Chris Harman: a life in the heart of the struggle

This is the Socialist Resistance editorial board’s tribute. Chris Harman, the editor of International Socialism and a central committee member of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), died from a massive heart attack on November 6th. He was 66. We, and others in the Fourth International, join in sending condolences to Chris’ family, friends and comrades.…

Liam

November 7, 2009

2–3 minutes

This is the Socialist Resistance editorial board’s tribute.

Chris Harman, the editor of International Socialism and a central committee member of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), died from a massive heart attack on November 6th. He was 66. We, and others in the Fourth International, join in sending condolences to Chris’ family, friends and comrades.

A convinced revolutionary socialist all his adult life, Harman had played a key role in founding Socialist Worker and editing it until 2004. Harman was an internationalist from the start. That was reflected in myriad ways, from his participation in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign in the the late 1960 to the symbolic location of his death: Cairo.

Harman was a polymath, gifted as an author, speaker, editor, leader and economist. His book The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918 to 1923 is a powerful tool for revolutionary socialists.. His greatest work, A Peoples’ History of the World, is invaluable. He was also outstanding as an activist and leader of the SWP and its forerunner, the International Socialists. Harman played a major role in helping the organisation develop its political direction and in explaining its choices to a radical audience. His famous 1992 debate with Ernest Mandel on the bureaucratic Stalinist dictatorships in Quatriéme Internationale was translated into English and is still in print as The Fallacies of State Capitalism. His analysis of SWP split from Respect was valued even by those who opposed the SWP’s decision: it was translated by Inprecor and published in Respect: Documents of the Crisis as the clearest exposition of the SWP’s viewpoint.

Harman took his role as an SWP leader seriously, but that did not stop him from having a transparent and comradely working relationship with socialists outside the SWP. Last month he was an active participant in the IIRE’s economists seminar, in which most participants were Fourth Internationalists. While there, he spoke at a public meeting sponsored by Grenzeloos, the magazine of the Fourth International in The Netherlands.

As one of our comrades, Clement, put it on hearing the news: “Harman was for me the person from which I discovered Marxism, and which showed and revealed that revolutionary engagement was compatible with highly demanding scientific investigation for understanding and changing the world.” Harman’s openness, his books and articles, his work in the struggle and the contribution he made to developing the socialist consciousness of tens of thousands of people are a fitting monument to his revolutionary life.

November 7 2009.

56 responses to “Chris Harman: a life in the heart of the struggle”

johng

November 7, 2009 at 5:12 pm

Chris Harman on 1968:

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Derek Wall

November 8, 2009 at 12:01 am

My rather less informed thoughts here http://another-green-world.blogspot.com/2009/11/chris-harman-dies-of-hearth-attack.html

Great credit to Liam and SR to be so generous to a political opponent, it would be great if the left in Britain, fractured as we are, could be a little more tolerant of difference….SR have been showing the way on this.

I am not a fan of the SWP but Chris did what he thought appropriate to build socialism, had good faith, worked hard and produced some important educational material.

A sad loss

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3arabawy BookMarx 11/08/2009 (a.m.) at 3arabawy

November 8, 2009 at 7:31 am

[…] Chris Harman: a life in the heart of the struggle « Mac Uaid […]

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johng

November 8, 2009 at 3:43 pm

Fascinating article Chris wrote in the late 1970s:

http://chrisharman.blogspot.com/2009/11/crisis-of-european-revolutionary-left.html

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skidmarx

November 8, 2009 at 4:29 pm

I believe that Haman’s reply to Mandel was titled “The inconsistencies of Ernest Mandel”,and can be found here:
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/harman/1969/12/mandel.htm

I always found it was the degenerated workers state theory that was fallacious rather than state capitalism, and found Harman much more convincing and to the point than Mandel.

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Liam

November 11, 2009 at 5:05 pm

Respect’s tribute is at

http://www.therespectparty.net/breakingnews.php?id=763

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bill j

November 11, 2009 at 5:43 pm

Why is it “fallacious”?
Harman attacks Mandel’s definition of capitalism as generalised commodity production and then says;

“We can sum up what we have been saying up to this point: yes, capitalism is, as Mandel argues, competition on the basis of commodity production.”

I mean whatever!

That’s the whole point, there was no commodity production, no commodity exchange and therefore no capitalism in the USSR. Of course Harman says that arms production/competition replaces economic competition.
That would only be true if the USSR were trying to sell their arms to the USA! And vice versa!
They weren’t!
Its all rather silly.

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skidmarx

November 12, 2009 at 11:29 am

bill j – obviously the economic part of this discussion is going on over over at Dave’s Place. I find it silly that you would say that competition in arms production relies on trade between the rivals, it resolves itself in war and the threat of war.Obviously.

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bill j

November 12, 2009 at 11:48 am

Well exactly. And that’s why its not economic competition. And therefore not commodity competition. And therefore not commodity production. And of course that’s fatal to Harman’s theory of state capitalism.
Harman concedes Mandel’s definition of capitalism – generalised commodity production, the production of things for sale on a market.
But he says that military “competition” replaces internal economic competition in the ex-USSR.
But of course it doesn’t, as the military competition he refers to is not economic and therefore does not involve the exchange of commodities.
The competition between the two militaries was precisely over the use value of their tanks, anti-tank missiles, guns, rockets etc. They were not trying to sell their tanks to each other – but blow them up!
And therefore according to Harman’s own definition of capitalism – generalised commodity production – the USSR is not capitalist.
I’m not surprised Mandel got frustrated.

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Mark Victorystooge

November 12, 2009 at 1:06 pm

I never saw the “theory of state capitalism” as anything other than a way to theorise distancing from a foreign power that happened to include “socialist” in its title.

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redbedhead

November 12, 2009 at 2:31 pm

“But he says that military “competition” replaces internal economic competition in the ex-USSR.
But of course it doesn’t, as the military competition he refers to is not economic and therefore does not involve the exchange of commodities.”

Except that the military competition necessitated the exploitation of the domestic working class in order to extract surplus (profit) to sustain the arms race and the Soviet empire. And that necessitated the oppression of the working class through the institutions of the Soviet state and economy.

and, Mark, that’s a bit of a strange way to look at it. Even if you don’t agree with the detailed analysis, it’s obvious that the point of the analysis was to reaffirm the centrality of the working class to any definition of socialism.

