Chris Knight and the right to be bonkers

March 26, 2009

2–3 minutes

There are not many jobs in which you can win favour with your boss by going on national TV and predicting that bankers might be ““hanging from lampposts” with the blatant implication that you think this is a very good idea, even if it does capture the mood of the moment. Chris Knight is at that stage in his career where he no longer gives a tuppenny f##k about these things and has been all over the press expressing the uncontentious view that the world revolution begins next Wednesday in London and that by June the entire planet will be one country.

He used a slot on Channel 4 news to tell viewers that the lights will have to be switched off in every office building they see during “”Earth Hour” or “our agents will find ways to enter the building, even if it means knocking down doors and windows to break in.” Predicting that up to one million people will be demonstrating this Saturday he threatens “mutually assured destruction” if the cops get violent. It’s the “our agents” phrase that leaps out.

If a stranger in a pub came out with this sort of stuff there are some questions you’d ask straightaway. “Is he the undercover leader of a mass movement that’s been quietly building?” Possible but unlikely. “How long will it take me to finish this pint and go somewhere else?” “If I go to the toilet will he nick my jacket?” You would not think that he is anything other than a harmless crank with a good line in demagogy. That’s not how the University of East London sees things. They have suspended Knight from his post in the Anthropology Department on the grounds that he might be inciting violence.

Credit has to be given to Knight and the networks with which he works. They have a panache and a theatrical flair that the rest of the left lacks. They connect with thousands of angry militant young people and give them easy answers. On the other hand they give them an utterly wrong conception of how politics works and how strong the social resistance movement is. Chances are that some people will roll up to the Bank of England next week expecting to be part of an army that will fight the cops and trash the City. It’s a very individualistic, moralising type of politics. The Met will teach them the hard way how wrong Knight was.

Knight has the right to express this lunacy loudly and in public from any forum that is open to him. His employer, which used to be considered a radical campus, has no right to censure or silence his private political views – especially at a time when similar opinions are commonplace on every chat show that discusses the recession.

73 responses to “Chris Knight and the right to be bonkers”

Joseph Kisolo

March 27, 2009 at 8:27 am

One thing I think this shows is that we are still struggling to find charismatic leaders to give voice to our (currently fractured and multiple) movements against the credit crunch .

Galloway was a brilliant voice about the war and remains a rallying light for justice for Palestine. But if we’re honest he just isn’t able to key into the public mood in the same way over the economy.

I wonder who the speakers will be at tomorrows demo? Will any of them stand out?

The question is, what are we doing to identify a new generation of media savey public speakers who can take our commitment to radical economic solutions to the masses?

LikeLike

Reply
jane kelly

March 27, 2009 at 11:52 am

McDonnell had a much better line on Channel 4 News on Wednesday responding to the window smashing incident in Edinburgh. He said – violence is not the way forward but you can see why people respond like that because the politicians keep blaming individual bankers and don’t carry out the actions they say we need. It’s the whole system that is at fault, not individuals however greedy they might have been. We need to take direct action like the campaign against the 3rd runway at Heathrow, but not violence

He was very good and got quoted by Snow at the end of the news.

As for Mr Knight – what can I say? Nothing changes!

LikeLike

Reply
Hugh

March 27, 2009 at 11:27 pm

Chris Knight is so old not to give a toss. Unlike most of us he has index linked public sector pension to fall back on in the bleak years ahead.

So Prof Knight seemingly can get get kids on the street to act out the unexpressed angst of the masses like some Gary Glitter agitprop X Factor judge. So the fucx what!

LikeLike

Reply
PhilW

March 28, 2009 at 12:32 pm

I’m not sure we need “charismatic leaders”: I can’t think of many (any?) that haven’t ultimately caused problems for the left.

LikeLike

Reply
Anthony Brain

March 28, 2009 at 10:44 pm

Thornett breaks further on the nature of Capitalism in its epoch by going further revisionist on China! and adapts to Obama!

Thornett in a article in a spring 2009 edition of Socialist Outlook in analysing the global Capitalist crisis makes from a Leninist-Trotskyist point of view makes outrageous statements on how Captalism in China is responible for the rapid development in its’ productive forces. This represents a break from the Leninist-Trotskyist programme of our epoch which starts from analysing correctly that Capitalism being in its’ death agency and that Imperialism holds down Third World countries. It also represents a major break with the theory and strategy of Permanent Revolution which flows from this programme of our epoch, which correctly argues that Imperialist super-exploitation of the Colonies/Semi-Colonies can only be ended by overthrowing Capitalusm. Thornett is echoing revisionist positions assocated with the “State Capitalist” poltics of the British SWP.

China has always for the Trotskyist movement been seen outside of Russia as being the 2nd major test which confirms Permanent Revolution. Capitalism when Capitalism prevailed after the 1840s ot 1850s after the Opium Wars dismembered China. Until the Chinese Socialiat Revolution broke out tens of millions Chinese died of starvation. Despite the distortions of Stalinism the Chinese Communist Party leadership had out of self-preservaion carried aspects of our programme of Permanent Revolution in overthrowing Capitalism. They were still Stalinists who argued stages theory in other Third World countries. At the same time as welcoming the overthrow of Capiltalism a Political Revolution was necessary to establish the political rule of the Proletariat. Trotsky made the same analysis when Stalin was forced to wipe out the Kulaks which he critically supported while critcising the excesses of 5-year plans.

It is the predominance of the non-Capitalist productive relations which explains why China has massively developed. Even Bourgeois analysts have to admit its biggest economic development in history! Imperialism out of weakness started trading during with China during the late 1970s attempting to further isolate the Soviet Union and to see what inroads was possible with the balance of class forces. The Imperialists hoped the Capitalist elements in the Special Economic Zones created during the 1980s would strengthen themselves to eventually overthrow the Workers’ State.

There are paraells with the rapid development of China in the last 30-plus years with the rapid industrialisation of the Soviet Union had occured duirng the 1930s. Elements of the Fourth Internatuional (FI) majority leadership argued this development was also happening in the Tiger Economies! This line was argued in International Viewpoint a month before those Tiger Economies collasped. China becuase it is a Workers’ State still went forward with developing the necessary modern infrastucture for their ecomomy and innovating in new technologies. Capitalist States go through periodoric crises because of production being based on proift. A Workers’ State by destroying profit being the predominant economic drive has an economy based on use value. In China like other Bureaucratised Workers’ States the Bureaucrats distort production by only being mainly interested in economic developments which benefit them. It is not true as Thornett claims that the Soviet Union’s development during the 1930s had limited impact on Capitalism. Imperialism traded with the Soviet Union during that period because without that the Depression would have been worse.

China as a transitonal society has been impacted on by Capitalist depression. This again confirms our Marxist analysis that Socialism cannot be built in a single country. There have been statsistics recently in the Bourgeois press show that 40% of Chnese GNP comes from domestic infrastructure projects and exports only accounted for 7%. It is these infrastructure projects predominantly nationalised is the basis of this 7% growth in Chnin’s GDP this year.

Until the Capitalist depression Chinese exports played a supplemtary role to the main domestic drive. Thornett claims that Capitalist restoration is complete! If this is the case why is Imperialism complaining that certain Chinese Banks remain Nationalised and allocate investemnets in what Capitalist firms see as “unprofitable?
If as Thornett claims China is Capitalist the Imperialist banks would dominate their banking system and the majority of “non-Profitable” industries would be decimated. How do you explain the social reforms with free education and healthcare being brought into the countryside if Cnina is Capitalist?

