Only Marx had imagined this `social decision' as being radically democratic, so that the production of the surplus would have an intrinsic legitimacy. The people, having made the decision to devote so much of their combined labour to net investment and the support of non-producers, would then willingly implement their own decision. For reasons both external and internal, Soviet society at the time of the introduction of economic planning was far from democratic. How, then, could the workers be induced or compelled to implement the plan (which, although it was supposedly formulated in their interests, was certainly not of their making)?
But other than that, there are fundamental problems with that, central planning doesn't make anything "socialist". If one says " this switch to a planned system, where the the division of necessary and surplus product is the result of deliberate social decision, is entirely in line with what Marx had hoped for", what about other elements of planning in clearly capitalist economies? The Nazis nationalized their entire steel industry, thus "making the division of necessary and surplus product the division of deliberate social decision", but clearly still extracting surplus from the workers, just now in a monopolized form, rather than competing entities responding to market changes and thus extracting the most possible surplus value of the workers.
The same can be applied the the USSR, just expanded to the entire economy instead of just the steel industry. Workers did not receive the full value of their labour, the allocation of the surplus was not managed by the workers themselves, but rather the state apparatus.
What constitutes capital and therefore capitalism according to Marx, Engels and Lenin?
This was done by the discovery of surplus-value. It was shown that the appropriation of unpaid labour is the basis of the capitalist mode of production and of the exploitation of the worker that occurs under it, that even if the capitalist buys the labour-power of his labourer at its full value as a commodity on the market, he yet extracts more value from it than he paid for; and that in the ultimate analysis this surplus-value forms those sums of value from which are heaped up the constantly increasing masses of capital in the hands of the possessing classes. The genesis of capitalist production and the production of capital were both explained.
-Engels, AntiDuhring
“The historic conditions of its existence are by no means given with the mere circulation of money and commodities. It [capitalism] can spring into life only when the owner of the means of production and subsistence meets in the market with the free laborer selling his labor power.”
Marx - (Capital, Vol. I, International ed., p. 170.)
“In themselves money and commodities are no more capital than are the means of production and of subsistence. They want transforming into capital. But this transformation can only take place under certain circumstances that center in this, viz., that two very different kinds of commodity-possessors must come face to face and into contact; on the one hand, the owners of money, means of production, means of subsistence, who are eager to increase the sums of values they possess, by buying other people’s labor power; on the other hand, free laborers, the sellers of their own labor power and therefore the sellers of labor… With this polarization of the market for commodities, the fundamental conditions of capitalist production are given. The capitalist system presupposes the complete separation of the laborers from all property in the means by which they can realize their labor. As soon as capitalist production is once on its own legs, it not only maintains this separation, but reproduces it on a continually extending scale.”
Marx (Capital, p. 714.)
the separation of the direct producer from the means of production, i.e., his expropriation, [signified] the transition from simple commodity production to capitalist production (and [constituted] the necessary condition for this transition)… The home market… spreads with the extension of commodity production from products to labor power, and only in proportion as the latter is transformed into a commodity does capitalism embrace the entire production of the country, developing mainly on account of means of production…"
Lenin - (Collected Works, Vol. 3, pp. 68-69.)
What did Marx and Lenin say regarding the lower phase of communist society?
Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structureof society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.
-Marx, Critique of the Gotha programme
It is this communist society, which has just emerged into the light of day out of the womb of capitalism and which is in every respect stamped with the birthmarks of the old society, that Marx terms the “first”, or lower, phase of communist society.
The means of production are no longer the private property of individuals. The means of production belong to the whole of society. Every member of society, performing a certain part of the socially-necessary work, receives a certificate from society to the effect that he has done a certain amount of work. And with this certificate he receives from the public store of consumer goods a corresponding quantity of products. After a deduction is made of the amount of labor which goes to the public fund, every worker, therefore, receives from society as much as he has given to it.
