NationStates Jolt Archive

Im currently undecided as to whether it was state-capitalist or a degenerate workers state. What does everybody here think? Why? Is it really all that important to society today?

I think State Capitalist is a bit more accurate because of the industrial drive they used to make up for the fact that Russia never went through the Capitalist stage. It does seem like the government behaved like an enormous monopoly.

A mess?

DHomme, it's hard to quaify it according the poll options without delving deeply into the works of Trotsky.

What's the difference between 'state socialism' and 'state capitalism', by the way? I'm leaning towards the latter option, but I'd like to clarify the definition.

A mess?
Erm... Messes do not last for 70+ years. :)

Erm... Messes do not last for 70+ years. :)

A bigmess then?

Economically speaking? A socialist state.
Politically speaking? A fascism.
Military speaking? IMHO, the precedent of the nowadays USA. :D

A bigmess then?
That's something to think about... ;) Was this opinion held by Marcuse or Derrida? :rolleyes:

State Capitalist is quite accurate.

What is state capitalism?

What is state capitalism?

What happens naturally when people try to make communism happen at the national level.

What is state capitalism?

in essentials, it means that the state acts as a giant capitalist firm and the elite that controls the state also owns and controls the various enterprises for their own ends. It also means the existence of wage labor and capitalist-style hierarchical management practices.

What's the difference between 'state socialism' and 'state capitalism', by the way?

i think it can be summed up like this:

state socialism is the ownership and control of the means of production by the state for the good of the people in general (at least in theory)

state capitalism is the ownership and control of the means of production by the state for the good of the state/party elite

i think it can be summed up like this:

state socialism is the ownership and control of the means of production by the state for the good of the people in general (at least in theory)

state capitalism is the ownership and control of the means of production by the state for the good of the state/party elite
If so, then the USSR was more of the first variety--Stalin and Khrushchev were completely uninterested in accruing personal wealth, for example. It was about power, not wealth...

The people of the USSR were living better in 1987 than in 1917, that's for sure.

i think it can be summed up like this:

state socialism is the ownership and control of the means of production by the state for the good of the people in general (at least in theory)

state capitalism is the ownership and control of the means of production by the state for the good of the state/party elite
So state capitalism is basically a corrupted version of state socialism?

Certainly not a degenerate worker's state though, choice of occupation was never enough in the hands of the workers for it to qualify that way. Hard to pin down to just one, the USSR was around for longer than most of the current Western governments, for a good portion of it's history it was a State Capitalist and for a different portion it was more State Socialist, and for while Bureacratic Collective State would have been a good categorization for it. If I had to choose one from your list for the entire history of the USSR it would be deformed workers state, but the deformations were in various directions.

Pre-Stalin, worker's state (with some deformation); early Stalin, Bureacratic Collective State; later Stalin, State Capitalist; post-Stalin, State Socialist with periods of State Capitalism and Bureacratic Collective State; at the end, a degenerate State Capitalist system.

So state capitalism is basically a corrupted version of state socialism?
Nope, if anything the reverse since State Capitalism is an acient form while State Socialism is exclusively modern. State Capitalism is best exemplified in the ancient world by the Spartans. A more clear distinction between the two can drawn by their approach to labor, under State Capitalism labor is considered a form of capital (part of the means of production and all that, which is owned by the state), while State Soicalism recognizes labor as distinct from capital and as something which cannot be owned.

Im currently undecided as to whether it was state-capitalist or a degenerate workers state. What does everybody here think? Why? Is it really all that important to society today?
I could be wrong, but.. uh...

COMMUNIST?

Now it's time for the "No True Scotsman," fallacies and for teenage commies here to show their complete ignorance of economics.

Chomskyrion, no one in the USSR described the system as Communist. Communism was somewhere 'beyond the horizon'.

It was state socialist. Lenin experimented with capitalism, but died too long to make anything of it. So it became a pure socialist state. But it was unable to achieve perfect communism for what I think were inherent flaws in the entire concept.

It was state socialist. Lenin experimented with capitalism, but died too long to make anything of it. So it became a pure socialist state. But it was unable to achieve perfect communism for what I think were inherent flaws in the entire concept.

No way. The workers held no real power.

No way. The workers held no real power.
Sure they did. Where was the capital at the time? There was none, save for a small reserve of gold for foreign deals. According to Marx, in a perfect communist society, capital is to be nonexistant, and there will be no one that will control it, either.