Another difficult question for Thornett if Chinese ‘Capitalism’ is so sucessful why cannot it show the rest of World Capitalism the way forward? The Workers’ State tendencies in China will be strengthend with the collapse of exports as Imperialism has less say in China. It is terrible that 20 Million workers have lost their jobs due to big export falls. The restoration of Capitalism woukd be worse with hundreds of millions of workers being made redundant. If Trotskyists are going to influence Chinese workers they have to recognise the gains of a Workers’ State while attacking the Bureaucratic pillage and inroads of Capitalists. It is the contradiction between the rising workers aspirations which develop as the Workers’ State goes forward and growing resentment with Bureaucratic pillage will lead to the Political Revolution with social consuqences.

Thornett downplays the importance of Cuba. If they develop oil they will not be “economically unimportanr” as Thorentt claims. Cuba is key to Latin America because the gains of that Workers’ State is helping to deepen revolutionary upheavals on this continent. This is why Thornett was fundamentally wrong in calling for Fidel Castro’s overthrow. There is a contradiction in Thorentt’s article in saying Capitalism dominates the world and then he has to recognise that Cuba stands against this!

Thornett overplays the possible social reforms under Obama. He does not point out that the purpose of any reforms is to stop a workers party independent of the main Capitalist parties. He does not argue against voting for Obama in the 2008 American Presidential elections. Who did he support in those elections? John Lister in the Morning Star argued pincipled position against supporting Obama. Americn Trotskyists in the 1930s and 1940s opposed the New Deal and its conversion into a War Dea! His biggest adaptation to Obama is Thornett calling for critical support to the New Deal! In another example of the dialectics of history is Thorentt being ultra-left on the Labour Party to calling in a Opportunist fashion for Brown’s “New Deal” being critically supported! When I have more time I will write a article on why and how American Trotskyists opposed the New Deal in New International upto May 1940 and Fourth Internatioal published snce then.

LikeLike

Reply
Anthony Brain

March 28, 2009 at 10:45 pm

Monday, 16 March 2009
Birmingham Socialist Resistance makes a left turn on Russia!

Birmingham Socialist Resistance leaflet on Russia for March 17th 2009 is useful in making a case that Russia remains a Degenerated Workers’ state. The figures it gives of the 1990s socio-economic disaster in terms of cuts in industrial growth and rapid improvishment of the masses which my blog has argued was a combination of extreme Bureaucratic pillage and Capitalist inroads. Capitalist inroads had these dire consuqences but if Capitalism had been restored it would been much worse.

The Birmingham leaflet points out how the Putin wing of Russian Stalinism has turned round the drop in industrial production with substained growth between 2000 and 2007. That leaflet shows the masses have made substantial gains in terms of their salaries incrassing hundreds-fold. This leaflet could be used to make the case that Russia is a Workers’ state by showing how the bulk of production and sales is determined by use value not for profits, with exports increasing pressures of the world Capitalist market on Russia. In 2003 according to the leaflet Russia had re-built itself sufficently that export pressures were reduced. The leaflet shows how even with the shift inside the Russian Bureaucracy against the excesses of extreme Bureaucratic pillage that the Workers’ State can go forward. Mandel argued in Power and Money that under Stalinism money is subordianted to Bureaucratic power wherehas under Capitalism Bureaucracy is subordinated to Capitalist profit.

There is huge potential for revolutioanry struggles against continued Bureaucratic pillage. An article in the Guardian in the last four or five weeks pointed out ther were massive differences within the Russian Bureaucracy whether they should bail out Capitalist firms. The Putinites believe by salvaging those Capitalist firms the Bureaucracy will gain more control over them. Other Bureaucrats do not want to salvage what they see as forces which attempting to overthrow them. Trotskyists would play on the contradiction that the workers have improved their standard of living to increase their confidence to challenge both the Capitalists and Stalinists. We woud play on the anger amongst workers against wasting tens of billions of Roubles to salvage Capitalist firms to begin to mobilise them for the Political Revolution with social consuqencces.

LikeLike

Reply
George T

March 29, 2009 at 11:25 am

Anthony – you own link appears broken

LikeLike

Reply
PhilW

March 29, 2009 at 12:01 pm

Anthony Brain’s argument about China appears to be that, because it has developed economically and that Trotskyist theory “excludes” this possibility for a capitalist economy, it can’t be capitalist.

We need to refine our theories when reality stares us in the face, not deny reality.

LikeLike

Reply
Liam

March 29, 2009 at 1:15 pm

http://brainontrotskyisttheory.blogspot.com/

is the link to Anthony’s site.

The piece entitled “Barnesites echo Matgammaism on Israel and general move to right concerning Imperialist interventions” caught my eye.

Perhaps the best place to have a discussion about Alan’s article is the site on which it appears.

Home

LikeLike

Reply
Jodley

March 29, 2009 at 2:22 pm

Sadly, CK’s publications list contains no reference to his seminal work “My sex life” , so can’t confirm whether my reading this masterpiece was a real event or just a hallucination. Agree with the headline.

LikeLike

Reply
David Ellis

March 29, 2009 at 3:18 pm

Russia is once again an imperialist state. The fall of the Stalinist regime to the right ensured that. It’s attack on Georgia was an act of imperialist aggression. China, however, remains a deformed workers’ state as long as it remains under the leadership and charge of the maoist bureaucracy. Just because western capitalist multi-nationals have been invited in on a grand scale doesn’t change that. Unchecked it does of course raise the danger of capitalist counter revolution probably with the participation of a large swathe of the bureaucracy itself. You’ll know when that has happened because China will begin to resemble Iraq at the height of the US-backed civil war and the imperialist powers that surround it will attempt to dismember it and share it amongst themselves. To prevent that a political revolution initiating workers’ democracy is required which will plug back into the world revolution.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

March 29, 2009 at 6:59 pm

China has been capitalist since at the latest 1995.
And it has grown.
Deal with it.

LikeLike

Reply
David Ellis

March 29, 2009 at 7:32 pm

Fraid not Bill. Deal with that.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

March 29, 2009 at 8:18 pm

Very easily.
Take the proportion of output at market prices. A pretty fundamental indicator of the existence of capitalism – given that capitalism is production for exchange on a market.

In 1980
No means of production was exchanged at market prices
3% of consumer goods were exchanged at market prices

In 2005
100% of means of production was exchanged at market prices
3% of consumer goods were exchanged at market prices.

And what’s more the capitalists certainly think that China is capitalist – after all they should know. Take UBS;

“Part 1: State economy or market economy?
In our experience it’s much more useful and accurate to think about today’s China as a predominantly market economy with a few state-induced distortions, rather than
a traditional socialist system with a mere market veneer.”

The state share of the economy is still sizeable….But even the state economy is now market-driven – and this is more important at the end of the day….As a result, state firms are profitable.”

Facts are stubborn things.

LikeLike

Reply
David Ellis

March 30, 2009 at 12:07 pm

What are you saying, that China was socialist until 1980? As you know that would not be possible. Don’t give me statistics and call them facts. Give me a class analysis of the state. As you know for Marxists it’s facts plus method. Facts are stubborn things because they prove method. Taken in isolation they prove nothing except what an empiricist you are.