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bill j

November 12, 2009 at 3:39 pm

See you can put surplus (profit) in brackets. But that doesn’t make surplus into profit.
Surplus was certainly extracted from the working class. Preobrazhensky the economic theorist of the left opposition explained that was absolutely necessary in order to develop the state plan.
But the extraction of surplus is not synonymous with (profit).
For surplus to become surplus value or profit it has to be exchanged on a market, i.e. it has to be part of commodity production, something produced for sale.
The military output of the USSR was not intended to be sold to the USA, but fired at it.
Am I right in thinking that Harman refers to the military output of the USA as non-commodity production, to support his theory of the Permanent Arms Economy, on the grounds that it was not sold on a market?
And that this non-exchange offset the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, as it was a deduction from accumulation? I think I am. But I’m sure someone can tell me.
Harman’s theory of state capitalism – which btw completely contradicts Cliffs from start to finish – is totally incoherent.
Harman says that captialism is generalised commodity production, i.e. the production of things for sale on the market.
Yet the military output of the USSR was not sold. Therefore it was not commodity production. Therefore it was not capitalist.
So if the military production of was not a commodity, then there was no commodity production, then the surplus extracted from the working class was not surplus value i.e.profit, then the USSR was not capitalist – by Harman’s own definition.
As a theory its not so much full of holes, as just holes, i.e. nothing.

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redbedhead

November 12, 2009 at 4:19 pm

bill j – the military aspect was where competition was expressed but unless I’m terribly mistaken there was a currency called the ruble that was used to purchase goods in the USSR. Consumption was thus mediated through a market where goods were bought and sold – even if the state companies didn’t compete directly with each other, the same dynamic of competitive accumulation drove them to reduce costs and rationalize production.
As for the Permanent Arms Economy – it is/was a countervailing tendency, it didn’t eliminate the tendency towards decline, only mitigated it.

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skidmarx

November 12, 2009 at 4:46 pm

See you can put surplus (profit) in brackets. But that doesn’t make surplus into profit.
I think surplus value is a more correct way of putting it than surplus(profit).

Harman concedes Mandel’s definition of capitalism – generalised commodity production, the production of things for sale on a market.
Oh no he doesn’t,he says:
He sees it as meaning that commodities produced have to be transformed into money, and that therefore that ‘capital accumulation’, ‘the final money form of capital’ and ‘the capitalists thirst for profits’ are ‘exactly identical expressions’. But this is plain unadulterated nonsense.
and:
This leads us to the central argument: whether the capitalist mode of production is to be defined by a system involving the ‘thirst for profit’ and ‘commodity production’ for a ‘constantly expanding and insecure market’, or by something else of which these are but manifestations. Kidron argues that this something else is the competition between rival owners of means of production that forces each to try and resist the inroads of the other by continually expanding the means of production. This establishes a relationship between the different accumulations of alienated labour making up the competing means of production that defines each as capital, and their owners as capitalists. It also determines the dynamic of interaction of capitalists with each other and with those who produce the means of production so as to continually reproduce on an enlarged scale, the competition.

You think that the two things here:
Harman says that captialism is generalised commodity production, i.e. the production of things for sale on the market,are the same, and clearly Harman did not.

Am I right in thinking that Harman refers to the military output of the USA as non-commodity production, to support his theory of the Permanent Arms Economy, on the grounds that it was not sold on a market?
Yes,I think so. Do you think that the military output of the USA wa sold on a market?
And that this non-exchange offset the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, as it was a deduction from accumulation? I think I am. But I’m sure someone can tell me.
Yes I think so. Money spent on goods of type I or II (means of production,means of consumption) produce a double impact of re-investment, whereas those in what’s known as IIa or III(it’s so long since I’ve thought about this you’ll have to forgive me for forgetting some of the terminology),luxury goods for the ruling class only have a single effect .

Clearly you have trouble taking the theory seriously because you can’t accept that the dynamic of competition can be expressed through military rivalry. Capitalists don’t always compete only on price,whatever Thomas Friedman says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_McDonalds_franchises#Golden_Arches_Theory_of_Conflict_Prevention

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bill j

November 12, 2009 at 4:47 pm

You lot just keep changing the goal posts.
According to Callinicos in his recent KCL lecture the USSR was a “Command centrally planned economy”. According to Harman in his last article;

“The “state capitalist” theory led to a very different conclusion. It was based on recognition that the parameters within which the rulers of the Eastern bloc states operated were determined by competition. This was not internal competition, but external competition with the west European states.”

http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=11016

Yet according to you there was a currency, the purchase of goods – presumably commodities internally – an internal market – and the same dynamic of competitive accumulation.

What are you lot like? You just make it up as you’re going along don’t you? Explain to me why Callinicos and Harman were so wrong?

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bill j

November 12, 2009 at 4:57 pm

@ Skidmarx

Harman says;

“We can sum up what we have been saying up to this point: yes, capitalism is, as Mandel argues, competition on the basis of commodity production.”

It could not be clearer. He agrees with Mandels definition that capitalism is generalised commodity production. Indeed he even says so, which is good because that is what Marx said too;

“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.”

Line 1, Volume 1 Das Kapital.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm

Mandel wasn’t being original here. He was being orthodox. If you’re saying that you have a different definition of capitalism from Marx, explain why we should ditch Das Kapital in favour of it.

Obviously capitalists fight wars. In that sense they compete militarily. So did stone age tribes. Does that make them capitalist?

Capitalist competition as described by Marx in Capital is by definition economic. It is a theory of economy. It is a book about economic production, realisation and competition.
Not a book about military competition.
Of course like all other output military materiel could be sold – it could become a commodity. But the military materiel of the USSR’s army was not sold. It did not become a commodity.
If the military competition is not economic – i.e. if it is not over the sale of arms – which of course it wasn’t, then the military competition is not economic competition.
If the military competition was not economic competition, it means that the USSR’s military output was not the output of commodities.
Which means that the USSR was not capitalist, as there was no internal competition either – at least not according to Harman, Cliff and Callinicos – and more importantly in fact as well.

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andy newman

November 12, 2009 at 5:06 pm

Bill is basically correct here.

capitalism – as defined by marx – requires that labour power is sold as a commodity, and that it is sold at its value, otherwise surplus value could not be generated into commodities produced by that labour power during the perios that the labour power is under control of capital.
But equally vital, the surplus value can only be realsied as capital by the circulation of commodities, by which C-M-C’ occurs.

Now if I had to choose, I would say that notwithstanding this huge theoretical problem, Harman’s theories are more truth approximate than mandel’s because although theoretically flawed, focussing on the external pressures of the world, and particularly armaments cometition is actually a very good way of understadning what happened at various points to the USSR’s economy.

However, the Cliffite theory of “state capitalism” of the USSR is irreconcilable with the classical political economy of Marx’s critique of Capital.

