Tony Cliff's State Capitalism in Russia

[IsItJustMe]

I'm working my way, slowly but thoroughly, through this book. Most people here may not be able to comment very much on the book because they don't know it, nor the context in which it was written, etc. But I believe a couple of people here are familiar with it. It is available online here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1955/statecap/index.htm).

I was expecting the book to be challenging, but I was disappointed. I thought Cliff undermined more or less everything he was saying when he said:

Everyone knows that those who have the control of capital in their hands, those who are the extreme personification of capital, do not deny themselves the pleasures of this world, but the significance of their spending is much smaller quantitatively and different qualitatively than that of accumulation, and is of no basic historical importance.

He seems to be saying here that the Russian bureaucrats who he sees as a bourgeoisie are ESPECIALLY bourgeois because their actual consumption is "of no basic historical importance."

That is that they are especially good at exploiting because they don't actually exploit, at least in any historically important way.

His theme is that they are fulfilling the historical tasks of the bourgeoisie, namely the creation of capital and the socialization of labor, and that this makes them a bourgeoisie despite that they are not exploiters.

He seems to be saying that a socialist country couldn't accumulate capital, or that socialism means only a certain maximum rate of accumulation of capital, despite the obvious need for the Soviet Union to develop in its early years.

And, of course, in all of this, he dramatically downplays the threat of foreign invasion which actually drove much of Soviet policy in that era.

Comments?

[Gamera]

Stalin, for all his murderous pathology, was by all accounts a very spartan man, and had no luxuries. He stayed in Moscow during the Nazi attack and seemed preternaturally fearless.

The Bolsheviks took a feudal, mediaeval economy and built it into a super power in about 50 years, a remarkable feat. I'm not downplaying the butchery that was sometime invovled. But then our nation does downplay the sadism and murder that 200 years of slavery involved in building our nation's economy.

My point is the mythology of the Right wants to have it both ways. They claim the Soviet union was world threat, but they claim that its economic policies were a vast failure. Which is it? The fact is the Bolsheviks created modern insitutions in Russia -- schools, hospitals, courts -- that lead to a modern nation. They did so at a terrible cost. So did we with our history of slavery.

I really don't want to listen to conservative ideologues spout market mumbo jumbo about the Soviet Union without acknowleging the crimes of the Southern slaveowners in buidling our infrastructure.

On the whole, Stalin's crimes pale in comparison to the murders, rape and cultural genocide that constituted antebellum southern society.

[Loren Pechtel]

I have not read the book but I think what he's saying is that the amount of personal spending in comparison to the total amount of money they control is minor.

[RED DAVE]

I have not read the book but I think what he's saying is that the amount of personal spending in comparison to the total amount of money they control is minor.That is correct.

This is a remarkable book. It first clarified the concept of state capitalism. It became a mainstay of the Left, replacing previous concepts of Russian as a degenerated workers state (Trotsky) and bureaucratic collectivism (Schachtman).

RED DAVE

[IsItJustMe]

I have not read the book but I think what he's saying is that the amount of personal spending in comparison to the total amount of money they control is minor.

Well, obviously. That's what the quoted text says. But my purpose in quoting the text was to suggest very strongly that it undercut the rest of the book. Since you haven't read the rest of the book, I doubt you really have an opinion on that.

I think it may be very hard to get a meaningful response to the OP here from people who haven't read the book, or at least don't have some background in the various critiques of the Soviet Union which various Trotskyists have made over the years.

[IsItJustMe]

The Bolsheviks took a feudal, mediaeval economy and built it into a super power in about 50 years, a remarkable feat. I'm not downplaying the butchery that was sometime invovled. But then our nation does downplay the sadism and murder that 200 years of slavery involved in building our nation's economy.

My point is the mythology of the Right wants to have it both ways. They claim the Soviet union was world threat, but they claim that its economic policies were a vast failure. Which is it? The fact is the Bolsheviks created modern insitutions in Russia -- schools, hospitals, courts -- that lead to a modern nation. They did so at a terrible cost. So did we with our history of slavery.

Well, I agree with much of what you said, but here is the thing. We are talking now about Tony Cliff, a Palestinian and British Trotskyist. The Trotskyists have provided a great deal of fuel for the right, but the Cliffites, at least, are not members of the right themselves.

