The Cuban revolution revisited: Part I – Overview

Red, first let me deal with the points you raise, then I will deal with Ticktin, and finally add a few comments re. Cuba post Castro, which is what this thread began as.

Okay the Mandelites etc. The AWL’s predecessors the I-CL and WSL had workers state analyses of the Soviet Union. It didn’t prevent them from criticising the invasion of Afghanistan, nor did they come to the conclusion Cambodia under Pol Pot was a workers state. I fail to see any reason why one should lead to the other. I continue to hold a workers state analysis, but I oppose the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan. I would have opposed it even had the Soviet Union been a healthy workers state unless it was necessary for legitimate self defence. I do think, however, there is something rather odd and incompatible about an analysis, which leads you on the one hand to see a defeat of pre-capitalist, clerical fascist forces by imperialism as being progressive in Iraq (which I also think it is), and yet don’t see the defeat of the same forces by the Soviet Union (however you describe it) as being so in Afghanistan.

On Ticktin and BC, whether his position was identical to that of Schactman and co. I wouldn’t like to say until I have re-read all the old material. But that is beside the point. The point is that his position is that of Bureuacratic Collectivism. Whether you think that this Bureuacratic Collectivism can be a new type of class society through which humanity has to pass, or that it is a dead-end is besides the point, it is under either definition something, new and unforeseen, and consequently must then be a mode of production, whether that mode of production goes nowhere or not. You could say the same about the Asiatic Mode of production, yet Marx certainly considered that a Mode of Production. You have to have a teleological view of development to come to any other conclusion. Indeed, if anything should be called a non-mode of production it is a transitional society.

On Defence of the Soviet Union, I can tell you for a fact that during the 1970’s I had numerous debates with comrades from the main British group that had the slogan “Neither Washington no Moscow” on its paper’s masthead. And I can tell you that the debate certainly was not framed in terms of conditional defence of the Soviet Union. The SWP came to the logical conclusion that arises out of a state capitalist or Bureuacratic Collectivist analysis of the Soviet Union, which is that such a conflict would be an inter-imperialist war, and that Marxists should refuse to take sides. If you read “In Defence of Marxism”, I think you will find that the arguments that Trotsky was having at the time were indeed of that nature.

On authoritarianism against the working class my answer is that it depends upon the circumstances. Take Russia in 1918. The revolution still has not been stabilised, the Civil War is brewing, imperialist forces are preparing the intervention. One of the most powerful groups of workers, the people who can bring the revolution crashing to the ground by starving Moscow and Petersburg – the railwaymen – oppose the Bolsheviks, and decide to act accordingly. Now forget about how things could happen in the best of all possible worlds, and put yourself in the position of a Bolshevik leader. Do you use authoritarian methods to defeat the railwaymen, or do you say, carry on comrades, you cut off the food and energy supplies to the cities we will simply hang on and try to convince you by the power of argument for the next few months? Or put yourself in the position of a transformation in a more advanced economy, that has occurred absolutely according to plan, has the most impeccable democracy etc. But a group of workers say, electricity supply workers decide that they do not like this new society, and they are going to strike until it is brought down. Do you simply try to starve them out, do you concede, and say “oh well back to capitalism then”, or do you take action to defeat them and safeguard the society? In neither the case of the railwaymen or this latter hypothetical is it simply a matter of workers with a grudge, some economic gripe that can be resolved, it is an attempt to overthrow society i.e. true counter-revolutionary activity. I know of know sane society that would not act to safeguard itself under such circumstances. Certainly the bourgeoisie have taken such action against sections of their own class when the need arose.

As far as “why didn’t the workers think their states were worth defending?” Of course it depends when you are talking about. In the Second World War Soviet citizens certainly did fight to defend their society, and the difference with WWI is striking. If you are talking about with the collapse of the regime then the answer is quite simple, because the workers had a very low level of class consciousness, and not surprising they did either. The same phenomena can be witnessed with workers in Britain who have been offered free shares, or saw the opportunity to receive redundancy pay, and therefore, accepted privatisation of their industries. It reflected a beaten down working class, and the absence of a decent workers party and fighting trade unions to have given them a lead in defending them. I consider that a negative, whereas you seem to think its somehow positive.

And as far as reactionary nationalised industry, particularly your reference to that nationalised by Saddam Hussein, are you then saying that Marxists are wrong to support the Iraqi oil workers in fighting to retain the oil industry as nationalised property?

Just to deal with your latest post on that, you are quite simply wrong. Whenever, Marxists have opposed privatisations in Britain, and the same is true currently in France too, the argument has never been just we oppose redundancies. Often the issue of redundancy is completely absent from any privatisation. The opposition has always been on the basis that we consider nationalised property even in its bureaucratic, state capitalist form to be progressive vis a vis private capital. We are not alone in that Marx and Engels thought so too, as I have detailed elsewhere in a previous discussion.

Incidentally, in relation to your last sentence, if you recall the basis of the previous discussion on this theme it was about the fact that the AWL supposedly had argued in favour of Yeltsin and his backers who were intent on privatising the Soviet economy.

Now to Ticktin. I am replying to the summary of Ticktin’s position set out in the link you supplied for ease.

“Central to Ticktin’s theory is the idea that capitalism is in decline (N.C.Fernandez p.225)and that the present epoch is of a transitional phase towards socialism.”

I am not sure what is being suggested here. However, Chris Reynolds has produced a very good article discussing the question of whether capitalism is no longer progressive. I have posted a link to it in previous posts, but I can’t find it at the moment. Basically, the argument is that Marxists of all stripes have tried to take the argument put by Lenin at the beginning of the lastc entury that capitalism was no longer progressive, and have despite all the facts to the contrary tried to demonstrate that capitalism is no longer capable of further progressive acts. That is a nonsense as every new technological development introduced by capitalism demonstrates. I would argue that one of the problems for Stalinism was precisely that continued progressive capacity of capitalism in the post-war period.

“Neither capitalist nor socialist, it is not transitional, it is not even a hybrid. It is non historical , a non mode of production with no essence and no mature form (N.C.Fernandez p.226).”

But surely the definition of transitional IS that such a form is neither capitalist nor socialist. Nor indeed can a transitional form ever be mature. A chrysalis does not achieve a mature form it is merely a transitional state between the caterpillar and the butterfly. Only a fully fledged Mode of Production can reach maturity. Its in that sense only that a transitional society can be considered a non-mode of production, but only because it is in transition either forwards or backwards. That is not Ticktin’s argument, but that it is something completely new and sterile.

