That is an indirect way of looking at it. More directly, in both cases they strive to maximise production and minimise costs. The big difference being that the market is a much more efficent mechanism for evaluating the success of this equation than any planning targets are going to be in practice. For example, it's difficult to survive as a factory in the West when you only produce left boots - in the SU this actually happened for long periods of time in certain factories as it actually made it easier to meet planning targets (number of boots, cost of machinery) since your machinery didn't have to be as complex to be able to sew on both sides.
An open question to all SWP members on u75
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That is an indirect way of looking at it. More directly, in both cases they strive to maximise production and minimise costs. The big difference being that the market is a much more efficent mechanism for evaluating the success of this equation than any planning targets are going to be in practice. For example, it's difficult to survive as a factory in the West when you only produce left boots - in the SU this actually happened for long periods of time in certain factories as it actually made it easier to meet planning targets (number of boots, cost of machinery) since your machinery didn't have to be as complex to be able to sew on both sides.
Idris2002
Stay Alive in '25
gurrier said:
Yes, and that contrast is why I see the SU as being fundamentally non-capitalist.
The anthropologist Katherine Verdery, who's worked on decollectivisation of Romanian agriculture, wrote something to the effect that while western capitalist accumulates capital, what the system in the east accumulated was means of production. Which is not quite the same thing.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
best not mentioned, really.sihhi said:
How do you explain Lenin's relationship with Mongolia and Mongolian workers?
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
poor working class.Well, that is something that you could indeed argue - that the lack of a market mechanism for evaluating planning targets renders the system substantially different from capitalism. To some extent it is merely a matter of semantics. You can say it is very similar to capitalism compared to older economic systems (extraction and re-investment of surplus under the control of a minority) and therefore decide to distinguish it by adding an adjective (state) or you could come up with some new descriptive term for it that highlights the difference.
Personally, I think that the 'state-capitalist' phrase is useful as it underlines the fact that the type of exploitation that existed in the SU was no different than capitalist exploitation. It has also been in use for a long time - the earliest use of the term that I know of was by Berkman in 1923 (although I don't think it originated with him). On the other hand, the trots who adopted the term liked it because it allowed them to oppose the SU on the grounds that it was capitalist, rather than the much more obvious grounds that it was a totalitarian dictatorship, which they have no problems with. Witness, the esteem that they all still hold lenin in, the architect of the dictatorship.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
State Capitalism
The Socialist Party of Great Britain I believe coined the term. They were using it within weeks of the revolution.
Trotsky of course did not of course describe the Soviet Union as "state capitalist" and anyone who does cannot really be described as "trotskyist" on this issue at least. One of Trotsky's best books is "The Revolution Betrayed" which, apart from the penetrating analysis is quite beautifully written. Whatever you think of the man's political ideas, he was by all accounts an incredible public speaker and the quality of his prose was almost uniquely good on the left. That said I don't think that anyone who has read the 18th Brumaire would concur with Gurrier's remarks on Marx as a writer.
Trotsky's analysis of the Soviet Union was that capitalism has been abolished but that looming over that important gain was a brutal dictatorship, rooted in the isolation of the revolution and the growth of a powerful caste of bureaucrats. The shorthand is that it was a "degenerated workers state".
In other words, Trotskyists opposed Stalinism precisely because it was a vicious dictatorship over the working class and certainly not because Stalinism was just another variant of capitalism. Stalinism, according to Trotsky, was an inherently unstable system that would either revert to capitalism or be overthrown by a new political revolution to establish a workers democracy - a prediction borne out by events.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain I believe coined the term. They were using it within weeks of the revolution.
Trotsky of course did not of course describe the Soviet Union as "state capitalist" and anyone who does cannot really be described as "trotskyist" on this issue at least. One of Trotsky's best books is "The Revolution Betrayed" which, apart from the penetrating analysis is quite beautifully written. Whatever you think of the man's political ideas, he was by all accounts an incredible public speaker and the quality of his prose was almost uniquely good on the left. That said I don't think that anyone who has read the 18th Brumaire would concur with Gurrier's remarks on Marx as a writer.
