Communism and Socialism megathread

[Berkhamsted]

I don't think I have misrepresented Trotsky's position on the issue at all.

You have misrepresented his position by using the term "degenerated workers' state" to refer to the Soviet economy and society, whereas Trotsky used it to refer strictly to the Soviet government.

But other than that, fair enough, I concede that "the USSR was between capitalism and socialism" is indeed an accurate description of Trotsky's position.

I happen to disagree with that position, but this is a different issue.

I hate to cite Wikipedia but I'm going to do it anyway.

In Trotskyist political theory, a degenerated workers' state is a socialist state in which direct working class control of production has given way to control by a bureaucratic clique. The term was developed by Leon Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed and in other works.

Here it quite explicitly references the economy. Whether you think Wikipedia is misrepresenting what the term means is another issue, I guess.
Out of curiosity, what is your position?

[Constantinopolis]

You have misrepresented his position by using the term "degenerated workers' state" to refer to the Soviet economy and society, whereas Trotsky used it to refer strictly to the Soviet government.

But other than that, fair enough, I concede that "the USSR was between capitalism and socialism" is indeed an accurate description of Trotsky's position.

I happen to disagree with that position, but this is a different issue.

I hate to cite Wikipedia but I'm going to do it anyway.

In Trotskyist political theory, a degenerated workers' state is a socialist state in which direct working class control of production has given way to control by a bureaucratic clique. The term was developed by Leon Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed and in other works.

Here it quite explicitly references the economy. Whether you think Wikipedia is misrepresenting what the term means is another issue, I guess.

No, I actually think Wikipedia is correct on this one. Notice how it starts with "a degenerated workers' state is a socialist state in which..."

This is actually quite surprising, since so many Wikipedia articles on USSR-related topics look like they've been written by bloggers who read maybe one or two chapters in a book about the topic, and then rushed to share their newfound knowledge with the world without realizing how little they actually understand.

Out of curiosity, what is your position?

The USSR was a socialist or near-socialist society, but with an extremely dysfunctional political system that stripped the working class of most of its power, and placed that power in the hands of a bureaucratic elite that was drawn from among the ranks of the working class but stood apart from it.

[Berkhamsted]

I hate to cite Wikipedia but I'm going to do it anyway.

Here it quite explicitly references the economy. Whether you think Wikipedia is misrepresenting what the term means is another issue, I guess.

No, I actually think Wikipedia is correct on this one. Notice how it starts with "a degenerated workers' state is a socialist state in which..."

This is actually quite surprising, since so many Wikipedia articles on USSR-related topics look like they've been written by bloggers who read maybe one or two chapters in a book about the topic, and then rushed to share their newfound knowledge with the world without realizing how little they actually understand.

Out of curiosity, what is your position?

The USSR was a socialist or near-socialist society, but with an extremely dysfunctional political system that stripped the working class of most of its power, and placed that power in the hands of a bureaucratic elite that was drawn from among the ranks of the working class but stood apart from it.

I thought we'd already established Trotsky did not view the degenerated workers state as socialist. You literally brought up the quote where Trotsky explicitly says that it wasn't socialist.

[Constantinopolis]

No, I actually think Wikipedia is correct on this one. Notice how it starts with "a degenerated workers' state is a socialist state in which..."

This is actually quite surprising, since so many Wikipedia articles on USSR-related topics look like they've been written by bloggers who read maybe one or two chapters in a book about the topic, and then rushed to share their newfound knowledge with the world without realizing how little they actually understand.


The USSR was a socialist or near-socialist society, but with an extremely dysfunctional political system that stripped the working class of most of its power, and placed that power in the hands of a bureaucratic elite that was drawn from among the ranks of the working class but stood apart from it.

I thought we'd already established Trotsky did not view the degenerated workers state as socialist. You literally brought up the quote where Trotsky explicitly says that it wasn't socialist.

Right. The Wikipedia article (not Trotsky) says that a degenerated workers' state is socialist, and I tend to agree with the Wikipedia article on this.