“The importance of this view was that it seen the market as both eternal and necessary. It assumed that only the market could provide the efficiency and elements of democracy needed for a stable and modern society. Adherents to this view failed to recognise that the majority of society would actually lose out with the introduction of “the market” (Hillel Ticktin p.8).”

But none of this follows. Did Lenin see the market as both eternal and necessary when he introduced NEP? Do the Chinese Stalinists see the introduction of the market as the only way to provide “elements of democracy”? Anyone would think that such introduction of the market was something new. Of course it isn’t. During the 2nd Five Year Plan the model state for the kolkhoz was introduced which enabled peasants on kolkhoz to own around an acre of land, together with livestock. In fact peasants had continued to have such priivate ownership during most of the time before that. The majority of meat, and milk was provided by private sale from these holdings and during this period at prices that were pretty much what the off-ration market price had been. The peasants from their private holdings provided all eggs, and provided a considerable amount of other produce through legal trade. (See Alec Nove “An Economic History of the USSR” Chapter 9). And during both of these periods the large increase in foodstuffs that came on to the market, and the increase in activity made he majority of workers better off, not worse off.

There seems to me a fetishisation of planning v the market which is unwarranted. The prime consideration in the construction of socialism is not the repalcement of the market with the plan, it is the replacement of private ownership of the means of production with collective, co-operative ownership of the means of production by the working class. That is the condition which enables the working class to free itself from wage slavery because the working class are no longer forced to sell their labour power to capitalists on unfavourable terms. That is the condition for the working class to become the dominant social class, and to institute the Dictatorship of the proletariat, and only then can the process of ever closer co-operation begin the development of slowly repalcing market relations with co-operative planned economic relations. Partly this also reflects a view that had the Soviet Union been a democratically planned economy all of the problems enumerated would have been overcome. This is a thoroughly naïve view.

See. Co-operatives and Socialism
“Therefore the Soviet elite are part of Ticktin’s surplus product (sic AB) (Hillel Ticktin p.10). The terms “actual” and “potential” surplus were the invention of Baran and Sweezy. The term potential surplus was to distinguish the difference between what could be produced and what was actually the end product. The term “waste” refers to “the use or lack of use of the surplus product in a manner that fails to lead to a product, that is labour is expended without any result (Hillel Ticktin p.10).

Ticktin claims that there is a contradiction within use value itself which leads to the production of goods which have a defective use value. The effect of this is to drive consumption and production apart, therefore throughout the system the contradiction between what is produced and what is “needed” tends to get aggravated (Hillel Ticktin p.12).”

But I am tempted to say here, “so what?” I have dealt with the issue raised by BC’s like Ticktin of the appropriation of the surplus product by the elite, so will merely restate the point that such appropriation does not prove the existence of some new class. For the full elaboration of that point see Bureuacracies and Revenue Extraction
Now to the contradiction in use value. Later on the author says that Ticktin uses the word contradiction a lot in the Hegelian and Marxist sense. Well it would be useful to know which Hegelian or Marxist as Marx completely demolished the Hegelian dialectic both in form and content. (See Marx’s Early Writings, particularly the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts.) Herein also lies a problem. It is in fact one of those legacies of Stalinism that some Marxists work with the concept of “Dialectical Materialism”. Such a concept was in fact alien to Marx. Marx’s method was that of Historical materialsm. If you read Engels explanation to the way in which Marx, for example went about writing Capital, he most certainly in respect of developing his analyis did not use a dialectical method. Marx himself also makes clear what his method requires. It is fist to accumulate all the facts, to order them, to create the big picture, to understand the interrelationships, and thereby udner stand the dynamic, and having done so to then return to the individual parts, to analyse them in their specificity and concreteness. The only dialectics in Capital is in the exposition which comes after the analsyis, and that is only because Marx wanted to poke those in the eye that had attacked Hegel, and despite being warned by Engels not to do it.

Unfortunately, this leads those wanting to apply the Marxist method to begin not as Marx did with an open minded examination and collation of the facts, but with a search for contradictions. Of course if you search for contradictions you will find them, life is full of them. Whether the particular contradiction you happen to choose is the one that explains anything or not, of course is a different matter. In place of materialism you have philosophism.

That is the case here with Ticktin’s discovery of a contradiction within use value in the Soviet model. Well, I’ve got news for you the same contradiction exists within use value under capitalism too. It will probably exist under a transitional economy in a healthy workers state, and probably under socialism too.

The contradiction Ticktin puts forward is that which leads to the production of goods which have a defective use value. Why is it defective? Well because the goods might not be required by consumers, or because the conditions under which goods are produced lead enterprises to produce goods which meet plan targets most effectively but are of defective quality – the well known stories of making goods too heavy because plan metrics are specified in wieght etc. Marx says that a use value is only a use value if someone has a use for it. If no one has a use for it its not a use value. In fact we can think of many things under capitalism that are produced which have negative use value – pollution for one. It will probably be a negative or defective use value under socialism too. Marx also says that what is socially necessary labour can only be determined a posteriori i.e. it requirs that commodities be produced and brought to market, only then if the commodity finds a buyer at the production price can you know that the labour embodied in it was indeed socially necessary. But of course on many, many occasions that proves not to be the case, it is the basis of crises of overproduction. Labour is used up in the production of commodities, which then do not find buyers, the amount of labour used was more than was socially necessary. In order to believe that this situation can be any different under any mode of production you have to believe that it is possible for there to be perfect knowledge, either the producers and consumers in a market must have perfect knowledge, or the people planning production whether they be bureaucrtas or democratic committees of workers must have perfect knowledge of what consumers want. Is that ever likely to be the case? Of course not, we can only attempt to make a better approximation than capitalism achieves, and certainly than Stalinism achieved.

The same thing is true of the defective use values in other ways. There have in fact been lots of examples of firms providing defective goods as part of the rip-off of Iraq for instance, and the basis on which they have done so has often been to utilise loopholes in the specifications for supply. Such practices are common in the supply of goods and services under tenders to Local Authorities. Finally, I was watching something the other day about Starbucks in the US which is selling some drinks to kids which in a single glass contain over 500 calories. Now to me that is a defective product, but of course when capitalism produces defective products it simply resorts to psychological techniques and high pressure advertising, to convince people that the use-values are not defective at all, simply fashionable.