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bill j

November 12, 2009 at 5:21 pm

So notwithstanding the fact that Harman’s theory was completely wrong you prefer it.
Why am I not surprised.
Actually the reason why this is a pertinent argument today is not particularly because of what happened while the USSR was around, but because of what happened after it collapsed.
Namely globalisation and the expansion of the world market into the former Stalinist bureaucratically planned states.

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redbedhead

November 12, 2009 at 6:59 pm

bill – I didn’t change the goal posts and what I said didn’t necessarily contradict the quote you’ve put up by Callinicos (I haven’t read the whole piece). But, tell me – did people use currency in the Soviet Union to buy things? Were they paid wages in money? If so then it was production for exchange, as far as I understand the terms.

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bill j

November 12, 2009 at 8:33 pm

So you are saying that there was commodity production inside the USSR? That is of course the opposite of what Harman, Cliff and Callinicos say. If it were true then you would not need the theory of state capitalism.
So how did those three get it so wrong?

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redbedhead

November 12, 2009 at 9:24 pm

Oh, my god, I might have disagreed with the Pope and his bishops?!?!? lol
I haven’t read their material on Russia in a very long time so I don’t remember what they wrote about commodities. I’m willing to be convinced but it seems to me that if the production process and its products are separated from the direct producers, and production is for exchange through stores and markets where workers use a universal exchange, like money, as the means to access them (as opposed to real planning) – then that is my definition of commodity production. I don’t think inter-enterprise competition is necessary for the economy as a whole to still be capitalist – just as there isn’t competition between divisions in the very large capitalist corporations like Sony, that produce a whole array of goods, sometimes (as in entertainment products) variations of the same product. The competitive dynamic in the case of the USSR occurred between the economy as a whole and the American, expressed through military competition, which imposed a dynamic of competitive accumulation over the totality of the economy and was expressed through each individual workplace.

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redbedhead

November 12, 2009 at 9:33 pm

and that doesn’t negate the theory of state capitalism at all. I don’t know why you think it does…

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bill j

November 12, 2009 at 9:52 pm

No of course not. Never mind that Cliff said that there was no commodity production inside the USSR. That money did not circulate. That there was no internal competition and so on.
Just goes to show this theory is whatever you want it to be. All that matters is the label. Nothing negates the theory, because its really a theory of nothing. Just a name that can be attached without too much thought.
Not a particularly substantial basis for a whole political current. But life’s funny like that eh?

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redbedhead

November 12, 2009 at 9:55 pm

Interesting how you managed to say absolutely nothing to refute anything that anybody said.

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bill j

November 12, 2009 at 10:05 pm

There’s nothing to refute. There was no circulation of capital in the USSR. It was a planned economy. There was no labour market. There was no commodity production. End of. You won’t agree. What can I do?
This theory is whatever random stuff that you want it to be.
You say that there is commodity production in the USSR.
Cliff says that there is not commodity production in the USSR.
You say that there is a labour market in the USSR.
Cliff says that there is not a labour market in the USSR.
You say that firms compete internally in the USSR.
Cliff says that firms do not compete internally in the USSR.
Etc.
Yet this is allegedly the same theory of state capitalism.
And I have to “prove” these things to you. If you won’t take Cliff’s word for it why would you take mine?

On a separate note, Harman says the reason that the USSR was capitalist was because military production and external military competition exerted the influence of the market on the USSR, the law of value, from outside.

“The “state capitalist” theory led to a very different conclusion. It was based on recognition that the parameters within which the rulers of the Eastern bloc states operated were determined by competition. This was not internal competition, but external competition with the west European states.”

If however, you check out his reply to Mandel, ironically entitled the “inconsistencies” of Ernest Mandel, he says that military production is non-market, non-commodity production;

“When capitalists work for defence, ie for the government treasury, it is obviously no more “pure” capitalism, but a special form of national economy. Pure capitalism means commodity production. Commodity production means working for an unknown and free market. But the capitalist “working” for defence does not “work” for the market at all.’5″
http://chrisharman.blogspot.com/2009/03/debates-with-ernest-mandel.html

So Harman says that the USSR is capitalist because of the operation of external military competition. But he also says that such military competition is non-market, non commodity production in a capitalist society.
Inconsistency? Not likely.

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redbedhead

November 12, 2009 at 11:01 pm

“You say that firms compete internally in the USSR.”

you should pay more attention. I didn’t say this. In fact, I agree with Harman that the competitive pressure was exerted via military competition – which is exactly what I wrote above.
Perhaps I disagree with Harman – so what? Cliff’s wasn’t the only theory of state capitalism. Raya Dunyavskeya, for instance, had a state capitalist theory that differed from Cliff. But, in any case, I’m not certain that there’s a disagreement there or, if there is one, its a question of terminology. I don’t define commodities as something that only exists in a free market. I define it as goods produced for exchange and a commodity economy where that method of production and distribution is generalized such that exchange is mediated through a universal equivalent like money. You don’t deny that the rouble existed and people weren’t simply assigned goods like food and shoes but, in fact, purchased them. You don’t deny that there were wage differentials and that people were, in fact, paid wages. As far as I’m concerned this meets the criteria of a commodity-based economy.
And the law of value was imposed by the pressure of military competition, rather than internal competition – as I said above.

Ok – now you can denounce me again for supposedly disagreeing with some theorists with whom you disagree.

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bill j

November 13, 2009 at 12:05 am

So competition is exerted externally, but goods are produced for exchange. Who are they exchanged with if there’s no internal competition? If there was no internal competition, then there was no internal exchange and therefore no internal commodity production or sale.
They are obviously not exchanged externally, as the external competition is not economic but military.

Your internal commodity based economy is incoherent even on its own terms.

In fact there was a central command planned economy. Inputs and outputs were decided by central planners, bureaucrats, who decided what was produced, where and in what quantities. There was a surplus, but not surplus value, as surplus value is specific to commodity exchange, that is capital, which requires internal economic or at last external economic competition – something you say doesn’t exist.

The military competition was between use values – the thickness of a tanks armour against the penetration of an anti-tank missile – not exchange values. Although bizarrely Harman says that military competition, which was supposed to be the mechanism through which the law of value exerted its influence on the USSR is not commodity production anyway, so even if it was economic competition then it wasn’t.
As you say there are different theories of state capitalism. They all disagree with each other. Not that that seems to be a problem for their adherents. The only thing that seems to matter is the name.
The logical consistency, the test of empirical reality or internal coherence don’t seem to matter to their proponents.
And yeah its true you have contradicted the theorists who invented the theory. And that doesn’t bother you either. I was simply pointing out that fact and that people who are considering the validity of the theory or otherwise should take note that none of its adherents can seem to agree on what the theory actually is.
Not that that stops them from denouncing those who disagree with it for not understanding what they’re on about.

