April 17, 2004


Polemical Response to Anti-Communism

by Lil Joe
Joe_radical@earthlink.net


This is a revision of a response to a "Black" bourgeois nationalist. The same as all bourgeois ideologists "nationalism" is conservative of the bourgeois order, and[is] reactionary in [its] opposition to proletarian internationalism. As in most cases , bourgeois nationalist ideologists are anti-communists who play upon the ignorance and prejudices of Americans and wrongly associate Soviet state-monopoly capitalism with "communism". They praise [the] "collapse" of the Soviet Union as the triumph of the 'evil'/'selfish' nature of 'man'. The "death of Communism" to them constitutes the end of economic planning on altruistic principles. I made revisions and corrections for a wider public dissemination.

"Igietseme, Joseph" <jbi8@cdc.gov> wrote:

Communism is DEAD!!! Even Russia with its communist philosophy, had an imperialist agenda. It therefore means that imperialism has nothing to do with capitalism or the philosophy of the bourgeoisie. To be human is to understand that class structure will exist, in intellects, academics, material wealth, et cetera. It is unfortunate that human success is measured by these parameters. Instead of Spiritualism? Well, you be the judge. Joe Igietseme
======================================)

Lil Joe Response:

What Igietseme is here presenting is nothing but Idealism and Christian theology. There is no such thing as evil or "human nature", what we call human nature in the boards of directors of GM, or IMF -- their proclivities to amass "material wealth, et cetera", and the "intellects and academics" which serve them (e.g. Ayittey, Igiestseme) -- is not the same human feelings, and motivation as had men in hunter-gatherer bands when they hunt, or women when they collected roots and berries, in each case for the band as a whole.

As for imperialism, Igietseme is showing his utter ignorance of, and contempt for, history in that he makes oversimplified statements about "imperialism" and so-called "human nature", but without providing any concrete analysis of the different kinds of imperialism, and explaining those differences.

As actual cases in point: the respective past ancient Empires of the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Persians, and the Parthian were based on land expansion and slave and serf labor, as well as taxes and tribute from conquered people.

The Greek and Roman Empires was based on commodity production and commerce, on the basis of slave gang labor and the primary motivation for conquest of the Romans was taxes and tribute, and slaves from the conquered people.

The Empire of Venice was based on capitalist commodity production by wage-labor and sought monopoly Asian markets with filtering through Venice into feudal Europe.

The dynastic and colonial empires of the European absolute monarchs were based of feudalism in the countrysides and commerce in the cities with a rising bourgeoisie in connection with world-trade, thus mercantilism and colonization directly connected to the world-market.

Meanwhile, the transatlantic slave trade was developing and African Empires traded people for guns ivory and slave trade was used as a basis for consolidating power into Western African Empire kingdoms.

The imperialism that Marx, Hobson, Luxemburg, Lenin and Mumia were writing about is capitalistic imperialism. This imperialism has nothing in common with ancient empires of the Afro-Asian Mediterranean world (Egypt, China, Mesopotamia, Persia, Nubia, Greece, Rome) as far as taxes and tribute is concerned. This imperialism was engendered by the world-market, and not the desire for tribute -- only Spain and Portugal's looting of treasures of the Aztec and Inca American civilization had similarity with predatory ancient empires. However, these exceptions prove the rule, in that Britain focused on production and selling sparked its industrial revolution that enabled it to overtake Spain (whose looted treasures were reduced to money used to purchase English commodities) and Portugal.

To conceptualize what Mumia quoted from the Communist Manifesto, what Marx and Engels wrote about is the technological basis and economic compulsion, of modern or capitalistic imperialism, the result of the world-market in turn forcing capitalisms spreading, from Western Europe throughout the world:

"The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonization of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.

*****

"Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.

*****

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, and establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country.

*****

"The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm

When Igietseme triumphantly declares, on the behalf of the African and Black bourgeoisie, and therefore world imperialism upon which these sub-capitalists are based, is that "Communism is DEAD!!!" -- Is he saying that Marx and Engels statement, quoted by Mumia and reproduced above in context, are not valid, wrong and refuted by history? If so, since he prides himself being an "intellectual", presumably he styles himself a Social Scientist, if not Economist, it is on him to prove the truth: the reality and power of his assertion.