Trotsky's analysis of the Soviet Union was that capitalism has been abolished but that looming over that important gain was a brutal dictatorship, rooted in the isolation of the revolution and the growth of a powerful caste of bureaucrats. The shorthand is that it was a "degenerated workers state".
In other words, Trotskyists opposed Stalinism precisely because it was a vicious dictatorship over the working class and certainly not because Stalinism was just another variant of capitalism. Stalinism, according to Trotsky, was an inherently unstable system that would either revert to capitalism or be overthrown by a new political revolution to establish a workers democracy - a prediction borne out by events.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
As were the mensheviks and some Bolheviks - but the the term was in common use amongst anarchist and other critics of the 2nd international and orthodox marxism well before 1917 - even in the 19th century. And, those criticisms were largely borne out by the way things went in Russia.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Pilgrim said:
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
It's ten pages in for fucks sake. Nobody reads threads by that point except for the few people who are still arguing on them.
Pilgrim: if you read back this thread is a criticism of the SWP - it has just gone into a somewhat deeper examination of the problems. Their problems spring from their core politics rather than the fact that they are all wankers (although their core politics do mean that they have a tendency to attract self-important wankers especially at a leadership level).
Nigel: I think you know who I am refering to when I write about the trots who adopted the state capitalism line!
I have never seen much point in delving into the metaphysics of trotskyism. All of the theories about the nature of the SU that came from a Trotskyist perspective share some common basic errors which render the whole theology ridiculous, a "how many paper-sellers can you fit on the corner of a street?" sort of thing. The fundamental and obvious problem with all the trot theories, whether they come from degenerated workers statists, bureaucratic collectivists or state capitatalists is that they ignore some basic facts.
1) Trotsky was one of the principal and most enthusiastic architects of the totalitarian dictatorship and is thus in rather a bad position to denounce it, especially when he never renounced his own part in it (did he ever admit any errors?). The fact that he only had a problem with it when it turned on him renders all of his criticisms little more than sour grapes.
2) Although you may declare his greatness as a prophet in predicting the possible reversion of the SU to capitalism, this rings rather hollow when you consider that many of his core predictions have been proved to be incredibly wide of the mark. His confident prediction that the objective conditions for revolution existed since the 1930's and that all that was holding back the working class was a crisis of leadership is revealed as little more than wishful thinking with hindsight. Similarly with all his predictions of imminent crises in capitalism - a blight that has deeply afflicted virtually all of the trot groups since. How many times have the SP or the SWP predicted that the coming years will see a huge upsurge in working class struggle and a deepening crisis in capitalism, only for them to be proven spectacularly wrong? It amazes me how they can simply ignore their mistakes and just change the timescale repeatedly. History has shown Trotsky to have been a very, very poor political analyst.
3) Specifically on the CWI's stance towards the SU - the degenerated workers state line. Firstly, the workers showed very clearly on repeated occasions that they didn't think it was 'their' state by rebeling against it whenever they got a chance, finally ditching it entirely in 1989-91. This error has deep roots - it springs from a core problem with Marxism and its absolute lack of analysis of power. To put it simply, there is no such thing as a workers' state. A state is an instrument for a minority to rule over a majority and since workers are always going to be a majority of society, the concept is an impossibility.
Nigel: I think you know who I am refering to when I write about the trots who adopted the state capitalism line!
I have never seen much point in delving into the metaphysics of trotskyism. All of the theories about the nature of the SU that came from a Trotskyist perspective share some common basic errors which render the whole theology ridiculous, a "how many paper-sellers can you fit on the corner of a street?" sort of thing. The fundamental and obvious problem with all the trot theories, whether they come from degenerated workers statists, bureaucratic collectivists or state capitatalists is that they ignore some basic facts.
1) Trotsky was one of the principal and most enthusiastic architects of the totalitarian dictatorship and is thus in rather a bad position to denounce it, especially when he never renounced his own part in it (did he ever admit any errors?). The fact that he only had a problem with it when it turned on him renders all of his criticisms little more than sour grapes.