Here is a fact: CCP still in charge. Yet to be overthrown. National bourgeoisie remains suppressed or contained for time being by post-capitalist internal forces not by imperialism or pre-capitalist feudal forces. If capitalism had been able to establish itself in China as an independent force we would know about it.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

March 30, 2009 at 12:11 pm

China was never socialist.
Did China have a centrally planned economy in 1980?
Absolutely yes.
Did the market reforms implemented by the CCP destroy that plan over the next 15 years?
Absolutely yes.
Is China now capitalist?
Absolutely yes.
A state defends a particular economy. Which economy does the Chinese state defend? A capitalist economy. So China is a capitalist state.
Personally I always find the charge of empricism a complement when made by “Marxists” who can’t be bothered to do any research.
So there.

LikeLike

Reply
chjh

March 30, 2009 at 12:31 pm

How exactly did the household responsibility system in agriculture, and the consumer markets it produced, fit into the ‘planned economy’? The privatisation of agriculture wasn’t complete in 1980, but it was well on its way.

What’s interesting about this exchange is that it illustrates how poorly orthodox Trotskism understands China. From David Ellis’ point of view the theory explains reality; from billj’s point of view reality doesn’t ask any questions about the previous theory.

But there are some very awkward questions posed. If the CCP has been in charge of the transition from a planned economy to a market economy, then what sort of organisation is the CCP? If capitalism has been restored in China, what social force pushed through this restoration? If there was a political counter-revolution, when was it? And how did we all miss noticing it?

LikeLike

Reply
David Ellis

March 30, 2009 at 12:37 pm

`A state defends a particular economy. Which economy does the Chinese state defend? A capitalist economy. So China is a capitalist state.’

Elementry my dear watson. Nice bit of formal logic. Shame about the premises.

Could you explain how China managed to perform this miracle in opposition to all previous theory that an independent Chinese capitalism could not emerge in a world already divided up amongst the imperialists? Seems to me you fallen for Stalinist two-stageism via the back door.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

March 30, 2009 at 3:37 pm

Formal logic has its place. Its certainly superior to making stuff up of the top of your head which you don’t really know anything about.
Dave Ellis pronounces that China’s not capitalist – it can’t be his theory tells him so – and therefore its not.
Whatever happened to material reality?
Is Dave Ellis god? Maybe in his world.
So how did China restore capitalism?
Actually there’s loads of literature on this. The OECD, UBS, IMF as well as Marxists like Hart and Landsberg – Maoists btw, have all explained how it was done.
After all it did happen. All reality is knowable. So notwithstanding problems for “theory” and explanation can be provided.
How did the capitalist reform of agriculture from the 1970s onwards fit into the planned economy?
In the end it didn’t. Over the two decades or so of the restoration process, that part of the economy within which capitalist relations were introduced became instead of a subordinate feature, the predominant feature.
Just as the Left Opposition explained if NEP in the 1920s in Soviet Russia had been allowed to continue unfettered, then capitalist restoration would have occured their too.
Of course it did not. Stalin’s five year plans destroyed those elements of the economy in which the law of value prevailed.
In China on the other hand the reverse happened.
The bureaucracy introduced market reforms first in the countryside, then in SEZs, then in enterprises themselves, destroying the in the process the “iron rice” bowl and welfare state, allowing market prices across a larger and larger proportion of the economy.
This culminated in the key show down of Tiannamen Square where demands for democracy coincided with working class unrest at rising unemployment and inflation. The crushing of this movement ensured that captialist restoration could be completed in the mid 1990s.
Is it in opposition to all previous theory? As theory is condensed experience if it is then best to junk such rubbish theory I suggest?
Of course its not. But given it was a rhetorical question I won’t bother to elaborate further.

LikeLike

Reply
skidmarx

March 30, 2009 at 3:55 pm

bill j – I believe that when Trotsky considered the suggestion that Stalin and the forces he represented represented a capitalist counter-revolution , he called it “running the film of reformism in reverse”, as he thought it impossible for such a counter-revolution to happen bit by bit so nobody will notice it, as the song has it. I think the Left Opposition suggested that if NEP was allowed to continue unfettered, the social forces thus strengthened would be strong enough to overthrow the workers’ state, not that they would wake up one day to find it had changed in class character without a physical battle.

complement, n. Something which, when added, completes or makes up a whole.

compliment, n. a polite expression of praise or commendation in speaking of a person.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

March 30, 2009 at 4:09 pm

Certainly Trotsky did say that. Does a single sentence amount to a theory? Not even from Trotsky.
Capitalism was restored incrementally, by reforms if you like, albeit with a massive showdown around Tiannmen.
Its just true.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

March 30, 2009 at 4:29 pm

Goldman Sachs today reported that;

“Nominal profits growth of larger industrial enterprises (with annual sales of Rmb5 million or more) fell 37.3% yoy in the January-February 2009 period, down from a drop of 26.0% yoy in the September-November 2008 period.1”

This was a description of?

a) central planning
b) somewhere large that has recently undergone capitalist restoration
c) A made up place where some “Trotskyists” live

LikeLike

Reply
David Ellis

March 30, 2009 at 6:25 pm

Excellent that this debate forces you to admit you are not a Trot but a hopeless empiricist. Slave to the bourgeoisie. Even the petty idiots of the SWP are helping you out. You remind me of the people who first found a platypus and declared it impossible.

LikeLike

Reply
David Ellis

March 30, 2009 at 6:29 pm

`Is Dave Ellis god? Maybe in his world.’

Yes, who is god in your world? Somebody else.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

March 30, 2009 at 6:40 pm

Ouch!!

“In this connection it seems to me not uninteresting to note that Hegel, declaring materialism to be “a consistent system of empiricism,” wrote: “For empiricism the external (das Ausserliche) in general is the truth, and if then a supersensible too be admitted, nevertheless knowledge of it cannot occur (soll doch eine Erkenntnis desselben [d. h. des Uebersinnlichen] nicht stattfinden können) and one must keep exclusively to what belongs to perception (das der Wahrnehmung Angehörige). However, this principle in its realisation (Durchführung) produced what was subsequently termed materialism. This materialism regards matter, as such, as the truly objective (das wahrhaft Objektive).”[Hegel, Encyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse [Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline], Werke, VI. Band (1843), S. 83. Cf. S. 122.]

All knowledge comes from experience, from sensation, from perception. That is true. But the question arises, does objective reality “belong to perception,” i.e., is it the source of perception? If you answer yes, you are a materialist.”

Lenin Materialism and empiro criticism
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mec/two4.htm#v14pp72h-122

Empiricist? Absolutely.
So you’re right on one thing – you’re definitely not my god!!

LikeLike

Reply
David Ellis

March 30, 2009 at 6:50 pm

Thank god for that. Your position is English empiricism.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

March 30, 2009 at 7:13 pm

Ouch. Ouch.
You throw these phrases around. Its quite clear you don’t know what they mean. You’ve yet to provide any evidence as to what you think China is – I hestitate to say what this – how could I know, there are no such thing as facts?
Tell you what – cobble a few old quotes together. That seems to work.

LikeLike

Reply
robm

March 30, 2009 at 7:24 pm

Bill J said “Capitalism was restored incrementally, by reforms if you like, albeit with a massive showdown around Tiannmen.
Its just true.”

So, might capitalism, likewise, be abolished incrementally (albeit with a massive showdown or two) again in China? Or in the US or in Europe?
If not, why not?