Nor should we be so naïve as to believe that just because we have a healthy workers state that such problems will not persist, especially if the basis of enterprise incomes is from some central financing body rather than the necessity to meet consumer needs in order to receive income.
So if this contradiction within use value exists within capitalism, and probably within socialism, certainly within any healthy transitional economy, what specific significance can be attached to it?

“For Ticktin commodities are not produced in the U.S.S.R., therefore labour power cannot be a commodity, but it can be alienated. Therefore the nature of labour power is also defective. It cannot be bought and sold as a commodity, so the worker retains a degree of control over his labour power. On the other hand, he has to alienate his product to the management, he can’t choose not to work but he can chose not to work as the management would prefer him to work. The labour process is therefore driven apart from the product. On the one hand the labour product is alienated to the management and so to the elite or the bureaucratic system. On the other hand the labour process remains in control of the labourers themselves (Hillel Ticktin p.12)”

But as I have argued in one post in the previous discussion linked to above this will be true in a healthy workers state too.

“A process of atomisation of the population was established in the 1930’s in the course of a long struggle with workers in the U.S.S.R.. The worker controls his own work rate whereby “norms” are deliberately set at low levels to accommodate this situation. Atomisation has been through a number of stages, putting a ban on all non state organisatlons. The period of Gorbachev can therefore be understood as the elites last ditch attempt to maintain itself in power by making minimal concessions before it’s controls disappear altogether (Hillel Ticktin p.13).”

But as I have pointed out above during the 1930’s peasants on colelctive farms were encouraged even to establish their own private operations, and these supplied considerable amounts of foodstuffs. In fact minimum numbers of hours had to be set for such peasants to work on the kolkhoz because they were putting so much time into their own production that kolkhoz output was falling. It is also wrong to have the idea that at this stage workers were alienated from the system, despite all of the deprivation. Most of the violence was suffered by the peasants as part of the forced collectivisation, and of course by the kulaks. But as Nove poimnts out in relation to the period of the first Five Year Plan,

“Vast projects got udner way. While some were the work of forced labour (the Volga-White sea canal, for instance), there is no doubt that there was enthusiasm too. There was the story of Magnitogorsk. A great new metallurgical centre was created in the wilderness, and the workers and technicians worked under the most primitive conditions, yet many seemed to have been fired by a real faith in the future and in their own and their children’s part in it. There were, especially in later years, all too many examples of phoney official superlatives, which gave rise to widespread cynicism. So it is all the more necessary to stress that thousands 9of young people in particular) participated in the ‘great construction projects of socialism’ with a will to self-sacrifice, accepting hardship with a real sense of comradeship.”

And as Nove also points out much of the problem during the 1930’s was in fact not due to workers trying to control their work process,a nd therey working poorly. The real problem was that many of the workers were new recruits from the peasantry, ill-educated, illiterate and unskilled. Many machines were broken not deliberately, but simply because of the inability of workers to know how to use them properly, and NOCe gives numerous examples to that effect. It was one reason that crash training courses were organised. Moreover, whatever the validity or lack of it in relation to Stakhanovism as Nove points out there was in fact huge sciope for improvements in labour productivity during this period in large part because of the above. Far from slowing down their work rate productivity increased dramatically. During this period real wages also increased considerably though way off the doubling that had been planned, partly because after 1933 and the rise of Hitler production was once again diverted away from consumer goods which had been planned for significant increases in the Second Plan, and into military spending, which at the time was at very low levels.

“Work norms were further increased, especially in 1938 and 1939, but in most cases they were still surpassed, by fairly large percentages.”
Nove p 233.

“The difference between the U.S.S.R. and a planned society is that the U.S.S.R. has planned control in the interests of a small group, the elite, bureaucracy, or ruling group. In a socialist society, on the other hand, centralised control is in the interests of society as a whole. Insuperable opposition is created between planners and planned. A bargain is then struck which results in the economy being worse off, goods are not delivered, discontent festers, the position of the elite is threatened and a new solution is sought (Hillel Ticktin p.118).”

But as I have argued previously this does not tell us that this society is not a workers state. It merely tells us that it is not socialism, that a bureuacracy has been able to acquire privileges for itself. The answer to that is to carry through a political revolution to seize back control of the political apparatus, and bring that bureuacracy udner control, or preferably to remove it, and to put in place new personnel, and efficient means of control and recall.

“It is in the interests of the elite to maximise control over the surplus product for their own ends, which can be reduced to their need for occupational stability and access to privileges. So for stability the elite require full control over the surplus product and thus the labour process to achieve stability that they require. The workers respond by reinterpreting the command which they receive, in their own interests. Because of this a section of the elite has emerged which is more interested in enforced control than in organisation. Such a movement to total control has failed in the past and must necessarily fail. The reason for this hopeless position is the fact that elite control is opposed by direct producers (Hillel Ticktin p.1l9).”

But you need to determine who the elite are you are referring to here. Is the elite the top political hierarchy. Well yes, I can see that they would have an interest in maximising the social surplus, and their share of it. The problem is I don’t think the facts show that that is what actually happened. As I have said elsewhere a large proportion went on health, welfare, and education, and at least in the early years a lot went on what Preobrazhensky called “primitive socialist accumulation”. In the 1930’s and later during the Cold war, a lot went on military spending, but it is hard to see how this actually directly benefits anyone in the elite in terms of enhancing their standrad of living etc. Secondly, there are other sections of the elite who are in conflict with this first section. The enterprise managers status etc. was dependent upon plan fulfillment, and it was this that led to some of the lunacies not any action by workers to deliberately produce defective goods, though that happened too as a means of fighting back in the absence of more formal methods.

“The elite therefore have control of the surplus product but do not control the labour process. Which prevents them having full control over the surplus product. The elite were therefore driven one way at the time of the purges, towards maximum force. Then the other way towards bargaining and organisational forms as under Kruschev, and in so doing have become split. This has made the third way look attractive, back towards the market and ultimately capitalism (Hillel Ticktin p.120).”

But as I have said above this is a misreading of history. During the 1930’s most of the problem was due to the incompetence of the new workers not deliberate sabotage. There was suspicion of sabotage in the paranoid environment of the time, but that was all it was.

