[ingliz]

Saul - After reading the link do you still think Stalinism is socialist or a pragmatic solution to counter real threats to the socialist State?

Either we do it or they crush us!

[ingliz]

Potemkin - The revolutionary goal of the working class is liberation from capitalist exploitation. This goal is not reached and cannot be reached by a new directing and governing class substituting the bourgeoisie. It can only be realised by the workers themselves being master over production
The dictatorship of the proletariat

The Proletariat seizes the power of the state and then changes the ownership of the means of production to state ownership.

But Stalinism subverted this for reasons of necessity

The philosophy of Stalinism is the philosophy of the elite, the bureaucracy, the organizers, the leaders, clothed in Marxist terminology. It is the extreme, the historical limit of the rationalism of the bourgeoisie, carefully organized to look like a new revolutionary doctrine.

[Abood]

Militia would fight an 'industrial' war?
Don't misunderstand me I am in favour of direct democracy, soviets, communes and collectives but I don't see how you could miss out the socialist state in a world of states. A non-state could not defend itself. It would need an international revolution to be viable.

I think you're over-simplifying things.

Anyway, I'm not into discussing something in a thread that has fragmented into many little discussions. If you're interested in discussing this, take it to the Anarchism sub-forum.

[SaulOhio]

Capitalism is based on the private ownership of the means of production, and production for profit rather than production for need.

Theres a problem with criticizing capitalism over production for profit rather than production for need. If people produced only what they themselves needed, we would not have a division of labor. Production for profit means production for trade. Both parties in the exchange must percieve the exchange to be in their own interests, that what they recieve in trade is worth more than what they offer. This is the very meaning of profit. Without this, there is no division of labor, and we all work for subsistance, on the edge of survival.

[ThereBeDragons]

Theres a problem with criticizing capitalism over production for profit rather than production for need. If people produced only what they themselves needed, we would not have a division of labor. Production for profit means production for trade. Both parties in the exchange must percieve the exchange to be in their own interests, that what they recieve in trade is worth more than what they offer. This is the very meaning of profit. Without this, there is no division of labor, and we all work for subsistance, on the edge of survival.

I do not understand the concept that capitalism is necessary for division of labor, or that it would be impossible (or even discouraged) in other economic systems. Production can be for the needs of everyone, not just the needs of one.

By profits here, I do not mean any advantage gained from a transaction, but more in the actual monetary sense, but rather of that fundamental underpinning of capitalism. Profit in the sense I am describing is the money that the capital-owner acquires as net profit (because he owns the capital; he sets the terms), after the laborers have been paid. There is no reason to think that division of labor would disappear if capitalism ceased to be the dominant economic mode of production.

[ingliz]

I am arguing Bukharin

Nikolai Bukharin : The Theory of Proletarian Dictatorship and Scientific Communism 1933

http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukhari ... hing/4.htm

[Potemkin]

Theres a problem with criticizing capitalism over production for profit rather than production for need. If people produced only what they themselves needed, we would not have a division of labor. Production for profit means production for trade. Both parties in the exchange must percieve the exchange to be in their own interests, that what they recieve in trade is worth more than what they offer. This is the very meaning of profit. Without this, there is no division of labor, and we all work for subsistance, on the edge of survival.

By 'production for need', I mean social need rather than the need of the individual producer. The mode of production has already been collectivised and socialised by capitalism itself; the mode of distribution should also be socialised - there should be production for the needs of society as a whole rather than for the profits of an individual owner of the means of production. An example of the effects of production for profit rather than for social need is the fact that during the Irish Famine of the 1840s, food was being exported from Ireland even as Irish peasants were starving to death, simply because a higher price could be obtained for that food abroad than in Ireland itself. Children were starving to death on the docks as the food was being loaded onto the ships to be sent abroad. That is what production for profit means.

[ingliz]

Marx and Engels also approached the problem of the dying away of the state from the aspect of an analysis of the state as a parasitic growth on the social body............The state is transformed into a force which stands above society, divided off from it, growing disproportionately even from the point of view of its own functions.
This peculiar hypertrophy of the state apparatus and its extreme bureaucratisation, this existence over society and those forces standing outside society, these monstrous nonproductive expenses, which arise out of the features of a specific (exploiting) social formation and are multiplied by the growth of. its inner contradictions.........

This is what is supposed to be destroyed and replaced by the dictatorship of the proletariat

........ are destroyed in the first place, and in this destruction are already to be found the germs of the surmounting of the state.

Stalin resurrected it!

The dictatorship of the proletariat should have been

So that even from the point of view of its economic function the dictatorship of the proletariat is both a state and not a state. It is the last historical form of the state in which it finally merges and dissolves into society

[Dr House]

Russia is one of the largest countries on the planet,

Quick correction: Russia is the largest country on the planet. It spans about 11 time zones, Covering the a third of Asia and the entire eastern half of Europe.