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

March 30, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Experience tells us no.
Attempts to reform away the capitalist state have been made many times. I take it you’ve heard of Chile?

LikeLike

Reply
robm

March 30, 2009 at 7:46 pm

Experience only tells us ‘no’ until it happens- that is precisely the argument you are using for the reverse case of China.

Until capitalism was actually ‘restored’ without a counter-revolution every ortho Trot on the planet would say it could never happen.

Basically, you are saying that the Marxist theory of the state only applies one way- in the transition from capitalism to socialism and is not applicable as a tool to analyse, or weapon to resist, capitalist counter-revolution.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

March 30, 2009 at 8:07 pm

Don’t know what you’re on about.
Capitalism has been restored in China since around 1995. That is simply a fact.
There was a centrally planned economy. Beginning in the 1970s the CCP introduced capitalist reforms until capitalism itself became the mode of production in the mid 1990s.
This sequence of events did actually happen.
As the purpose of theory is to explain objective reality then theory needs to explain that.
If theory can’t explain that then it needs to be ditched.
You don’t change reality by saying what did happen couldn’t happen according to a “theory”.
Plenty of leftists do just that. That’s unfortunate but its not my fault.
Does that mean that the “state” presumably, you mean a workers state cannot be used to fight capitalist counter revolution?
That too would be absurd, given that the Bolsheviks used a workers state to do just that.
But does that mean that a “workers state” ruled by a restorationist counter revolutionary Stalinist bureaucracy can be used to fight the restoration of capitalism?
Well again yes and no.
In WWII they did that in the USSR.
In a different period they used the state for the opposite reason.
From the 1970s onwards in China the Stalinist used that state to restore capitalism.
That is what happened and it can be proved by empiricism. Or if you prefer the theory of experience which says that the truth can be experienced and that experience can encompass the truth.

LikeLike

Reply
chjh

March 30, 2009 at 8:10 pm

billj’s right that there’s loads of literature on China’s economic expansion since 1978. How it happened is quite easy to explain. Fitting the history into the template of an ‘incremental’ counter-revolution is rather more difficult. His account misses out, for instance, that the sustained attacks on the ‘iron rice-bowl’ and workplace welfare didn’t come until the mid-1990s. Entterprise reform started in the early 1980s, but was mostly focussed on freeing up management initiative and access to markets. Workers often gained from the process as they found themselves facing a local management that was now allowed to give wage and bonus rises.

Two more stubborn facts for the ‘restorationists’ to contend with:

1) one of the most important economic developments in the 1980s was the growth of rural industry (TVEs in the jargon), which by the mid-1908s employed some 85 million people. These were overwhelmingly not private enterprises – almost all of them were owned or controlled by local governments at different levels. Yes, the economy grew out of the control of the central planners, but it did so primarily because the local state was able to mobilise and direct both capital and labour.

2) the repression following June 4th, 1989 marked a major defeat for the pro-market faction of the CCP and a comeback for those arguing for greater state control over the economy. If Tiananmen Square was the capitalist counter-revolution in action, no-one told its victors.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

March 30, 2009 at 8:37 pm

Fitting the history into the idea that the transition from central planning to capitalism did not actually happen, because the state was already capitalist is however, even more difficult.
In fact its impossible, as it ignores the main fact, namely that the economy was not capitalist when the process of capitalist reform began.
Its clearly impossible to restore capitalism, or indeed introduce pro-market capitalist reforms, in an economy which is already capitalist.
As for the chronology Hart and Landsberg explain it, I’ve summarised it in a review here;

http://www.permanentrevolution.net/entry/872

the OECD explained it here likewise in a review here

http://www.permanentrevolution.net/entry/861

There is no state capitalist explanation of it. Harman’s article on China written a couple of years ago, was based pretty much entirely on Hart and Landsberg’s book China and Socialism.
And every single account written by the capitalists – and therefore with no “Marxist” axe to grind – confirms that central planning was abolished through market reforms.
That did happen. And it is true.
Tiananmen Square was not a defeat of the capitalist restorationists given that two years later the victorious faction announced;

“In early 1992 Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese premier, announced during a visit to Shenzhen that “as long as it makes money it is good for China.” p51 and at the 14th Party Congress in October 1992 it was confirmed that the CCP were determined to establish a “socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics.””

It was rather a victory for the state capitalist as opposed to the free market faction of the bureaucracy. Two different roads to capitalist restoration. Neither faction wanted the maintenance of the centrally planned economy.
And so they abolished it a couple of years later.

LikeLike

Reply
chjh

March 31, 2009 at 9:48 am

Its clearly impossible to restore capitalism, or indeed introduce pro-market capitalist reforms, in an economy which is already capitalist.

You can’t restore capitalism if the economy’s already capitalist. You can, however, introduce pro-market capitalist reforms into a capitalist economy – what else is privatisation?

Central planning was indeed abolished through market reforms, just as central planning in the NHS is gradually being abolished by pro-market reforms. Central planning doesn’t define the class nature of the state.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

March 31, 2009 at 12:11 pm

Its an old but still feeble comparison.
The central planning in the NHS did not determine the nature of the British economy as a whole, which was capitalist.
The central planning in the USSR and China (before 1995) did.
Central planning – the abolition of the law of value – does determine the class nature of the state, if it is the means by which all production takes place, as indeed Hart Landsberg, the OECD, UBS etc. all confirm.
The state defends a particular set of property, legal, or social relations.
In the USSR and China for most of their existence the state defended the overthrow of capitalism – production of commodities, things for exchange in a market.
For the last few years of their existence these states ensured the re-introduction of capitalism, and you could argue from that point onwards were capitalist states.
Just as the Bolsheviks briefly oversaw a capitalist economy for a few years after 1917, even though they did not defend it.
Its the ABCs of Marxism and its still true.
The joke is of course that Tony Cliff in his original statement of the position State Captialism in Russia concedes that the law of value was not to be found it in, but still called it capitalist.
Harman and co later changed that, but it made no difference in practice.
Which just goes to show, if you try hard enough you can get away with anything.

LikeLike

Reply
Jodley

March 31, 2009 at 2:08 pm

This debate reminds me of Stewart Lee’s taxi driver argument

“Well, you can prove anything with facts”

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

March 31, 2009 at 4:37 pm

Having listened. I can only agree.

LikeLike

Reply
steve R

March 31, 2009 at 9:00 pm

BillJ is good at quoting the Bourgeoisie, tho i agree that China is capitalist, and reckon the decisive turning points to be the market-reforms following the death of Mao in (?) ’75 (?) then the violent repression associated with the “Tiananmen Square” events of mid-1989 (a thoroughly counter-revolutionary year, for any Workers Power comrades reading who remain unsure of the difference/s between a revolutionary and a counter-revolutionary situation)….

I actually tuned into Liam’s blog to ask him some things he might know about SLF stiff little fingers
but perhaps i take a leaf out of Bill’s book and search Wikipedia/etc!!

LikeLike

Reply
skidmarx

April 1, 2009 at 8:37 am

Perhaps bill j could tell us what proportion of the economy has to be centrally planned before quantity changes into quality and the economy ceases to be capiltalist. And how his analysis fits with the materialist conception of history,most adherents to which have considered hokey-cokeying with capitalist relations of production impossible without an accompanying social revoultion.