Sure they did. Where was the capital at the time? There was none, save for a small reserve of gold for foreign deals. According to Marx, in a perfect communist society, capital is to be nonexistant, and there will be no one that will control it, either.

Capital, with regards to Marxism, doesn't mean money. Instead, it refers to the means of production, the Soviets had capital, a good deal of it.

Now it's time for the "No True Scotsman," fallacies and for teenage commies here to show their complete ignorance of economics.

That would be an erroneous application of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.

The communist policy from the getgo was all about deconstructing the old orders and replacing them with social systems that were supposed to be better. But in each case as the old power structures (religion, marketing, etc) were destroyed the power vacuum was simply occupied by the leader in charge of the deconstruction. Instead of worshipping God, people were made to worship Stalin/Mao/Jong-Il and instead of corporations owning the land it was owned by the state which was pretty much owned by the dictator. So instead of progressing from Capitalism to Communism there was just a regression to Despotism.

Sure they did. Where was the capital at the time? There was none, save for a small reserve of gold for foreign deals. According to Marx, in a perfect communist society, capital is to be nonexistant, and there will be no one that will control it, either.
ABsoultely not, unless you're using a defintion of capital different from Marx's.

Perhaps this will also help clarify the difference between State Capitalism and State Socialism of you are not familiar with underlying terms (you would think people would know the basics, don't they teach Marx anymore?). Capitalism is the belief that merely because you were lucky enough to have obtained (through whtever means) the means of production (capital), be it land to farm, the machines to make guns or the cows to milk for butter you deserve to own the product of using that capital (in state capitalism the state owns the product of the capital). Socialism is the belief that the yabo who runs the machine to make the guns, milks the cows for the butter or runs the tractor over the land deserves to own the product of the capital and the guy who happens to owns it "don't got nuttin' comin'" (thus in State Socialism the workers own the products made with the state owned capital, which they often exchange wth other workers using the state as a broker for whatever goods are needed which they don't produce). Neither is found anywhere in a very pure form, but from the archetypes we can classify a system by where it stands relative to the two extremes.

It was a communist, state run oligarchy where the party elites were infinitely more oppressive than the "evil" capitalists they swore to overthrow. There's no such thing as a "true" Communist nation because the only Communism put in to practice was the kind evidenced by the failed states that were considered Communist. Yet another failed ideology.

It was state socialist. Lenin experimented with capitalism, but died too long to make anything of it. So it became a pure socialist state. But it was unable to achieve perfect communism for what I think were inherent flaws in the entire concept.

...like the absence of financial freedom, the development of inelastic castes/guilds, etc.

hehe

oh, wait, those are normal attributes of communism. never mind.

;)

It was a communist, state run oligarchy where the party elites were infinitely more oppressive than the "evil" capitalists they swore to overthrow. There's no such thing as a "true" Communist nation because the only Communism put in to practice was the kind evidenced by the failed states that were considered Communist. Yet another failed ideology.A little off, there have been a few scattered incidents of sucessful "true communism" put into practice, although on the national scale there is really only Mao's China (take two) (look at the Paris Commune and into post-Franco Spanish dockyards for examples of sucessful "true communism").

However this is irrelevant, communism in the sense practiced in the USSR refers not to the economic structure of the USSR but to the political structure. The poll does not ask one to classify the politics of the USSR but the economics. SO without resorting to the fact that politically the USSR was classified as communist, how would you define the economy of the USSR?

Early Soviet society can only be described as feudalistic economically speaking. There is some debate about whether or not Lenin was attempting to change that (the friend who is most qualified to answer that question is specializing in Russian history and philosophy in college, but he's also Red to the core, so he does have a bit of a pink tinge to his viewpoint), but Russia under the early (pre-WWII) Stalin was unquestionably feudalistic, with the ownership of the means of production transferred from the royal family to the Party controlled by Stalin.

I don't know enough about Russian history post-WWII to say whether they ever truly made it out of feudalism and into any semblance of capitalism or true socialism. I will say, though, that some of the subject matter is clouded by the fact that feudalism is often seen as incompatible with industrialization, when in fact that may not necessarily be the case.