And Tony Cliff would concede at least part of what you have said in terms of construction. His point is that the very fact of the emphasis on accumulation over consumption is the proof that the bureaucracy had become a class of capitalists, and this despite that their actual consumption was "of no historical importance."

[IsItJustMe]

This is a remarkable book. It first clarified the concept of state capitalism. It became a mainstay of the Left, replacing previous concepts of Russian as a degenerated workers state (Trotsky) and bureaucratic collectivism (Schachtman).

RED DAVE

Well, I wouldn't say it altogether REPLACED them. There are certainly still Trotskyists who hold to those older positions.

But, now, to the meat of the matter: The defining characteristic of an exploiting class is that it exploits... That is to say that it appropriates and consumes surplus value produced by another class. If Cliff is forced to concede in his book that whatever consumption of surplus value the bureaucracy undertook was "of no historical importance" surely it follows that the bureaucracy was not an exploiting class in any historically important sense, no?

[RED DAVE]

The Trotskyists have provided a great deal of fuel for the right, but the Cliffites, at least, are not members of the right themselves.This is a neocon, or Stalinist, fantasy. The fact is that Trotskyists, of one stripe or another, including Cliff, have struggled to come up with a meaningful characterization of Stalinism. If the neocons, some of whom may have flirted with the Left in their youth, borrow and pervert some Trotskyist ideas, that's not the fault of the Trots.

RED DAVE

[Hooboy !!]

I have not read the book but I think what he's saying is that the amount of personal spending in comparison to the total amount of money they control is minor.That is correct.
I haven't read it yet either. I thought this was interesting though.

So, are you saying that it is OK to exploit the workers, as long as it isn't historically significant? Is this some kind of apologia for bureaucratic corruption in the former Soviet Union?

Pardon me if I missed hte point here.

[RED DAVE]

That is correct.
I haven't read it yet either. I thought this was interesting though.

So, are you saying that it is OK to exploit the workers, as long as it isn't historically significant? Is this some kind of apologia for bureaucratic corruption in the former Soviet Union?

Pardon me if I missed hte point here.You missed the point, as usual.

The point, which is raised by Cliff's book, and correctly indentified by Loren, is that the consumption aspect of the rule of the stalinist bureaucratic class was trivial compared to the control aspect.

RED DAVE

[IsItJustMe]

This is a neocon, or Stalinist, fantasy.

I don't think so, really. I remember in high school English class we read Animal Farm. During the discussion, the teacher made it clear to the class that this was an indictment of socialism. I raised my hand to point out that Orwell himself was a socialist, only not a Stalinist, and that HE certainly didn't see things that way. The teacher said, "Well, so you think a different kind of socialism still could work" and moved on without acknowledging what I actually was saying, namely that ORWELL was a socialist.

Fromme's afterward to Orwell's 1984 makes a point quite similar to mine, namely that the book is invariably read as a critique limited to Stalinist society, whereas the danger of a 1984 type society in Western capitalism was ignored.

The fact is that Trotskyists, of one stripe or another, including Cliff, have struggled to come up with a meaningful characterization of Stalinism. If the neocons, some of whom may have flirted with the Left in their youth, borrow and pervert some Trotskyist ideas, that's not the fault of the Trots.

Well, I agree, certainly, that if what Orwell wrote in Animal Farm was an accurate portrayal of life in the Soviet Union, he can hardly be blamed for writing it, simply because it would be picked up and abused by people on the right.

However, I'm not sure your statement quite covers the case of Christopher Hitchins, let's say, who was an important Trotskyist for very many years before joining the neocons.

If Soviet allegations of an alliance between the Trotskyists and the Germans in Spain were proven, that would also fall outside of that rubric.

[RED DAVE]

From RED DAVE
This [Trotskyists have provided a great deal of fuel for the right] is a neocon, or Stalinist, fantasy.From IsItJustMe:
I don't think so, really. I remember in high school English class we read Animal Farm. During the discussion, the teacher made it clear to the class that this was an indictment of socialism. I raised my hand to point out that Orwell himself was a socialist, only not a Stalinist, and that HE certainly didn't see things that way. The teacher said, "Well, so you think a different kind of socialism still could work" and moved on without acknowledging what I actually was saying, namely that ORWELL was a socialist.Okay. However, the power of Orwell's indictment has long survived the fall of "Communism" and is now routinely used against both the US and British establishments, especially with regard to language. Orwell is a very unreliable spokesperson for the Right, even given his political course in the post-WWII period prior to his death.