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NollaigO

November 13, 2009 at 12:21 am

Perhaps(!) I disagree with Harman – so what?

To borrow a football chant:

billj,
You have him on the run!

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redbedhead

November 13, 2009 at 1:21 am

“Who are they exchanged with if there’s no internal competition? If there was no internal competition, then there was no internal exchange and therefore no internal commodity production or sale.”

Workers, other factories, etc. They didn’t just print rubles so that they could have pretty pictures on small pieces of paper. And you don’t need internal competition to use measures of value in the exchange of goods – just like my example above with Sony.

“The military competition was between use values”

Except that it requires an input to make a tank or a missile. You have to build the capital equipment to build the tanks. You have to mine the ore to build the capital equipment. And you have to feed the workers and put a roof over their heads. In other words you need to have a measure of all the labour inputs and outputs in order to direct resources. And you face pressure to do it better, faster, etc. than your biggest competitor so that you can defeat them in whatever proxy war you happen to be fighting this week or the next. It won’t matter a hoot that your AK-47 fires more rounds, more accurately if you can only produce ten of them for every 100,000 M-16s your opponent can produce. And, in any case, the use values are arrived at by capital investment in research, equipment, training, etc. – also measured in terms of inputs and outputs. And so the law of exchange value comes into play as your mechanism of determining allocation of resources and extraction of profit to try and get the upper hand in the military competition.
bill – you see the problem with your argument is that it mostly amounts to you name-calling your opponents. Which might make you feel warm and fuzzy (along with, apparently NollaigO) but it’s a level of debate more usually suitable to a schoolyard dispute of very young children. My reason for dismissing your points about me disagreeing with Harman was that I wanted to hear YOUR argument – not your ability to say Harman was inconsistent and Mandel was brilliant six ways till Sunday. Or that I was an apostate at the church of Cliff.
So, now I see your argument: the lack of internal competition within the Soviet Union means that the law of value didn’t apply. And apparently, the only form of competition that would cause the law of value to apply would be direct economic competition.

Well, I think I’ve answered you above. Thank you. Have a good day.

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bill j

November 13, 2009 at 10:25 am

Err no you haven’t.
If there is no internal competition then there can be no exchange.
Exchange by definition means the sale of things to and from more than one economic unit. If there is no one to exchange with, then there can be no exchange. If there is no competition then there cannot be more than one unit. So there cannot be exchange. If there is no exchange there can be no commodity production. If there is no commodity production the law of value cannot apply. If the law of value cannot apply there can be no capitalism.
By your own description of the USSR exchange is impossible. Exchange does not take place within Sony. It takes place between Sony and other firms or customers. Sony is not the only firm in Japan.
In order to put your tank against the infantry you have to produce both. Therefore there is a production process. There would also a production process under Socialism. Socialism would also have to research its military hardware. Build tanks. Allocate resources to its military.
If we took your definition seriously – if the very creation of military capacity meant an economy was capitalist – then socialism is impossible.
What a pessimistic philosophy.
Military competition is not economic competition. It compared the usefulness of military hardware as military hardware. How good is your helmet? Does you dum-dum bullet kill instantly?
That is not economic competition.
The USA were not selling their helmets and dum-dum bullets to the USSR.
The USSR were not selling their helmets and dum-dum bullets to the USA.
They were planning to fire them at each other, or wear them to stop themselves getting killed.
RBH see the problem with your argument is that it is essentially incoherent. Even on its own terms it doesn’t stand up. It doesn’t bother me if you’re an apostate. I didn’t understand your religion in the first place.
Your theory contradicts the other theorists who propose the “theory” of state capitalism. On examination we discover that there is no “theory” at all, but several competing, mutually exclusive and internally contradictory theories. None of which are true, as none of them actually explain what the USSR was either in terms of agreed categories of Marxist theory or the empirical existence of the former soviet union.
Of course like you I could make up MY OWN theory of the USSR. But just because it was MY OWN theory that would not mean it was any good. YOUR OWN theory of the USSR is no good.
You may not have noticed but capitalism is an economic system. Capital is a theory of political economy. To say that the only form of competition that can cause the law of value to apply is economic competition is therefore, banal, but accurate.
Maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel. Hallelujah!

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skidmarx

November 13, 2009 at 1:21 pm

bill j -I think I’ve already dealt with the Callinicos quote, I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill if you think he’s shifting his position,or “confused”, on the basis of one characterisation in a debate. On the Harman SR quote I think your goalpostsare the ones that move erratically:
The “state capitalist” theory led to a very different conclusion. It was based on recognition that the parameters within which the rulers of the Eastern bloc states operated were determined by competition. This was not internal competition, but external competition with the west European states.”
You selectively quote again:
Harman says this:
the parameters within which the rulers of the Eastern bloc states operated were determined by competition. This was not internal competition, but external competition with the west European states. An increasing amount of this competition was for markets, but most was military.
He is quite clear that there is a mix of the differnent forms of competition, with the military being dominant.

I think Harman and Cliff and Callinicos are adequate, and don’t contradict each other in the way you claim. When states on behalf of capital go to war, it changes the competitive balance between them. In order to survive as competitive centres of capital accumulation, the state capitalist stateswere forced to measure their military output against the West for fear of invasion, or more subtle loss of spheres of influence, and their output of consumption goods for fear that the workers there would prefer an openly bourgeois government [ if you say but if it was capitalist already how could the workers see any change I will scweam and scweam and scweam until I am sick].

If we took your definition seriously – if the very creation of military capacity meant an economy was capitalist – then socialism is impossible.
Please stop setting up straw men, dragging goalposts away to an entirely different pitch, and so forth. It isn’t the creation of military capacity that makes captialism, it is the separation of the producers from control over production. If you read what any of these people say about the theory rather than flicking through for fallacious gotcha quotes you’d know that. Have a nice day.

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redbedhead

November 13, 2009 at 2:46 pm

“Exchange does not take place within Sony”

Besides lacking a facility with the English language, you also know nothing about how large businesses operate if you think there aren’t forms of exchange within and between units of large corporations. Corporations quite regularly apply internal market valuations, the movement of money, etc. between different units – this is how they keep track of inputs and outputs. They will, for instance, buy services from themselves. If Sony Playstation wants to adapt a movie owned by Sony Pictures into a video game or a video game into a movie, they will have to buy the rights from the other division.
As for the USSR, perhaps you can explain to me this: if workers go to work and in exchange for their work they are given roubles and then they take those roubles to the store and in exchange for roubles they buy some bread, how is this not exchange. It is by definition exchange. You’re confusing the establishment of price mechanisms via the market with exchange mechanisms. A fully planned economy doesn’t need money, for instance, because there is no exchange and no universal equivalent is therefore required.
And to continue from skidmarx accurate point – the existence of money as a universal equivalent is an expression of the fact that the producers have been separated from control over production.