“But of course training schemes could barely touch the millions who were recruited, or fled, from the countryside. Soviet leaders and novelists now freely admit that much damage was done by sheer clumsiness: expensive imported machines were smashed by inexperiences labourers or unqualified substitute-engineers.” Nove.

Nor were workers restricted at the time in means of control. There was an extremely high turnover of labour as workers moved from factory to factory, as well as sometimes back to the country. The forced pace industrialisation of the first plan caused labour shortages which forced wages up.

As for the purge. In 1934 a closed session of the 17th Congress in 1934 it was decided to reduce Stalin’s powers, and to relax the terror. It was also proposed to bring forward Kirov. It is possibly this background which led to the great purge by Stalin and his supporters. But the first people to suffer were in fact sections of the elite – no doubt those that were pushing Kirov, the party secretaries, and chairmen, the bureuacrats of various shades within the collective farms and enterprises.

“The elite have a preference for producing heavy industrial goods because it affords them unparalleled power (Hillel Ticktin p.122). The reason for the lack of consumer goods lies in the fact that they are the end product of a process of production that never reaches it’s logical end.”

But this contradicts the stated aim of the elite to maximise the social surplus. There is in fact an argument related to the so called Transformation Problem of Exchange Values to prices which says that capitalism necessarily overproduces consumer goods compared to capital goods, and as a result reduces its potential long term growth rate, but I don’t want to get into that here. It does provide a theoretical basis for a society seeking to plan its production and to minimise future labour costs concentrating on greater investment goods production, however.
But I think the answer is more complex. In the second Plan as I have stated consumer goods were planned to be increased, as were real wages, and housing. Nove gives part at least of the reason for this. In 1933 when Hitler came to power military spending accounted for just 3.4 per cent of budgeted expenditure. By the following year and as a clear response to Hitler’s declared intention to wage war against the SU this figure trebled to 9.1%. By 1936 it was 16.1%, 25.6% in 1939, and 32.6% in 1940. Yet despite that during this period living standards did rise in real terms, and that could only happen if more consumer goods were produced. In fact they rose more than the statistics would suggest because as Nove points out a large number of workers were new workers from the countryside, and compared with the standard of living they would have had as peasants their wages in the towns and urban areas were significantly higher.

The same is true in the post war period under Khrushchev where attempts were made to icnrease consumer goods production, but where the arms and space race again drained resources. And against the argument well they should have been able to outproduce the US, the answer I think is quite simply in the statistics of the damage suffered to agricultural and industrial production, not to mention of its productive population, compared to the minor casualties suffered by the US, and the absence of any damage to its agricultural or industrial base. But it is true that Stalinism had a particular problem with the production of consumer goods that it did not have with heavy industrial goods. I am not sure that democratic planning methods necessarily will resolve it either.

” The split in the division of labour has shown itself in the detailed working of the economy. Production is split from consumption ; consumer goods from producer goods ; the product from it’s repair; new technology from old technology; and newer plants from older plants. In every sphere a dichotomy emerges which cannot be bridged. Since the organisers cannot hold it together, society begins to disintegrate.(Hillel Ticktin p.123) Growth therefore becomes a pragmatic response. Insofar as it proves counterproductive in preserving the position of the elite, they would stand opposed to it. The increasing intensity of the problems within the economy does not raise the necessity of growth, but the work force cannot be dismissed without creating massive internal unrest (Hillel Ticktin p.123).”

But that dichotomy is created under capitalism and merely inherited by a transitional economy, it is not specific to Stalinism. On the contrary it is the necessity to resolve that contradiction that leads a transitional society on to try to resolve it through the greater control of the economy. True the Stalinisist could not do that – in part I believe because the attempts to plan the economy were too premature in the 20’s, and probably remained premature in the 80’s – but there is no guarantee that a democratic workers state will be able to do so either.

“In the normal explanation of the word, growth might be defined as an increase in the net product of a society. But more succinctly it is,,the increase in the surplus product which is produced.”

This is just simply wrong. It is quite possible to have economic growth and a smaller surplus and vice versa. In conditions of strong economic growth capital expands,and along with it the demand for labour. It is as Marx describes it the time which is most conducive to Labour. During such periods workers can and do demand higher wages, a bigger slice of the cake. The bigger the workers slice of the cake the smaller proprtionately the social surplus, though it could grow in absolute terms, but not necessarily. Similarly in a Depression workers are laid off, real wages fall and ultimately profits (social surplus) rises. Indeed it is the necessity of this which provides the basis for the recovery out of recession.

” Taking into account that the elite are based on apparent growth, a growth that may employ more people, have more production, but not yet deliver the goods as real use values, these are the elites real chimera (Hillel Ticktin p.124). “

No the chimera is an undesired outcome. Only superficially do those sections of the elite at enterprise management level benefit as a ressult of exceeding planned targets. In fact it is probably one of the reasons why such practices tended to be less a problem during the 1930’s i.e. rather than benefitting the enterprise manager who deliberately produced defective tractors would have faced a trip to the Gulag. It is possible but by no means certain that real workers control, and workers democracy might resolve such a problem. But again all we are pointed to is the problem of bureaucratism in a workers state, and the problem of incentivisation within the confines of a non-market economy.

” It is now possible to identify Gorbachev’s problem more clearly. His aim was to turn the elite from an emasculated ruling group, terrified of losing power at every turn, both individually and collectively, into a class that is firmly in control of the surplus product. In order to achieve this he must turn on the working class (Hillel Ticktin p.125).”

But this seems to contradict the statement
” The plenum of the Central Committee of the communist party of the former Soviet Union that met on the 6-8th of Feb.1990 marked a turning point in the political economy of the U.S.S.R.. Article 6 of the constitution enshrining the special role of the communist party was slated for removal, the party was to become more democratic, and multi party elections were to be held (Hillel Ticktin p.8).”

Seeing the decision of the Russian parliament today to give Gazprom a monopoly of foreign trade in gas, watching Putin’s reigning in of assets back in to the state sector, his attack on the oligarchs, and his statement that the dissolution of the USSR was the biggest catastrophe of the 20th century I think it is safe to say that this story has not ended yet. The ability of the Chinese Stalinists to buy off to a large extent dissent from below through the use of an NEP on steroids, whilst 70% of the workforce and capital continue to be employed in SOE’s (though they account for a minority of GDP), and the increasing links between China and Russia particularly in relation to energy also lead me to believe that Stalinism is not dead and buried yet.

