It’s quite possibly the most twisted and vile success in the history of capitalism.
My favorite capitalist propaganda is that a) People won’t work if they have money, but also that b) Billionaires add value to society.
The problem is that those billionaires know that they have money and that they don’t do any work. They assume the rest of us are equally vapid. And tbf, if I had their money, I would spend at least a few weeks every year in a sunny beach with my feet up. Maybe even for a month or more.
Vijay Prashad has a good one commenting on the scale of world inequality: A handful of euro-americans own more wealth than all the women in Africa combined.
To me, the biggest bit of capitalist propaganda is the obfuscation of the switch from feudalism to capitalism. The institutions that be just gloss over the fact that there’s no reason capitalism needs to be the dominant global economic system. Western youth nearly all grow up with this system as a simple fact of life, and it takes a lot of effort to deprogram that falsehood.
B-b-but invisible hand of the market!
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Having grown up in USSR, I’ll take state capitalism over actual capitalism any day. The fundamental difference between state owned enterprise and privately owned enterprise is the purpose of work. Under actual capitalism, the sole purpose of a business is to create profit for the owners of that business. On the other hand, the purpose of state enterprise is to create useful things for the people living in the country. Nobody is accumulating wealth and becoming rich of other people’s labour when the means of production are publicly owned. It might not be perfect, but it’s certainly a huge step forward from capitalist relations seen in the west.
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I welcome that you openly admit that Stalinism is fundamentally a state-capitalist ideology.
Please don’t put words in my mouth. What I actually said was that state-capitalism is fundamentally a misnomer because capitalism is fundamentally a system of capital accumulation by capitalists through exploitation of the working class. This fundamental capitalist mechanic is not present in what you refer to as state-capitalism.
Nor did I ever agree with you that this somehow fundamental to Soviet style communism. Organization of industry by the state was done because of the need for rapid industrialization in face of adversity from western capitalist powers. The original model of organizing industry ad hoc proven itself to be inefficient for this task.
However the state under state-capitalism is still bound by the unalterable laws of capital- it must still accumulate capital above all else (even above “making useful things”), make a profit (profit comes from the exploitation of wage labor), and compete in a global market, just like ‘actual capitalism’ (you seem to be calling ‘free market’ capitalism ‘actual capitalism’ to distinguish it from state-capitalism even though Marxism doesn’t really make a distinction). Just because the state owns the means of production doesn’t mean ‘the people’ own it (what does that even mean? That’s a total abstraction from class) or that they are not exploited.
That’s just a bunch of falsehoods. First of all, the state does not accumulate capital. The labour is directed towards productive activity such as building infrastructure, housing, food production, and so on. That’s the core difference you seem to be missing.
Nor did USSR compete on the global market. In fact, the way USSR interacted with other countries shows another clear difference from capitalism. USSR made huge investments into countries such as Cuba and Vietnam by building out their infrastructure, providing their people with education, and food. Once USSR collapsed, the quality of life in these countries saw a sharp decline. This is literally the opposite of the extractive capitalist relations practiced by the west.
Finally, since the working class holds the power in the state the workers do in fact own the means of production by virtue of having the dictatorship of the proletariat that runs the state.
Meanwhile, your Engels quote conveniently avoids the context where both Marx and Engels recognized that some form of a worker state was necessary as a transitional entity between capitalism and communism. This is literally what withering of the state refers to. You cannot take a society that was shaped by capitalist relations and magically turn it communist because people develop their habits and sensibilities based on their environment. Only when socialist relations have become the norm can there be talk of the stat withering. And it’s certainly not something that’s possible while capitalism is the dominant global ideology.
Trying to claim that Engels did not recognize the role of the state is the height of intellectual dishonesty given that this is literally the core disagreement between Engels and the anarchists.
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Capitalism is not only the exploitation of the working class by individual capitalists. As Marx and Engels explained, as as Engels argued, ‘capitalist’ is a social role, not an individual one. You’re engaging in circular reasoning if you’re trying to say “it wasn’t capital accumulation because the state was not capitalist by definition”.