Igietseme has to do an empirical analysis showing where Marx's analysis of the rise of capitalist industrialism and imperialism is wrong; he must show where it is incorrect, and must he do a refutation based on data!!!

Marx and Engels formulations are theories based on data: the result of observation, collecting and analysis of the data available at the time. Consequently, if Igietseme is the scientist he claims to be, he has to come up with either new data to show that the original analysis is based on what he perceives to have been faulty, proving that it is in fact faulty; or, if not faulty, valid data incorrectly analyzed by Marx and Engels.

Asserting "Communism is DEAD" explains nothing!!! It is only AFTER Igietseme has presented his analysis of the different historical conditions engendered specific and different kinds of "Empires", that he can proceed logically to rationally explain the Soviet "empire" in context of the history of imperial Russia, prior to the 20th century and the Russian Revolution. Only by this can Igietseme demonstrate his objectivity and present his analysis of the Soviet economy and political correspondences to explain relative to these factors what "Communist philosophy" is and what it wanted to accomplish, and then why in his opinion it "failed".

However, without presenting a single fact to support his declarations, predicated upon nothing Igietseme declares: "Even Russia with its communist philosophy, had an imperialist agenda." (!!!) Were Igietseme the social scientist, or historian he claims to be, he would have:

Stated an historical analysis of Russia as the simi-colonial and at the same time imperial system: the Russian Empire prior to the 1917 Russian Revolution.

For example, as in the article Permanent Revolution, Trotsky observed of Russia in relation to the more advanced industrializing capitalist economies of Europe:

"The Russian state, which grew up on a primitive economic basis, entered into relations and came into conflict with state organizations built upon higher and more stable foundations. Two possibilities presented themselves: either the Russian State was to succumb in its struggle with them, as the Golden Horde had succumbed in its struggle with the Moscow State, or it was to overtake them in the development of economic relations and absorb a great deal more vital forces than it could have done had it remained isolated. The economy of Russia, however, was already sufficiently developed to prevent the former happening. The State did not break down but started growing under the terrible pressure of economic forces.

*****

The struggle agast the Crimean and Nogai Tatars called forth the utmost exertion of effort. But this was, of course, not greater than the exertion of effort during the hundred years’ war between France and England. It was not the Tatars who compelled Old Russia to introduce firearms and create the standing regiments of Streltsi; it was not the Tatars who later on forced her to form knightly cavalry and infantry forces, but the pressure of Lithuania, Poland and Sweden."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1931-tpv/rp01.htm

Similarly Igietseme must explain the history Russian Empire, in relation to his assertion of "Soviet Empire" on one hand, and the so-called "death of communism" on the other. Igietseme must explain:

a) How it was possible for vast Russia with its vast peasant masses were so weak, economically and politically, that it was subordinated by the relatively small kingdoms of Lithuania, Poland and Sweden;

b) What the necessities were in the economic policies of Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible and J.V. Stalin relative to Western Europe, in acquiring technology produced in Sweden, Britain, France and Germany needed for modernizing Russia's productive forces;

c) How it came about that Peter was able to acquire the wherewithal that enabled "backward Russia" to defeat Sweden, and thereupon establish the Russian Empire both in Asia and also in Europe. That is, what is Igietseme's explanation of (1) the Northern War, against Sweden; (2) the Russian victory resulting in the Treaty of Nystad, that enabled the Russian Empire to establish itself in Europe by the capture of Livonia, Estonia, Karelia, Ingria?

d) What is Igietseme's critique of Lenin's polemics and position taken on The "Rights of Nation's to Self-Determination"? which were polemics against the Russian Empire imprisoning its surrounding nations? And of Stalin's "Marxism and the National Question"?

e) In this connection Igietseme must explain how it was that if the Soviet Union was an "empire" not different than the French, British and American why it was that the Soviet foreign policy supported the independence movements of China, Vietnam, Korea, India, Congo, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, ANC in South Africa, Cuba, Nicaragua and El Salvador?