A final comment re. Cuba. You may be right that the Cuban Stalinists will privatise. Chinese companies may buy them up given the increasing influence of China in Cuba, and other Latin American countries. The question is what should be the attitude of Marxists to any such attempt at privatisation.

If you acept Ticktin’s viewpoint that such societies represent a sterile dead end, then it really makes no odds whether the property remains nationalised or not. There is, if they really are sterile, no prospect of them simply being transformed. You ma as well go back to capitalism and start again. I do not accept that position, obviously. As I have pointed out elsewhere I am not particularly attached to the notion of nationalised property. It represents an advance on privately owned capital, but I believe that a more secure form of collective property is the co-operative. I would argue for all state property to be converted then into workers co-operatives other than for thos inustries for which that is not suitable or efficient such as electricity supply, railways etc. i.e. industries which by their nature have to be operated on a national level. I would abandon attempts to plan production for co-operative output and reinstiture marekt relations. For nationalised property I would give every adult a non-negotiable share in each nationalised industry. Every citizen then becomes a shareholder rather like people can be shareholders with an equal vote in the Co-op in Britain. Each co-operative and enterprise could elect a delegate to attend the AGM of such industries, and make decisions on investment etc. as well as electing a Management Board also comprising workers from the industry. On a day to day basis their should be workers control over production within such nationalised industries.

All workers should pay into a central pension fund. Investment for co-operatives would come from the internally generated profits of the co-operative plus borrowing from co-operative banks, and from the workers pension fund. This fund would also provide the bais for investment funds for the nationalised industries. Interest payments from such loans would flow back to the workers pension fund, and be the means both of it increasing its resources for future investments, and for financing workers retirment pensions.

Financing for health, welfare, education and social provision would come through taxation, and would be a matter of discussion as to whether this is best done on a national regional or local basis to provide the greatest fairness, and democratic control. Decisions on resources then to be devoted to such socialised provision would circumscribe the available resources for the market sector i.e. the co-operatives within which they would compete for resources and through which prices would be establsihed.
Increasing links between co-operatives, and co-operatives and state industries, and services would obver time mean a growing interlinking of enterprise plans across sectors. Democratic decision making at local level would also lead to the linking together of co-operatives within a local area thereby unercutting the problem outlined by Bettelheim in the post I submitted some time ago, of individual enterprises simply reproducing capitalist norms and values.

The only problem is we don’t have a workers party or adequate international labour Movement to argue for it in Cuba or anywhere else.

Arthur Bough

Red, I read your last post with some dismay. Both because you have decided not to continue the discussion, and because you do not appear to realise the nature of the position you have now found yourself in.
Having agreed that the Soviet Union was not state capitalist or Bureaucratic Collectivist (at least in the sense of there being a new class, and mode of production) you settle on Ticktin’s idea that it was a “non-mode of production” i.e. that it was sterile, a dead-end, and could only collapse. In fact you say that a collapse back into capitalism was inevitable. But in that case you should clearly argue that the sooner this collapse back into capitalism occurred the better, because only on that basis could the dead-end come to an end, only then could normal service be resumed and the working class begin a normal progress towards socialism. Yet you do not arrive at that conclusion. In the discussion on whether the AWL was right or not to support those that were in favour of capitalist restoration you said no. And you have condemned the sections of the elite that were proposing a return to capitalism. Rather than condemning them you should have supported them for speeding up the inevitable and laying the basis for a normal development.

This is the first instance of where you come to a practical conclusion that it is diametrically opposed to your analysis of the nature of the state in question.

Having said that the industry nationalised by Saddam Hussein was reactionary. A position you are forced to adopt on the basis of your analysis of property forms in the Soviet Union, and your conclusion that nationalised property can only be progressive if it is property that has been nationalised on the basis of action by a class conscious working class, and under its control, I asked you whether you would then support the Iraqi oil workers in their opposition to the privatisation of this reactionary nationalised industry. And here the real nature of the corner you have put yourself in is laid out clearly. You reply that you cannot give the Iraqi oil workers any advice on what they should do!!!!

“...I don't recommend anything to the Iraqi oil workers. It's entirely up to them. What I want them to do is seize the oil industry and put it under workers' control. But I have no "advice" -- for want of a better word -- to give them.”

But what kind of a Marxist, or even socialist is it, that finds themselves in a position where they cannot use their Marxism to provide the working class with advice? That is precisely what Marxist praxis is about. It requires that the Marxists use their science to analyse the actions of the workers to learn the lessons, and on that basis to draw up a programme, and practical advice for the workers in their struggles, so that they do not have to continually relearn what other workers have learned before. In fact your inability to give advice to intervene positively in the class struggle whether it is supporting the Iraqi oil workers fight against privatisation, or the fight of NHS workers in Britain against privatisation, or the fight against privatisation on the Tube arises from the corener you have created for yourself from your incorrect analysis. Yes you say “I want them to seize the oil industry and put it udner workers control”. Fine we all want that, it would bne nice if that could happen in the NHS and on the Tube too, but that doesn’t deal with the real struggle does it? In the absence of that possibility do we as your analysis would force us to do simply turn round to the workers and say, “sorry your nationalised industry is reactionary, the only basis it can be progressive is if you seize it under workers control, and unless that is what you plan I can’t support your fight?”

Yes, sometimes Marxists do refuse to support workers struggles where the objectives are reactionary. For example, if workers struck demanding that black workers be sacked, we would not support them. But this clearly is not the case here. I can imagine no Marxist that will not support the Iraqi oil workers opposition to privatisation, whether or not they demand or could achieve workers control.

At every stage in this discussion on this particular issue you have been forced to flit from one position to another, for example trying to evade the issue by saying that it was about foreign or domestic capitalists, or the opposition to privatisation was solely agaisnt redundancies. It clearly is not.

Do you now recognise the nature of the position your analysis has brought you to, whereby if the conclusions of that analysis were carried through it would leave you calling for the establishment of capitalism in the Soviet Union as a progressive move – which you argued against – and refusing to advise the Iraqi oil workers to oppose privatisation, and refusing to support any workers fighting privatisation, other than to avoid redundancies, and only if they do so on the basis of workers control!!!! Yet you do not follow that through your actions contradict your analysis. I do not use the word in a pejorative sense, but in its correct Marxist sense, when I say that the corect term for someone that does this is opportunist.

Now to turn to your further points.