I’m not engaging in any circular thinking here. I’m simply stating that capital accumulation is the core aspect of capitalism, that’s why it’s called capitalism. Once again, the state does not accumulate capital. That’s just something you made up and keep using as a straw man. The state directs the productive power towards producing material things people of the country use.
The drive towards industrialization in the USSR represented a state-led capital accumulation. Wages were quite low during this time. The fact that wages were set by state planners and not the market does not make them “not wages”, and the fact that their labor value was appropriated by the state instead of privately does not make them “not wages” either.
It did not, it produced infrastructure, housing, food, energy, and weapons that the people of USSR needed to live and defend themselves from the capitalist threat. Meanwhile, your argument regarding the wages is intellectually dishonest because it ignores all the things people got they didn’t need to pay money for, and the fact that prices for things like food were fixed.
I’m aware that the USSR set prices and produced things according to production targets rather than market demand. This does not make it “not commodity production”. Even if we concede that people are happy with the wages they are paid or are okay with their exploitation at the moment does not make it “not wage labor”, “not exploitation” and thus "not capital accumulation - it’s the fact that wage labor exists at all.
People working to produce things that they all use collectively is not exploitation. Your whole argument here is fallacious. Nobody in USSR was exploiting the labour of the workers for personal benefit the way actual capitalism works. Labour was done in the collective interest.
You could make a coherent argument that organization of labour could have been better, or that there was lack of genuine workplace democracy. These could be sound and credible arguments drawing parallels between capitalist company structure and state owned enterprise in USSR. However, that’s not the argument you’re making.
More circular reasoning. You’re saying that there’s a dictatorship of the proletariat because there’s a dictatorship of the proletariat. Moreover, you keep conflating terms- you realize that the DoTP and socialism/ communism are not the same right?
I’m beginning to think that you don’t understand what the term circular reasoning means. There was a dictatorship of the proletariat because the proletariat ran a communist revolution that was led by the communist party and took power. That’s why there was a dictatorship of the proletariat.
The way this is framed is entirely wrong. The goal of socialism is not to build a worker’s nation-state. The proletarian state’s role, led by the vanguard party, is to directly suppress the bourgeoisie during the transition to communism globally. The dictatorship of the proletarian is not equivalent to communism/ socialism and the proletarian state does not take over the role of “managing” the state capital, as capital cannot be “tamed” like Stalinists think it can.
Once somebody demonstrates a better way to do thing we’ll talk. The reality is that the approach that USSR followed actually created a better state of things than a capitalist society as imperfect as it was. This was a socialist state that was moving in the direction of communism. The goal of socialism is to create a transitional state that moves society from capitalist relations towards communist ones. This does not happen overnight.
This does not take place within the context of a nation-state. It happens internationally as the proletariat are at global war with the bourgeoisie.
This argument would make sense if there was a global socialist movement which does not actually exist. In absence of such a movement, creating a socialist state is obviously the next best option. If Europeans didn’t shit the bed at the start of the 20th century and joined the communist movement, then what you’re talking about may have been possible.
My argument is that Stalin’s theories are a gross departure from Marx’s theory and Lenin’s application it.
Unfortunately, your argument is not dialectical because it ignores the material realities that drove these departures. If USSR failed to rapidly industrialize under Stalin, the most likely outcome would’ve been that nazis Germany would’ve taken it apart and ushered in global fascism before US finally managed to do it.
You’re presenting a position that ignores the material realities in favor of idealism. Lenin directly addresses this style of argument in “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder
What we see in China today is not fundamentally different from NEP which Lenin realized was necessary for largely the same reasons. It’s very easy to argue and criticize things in the abstract, it’s much harder to actually implement these things while under duress from global capitalism.
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Wage labor existed in the USSR.
You’re either missing or intentionally ignoring my point which is the purpose of labour. The purpose of labour under capitalism is to create wealth for the capital owning class. The purpose of labour in a socialist system such as USSR is to create value for society. What you’re talking about is the organization of labour, which I completely agree can be done better than what USSR did. However, that’s an entirely separate point of discussion.