The first phase of communism, therefore, cannot yet provide justice and equality; differences, and unjust differences, in wealth will still persist, but the exploitation of man by man will have become impossible because it will be impossible to seize the means of production--the factories, machines, land, etc.--and make them private property. In smashing Lassalle's petty-bourgeois, vague phrases about “equality” and “justice” in general, Marx shows the course of development of communist society, which is compelled to abolish at first only the “injustice” of the means of production seized by individuals, and which is unable at once to eliminate the other injustice, which consists in the distribution of consumer goods "according to the amount of labor performed" (and not according to needs).
-Lenin, State And Revolution, Chapter 5 Section 3
So in response to this
The Nazis nationalized their entire steel industry, thus “making the division of necessary and surplus product the division of deliberate social decision”, but clearly still extracting surplus from the workers, just now in a monopolized form, rather than competing entities responding to market changes and thus extracting the most possible surplus value of the workers.
So there was no free market for a labourer to sell their labour power as a commodity (what Marx says must be characteristic for capital to "spring into life"). So capital didn't exist because capital is surplus-value of labour and the industries were all state owned and profit didn't go into a capitalists hands but back into industry as investment and the workers wages and all of the mentioned subordinated to a central plan so was not subject to the "whim of the anarchy of production".
Incidently this is why the Soviet Union and then China were able to industrialise at a phenomenal place precisely because they were not hampered by the capitalist mode of production of the capitalist class, the profit motive and the anarchy of production. Industry could just expand like balloon.
In order to demonstrate that a given society was capitalist, in the scientific sense of the term, it would be necessary to show not merely that articles of consumption were commodities (which was true but proves little), but also and principally that commodity exchange, based on expropriation of the direct producers, embraced and governed the means of production and labor power. If the direct producers, the workers, are not divorced from the means of production, and if consequently neither these means nor labor power function as commodities, then no survivals of "bourgeois right," nor any amount of other inequities and injustices, can allow of such a society being properly termed capitalist.
Inversely, if the direct producers have been separated from the means of production, and consequently both labor power and means of production are exchanged as commodities, then no amount of social welfare benefits, no nationalizations, no statutory curbs on excess profiteering, no ameliorative measures whatever can conceal or modify the capitalist character of such a society.
I obviously agree with almost everything in this comment, I think the key part is this:
If the direct producers, the workers, are not divorced from the means of production
I think the workers in the soviet union were still very much divorced from the means of production and thus from the surplus value they created. I do not see any big change in relation to the control over the means of production from the 20s to the 30s, other than the NEP ended and control was shifted more to the state.
It is this communist society, which has just emerged into the light of day out of the womb of capitalism and which is in every respect stamped with the birthmarks of the old society, that Marx terms the “first”, or lower, phase of communist society.
Do you really think the USSR has achieved that? The lower phase of communism should still not show symptoms of a state (a tool for class oppression, I think we agree with that) as it is a classless society.
For me it's ridiculous to claim that the USSR didn't show a class character and thus - that the USSR was stateless. It's absurd.
I think the workers in the soviet union were still very much divorced from the means of production and thus from the surplus value they created. I do not see any big change in relation to the control over the means of production from the 20s to the 30s, other than the NEP ended and control was shifted more to the state.
They weren't. Their direct connection to the means of production through either state owned (and therefore worker managed and directed but subordinated to the central plan) industry or directly through the collective farms and tractor stations. Please go read the Communist Manifesto Chapter 2 with particular attention to the last 5 paragraphs on what Marx says should be done in a country and report back whether the Soviets did that
Do you really think the USSR has achieved that? The lower phase of communism should still not show symptoms of a state (a tool for class oppression, I think we agree with that) as it is a classless society.
For me it’s ridiculous to claim that the USSR didn’t show a class character and thus - that the USSR was stateless. It’s absurd.