f) What is Igietseme's analysis of the Russian occupation of Manchuria and the War with Japan defeat engendered Russian Revolution of 1905 and its participation in World War I facilitated the Russian Revolutions of 1917.

g) The Bolshevik policy toward nations of the former Empire of Russia was that these nations had the right of succession. A couple of these nations did succeed while proletarians in the Communist Parties in power in the majority of these former colonies -- e.g. Georgia -- voted for Soviet Federation. Stalin, for instance was a Georgian peasant who became the head of the Soviet Federation.

h) What Igietseme's analysis of Lenin's "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism"? the Bolshevik War Policy? Lenin "On the National and Colonial Question"?

i) What is Igietseme's analysis of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, by the terms of which Revolutionary Russia was compelled by Germany into Russians surrendering the Ukraine, Finland, the Baltic provinces, the Caucasus and Poland? Does Igietseme agree with the Germans? With Bukarin? Trotsky? Kollanti? or Lenin regarding the Treaty?

j) What, in Igietseme's opinion led to the Stalin-Hitler Pact? The fates in that connection of Poland? The retaking of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, &C.?

k) What does Igietseme think of World-War II and Soviet Red Army's liberation from NAZI occupation of countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic countries, and how this turned into a Soviet occupation following driving the Nazis out from these lands?

l) How, in Igietseme's analysis do this sea sawing of history fit into his explanation of the independence of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and of Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia &C. in the collapse of the Soviet "empire", and Warsaw Pact?

m) How, therefore does Igietseme connect all these elements in Russian history, the rise and fall of its "empire" to the statements quoted by Mumia and the "death" of Communism?

n) Does Igietseme not know that Russia was never a communist country, but was state-capitalist commodity production by wage labor?

Where Igietseme asserts: "Even Russia with its communist philosophy, had an imperialist agenda". Because in the poverty of his declarations these is no empirical data either presented or analyzed to back it up, it therefore means that imperialism is a psychological phenomena and has nothing to do with historical circumstances (technology, economy) and therefore nothing to do with capitalism or the philosophy of the bourgeoisie."

All Igietseme is doing is showing his ignorance of Marxism and "communist philosophy".

Let me therefore teach him. I will post selective statements from the works of Marx and Engels, regarding "communist philosophy" -- i.e. the materialist conception of hhiiiiistory and diialectics of historical necessities engendering social changes and revolutions. Using references from the works of Marx and Engels is to presented for Igietseme's to refute -- but let me warn him: denouncing Marx and Engels as "Europeans" and "White men" does not a refutation make!

Igietseme introduced the issue of Marxist Communist philosophy, which I will now explain to him, as much as possible letting those philosophers speak for themselves by selected quotations.

Marxist Communist philosophy is philosophical materialism in the dialectical method of reason, and of empirical analysis of progressive changes in material productive forces engendering changes in the divisions of labor, exchange, class formations in relations of production, and corresponding changes in social consciousness.

1) "In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.

2) "Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02.htm

3) The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto.

4) "From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out."

5) "Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm

Lenin was a Marxist. It was from this Marxian perspective -- namely that "Only at a certain level of development of these social productive forces, even a very high level for our modern conditions, does it become possible to raise production to such an extent that the abolition of class distinctions can constitute real progress, can be lasting without bringing about stagnation or even decline in the mode of social production" -- that Lenin argued that it was not at that time in Russia possible to create socialism. Russia lacked the necessary productive forces, advanced technology and proletarian communist power. Russia had but an infant, and small industrial capacity with a correspondingly small proletariat.

Russia was a country economically dominated by peasants using hand tools in commodity production. What is possible in this capitalistic framework of commodity production was no more than and advanced form of state-monopoly capitalism.

In The April Thesis, Lenin wrote:

"It is not our immediate task to "introduce" socialism, but only to bring social production and the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/04.htm

Lenin therefore was in basic agreement with what Marx had argued, against anarchists, that socialist revolution could not yet occur in Russia because it lacked the capitalistically developed industrial capacity, and therefore lacked a significant proletarian majority required to carry this revolution through to its logical and historical conclusion -- the abolition of commodity production and the wage system, and thus ending class and class struggle.