(which makes me feel very weird )

Trotsky argued that the degenerated workers' state was in between capitalism and socialism (as opposed to being properly socialist) because its living standards weren't high enough. And, as I mentioned in the post in which I brought up that quote, I find this argument to be seriously flawed and I reject it.

[United Marxist Nations]

It can't be capitalist because of the aforementioned lack of private ownership and no capital accumulation, which are the hallmarks of capitalism.

I agree it wasn't a workers' state; there have been other names for it; I use "proto-Socialist", I've seen 4Years call it a "proletariat-Bonapartism", and Trotsky called i the Degenerated Workers' State. The reasons for most using the last of these is that everyone knows what it is talking about.

It was capitalist, merely state capitalist. The means of production were owned be the elite class of party officials and the proletariat labored for them. Proto-socialist implies that it had any socialist elements whatsoever, which it didn't. What it represented was perhaps the greatest height of capitalism. It was capitalism that made use of socialist rhetoric to mask the oppression of the workers. Marx talked in great detail about the use of ideology by the ruling class to justify the oppression of the working class, and the Soviet Union used a perversion of Marx's work as an ideological justification for their continued oppression of the proletariat. Leninism, like fascism, served as a doctrine to try to placate the workers to ensure that capitalism never fell.

Capitalism is not just any society with classes; capitalism is a very specific mode of production with its most important features being:

- capital accumulation
- private ownership of the means of production
- wage labor (!)
- money (!)
- market for capital goods


Of these, the most one could say the USSR had with would be the ones marked with (!), and even then, you would have to stretch, as the Soviet Ruble doesn't function as money conventionally does; the Soviet Ruble has even been described as a "non-currency", it was de facto a labor voucher. As for wage labor, while the USSR did have wages, they only accounted for ~23% of a worker's income (the rest being in what the Soviet government called "social wages", which were forms of government benefits).

[Berkhamsted]

I thought we'd already established Trotsky did not view the degenerated workers state as socialist. You literally brought up the quote where Trotsky explicitly says that it wasn't socialist.

Right. The Wikipedia article (not Trotsky) says that a degenerated workers' state is socialist, and I tend to agree with the Wikipedia article on this.

(which makes me feel very weird )

Trotsky argued that the degenerated workers' state was in between capitalism and socialism (as opposed to being properly socialist) because its living standards weren't high enough. And, as I mentioned in the post in which I brought up that quote, I find this argument to be seriously flawed and I reject it.

Okay, I misunderstood you, my bad.

[The New Sea Territory]

Contemporary PRC isn't state capitalist.

The USSR was, from roughly 1917-1928, a state capitalist nation. Stalin abolished the NEP and proceeded into what Trotsky would call the "Degenerated Workers' State".

The "Degenerated Workers' State" being a form of socialism.

Yes, undeniably.

[Shigiel]

Calling the USSR a "degenerated workers' state" ignores the fact that it, erm, wasn't a workers' state. Sure, the means of production were nationalised, but the state was not controlled by the workers. It was controlled by a new class of bureaucrats that arose from a party that was once the political organisation of the Russian proletariat, but then grew detached from them.

The situation which you describe here is pretty much what a degenerated workers states is.

A degenerated workers' state involves a sort of bureaucratic growth rather than the creation of a new class. I've heard Trotskyists call it a "parasite."

Calling the USSR a "degenerated workers' state" ignores the fact that it, erm, wasn't a workers' state. Sure, the means of production were nationalised, but the state was not controlled by the workers. It was controlled by a new class of bureaucrats that arose from a party that was once the political organisation of the Russian proletariat, but then grew detached from them. There was also generalised commodity production and the NEP, which I don't even need to elaborate on, and by the time the NEP ended, the world revolution had failed, the Comintern was full of puppets and the Russian revolution was therefore doomed. So it was pretty capitalist.

It can't be capitalist because of the aforementioned lack of private ownership and no capital accumulation, which are the hallmarks of capitalism.

I agree it wasn't a workers' state; there have been other names for it; I use "proto-Socialist", I've seen 4Years call it a "proletariat-Bonapartism", and Trotsky called i the Degenerated Workers' State. The reasons for most using the last of these is that everyone knows what it is talking about.