2) Although you may declare his greatness as a prophet in predicting the possible reversion of the SU to capitalism, this rings rather hollow when you consider that many of his core predictions have been proved to be incredibly wide of the mark. His confident prediction that the objective conditions for revolution existed since the 1930's and that all that was holding back the working class was a crisis of leadership is revealed as little more than wishful thinking with hindsight. Similarly with all his predictions of imminent crises in capitalism - a blight that has deeply afflicted virtually all of the trot groups since. How many times have the SP or the SWP predicted that the coming years will see a huge upsurge in working class struggle and a deepening crisis in capitalism, only for them to be proven spectacularly wrong? It amazes me how they can simply ignore their mistakes and just change the timescale repeatedly. History has shown Trotsky to have been a very, very poor political analyst.
3) Specifically on the CWI's stance towards the SU - the degenerated workers state line. Firstly, the workers showed very clearly on repeated occasions that they didn't think it was 'their' state by rebeling against it whenever they got a chance, finally ditching it entirely in 1989-91. This error has deep roots - it springs from a core problem with Marxism and its absolute lack of analysis of power. To put it simply, there is no such thing as a workers' state. A state is an instrument for a minority to rule over a majority and since workers are always going to be a majority of society, the concept is an impossibility.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
Sorry gurrier, I'm far too tired to get into this in detail right now.
I posted to point out that criticising the Trotskyist view of the Soviet Union by attacking the SWP's supposed ulterior motives for developing a variant of a state capitalist analysis doesn't make much sense. Whether or not you regard the SWP as "Trotskyists" in general, their view of the Soviet Union is not Trotskyist and they'd be the first to say it.
The criticisms you make of Trotsky's actual view of the Soviet Union in your more recent posting are fairly standard anarchist stuff which I don't have any time for, but at least you are attacking something related to his actual views. Trotsky, and those who broadly hold to his analysis, did indeed oppose the Stalinists precisely because they saw the Soviet Union as a bureaucratic dictatorship not because they saw it as some form of capitalism. You can argue that Trotsky was a hypocrite, a butcher or whatever else. I'd argue that he was a heroic figure who did his best to fight for the survival of the revolution, fought against the rise of the bureaucracy and was eventually murdered for it. We aren't likely to resolve that particular disagreement on this thread however.
On the other issue you raise, Trotsky's argument that there was a crisis of leadership in the working class movement in the latter part of his lifetime certainly stands up to scrutiny.
There were mass working class political organisations with the allegiance of millions - social democracy during the first world war and immediately after it, both social democracy and Stalinism afterwards. There were a series of revolutionary or pre-revolutionary crises in the wake of the first world war and to a lesser extent at other stages (for example the end of World War 2, 1968). In each of those situations the leadership of those mass organisations did everything they could to chain the working class to capitalism. That's the essence of what the "crisis of leadership" analysis was about.
As for the present day, I wouldn't argue that the main problem facing the working class in its political organisations is faulty leadership. A rather bigger problem is the absence of mass political organisations in the first place. A crisis of organisation if you will.
Anyway, as I said too tired for this right now.
I posted to point out that criticising the Trotskyist view of the Soviet Union by attacking the SWP's supposed ulterior motives for developing a variant of a state capitalist analysis doesn't make much sense. Whether or not you regard the SWP as "Trotskyists" in general, their view of the Soviet Union is not Trotskyist and they'd be the first to say it.
The criticisms you make of Trotsky's actual view of the Soviet Union in your more recent posting are fairly standard anarchist stuff which I don't have any time for, but at least you are attacking something related to his actual views. Trotsky, and those who broadly hold to his analysis, did indeed oppose the Stalinists precisely because they saw the Soviet Union as a bureaucratic dictatorship not because they saw it as some form of capitalism. You can argue that Trotsky was a hypocrite, a butcher or whatever else. I'd argue that he was a heroic figure who did his best to fight for the survival of the revolution, fought against the rise of the bureaucracy and was eventually murdered for it. We aren't likely to resolve that particular disagreement on this thread however.
On the other issue you raise, Trotsky's argument that there was a crisis of leadership in the working class movement in the latter part of his lifetime certainly stands up to scrutiny.