Absolutely they achieved this lower form of communism (or what we would now term socialism). Marx and Engels explicitly say that the era between capitalist and Communisty society (here we mean full classless/stateless/moneyless etc.) can be none other than the dictatorship of the proletariat. Here is what they said.
The people’s state has been flung in our teeth ad nauseam by the anarchists, although Marx’s anti-Proudhon piece and after it the Communist Manifesto declare outright that, with the introduction of the socialist order of society, the state will dissolve of itself and disappear. Now, since the state is merely a transitional institution of which use is made in the struggle, in the revolution, to keep down one’s enemies by force, it is utter nonsense to speak of a free people’s state; so long as the proletariat still makes use of the state, it makes use of it, not for the purpose of freedom, but of keeping down its enemies and, as soon as there can be any question of freedom, the state as such ceases to exist.
In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at the earliest possible moment, until such time as a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, will be able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap-heap.
Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Nevertheless, the different states of the different civilized countries, in spite or their motley diversity of form, all have this in common: that they are based on modern bourgeois society, only one more or less capitalistically developed. They have, therefore, also certain essential characteristics in common. In this sense, it is possible to speak of the "present-day state" in contrast with the future, in which its present root, bourgeois society, will have died off.
The question then arises: What transformation will the state undergo in communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions? This question can only be answered scientifically, and one does not get a flea-hop nearer to the problem by a thousand-fold combination of the word 'people' with the word 'state'.
Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
They downvoted @Hungover because he spoke the truth.
There's definitely a group on Chapo whose line is: "Communism is when surplus value is extracted by states that are opposed to American imperialism, and the more surplus value extracted, the more communist it is."
v Please give me your downvotes below, thank you. v
I literally said it wasn't possible for the USSR to establish socialism / communism (really, more or less the same thing for Marx) without a revolution in Europe, this is such an absurd strawman.
That is literally what you're saying. The (stated) goal of all socialist countries is to give the workers ownership over the means of production, but this cannot be achieved until there is a strong enough coalition capable of and willing to stand up against capitalist interference. The moment a capitalist state catches wind of a country even saying that sort of stuff is the moment they begin plotting its destruction - the surplus value of labor (at least, part of it) must be used for the common good - ie building up productive forces, purging reactionary elements, and creating a military sufficient not only to defend the country itself but to discourage interference with allies and neighbors. It's not ideal, by all means, but it is the only way forward. If China, or Cuba, or Vietnam, or North Korea were to not use its surplus value doing the previously stated things, the US and other NATO aligned countries would've crushed them decades ago, and replaced their leadership with neoliberal or fascist puppets.
This is not an uncritical defense of AES, but rather an explanation as to why just because they have not achieved the socialist mode of production and distribution does not mean they are not building towards it. This also isn't proof that they will, or even desire to, transition to the socialist mode of production and distribution, but again, simply saying that they aren't NOW isn't proof that they won't later. If you wish claim that say, China does not wish to move to socialism, that is a perfectly fine opinion to hold, once backed with an argument and evidence
This is not an uncritical defense of AES, but rather an explanation as to why just because they have not achieved the socialist mode of production and distribution does not mean they are not building towards it. This also isn’t proof that they will, or even desire to, transition to the socialist mode of production and distribution, but again, simply saying that they aren’t NOW isn’t proof that they won’t later. If you wish claim that say, China does not wish to move to socialism, that is a perfectly fine opinion to hold, once backed with an argument and evidence
I agree with all of this, maybe our differences lie somewhere else. I do not blame countries or leaders or parties or whatever else for 'not pushing the socialism button', I think history plays out of material conditions.
Obviously there are material factors that explain the current conditions, I'm just not willing to call countries socialist if they don't have a socialist mode of production. Dictatorships of the proletariat - fine. Socialist experiments - fine. Actually existing Socialism? - I think that's just empirically not true and a fundamental deception.
This is not an uncritical defense of [actually existing socialism], but rather an explanation as to why just because they have not achieved [actual existing socialism] does not mean they are not building towards it.