LikeLike

Reply
steve R

April 1, 2009 at 8:54 am

under Saddam, Iraqi economy was over 80% state-owned but i don’t recall even the Grantites of the IMT (“Socialist Appeal” or “the S.Apps” I like to call these fakers) referring to Iraq as any kind of workers’ state…
..although the old Militant DID consider Burma among other places to be types of workers’ state (and was it also Liverpool under Hatton and Mulhearn, the idiots?!)

real Trots, which to my mind are the genuine revolutionary Marxists, consider the property relations that are defended by the ruling regime, as well as the trajectory the regime is moving in
which is why for example Russia became a workers’ state as soon as the Bolsheviks took the power away from the Bourgeoisie in 1917, although there wasn’t actually that much in the way of nationalisation of industry until really 1918…
..anyway, i just want to read-up on this tho i do definitely stand by it!

..and central planning in the NHS? who’s that, and are they having a laff?!?
the NHS has always been about profits for the pharmaceutical and other companies; the Doctors even work for themselves as little contractors
and the ownership of the buildings/premises is on the way out as all new units built are PFIs

when i have to go hospital, say with a Service User at my job, i like to just see how many corporate brand names are…. everywhere on the wards and in the offices, and the canteens and toilets and… everywhere!; like at work: Birmingham City Council
but anyway enuff….!

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

April 1, 2009 at 4:30 pm

Given that all statistics under capitalism are produced by the bourgeoisie – all statistics are bourgeois statistics. If you want to use statistics – most economists do, even some Marxists ones – then these are the statistics that one uses.
What proportion of the economy has to be centrally planned in order to have a centrally planned economy?
Well I was thinking at least 50%. Of course in China and the USSR when they were centrally planned then the proportion of output centrally planned was much, much, much larger than that. Well over 90% in fact.
What proportion of the economy do you think has to be centrally planned in order to have a centrally planned economy?
Answer that question and maybe we’ll get somewhere.
Of course state ownership is not the same as central planning. The majority of the Chinese economy remains state owned today – but it produces commodities for exchange on the market and is therefore capitalist.
Was there a social revolution or counter revolution in China and the USSR. Yes there was. Albeit an incremental one.
Most Marxists consider that the economic base of society determines its superstructure – the class nature of the state.
Apparently not the SWP.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

April 1, 2009 at 5:09 pm

BTW according to government statistics (bourgeois) the NHS was 7% of GDP in the year 2000.
If an economy which is 7% centrally planned (accepting that the NHS was centrally planned when it wasn’t really) then according to your definition China may indeed still be a workers state.
As I noticed when I checked that stats that the OECD said that 10% of Chinese means of production were state fixed prices in 2003, and 2.6% of consumer goods production were.
My bad.

LikeLike

Reply
David Ellis

April 2, 2009 at 6:48 pm

The ahh, buh, cuh of recent chinese history…

The Chinese bourgeoisie were unable to carry through the national democratic revolution against feudalism because of their links with imperialism and their crippling fear of the emergent working class. Despite the counter-revolutionary nature of Stalinism even it was unable to resist the logic of permanent revolution. The Chinese Stalinists now rest on the vast state sector of the economy and have roots in highly bureaucratised country-based authorities. For the Chinese Communist Party it was either take power or face a second great massacre in rapid succession at the hands of the Kuomintang which they would have done had the Soviet Union not already existed with a strategic interest in China as a buffer zone, or at least not a hostile base, after World War 2. Hubristically, the Maoist-Stalinists (aping the Stalinist errors in the Soviet Union) set about building Chinese `socialism’ which of course is impossible and built only a cheap copy of Western industry hampered by bureaucracy and by being surrounded by a sea of peasantry. They were compelled to introduce market reforms. As Trotsky said in relation to Stalin’s zig-zagging: you may be able to leap over the capitalist stage politically but apparently not economically. Multi-national companies were invited in to China to set up and take advantage of cheap, unorganised labour. The Chinese boom has enriched the West with only a small per centage of the surplus value produced by the Chinese working class going into Chinese coffers. In the meantime an emergent Chinese middle class has made links with imperialism through the multi-nationals. They increasingly see the state sector as either a burden on their profits or an opportunity for profit-making denied them. Sections of the bureaucracy too, enriching themselves in the current climate are increasingly prepared to countenance the idea of over turning the rule of the CCP in favour of `democracy’. If the growth of imperialist interests in China continues unchecked a counter-revolution restoring imperialist rule in China is certain. The state sector of the economy will be dismantled as it comes into contact with the world market and so will the country as the imperialist seek to divide it up into spheres of interest amongst themselves. Chinese bourgeois `democracy’ will prove the impossibility of Chinese capitalism in the most negative, dramatic and murderous way. The counter revolution in China could well be the bloodiest event human history has yet seen or recorded. A political revolution initiating workers democracy over the means of production shaping it in the interests of the toilers and recognising the global nature of revolution is urgently required. Should a mass movement erupt in China in opposition to bureaucratic austerity measures and CCP arbitrariness it will be necessary not to condemn it but to attempt to get to the head of it and present demands proper to a political revolution whilst opposing the bourgeois `democrats’ and their efforts to sell China to imperialism run by a war lord Chinese feudal/bourgeoisie. Workers to the fore.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

April 2, 2009 at 7:08 pm

But don’t kid yourself you’ve proved your point.
There’s not a single fact in the whole thing.
Basically cobblers.

LikeLike

Reply
David Ellis

April 2, 2009 at 7:10 pm

Cobblers is my middle name.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

April 2, 2009 at 7:41 pm

That explains a lot.

LikeLike

Reply
David Ellis

April 2, 2009 at 8:00 pm

Indeed it do.

LikeLike

Reply
Liam

April 2, 2009 at 10:33 pm

Does anyone have any views on the various demos?

Chris Knight’s predictions were not really fulfiled and my impression was that they were smaller than anticipated.

I think we also got a glimpse of what a police state in Britain might look like. There was a cop constantly droning on about facilitating protest all over the telly while their whole operation was to criminalise it and create an atmosphere of tension to allow them to carry out mass arrests and lock down the area near the G20 venue – to say nothing of preventing medical aid getting to a dying man.

LikeLike

Reply
jim jay

April 2, 2009 at 11:28 pm

Well Chris Knight claims there was a revolution on Wednesday… I think it may have been a very subtle, and short lived, one if so.

As to the demos – personally I think we need to raise the profile of the fact that a protester died and the police were lying about the circumstances before the body was even cold.

Not that China isn’t important or anything…

LikeLike

Reply
skidmarx

April 3, 2009 at 11:44 am

“Most Marxists consider that the economic base of society determines its superstructure – the class nature of the state.”

I think I’d go along with that. But I’d say that the economic base is determined by which class has control of production, not by formal ownership.

Ben Brown was on BBC News on Wednesday afternoon saying “Some of these people don’t want any government at all in this country”; I guess those would be anarchists.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

April 3, 2009 at 3:33 pm

In which case there was no class with control of production in the USSR/China, at the time when they were centrally planned economies.
The bureaucracy did not own the means of production, they had no legal entitlement to it.
So the state had no class character according to this definition. It certainly was not a “bourgeois” state as the economy was not capitalist and the state was not controlled by capitalists.
Ergo “state capitalism” falls.
Trotsky settled upon the rather ugly definition of a “degenerate workers state” as it was the best means of reconciling all the contradicitions in this formation.
I still think it is.
But either way – leaving definitions aside for a moment – there was a non-capitalist centrally planned economy, ruled by a tyrannical state bureaucracy.
Over a couple of decades in China, over a couple of years in the ex-USSR, this social formation was replaced by a capitalist economy of generalised commodity production and a capitalist state to defend it.
That’s where it came from, that’s the process it went through and that’s where we are now.