[SaulOhio]

By 'production for need', I mean social need rather than the need of the individual producer.

Profit is the measure of need. If one commodity is more profitable than another and both use the same resources to produce, then it is an indication that the more profitable commodity is the one needed more. It is in higher demand.

An example of the effects of production for profit rather than for social need is the fact that during the Irish Famine of the 1840s, food was being exported from Ireland even as Irish peasants were starving to death, simply because a higher price could be obtained for that food abroad than in Ireland itself. Children were starving to death on the docks as the food was being loaded onto the ships to be sent abroad. That is what production for profit means.

As I have explained before, this was caused by violations of property rights. The owners of land were not allowed to profit, because every few years, political upheavals would result in the confiscation and redistribution of land. Irish Catholics were severely restricted in their property rights, so were excluded from the capitalist system. Blaming capitalism for the famine is like blaming someone with an airtight alibi for a murder. Those who were kept poor by the English policies could contribute to the demand for the grain. Those who feared their land could be taken from them at any moment were motivated to extract as much short-term gain as they could from what they owned and raise rents to destructive levels. Blaming capitalism for the famine is like blaming someone with an airtight alibi for a murder.
[quote=ThereBeYe"]I do not understand the concept that capitalism is necessary for division of labor, or that it would be impossible (or even discouraged) in other economic systems. Production can be for the needs of everyone, not just the needs of one. [/quote]
George Reisman devoted four chapters of his tome Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics, explaining the dependance of the division of labor on capitalism. Here's a couple of paragraphs that summarize his thesis:

The direct dependance of the division of labor on private ownership of the means of production is based on the very nature of the gains provided by the division of labor. These gains, above all the multiplication of knowledge and the benefit from the existence of geniuses, fundamentally derive from the fact that individuals possess separate, independant minds, which permit, indeed, require them to have separate, independant knowledge and to make separate, independant judgments and decisions. In a division-of-labor society, each person benefits from the fact that other people possess knowledge which he does not, and an intelligence separate from and often greater than his own. His benefit requires that others be able to acquire and apply their own knowledge on their own initiative, without having to await his orders, approval, or permission, which, in the nature of the case, he would be unable to give in any rational way, since he necessarily lacks the knowledge that would be required to do so.

Now, in order for people to act and produce on any significant scale, they must possess material means of action and production: they must possess wealth. In order for them to act and produce separately and independantly from one another, they must hold wealth separately and independantly from one another--that is, there must be private property, including private ownership of the means of production.

That is the gist of the argument, and Reisman spends the next four chapters justifying it. He uses empirical, historical evidence to support it.

He also explains the reason why socialism necessarily interferes with the division of labor:

It should be realized that collectivism openly demands that everyone think and act as a unit. It leaves no room for the vast differentiation and individuation of knowledge on which a division-of-labor society rests. The propaganda of socialism fully displays this absurdity when it pretends that under socialism all economic decisions will be arrived at democratically. In order for people intelligently to vote on all economic decisions, everyone would have to have all the necessary knowledge pertaining to all economic decisions, which is clearly impossible in a division-of-labor society. It would mean, for example, that the voters would have to decide such questions as whether a new steel mill should be built in Gary, Indiana, or somewhere else, what kind of steel mill it should be, how large it should be, and so on. In the face of hundreds or thousands of such questions arising every day, voters would have to devote their lives to nothing else, and still they would be almost entirely ignorant about the matters raised in each case.
----------------------------------------------------------
Socialism is incompatible with a division-of-labor society because in all its versions it is incompatible with a division of the intellectual labor required in the planning of the conduct of the economic system.

[ingliz]

To maintain itself, Stalinism is now forced to conduct a direct civil war against Bolshevism, under the name of "Trotskyism," not only in the USSR but also in Spain. The old Bolshevik Party is dead, but Bolshevism is raising its head everywhere. To deduce Stalinism from Bolshevism or from Marxism is the same as to deduce, in a larger sense, counterrevolution from revolution.

I know the argument that the workers cannot exploit themselves and any state enterprise must be socialist.