From IsItJustMe:
Fromme's afterward to Orwell's 1984 makes a point quite similar to mine, namely that the book is invariably read as a critique limited to Stalinist society, whereas the danger of a 1984 type society in Western capitalism was ignored.Again, that's true, but the fact that the book carried Fromme's afterward is indicative. The difference between the two movie versions of 1984 is important. In the earlier version, made during the 50s, the ending was changed to indicate that Winston Smith had not, in fact, been brain washed (to use a term current at the time). However, in the second version, made in the 1980s, the resemblance of the crumbling, war ravaged society to Thatcherite Britian and the Reaganite US is, in my opinion, unmistakable, especially as Stalinism was collapsing in Russia and elsewhere.

From RED DAVE:
The fact is that Trotskyists, of one stripe or another, including Cliff, have struggled to come up with a meaningful characterization of Stalinism. If the neocons, some of whom may have flirted with the Left in their youth, borrow and pervert some Trotskyist ideas, that's not the fault of the Trots.From IsItJustMe:
Well, I agree, certainly, that if what Orwell wrote in Animal Farm was an accurate portrayal of life in the Soviet Union, he can hardly be blamed for writing it, simply because it would be picked up and abused by people on the right.Kewl.

From IsItJustMe:
However, I'm not sure your statement quite covers the case of Christopher Hitchins, let's say, who was an important Trotskyist for very many years before joining the neocons.Several points. Hitchens was never an important Trotskyist. As a Trot of one variety or the other for about 40 years, I think I can say that safely. It was good and refreshing to read his stuff in the 80s and 90s, when there wasn't much else out there, but important, as in an important formulator of Trotskyist doctrine of an important communicatgor of Trotskyist ideas, no.

From IsItJustMe:
If Soviet allegations of an alliance between the Trotskyists and the Germans in Spain were proven, that would also fall outside of that rubric.C'mon, dude. Let's not go there. Those Stalinist fantasies were buried fifty years ago, along with the charge that Trotsky had collaborated with hitler.

RED DAVE

[Hooboy !!]

The point, which is raised by Cliff's book, and correctly indentified by Loren, is that the consumption aspect of the rule of the stalinist bureaucratic class was trivial compared to the control aspect.
The harm that can be caused by central control of the economy is directly proportionate to the level of corruption in those who hold the control. How is personal consumption not indicative of corruption and therefore of potential harm?

[IsItJustMe]

Well, perhaps we should get back to the central point, namely Cliff's contention that the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union constituted an exploiting class because it fulfilled the historical functions of the bourgeoisie, viz the accumulation of means of production and the socialization of labor.

I have said before that in my view an exploiting class must exploit, and that therefore the fact that, as Cliff concedes, the bureaucracy did not exploit to any historically important extent decides the question.

But let's look at this question of historical tasks for a minute. The accumulation of capital, increase in the means of production, are historical task of the bourgeoisie. That is certainly true. But are they not also historical tasks of socialist society?

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

(emphasis mine)

Of course they are.

Cliff makes a great deal of noise about the rate of accumulation vs. the rate of consumption, and points out that consumption did not increase proportionately to accumulation.

But in conceding that the consumption of surplus value obtained from workers by the bureaucracy was "of no historical importance" he concedes that the difference is not going to feed rich bureaucrats. Where was it going?

Throughout the book, Cliff downplays or ignores the most basic fact of life in the Soviet Union in the 1930s: The inevitability of another foreign invasion.

And this is obviously the reason that production outstripped personal consumption in the 1930s: More and more production had to be expended in the preparation of a modern army, without which victory over the Nazis would have been impossible.

[IsItJustMe]

The point, which is raised by Cliff's book, and correctly indentified by Loren, is that the consumption aspect of the rule of the stalinist bureaucratic class was trivial compared to the control aspect.
The harm that can be caused by central control of the economy is directly proportionate to the level of corruption in those who hold the control. How is personal consumption not indicative of corruption and therefore of potential harm?

Well, why don't you go ahead and start your own thread on that, OK? I started this thread to discuss a book by Tony Cliff that you haven't read.