There was a de facto capitalist class. The means of production may have been owned by the state rather than individuals, but this state behaved in the same way as capitalists do. It can't be called socialist or proletarian in any way because the workers did not control the state and it was far from having socialised means of production (a mode of production that would also require a stateless, classless, moneyless society).

[Conscentia]

The Soviet ruling class sure did accumulate a lot for people not accumulating.
And central management is central management.

What did they accumulate? They couldn't have accumulated many more roubles, as roubles had limited use; as Wiki points out:

The economy of the Soviet Union was a government-controlled planned economy, where the government controlled prices and the exchange of currency. Thus, its role was unlike that of a currency in a market economy, because distribution of goods was controlled by other mechanisms than currency, such as centrally planned quotas, queuing or blat. Only a limited set of products could be freely bought, thus the ruble had a role similar to trading stamps or food stamps. The currency was not internationally exchangeable and its export was illegal. The sudden transformation from a Soviet "non-currency" into a market currency contributed to the economic hardship following the collapse of the Soviet planned economy.[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_ruble#Economic_role

So, what were they accumulating? They had complete and total control over distribution of resources, so they wouldn't have to accumulate anything. They could live very lavish lifestyles without much accumulation at all.

1. The citation for that is literally just "see Ilmari Susiluoto". No link or anything.
2. I don't see how the reality of the USSR is not equivalent to a vast capitalist monopoly. The surplus productivity of the Soviet economy often benefited the ruling class more than the average person. They exploited the control over the distribution of resources to their profit.

[Constantinopolis]

I don't see how the reality of the USSR is not equivalent to a vast capitalist monopoly. The surplus productivity of the Soviet economy often benefited the ruling class more than the average person. They exploited the control over the distribution of resources to their profit.

Why do so many people confuse capitalism (a particular type of class society) with class society in general?

A society in which there is a ruling class which benefits (far) more than the average person, and which controls the means of production and the distribution of resources and uses this control for its own profit... is a class society. Not necessarily a capitalist one. Feudalism and the slave mode of production (among others) fit this description just as well as capitalism does.

There is a strong argument which can be made that the USSR was a new type of class society. Sometimes I'm even inclined to agree with it. But to call the Soviet system a form of capitalism is ridiculous.

[Conscentia]

I don't see how the reality of the USSR is not equivalent to a vast capitalist monopoly. The surplus productivity of the Soviet economy often benefited the ruling class more than the average person. They exploited the control over the distribution of resources to their profit.

Why do so many people confuse capitalism (a particular type of class society) with class society in general?

A society in which there is a ruling class which benefits (far) more than the average person, and which controls the means of production and the distribution of resources and uses this control for its own profit... is a class society. Not necessarily a capitalist one. Feudalism and the slave mode of production (among others) fit this description just as well as capitalism does.

There is a strong argument which can be made that the USSR was a new type of class society. Sometimes I'm even inclined to agree with it. But to call the Soviet system a form of capitalism is ridiculous.

Explain why it's not equivalent to a vast capitalist monopoly then.

[Constantinopolis]

Why do so many people confuse capitalism (a particular type of class society) with class society in general?

A society in which there is a ruling class which benefits (far) more than the average person, and which controls the means of production and the distribution of resources and uses this control for its own profit... is a class society. Not necessarily a capitalist one. Feudalism and the slave mode of production (among others) fit this description just as well as capitalism does.

There is a strong argument which can be made that the USSR was a new type of class society. Sometimes I'm even inclined to agree with it. But to call the Soviet system a form of capitalism is ridiculous.

Explain why it's not equivalent to a vast capitalist monopoly then.

Because a capitalist monopoly is still a profit-driven enterprise that competes with others in a market economy. It may not have any competition for its product (that's what makes it a monopoly), but it still competes for resources, for credit, for investment opportunities and so on. And it still attempts to increase its profits by expanding its consumer base. For example, if there was a single car company in your country (i.e. a car monopoly), that company would still try to get more people to buy cars as opposed to taking the train for example. It would try to use its political clout to undermine projects to expand public transport. And the company would probably be listed on the stock market, it would be concerned about its stock prices, it would attempt to increase "shareholder value", etc.