LikeLike

Reply
skidmarx

April 3, 2009 at 5:02 pm

The nomenklatura had effective control of the means of production as a class, although formal ownership was vested in the working class this meant nothing in practice.
So the state was capitalist according to this definition, as the workers were forced to sell their labour power and had no control over the means of production. It certainly was a “bourgeois” state as the economy was capitalist (workers separted from control over production, and competition, primarily military with other concentrations of capital) and the state was controlled by a narrow section of society that lived off the exploitation of workers.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

April 3, 2009 at 5:45 pm

Marx Capital Volume 1 Chapter 1 line 1

“The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,”[1] its unit being a single commodity. ”

So capitalism is generalised commodity production. And commodities are governed by the “law of value”;

“….the common substance that manifests itself in the exchange value of commodities, whenever they are exchanged, is their value. ”

Yet the law of value is not to be found in the centrally planned economies of the USSR, China etc….according to…. Tony Cliff;

“Hence if one examines the relations within the Russian economy, abstracting them from their relations with the world economy, one it bound to conclude that the source of the law of value, as the motor and regulator of production, is not to be found in it.”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1955/statecap/ch07-s1.htm#s4

There is no commodity production, there are no commodities, there is no law of value explains…Tony Cliff.

The nomenklatura had control but not ownership of the means of production. Agreed. But the nomenkaltura were not a capitalist class. That’s why they’re called nomenkaltura and not called capitalists.
Was there a labour market in the USSR? Did workers sell their labour power in it? Not according to Tony Cliff who points out that;

“There is one thing in Russia that appears on the surface to fulfil the requirements of a commodity: labour power. If it is a commodity, then the consumer goods that the workers receive in exchange for their labour power are also commodities, being produced for exchange.”

But in fact labour power is not a commodity. It is not exchanged and there is no labour market;

“If there is only one employer, a “change of masters” is impossible, and the “periodic sale of himself” becomes a mere formality.”

So the state was not capitalist according to this definition – according to Tony Cliff;

As there were no commodities – according to Tony Cliff
As there was no exchange value – according to Tony Cliff
As there was no labour power – according to Tony Cliff
As there was no labour market – according to Tony Cliff

So there was no capitalism – according to Tony Cliff.
There was “military” but not “economic” “competition” with other states. That’s hardly unique to capitalism. There was military “competition” between tribes in the stone age. That doesn’t make them capitalist.
What I can’t understand is given the honesty of his description of the central planning of the ex-USSR how Cliff came to call it capitalist.
Its just one of those weird things we’ll never know the answer to.

LikeLike

Reply
steve

April 3, 2009 at 9:46 pm

Bill: “Trotsky settled upon the rather ugly definition of a “degenerate workers state” as it was the best means of reconciling all the contradicitions in this formation.
I still think it is.”
despite my criticism of BillJ, i am in agreement with lots of what he says… however, i would like to just clarify something which is that Trotsky’s “rather ugly definition of a degenerate[d, I’d say] workers[‘, I’d say] state” applies to the USSR – which WAS a healthy workers’ state (despite the massive problems immediately encountered) which degenerated; a further category was “deformed workers’ state” which applied (or may still apply in the case of Cuba, possibly N.Korea) to those states that were ‘born’ fkd up/”stalinised”, ie the bureaucracy was in control from the start: eg China, E.European states eg DDR. The key thing is that they were WORKERS’ STATES, which is states in which commodity production and the law of value (as well as the capitalist class) were eliminated
now to the last comment!

LikeLike

Reply
skidmarx

April 4, 2009 at 8:56 am

bill j – The key line in your first Cliff quote is
“abstracting them from their relations with the world economy”.
If you view the Soviet Union in isolation it has the appearance of not being capitalist.
The Soviet Union did not exist in isolation, and in the imperialist epoch in which modes of production are determined on a global scale, the military and economic competition between state capitals renders it capitalist.

It is just one of those weird things that I and others keep explaining this to you in different words, but you are either determined not to listen, or think it makes for a great polemic to dig up any instance of Cliff saying that a state capitalist economy doesn’t behave in the way Marx described capitalism and go aha! He doesn’t think state capitalism is capitalism, isn’t it weird? Nay, nay and thrice nay.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

April 4, 2009 at 10:22 am

I think Marx explains what he means pretty well here;

“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. ”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm

The economic structure of society – a non capitalist economic structure in the USSR – creates a certain superstructure. Which superstructure does it create? A non capitalist superstructure.
From the outset the Bolshevik revolution was surrounded by capitalist states. In military competition with them if you will. According to your definition – that the class character of a state is determined not by what it is – but by the states that surround it, then the Bolsheviks did not overthrow capitalism.
Conversely I suppose you could say, that because Germany was next to a non -capitalist state, then it was non- capitalist, whereas the USSR was capitalist!!!
Its frankly rather silly.
Why do I refer to Cliff? Simple, he invented there theory. Therefore when Cliff says that the economy is not capitalist I pay more attention than when others tell me that Cliff actually thought it was capitalist, when he was quite clear it wasn’t.

LikeLike

Reply
skidmarx

April 6, 2009 at 12:11 pm

In fact what I am saying, and what Cliff said, is that socialism in one country is impossible in the era of imperialism. The Bolsheviks did temporarily overthrow capitalism, but could not maintain a workers state without the revolution spreading.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

April 6, 2009 at 4:08 pm

But that doesn’t really get us that far.
Socialism in one country is impossible in the era of imperialism.
The Bolsheviks did overthrow capitalism.
A healthy workers state was impossible without the revolution spreading.

But the premises do not secure your result.
They are a necessary but not sufficient condition.
History taught us that there could be a bureaucratically degenerate state apparatus ruling over a centrally planned non-capitalist economy.
That is what actually occured.
Experience, the facts, the empirical reality or whatever you want to call it, produced a different outcome than full capitalist restoration for an entire period.
Produce your own definition of the nature of these states by all means – but don’t call it capitalist – its not.

LikeLike

Reply
skidmarx

April 7, 2009 at 11:44 am

“History taught us that there could be a bureaucratically degenerate state apparatus ruling over a centrally planned non-capitalist economy.
That is what actually occured.”

Strange. You implicitly attack my use of logic, and then assume your conclusions. I don’t agree with you that full capitalist restoration failed to occur, so feel no obligation not to so define state capitalist societies in such manner.

If you think a non-capitalist economy can survive for an extended period in the era of imperialism, and can certainly survive without the intervention of the working class, you are majorly rewriting the materialist conception of history and rejecting much of the idea that the emancipation of the working class is the act of the working class. “Many solutions! Only one of which is Revolution!”

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

April 7, 2009 at 12:29 pm

Not just me then, but Cliff too, who after all believed that a non-capitalist economy had survived for an extended period in the USSR or “Russia” as he misleadingly labelled it.
I note that you have produced – and indeed cannot produce – any evidence whatsoever that “Russia” was capitalist. And strangely feel no obligation to do so. Its enough that you say it is.
Reality you say does not conform to your theory – therefore reality must be rejected.You are an idealist.
Funny how we’re back to where we started. What both you and Dave Ellis have in common is a rejection of the empirical facts in favour of the “idea”.
Its like arguing about the existence of God, as there is no objective – i.e. real material – standard by which your “idea” can be assessed its impossible to disprove it. It doesn’t even bother you that its internally contradictory, incoherent, and at odds with the founder of your “idea”, that you have changed your argument several times, jumped about here and there, and generally dished up whatever comes to hand. But whatever way you look at it – its still slop.
Enough is enough I think.

