State Capitalism and World Revolution

By C.L.R. James, Raya Dunayevskaya, Grace Lee Boggs

PM Press

Copyright © 2013 PM Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60486-092-4

Contents

A Note to the 2013 edition by Paul Buhle,
Fully and Absolutely Assured (C.L.R. James’ Foreword to the 1986 Edition),
Introduction to the Fourth Edition (1986) by Paul Buhle,
Preface to the Third Edition (1968) by Martin Glaberman,
Author’s Preface to the Second Edition (1956),
Authors’ Introduction to the First Edition,
I. What Is Stalinism?,
II. The Stalinists and the Theory of State Capitalism,
III. Lenin and State Capitalism,
IV. Rearming the Party of World Revolution,
V. The Class Struggle,
VI. The Theory of the Party,
VII. Methodology,
VIII. Leninism and the Transitional Regime,
IX. Yugoslavia,
X. Some Political Conclusions,
XI. Philosophy and State Capitalism,
Glossary,

CHAPTER 1

What Is Stalinism?

Trotsky’s Analysis

The first, the basic, the indispensable task of a revolutionary international is to define correctly the working class organization it proposes to overthrow. In this task the failure of orthodox Trotskyism is complete.

The Transitional Program asserts: “The definite passing over of the Comintern to the side of the bourgeois order.”

Later the same document says: “The Third International has taken to the road of reformism … The Comintern’s policy … demonstrates that the Comintern is likewise incapable of learning anything further or of changing.”

In the December 1938 issue of the New International we read why: “Ten years ago it was predicted that the theory of socialism in one country must inevitably lead to the growth of nationalist tendencies in the sections of the Comintern. This prediction has become an obvious fact. … Today we can predict with assurance the inception of a new stage. The growth of imperialist antagonisms, the obvious proximity of the war danger and the equally obvious isolation of the USSR must unavoidably strengthen the centrifugal nationalist tendencies within the Comintern. Each one of its sections will begin to evolve a patriotic policy on its own account. Stalin has reconciled the communist parties of imperialist democracies with their national bourgeoisies.” (Emphasis in original).

In the last pages of The Draft Program of the Comintern can be seen the prediction that Stalin’s theory of socialism in one country would lead the Comintern to disintegration into national sections, like the Social-Democracy on August 4th, 1914.

This is the theory from 1929 to 1938, absolutely clear and absolutely wrong.

It is precisely this question, this and no other which, since the end of World War II, has crippled the French party. To this day the International does not know whether the Chinese Stalinists are enemies of the Chinese bourgeoisie or collaborators with it.

At the World Congress in 1948 those in Europe who held our views moved that the quoted sections be deleted from the Transitional Program. The motion was voted down.

Trotsky, basing himself on the experience of 1914–1918, believed that there were two fundamental political currents in the world working class movement. One was reformism, the Second International, based upon private property, the defense of the national state, enemy of the proletarian revolution. The other was revolutionary, based upon or fighting for state-property, repudiating the national state, advocate and defender of the proletarian revolution. Between them were various brands of centrism.

Upon these premises he saw the bureaucracy in Russia as centrist, and inevitably headed, as all bureaucracies, for the restoration of private property. That is why the Transitional Program says:

The fascist, counter-revolutionary elements, growing uninterruptedly express with ever greater consistency, the interests of world imperialism. These candidates for the role of compradors consider, not without reason, that the new ruling layer can insure their positions of privilege only through rejection of nationalization, collectivization and monopoly of foreign trade in the name of the assimilation of “Western civilization,” i.e., capitalism. Between these two poles, there are intermediate, diffused Menshevik-SRliberal tendencies which gravitate toward bourgeois democracy. (48, emphasis added)

And a little later: “From them, i.e., from the right, we can expect ever more determined attempts in the next period to revise the socialist character of the USSR and bring it closer in pattern to ‘Western civilization’ in its fascist form” (49–50).

Again at the World Congress it was moved to delete this from the Program. This was voted down.

Two years after the World Congress, Pablo has come to a decision. When he says that we have to make up our minds to deal with degenerated workers’ states for centuries, he is saying that the bureaucracies in Eastern Europe are organically attached to the state-property forms, that they perform a function in production, and this is a form of economy superior to capitalism. The same applies to the Russian bureaucracy, parent and sponsor of the satellite bureaucracies. This, we have to admit, is Trotskyism, logical and complete. Pablo leaves out only the one thing that Trotsky did not leave out, namely, that if this were so, then Marxism is Utopia.

The Analysis of “Johnson-Forest”

“Johnson-Forest” repudiate all this, theory, practice and methodology. We base our analysis on the theory of state-capitalism. It is commonly believed that this has mainly to do with defeatism or defensism of Russia. That is the least of our concerns.

This is the position of “Johnson-Forest”:

(a) As the Social-Democrats were the labor bureaucracy of monopoly capitalism, the Stalinists are the labor bureaucracy of the period of “vast state-capitalist trusts and syndicates.”