A planned economy does not have anything like those characteristics.

Also, while money is essential to a capitalist monopoly (as it is for any capitalist company) because of the profit motive, a planned economy does not work that way. In a planned economy, money (or, to be more exact, the domestic currency) is largely irrelevant to the government. Think about it: Why does a government need to raise money in its own domestic currency? Why does the US government need US dollars? Well, to buy things, of course. But from whom are they buying those things with US dollars? Well, from domestic private companies...

But in a planned economy, there are no domestic private companies. If the government needs something from the domestic economy, it can simply write that something into the economic plan. No monetary exchange is necessary. The only reason the government needs any money at all in a planned economy is for foreign trade. The domestic currency is irrelevant to the government.

That's why planned economies typically have no income taxes.

[Conscentia]

Explain why it's not equivalent to a vast capitalist monopoly then.

Because a capitalist monopoly is still a profit-driven enterprise that competes with others in a market economy. It may not have any competition for its product (that's what makes it a monopoly), but it still competes for resources, for credit, for investment opportunities and so on. And it still attempts to increase its profits by expanding its consumer base. For example, if there was a single car company in your country (i.e. a car monopoly), that company would still try to get more people to buy cars as opposed to taking the train for example. It would try to use its political clout to undermine projects to expand public transport. And the company would probably be listed on the stock market, it would be concerned about its stock prices, it would attempt to increase "shareholder value", etc.

A planned economy does not have anything like those characteristics.

Also, while money is essential to a capitalist monopoly (as it is for any capitalist company) because of the profit motive, a planned economy does not work that way. In a planned economy, money (or, to be more exact, the domestic currency) is largely irrelevant to the government. Think about it: Why does a government need to raise money in its own domestic currency? Why does the US government need US dollars? Well, to buy things, of course. But from whom are they buying those things with US dollars? Well, from domestic private companies...

But in a planned economy, there are no domestic private companies. If the government needs something from the domestic economy, it can simply write that something into the economic plan. No monetary exchange is necessary. The only reason the government needs any money at all in a planned economy is for foreign trade. The domestic currency is irrelevant to the government.

That's why planned economies typically have no income taxes.

Monopolies show that a market economy isn't necessary for capitalism.
With whom is the monopoly competing for resources, credit, and investment opportunities? They're the only guys asking for them.
The USSR had it's state owned businesses still wanted people using their products - they had productivity quotas to meet and jobs to retain. An example I remember clearly is of state-owned tobacco companies promoting smoking in the USSR - it's legacy is that smoking remains a huge problem in Russia.
I imagine that the USSR's commitment to total employment fuelled a need to provide jobs for everyone - hence it needed to maintain demand for labour.

The USSR used money to distribute resources - same way money is used within businesses.

In a planned economy, there is exactly one domestic company - one that seems indistinguishable from a private company that's taken over every other company around. That it's bosses are also government politicians and bureaucrats is irrelevant.

Private companies don't typically tax their employees' salaries. Why would they? They set the salary in the first place.

[United Marxist Nations]

Because a capitalist monopoly is still a profit-driven enterprise that competes with others in a market economy. It may not have any competition for its product (that's what makes it a monopoly), but it still competes for resources, for credit, for investment opportunities and so on. And it still attempts to increase its profits by expanding its consumer base. For example, if there was a single car company in your country (i.e. a car monopoly), that company would still try to get more people to buy cars as opposed to taking the train for example. It would try to use its political clout to undermine projects to expand public transport. And the company would probably be listed on the stock market, it would be concerned about its stock prices, it would attempt to increase "shareholder value", etc.

A planned economy does not have anything like those characteristics.

Also, while money is essential to a capitalist monopoly (as it is for any capitalist company) because of the profit motive, a planned economy does not work that way. In a planned economy, money (or, to be more exact, the domestic currency) is largely irrelevant to the government. Think about it: Why does a government need to raise money in its own domestic currency? Why does the US government need US dollars? Well, to buy things, of course. But from whom are they buying those things with US dollars? Well, from domestic private companies...