Marx had argued, in Lenin's opinion correctly:

"The revolution that modern socialism strives to achieve is, briefly, the victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie and the establishment of a new organization of society by the destruction of all class distinctions. This requires not only a proletariat to carry out this revolution, but also a bourgeoisie in whose hands the social productive forces have developed so far that they permit the final destruction of class distinctions."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/04/nationalisation-land.htm

What Lenin advocated, and the Bolsheviks working class adopted, on the one hand was the redistribution of the landed estates to the landless peasants (as is occurring today in Zimbabwe) but with the understanding that this was in fact bourgeois democratic in content. While on the other hand advocating and the Bolsheviks adopting a policy toward State ownership of industry and banks, but understanding that this State expropriation of large scales industries and banks throughout Russia still would operate in the framework of capitalist commodity production and wage labor, and therefore was not socialism.. The Bolshevik Red Army without any illusions that this in itself constituted "communism", but was the economic precondition for state-monopoly capitalism, undertook these expropriations and nationalizations.

In the same year as "The April Theses" - 1917 prior to assuming state power -- Lenin wrote "The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It" (Published at the end of October 1917 in pamphlet form by Priboi Publishers). In this pamphlet Lenin wrote:

"Everybody talks about imperialism. But imperialism is merely monopoly capitalism: That capitalism in Russia has also become monopoly capitalism is sufficiently attested by the examples of the Produgol, the Prodamet, the Sugar Syndicate, etc. This Sugar Syndicate is an object lesson in the way monopoly capitalism develops into state-monopoly capitalism.

"And what is the state? It is an organization of the ruling class -- in Germany, for instance, of the Junkers and capitalists. And therefore what the German Plekhanovs (Scheidemann, Lensch, and others) call "war-time socialism" is in fact war-time state-monopoly capitalism, or, to put it more simply and clearly, war-time penal servitude for the workers and war-time protection for capitalist profits.

"Now try to substitute for the Junker-capitalist state, for the landowner-capitalist state, a revolutionary-democratic state, i.e., a state which in a revolutionary way abolishes all privileges and does not fear to introduce the fullest democracy in a revolutionary way. You will find that, given a really revolutionary-democratic state, state- monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably implies a step, and more than one step, towards socialism! For if a huge capitalist undertaking becomes a monopoly, it means that it serves the whole nation. If it has become a state monopoly, it means that the state (i.e., the armed organization of the population, the workers and peasants above all, provided there is revolutionary democracy) directs the whole undertaking. In whose interest?

"Either in the interest of the landowners and capitalists, in which case we have not a revolutionary-democratic, but a reactionary-bureaucratic state, an imperialist republic. Or in the interest of revolutionary democracy -- and then it is a step towards socialism. For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly." http://www.marx2mao.org/Lenin/IC17.html#s10

What Lenin advocated to the Bolsheviks, and what the Bolshevik influenced working class Soviets adopted as policy, and enacted was nationalization of large scales industries and banks. Lenin never called this "communism". The Bolshevik's cadres and communist proletarians had no illusions that these nationalizations were in any way "communism". State-ownership of industry does not equal "communism", but is a transitional form of state-monopoly capitalism.

"The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm

In "The Revolution Betrayed Trotsky quotes Lenin as describing the Soviet State as "a bourgeois state without a bourgeoisie".

The Russian economy only passed into the Soviet political economy, managed by the Communist Party state but dominated by peasant commodity production. The overthrow of the Czarist state and expropriation of landed estates by the peasant masses facilitated the capitalistic character of commodity production and the capitalist character of the productive forces.

Capitalist commodity production not only was not done away with in the rural peasant productions, but the economic form of production in state farms and industry was on the basis of proletarian wageworkers: State-capitalist commodity production by wage-labor.

What the "collapse of the Soviet Communism" proves thereupon is not that the Marxian materialist hypothesis (historical dialectical materialism) failed the empirical test of history, but in fact it is verified as correct.

Maximillian Robespierre is absolutely correct:

"State Monopoly capitalism, controlled regulated economies, oligarchic bureaucracies and other Stalinist characterizations of the Soviet Union cannot be criticized as communistic."

