Date: Tue, 2 Jul 96 15:25:11 GMT
From: Adam Rose <adam-AT-pmel.com>
Subject: Re: STATE CAP AND NEIL



Karl writes, in debate with Neil:
> 
> Karl:
> 
> "The elimination of the private property form and the retention of the
> form of capitalist property is impossible. Capitalist property is a
> specific form of private property."
> 
> Capital is a form. It is a social from through which the development of
> the forces of production are facilitated or hindered. Wage-labour is
> premised on the existence of labour power in the form of a commodity.
> Since by its very nature a commodity is a form of private property it
> follows that labour is a from of private property. This being so it
> follows that the "elimination of the private property form and the
> retention of the form of capitalist property is impossible." 
> 

I actually agree with everything you have written here.

I would just argue that the form private property takes is state
ownership. This is, after all, not unusual in the history of
class societies, nor that unusual in the history of capitalism.

Are you arguing that there was no wage labour in the USSR ?
[ This is in contravention of the facts ].

Are you arguing that because the surplus was not realised in the market
place, therefore the surplus was not transformed into a commodity, therefore
Labour is not a commodity ?

[ This also is in contravention of the facts - there was a well developed 
labour market. Also, it's wrong theoretically. But first, I'd like to 
be sure exactly what your argument is ].

> 
> Karl:
> In contradistinction to this conclusion of yours I quote below from text
> that follows close behind your quoted material from Engels:
> 
> "The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production
> in the first instance into STATE PROPERTY....But IN DOING THIS IT
> ABOLISHES ITSELF AS PROLETARIAT, abolishes all class distinctions and
> class antagonisms, abolishes also the state as state....The first act by
> virtue of which the state really constitutes itself the representative of
> the whole of society -the taking possession of the means of production in
> the name of society- this is, at the same time, its last independent act
> as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain
> after another, superfluous, and then withers away of itself;..." (F.
> Engels: Anti-Duhring; pp. 332,333. L&W 1969).
> 

Yes, Engels is arguing that the first task of a workers state is to make
all property into state property. When a workers state takes into its
own hands the means of production, "IT ABOLISHES ITSELF AS PROLETARIAT".
But he is not discussing what happens if some OTHER class takes all
property into state hands.

> Incidentally the substitution of quotations for argument is not a very
> helpful way of developing debate on the question of state capitalism.
> 

Indeed.

Adam.



Adam Rose
SWP
Manchester
UK


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