[Hooboy !!]

Well, why don't you go ahead and start your own thread on that, OK? I started this thread to discuss a book by Tony Cliff that you haven't read.
Like I said. Corruption matters.

You are arguing that the disparity between production and consumption is explained by the military buildup, but wouldn't this be measured in "consumption"?

But in conceding that the consumption of surplus value obtained from workers by the bureaucracy was "of no historical importance" he concedes that the difference is not going to feed rich bureaucrats. Where was it going?
The assertion that it was "of no historical importance" is not really justified and we do not know that the disparity was "not going to feed rich bureaucrats". Though I tend to agree. A more likely explanation would be simply loss or waste.

[RED DAVE]

From IsItJustMe:
Well, perhaps we should get back to the central point, namely Cliff's contention that the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union constituted an exploiting class because it fulfilled the historical functions of the bourgeoisie, viz the accumulation of means of production and the socialization of labor.That's "accumulation of capital," not "accumulation of means of producion." Okay.

From IsItJustMe:
I have said before that in my view an exploiting class must exploit, and that therefore the fact that, as Cliff concedes, the bureaucracy did not exploit to any historically important extent decides the question.And you have just missed the point that Loren made and the central point of Stalinism. The bureaucracy did exploit. What is economic exploitation? It is the undemocratic retention of surplus value. And this is what the bureaucracy did.

From IsItJustMe:
But let's look at this question of historical tasks for a minute. The accumulation of capital, increase in the means of production, are historical task of the bourgeoisie. That is certainly true. But are they not also historical tasks of socialist society?Yes, they are. But the difference is that under socialism, these functions are controlled democratically, whereas under capitalism, state or otherwise, they are controlled autocratically.

From IsItJustMe:
Cliff makes a great deal of noise about the rate of accumulation vs. the rate of consumption, and points out that consumption did not increase proportionately to accumulation.Okay.

From IsItJustMe:
But in conceding that the consumption of surplus value obtained from workers by the bureaucracy was "of no historical importance" he concedes that the difference is not going to feed rich bureaucrats. Where was it going?You missed it again. The proportion of surplus value obtained by the bureaucracy and used for its personal consumption, was of no historical importance. But the seizing of surplus value was done.

Where did it go? Into industrial, agricultural and military development, according to an economic model developed by the bureaucracy, which incorporated and preserved its social power.

From IsItJustMe:
Throughout the book, Cliff downplays or ignores the most basic fact of life in the Soviet Union in the 1930s: The inevitability of another foreign invasion.

And this is obviously the reason that production outstripped personal consumption in the 1930s: More and more production had to be expended in the preparation of a modern army, without which victory over the Nazis would have been impossible.Sigh. This is irrelevant. The point is not the rate of production vs. the rate of consumption. It is quite possible that during the same period the rate of consumption of the bureaucracy suffered as well.

The point is: who made the decisions? The bureaucracy made the decisions.

Socialism without democracy, without economic and political democracy, is impossible. Capitalism, especially state capitalism, but fascism and other authoritarian capitalist forms, can function quite well without either.

RED DAVE

[Preno]

I suppose that to argue that the bureaucracy acted in an especially bourgeois way because most of the surplus value did not go to consumption is kinda dubious. But the relevant question whether and to what extent they exploit, not whether they exploit like the bourgeoise or unlike the bourgeoise. (I am in full agreement with RED DAVE on the most relevant question being: who makes the decisions? "What about the surplus value" is an interesting question from the academic and explanatory point of view, but it is ultimately trumped by this one.)

I haven't read the book, and can hardly claim any degree of expertise on the economic structure of the late USSR, but I think this can be a possible explanation of how exploitation can arise in similar systems without assuming that massive amounts of surplus value were extracted:

Take any person that lies neither on the highest nor on the lowest level in the production chain. His reward (which can be both in terms of money and in terms of social prestige, the latter potentially being a powerful motivator especially in cases where the person is not driven by a desire to consume more, as was the case with the present example) is determined by his superiors, according to how productive he is relative to the input he needs (to be exact, assuming that the superior seeks to maximize his reward, he will reward his subordinates in accordance with how much they contribute to his reward - which can ultimately be assumed to boil down to rewarding relative productivity). This is similar to capitalism, except that there are presumably more levels of management than in capitalism. Thus, what is systematically rewarded is maximization of relative productivity, which can be accomplished by demanding more production, but rewarding the workers less (or in general, giving less money for rewards to his subordinates, who in turn do the same, which ultimately means rewarding the workers less). If it is more profitable for the manager to lower the workers' reward while awarding the remaining money for himself, he will do so, unless there are other, non-economic reasons for him not to. (Btw, this doesn't seem to be surplus value sensu strictu - it is directly determined by the money allocated from above, and only indirectly by the production of the workers.)