Maximillian Robespierre bolshevist2017@yahoo.com

The fact is that communism in the Soviet Union was not then possible because "No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm

The Bolsheviks and Lenin were right to lead the Soviets of Workers, Peasants, Soldiers and Sailors Soviets to the destruction of the bourgeois state and displacing it by Soviet Power, and the Bolsheviks themselves displacing the bourgeois government!

There is a history and a continuity in the advances in proletarians political and ideological class participation in democratic revolutions: In England from Alan Ball and Wat Tyler to Winestanley and the Levelers; in the democratic revolution in France this history was advanced by the sans collutes and the Jacobins - Jean-Paul Marat,

Saint Just, Maximillian Robespierre and Gracchus Babeuf; Joseph Proudhon and Wilhelm Wietling; the Revolutions in 1848 and the Communist League; the Chartists in England; the Paris Commune in 1771 and the Soviets in Russia in 1905. The Soviets and the Bolsheviks assumption of Power in 1917 were the continuation in the proletarian praxis of the revolutionary proletariat.

Marx observed in 1850 that in our cumulative history the proletarian revolutions "constantly criticize themselves, constantly interrupt themselves in their own course, return to the apparently accomplished, in order to begin anew; they deride with cruel thoroughness the half-measures, weaknesses, and paltriness of their first attempts, seem to throw down their opponents only so the latter may draw new strength from the earth and rise before them again more gigantic than ever, recoil constantly from the indefinite colossalness of their own goals — until a situation is created which makes all turning back impossible, and the conditions themselves call out: Hic Rhodus, hic salta!"

Here is the rose, here dance!

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm

It was in this tradition and in response to the changed conditions resulting from the new possibilities, and the existence of a communist cadre in Russia along with Soviets that the Bolsheviks move for power was historically inevitable.

Yet the communist workers in power in Russia did not consider their revolution in power separate and apart from European workers in power in communist revolutions.

"Only at a certain level of development of these social productive forces, even a very high level for our modern conditions, does it become possible to raise production to such an extent that the abolition of class distinctions can constitute real progress, can be lasting without bringing about stagnation or even decline in the mode of social production. But the productive forces have reached this level of development only in the hands of the bourgeoisie."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/refugee-literature/ch05.htm

Lenin in 1918 wrote "'Left-Wing' Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality" in which he argued "the situation in Russia at the present time -- an exceptional situation when we, the Russian proletariat, are in advance of any Britain or any Germany as regards our political order, as regards the strength of the workers' political power, but are behind the most backward West-European country as regards organising a good state capitalism, as regards our level of culture and the degree of material and productive preparedness for the "introduction" of socialism." "A successful proletarian revolution in Germany would immediately and very easily smash any shell of imperialism (which unfortunately is made of the best steel, and hence cannot be broken by the efforts of any … chicken) and would bring about the victory of world socialism for certain, without any difficulty, or with slight difficulty -- if, of course, by "difficulty" we mean difficult on a world historical scale, and not in the parochial philistine sense."
http://www.marx2mao.org/Lenin/LWC18.html#s1

Lenin therefore understood the decisive importance for industrial capacity and a proletarian majority fighting for communism as preconditions for socialism. The Russian Revolution could become a successful socialist revolution only in context of global communist proletarian revolutions, anchored in the industrially developed and most advanced technology countries.

Thus, Lenin saw state-monopoly capitalism in the Soviet Union as inevitable and a holding action in the proletarian international revolution.

In "The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It" (Published at the end of October 1917 in pamphlet form by Priboi Publishers). In this pamphlet Lenin wrote:

"Everybody talks about imperialism. But imperialism is merely monopoly capitalism: That capitalism in Russia has also become monopoly capitalism is sufficiently attested by the examples of the Produgol, the Prodamet, the Sugar Syndicate, etc. This Sugar Syndicate is an object lesson in the way monopoly capitalism develops into state-monopoly capitalism.

"And what is the state? It is an organization of the ruling class -- in Germany, for instance, of the Junkers and capitalists. And therefore what the German Plekhanovs (Scheidemann, Lensch, and others) call "war-time socialism" is in fact war-time state-monopoly capitalism, or, to put it more simply and clearly, war-time penal servitude for the workers and war-time protection for capitalist profits.