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Graham B

November 13, 2009 at 4:47 pm

To chip in on this.
skidmarx says: “In order to survive as competitive centres of capital accumulation, the state capitalist states were forced to measure their military output against the West for fear of invasion”.
Well yes, no one is going to disagree that the USSR faced severe military competition, particulary as the economy was smaller than the US. But, as I’m sure has already been said on this thread, war and the production of the means of waging it is not sufficient to make the USSR capitalist. Military competition is a product of class society, not just capitalism. Don’t you think there have been pre-capitalist states that have been squeezed or bankrupted by the pressures of war?

For the USSR to be state capitalist you’d have to show how external military competition qualitatively changed the internal economy to ‘capitalist’. This, I think, is what Harman tried to do as Cliff’s version of state capitalism in the USSR said – correctly – that the law of value didn’t operate within it.
The fundamental problem for Harman is that there was no internal competition between units of capital because there was only one employer. This is why he would always tag on to his theory the foreign trade between Eastern Europe and the West to try and ‘introduce’ an element of real economic competition between capitals. But this cannot be the central defining dynamic of these economies, particularly the USSR where there was relatively little international trade.

Does ‘capital accumulation’ define it as capitalist? Only if you think this is exclusively the accumulation of heavy industry – fixed assets. It’s the accumulation of capital as money – i.e. profits – that ultimately matters. Were there profits in the USSR?

redbedhead says: “As for the USSR, perhaps you can explain to me this: if workers go to work and in exchange for their work they are given roubles and then they take those roubles to the store and in exchange for roubles they buy some bread, how is this not exchange. It is by definition exchange”.
This is money as a universal equivalent, not money as capital and, as I think you agree, it didn’t operate as a pricing mechanism. The point is that under capitalism you would be able to take your Roubles into the store and decide to spend them on bread from different makers or forget about eating and spend it on a console game, again made by a different manufacturer. So how were prices set in the USSR when everything was produced by the one unit? By the bureaucracy, not an internal market for capital and consumption goods and services.

This isn’t capitalism, and it doesn’t matter that the concentration and centralisation of an aging system has made everything bigger in the West with more internal planning – some sort of ‘symmetry’ with the USSR – there is still competition. There may be a small number of global players in a given sector like cars or console games, but just one?

Does the production of a surplus define it as capitalist. No, again this is class society not capitalism. It’s the specific form that the surplus takes that makes it capitalist – profit (and interest and rent). Did these exist in the USSR?

The USSR was obviously a million miles away from socialism, but it wasn’t a capitalist economy because there was – internally – only one employer and hence no competition, markets or surplus in the form of profits.

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bill j

November 13, 2009 at 5:04 pm

Ouch! Rude aren’t you?
Exchange does not take place within Sony. If Sony “sells itself” something, this is simply a unit of account – it is not a cash transaction.
Exchange in that sense also takes place inside many public authorities – in the council for instance. Next thing you’ll be telling me the council is a capitalist firm.
As there was no competition inside the USSR and therefore no one to exchange with – Cliff said this btw – there was no exchange within the Soviet Union.
I appreciate you don’t believe me. And you don’t believe Cliff. And you don’t believe Harman. And you don’t believe Callinicos. And you don’t believe Trotsky. And you don’t believe Preobrahzensky. And you don’t believe Mandel, on this.
How come you got so sceptical?
Where Luncheon Vouchers the universal equivalent? No they were tokens that some firms gave out in the 1970s to subsidise lunch.
The “universal equivalent” in the USSR could not buy very much, it wasn’t very universal – Cliff thought this by the way. it couldn’t buy means of production. it couldn’t buy flats. it could buy some small proportion of consumer goods. Although most of these were supplied centrally either by state firms or other organisations.
Was that generalised commodity production – in your world no doubt.
Was the USSR socialist? Of course not. Therefore the working class did not control the plan. In fact the bureaucracy was akin to a fascist dictatorship in Trotsky’s words.
BTW how come you’ve only found the inadequacies of your leaders theories now? How long have you been a Cliffite? What happened in the last week to make you reject a lifetime of Cliffite orthodoxy? Do you always make up YOUR OWN analyse when the contradictions of your leaders become too uncomfortable?

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Mark Victorystooge

November 13, 2009 at 6:06 pm

I think the incoherencies in the theory – well brought out by billj – are down to it being a makeshift. Cliff didn’t like the USSR of Stalin and needed a theory to say it was not only not “socialist” but shock! horror! some form of capitalism!
I used to own a copy of “State Capitalism in Russia” which had on its cover a well-known picture of a Soviet officer in Budapest in 1956 advancing threateningly on the (British) photographer, who worked for the Daily Mail or Express. I guess an anarchist book would have had a picture of Red Army soldiers in white running across the ice to put down the Kronstadt rebellion.

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Mark Victorystooge

November 13, 2009 at 6:18 pm

On another point, I recently read “The Devil’s Workshop” by Adolf Burger. Burger is (he is still alive) a Slovak-born Jew who, as a concentration camp prisoner, assisted the Nazis under duress to forge British sterling and US dollars, among other things. The book gives a short history of 20th century forgery attempts, including an attempt by White Russian exiles to destabilise the early Soviet economy by forging rubles in the 1920s.
The book mentions that the concentration camp prisoners forged money to destabilise Tito’s Partisans, who printed money in the parts of Yugoslavia they liberated. But there seems to have been no attempt to forge the ruble during WW2. Perhaps it was because one major route for introducing forged money was through neutral countries, but there were no rubles in circulation outside Soviet territory. Or perhaps the ruble operated to such different economic rules, in a different system, that it was not considered worthwhile forging it. Burger mentioned that fake IDs of NKVD (Soviet security service) members were produced, perhaps for use by German agents, but the ruble itself was not forged.

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bill j

November 13, 2009 at 6:34 pm

Just to add Skids says;

“It isn’t the creation of military capacity that makes captialism, it is the separation of the producers from control over production.”

What you mean like they were separated from the control of production under feudalism? Serfs didn’t have too much control of production. Oh and neither did slaves. No doubt Ancient Rome was capitalist too.

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redbedhead

November 14, 2009 at 1:01 am

Wait a minute so if Sony has an internal economy that is similar to the USSR does that mean that it isn’t capitalist? Woo hoo! Somebody get me a job there.