(b) The Stalinists are not class-collaborationists, fools, cowards, idiots, men with “supple spines,” but conscious clear-sighted aspirants for world-power. They are deadly enemies of private property capitalism. They aim to seize the power and take the place of the bourgeoisie. When they support a war or do not support, support the bourgeoisie or do not support, they know exactly what they are doing. The bourgeoisie also knows. In fact everybody, including most workers, knows this, except orthodox Trotskyism.

(c) But the Stalinists are not proletarian revolutionists. They aim to get power by help, direct or indirect, of the Red Army and the protection of Russia and the Russian state. That is the reason why they follow the foreign policy of the Kremlin — it is sheer naked self-interest.

(d) Theirs is a last desperate attempt under the guise of “socialism” and “planned economy” to reorganize the means of production without releasing the proletariat from wage-slavery. Historical viability they have none; for state-ownership multiplies every contradiction of capitalism. Antagonisms of an intensity and scope so far unknown already have Stalinism in their grip. Power merely brings these into the open.

(e) The dilemma of the Fourth International is that it has to recognize that there now exists a labor bureaucracy which is the enemy of private property and national defense and yet is counter-revolutionary. The Fourth International cannot escape this decision: if the destruction of private property and the repudiation of national defense are revolutionary, then Stalinism is revolutionary and there is no historical need for a Fourth International.

(f) These are the questions with which the theory of state-capitalism deals. The theory is not primarily concerned with defensism or defeatism in Russia, about which we can do little. We are primarily concerned here with what the refusal to accept this theory does to the party, its solidarity, its capacity to fight its enemies, its capacity to preserve itself and to grow, in brief, to prepare the liquidation of Stalinism.

CHAPTER 2

The Stalinists and the Theory of State Capitalism

It is very easy to quote from In Defense of Marxism how the Mensheviks stuck to the concrete while Lenin began with dialectical materialism. To carry out Leninism in practice, however, is another matter. Strictly speaking, we should begin with philosophy, but we postpone that to the end of this document where it sums up the whole. We shall begin instead with political economy.

It is not because of the policy of the Fourth International that the world revolution has suffered such defeats. Stalinism is the enemy. We have to pose the question in opposition to Stalinism.

For many years now the whole gigantic theoretical machinery of Stalinism has had one main theoretical enemy. This enemy, it will surprise most members of the Fourth International to learn, is the theory of state-capitalism, whether applied to Russia or countries abroad. We have to add that the Fourth International either does not know or does not care about what the Stalinists are doing in this field. As we shall see, that is not at all accidental but it makes our task particularly difficult. Before we discuss, we have to state the facts and conditions of discussion.

Marx removed political economy from intellectual theorizing and made it a weapon of the class struggle. He placed it in the very heart of the capitalist system, in the process of production itself. For him the fundamental antagonism of society was the contradiction between the development of the productive forces and the social relations of production. Inasmuch as this conception is what the Stalinists are using all the power of the Russian state to destroy, we must spend some time here.

In the United States, since 1935, the working class in the CIO is mobilized to fight any increase in the productivity of labor. Speed-up does not mean necessarily work beyond physical or mental endurance. The proletariat as a class is opposed to increase of productivity of labor in any form, whether it is speed-up of the line or the machine, or the further division of labor. It is convinced in the very marrow of its being that any such increase is obtained only at the expense of its own most vital material and spiritual interests. But the capitalist class is equally convinced that the desire of the workers to have the decisive word on production standards is opposed to the vital interests of the capitalist system which they represent. Both sides are absolutely correct upon the basis of capitalist production. The clash is final and absolute.

Marx established that as long as the proletariat did not rule production, production knew and could know no other method of progress but the increase of constant capital, machinery, mechanization, at the expense of variable, living labor. The only revolution which could save society was the proletarian revolution in the process of production.

Further he showed that this system not only created the violent clash in social relations. Inevitably the rate of profit would fall and (theoretically) at a certain stage the economy would not be able to expand any further because it would lack sufficient surplus value.

In his strictly logical theory Marx expressly excluded any idea that the system would collapse because goods could not be sold. In his analysis of collapse he made it absolutely clear that the capitalist could sell all the goods he produced. This would not alter the conditions of the workers in the factory. It is possible to keep silent about this, but to deny it — that is impossible. The Stalinists do not go so far. All Marx’s theories of crisis, overproduction, commercial crisis, etc., to which he paid careful attention, all are based on this foundation of relations in production.

All his opponents, however differentiated among themselves, are united in this, that they see the solution of the crisis of capitalism in every conceivable place except the reorganization of the productive process by labor itself. From Section 1, Chapter 1, Vol. 1 of Capital, this is precisely what Marx opposed. The very categories he used, and the content he gave to them as categories of exploitation, were derived from his analysis of the mode of labor, and without it he could not have succeeded in defeating all his opponents.