Sorry to sidetrack a little, but to me "state capitalism" sounds like an impossible contradiction. Capitalism as I understand it strongly condemns the intervention, regulation and other general meddling of the state, except in order to protect private citizens and their property from larceny and attack.

The USSR did do a lot of meddling, but the one thing it didn't meddle in order to protect was private property. It outlawed it instead. So the USSR was the complete anti-thesis of capitalism put into practice. Instead of "No government meddling except to protect property" it was "No absence of government meddling except to not protect property".

A planned economy is not a capitalist one. State capitalism is impossible.

I know this is really only a trivial matter of semantics, but it really ticks me off that socialists/communists/anarcho-worker-doo-dah would try and make the USSR look like a failure of capitalism instead of accepting that the people who set it up were actually twisting the tenets of socialism instead.

Sorry to sidetrack a little, but to me "state capitalism" sounds like an impossible contradiction. Capitalism as I understand it strongly condemns the intervention, regulation and other general meddling of the state, except in order to protect private citizens and their property from larceny and attack.

by definition, the owners of capital can't meddle in their own affairs. The owner of capital was the state. therefore the state wasn't meddling in the economy. intervention, regulation, and general meddling can only be done by entities that don't hold ownership. otherwise, those actions are just the owner choosing what they want to do with their property.

A planned economy is not a capitalist one.

so capitalist firms are not capitalist? because they sure do a hell of a lot of planning about all manner of resource allocations for both internal and external purposes.

so capitalist firms are not capitalist? because they sure do a hell of a lot of planning about all manner of resource allocations for both internal and external purposes.

Well, to be fair, they do so in an attempt to anticipate what the market wants, not replace the market entirely. I'd be willing to say that if a firm completely cornered the market, then it isn't a capitalism anymore either.

state capitalist. the state - not the people or proletariat - was the owner and manager of the means of production. it operated under relatively standard, if bureaucratic, business standards and, while operating a sizable welfare state/subsidy/socialised system, the sheer fact that the state took the means of production away from the bourgeoisie and turned itself into the defacto monopoly of, well, everything, kinda shows it was more state capitalist than simple state socialist (although this was evidently an element).

it wasn't communist because a) the economy must progress from capitalist to socialist then to communist, under communist thinking - and if anything the USSR was merely socialist - it had not reached the final stage in Marx's theory of historical materialism; and b) in the final stage, communism, there is no state. for the USSR to have been state anything defies the claim that it was at all communist

state capitalist. the state - not the people or proletariat - was the owner and manager of the means of production. it operated under relatively standard, if bureaucratic, business standards and, while operating a sizable welfare state/subsidy/socialised system, the sheer fact that the state took the means of production away from the bourgeoisie and turned itself into the defacto monopoly of, well, everything, kinda shows it was more state capitalist than simple state socialist (although this was evidently an element).

it wasn't communist because a) the economy must progress from capitalist to socialist then to communist, under communist thinking - and if anything the USSR was merely socialist - it had not reached the final stage in Marx's theory of historical materialism; and b) in the final stage, communism, there is no state. for the USSR to have been state anything defies the claim that it was at all communist

Russia hadn't even made it to capitalism by the Bolshevik revolution, so I have a hard time seeing how they could be socialist, either; you can't really skip steps in Marx' analysis.

Sorry to sidetrack a little, but to me "state capitalism" sounds like an impossible contradiction. Capitalism as I understand it strongly condemns the intervention, regulation and other general meddling of the state, except in order to protect private citizens and their property from larceny and attack.

state capitalism is not impossible. the capitalist system is, at its core, simply one wich allows the private ownership of the means of production - be they land, labour, or capital. within capitalism do you not find monopolies? are monopolies, perhaps natural or perhaps formed through otherwise-illicit methods such as cartels in an unregulated market, not naturally occurring in such a capitalist system? what is the real difference between one economic agent - a private firm - from enjoying the sole monopolistic position of all goods and services in society (along with absolute monopsony), and another economic agent - the state - from occupying this very same position?

by definition, the owners of capital can't meddle in their own affairs. The owner of capital was the state. therefore the state wasn't meddling in the economy. intervention, regulation, and general meddling can only be done by entities that don't hold ownership. otherwise, those actions are just the owner choosing what they want to do with their property.