"Now try to substitute for the Junker-capitalist state, for the landowner-capitalist state, a revolutionary-democratic state, i.e., a state which in a revolutionary way abolishes all privileges and does not fear to introduce the fullest democracy in a revolutionary way. You will find that, given a really revolutionary-democratic state, state- monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably implies a step, and more than one step, towards socialism! For if a huge capitalist undertaking becomes a monopoly, it means that it serves the whole nation. If it has become a state monopoly, it means that the state (i.e., the armed organization of the population, the workers and peasants above all, provided there is revolutionary democracy) directs the whole undertaking.

"Either in the interest of the landowners and capitalists, in which case we have not a revolutionary-democratic, but a reactionary-bureaucratic state, an imperialist republic. Or in the interest of revolutionary democracy -- and then it is a step towards socialism. For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. *** State-monopoly capitalism is a complete material preparation for socialism, the threshold of socialism, a rung on the ladder of history between which and the rung called socialism there are no intermediate rungs."
http://www.marx2mao.org/Lenin/IC17.html#s10

Industry in the Russian economy needed to advance on the basis of proletarian industrial social production before it could pass from entrepreneurial capital into Soviet political economy.

In context of the overthrow of the Czarist state, and peasant expropriation of landed estates facilitated the capitalistic character of commodity production, the capitalist character of the productive forces.

"The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm

Lenin referred to the Soviet political economy as "a bourgeois state without a bourgeoisie". In the Soviet Union capitalist commodity production was not done away with. The economic form of production in the Soviet political economy was on the basis of proletarian wageworkers state ownership of Russian industry and State farms were state-capitalist commodity production by wage-labor.

The "collapse of the Soviet State" proves is the correctness of the Marxian materialist conception of dialectics of revolution: "No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm

In the Russian October, in 1918 the Bolshevik Party led worker's insurrection in the urban centers seized the government. The Bolshevik government based itself on Soviet State Power. In Petersburg and Moscow backed by workers, organized Red Guards the Bolshevik government expropriated the legalized the worker's expropriations of industry and financial institutions by the transfer to the government the ownership of stocks and bonds.

Here lies the difference between capitalist state monopoly e.g. Germany, and fascism bourgeois nationalization on the one hand, and also Social-Democratic Labor Party government's nationalizations on the other: In the Soviet Union the armed proletariat and the peasants were the State's power and the worker's economic power was based on expropriated industry and was transferred to the Bolshevik government for management and Peasants expropriated land was the economic basis of the Peasant Soviets.

Capone, Connie and I attended an American Labor Party Convention a few years ago. We were roommates as well as comrades representing the Los Angeles Inner-City Labor Party Organizing Committee that previously had established laborpartypraxis@yahoogroups.com.

Comrade Capone and I had some exchanges on the list Sovietdemocracy@yahoogroups.com regarding the Soviet economy -- which was the transferred discussion from CyberCommunistParty@yahoogroups.com where we were previous members. Capone, however, had considered Lenin's description of Prussian "state-monopoly capitalism (see above) which Lenin compared to Soviet-State monopoly capitalism (ibid) and did research into the description of "state capitalism" described by Lenin's references to Prussia and subsequently did some research and thinking about the state-economies of both the "socialism" of NAZI Germany, and Roosevelt's War economy, and the Social-Democracy welfare state. I was impressed by his analysis had been doing a lot of highly original theoretical thinking. I cannot replicate his analysis in this post, but it is an important one. Perhaps we can gadfly him into joining this discussion?

In any event what Capone and I agreed upon is that -- notwithstanding whether it is called "communism" or "National 'Socialism" -- the determinate or characteristic feature of capitalism is the prevalence of commodity production by wageworkers whether Venice, Germany, the Soviet Union or for that matter Cuba. Whether or not the Party in Power bears the title "Socialist", "Communist", "National Socialist" or even "Worker's Party", and regardless to whether or not it's majority membership are workers or bourgeois and furthermore regardless to whether or not its leaders call themselves "Marxist", "Marxist-Leninists, Trotskyist or Maoist makes no difference.

