[Vera Politica]

The withering away of the state, however, doesn't seem plausible in one country.

This thesis is an extension of the idea that when certain countries experience a socialist revolution, it ignites an international class struggle. The latter, by definition, could not wither away in a 'single state'. That being said, one would have to motivate the idea that the state cannot wither, in any single country, if an international class struggle exists.

[daft punk]

Socialism and communism are basically the same thing really, to Marxists. It means an economy which is mostly in public ownership, with democratic control by the workers. This means a huge amount of mass participation in decision making.

Neither has ever existed. It was attempted only once, in Russia, where it failed due to it's isolation in a single backward country.

Lenin:

"But we have not finished building even the foundations of socialist economy and the hostile power of moribund capitalism can still deprive us of that. We must clearly appreciate this and frankly admit it; for there is nothing more dangerous than illusions (and vertigo, particularly at high altitudes). And there is absolutely nothing terrible, nothing that should give legitimate grounds for the slightest despondency, in admitting this bitter truth; we have always urged and reiterated the elementary truth of Marxism - that the joint efforts of the workers of several advanced countries are needed for the victory of socialism."

The words have changed a bit. Marx and Engels called themselves communists. Lenin and Trotsky used the word socialism for the earlier stages, but stages they never got anywhere near. Nowadays we mostly just use the word socialism.

The end result: no countries, no state, no government, no full time politicians, no money.

[Daktoria]

Love thy neighbor as you would love thyself.

Of course, this is problematic because everyone doesn't want to be loved the same way, but there really isn't any other way to distribute equality.

BTW, the problem with "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" is it doesn't motivate people to provide or even communicate. It's a very harsh mandate because it doesn't actually include any sort of social relationship (which leaves economic actors in a bit of a rut).

[Vera Politica]

Socialism and communism are basically the same thing really, to Marxists.

Not quite. Socialism involves worker's ownership of the means of production and the state apparatus (to eliminate counter-revolutionary conditions and generally advance the interests of the working class and eliminate all other classes). Class struggle is still at work in socialism, the difference is that the working class, in this stage, is the ruling class. Communism is stateless, the stage where class struggle no longer exists. The later is possible only on a global scale, since international class conflict will still exist if capitalism has not been supplanted as the dominant form of production. Socialism, on the other hand, is possible in a single country; although, the country is always mixed in with the international struggle, no matter what the condition of the class struggle domestically.

[KurtFF8]

Socialism, on the other hand, is possible in a single country; although, the country is always mixed in with the international struggle, no matter what the condition of the class struggle domestically.

Indeed, I never understood the automatic rejection of this based on Trostky's claim (although he did in fact help construct "socialism in one country" even if he rejected Stalin's defense of it). I don't see how it follows that socialism can only be achieved if all nations go through revolution. Such an idea is very idealistic and unscientific to say the least.

[The Immortal Goon]

Indeed, I never understood the automatic rejection of this based on Trostky's claim (although he did in fact help construct "socialism in one country" even if he rejected Stalin's defense of it). I don't see how it follows that socialism can only be achieved if all nations go through revolution. Such an idea is very idealistic and unscientific to say the least.

It's not based on Trotsky, per se, but Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky. Marx's analysis is pretty heady, but he does make clear that capitalism is a world-wide system that will have a world-wide consequence.

National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.

The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.

The logic here is simple enough; capitalism is a world-wide system. If socialism, as a system, is a higher form of production born from the contradictions of a world system - it too should be international in scope.

It's, of course, not that cut and dry as the struggle to create a socialist system, so Marx correctly implies, takes on a national scope. But he is also right to lampoon socialists concerned only with socializing their own country exactly because it completely ignores the fact that capitalism is a global economy:

Lassalle, in opposition to the [img]Communist%20Manifesto[/img] and to all earlier socialism, conceived the workers' movement from the narrowest national standpoint. He is being followed in this -- and that after the work of the International!

It is altogether self-evident that, to be able to fight at all, the working class must organize itself at home as a class and that its own country is the immediate arena of its struggle -- insofar as its class struggle is national, not in substance, but, as the Communist Manifesto says, "in form". But the "framework of the present-day national state", for instance, the German Empire, is itself, in its turn, economically "within the framework" of the world market, politically "within the framework" of the system of states. Every businessman knows that German trade is at the same time foreign trade, and the greatness of Herr Bismarck consists, to be sure, precisely in his pursuing a kind of international policy.

