95 10:43:08 EDT From: Walter Daum <WGDCC-AT-CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU> Subject: state capitalism Ralph Dumain inquires how my theory of state capitalism (actually, that of the League for the Revolutionary Party) differs from James', Cliff's and Hillel Ticktin's "unusual" one. Briefly, Cliff (like Mattick, Sr., by the way) holds that value is not the driving motor of the state capitalist economy as in the USSR. The country counts as "one big factory" governed internally by the rulers' conscious will, not the "anarchy" of capitalism. Capitalism's laws of motion are induced into the economy through military competition with the West, forcing the Stalinist rulers to undertake rapid capital accumulation. Cliff also held that Stalinist state capitalism was the highest stage of capitalism, in effect, and would outstrip traditional decadent capitalism. For obvious reasons this last point got revised in recent years, without acknowledging its existence in Cliff's book. Ours is closer to James' (and the Johnson-Forest tendency's) theory, since they see Stalinism as a value-driven system. One problem, however, is that they did not explain either historically or theoretically how the Soviet workers' state got turned into a state capitalist class society. A major reason for this was that they seemed to see the very existence of wage labor in the workers' state as proof that the system was ruled by a capitalist class. Further, Johnson-Forest misjudged the world-historical fate of Stalinist capitalism, seeing it as the wave of the capitalist future, since all the capitalist powers were heading in that direction. (This position runs parallel to Cliff's.) Our view in contrast sees Stalinist state capitalism as hampered and weakened by the remnants of the former workers' state, the weak link of world imperialism. Ticktin is a lot harder to pin down. But first of all, his is not a theory of state capitalism. He sees the USSR as neither capitalist nor socialist, nor transitional from one to the other (indeed, he seems to be unaware of even the idea of a workers' state, or dictatorship of the proletariat, transitional from capitalism to communism). He says in fact that the Stalinist system was not a mode of production of any kind, which strikes me as absurd on its face. He sometimes denies the existence of a working class, and then goes on to use the term as if he had never denied its existence. (I really meant hard to pin down!) Nevertheless, Ticktin published valuable information and insights on the USSR, and claims credit for forseeing its downfall. I would credit that to his empirical knowledge, not his strange theory. Enough for a brief summary. Sorry, by the way, for inadvertantly posting a note to Rakesh yesterday to the whole list. Walter Daum --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
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