LikeLike

Reply
skidmarx

April 7, 2009 at 1:31 pm

I think you might be right that we’re going round in circles. But you do keep stating the contentions as facts.

Not just me, but Cliff too, thought that state caiptalism was entrenched in Russia with the inauguration of the First Five Year Plan. I don’t what extended period you’re referring to, maybe you’re going back to your contention that Cliff didn’t think Russia was capitalist.

Consider prison labour in the US, it’s capitalist because of its relation to the rest of the economy.

LikeLike

Reply
skidmarx

April 7, 2009 at 1:58 pm

“I note that you have produced – and indeed cannot produce – any evidence whatsoever that “Russia” was capitalist.”

Th existence of a world of competing state capitals renders Russia capitalist. There is planning in capitalist firms, writers from Adam Smith to Bukharin have noted the process of cartelisation by which capitalists seek to remove competition from markets. It is you who wishes to set up an ahistorical category of post-capitalist society without workers control which removes historical development from the process of class struggle and makes the bayonets of the Red Army the driving process of historical change.

“Reality you say does not conform to your theory – therefore reality must be rejected.”

No I didn’t. You say it doesn’t conform to my (Cliff’s) theory.

“It doesn’t even bother you that its internally contradictory, incoherent, and at odds with the founder of your “idea”, that you have changed your argument several times, jumped about here and there, and generally dished up whatever comes to hand. But whatever way you look at it – its still slop.”

It would bother me if what you say is true. But it isn’t. I’ve tried to point out that you misquote and distort what Cliff says because you can’t accept, or possibly understand, his central thesis. I think I’ve tried to make this case by answering your points directly in turn. You and David Ellis seem to have in common that when I point out errors in your logic you simply ignore it and repeat what you’ve said before.

Trotsky described the Soviet Union as being like a sphere atop a pyramid – inherently unstable. He thought that if the Soviet Union survived the Second World War without a political revolution restoring workers control, his definition of it as a degenerated workers state would be disproved. He certainly didn’t think such a regime could come about through anything other than the degeneration of a workers state, not like what happened in Eastern Europe etc. It is you who holds to his original definition with an unfalsifiable idealism as if you were worshipping a God (that died). See Alex (Lexx – the most Powerful Weapon in the Two Universes) Callinicos’ book “Trotskyism” for more on this point.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

April 7, 2009 at 1:58 pm

It is not a contention.
Cliff stated absolutely clearly that the economy of the USSR was not a capitalist economy.
What’s more he even polemicises against the idea that it was capitalist, the law of value existed, or there was a labour market.
You won’t accept that. I don’t know why. I can only refer you to Cliff’s own writings. You don’t even have to take my word for it.
Even without Cliff all of the empirical data confirms that the economy of the USSR/China etc. were not capitalist economies, but rather subject to bureaucratic central planning.
You don’t like the facts. So you simply say because of some theory – or you interpretation of a theory – the facts can’t be true, even though they are.
Remember Cliff did not call the state capitalist because of the economy of the USSR. He rather claimed it was “state capitalist” because of military not economic competition with the West.
From the point of view of Marxism this is illegimate and wrong, but either way, the economy of the USSR was not Marxist, the facts show it and Cliff agreed.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

April 7, 2009 at 1:59 pm

Obviously the economy of the USSR was not Marxist – but I meant to write “not capitalist”.

LikeLike

Reply
skidmarx

April 7, 2009 at 3:57 pm

Once again we go back to your Cliff quote:
“Hence if one examines the relations within the Russian economy, abstracting them from their relations with the world economy, one it bound to conclude that the source of the law of value, as the motor and regulator of production, is not to be found in it.”

Once again, the key phrase is “abstracting them from their relations with the world economy”. If you viewone firm in isolation, it doesn’t show internally the features of capitalism. If you view one commodity in isolation it doesn’t appear as a capitalist commodity.
I like the facts. I like Cliff’s theory. He accepted that if you view the Soviet Union in isolation, just as if one state capital encompassed the world, it does not have some of the same internal features as state monopoly capitalism. From the point of view of Marxism, it is legitimate and right to assert as Cliff did that each state capital in an era of imperialism is bent to the laws of capitalism (see his oft repeated comment about if one fights a dog long enough it is impossible to tell which is which).

What you want to do is stick to the letter of Trotsky’s theory, the predictive power of which has long been overtaken by events, and present an ad hoc ramshackle patching up of that theory as Marxism, which it isn’t.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

April 7, 2009 at 4:15 pm

That is the key phrase.
If a dog rolls in a mud bath, one abstracts the dog from the mud and realises it remains a dog or conversely one abstracts the mud bath from the dog and realises it remains a mud bath.
According to the Cliff method once the dog had rolled in the mud bath it would no longer be a dog but mud or conversely the mud bath would now be a dog.
Its a ridiculous method that turns reality on its head.
Either way however, the economy of the USSR was bureaucratic central planning and theres no escaping that, not even according to Cliff.

LikeLike

Reply
Liam

April 7, 2009 at 5:26 pm

Bill / Skidmark – why don’t you two meet up over the Easter holiday and discuss this face to face?

One of you might change the other’s mind that way because it does not look like it’s going to happen here.

LikeLike

Reply
skidmarx

April 8, 2009 at 10:25 am

bill j – If you’d looked at the next chapter of Cliff’s book, you’d note it ends with this statement:
“The law of value is thus seen to be the arbiter of the Russian economic structure as soon as it is seen in the concrete historical situation of today – the anarchic world market.”
http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1955/statecap/ch07-s1.htm#s6

The chapter you quote from is titled “The Marxian law of value and the Russian economy viewed in isolation from world capitalism”, the following one:
“The Marxian law of value and the Russian economy viewed in its relation with world capitalism”.
Perhaps this might give some clue as to you misunderstanding of his method.

Liam – give me his contact details and I’ll think about it. Is your website that clogged up with our debate?

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

April 8, 2009 at 3:47 pm

True Cliff does try to have his cake and eat it. His problem is of course that he can’t prove his second assertion. How does the law of value govern the economy of the USSR when it does not operate within it?
To ask the question is to answer it.
Was the bureaucratic central plan effected by the need to fight off imperialist/capitalist attack obviously yes. But the difference between one regime and the other is obvious.
Once the state had ceased to defend planned property but instead sought to restore capitalism it did so within a matter of months in the USSR and a few years in China.
The law of value requires the exchange of commodities on a market – it determines the proportions in which commodities are exchanged through exchange. But in the USSR there was no exchange. Ergo there was no law of value. Ergo the law of value did not govern the economy of the USSR.
The advantage I have over you is that not only can I prove this position through logic, the internal consistency and coherence of the argument in itself, but I can also prove it through reference to empirical data.
Quantities of production, the allocation of labour and means of production was determined not through a market but through a nomenklatura. In other words according to bureaucratic central planning.
That’s just true. And you cannot disprove it.
And what’s more of course, that essential point is conceded by Cliff in his discussion of the economy of the USSR.