"Socialism" and "Communism" as term-ideologies have been distorted by Lenin because he affiliated it to state-monopoly capitalism. What Lenin called "socialism", in "The State and Revolution", is also what in "The Impending Catastrophe and How To Combat It", and in "Left-Wing Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality " he called "state-monopoly capitalism".

In "The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It" and "'Left-Wing' Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality" Lenin really fucked up by subordinating philosophical Truth to Pragmatism, and materialist science to political expediency [opportunism] in where he associated Socialism and State-Monopoly Capitalism in order to present a "Marxist" justification of the Bolshevik taking power of government in October, 1917. What is asserted in these pamphlets were positions Lenin argued, against the Social-Democratic reformism represented by Kautsky, in "The State and Revolution".

Lenin asserted in his version of "Marxism" that state-monopoly capitalism under the dictatorship of the proletariat, is the sociology of socialism based in capitalist normative economics.

In The Sate and Revolution Lenin presented this as the socialism predicted by Marx as the "lower" stage of "communism". I must of necessity therefore now critique the Leninism masquerading as Leninism, Trotskyism, on one side; and Stalinism, including Maoism on the other.

When we look directly at the data and arguments made by Marx, regarding the centrality of industrial social production and proletarian labor in capitalist and socialist societies it is clear that Lenin had transferred to social psychology what Marx had regarded from a strictly empirical analysis. They therefore came to different perspective regarding the transition from capitalism to communism.

In the "Critique of the Gotha Program" Marx observed:

"What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it.

*****

"He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor that the individual producer has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

*****

"In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor."
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm

Comrade Marx's concept of the lower phrase of communism isn't what comrade Lenin designated as "socialism" qua "state-monopoly capitalism". The concept of "Socialism" in Leninism is State monopoly capitalism continues commodity production by peasants in agriculture, and wageworkers in State - owned industry and State Farms.

The economical relation of the State owned land to the peasants including peasant collectives is that of the State as Landlord appropriating rent on one hand, and of finance capital ("Gosbank") appropriating surplus produce &/or monetary equivalent &/or owners of proletarian industrial products --e.g. tractors &C sold or rented to peasants &/or Collectives.

Socialism in the reality of Marx's Marxism is nothing but another term for Communism. The process evolves in advanced industrial capitalist democracies where the working-class wins the battle of democracy by becoming the Parliamentary majority, and as such legislating the transfer of the productive forces from private and state ownership to working-class ownership as public property.

With production and distribution managed by the workers themselves -- factory to factory, industry to industry, banks, offices and so on the mode of appropriation of products from factory to factory and industry to industry will no longer be buying and selling capital goods but mere transfer and signing receipts. There will be no role for money, as the receipts will not circulate. Thus, where money has ceased to exist so taxation will be eliminated, no turnover tax as had existed in the Soviet Union.

The workers government will legislate the reduction of hours of the workday to correspond to socially necessary labor time: the exact opposite of "sobbotniki and Stakhanovism! - Thus enabling more to work and those who work to have more free time.

The immediate social policies of the workers government will legislate the abolition of all individual debts. Those who have been paying mortgages and home loans, rent and car notes and taxes, insurance, utilities payments, and so on will be immediately freed from such obligations and debts. The homes, apartments, automobiles, &C. that one has been paying for will become one's personal property. The homeless will be given free housing. Only on these foundations can there be any talk of individual rights to life, liberty and pursuits of happiness.

The production of means of production will transfer from one branch of industry to another by recipes. Similarly, and still in this first phase of communism or socialism, the worker's state will substitute labor certificates in place of wages which means that income taxes will be abolished, together with the abolition of taxes on articles of consumption. If not labor certificates, the advanced computer technology may enable a "payment" system where at the end of the work-week the factory management committee of workers could compute into a national accounting system that would credit workers with so much labor time credit access to means of subsistence and culture, managed and distributed by the workers themselves.

This process will by ending commodity production and wages on one hand, and the continually advances in technology continually reducing socially necessary labor time on the other will led inevitably to the next or higher phase of socialism or communism.