And to what does the German Workers' party reduce its internationalism? To the consciousness that the result of its efforts will be "the international brotherhood of peoples" -- a phrase borrowed from the bourgeois League of Peace and Freedom, which is intended to pass as equivalent to the international brotherhood of working classes in the joint struggle against the ruling classes and their governments. Not a word, therefore, about the international functions of the German working class! And it is thus that it is to challenge its own bourgeoisie -- which is already linked up in brotherhood against it with the bourgeois of all other countries -- and Herr Bismarck's international policy of conspiracy.

In fact, the internationalism of the program stands even infinitely below that of the Free Trade party. The latter also asserts that the result of its efforts will be "the international brotherhood of peoples". But it also does something to make trade international and by no means contents itself with the consciousness that all people are carrying on trade at home.

The international activity of the working classes does not in any way depend on the existence of the International Working Men's Association. This was only the first attempt to create a central organ for the activity; an attempt which was a lasting success on account of the impulse which it gave but which was no longer realizable in its historical form after the fall of the Paris Commune.

Bismarck's Norddeutsche was absolutely right when it announced, to the satisfaction of its master, that the German Workers' party had sworn off internationalism in the new program.

Engels is more blunt:

Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone?

No. By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others.

Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries – that is to say, at least in England, America, France, and Germany.

It will develop in each of these countries more or less rapidly, according as one country or the other has a more developed industry, greater wealth, a more significant mass of productive forces. Hence, it will go slowest and will meet most obstacles in Germany, most rapidly and with the fewest difficulties in England. It will have a powerful impact on the other countries of the world, and will radically alter the course of development which they have followed up to now, while greatly stepping up its pace.

Lenin, especially toward the end of his life, condemned the party when it attempted to declare that they were making a socialist system in one country. This is actually pretty interesting to follow insofar as Agitprop and women's issues were concerned. Regardless, Lenin:

Socialist revolution can triumph only on two conditions. First, if it is given timely support by a socialist revolution in one or several advanced countries. As you know we have done very much in comparison with the past to bring about this condition, but far from enough to make it a reality.

The second condition is agreement between the proletariat, which is exercising its dictatorship, that is holds state power,and the majority of the peasant population

But we have not finished building even the foundations of socialist economy and the hostile power of moribund capitalism can still deprive us of that. We must clearly appreciate this and frankly admit it; for there is nothing more dangerous than illusions (and vertigo, particularly at high altitudes). And there is absolutely nothing terrible, nothing that should give legitimate grounds for the slightest despondency, in admitting this bitter truth; we have always urged and reiterated the elementary truth of Marxism - that the joint efforts of the workers of several advanced countries are needed for the victory of socialism.

And there's little need to go in to Trotsky on this detail as he's become the poster-boy for it. In each of these cases it's important to point out that Trotsky - unlike some of his latterday admirers, did not see the Soviet Union as capitalist in any sense. He also saw that it had advances that needed to be protected from the outside world. It was a worker's state that needed to be defended - but in the same way Marx, Engels, and Lenin did not see it as being a socialist state - neither did he.

There's also a tendency to take this analysis as a direct refutation of everything Stalin and company did. This is also a simplification. The Soviet Union did modify the theoretical approach after they dropped the ridiculous Third Period garbage that would have been completely logical had one found that Socialism in One Country was a totally viable analysis.

[KurtFF8]

It's not based on Trotsky, per se, but Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky. Marx's analysis is pretty heady, but he does make clear that capitalism is a world-wide system that will have a world-wide consequence.

Yet it tends to be mostly Trotskyists who emphasize this point in contradiction to the USSR.

I don't think that any Marxist denies the need for internationalism and the establishment of a world-scale conflict. The point is that the Trotskyist opposition to the USSR was based on a strange notion that of its own shortcomings being that it didn't somehow also produce revolutions in the West. In other words, the criticism of the Russian Revolution's direction is that it didn't directly induce revolutions else where.

Such logic makes no sense to me, as the failure of the German revolution is sometimes pointed to as a shortcoming of Stalin's.

unlike some of his latterday admirers, did not see the Soviet Union as capitalist in any sense. He also saw that it had advances that needed to be protected from the outside world. It was a worker's state that needed to be defended - but in the same way Marx, Engels, and Lenin did not see it as being a socialist state - neither did he.

I guess my issue with Trotsky has always been distinguishing between a workers state and a socialist state. Trotsky's theory of a "degenerated workers' state" didn't hold much water in my opinion (nor the opinion of many). Especially when Trotskyists try to apply that logic to a place like Cuba (granted he can't personally be blamed for such weak arguments made after his life)

[The Immortal Goon]

The point is that the Trotskyist opposition to the USSR was based on a strange notion that of its own shortcomings being that it didn't somehow also produce revolutions in the West. In other words, the criticism of the Russian Revolution's direction is that it didn't directly induce revolutions else where.