But in a planned economy, there are no domestic private companies. If the government needs something from the domestic economy, it can simply write that something into the economic plan. No monetary exchange is necessary. The only reason the government needs any money at all in a planned economy is for foreign trade. The domestic currency is irrelevant to the government.

That's why planned economies typically have no income taxes.

Monopolies show that a market economy isn't necessary for capitalism.
With whom is the monopoly competing for resources, credit, and investment opportunities? They're the only guys asking for them.
The USSR had it's state owned businesses still wanted people using their products - they had productivity quotas to meet and jobs to retain. An example I remember clearly is of state-owned tobacco companies promoting smoking in the USSR - it's legacy is that smoking remains a huge problem in Russia.
I imagine that the USSR's commitment to total employment fuelled a need to provide jobs for everyone - hence it needed to maintain demand for labour.

The USSR used money to distribute resources - same way money is used within businesses.

In a planned economy, there is exactly one domestic company - one that seems indistinguishable from a private company that's taken over every other company around. That it's bosses are also government politicians and bureaucrats is irrelevant.

Private companies don't typically tax their employees' salaries. Why would they? They set the salary in the first place.

The USSR did not use money to distribute resources, they just allocated resources. The method of planning the USSR used is Material Balance Planning, which explicitly doesn't use money in planning and distribution. And why would it? The Soviet government was both the producer and the consumer, so why would it use money? The goal was to create a balance between the supply and the demand, not to increase profit, because what would be gained by increasing profit when money is completely meaningless for the people for whom the profit would increase? You couldn't just buy up more, rubles wouldn't magically make the bureaucrats lives better. There was nothing more for them to accumulate.

With regard to smoking, the USSR produced cigarettes mainly to meet the enormous demand for them, as this 1982 article notes, the USSR had "some of the most progressive anti-smoking policies in the world", noting that some cities had banned smoking outright as a means of curbing it.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1499048/

[Constantinopolis]

Monopolies show that a market economy isn't necessary for capitalism.

What are you talking about? Monopolies operate within a market economy.

With whom is the monopoly competing for resources, credit, and investment opportunities? They're the only guys asking for them.

Again, what are you talking about? To continue my earlier example, if a single company has a monopoly on the production of cars, that company requires raw materials such as steel, glass, and plastic. It buys these on a market, where there are also many other buyers of steel, glass and plastic. And when the monopolistic company needs credit, it obtains credit by issuing bonds, in which case it must compete on the bond market, or by borrowing from a bank, in which case it must compete with other borrowers. When there is an investment opportunity - a piece of land that the company wants to buy in order to build another car factory, for example - it must compete with other companies that may want to buy the same piece of land for other purposes (for example, building a furniture factory). Having a monopoly doesn't mean you're the only company around.

The USSR had it's state owned businesses still wanted people using their products - they had productivity quotas to meet and jobs to retain.

Why would they care about retaining jobs? The USSR had a total employment economy. If one job got cut somewhere, another job was automatically created somewhere else.

As for the productivity quotas, those were set by Gosplan (the state planning agency), not by each state-owned company in particular. If it turned out that a quota was too high (i.e. the number of products made exceeded the number that people wanted to buy), that was Gosplan's fault, and Gosplan was supposed to fix it. The individual company would not be punished or lose anything when this happened, so it had no reason to be worried about it.

Also, bear in mind that so far we've only been talking about consumer goods, which are a small minority of the goods produced by any economy. Most goods are intermediate goods, made by one company and bought by another company to be used in some production process. Most of the components in your computer, for example, were produced individually by separate companies, who then sold them to the final company that put the computer together. It's like that with almost everything you buy. Even packaged food typically involves one company making the food and another one making the packaging, and the company that made the food bought several different ingredients from different sources, and the company that made the packaging had to buy paper, plastic, ink and so on...

So, to reiterate: Most goods are intermediate goods, made by one company and bought by another company. It was the same in the USSR. So most of the state-owned companies didn't have anything to do with "people using their products". They just made intermediate goods for the next company in the supply chain.

An example I remember clearly is of state-owned tobacco companies promoting smoking in the USSR - it's legacy is that smoking remains a huge problem in Russia.