LikeLike

Reply
skidmarx

April 9, 2009 at 11:22 am

You don’t prove your position through logic, you assert it through partial quotation. You have stated a number of times that Cliff said that the law of value didn’t apply to the Soviet Union, on this thread and previous ones, when I point out that he says the opposite there is no backing off, no “perhaps I should go back and read what he actually says”. So when you finish your last comment with “…that essential point is conceded by Cliff in his discussion of the economy of the USSR”, I am tempted to say that you’re just talking nonsense and leave it at that.

But let’s look at the point you refer to.
“Quantities of production, the allocation of labour and means of production was determined not through a market but through a nomenklatura. In other words according to bureaucratic central planning.”

What Cliff said is that such allocation does not take place in a vacuum, but under the pressure to accumulate means of production so as to be able to compete with the West, partly militarily, but also economically in competing spheres of influence. If you bothered to read what he says you’d know this. May I suggest again you try it.

“Once the state had ceased to defend planned property but instead sought to restore capitalism it did so within a matter of months in the USSR and a few years in China.”

Whose state? How could it suddenly change sides? Your ahistorical view of the relationship between state power and class struggle is another major flaw in the theory that Cliff identified:
“If the ‘new democracies’ are workers’ states, what Marx and Engels said about the socialist revolution being ‘history conscious of itself’ is refuted.”
By the way I believe Hungary in the 80s had a major return to the market economy before one -party control was abandoned. As chjh pointed out, your analysis of China is very weak, and so I think it’s reasonable to assert that your one-to-one identification between “deformed workers stateness” and nationalisation is based on pretty weak evidence.

You prove nothing while claiming to prove everything. And it’s “affected” not “effected”.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

April 9, 2009 at 4:37 pm

He says the opposite? Where does he say the opposite? He states that the law of value is not to be found within the USSR.
It is absolutely unambiguous even for Cliff.
Was the bureaucratic central plan effected by the need to build armaments to defend itself from the capitalists? Evidently.
But for that effect to have lead to capitalist restoration Cliff would need to show that the law of value operated within the USSR.
Something that he unambiguously ruled out.
His assertion then that the economy of the USSR was capitalist falls based on his own analysis that the law of value, i.e. capitalism did not exist within the USSR.
That is why he insisted that there was military but not economic competition between the USSR and the capitalist states.
So what you say. Cliff is incoherent and self contradictory. OK I say. Let’s leave that to one side.
Provide some proof that the economy of the USSR was capitalist, i.e. that their was the accumulation of capital, production for profit, the law of value etc.
Of course you can’t, but never mind who cares about the facts?
Who’s state? Again you adopt an idealist perspective. Cliff says that if the state does something he does not expect, then Marx and Engels are wrong.
Marx and Engels cannot be wrong Cliff says – so reality does not happen. The facts do not exist. History has to be re-written.
Ideas not matter drives history.
Its historical but its not materialism.
But actually I don’t have that problem as the transition can easily be encompassed within Trotsky’s theory of the degenerate workers state.
Who’s state? Until the late 1990s in the USSR the state defended planned property. The property relations of the workers state. As the legal framework of society is only a reflection of the social relations in it – who’s state – a workers state. Albeit one ruled by a semi-fascistic bureaucratic dictatorship.
Once the state abandoned the defence of planned property, then capitalist property and capitalist production, commodity production, the law of value, profits etc. was restored very quickly. Within two years in the USSR/CIS/Russia.
Actually chjh agreed that there were piles of historical accounts which explain the transition from central planning to capitalism.
Pick any of the bourgeois histories you care to pick and most of the Marxist ones.
Actually for what its worth I wouldn’t have charactrised China as a deformed workers state – but a degenerated one but that’s really by the by. Similarly I don’t consider nationalisation the key – that is Dave Ellis position – but generalised commodity production, as Marx explained in Capital.
The only thing you seem to by any good at is spelling. And that’s a legacy of the Victorian class system. So nothing to boast about either.

LikeLike

Reply
skidmarx

April 14, 2009 at 5:14 pm

Actually chjh said :
“You can’t restore capitalism if the economy’s already capitalist. You can, however, introduce pro-market capitalist reforms into a capitalist economy – what else is privatisation? ”
And I can’t see how that helps make your case at all.

“He says the opposite? Where does he say the opposite? He states that the law of value is not to be found within the USSR.”

I repeat it again if you’re having trouble:
“The law of value is thus seen to be the arbiter of the Russian economic structure as soon as it is seen in the concrete historical situation of today – the anarchic world market.”
Rereading an earlier version of State Cap in Russia recently, I noticed Cliff put it slightly differently; unfortunately I don’t have it to hand. The point over and over is that it is a mistake to look at the Soviet Union in isolation and think you can comprehend it entirely in that abstracted form, just as a single firm or commodity doesn’t behave in a capitalist manner in isolation. Read those two chapters of Cliff and hopefully you can understand what he’s getting at even if you don’t agree.

You are the one who seems to beieve that ideas not classes drive history, with the formal organisation of the economy rather than class control being the determining factor of social change. Cliff is not saying reality does not happen or that facts should be ignored, and no matter how many times you say it it won’t become true. Why did the states in the state capitalist countries cease to defend nationalised property?[“whose” not “who’s” by the way ] My answer would be that the development of the global economy made their autarkic model of growth outdated. I can’t see how you’d explain it without a non-existent social revolution.

LikeLike

Reply
bill j

April 14, 2009 at 6:06 pm

Lol.
Who’s having trouble?
The question is did the law of value operate inside the USSR? In other words was its economy based on commodity exchange? In other words a capitalist economy.
No it wasn’t – according to Tony Cliff.
Therefore – as capitalism is based on the commodity exchange and the law of value – the central planning of the USSR was not capitalist, as the economic base determines the character of the superstructure – then the state wasn’t capitalist either.
I don’t know how to say it any clearer.
Cliff then goes onto say that the USSR is nonetheless governed by the law of value through its relationship – its military competition – not economic note – with the the capitalist states.
I could even concede that point, although its not strictly true, but even then it does not make the USSR capitalist.
For that to be the case Cliff would have to show that this relationship transformed production in the USSR into capitalist production.
But as he’s already pointed out it didn’t.
So we are back to where we were at the beginning.
The USSR was bureaucratic centrally planned economy in a capitalist world.
That is a fact.
Instead you say that if that were true then Marx would be wrong – in your opinion.
As Marx cannot be wrong – he’s another god presumably – the USSR cannot be a centrally planned economy.
So you change the facts to fit your system.
Total idealism.
Pardoxically Chjh even conceded the point he said;

“Central planning was indeed abolished through market reforms, just as central planning in the NHS is gradually being abolished by pro-market reforms. Central planning doesn’t define the class nature of the state.”

But did does the define the class nature of the state when instead of it being 7% of the economy it is 97%. Its called the transition from quantity into quality.
And my explanation of the transition from central planning to capitalism, isn’t in the slightest bit original, but is confirmed by every serious book that has been written about it as cjhj confirmed;

“billj’s right that there’s loads of literature on China’s economic expansion since 1978.”

Whereas there is not a single book, piece of research or anything else that supports your position. You need to ask yourself why?
You could put it down to a bourgeois conspiracy. Or maybe its just the world are too dumb to understand the wisdom of the IS/SWP. Choose whichever you prefer. You’ve tried everything else.

LikeLike

Reply