See how this is a facially absurd sentence? How you literally go from saying "it is socialism" to "it isn't" in the course of like a dozen words? This is the essence of my problem with idealist definitions of AES that emphasize intentions over actions and material circumstances.
Idealist definitions of AES? Socialism isn't something you just get overnight, it's something that will take years, decades to build WITHOUT capitalist interference. You're the fucking idealist, thinking that you can just institute socialism the moment you get into power
In the mixed economies that have existed to date, the socialist elements have remained subordinated to the capitalist elements.
There are no 'socialist elements' in a mixed economy. It's a capitalist economy because the mode of production remains capitalist and the commodity form exists, it's only the market that takes a simpler form (monopolized) with a single element on the 'job supply' side - the state.
Nationalised steel industries within a capitalist system have to conform to market pressures. Similarly the “worker receiving full value of their labour” in worker coops operating in markets will also engage in commodity production. Key is that with a planned economy, anarchy in production has been eliminated and the scope of commodity exchange has been reduced.
I fully agree with this point, I just don't see the relevance. It's still key who plans the economy and manages surplus value, right?
deleted by creator
Why did you stop there with your quote?
But other than that, there are fundamental problems with that, central planning doesn't make anything "socialist". If one says " this switch to a planned system, where the the division of necessary and surplus product is the result of deliberate social decision, is entirely in line with what Marx had hoped for", what about other elements of planning in clearly capitalist economies? The Nazis nationalized their entire steel industry, thus "making the division of necessary and surplus product the division of deliberate social decision", but clearly still extracting surplus from the workers, just now in a monopolized form, rather than competing entities responding to market changes and thus extracting the most possible surplus value of the workers.
The same can be applied the the USSR, just expanded to the entire economy instead of just the steel industry. Workers did not receive the full value of their labour, the allocation of the surplus was not managed by the workers themselves, but rather the state apparatus.
What constitutes capital and therefore capitalism according to Marx, Engels and Lenin?
-Engels, AntiDuhring
Marx - (Capital, Vol. I, International ed., p. 170.)
Marx (Capital, p. 714.)
Lenin - (Collected Works, Vol. 3, pp. 68-69.)
What did Marx and Lenin say regarding the lower phase of communist society?
-Marx, Critique of the Gotha programme
-Lenin, State And Revolution, Chapter 5 Section 3
So in response to this
So there was no free market for a labourer to sell their labour power as a commodity (what Marx says must be characteristic for capital to "spring into life"). So capital didn't exist because capital is surplus-value of labour and the industries were all state owned and profit didn't go into a capitalists hands but back into industry as investment and the workers wages and all of the mentioned subordinated to a central plan so was not subject to the "whim of the anarchy of production".
Incidently this is why the Soviet Union and then China were able to industrialise at a phenomenal place precisely because they were not hampered by the capitalist mode of production of the capitalist class, the profit motive and the anarchy of production. Industry could just expand like balloon.
In order to demonstrate that a given society was capitalist, in the scientific sense of the term, it would be necessary to show not merely that articles of consumption were commodities (which was true but proves little), but also and principally that commodity exchange, based on expropriation of the direct producers, embraced and governed the means of production and labor power. If the direct producers, the workers, are not divorced from the means of production, and if consequently neither these means nor labor power function as commodities, then no survivals of "bourgeois right," nor any amount of other inequities and injustices, can allow of such a society being properly termed capitalist.
Inversely, if the direct producers have been separated from the means of production, and consequently both labor power and means of production are exchanged as commodities, then no amount of social welfare benefits, no nationalizations, no statutory curbs on excess profiteering, no ameliorative measures whatever can conceal or modify the capitalist character of such a society.
deleted by creator
I obviously agree with almost everything in this comment, I think the key part is this:
I think the workers in the soviet union were still very much divorced from the means of production and thus from the surplus value they created. I do not see any big change in relation to the control over the means of production from the 20s to the 30s, other than the NEP ended and control was shifted more to the state.
