Maybe I'm weird or misinformed, but I don't really get why using the term "state capitalist" is offensive if being used to describe a path to socialism that uses the power of the state as a means to transition to socialism. Here's how Lenin himself describes it:
Capitalism is a bane compared with socialism. Capitalism is a boon compared with medievalism, small production, and the evils of bureaucracy which spring from the dispersal of the small producers. Inasmuch as we are as yet unable to pass directly from small production to socialism, some capitalism is inevitable as the elemental product of small production and exchange; so that we must utilise capitalism (particularly by directing it into the channels of state capitalism) as the intermediary link between small production and socialism, as a means, a path, and a method of increasing the productive forces.
Not all state capitalism is carried out for the purpose of transitioning to socialism, of course, but in cases like the USSR or China (or other AES states) it's clearly used as a way to increase productive forces leading to the eventual abolition of capitalism and introduction of true socialism/communism.
Am I wrong to view it this way? I'm guessing there's maybe some history behind the use of the term that I'm not fully aware of, but on its face it seems to me to be a necessary step in the transition to socialism in most cases and not something that should automatically be viewed as some terrible thing, but I'd love to be enlightened here if I'm way off base.
Using it as a perjorative for someones entire ideological system is essentially implying that all they want and intend to work towards is "state capitalism" and that that is the core of their ideology, its the same shit as like "State socialist", its discarding all nuance about the utility and necessity of a state and instead just going "THESE GUYS ARE BAD BECAUSE THEY JUST LOVE STATES AND WANTS TO OPPRESS EVERYONE UNDER A STATE".
"State Capitalist" is so effective for a certain type of leftist because they have the fundamental delusion that economy is separate from the government. This makes 'State Capitalism' worse than the supposedly neutral liberal capitalism where most aspects of life are relegated to the free market. Even if they are socialists or even communists, they have rhetorical license to trivialize the struggle of anyone who ever fought for these causes as oppressed lackeys for backwards oriental despots.
These same types LOVE martyrs though, name a failed left wing struggle and they'll write you a poem about it. It's only the groups that fought fascism/imperialism/capitalism and won (even for a short time) that deserve condemmnation.
Wasn't the intent there to describe basically "heavily regulated capitalism with social welfare programs being established as possible, as a placeholder while the institutions required for socialism were built up" (because that's what the early USSR did: their infrastructure, logistics, and central planning systems didn't spring fully formed simply from the success of the revolution, and instead took years to be built up during which something had to be done in the meantime) and it's just worded/translated awkwardly? If anything it sounds like he's saying "we literally do not have the ability to do more than this right now" and trying to couch it in historical materialist theory instead of admitting the limitations of the party and Soviet government at the time.
If anything it sounds like he’s saying “we literally do not have the ability to do more than this right now”
This is how I read it, but I don't think it's unique to the USSR. In my view, there has to be some kind of transition and transition plan, and since we live in a capitalist system, that plan would involve capitalism in some way, shape, or form, albeit under the guidance of the state. To me it's just being realistic.
and trying to couch it in historical materialist theory instead of admitting the limitations of the party and Soviet government at the time.
Again, I think there's always going to be limitations and hurdles that need to be overcome under almost any conditions, though the conditions the USSR was under at the time were especially harsh, and so I don't think Lenin or the early Soviet leaders should be faulted for embracing what was entirely necessary to move the USSR forward.
We shall, of course, not take the trouble to enlighten our wise philosophers by explaining to them that the “liberation” of man is not advanced a single step by reducing philosophy, theology, substance and all the trash to “self-consciousness” and by liberating man from the domination of these phrases, which have never held him in thrall. Nor will we explain to them that it is only possible to achieve real liberation in the real world and by employing real means, that slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine and the mule and spinning-jenny, serfdom cannot be abolished without improved agriculture, and that, in general, people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity. “Liberation” is an historical and not a mental act, and it is brought about by historical conditions, the development of industry, commerce, agriculture, the conditions of intercourse...
It's definitely not unique. China at least did the same thing in the early 50s, regulating a still-capitalist economy while transitioning to communes and state-owned businesses, a process which required massive literacy programs and bringing a lot of former landlords, businessmen, and other upper/middle class professionals into the fold because they were systemically the only literate groups pre-revolution and the need for literate functionaries was so dire that pardoning any who peacefully surrendered their claims to properties and agreed to work with the new system was seen as necessary.
I don’t think Lenin or the early Soviet leaders should be faulted for embracing what was entirely necessary to move the USSR forward.
Right. I'm just looking at his words through the lens of them not making much literal sense, but in the context of what they actually, materially did and the conditions they were faced with they make sense as an attempt to explain a pragmatic move (allowing regulated capitalism to persist as a holding pattern until collectivization and state-run industries could be accomplished) with a marxist theory explanation rather than openly admitting weakness or limitations at a time when they were beset on all sides by reactionaries.