Now, the inherent potential for exploitation lies on every level, being diminished only or especially by 'competition' among different candidates for a position. But for individuals high up in the chain, who can delegate tasks to many other people, only a small differential reward is sufficient to introduce large amounts of exploitation into the system. In fact, it may well be that the social prestige/power, or even prospect thereof, is quite sufficient for that at such a high level. Which can be a simple solution to the question of "where did the surplus go" - there was little to no surplus actually expropriated for consumption, but given the economic structure, it was capable of generating much exploitation*.

At precisely what level in the system exploitation originates, that's hard to say in general. In different cases, it might be the fault of the person that allocated too little resources to a particular factory, or it may be the fault of its manager to strive for too much efficiency (at the expense of the workers). But as long as the management is not directly accountable to the people they manage, it is not difficult for exploitation to arise.

How well all this jives with the reality of the Soviet Union or with Marxist theory, I can't say. Perhaps this was all either debunked or vindicated by Tony Cliff. At any rate, it sounds quite sensible to me. [Bah, this post is a tad longer than I wanted it to be.]

* I suppose you could define exploitation in such a way as to focus on what the exploiter gains rather than what the exploited lose. That would be a valid definition, but surely the more valid way of comparing the relative merits of two systems if the two different is the latter, not the former.

[Hooboy !!]

Take any person that lies neither on the highest nor on the lowest level in the production chain. His reward (which can be both in terms of money and in terms of social prestige, the latter potentially being a powerful motivator especially in cases where the person is not driven by a desire to consume more, as was the case with the present example) is determined by his superiors, according to how productive he is relative to the input he needs (to be exact, assuming that the superior seeks to maximize his reward, he will reward his subordinates in accordance with how much they contribute to his reward - which can ultimately be assumed to boil down to rewarding relative productivity).
What you are describing here is a corruption pyramid, unless the only reward is "prestige", which I disagree is a powerful motivator. Replace the word "prestige" with "power" and I might agree with you.

I think the point is that the amount of production that is being skimmed off the top (as it were) is not significant and does not explain the disparity between production and consumption.

This is similar to capitalism, except that there are presumably more levels of management than in capitalism.
Kind of. The primary difference is one is a bribe and the other is a salary. I suppose its all just semantics.

I suppose you could define exploitation in such a way as to focus on what the exploiter gains rather than what the exploited lose. That would be a valid definition, but surely the more valid way of comparing the relative merits of two systems if the two different is the latter, not the former.
"Exploitation" is hard to gauge. Is it measured by how much of the value from their work fails to come back to them, or is it measured by their quality of life?

[IsItJustMe]

Like I said. Corruption matters.

You are arguing that the disparity between production and consumption is explained by the military buildup, but wouldn't this be measured in "consumption"?

If you'd read the book, you would know that it would not, because when Tony Cliff speaks of consumption, he means consumption by private persons and he does not mean military spending and the like.

The assertion that it was "of no historical importance" is not really justified and we do not know that the disparity was "not going to feed rich bureaucrats". Though I tend to agree. A more likely explanation would be simply loss or waste.

Your opinions are as profound and well-informed as always, Hooboy, but in this case they don't have very much to do with the thread.

The question which the thread raises is whether or not there is an inconsistency between two different things that Tony Cliff says, namely that the Soviet bureaucrats were a bourgeoisie and that their extra personal consumption was "of no historical importance."

So, arguing that their personal consumption WAS of historical importance is pretty much neither here nor there.

[IsItJustMe]

But the relevant question whether and to what extent they exploit, not whether they exploit like the bourgeoise or unlike the bourgeoise.

Sure, but if exploit means to consume surplus value produced by others, than the statement "but the significance of their spending is much smaller quantitatively and different qualitatively than that of accumulation, and is of no basic historical importance" clearly indicates that any exploitation taking place is quite minimal, no?