Actually, I would consider the actions of the USSR's leaders to have been absolute, comprehensive and total general meddling. How more generally meddleous can you get than taking control of everything everybody owns (property, capital, labor, land) and then making them do what you say with it?


so capitalist firms are not capitalist? because they sure do a hell of a lot of planning about all manner of resource allocations for both internal and external purposes.

You probably know that I was referring to the economy of a nation being planned by government. That is the usual usage of "planned economy".

the capitalist system is, at its core, simply one wich allows the private ownership of the means of production - be they land, labour, or capital.

You just said it right there. That's what I mean. When the government takes it, it isn't private ownership anymore.

within capitalism do you not find monopolies? are monopolies, perhaps natural or perhaps formed through otherwise-illicit methods such as cartels in an unregulated market, not naturally occurring in such a capitalist system?

Monopolies which are established through fraudulent or otherwise illegal means are not a shortcoming of capitalism, they are a shortcoming of insufficient law enforcement. Capitalists condemn force, fraud and theft.


what is the real difference between one economic agent - a private firm - from enjoying the sole monopolistic position of all goods and services in society (along with absolute monopsony), and another economic agent - the state - from occupying this very same position?


Legitimate private monopolies are subject to market forces which require them to maintain reasonable price and quality. Consider this - A successful car manufacturer drives out all competition by producing such an excellent automobile at such a reasonable price that potential competitors cannot viably make a profit. So the manufacturer seizes the market and a monopoly occurs. If the manufacturer's product now becomes extortionately priced and poorly built, it will soon become lucrative to enter the market again and produce a better car. This process is sometimes slow to happen when a private chokehold is held on an industry, but at least it does happen, slowly and to a certain degree.

When the state seizes a market and outlaws competition, investors and private competitors cannot hope to enter the market without becoming criminals. The state can produce crappy cars for the same reason as a capitalist would (it's cheaper to hire idiots as oppose to skilled workers, and cheaper to make shoddy products as oppose to good ones), but nobody can enter the market and make a good one.

Another way of putting this is that a state monopoly is harder to shake than a private one (conceding that monopolies are a bad thing), since the state has a police force to prevent competition, while a capitalist has only his economic savvy and his capital.

You just said it right there. That's what I mean. When the government takes it, it isn't private ownership anymore.

yeah you're probably right there, yeah. i stand by the judgement of the USSR as state capitalist but its not capitalism as we know it (Jim) - however i'm too tired to think about it properly now and come up with something clever and new



Monopolies which are established through fraudulent or otherwise illegal means are not a shortcoming of capitalism, they are a shortcoming of insufficient law enforcement. Capitalists condemn force, fraud and theft.

indeed they are shortcomings of capitalism. market based/capitalist economies have inherent market distortions and market failures that have to be rectified by government (or other effective) regulation.
all you're saying there is that the problems of capitalism aren't the fault of the capitalist system but that of the regulator for not doing its job properly. if the problem stems from capitalism then it its capitalism's problem/shortcoming.
but this is a moot point


Legitimate private monopolies are subject to market forces which require them to maintain reasonable price and quality. Consider this - A successful car manufacturer drives out all competition by producing such an excellent automobile at such a reasonable price that potential competitors cannot viably make a profit. So the manufacturer seizes the market and a monopoly occurs. If the manufacturer's product now becomes extortionately priced and poorly built, it will soon become lucrative to enter the market again and produce a better car. This process is sometimes slow to happen when a private chokehold is held on an industry, but at least it does happen, slowly and to a certain degree.

well, yes and no. in the long run, yes this could be true. however monopolies have the power to introduce artificial barriers to entry for new firms entering the market, and this is on top of the natural barriers to entry (such as high setting up or capital costs) that a firm in monoploy situation will more than likely be protected by. monopolies have the power and position to ensure their own survival as the market dominator and in the short run consumers are still shafted by extraordinarily high prices and lower output.
in the very long run, if ridiculous prices are charged, then - if the monopoly has not gone to any lengths to ensure its own dominance - it is possible for other firms to enter the market.
however a) the monopoly has much more money than new firm and will most likely buy said new firm (thus eliminating new competiton); and b) it all depends on a further two factors. first, the elasticities of demand of the monopolies' consumer base - if the good they are selling is generally inelastic the monopoly may be able to get away with murder before a new firm entered the market. second, the monopoly excercises the freedom its position grants it and is able to produce at the - very specific - profit maximising condition (where marginal cost = marginal revenue when MC is rising) and will hence not keep jacking the price up to ridiculous levels.
sufficed to say, once unregulated monopolies are in power, there's almost fuck all you can do about it


When the state seizes a market and outlaws competition, investors and private competitors cannot hope to enter the market without becoming criminals. The state can produce crappy cars for the same reason as a capitalist would (it's cheaper to hire idiots as oppose to skilled workers, and cheaper to make shoddy products as oppose to good ones), but nobody can enter the market and make a good one.