Sadly, the process of exchange within Sony isn’t separate from the real world of market driven exchange external to it because it is in a relation to that world. That relationship forces it to exploit its workers and accumulate capital whether it wants to or not. it’s use of exchange rate – mediated by market valuations – in its internal economy is an expression of the fact that it must compete with the outside world. So, it seems that external competition has an impact on internal operations. But apparently, external competition between the USSR and the USA (its primary competitor) didn’t cause the kind of symmetry that every other type of competition causes. How strange. It didn’t cause it to rely on exchange rate valuations – ie. labour accounting – in order to accumulate capital to meet the competition from the USA. Instead they just whittled away, unaffected by the west, doing their own thing for the sake of their own thing. What a strange sort of materialism.

Here’s a short glossary to help you out for future reference:
1) universal equivalent doesn’t really mean its universal. You can’t spend US dollars on Mars and you can’t even spend Canadian dollars in China. It means that Soviet workers wages could be used to buy shoes OR apples (assuming there were any). And if you lost your pay packet on the way to the store, somebody else could celebrate their good luck finding it by buying some vodka. And when the bureaucrats calculated inputs and outputs they used the same measure – even if it weren’t roubles. The iron ore mine didn’t refer to things in pounds and the gun factory didn’t use kilograms as their units. I don’t have a handy Soviet economic planners guide for dummies here but my guess is that they all used the same units of measure in order to be able to compare apples and oranges. Just like Sony.

2) orthodoxy and dogma. You’re a funny lot, you sectarians. There’s no pleasing you. If I seem to agree with Cliff – I’m a sock puppet, a drone, a dogmatist. If I seem to disagree with Cliff I’m an apostate, etc. etc. It’s very strange – at first. Later it’s just boring. I can only assume that years of unthinking schematism to a line of thinking that forces you to redefine terms in order to avoid uncomfortable engagements with reality has carved inescapable grooves in your cortex. My condolences.

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bill j

November 14, 2009 at 10:29 am

“Wait a minute so if Sony has an internal economy that is similar to the USSR does that mean that it isn’t capitalist? Woo hoo! Somebody get me a job there.”

But Sony exchanges its output on a market. It manufacturers things for sale. I hope you’ll accept that? Therefore it is a capitalist enterprise according to Marx’s definition. The USSR did not and therefore it is not.

“But apparently, external competition between the USSR and the USA (its primary competitor) didn’t cause the kind of symmetry that every other type of competition causes.”

You are comparing military competition with economic competition, But these are two different things.

I’ll explain. Words that are spelt the same can refer to different things and have different meanings.
Cold can mean a type of cough or the temperature. There is a relationship between them in as much as if you get cold – i.e. you temperature falls too low – you may catch a cold – i.e. a form of cough. But nonetheless they are very different things.

Military competition – where armies fight battles with weapons is not the same thing as economic competition – where firms try to sell each other commodities.

It really is that simple.

As for you other points – you point out you can’t spend Canadian dollars on Mars or in China. But can you spend them in Canada?
I’m guessing yes.
In terms of gold of course the absolute universal equivalent in capitalism you spend it in both Canada and China.
But you couldn’t spend it in the USSR.
Weird sort of capitalism that huh?
Planning obviously requires units of account, but these units of account are not capital, they do not circulate. Bureaucrats allocate resources and determine prices in advance and from above, not according to the law of value, not according to the spontaneous operation of the market.

You’re a funny bloke, don’t know about sectarians,
you called yourself all these things – apostate, sock, puppet, drone, dogmatist – I didn’t. Maybe that’s what you really feel about yourself, and in the heat of discussion your subordinated feelings are coming to the surface. No problem. I honestly don’t mind.
Maybe you’ve got some issues you need to address, but please don’t accuse me of what you did.

And of course what is inescapable is that the “theory” of state capitalism is nothing of the kind. In fact there are numerous rival theories – including now, elaborated here for the first time – the RBH theory. When are you writing your book?

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skidmarx

November 14, 2009 at 11:54 am

billj – just because you don’t understand it, and can’t be bothered to understand it, doesn’t mean it’s not a coherent theory. Just because you use partial quotation to create imaginary differences between the proponents of Cliff’s theory doesn’t make those differences real.Incidentally an informed discussion of the different state cap theories was going on here:

obituary of chris harman

grahamb – . Don’t you think there have been pre-capitalist states that have been squeezed or bankrupted by the pressures of war?
Yes,but the process was not central to the dynamic of production until capitalism spread as a world system. As Harman says in “From Workers State to State Capitalism”:
As industrial capitalism developed…it threatened the position of all existing ruling classes. The only way that existing ruling classes could resist this subjection was to change radically their own mode of exploitation….All pre-capitalist societies are characterised by one feature…as Marx put it.”the walls of the lord’s stomach determine the exploitation of the serf”…They can only protect themselves …if they too subordinate everything else to the accumulation of means of production in order to accumulate other means of production…In 1929 the Stalinist ruling stratum in Russia faced the same dilemma: follow the logic ofcapitalism and acccumulate in order to further accumulate or face subjection to international capitalism.[pp49-51]
Which I think answers this question:
For the USSR to be state capitalist you’d have to show how external military competition qualitatively changed the internal economy to ‘capitalist’.
though not in depth.

This is why he would always tag on to his theory the foreign trade between Eastern Europe and the West to try and ‘introduce’ an element of real economic competition between capitals.
I think the quote from Harman’s “Inconsistencies” above shows that this is incorrect.

Does ‘capital accumulation’ define it as capitalist? The shift to capital accumualtion and the concentration on means of production rather than consumption are some of the defining characteristics.

It’s the accumulation of capital as money – i.e. profits – that ultimately matters.
That’s your view.

Were there profits in the USSR?
In some case (particularly in the criminal underworld), but they aren’t the defining characteristic of the system.

Mark VS – I think you are wrong about the theory being a makeshift, and if you rely on billj for your understanding of it I think you are currently going to come up short. I don’t know what the significance of Whites forging rubles but it not occuring in WWII is.

I would also recommend the Pete Binns article in Workers State to State Cap in which he shows how Marx and Engels rejected the idea that private property and capitalism were identical.

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Mark Victorystooge

November 14, 2009 at 12:27 pm

The Soviet Union during WW2 was also unusual among the major warring powers in not calling on people to buy “victory bonds” or subscribe to war loans. The Czech-born historian Zbynek Zeman attributed this to the ruble being an accounting unit rather than a “means of influencing the (economic) game”. Burger doesn’t explain why the ruble wasn’t forged, while he goes into some detail about the hopes that forging the pound and later the dollar would weaken the economies targeted. He also mentions that his team were threatened with death unless they successfully forged NKVD passes. That stress was laid on faking Soviet security police IDs but not on faking Soviet money suggests that currency forgery was not considered an effective way to undermine the USSR’s economy.