(I am in full agreement with RED DAVE on the most relevant question being: who makes the decisions? "What about the surplus value" is an interesting question from the academic and explanatory point of view, but it is ultimately trumped by this one.)

Well... But how does this become an either/or? As Red Dave said, "Trotskyists, of one stripe or another, including Cliff, have struggled to come up with a meaningful characterization of Stalinism." From a Marxist perspective, the question of who is exploiting whom is necessarily an important part of that question. Not the only part, but an important part.

This is similar to capitalism, except that there are presumably more levels of management than in capitalism. Thus, what is systematically rewarded is maximization of relative productivity, which can be accomplished by demanding more production, but rewarding the workers less (or in general, giving less money for rewards to his subordinates, who in turn do the same, which ultimately means rewarding the workers less). If it is more profitable for the manager to lower the workers' reward while awarding the remaining money for himself, he will do so, unless there are other, non-economic reasons for him not to. (Btw, this doesn't seem to be surplus value sensu strictu - it is directly determined by the money allocated from above, and only indirectly by the production of the workers.)

Now, the inherent potential for exploitation lies on every level, being diminished only or especially by 'competition' among different candidates for a position. But for individuals high up in the chain, who can delegate tasks to many other people, only a small differential reward is sufficient to introduce large amounts of exploitation into the system. In fact, it may well be that the social prestige/power, or even prospect thereof, is quite sufficient for that at such a high level. Which can be a simple solution to the question of "where did the surplus go" - there was little to no surplus actually expropriated for consumption, but given the economic structure, it was capable of generating much exploitation*.

At precisely what level in the system exploitation originates, that's hard to say in general. In different cases, it might be the fault of the person that allocated too little resources to a particular factory, or it may be the fault of its manager to strive for too much efficiency (at the expense of the workers). But as long as the management is not directly accountable to the people they manage, it is not difficult for exploitation to arise.

I don't understand this. If at every level people are paid slightly less than what they produce, then the result is that overall consumption by the workers is less than production by the workers. So there is still extra production, whether it is all taken out at one level or whether it is taken out little by little as things go higher up the chain.

You reach the same problem: Where does it go? There should be then a huge pile of consumer goods, or whatever else it is they are producing, accumulating somewhere... Fields and fields full of merchandise no one has the money to buy.

[IsItJustMe]

From IsItJustMe:
Well, perhaps we should get back to the central point, namely Cliff's contention that the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union constituted an exploiting class because it fulfilled the historical functions of the bourgeoisie, viz the accumulation of means of production and the socialization of labor.That's "accumulation of capital," not "accumulation of means of producion." Okay.

Is there some important difference in this case?

And you have just missed the point that Loren made

:confused:

and the central point of Stalinism. The bureaucracy did exploit. What is economic exploitation? It is the undemocratic retention of surplus value. And this is what the bureaucracy did.

Well, problem number one is to square that statement with this:

Everyone knows that those who have the control of capital in their hands, those who are the extreme personification of capital, do not deny themselves the pleasures of this world, but the significance of their spending is much smaller quantitatively and different qualitatively than that of accumulation, and is of no basic historical importance.

If you like, later, I will delve a little more fully into what investigations Cliff does make of that exploitation, and explain why even the conclusion that minimal exploitation was taking place is not supported by this work.

Yes, they are. But the difference is that under socialism, these functions are controlled democratically, whereas under capitalism, state or otherwise, they are controlled autocratically.

Whether or not that is true, the fact remains that under capitalism, by any reasonable definition of the same, there is an exploiting class, namely the bourgeoisie.

Whether or not lack of democracy is a legitimate criticism of Stalin's USSR, it is certainly not enough to turn Stalin's USSR into a capitalist country.

You cannot have capitalism without a bourgeoisie. The USSR had no bourgeoisie. Thus, whatever the USSR was, it was not capitalism, state or otherwise.

You missed it again. The proportion of surplus value obtained by the bureaucracy and used for its personal consumption, was of no historical importance. But the seizing of surplus value was done.

Where did it go? Into industrial, agricultural and military development, according to an economic model developed by the bureaucracy, which incorporated and preserved its social power.