Source?

In any case, while it is true that there were deliberate campaigns to promote certain products, those were initiated by the state for political reasons (to show off Soviet products as being better than foreign products), or to promote modern technology (which was considered inherently good), or for public health reasons. They were not initiated by individual companies in order to make more money.

I imagine that the USSR's commitment to total employment fuelled a need to provide jobs for everyone - hence it needed to maintain demand for labour.

Yes, precisely!

But, um, that's one of the things that makes it different from a capitalist company, because capitalist companies typically try to find ways to reduce their demand for labour, not increase it. Capitalists don't go around creating jobs just for the sake of creating jobs, even when it doesn't benefit them. The USSR did.

The USSR used money to distribute resources - same way money is used within businesses.

The USSR used money to distribute consumer goods, which, as I said, are a minority of the goods produced in any economy.

Intermediate goods were distributed according to the plan, and money had nothing to do with it. For example, the plan said, "the cardboard box factory will produce one million cardboard boxes, of which 100,000 will be shipped to the shoe factory to be used as shoe packaging, another 200,000 will be shipped to..." You get the idea. And the cardboard box factory did not care about getting money from the shoe factory.

In a planned economy, there is exactly one domestic company - one that seems indistinguishable from a private company that's taken over every other company around. That it's bosses are also government politicians and bureaucrats is irrelevant.

That's like saying that feudalism is just like capitalism, except with the companies being called "feudal lords", brand logos being called "house crests", and most products being agricultural rather than industrial.

Come on. Just because A and B share some similarities, that doesn't make them the same thing.

[Bolnoa]

Never forget Communist Somalia, kiddies.

[Dejanic]

Never forget Communist Somalia, kiddies.

From totalitarian Socialism to Anarcho Capitalism. Somalia really jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire.

[Bolnoa]

Never forget Communist Somalia, kiddies.

From totalitarian Socialism to Anarcho Capitalism. Somalia really jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Think of it as the perfect example of political jump and change.

[United North Atlantic States]

Social democracy and democratic socialism are overrated.

If you're gonna be a socialist, at least be consistent about it and go full-scale Marxist.

[The New Sea Territory]

Social democracy and democratic socialism are overrated.

If you're gonna be a socialist, at least be consistent about it and go full-scale Marxist.

Why? Marxist theories have failed.

[The New Sea Territory]

Never forget Communist Somalia, kiddies.

From totalitarian Socialism to Anarcho Capitalism. Somalia really jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Somalia is not anarcho-capitalist, and to say it is would be equally as dumb as saying Sweden is socialist.

[Constantinopolis]

Social democracy and democratic socialism are overrated.

If you're gonna be a socialist, at least be consistent about it and go full-scale Marxist.

Why? Marxist theories have failed.

Irony: Saying that the most popular and far-reaching anti-capitalist movement in the modern world has "failed", while your own ideology doesn't even have an organized movement behind it, and is supported by almost no one.

[Yumyumsuppertime]

Social democracy and democratic socialism are overrated.

If you're gonna be a socialist, at least be consistent about it and go full-scale Marxist.

"If you're going to have vegetables on your burger, at least be consistent and go full-scale vegan."

[Constantinopolis]

You know, there was a time, when I was around 18-22 years old, when I believed that Marxism-Leninism (not Marxism in general, but rather M-L in particular) was a failure, because it never achieved what it set out to accomplish. The M-L movement never reached communism, and M-L states were not very good examples of socialism either.

But later, after I got some practical experience of being involved in left-wing political activism, I realized how mistaken I had been. It is enormously difficult for a political ideology to become popular and widespread in the first place. And it is even more difficult to defeat the power of the capitalist state and just BEGIN to try creating a new society. Even if you screw up at this stage, the fact that you even got here in the first place is a monumental achievement by itself.

Those ideologies that have grown to a large enough size to be able to leave their mark on history are ALL success stories, even if they did not achieve what they wanted.

The failures are those that never got off the ground in the first place - those that are not in the history books, because they were simply not important enough to be included.

[NuevoPaisVasco]

I wish there was a social democratic political party in the usa that was as popular as its European counterparts