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Mark Victorystooge

November 14, 2009 at 12:51 pm

I am not an economic expert and this is speculation, but perhaps the ruble wasn’t targeted because the Soviet economy was considered sui generis and outside normal capitalist relations. When the Germans retreated from occupied Soviet territory, they did their best to remove or destroy crops and industrial equipment. That they did all this physical destruction but did not attack the ruble suggests they thought the Soviet economy operated differently from the systems of Britain or the USA.

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skidmarx

November 14, 2009 at 2:36 pm

Mark VS – maybe they didn’t issue bonds because they’d already taken everything there was to give.
Maybe the rouble wasn’t targeted because it wasn’t an international currency, and because the Russian economy was far less dependent on excnage. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t a form of capitalism.

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bill j

November 14, 2009 at 2:37 pm

The problem is that the so called theory of state capitalism is several rival theories.

So take Cliff’s original theory – the one that all state caps (except RBH) claim to adhere to – that theory has several key propositions, it says;

There was no law of value inside the USSR.
Prices were not a guide to production inside it.
There was no labour market.
There could be no over accumulation of capital.
It was capitalist as a result of its military competition with the west.

In contrast Harman says;

There was the law of value inside the USSR
Prices therefore were a guide to production inside it.
There was a labour market.
It collapsed because of the over accumulation of capital.
It was internally capitalist because of external military competition. (Although he uniquely adds that military production is non-capitalist non-commodity production, so why the USSR was the exception to this is not explained.)

These are two diametrically opposed theories that refute each other. Does that matter to the adherents of state capitalism? Not a bit.
All they care about is the name.

Opponents of state capitalism are then berated, we do not understand the theory, we are sectarian, we call people names even though we don’t, and so on.

We simply answer which theory of state capitalism do you want us to understand?

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skidmarx

November 14, 2009 at 2:37 pm

Sorry, that should be “exchange”.

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bill j

November 14, 2009 at 2:41 pm

“Maybe the rouble wasn’t targeted because it wasn’t an international currency, and because the Russian economy was far less dependent on excnage. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t a form of capitalism.”

Or maybe it does. Capitalist is a specific mode of production for Marxists. It means the production of things for the market, for sale. If production is not for the market then it is not capitalist production.
In the USSR after the implementation of the five year plans in 1928 capitalist production was destroyed by state planning.
If you’re really interested the EH Carr wrote a monumental work on it “The Foundations of the Planned Economy” in 5 volumes.

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skidmarx

November 14, 2009 at 3:06 pm

bill j – I’ll try to keep this as polite as possible, but you do keep banging your head against a wall of your own making.Cliff as you know says that if you view the USSR in isolation the theory of value appears not to operate, acknowledge the existence of the world and it does.Harman in Workers State To State Cap” says:
As capitalism develops,the direct role of the market in relating different processes of production tends to diminish…”When capitalists work for defence i.e. for the government treasury,it is obviously no more ‘pure’ capitalism,but a special form of national economy…the capitlaist working for defence does not ‘work’ for the market at all.”[Section in quotes Lenin,quoted by Cliff,cited by Harman] But the Marxian law of value still operates – in so far as the government ,responding to various pressures upon itself,consciously attempts to relate the price it pays for arms to the cost of goods produced elsewhere…Since 1929 the Russian economy has been subordinated to needs arising out of its interaction with the capitalist West.This has not in the main taken the form of direct market competition.[He notes here that trade between the USSR and the West accounted for only 1% of Russian production in 1971, but says it has been important at certain stages,such as the drop in agricultural prices in the 30s , and in other Stalinist states like Czechoslovakia and Cuba].But there has been a mediating mechanism that has played a similar role to that of direct market competition: competition through arms production.

So when you say:
These are two diametrically opposed theories that refute each other
I think you are talking nonsense, but it is not a surprise that you can’t understand the theory if you think it is multiple different ones. I’d like you to understand Cliff’s theory, shared by Harman, but you won’t be able to do that unless you stop falsely polarising the two.Maybe try reading what they wrote to understand what they say rather than picking up out of context quotes and relating a distorted account of their meaning. I reject you list of what Harman and Cliff say, there is enough original material in this comment and in the previous ones on this thread for you to get to grips with the why, you only have yourself to blame if you can’t.

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skidmarx

November 14, 2009 at 3:21 pm

Pete Binns says
We look to Russia’s accumulation for accumulation’s sake,based upon competition with Wesetern capitalism,as the key to explaining changes in its internal structure.
Marx himself argued in just the same way when he analyses the economy of the plantation slave states in 1850s America…
“…we now not only call the plantation owners in America capitalists, but… they are capitalists”…
Marx’s methodolgy is very clear here. Looked at on therie own the slave states lack an essential aspect of capitalism…External competition enforces a capitalist dynamic…
Exactly the same methodolgy reveals the capitalist nature of the bureaucracy in Russia. Of course Russian workers are not slaves;they are paid in roubles; they have some choice over which enterprise to work in …Nonetheless if ‘Russia Inc.’ is in essence one single enterprise… the plantation owner and the Russian bureaucracy are in comparable positions…the Russian bureaucracy is forced to exploit …modernise…accumulate, and it is forced to do these things solely because ofthe competitive pressure of the world.pp90-91

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bill j

November 15, 2009 at 11:05 am

Whether you’re polite or not is up to you. But it is notable that you don’t seem concerned that Harman and Cliff have a different analysis of the USSR, something which after all, even RBH has conceded. If you take the pamphlet you refer to “Russian From workers state to state capitalism” it contains both theories.
Harman’s says; “There is a tendency for people (which people? – bj) to identify capitalism with one or other of its superficial characteristics, the stock exchange, periodic economic crisis, unemployment ‘thirst for profits’ or the ‘final money form of capital.” p52 Interesting that Harman thereby concedes that none of these phenomena are found in the USSR. But more to the point, Mandel, his foremost opponent did not identify capitalism with any of these things – but with generalised commodity production. Marx’s own definition on line 1 of Capital.
It is a good example of Harman’s method – argue against a fictional opponent of your own creation. Harman continues; “Marx on the other hand was concerned not with these external aspects, but with the underlying dynamic of capitalist that produced these. This he located in two basic features; 1. That each individual act of labour is related to each other, not by conscious planning, but by an unplanned and anarchic comparison of the products of labour. So Harman states that capitalism is characterised by the absence of “conscious” planning, so for the USSR to be capitalist it too must be characterised by the absence of “conscious” planning. And must have an “anarchic comparison” of the products of labour.”
Harman continues that this means that products are compared according to their “costs of production”, regulated by the social labour time contained in them, there are many producers, their relations are unplanned and anarchic.