“Your statements re: authoritarianism are fine, but don't amount to authoritarianism as I understand the term. Authoritarianism is when, like Lenin, you think that "the dictatorship is unrestrained by any laws and based directly on force." I understand that this isn't your view, but the fact that this was Lenin's (and Trotsky's, and Bukharin's) view contributed much towards the destruction Soviet Union's character as a workers' state.”

But it is my view. I see nothing here in Lenin’s statement that contradicts what I said above. A class dictatorship is based directly on force and unrestrained by laws, how can it be otherwise. I might have laws that guarantee the right to strike for example, but if that right to strike is used by some group of workers specifically as a means to overthrow the state, as could have been the case with the railwayworkers for instance in 1918, then that law is simply ignored, and the state uses force to guarantee its continuance. I might have laws guaranteeing universal suffrage, but if the state as was the case in Russia is one where the working class constitutes a minority I might decide to deny the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie the vote. Now because of my different model of socialist construction I might argue that if possible Marxists should avoid making a revolution in such conditions if possible, but soemtimes as in 1917, it is not possible to avoid doing what has to be done. The alternative in 1917/18 in Russia was not some bourgeois regime, it was absolutist counter-revolution, and the likelihhod of terrible pogroms against the workers and peasants such as those that occurred where the Whites managed to gain control.

“The NEP was explicitly a temporary measure, whereas under Stalin there was all sorts of nonsense about the law of value being a permanent feature under "socialism." Big difference, I think.”

You are completely wrong here on several counts. First of all no Marxists before War Communism believed that you could go quickly to a planned economy. You will search in vain in the writings of Marx or Engels to find any such idea. And quite rightly because it is prepostrous. Trotsky himself in “The New Course” makes the same comment. Prior to the Civil War there was no great rush or demand to begin introducing a planned economy, and even in the 1920’s when the Left Opposition proposed the introduction of planning measures these were intended to be very limited. But far from being “explicitly” a temporary measure, Lenin said exactly the opposite. He said that they were intended to last a long time.

”At first, when the party was persuaded of the need for change it was thought that the retreat would be limited to the substitution of ‘commodity exchange’ for confiscations. Speaking in October 1921, Lenin frankly admitted this had been an error, an illusion. The only way was trade.

'What is the use of talking to us about state trade,’ argued a delegate.’ They didn’t teach us to trade in prison.’ Lenin replied:’….Were we taught to fight in prison? Were we taught how to administer a state in prison’?”

Nove “An Economic History of the USSR” p 84-5. quoting Lenin CW Vol33, p104.

By 1922-3 75% of all retail trade was in private hands. Lenin hoped that foreign capital would come in to fill the gaps to bring in the new machines they desperately needed, and the expertise and training with them. Some did, but nowhere near what Lenin had hoped, and given what had happened it was unlikely.

How long did Lenin consider NEP should last, was it just a temporary blip. Lenin answered the question himself. He said that twenty-five years would be a rather pessimistic view. See Lenin CW Vol 32 pp429-30.

You are also wrong on another aspect which I have dealt with previously, but which I do not want to go into detail about here. That is the Law of Value and socialism. Some of this stems from an error or wrong formaulation by Engels in Anti-Duhring. Marx explains the Law of Value in terms of the Value of a use-value being the labour-time required for its production. This is different from Exchange Value. Marx says the first exchange is the exchange of labour with nature. The law of value, therefore, is really saying that the choices we can make are constrained by the amount of labour that can be expended, and the labour time required to produce any particular use-value. It is quite clear then that whilst the determination of what should be produced based on Exchange Values will cease under socialism as society determines how much labour to allocate to different types of use value based on the priority assigned to those use-values, the law of value must continue to operate, because the law of value will dictate the choices of what combination of those use-values it is possible to produce.

“The problem with "planning" in the USSR isn't that it was "bad." It was that it wasn't done by the workers themselves and hence was without real working-class socialist content. Of course errors are possible through democratic planning. But if the workers are really in charge then they can correct the errors.”

This is simply naïve. It demonstrates precisely the argument I was making previously. It also highlights a comment made by Nove, who noted the extent to which Trotskyists, and others on the Left simply refused to believe that there was anything to be learned from the problems of planning experienced in the Soviet Union. Of course you will not learn anything from that experiecne if you believe that a healthy workers state will not experiecne them, that simply workers democracy will cure all ills. Quite clearly such a position is nonsense for anyone that actually has studied the problems of planning. Take the well-known problem of defective goods refered to by Ticktin. One example is where rail transport was paid on the basis of tonnes/per kilometre. The rail companies therefore had an incentive to load up as many heavy wagons as possible for long journeys turning down orders for short journeys or lighter loads even though this caused waste and inefficiency. This meant that lighter goods or shorter journeys got squeezed out, causing bottlenecks of these goods to markets.

Now imagine that you have established a democratic plan, and the requirements of this plan are set down, and instructions are sent out to the enterprises and other organs that are to implement it. In order to ensure that each enterprise does its bit some plan metrics must be sent to it establsihing what it must do, and the financing it will receive. One of these plan metrics is that above tonnes/per kilometre. This is the basis on which this enterprise will be paid, the manager and workers ensure their incomes can be paid out. Why should the manager and the workers of this enterprise be any less prone to carrying heavy loads over long distances than if the plan has simply been decided on high by bureuacrats. In fact in terms of what they recive as instructions from the central planning board that is exactly how it would appear. There is no necessary connection whatsoever between the democratic involvement in decision making and workers control of the actual enterprise, or general discussions of priorities that these workers might engage in with other workers through the soviet that has any resemblance to the end plan, and the plan instructions they receive. And if by carrying heavy loads over short distances the workers of this enterprise can meet their plan requirements more easily, work less hard, go home early etc. or receie bonuses for overfulfillment of the plan, why on earth would they not do so? The only answer you can give to this is that they would be filled with socialist class conscioussness, and would do the right thing. But that requires a huge leap of faith, and a vast amount of voluntarism. Your require the workers to have actually become socialists, to have imbibed the culture of the future socialist society before hey have got there.