There were mass working class political organisations with the allegiance of millions - social democracy during the first world war and immediately after it, both social democracy and Stalinism afterwards. There were a series of revolutionary or pre-revolutionary crises in the wake of the first world war and to a lesser extent at other stages (for example the end of World War 2, 1968). In each of those situations the leadership of those mass organisations did everything they could to chain the working class to capitalism. That's the essence of what the "crisis of leadership" analysis was about.
As for the present day, I wouldn't argue that the main problem facing the working class in its political organisations is faulty leadership. A rather bigger problem is the absence of mass political organisations in the first place. A crisis of organisation if you will.
Anyway, as I said too tired for this right now.
danno_at_work said:
............ STOP TALKING TO YOURSELF THEN
silentNate said:
'SCUSEE but editor has also said it's not a BNP or SWP site.
.
Stalin and friends developed 'LeninISM', "Problems of Leninism", I think your correct that lenin's understanding has been rejected by the SWP, though not correct on what constitutes 'Leninism'.fanciful said:
How 'crap' is the leninism of the SWP when so many other groups, aside from the swp, bemoan the inability to bring the 'left' to a position of amagamation into a united political force, poss' even to found a base of a genuine socialist party.
.
Stalinist's sit in workers or even student meetings as members of the swp, as years ago the British Communist Party members sat in the trade union meetings and were not opposed as left wing fascists ?
Otherwise I think your description is accurate.
rebel warrior said:
An SWP tale of the creator, by a full time worker ?, dialectical materialist view, Greeks were into dialectics -maybe not, historical materialist view, Morgan also helped in it's development, seperately - maybe not, Monist view - could try India ............ what's this 'coherant' method ?
were the others incoherant ? who ?
danno_at_work
ASBO fodder
oh god
Idris2002
Stay Alive in '25
Nigel Irritable said:
Sorry Nige, but I think you're retreating into mythical thinking with this one. Even if there were elements of heroism in his later stand against Stalin, the fact remains that - as gurrier made clear - Trotsky and Lenin laid the foundations for what would become Stalinism.
Why do you CWI people stick with this? I can understand cults like the Sparts and student re-enactment societies like the SWP still keeping in step with the party line that's been handed down. But you lot are too much like normal human beings to keep adhering to this stuff.
DONT MIND HIM MATE...<sorry, takes off caps lock>danno_at_work said:
Snow tiger, as he was know before his first banning for the same utterances but on a more frequent basis, will come along and say this type of shit regularly... cos, you see, ST/SS got his political education from the then WRP and was also expelled from the WRP!! No mean feat that
And hes well know to the movement in Leeds, but just cant bring himself to acknowledge that everyone here in Leeds thinks hes absolutely BONKers..
bless...
cockneyrebel
New Member
For a good analysis of why the ideas/methods of the Bolsheviks didn't lay down the foundations of Stalinism:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1937/1937-sta.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1937/1937-sta.htm
Pfff. 
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
It back.
Mungo hungry for Trot.
Dr. Christmas
ca suffit
ernestolynch said:
croeso n'ol ern!cockneyrebel said:
STOP PRESS - Trotsky says 'I'm not to blame'!
This isn't a 'good analysis', there are lots and lots of words on the page but they say almost nothing that relates to this discussion.
But if its the war of the URLs your after how about this http://struggle.ws/once/iwg.html Your a member of Workers Power I think, this was a reply to your Irish group back in 1994 (they would up shortly afterwards). It covers a lot of the more thinking trot defenses of Leninism. ie not the SWP 'nothing happened, everything was wonderful until evil uncle joe popped up from behind a toadstool' panto defence beloved of John Rees and other hacks. For a laugh at the Rees method see http://struggle.ws/ws92/krons34.html
Diolch Doc! Any messages from the Trot buffoons can be forwarded to:
The Estate of Lev Bronstein
Dept for Useful Idiots
Pentagon
Washington
DC 620002
The Estate of Lev Bronstein
Dept for Useful Idiots
Pentagon
Washington
DC 620002
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