That would be like pointing to a rotting ship at the bottom of the sea covered in barnacles and complaining that one of the planks is loose. What is “genuine workplace democracy” anyway? That’s not a Marxist term I’ve ever heard. I only ever hear Bernie/ Wolff enjoyers talk like that.
It’s kind of amusing that you can’t even acknowledge that Marxist theory continues to evolve over time and new terminology is added. Workplace democracy typically refers to cooperative ownership of the enterprise where the workers have a democratic say over administrative functions of the business, get to elect leaders in the workplace, and have power of recall. USSR practised aspects of this, but still suffered from worker alienation.
There was not a dictatorship of the proletariat because something that called itself the communist party took over. There was a dictatorship of the proletariat for a brief time under Lenin because the bourgeoisie and the capitalist mode of production were suppressed by the vanguard party of the proletariat. However this did not last past Lenin’s death as the failures of the revolutions globally ultimately led to the failure of the revolution in Russia. A DotP sustaining itself in Russia alone would have been impossible. The path Russia took and where it is currently sitting at today proves that correct.
That’s a rather superficial and frankly ahistorical interpretation of events. USSR certainly was not destined to collapse, and many alternative paths were clearly possible. Claiming that USSR was not a dictatorship of the proletariat is also demonstrably absurd.
What you’re calling ‘creating a socialist state’ is not possible in that manner. Attempting to create a better society is certainly possible, but that society will still be capitalist in essence no matter if the people running the country want it or not. Capitalism is not something some functionary can sign away on some decree.
That’s a completely baseless assertion I’m afraid. A state such as USSR can absolutely transition past capitalist relations, and it was very much happening in USSR until the counterrevolution was allowed to happen under Gorbachev.
I wasn’t suggesting they had another choice. What I do criticize them for is for hurting future revolutions by not just admitting that socialism was not possible at that time. They didn’t have to distort Marx, Engels, and Lenin with their abomination of ‘Marxism-Leninism’. I’m not saying they shouldn’t have defended themselves.
Again, I fundamentally disagree with your assertion that USSR wasn’t socialist, or that there was no path towards communism in USSR. While other interpretations of Marx, Engels, and Lenin are certainly valid, the interpretation USSR had was sound given the conditions USSR existed under.
Lenin never argued for the continuation of commodity production and would have never suggested it as a strategy for any reason, any more than he would argue for throwing up their hands and immediately surrendering to the bourgeoisie. He did acknowledge that socialist relations would co-exist alongside commodity production for a time, but he acknowledged that the parts of society where commodity production prevails are still capitalist.
I mean Lenin literally created the NEP, and he was clearly pragmatic enough to realize what compromises needed to be made. So far, the only tangible critique of USSR I can discern in your argument is that your disagree with the use of state owned enterprise as the mode of organizing labour. Perhaps you can articulate your critique more clearly.
“The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky” (1918). Lenin knew that the success in revolution in Russia depended on the successes of the revolutions in Europe.
This is the point I made earlier, since the conditions for a world revolution did not exist, the next best thing that could be done was to build a socialist state in form of USSR. This is what Parenti referred to as Siege Socialism. The fact of the matter is that Lenin and Marx turned out to be overly optimistic. It turns out that capitalism is much more resilient than people expected, and overthrowing it globally is a very difficult task. Creating bulwarks against capitalism is an important step towards that.
Reminds me of my city, when the internet provider was a government company. The internet was down 30% of the day, latency of 1s, nobody answered the support lines, whole portions of the city could be out for days… It was extremely expensive and the speeds were so low I remember it could take 2h to download a 5m song.
Then private companies (with wealth accumulation) were allowed to provide internet for users. Everyone started jumping on the private networks as soon as their area had coverage. It was like 1/3 of the cost of the public company and like 20 times the speed. Latencies were like 100ms.
The public company saw its reign over people crumbling and did something INSANE, totally unexpected. They actually became competitive and started giving a good service.
That’s a lesson for y’all. If there’s no wealth large enough to compete against the state, the state becomes an inefficient monopoly.
I have no idea what country you’re in, but it’s literally the opposite situation in Canada where publicly owned SaskTel provides the best service in the country while private sector managed to create some of the most expensive and slowest infrastructure out of any G7 countries.