It is obvious, therefore, that the Marxian theory from its very elements is an invincible weapon against the capitalist class or a usurping bureaucracy, whether the property is private property or state-property. It is equally obvious that a bureaucracy, caught in the throes of economic crisis and in the name of Marxism exploiting millions of workers, has a deadly enemy in this theory. If the Marxian categories apply to Russia, then it is a simple matter to say that Russia is a form of state-capitalism. The Marxist categories therefore become for the Stalinist bureaucracy the concrete theoretical enemy.

The Stalinists Revise Marx’s Capital

In 1943 Leontiev published his celebrated Political Economy in the Soviet Union. There was a crisis in political economy in the Soviet Union. He tells us that for years the teaching of political economy had stopped entirely. The reason will astonish most of the readers of this document. The Soviet youth studying Capital found themselves unable to see how the categories, money, wages, etc., as described in Capital differed from the categories as they appeared in the Russian reality. (No such doubts trouble orthodox Trotskyists.) Leontiev described the measures adopted. Economists were henceforth to teach:

(a) that these categories existed before capitalism, hence are not integral to capitalism;

(b) that they meant something different in each period and hence mean something different in Russia.

Thus Marx’s analysis of the categories of capitalism, the foundation of Marxism, received the first blow. But the Stalinist theoreticians had something positive to substitute.

Above all, they said, these categories have always been part and parcel of private property capitalism and exploitation of man by man. There is no private property in Russia, hence no exploitation of man by man, hence these categories are not the same.

But this ridiculous sophistry could not shake Capital.

Two years later the Stalinists had to drop the pretense that only the “teaching” of political economy was being changed. Nothing short of a break with the dialectic structure of Capital would do. They decided to reorganize Capital thoroughly, beginning with page 1 of Chapter 1 of Volume 1. Marx had begun the analysis of capitalism with the analysis of the commodity. The Stalinists repudiated his method, stating that to “preserve unchanged the same sequence” would be “ludicrous and harmful pedantry.” The new theory was explained for English readers in Marx’s Capital: An Aid to the Study of Political Economy by Leontiev, 1946.

The Stalinists have drowned Marx’s specific categories of capitalist exploitation. They have to, because they cannot differentiate them from the economic system in Russia. They know who the enemy is. In his article Leontiev thundered against the “Trotskyite-Bukharinist wreckers”:

It is known that enemies of socialism of various brands — bourgeois economist wreckers, restorers of capitalism from the camp of the Trotskyite-Bukharinist agency of fascism — have tried to extend to socialist economy the laws of capitalist economy. To suit their wrecking counterrevolutionary purposes they have slanderously perverted the character of the socialist relations that have been introduced among us, falsifying them, repainting them in the colors of capitalist relations.

We hope no one believes that the Stalinists go through all this merely for “Trotskyite-Bukharinist-fascists.” To anyone who knows them and reads Leontiev’s article, it is perfectly obvious that there is inside Russia itself a tendency to call Russia state-capitalism and the Stalinists can only fight it by mutilating Capital. They must attempt in theory as well as in practice to destroy every manifestation of the developing revolution in Russia. The theory of state-capitalism is the theoretical foundation for this revolution.

The Stalinists and the Falling Rate of Profit

Orthodox Trotskyism lives peaceably while all this goes on. It repeats: State-property, therefore no laws of capitalism. The whole meaning of the present discussion is that those days are over.

But what about overproduction, asks orthodox Trotskyism? There can be no overproduction in Russia, hence the system is superior, etc., etc. The Stalinists are taking care of that too. The method is to destroy the theory of the falling rate of profit and substitute the theory of the market, under-consumptionism. If state-property, and not the total reorganization of labor, is the solution to the contradiction of capitalism, then the proletariat has only to work hard (and very hard) until in the fullness of time, there is enough for all.

In 1943, Leontiev wrote in his essay a moderate paragraph which looked innocent but was part of the assault on Capital and the Russian proletariat: “… the law of value under capitalism operates through the law of the average rate of profit, whereas in the socialist system of national economy the law of the average rate of profit has lost its significance.”

Thus, in place of the law in the decline in the rate of profit, i.e., the insoluble contradiction of capitalism due to value production, the Stalinists have substituted the average rate of profit or the distribution of the total profits among the capitalists. The average rate of profit is singled out as the crucial feature of Volume III of Capital.

Prior to World War I, the debates in the Marxist movement revolved around Volume II of Capital. The theory of accumulation was urgent only insofar as it concerned whether imperialist expansion could solve the contradictions of capitalism. By World War II this was no longer the question. Not only had the contradictions of capitalism not been solved by imperialist expansion; there was a crisis in productivity on a world scale. The debate of necessity has shifted from Volume II (expanded reproduction) to Volume III (decline in the rate of profit).

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