‘Of course the working class is different from any other class in history. To quote Charles Post (http://www.ernestmandel.org/en/aboutlife/txt/charlespost.htm):
"The analogy with feudal absolutism and capitalist dictatorships tends to obscure the differentia specifica of the transition to socialism. First, neither the feudal nor capitalist modes of production emerged from the struggles of classes self-consciously attempting to create new forms of society. Instead, feudalism and capitalism arose out of the struggles of already propertied classes to consolidate and extend their class domination. Socialism, by contrast, is the first form of society created in a conscious struggle by a propertyless social class, the working class. Further, both feudalism and capitalism are reproduced through a “blind economic logic” that operates “behind the back” of both the economically dominant classes and the direct producers. The feudal aristocracy and the bourgeoisie can remain socially dominant without directly dominating the state. Socialism is the first form of society based on conscious and deliberate planning of economic development."’

I agree with much of this, but not entirely. I think it misses out the ideological role played by the Church in creating the justification for feudalism, just as it misses out the massive role played by bourgeois ideologists from the time of the Reformation onwards in setting out the basic ideological battlefield on which the capitalist class would organise itself and confront the feudal aristocracy. I do agree that simple economic mechanisms did act to carry capitalism in particular forward without the conscious need of the bourgeoisie to understand the nature of that process or to deliberately intervene to bring it about – with the exception of course of later capitalist industrialisations. Where I disagree is in the idea that the working class is somehow different. This is really something that has developed on the basis of Leninism, and is necessary to Leninism in order to justify the nature of the revolutioanry party, and the top down model of socialist construction.

But it is clear that Marx did not accept this idea. As I pointed out here.
Co-operatives and Socialism

And in particular in this quote from Marx from Capital.

“The co-operative factories of the labourers themselves represent within the old form the first sprouts of the new, although they naturally reproduce, and must reproduce, everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system. But the antithesis between capital and labour is overcome within them, if at first only by way of making the associated labourers into their own capitalist, i.e., by enabling them to use the means of production for the employment of their own labour. They show how a new mode of production naturally grows out of an old one, when the development of the material forces of production and of the corresponding forms of social production have reached a particular stage. Without the factory system arising out of the capitalist mode of production there could have been no co-operative factories. Nor could these have developed without the credit system arising out of the same mode of production. The credit system is not only the principal basis for the gradual transformation of capitalist private enterprises. into capitalist stock companies, but equally offers the means for the gradual extension of co-operative enterprises on a more or less national scale. The capitalist stock companies, as much as the co-operative factories, should be considered as transitional forms from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one, with the only distinction that the antagonism is resolved negatively in the one and positively in the other.”
He goes on,

“The two characteristics immanent in the credit system are, on the one hand, to develop the incentive of capitalist production, enrichment through exploitation of the labour of others, to the purest and most colossal form of gambling and swindling, and to reduce more and more the number of the few who exploit the social wealth; on the other hand, to constitute the form of transition to a new mode of production. It is this ambiguous nature, which endows the principal spokesmen of credit from Law to Isaac Pereire with the pleasant character mixture of swindler and prophet.”

(Capital Vol III pp441-2)

So it is quite clear from this that Marx does not accept that the working class has to remain a slave class, a propertyless class until after the revolution. On the contrary normal economic development within capitalism can “mak(e) the associated labourers into their own capitalist, i.e., by enabling them to use the means of production for the employment of their own labour.” Nor does he see this process as necessarily requiring the intervention of some revolutionary party acting on behalf of the workers to seize state power and thereby transfer this property to the workers. On the contrary, “They show how a new mode of production naturally grows out of an old one, when the development of the material forces of production and of the corresponding forms of social production have reached a particular stage.”

Nor can it be argued that this was some aberration of Marx from his youth. This is Capital Vol III his magnum opus, his most complete thought. Nor can it be argued that he might have changed his mind following the Paris Commune. Were that the case then Engels would surely have placed a note against this saying so. The fact that even to the last edition edited by Engels he felt no need to change this statement of Marx’s materialist philosophy demonstrating how the ripening of the means of production lead to the development of socialist forms naturally and gradually, just as in the past they had led to capitalist and feudalist forms is there as clear as day, for all to see. Of course it does not contradict Marx and Engels further view that such a process needs also to be accompanied by the development of a Workers Party to further press the workers interests. But it does put into context their views about the role of such a party in the realm of Parliamentarism, the extent to which such action acts as an index of the class’s maturity, and the ultimate need to move forward on the basis of this legitimacy and social domination to put down a slaveholders revolt.

‘And Alan Johnson (http://archive.workersliberty.org/wlmags/wl50/losttext.htm):
"...the “correct and decisive” criteria of a workers’ state is that the working class holds political power. The bourgeoisie can own and control the means of production without political power. The working class, by contrast, “differs from all others in history above all in the fact that it can conquer and rule only in its own name.” “Proletarian Bonapartism” is therefore a theoretical and practical impossibility...To define property relations in terms of property forms is, for a Marxist, to reverse the order of categorial priority, to replace social relations with a juridical illusion and to substitute an economism for a rounded Marxist judgement. The consequences are disastrous for one’s ability as a Marxist to theoretically ground democracy. For when the bureaucracy conquered state power the property relations established by October were, by definition, destroyed. To imagine that the property relations of October were somehow, mystically, congealed in the property forms of October, held there, intact, as long as capitalism was not restored, was a fatal error, a juridical illusion."’

I could simply state look what happened to Alan Johnson, but that would be a cheap shot.

My answer to this is that the property forms established in October were deformed to begin with. To believe as Johnson does here that the working class had ownership of the means of production in October is a fantasy. There never was a time in the Soviet Union when the workers in any meaningful sense directly owned the means of production. There were instances of workers implementing workers control, but that is not ownership. It is in fact only with the ending of NEP that property relations begin to be changed, that the political revolution carried through by the Bolsheviks in 1917 resulting in their control of state power as proxy for the working class results in that social revolution. The issue is what do we mean by the state. Yes I agree the working class can only rule in its own name, though Marx’s words above could conceivably be used to contradict that. But this does not resolve the problem. You have accepted that the state capitalist and BC analysis does not fly, but in that case you are stumped and Johnosn’s comment does not help you. If there is no new class in the Soviet Union, then the bureuacracy remains just that a bureuacracy, and as such is the bureuacracy of some other social class. In the absence of a capitalist class, landlord class etc. it can only be the bureuacracy of the working class, just like the bureuacracy of a Trade Union however reactionary and timeserving remains the bureuacracy of the workers in that union, holding a position only so long as the union continues to exist, and therefore ultimately tied in however a distorted way upon the members of the Trade Union.