"In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm

Igietseme: To be human is to understand that class structure will exist, in intellects, academics, material wealth, et cetera. It is unfortunate that human success is measured by these parameters. Instead of Spiritualism? Well, you be the judge. Joe Igietseme

Lil Joe: Predictably metaphysical hogwash about "human nature" to justify the continuation of a society based on economic exploitation.

"Communism" in the Soviet Union did not "fail" on account of some metaphysical defect in the human character that supposedly expresses itself in greed and class stratification.

The Soviet's of Worker's and Peasant's Deputies was an alliance of States -- collaboration in the what Lenin called the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry -- on the basis of common opposition to the expropriated capitalists (by proletarians) and landed aristocrats (by peasants) who were also already organized in the armed forces by the state in the Russian army in World War I. These workers in the army were the Red Guard military power of the Bolsheviks, and the Red Army led by Trotsky. See Trotsky's Military writings:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1918-mil/index.htm

The Peasants had their own army in Ukraine - the Insurrectionary Army led by Machno. See the writings of Machno http://www.geocities.com/nestor_mcnab/makhno.htm Machno's position was that "The toilers themselves must choose their own councils (soviets) which are to carry out the wishes and instructions of those same toilers: so they are to be executive councils, not authoritative councils. The land, factories, forms, mines, transport, etc., should belong to the toilers who toil, so they must be socialized." http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/progmani.htm.

The anarchist peasants and proletarians communists formed a popular front in opposition to the Tsarist counter-revolution and imperialist intervention. However, once the civil war ended and the interventionists expelled, the peasants began to think as the rural bourgeoisie they were, demanding an end to "war communism" and that the state withdraw from the rural economy.

This conflict of peasant anarchists and the proletarian state engendered the Kronstadt peasant sailor revolt suppressed violently by Trotsky's Red Army, on one hand; and Lenin's subsequent capitulation to rural peasant and urban entrepreneurial capitalists on the other.

In 1921 the restoration and legal recognition of capitalism in Russia was established in the Bolshevik Party and Soviet State under the general rubric of the New Economic Policy upon which was evolved open markets based on peasants surplus produce and exchange, money, and an entrepreneurial class engaging in commodity production. The state, however, maintained a monopoly on most of what industry existed in the Soviet Union, state farms including natural resources and agriculture, and banks. The monopoly state sector however was just as much engaged in capitalist commodity production, as were the others. All these entities interacted economically.

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union had a political monopoly on state government, and had party members assigned to the different industries and private firms including peasant organizations. This monopoly was initially placed by Lenin to oversee the economic management of the economy and protect the interests of workers and poor peasants. Lenin also fought for Soviet workers in Soviet as well as private enterprises to have independent trade unions to protect the workers interests from the managers, entrepreneurs and the state.

Over the next decade the competing elements in the economy reified as factions in the Party, as demonstrated by the Great Debate over industrialization and the Scissors Crisis. Bukharin and Stalin represented the wealthy and enriching peasants and entrepreneurs and state enterprise managers in the Party's Right faction, and Preobrazhensky and Trotsky represented the workers in the Party's Left.

Later, after Stalin got rid of Trotsky and the Left-Opposition, he switched on the rich peasants and Bukharin and forced collectivization and burdened the peasants to provide surpluses then used in international markets to ascertain the wherewithal to purchase industrial technology to industrialize the Soviet Union.

The economic and political success as well as failures in the Soviet Union and Communist Party was the result of global economic political contexts, and not consequences of some metaphysical figments of Igietseme's corrupt imaginations regarding "human nature"!

Neither is the collapse of the Soviet system of state-monopoly capitalism is to be explained by metaphysical causality mealy mouthed as the "collapse of communism". Rather, what occurred was the privatization of the State monopoly capital holdings, when the enterprise managers, entrepreneurs and opportunist party careerists become owners of those productive forces is to also be explained in international economic and political contexts.

The Russian Bolshevik's assumption of political power in October 1917, and institution of an economy commanded by the State was never a communist country, as it lacked the productive capacity and proletarian majority required to end capitalist commodity production and wage-labor, and competed with the more industrially advanced capitalist countries in the West.

It is the task of these workers in the industrialized countries must be to take the productive forces by a workers state and government, and ending commodity production and wage labor.

Lil Joe


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