First, I don't think that it's fair to say that Trotsky had "opposition to the USSR". There were things that he disagreed with, but he put his this in to context:

the Soviet bureaucracy is for us subordinate to the question of preserving state property in the means of production of the USSR: that the question of preserving state property in the means of production in the USSR is subordinate for us to the question of the world proletarian revolution.

And I feel that the above is pretty hard to disagree with.

I guess my issue with Trotsky has always been distinguishing between a workers state and a socialist state. Trotsky's theory of a "degenerated workers' state" didn't hold much water in my opinion (nor the opinion of many).

It's funny, in a sense, that this is something that Trotsky gets saddled with. In fact, he thought the worker's revolution was further along in Russia than Lenin did. When debating what to do with labour unions, Trotsky and Lenin came to crossroads. Trotsky thought that, since the state was a worker's state that would later blossom into socialism, there was no real need for unions anymore since worker representation was already a manifestation of the state. Lenin disagreed:

Comrade Trotsky falls into error himself. He seems to say that in a workers’ state it is not the business of the trade unions to stand up for the material and spiritual interests of the working class. That is a mistake. Comrade Trotsky speaks of a “workers’ state”. May I say that this is an abstraction. It was natural for us to write about a workers’ state in 1917; but it is now a patent error to say: “Since this is a workers’ state without any bourgeoisie, against whom then is the working class to be protected, and for what purpose?” The whole point is that it is not quite a workers’ state. That is where Comrade Trotsky makes one of his main mistakes. We have got down from general principles to practical discussion and decrees, and here we are being dragged back and prevented from tackling the business at hand. This will not do. For one thing, ours is not actually a workers’ state but a workers’ and peasants’ state. And a lot depends on that. (Bukharin : “What kind of state? A workers’ and peasants’ state?”) Comrade Bukharin back there may well shout “What kind of state? A workers’ and peasants’ state?” I shall not stop to answer him. Anyone who has a mind to should recall the recent Congress of Soviets,[3] and that will be answer enough.

But that is not all. Our Party Programme—a document which the author of the ABC of Communism knows very well—shows that ours is a workers’ state with a bureacratic twist to it. We have had to mark it with this dismal, shall I say, tag. There you have the reality of the transition. Well, is it right to say that in a state that has taken this shape in practice the trade unions have nothing to protect, or that we can do without them in protecting the material and spiritual interests of the massively organised proletariat? No, this reasoning is theoretically quite wrong. It takes us into the sphere of abstraction or an ideal we shall achieve in 15 or 20 years’ time, and I am not so sure that we shall have achieved it even by then. What we actually have before us is a reality of which we have a good deal of knowledge, provided, that is, we keep our heads, and do not let ourselves be carried awav by intellectualist talk or abstract reasoning, or by what may appear to be “theory” but is in fact error and misapprehension of the peculiarities of transition. We now have a state under which it is the business of the massively organised proletariat to protect itself, while we, for our part, must use these workers’ organisations to protect the workers from their state, and to get them to protect our state. Both forms of protection are achieved through the peculiar interweaving of our state measures and our agreeing or “coalescing” with our trade unions.

Trotsky eventually fell back into line. But this wasn't because he did whatever Lenin said, it was because he was wrong and Lenin was correct. It was not a socialist state or close to becoming a socialist state where labour unions could be safely said to be irrelevant.

Lenin continued, toward the end of his life, warning the communists against the "bureacratic twist" that he had conceived of before:

The main economic power is in our hands. All the vital large enterprises, the railways, etc., are in our hands. The number of leased enterprises, although considerable in places, is on the whole insignificant; altogether it is infinitesimal compared with the rest. The economic power in the hands of the proletarian state of Russia is quite adequate to ensure the transition to communism. What then is lacking? Obviously, what is lacking is culture among the stratum of the Communists who perform administrative functions. If we take Moscow with its 4,700 Communists in responsible positions, and if we take that huge bureaucratic machine, that gigantic heap, we must ask: who is directing whom? I doubt very much whether it can truthfully be said that the Communists are directing that heap. To tell the truth they are not directing, they are being directed. Some thing analogous happened here to what we were told in our history lessons when we were children: sometimes one nation conquers another, the nation that conquers is the conqueror and the nation that is vanquished is the conquered nation. This is simple and intelligible to all. But what happens to the culture of these nations? Here things are not so simple. If the conquering nation is more cultured than the vanquished nation, the former imposes its culture upon the latter; but if the opposite is the case, the vanquished nation imposes its culture upon the conqueror. Has not something like this happened in the capital of the R.S.F.S.R.? Have the 4,700 Communists (nearly a whole army division, and all of them the very best) come under the influence of an alien culture? True, there may be the impression that the vanquished have a high level of culture. But that is not the case at all. Their culture is miserable, insignificant, but it is still at a higher level than ours. Miserable and low as it is, it is higher than that of our responsible Communist administrators, for the latter lack administrative ability. Communists who are put at the head of departments—and sometimes artful saboteurs deliberately put them in these positions in order to use them as a shield—are often fooled. This is a very unpleasant admission to make, or, at any rate, not a very pleasant one; but I think we must admit it, for at present this is the salient problem. I think that this is the political lesson of the past year; and it is around this that the struggle will rage in 1922.

Will the responsible Communists of the R.S.F.S.R. and of the Russian Communist Party realise that they cannot administer; that they only imagine they are directing, but are, actually, being directed? If they realise this they will learn, of course; for this business can be learnt. But one must study hard to learn it, and our people are not doing this. They scatter orders and decrees right and left, but the result is quite different from what they want.

It was only long after this that Trotsky put Lenin's ideological victory over his own, as well as Lenin's subsequent warnings to the party into a coherent theory that explained the general arc of Soviet history.

In doing so, he pulled from Lenin's conception of a worker's state that was not socialist - which had been counter to his own earlier conception. It was only then that the formalized theory of the Worker's State was made.

To go back to the beginning of the post, the worker's state - for all its flaws - was still worth protecting as it was a vanguard against the capitalist system and still had the potential to grow into a socialist state had capitalism itself been given another blow.

Such logic makes no sense to me, as the failure of the German revolution is sometimes pointed to as a shortcoming of Stalin's.

This mostly comes down to the Third Period, which Stalin later discarded the German Revolution failed. The idea is that the Comintern was too busy fighting other communists not sure about Stalin and ordering the Communist Parties to join and collaborate with Social Democrats in government instead of rising while the iron was hot.

I'm more luke-warm on the history of German in particular, so I won't comment beyond linking the above CLR James sequence of events - which should go some way in explaining why the theory is the way it is.

[Phred]

As the topic states, what is the most basic definition of socialism and communism?

I'll leave the defining of Communism to someone else, since I've never been able to puzzle out the plethora of contradictory definitions I've run across over the last half century or so, but you can find a quasi-definition of Socialism in the sticky post at the top of the first page of this forum:

Socialists are skeptical about a free and unfettered market ever providing a just outcome and are strongly disposed to intervention in the prevailing economic system to ensure a more equitable distribution of resources. For "softer" socialists, this means the embracing of a democratic welfare state where governments safeguard basic standards of education, health and welfare for all citizens, while for revolutionary socialists this entails promoting an overthrow of the present order in the interests of providing true ownership of labour to each and every person.

Yeah... I know it sucks as a definition, but the Socialists here at PoFo (of whom there is assuredly no shortage) haven't seen fit to clarify it for the last five years, so it's safe to assume it's the best the PoFo Socialists can come up with.



Phred

[daft punk]

This mostly comes down to the Third Period, which Stalin later discarded the German Revolution failed. The idea is that the Comintern was too busy fighting other communists not sure about Stalin and ordering the Communist Parties to join and collaborate with Social Democrats in government instead of rising while the iron was hot.

I'm more luke-warm on the history of German in particular, so I won't comment beyond linking the above CLR James sequence of events - which should go some way in explaining why the theory is the way it is.

Good post up to this last bit, you were probably worn out. Let me expand a bit.

The Third Period was 1928-34. It was an ultra-left, sectarian period. The Stalinists believed world revolution was on the cards, and collaboration with other workers organisations was a no-no. They called the German SPD 'social fascists' and refused to work with them as Trotsky had advocated. This allowed the Nazis into power and Trotsky gave up on the Comintern.

The German revolution however failed in 1923. Stalin had a hand in that, watering it down. Before that the main one failed in 1919 when 30,000 troops crushed it.

The key thing here is that in 1928 there was no chance of revolution anywhere, Stalin had everything 100% wrong. Anyway, Stalin had no real interest in socialism by 1928. However events forced him to go through the motions at that time:

1. To make up for cocking up the Chinese revolution
2. Because his bourgeois power base was becoming a threat
3. Because agriculture and industry were not performing under the NEP
4. To get some left credentials a la Left Opposition.