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bill j

November 15, 2009 at 11:06 am

His second point is that there is “the separation of the producers from the means of production. Workers can only survive by selling their own ability to work (their labour power) to those who own the means of production.” In other words there is a labour market and the capitalists (or the bureaucracy if you prefer) own the means of production. Was either of these two definitions true in the USSR?
Cliff didn’t think so, which is why he polemicised directly against them in his 1948 book. What the USSR plan “anarchic” and “unconscious”. Obviously it was not. It was bureaucratic and cack handed, but it was conscious, it allocated resources according to the pre-set objectives of the bureaucracy and it produced nearly all of what it had planned. It was not anarchic. What’s more the bureaucracy did not “own” the means of production, they controlled them. So according to Harman’s own definition of capitalism, not Marx’s, but his very own creation, the USSR is not capitalist.
As indeed Peter Binns confirms a few pages further in, where he says; “From the late 1920s a centralised plan for the economy has been imposed by the leaders on the workers and peasants, who have had no rights even to object to what has been decided.” p75 So the USSR has a central plan. It is not anarchic or unconscious. He continues; “Overwhelming it is a case that within the Russian economy there is a centralised administration of production. Individual productive units have rarely been autonomous or in competition with each other.” p85

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bill j

November 15, 2009 at 11:06 am

So resources are not allocated according to their costs of production based on the socially necessary labour time required for their production. The law of value does not operate. He says; “The bureaucracy’s monopoly (of foreign trade) enabled it to seal off Russia from price competition”. p88 He makes much of the fact that the bureaucracy subordinated consumption to the accumulation of means of production and claims that this proves it is capitalist. But the plan of the Left Opposition of Trotsky and Preohbrahzensky also subordinated consumption to the accumulation of means of production. If this were true then the victory of the Left Opposition would also have resulted in the restoration of capitalism!!
Binns compares the USSR to the slave producers of the Southern USA C19 noting that “Marx says that the production of goods on the market is the production of use values, not exchange values. ‘To become a commodity a product must be transferred to another, to whom it will serve as a use value, by means of exchange.’ Therefore it is argued that Russian cannot be capitalist.” p92 Although the slave producers of Southern USA did not exploit as working class separated from the means of production, the working class were actually part of the means of production in this case, they nonetheless produced commodities for exchange on a market, so they were capitalists. And he argues that in the USSR military competition played this role. He says; “Production for the military needs of the state is not qualitatively different from this (production of giant corporations for a market- bj) Although the goods involved are never going to be exchanged on a competitive market (in Britain only 10% of arms are sold to anyone but the British government) those who plan production are still compelled to impose the laws of capitalism on it.” p93 So although arms production is not exchanged, so although the USSR did not fulfil Marx’s definition of commodity production, so although according to Pete Binns own definition written 1 page earlier, this is not commodity production, and therefore not captialist production, nonetheless – military competition still imposes the laws of capitalism on it!!! We might ask how? If this is non-commodity production, if this is the production of use values not exchange values,. then the economic competitive struggle does not exist and this is a non-capitalist economy. Pete Binns has in fact produced a polemic against planning. So it is clear, what the state capitalists object to, is not that we do not understand their “theory” or multiplicity of “theories” but that we do understand it. We know it is not a scientific analysis of the USSR but a collection of prejudices which are internally incoherent, mutually contradictory, and not supported by the empirical evidence. What a load of old cobblers.

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Graham B

November 15, 2009 at 11:11 am

skidmarx, you still haven’t answered the central question:

For the USSR to be state capitalist you’d have to show how external military competition qualitatively changed the internal economy to ‘capitalist’.

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Graham B

November 15, 2009 at 11:43 am

From “The Law of Value and the USSR”, Derek Howl, ISJ 49 Winter 1990:

“For 60 years these market mechanisms [commodity exchange] have not operated inside the USSR. Prices have not been based on the labour value of goods, nor have they moved with supply and demand. Money has not determined the allocation of resources between enterprises (although it is a mechanism whereby consumer goods are allocated between individuals). Profit, in the abscence of genuine prices, have been an artificial construct without the social content it has in the West. The relationship between different producers is not just through exchange of their products. The existence of central administration, even if not real planning, means that that labour has a relationship to total social labour prior to the exchange of the products of labour. The allocation of workers to work, the ratio by which goods exchange, the profit to be made – none of these are goverened by market signals. Instead they are the result of decisions by bureaucrats. How then can the USSR be capitalist?”

Quite. And this, of course, is a picture of the dynamics of the USSR economy WITH external military competition. Try to square this circle.

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skidmarx

November 15, 2009 at 4:12 pm

you don’t seem concerned that Harman and Cliff have a different analysis of the USSR, something which after all, even RBH has conceded.
No he didn’t , he said :
Perhaps I disagree with Harman – so what? Cliff’s wasn’t the only theory of state capitalism
Which would appear to suggest that he thinks Harman and Cliff agree.As he is presumably still alive you could ask him.

it contains both theories
Or perhaps the two are one. It’s astonishing that noone in the SWP had noticed that they were multiply confused until you pointed it out.

What a load of old cobblers.
“Let the cobbler stick to his last” as Marx quotes somewhere in Capital Vol I, though being classicly educated he did it in Latin.

Graham B – skidmarx, you still haven’t answered the central question
Sorry I thought my commment above:
http://liammacuaid.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/chris-harman-a-life-in-the-heart-of-the-struggle/#comment-17400
did so,if you need to see more detail,borrow bill j’s copy of Workers State to State Capitalism, if you’re still not satisfied I’ll try and see if I can be more explicacious.

Try to square this circle
Infinitely sided regular polygons should do the job. How do you get over the contradiction of workers states without the workers in power, societies that bound forward from capitalism and then slip back without a social revolution, such are the fallacies of Mandel I would have pointed out to bill j earlier?

the bureaucracy did not “own” the means of production, they controlled them.
And the practical difference is…?

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bill j

November 15, 2009 at 4:39 pm

The practical difference is its not capitalist.
Did the SWP notice the difference between the two theories? Actually the did. There was a long debate about the existence or not of a labour market in the 1970s.
The absence of a labour market, something that Cliff pointed out, would have violated Harman’s definition of capitalism.
Harman had a good solution though, he simply said there was a labour market. Neat!

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skidmarx

November 16, 2009 at 12:29 pm

Because the bureaucracy didn’t have its name on the title deeds. You seem to mistake form for content.

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