The working class cannot exploit itself. The division of the proletariat between those workers who fulfil organizing functions and are better paid, and the rest, is a division within a single class, and in principle is not distinguishable from the division of this class into skilled and unskilled workers

But even Lenin recognised the need to protect the workers against "the blunders and excesses of business organizations resulting from bureaucratic distortions of the state apparatus."
and Trotsky on Soviet bureaucracy

To the extent that, in contrast to decaying capitalism, it develops the productive forces, [the bureaucracy] is preparing the economic basis of socialism. To the extent that, for the benefit of an upper stratum, it carries to more and more extreme expression bourgeois norms of distribution, it is preparing a capitalist restoration. (The Revolution Betrayed)

and Cliff

the civil war of the bureaucracy against the masses, a war in which only one side was armed and organized. They witnessed the consummation of the bureaucracy's total liberation from popular control. (State Capitalism in Russia)

We can argue from Engels that mature capitalism no longer requires capitalists

The conversion of the great organizations for production and communication into joint-stock companies and state property show that for this purpose the bourgeoisie can be dispensed with. All the social functions of the capitalists are now carried out by salaried employees. The capitalist has no longer any social activity save the pocketing of revenues, the clipping of coupons and gambling on the stock exchange, where different capitalists fleece each other of their capital. Just as at first the capitalist mode of production displaced the workers, so now it displaces the capitalists, relegating them, just as it did the workers, to the superfluous population, even if in the first instance not to the industrial reserve army.

This doesn't change the character of the productive forces, the nature of 'capital'
The modern state, whatever its form, is an essentially capitalist machine; it is the state of capitalists, the ideal collective body of all capitalists. The more productive forces it takes over as its property, the more it becomes the real collective body of all capitalists, the more citizens it exploits. The workers remain wage earners, proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not abolished; it is rather pushed to an extreme. But at this extreme it is transformed into its opposite. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but it contains within itself the formal means, the key to the solution (Engels, Anti-Dühring)
It can be argued that the privileged bureaucracy is the new exploiting class. And, if this bureaucracy uses its control of the state in order to direct production and accumulation in the interests not of human emancipation, but in competition with other capitalist States then it cannot be characterised as a workers' state. I would argue we are dealing with a system of bureaucratic state capitalism in which capital is collectively controlled by the privileged bureaucracy that controls the state.

The bourgeoisie is not the only enemy of socialism and democracy but-also bureaucratism (is the enemy of socialism) bureaucratism which continually
violates legality in order to establish its
ideological. and political domination over the people;
bureaucratism does this in order to take the means
(of production) away from all the people and use it
(the means) for its own purposes. This is the reason
why bureaucratism very often invents enemies to
justify its existence and to remain loyal to its own
dogma.

December 30 1920 at Joint meeting of the Party fraction to the Eighth Congress of Soviets, of Party members on the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions

a full break with communism and a transition to a position of syndicalism...... It destroyed the need for the Party. If the trade unions, nine-tenths of whose members are non-Party workers, appoint the managers of industry, what is the use of the Party?

[SaulOhio]

If you abolish private property, there is no way to avoid either bureaucratization or simple chaos, with either one destroying the division of labor and the industrial base.

[ingliz]

"Liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice; socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality

That quote sums up my philosophy but it is hard to find common ground as your definition of liberty, property and socialism are so different to mine. If we have no common language then how is it possible to debate : This discussion is pointless.

[Dr House]

That quote sums up my philosophy but it is hard to find common ground as your definition of liberty, property and socialism are so different to mine. If we have no common language then how is it possible to debate : This discussion is pointless.

Bingo.

[Potemkin]

That quote sums up my philosophy

Interesting that you would quote Bakunin as having summed up your 'philosophy'; Bakunin was one of the most bitter opponents of Marx.

[ingliz]

I am not an ideologue

[SaulOhio]

Ingliz: Your different definitions are a consequence of your anti-reason philosophy. You like to choose your definitions according to what feels right, what you want reality to be, rather than what exists in reality, a reality you have said we create and shape for ourselves by choosing our definitions. You do it backwards.

I look at reality and make my definitions accordingly. Reality is an absolute, out there, not affected by our beliefs about it (except as a consequence of our physical actions.)

[Potemkin]

I am not an ideologue

Translation: I'm an Anarchist.

[ingliz]

I agree with the anarcho-communists on most things except the need to retain the state. I believe a soviet republic is essential until the international revolution is successful. I don't think you could call me an anarchist. To be honest I don't know how I would be categorised, probably a 'useful idiot' come the revolution.

[Potemkin]

I agree with the anarcho-communists on most things except the need to retain the state. I believe a soviet republic is essential until the international revolution is successful.

Then you don't agree with the anarcho-communists on the essential point. I agree with some of the policies of Tony Blair; does that make me a New Labourite?

It strikes me that you are somewhat ideologically confused. As some of the supporters of capitalism have pointed out, your definitions of things tend to omit the essential point and focus on side-effects or details as though they are the essential defining element. The fact that capitalism is exploitative does not define capitalism; it is a consequence of how capitalism works, just as it is a consequence of how feudalism works. This approach tends, in my view, towards idealist subjectivism rather than scientific socialism. I think you'd be more comfortable calling yourself an 'Anarchist' rather than a 'Marxist-Leninist'.