Do you really think the USSR has achieved that? The lower phase of communism should still not show symptoms of a state (a tool for class oppression, I think we agree with that) as it is a classless society.
For me it's ridiculous to claim that the USSR didn't show a class character and thus - that the USSR was stateless. It's absurd.
They weren't. Their direct connection to the means of production through either state owned (and therefore worker managed and directed but subordinated to the central plan) industry or directly through the collective farms and tractor stations. Please go read the Communist Manifesto Chapter 2 with particular attention to the last 5 paragraphs on what Marx says should be done in a country and report back whether the Soviets did that
Absolutely they achieved this lower form of communism (or what we would now term socialism). Marx and Engels explicitly say that the era between capitalist and Communisty society (here we mean full classless/stateless/moneyless etc.) can be none other than the dictatorship of the proletariat. Here is what they said.
Engels to August Bebel In Zwickau, London, March 18-28, 1875;
Engels, Civil War In France
Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme
They downvoted @Hungover because he spoke the truth.
There's definitely a group on Chapo whose line is: "Communism is when surplus value is extracted by states that are opposed to American imperialism, and the more surplus value extracted, the more communist it is."
v Please give me your downvotes below, thank you. v
Lotta words to ask "Why didn't Stalin press the big red establish communism button?"
I literally said it wasn't possible for the USSR to establish socialism / communism (really, more or less the same thing for Marx) without a revolution in Europe, this is such an absurd strawman.
That is literally what you're saying. The (stated) goal of all socialist countries is to give the workers ownership over the means of production, but this cannot be achieved until there is a strong enough coalition capable of and willing to stand up against capitalist interference. The moment a capitalist state catches wind of a country even saying that sort of stuff is the moment they begin plotting its destruction - the surplus value of labor (at least, part of it) must be used for the common good - ie building up productive forces, purging reactionary elements, and creating a military sufficient not only to defend the country itself but to discourage interference with allies and neighbors. It's not ideal, by all means, but it is the only way forward. If China, or Cuba, or Vietnam, or North Korea were to not use its surplus value doing the previously stated things, the US and other NATO aligned countries would've crushed them decades ago, and replaced their leadership with neoliberal or fascist puppets.
This is not an uncritical defense of AES, but rather an explanation as to why just because they have not achieved the socialist mode of production and distribution does not mean they are not building towards it. This also isn't proof that they will, or even desire to, transition to the socialist mode of production and distribution, but again, simply saying that they aren't NOW isn't proof that they won't later. If you wish claim that say, China does not wish to move to socialism, that is a perfectly fine opinion to hold, once backed with an argument and evidence
I agree with all of this, maybe our differences lie somewhere else. I do not blame countries or leaders or parties or whatever else for 'not pushing the socialism button', I think history plays out of material conditions.
Obviously there are material factors that explain the current conditions, I'm just not willing to call countries socialist if they don't have a socialist mode of production. Dictatorships of the proletariat - fine. Socialist experiments - fine. Actually existing Socialism? - I think that's just empirically not true and a fundamental deception.
See how this is a facially absurd sentence? How you literally go from saying "it is socialism" to "it isn't" in the course of like a dozen words? This is the essence of my problem with idealist definitions of AES that emphasize intentions over actions and material circumstances.
Idealist definitions of AES? Socialism isn't something you just get overnight, it's something that will take years, decades to build WITHOUT capitalist interference. You're the fucking idealist, thinking that you can just institute socialism the moment you get into power
deleted by creator
There are no 'socialist elements' in a mixed economy. It's a capitalist economy because the mode of production remains capitalist and the commodity form exists, it's only the market that takes a simpler form (monopolized) with a single element on the 'job supply' side - the state.
I fully agree with this point, I just don't see the relevance. It's still key who plans the economy and manages surplus value, right?