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Since Hakim was mainly just asking questions and wasn't able to give his own thoughts in the video, he made a comment with any thoughts and disagreements he had with what Wolff said:
"My thoughts: If we had more time, I would've asked a lot more and asked particularly for clarification on some statements he made. I think most of my disagreements are from either misunderstandings on my part or a lack of clarity on the professor's part. Both of these would've been cleared up with more time, but sadly we only had 30 minutes (which I dragged out to 45ish lol).
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Professor Wolff seems either confused or otherwise deliberately unclear when it comes to the idea of imperialism and China. His answer wasn't a definite yes or no, which is fine. The qualifying remarks, however, seems strange ("the movement to control their sources of inputs of raw materials..." for imperialism). It isn't incorrect per se, but it isn't entirely correct either. The definition is too broad, basically. Finally, he seems to insinuate any country that exhibits the Capitalist "employer-employee relationship" can be considered imperialist (or "takes part in such activities", in his words). Maybe in clarification he means that they have the tendency to do so?
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Professor Wolff's definition of Socialism seems to hinge particularly heavy on the "reorganization of the enterprise" aspect, to the point that, if it isn't present to his definition, it isn't Socialism (according to him). Now I feel this is a similar error to those that consider solely state control by a proletarian party to be legitimate Socialism, and the technicalities of how production is organized is a secondary or even tertiary matter. In my personal opinion, both of these need to be present (and historically were present to various degrees) for a full-bodied Socialism to exist. Regardless, Wolff's strange comments in which he links Soviet Socialism to a social-democratic formulation (and hence a form of state-Capitalism) is just silly and plain wrong. I'm sure he would've clarified had I asked, but we didn't have the time. For those interested though, Soviet Socialism did not have markets (in the extensive sense; only for cooperative farms), did not have a market for labour-power, did not have private ownership (with the notable exception of cooperative farms in the Khrushchev-era), did not have and allow ownership of capital by private individuals, did not have wage-labour, did not have a separate class that related differently to the means of production than the proletarian/peasant base of the USSR....etc. This is very different from even the most radical form of Social-Democracy practiced by Europe, which retained all of these features. Most of the difficulties of realizing Soviet Socialism were a result of the USSR's conditions (i.e. agrarian society with a notable peasant population, destruction as a result of war(s), international diplomatic and military harassment etc.), and Wolff has recognized this in other talks.
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Professor Wolff seems to be very adamantly pro--economic planning. What a chad.
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Professor Wolff seems to think in a very "long-game" way towards worker cooperatives. His train of thought seems to be: Build up of cooperatives -> Develop increased political capital and a drive to push for their interests -> Slowly join the political system (which benefits cooperative development), and eventually the material conditions and the consequences of such action would heighten the class struggle to a possible point of revolution (or some level of civil strife, at least). This isn't the only way it could go in his mind, it seems, but I have a feeling that that is what he intended to highlight. There is merit to this position, but I think this should be only part of a wider Socialist movement (and I think Wolff might feel the same). Very interesting.
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Criticisms of Yugoslavia? Dunking on markets again. Absolute chad.
This was from a very short chat where I didn't have the time to really ask too deeply on each point. Nonetheless, it was very interesting and fruitful. He is obviously a very intelligent man with a lot of nuance to his positions. In the future, I hope to be able to get him on again for a longer time, so that we can delve a little deeper. Lemme know what you guys think."
Hakim is somewhat misinformed on soviet economic history, there was absolutely mass wage labor, and absolutely there was a wage labor market, however because wages were set by the state there was additional competition over amenities provided by the employer. For example access to special stores, apartments, summer camps, bonuses for meeting quotas set by GOSPLAN etc. Lots of workers were on piece (or tonnage) wages till the 50s and 60s too, which is really one of the crappiest forms of doing wage labor. There was actually imo still anarchy of production, but it was an anarchy caused by national goals of GOSPLAN not having really any democratic input on production and distribution. What actually got produced was anarchic as state owned firms traded resources with each other to try and hit certain quotas, and what goods were actually available were not well managed.
The class system in the soviet union also imo had a bourgeoisie that related to production differently than the base, however it was quite different from capitalist ownership.
Hakim's understanding of what State Capitalism means (or rather his lack of understanding the breadth of what it means at different times by different people) also seems off to me.
can you recommend any books on the Soviet economy or the history of the Soviet economy?
The big overview book I think everyone still uses is the most recent edition of An Economic History of the USSR by Alec Nove.
There is large amounts of state control over crucial industry in Scandinavian countries, though there is no political control that comes along with it. Meaning the state very clearly is operated in the interests of capitalists because their political power was never expropriated as it was in China, where while capitalists have influence in government they do not have the political control they do in liberal democracies. Sweden and other Scandinavian countries are capitalist countries controlled by a capitalist class. This is the distinction between european social democracies vs countries like China and Vietnam where the communist party has the political power as opposed to the capitalist class.
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Wolff can be a bit non-committal about the implementation of socialism sometimes but I like what he has to say on the futility of markets and the need for dual power
I'm a big fan of Wolff's arguments for worker co-ops as a means of building towards socialism. Very well theorized.
If you could enumerate where you see contradictions, I think that would be helpful because I watched the interview and didn't really find any contradictions since he seems to frame his answers out of definitions that he is keeping consistent throughout the interview.
Oh, okay. I must have misunderstood you since I thought contradiction meant a lack of consistency, not being plain wrong. But I understand now. Yeah, Richard Wolff is wrong on lots of the finer details of his points for sure.