Like the general progression of economies and the conditions for revolution exist more in a general sense than a strict order that a given place must follow. Like a socialist state offering aid to indigenous horticulturalists wouldn't say "oh well first we need you to establish an agricultural slave-based economy administered by a city-state with an oligarchic council, then get yourselves a king, then kill the king and get some businessmen, then kill the businessmen and we'll give you tractors, modern medicine, and a railway," because they have to progress through all the stages, because that's obviously not true. At the time of the Russian Revolution they materially had the precursors they needed to go on to establish the industrial socialist state that they'd become, but they needed time to actually build up and create those institutions: they didn't need regulated capitalism to produce the conditions they needed to build socialism, they needed it as a harm-reducing stop-gap measure to keep people working, fed, and housed while the state and party was building institutions needed for a socialist system.
I don't even know what such a stop-gap measure would look like in an imperial core country these days. Trying to quickly nationalize as much corporate logistics infrastructure as possible while trying to bring agricultural workers to the table to keep nationalized corporate agricultural holdings productive, while working to fully coopt Amazon supply lines and move smaller private businesses to a coop model under some local umbrella? I don't think there's a more solid answer than "literally whatever concession it takes to keep food growing and supplies moving while people stay busy and provided for, until a better system can be built," which is generally what successful revolutionaries have done in the past.
trying to couch it in historical materialist theory instead of admitting the limitations of the party and Soviet government at the time.
you yourself pointed out that these were the limitations of the time and the particular level of development, contradictions, material conditions and foreign position the ussr found itself at the time. And Lenin thouroughly talked about these things in any of his writtings in that era and maybe that specific passage seems that way to you cause it specificaly talks about a nep style direction economicaly. Also Tax in kind is an amazing work to read thats often ignored by people. But in general Lenin never pretended the USSR economy was something that it wasnt. He never said to the people "we have achieved socialism and smashes capitalist production" or "we will be able to do so in the near future". He is just describing and accepting a reality and his desciptions of it and of soviet economy in that post revolution era are honest but also changing a lot year by year cause a lot of huge shit and shifts were happening so you cant parse some general underlying tactic or economism from just what he wrote in lets say 1921 regarding something.
Perhaps my reading of it is colored by how people tend to talk about that quote, either pointing to it to claim the later Soviet model of centrally planned state-owned businesses with a quasi-market system was "state capitalist" because Lenin used that term for the long-since-ended NEP, or to try to argue an idea of a strict progression through systems of economic organization and say that Soviets "had to make capitalism first because you can't just go from feudalism to socialism" which is also missing the point because it paints the capitalist stage itself as contributing a necessary character or the like (and also misrepresents pre-revolution Russia as fully feudal and agrarian, when it was actually an underdeveloped industrial capitalist state, albeit one that was rather far behind the other great powers in many respects), when the actions the early Soviets took were much more pragmatic and grounded in the material realities on the grounds.
I may also have worded my take on it poorly: what I mean is that I don't believe the early Soviets were just dogmatically following a prescribed order of development (which I've seen people misrepresent the NEP as before), but instead acted pragmatically based on their material limitations, that the regulated capitalism of the NEP wasn't because private enterprise is universally necessary to go from underdeveloped aristocratic capitalism to socialism but because the Soviet state itself had not yet established the sorts of central planning institutions and the logistics chain to support them that they would later rely on.
Maybe I'm weird or misinformed, but I don't really get why using the term "state capitalist" is offensive if being used to describe a path to socialism that uses the power of the state as a means to transition to socialism. Here's how Lenin himself describes it:
Not all state capitalism is carried out for the purpose of transitioning to socialism, of course, but in cases like the USSR or China (or other AES states) it's clearly used as a way to increase productive forces leading to the eventual abolition of capitalism and introduction of true socialism/communism.
Am I wrong to view it this way? I'm guessing there's maybe some history behind the use of the term that I'm not fully aware of, but on its face it seems to me to be a necessary step in the transition to socialism in most cases and not something that should automatically be viewed as some terrible thing, but I'd love to be enlightened here if I'm way off base.
Using it as a perjorative for someones entire ideological system is essentially implying that all they want and intend to work towards is "state capitalism" and that that is the core of their ideology, its the same shit as like "State socialist", its discarding all nuance about the utility and necessity of a state and instead just going "THESE GUYS ARE BAD BECAUSE THEY JUST LOVE STATES AND WANTS TO OPPRESS EVERYONE UNDER A STATE".
"State Capitalist" is so effective for a certain type of leftist because they have the fundamental delusion that economy is separate from the government. This makes 'State Capitalism' worse than the supposedly neutral liberal capitalism where most aspects of life are relegated to the free market. Even if they are socialists or even communists, they have rhetorical license to trivialize the struggle of anyone who ever fought for these causes as oppressed lackeys for backwards oriental despots.
These same types LOVE martyrs though, name a failed left wing struggle and they'll write you a poem about it. It's only the groups that fought fascism/imperialism/capitalism and won (even for a short time) that deserve condemmnation.
Clearly?