Another way of putting this is that a state monopoly is harder to shake than a private one (conceding that monopolies are a bad thing), since the state has a police force to prevent competition, while a capitalist has only his economic savvy and his capital.
exactly. the state monopoly is not purely an economic entity as a monopolisitc firm would be; the state has the 'coersive power' (read: violence) and authority of... the state behind it


however, in the way they operate, there will be little difference between a privately owned national monopoly of all goods and services, and the state operating the same monopoly - this is what i was trying to get at.
ok the state has more power behind it - this is always going to be true - and the state denies the prerequesit of private property required for 'capitalism', but at the functioning or practical level there will be little difference in the ways a state-capitalist monopoly and private total-monopoly run.

if anything the state capitalist monopoly would be more beneficial to the consumers as it would not necessarily operate at the profit maximising condition, but maybe at the output maximising point - meaning more and cheaper products for the people. but this is a whole different issue again...

1) I find it really ammusing that the folks who are pro-communist/ socialist are working so hard to argue that the USSR was 'state capitalist'. Perhaps because every 'workers paradise' turns into such a corrupt Oligarchy? And since they see capitalists as the real oppressors all opressive states must be declared capitalist in defiance of reason?

2) I'm not saying what I voted.

3) I'll bet ya 100 rubles I'm the only one here who was in the USSR when it was still the USSR.

ABsoultely not, unless you're using a defintion of capital different from Marx's.

Perhaps this will also help clarify the difference between State Capitalism and State Socialism of you are not familiar with underlying terms (you would think people would know the basics, don't they teach Marx anymore?). Capitalism is the belief that merely because you were lucky enough to have obtained (through whtever means) the means of production (capital), be it land to farm, the machines to make guns or the cows to milk for butter you deserve to own the product of using that capital (in state capitalism the state owns the product of the capital). Socialism is the belief that the yabo who runs the machine to make the guns, milks the cows for the butter or runs the tractor over the land deserves to own the product of the capital and the guy who happens to owns it "don't got nuttin' comin'" (thus in State Socialism the workers own the products made with the state owned capital, which they often exchange wth other workers using the state as a broker for whatever goods are needed which they don't produce). Neither is found anywhere in a very pure form, but from the archetypes we can classify a system by where it stands relative to the two extremes.
Maybe I do use my definition slightly different from Marx. But Marx predicted a conflict between capital and labor. As we all know, capital is held by whomever can get it in this system, hence the term capitalism. In communism, or the attempted version there, everyone is equal in capital. This was the case most of the time, unless you consider Josef Stalin's lifestyle. Then again, I think that corruption of the system like what he did is an inherent flaw.

Actually, I would consider the actions of the USSR's leaders to have been absolute, comprehensive and total general meddling. How more generally meddleous can you get than taking control of everything everybody owns (property, capital, labor, land) and then making them do what you say with it?

but you only see it as meddling because you hold a prior commitment to the idea that the state isn't the rightful owner. somebody holding a different prior commitment - for example, to a common property regime - would find some individual claiming ownership over a piece of land, taking control of it, and making anyone who wants access to it obey their commands to be engaged in a rather huge amount of meddling.

You probably know that I was referring to the economy of a nation being planned by government. That is the usual usage of "planned economy".

so planning by state-owned industry = planned economy = not capitalist but planning by capitalist-owned industries = free market = capitalist, right?

but each operates on a planned economy within their own domains. when capitalist firms have to allocate resources internally, they operate a planned economy. calling it anything else is just word games.

think of state capitalist economies as the old capitalist company towns writ large.

it isn't the amount of planning that makes something capitalist or not, or even the amount of centralization of planning. if it was you would wind up having to talk about the global capitalist economy being largely populated by completely uncapitalist entities. it's best to talk about capitalism in terms of who owns capital and how labor is treated.