A common pattern that’s observed is that initially there is a stage after privatization where there is competition between companies. However, eventually a few companies end up dominating the market and at that point you have all the same problems that the parent comment moans about being present under public ownership while having no actual control over the situation because the infrastructure is privately owned.
That’s the real lesson for y’all.
Your scenario isn’t against my point, public and private sectors should compete. It just sounds like there’s a lack of competition in your area, which is something that the government should fix, not private companies. So you want to give more power to an entity that can’t even fix a competition issue in the market? This is literally the responsibility of the government. As far as I know, Canada isn’t like the US, private companies don’t own the government, so what’s happening there?
I’m just saying, wealth accumulation isn’t necessarily an evil thing. As I showed, it can also be positive. It’s just a matter of balance. I’m much more inclined to the left than the right, but I don’t see everything that happens in the right as evil.
My scenario is actually against your point because you’re not considering the full capitalist lifecycle in your argument. Capitalist competition necessarily leads to capital consolidation and monopolies by its very nature. Meanwhile, capital owning class is very much in charge in every capitalist state. Capitalists own the media, pay for political campaigns, lobbying, and so on. Working class has no real representation in politics, and no holds no actual power. All people get to do is to once every few years decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.
I think that just because capitalism can go wrong it doesn’t mean that capitalism is a failure. Sure, right now we’re living in a pretty dystopian capitalism, but this can happen to any system, no system is invulnerable to exploitation. This is just the same argument the far-right uses to say socialism and communism are failure because “look at North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and the Soviet Union”.
Unfortunately, they figured out how to exploit capitalism by buying politicians. This is bad because they get to do whatever the fuck they want with no consequences, but it doesn’t mean that wealth accumulation is bad.
Imagine a company that didn’t exploit workers, didn’t buy politicians, cared about the environment and payed fair taxes. These companies do exist. They exist under capitalism. The same way you imagine a government that takes care of everyone, gives free education, free healthcare, takes care of workers… I could imagine a government that has too much power, destroys private companies and ignores the needs of the working class, as it has happened under socialism/communism.
It isn’t a matter of abolishing the systems we have but finding a balance between them. Plus, politicians should be subjected to extremely harsh audits to make sure they aren’t corrupt. Lobbying shouldn’t be legal, that’s insane, but it isn’t an inherente part of capitalism.
Idk, I think capitalism isn’t evil, humans are. Any system can go south with us.
I mean it’s been tried for over a century, and it always goes wrong the same way everywhere it’s tried because of how the system inherently functions. Meanwhile, if the problem genuinely was with the human nature that’s an argument for designing systems that inhibit negative qualities while promoting positive ones. Capitalism does the exact opposite.
Western capitalism is responsible for horrors far worse than anything that USSR, Cuba, Venezuela, or DPRK have ever done. It has enslaved majority of the human population through pure brutality and exploits it to this day to subsidize the lifestyle of the golden billion. Yet, even with this level of exploitation, the conditions in the west are now deteriorating for the majority of the people.
Imagining a company that didn’t exploit workers, didn’t buy politicians, cared about the environment and payed fair taxes is like imagining unicorns. Such companies if they ever get created will simply be outcompeted by companies that are willing to do all those things, because making profit is the sole fitness function for a capitalist business.
I could imagine a government that has too much power, destroys private companies and ignores the needs of the working class, as it has happened under socialism/communism.
Except, communists managed to achieve things such as ensuring everyone has their basic needs met, which still eludes capitalist societies to this day despite far more wealth being available.
It isn’t a matter of abolishing the systems we have but finding a balance between them. Plus, politicians should be subjected to extremely harsh audits to make sure they aren’t corrupt. Lobbying shouldn’t be legal, that’s insane, but it isn’t an inherente part of capitalism.
It’s not possible to have a neutral government in a society where there is mass wealth inequality. People who have wealth will always use it for political purposes. They buy media, pay bribes, groom politicians, and so on. This happens every single time capitalism is tried in a society. The only way to avoid the problem is to eliminate the ability for people to accumulate capital.