Wasn't the intent there to describe basically "heavily regulated capitalism with social welfare programs being established as possible, as a placeholder while the institutions required for socialism were built up" (because that's what the early USSR did: their infrastructure, logistics, and central planning systems didn't spring fully formed simply from the success of the revolution, and instead took years to be built up during which something had to be done in the meantime) and it's just worded/translated awkwardly? If anything it sounds like he's saying "we literally do not have the ability to do more than this right now" and trying to couch it in historical materialist theory instead of admitting the limitations of the party and Soviet government at the time.
This is how I read it, but I don't think it's unique to the USSR. In my view, there has to be some kind of transition and transition plan, and since we live in a capitalist system, that plan would involve capitalism in some way, shape, or form, albeit under the guidance of the state. To me it's just being realistic.
Again, I think there's always going to be limitations and hurdles that need to be overcome under almost any conditions, though the conditions the USSR was under at the time were especially harsh, and so I don't think Lenin or the early Soviet leaders should be faulted for embracing what was entirely necessary to move the USSR forward.
Relevant Marx quote from The German Ideology:
It's definitely not unique. China at least did the same thing in the early 50s, regulating a still-capitalist economy while transitioning to communes and state-owned businesses, a process which required massive literacy programs and bringing a lot of former landlords, businessmen, and other upper/middle class professionals into the fold because they were systemically the only literate groups pre-revolution and the need for literate functionaries was so dire that pardoning any who peacefully surrendered their claims to properties and agreed to work with the new system was seen as necessary.
Right. I'm just looking at his words through the lens of them not making much literal sense, but in the context of what they actually, materially did and the conditions they were faced with they make sense as an attempt to explain a pragmatic move (allowing regulated capitalism to persist as a holding pattern until collectivization and state-run industries could be accomplished) with a marxist theory explanation rather than openly admitting weakness or limitations at a time when they were beset on all sides by reactionaries.
Like the general progression of economies and the conditions for revolution exist more in a general sense than a strict order that a given place must follow. Like a socialist state offering aid to indigenous horticulturalists wouldn't say "oh well first we need you to establish an agricultural slave-based economy administered by a city-state with an oligarchic council, then get yourselves a king, then kill the king and get some businessmen, then kill the businessmen and we'll give you tractors, modern medicine, and a railway," because they have to progress through all the stages, because that's obviously not true. At the time of the Russian Revolution they materially had the precursors they needed to go on to establish the industrial socialist state that they'd become, but they needed time to actually build up and create those institutions: they didn't need regulated capitalism to produce the conditions they needed to build socialism, they needed it as a harm-reducing stop-gap measure to keep people working, fed, and housed while the state and party was building institutions needed for a socialist system.
I don't even know what such a stop-gap measure would look like in an imperial core country these days. Trying to quickly nationalize as much corporate logistics infrastructure as possible while trying to bring agricultural workers to the table to keep nationalized corporate agricultural holdings productive, while working to fully coopt Amazon supply lines and move smaller private businesses to a coop model under some local umbrella? I don't think there's a more solid answer than "literally whatever concession it takes to keep food growing and supplies moving while people stay busy and provided for, until a better system can be built," which is generally what successful revolutionaries have done in the past.
you yourself pointed out that these were the limitations of the time and the particular level of development, contradictions, material conditions and foreign position the ussr found itself at the time. And Lenin thouroughly talked about these things in any of his writtings in that era and maybe that specific passage seems that way to you cause it specificaly talks about a nep style direction economicaly. Also Tax in kind is an amazing work to read thats often ignored by people. But in general Lenin never pretended the USSR economy was something that it wasnt. He never said to the people "we have achieved socialism and smashes capitalist production" or "we will be able to do so in the near future". He is just describing and accepting a reality and his desciptions of it and of soviet economy in that post revolution era are honest but also changing a lot year by year cause a lot of huge shit and shifts were happening so you cant parse some general underlying tactic or economism from just what he wrote in lets say 1921 regarding something.
Perhaps my reading of it is colored by how people tend to talk about that quote, either pointing to it to claim the later Soviet model of centrally planned state-owned businesses with a quasi-market system was "state capitalist" because Lenin used that term for the long-since-ended NEP, or to try to argue an idea of a strict progression through systems of economic organization and say that Soviets "had to make capitalism first because you can't just go from feudalism to socialism" which is also missing the point because it paints the capitalist stage itself as contributing a necessary character or the like (and also misrepresents pre-revolution Russia as fully feudal and agrarian, when it was actually an underdeveloped industrial capitalist state, albeit one that was rather far behind the other great powers in many respects), when the actions the early Soviets took were much more pragmatic and grounded in the material realities on the grounds.
I may also have worded my take on it poorly: what I mean is that I don't believe the early Soviets were just dogmatically following a prescribed order of development (which I've seen people misrepresent the NEP as before), but instead acted pragmatically based on their material limitations, that the regulated capitalism of the NEP wasn't because private enterprise is universally necessary to go from underdeveloped aristocratic capitalism to socialism but because the Soviet state itself had not yet established the sorts of central planning institutions and the logistics chain to support them that they would later rely on.