And Johnson’s comment standing on its own fares no better for the same reason. It requires that this bureuacracy be established as actually being a new class, or a caste capable of passing on its control of the means of production. And that was not the case. The existence of the bureuacracy and its domination of the apparatus does not change the class nature of the state therefore, does not deny the continued rule of the working class, it merely establsihes that that rule is conducted through a deformed and distorted conduit. Just like the treacherous, sometimes reactionary nature of a TU bureuacracy does not change the proletarian nature of a Trade Union. His analysis is then left hanging out there unsecured to any materialist foundation.

I’m sorry that you cannot continue the discussion as I have found it very useful.

Arthur Bough

Red, I'm glad that you now agree that the Stalinist stes were not state capitalist or bureaucratic collectivist. I am sorry I haven't yet convinced you that they were deformed workers states - and I include the Soviet Union as a deformed workers state not a degenerated workers state for the reasons I have given elsewhere.

The argument is in fact quite simple on this further point, however. We simply have to ask are these states still class societies. In order to answer no to this question you would have to come to the conclusion that they had gone through transition, and arrived at socialism. I don't know anyone that would argue that other than some right-winger that simply wants to besmirch the name of socialism. If they remain class societies, the question is what classes exist. If you now agree with me that no new class exists in these societies we are left with the three clases of the old society. But capitalists as a class were long since liquidated, as wee landlords. In some of these societies we can point to the continued existence of a peasantry - in some cases such as China, Vietnam, Cuba, Korea - quite significant peasantries. But Marx says that the peasantry and petit-bourgeois can never constitute a ruling class because htey lack the homogeneity and internal cohesion required to become a class for themselves. We are left then with the working class as the only candidate to form the dominant or ruling social class. As the state is according to all Marxist theory the organ of class rule utilised by the dominant social class it necessarily follows that deformed as it may be the state in these societies is a workers state. The fact that this state oppresses the workers merely tells us that it is deformed that the political superstructure is out of kilter with the material base of the society. It can tell us nothing more, any more than the fact that the Nazi State or the State of Bonaparte oppressed the capitalist class to some degreee, and leached off the society bureuacratically leads us to the conclusion that these were not capitalist states.

The fact that the political revolutions or military conquests that overthrew capitalist rule, and then carried through a transformation of property relations were undertaken by elitist organisations with the working class and peasantry fulfilling the role of foot soldiers rather than these revolutions being undertaken fully class conscious working classes that immediately set about bringing these societies udner their own immediate control is irrelevant in large part. The social context of this transformation is of course not insignificant, on the contrary. Had for example the Nazis carried on to nationalise a large part of the German economy, and establish some form of economic planning - as opposed to the mere tinkering the Economic Council was involved in - then I would not describe this as a Workers State. The reason being that if the old capitalists continued to control this property through the Ecoomic Council it really would constitute a form of state capitalism of the type Engels described. One would conclude that the basis of this transformation was to meet some immediate problem prior to the re-establishment of private property, or that it would be short lived for the reason Engels proposed. However, if the Nazis had gone on to nationalise all of the economy, had gone on to liquidate the capitalists and landlords as a class then I would be tempted to describe the resultant society as a workers state as grossly distorted as that might be for the reasons I have outlined. (Consider this. Workers undertake a revolution, take hold of the means of production, establish democratic control of the economy, and begin to plan it on the basis of need etc. In other words they do everything required for the establishment of a healthy workers state. The workers in this healthy workers state then proceed via completely open and democratic procedures to exterminate all Jews within their national boundaries. Does this tell us that this is not a workers state? Or does it just tell us this is not a socialist state?) But here is the crux. Of course the Nazis would not have done that for the simple reason that the Nazis were a product of the capitalist class and dependent upon it. Those within the Nazis that advocated such a policy - the Strasserites - were liquidated in the Night of the Long Knives.

This is also why I reject the idea of a non-mode of production. It is non-Marxist. A non-mode of production is a contradiction in terms. What do we mean by a mode of production. All human society even the most primitive produces. This method of production is not the mode of production, but merely its basis. Upon this material basis of the way in which human society goes about producing arise human social relations. And out of these social relations arise sets of ideas. It is only the totality of these three things - the method of production, the social relations, and the ideological superstructure - that constitutes a mode of production.

If we look at any of these societies we simply ask. Did they produce, yes. Did they arising from the method of production develop social relations. Yes. Out of that did a set or sets of ideas develop, from which were developed laws, morals etc. Yes they did. Then it is a Mode of Production.

Just to bring this back to Cuba. I went on holiday to Cuba last year for a fortnight. (Actually, I was a bit wary because the last time I went to a deformed workers state - Bulgaria in the early 80's - for a holiday I upset a waiter in one of the hotels we went to have our meals and later had what I am sure was a secret policeman trying to get me to take a letter for him back to Britain for someone in Solidarnosc, and when that didn't work trying to get me to exchange currency. Fortunately, we were coming home the next day.) The people are great, and I found no trouble getting to talk to them, and especially as I was able to try out a bit of the Spanish I am slowly picking up. Though when I asked one of the bartenders what the Spanish was for Rum and Coke I thought he was taking the piss when he said Cuba Libra - actually it is.

Anyway two things. The job of working in the holiday hotels is a privileged job, because people get tips. Everyone tipped the waiters and other staff $1. I reckon in the hotel each waiter must have got at least $30 each meal time. I was thinking this was a bit unfair because other staff such as the gardeners missed out - though they get tips from giving you coconuts they knock down from the trees. However, I found out that in fact the workers in the hotel pool all the tips - though the waiters take out a percentage based on how much they personally recieved - and then all the tips are shared out amongst all the workers.

Second thing. I was talking to one of the waiters one lunch time, and he spoke amazingly fluent English. He told me that he spoke 6 languages fluently, and his father who also worked part time in one of the bars at the hotel spoke 9. He said every day they spoke a different language at home. Anyway one day I was talking to a Canadian. In fact there seemed more Canadians there than Cubans, especially Italian Canadians, and Canadians appear to be investing heavily in the Cuban tourist industry. He made what I thought was a really odd comment.

"He said, the only people who get on well here are the ones who are clever."

I assumed he must have been a Canadian capitalist who could only believe that you get rich by having capital and exploiting people. God forbid a society that people do well on the basis of personal merit.

Arthur Bough