2 was probably the main one.

A good summary is here

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky ... /index.htm

THE RISE OF HITLER
AND DESTRUCTION OF THE GERMAN LEFT

[Negotiator]

Socialism: Any economic order without dependency and exploitation of individuals.

Communism: A society of economic equals, without rich or poor people.

Capitalism: An economic order where a small elite controls production and services and the average individual depends upon getting a job from these elites, thus getting into the danger of getting exploited for profit.

The government running the whole economy.

Thats a planned economy. A planned economy can be a perfect capitalism, as for example nazi germany has proven. It is then simply a guaranteed monopoly or ogliopoly for the previously existing producers.

Any economy is either a planned economy or a market economy, or a mixture of both.

Planned economies existed, for example, in nazi germany, and in britain between the world wars, as well as of course in the sowjet union and later its allies. None of these have been socalisms or communisms according to the above definition. Only the sovjet union even wanted to be a socialism, but not a communism.

The strength of planned economies is that complete employment is easily reachable and that certain "global" goals, such as preparing the military for a world war in nazi germany, are more efficiently reachable. On the other hand, general consumption has, in all historical examples, always stayed very low in all planned economies, though there is no logical reason why it must be that way. Only the sovjet union tried to be a socialism, but it completely failed, as it wasnt even a democracy to start with and thus had no freedom of the individual.

The disadvantage is that it doesnt work. With every planned economy, there is a black market that needs to exist to compensate for all the miscalculations of the economic planning instance. Thus pure planned economies on large scales do not exist.

Also, in the long run, planned economies have shown a lack of innovation and progress.

Basically planned economies suffer from the same error as monopolys and ogliopolys - there is just nothing that would urge the economy to stay efficient, thus the performance depends completely upon the whims of the economic leadership, which may for example decide to overinvest, to underinvest. However, some behaviors typical for monopolys, such as destroying part of the production in order to maximize profits, arent typical for planned economies.

Planned economies actually work quite well on small scales and easy tasks. Especially, every individual by themselves form a planned economy, as does every other economic unit (families, companies). So the forming entity of every market economy is always a planned economy in itself.

One of the main misconceptions about planned economies was also that the designers didnt realize any planned economies have to work as part of a market economy, because the world economy is always a market economy (unless we would have a world government). Thus the inefficient planned economies always ended up competing directly with the more efficient market economies.

It has to be stressed that market economies are not the same as capitalism. There is no inherent mechanism of dependency in a market economy, thus a market economy may be the base for a socialism.

All in all planned economies can be viewed as a failure that shouldnt be considered except in special cases when the production in question is simple, such as with agriculture.

One core element should be mentioned as well - planned economies do not actually need money, while complex market economies without money are next to impossible.

[daft punk]

Interesting post. Let me take up one or two points

The disadvantage is that it doesnt work. With every planned economy, there is a black market that needs to exist to compensate for all the miscalculations of the economic planning instance. Thus pure planned economies on large scales do not exist.

It is true that the Stalinist states were riddled with slow, poor decision making. This is why planned economies need massive extensions of democracy, not its curtailment. Mass workers participation in decision making. This get decisions made at the lowest level, by the people who know what is needed, in the fastest time. It also provides incentive by involving people. This is a Marxist basic - socialism must be democratic. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and Luxemburg all stressed this.

Lenin, 1917

"One of the most important tasks today, if not the most important, is to develop this independent initiative of the workers, and of all the working and exploited people generally, develop it as widely as possible in creative organisational work. At all costs we must break the old, absurd, savage, despicable and disgusting prejudice that only the so-called "upper classes", only the rich, and those who have gone through the school of the rich, are capable of administering the state and directing the organisational development of socialist society."

"The workers and peasants are still "timid", they have not yet become accustomed to the idea that they are now the ruling class.."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/w ... dec/25.htm


Lenin 1918
"Proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy; Soviet power is a million times more democratic than the most democratic bourgeois republic." Lenin, 1918, Bourgeois And Proletarian Democracy

You may wonder then why they didnt implement democracy. In fact they started to, but the civil war cut across it. It shold have been reinstated after the war, but they didnt move quick enough in my opinion, they concentrated on the economy.

The bottom line is that socialism is impossible in an isolated backward country, as predicted by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and Luxemburg. Failure to take off in Germany left Russia isolated.