I don't think this is Cliff's point. Let's see:

In a workers’ state a rise in the productivity of labour is accompanied by an improvement in the conditions of the workers. As Trotsky said in 1928, real wages “must become the main criterion for measuring the success of socialist evolution”. The “criterion of socialist upswing is constant improvement of labour standards”

Thus his argument is much more classically Marxist, much more closely modeled on the Marxist notion of economic exploitation. It says, in effect, that rises in production must bring rises in personal consumption or you have capitalism.

Thus, even if the workers were to democratically choose to spend all their money on tanks (and how the decision is made does seem rather secondary to the fact that it was obviously a necessary decision), it would still be proof of the capitalism of the country according to Cliff.

When you talk about the bureaucracy increasing it's social power, that is all very well, but it is a little hard to believe a Marxist can define classes in terms of "social power." Cliff quotes Marx and Engels on the question of what constitutes a class as follows:

We call classes large groups of people that are distinctive by the place they occupy in a definite historically defined system of social production; by their relations towards the means of production (in the majority of cases [not always] fixed and formulated in laws); by their role in the social system of labour; and consequently, by their method of obtaining the share of national wealth which they dispose of, and by the size of that share. Classes are such groups of people one of which can appropriate the labour of another owing to the difference in their position in a given system of social economy.

A third division of labour was added by civilisation: it created a class that did not take part in production, but occupied itself merely with the exchange of products – the merchants. ... a class of parasites, genuine social ichneumons, that skim the cream of production at home and abroad as a reward for very insignificant services; that rapidly amass enormous wealth and gain social significance accordingly;

Sigh. This is irrelevant. The point is not the rate of production vs. the rate of consumption. It is quite possible that during the same period the rate of consumption of the bureaucracy suffered as well.

The point is: who made the decisions? The bureaucracy made the decisions.

I think that's not quite right. Trotsky or Schachtman would certainly have told you about the lack of democracy in the USSR. Cliff's point is beyond that, namely that the bureaucracy constituted an exploiting class. Thus the name of the book. And to say otherwise is to take a non-Marxist view of what constitutes a class.

Perhaps I can illustrate the point with a hypothetical: What if the rate of consumption of the working class rose, as it did after the war? What if, after the war, a situation continued to prevail in which there was no "historically important" exploitation by the bureaucracy, while production shifted heavily to consumer goods? What if, in effect, the working class got wealthy? What if workers got four weeks off a year, retired at 55, had full health and free housing, etc., while the bureaucrats continued to live little better than the workers?

Then, too, consider this problem: Precisely how many bureaucrats do you think there were who had political power in the regime? If, in fact, we accept the notion that the Soviet Union was a dictatorship of one person, and that the exploiting class consisted of precisely those who had political power, then don't we have a bourgeoisie made up solely of Stalin? Isn't this silly?

If instead you say that the bourgeoisie consisted of all those who had their hands on the levers of power, then aren't we left with the smallest exploiting class in history? An exploiting class no larger than the leaders of a typical government, which is usually merely the agent for a relatively large exploiting class?

Socialism without democracy, without economic and political democracy, is impossible. Capitalism, especially state capitalism, but fascism and other authoritarian capitalist forms, can function quite well without either.

In this thread I did not hope to take on all the various critiques of the USSR that have been made over the years. My goal was much more modest: To show that Cliff's analysis, the state capitalism analysis, is incorrect.

I think that the analysis above actually shows that very convincingly.

It does not show that the USSR was without fault. It does not even rule out any of the various other Trotskyist analysises of the USSR.

[Hooboy !!]

If you'd read the book, you would know that it would not, because when Tony Cliff speaks of consumption, he means consumption by private persons and he does not mean military spending and the like.
OK

The question which the thread raises is whether or not there is an inconsistency between two different things that Tony Cliff says, namely that the Soviet bureaucrats were a bourgeoisie and that their extra personal consumption was "of no historical importance."

So, arguing that their personal consumption WAS of historical importance is pretty much neither here nor there.
Ahhh. I agree with RED DAVE that control over the means of production is far more significant than any differences in personal consumption (read differences in standard of living).

Still... what if the control over the means of production was manipulated by extra personal consumption? It seems to me that the two things are inseparable.

I guess I'm gonna have to read the book, cuz my head is hurting.

[Preno]

What you are describing here is a corruption pyramid, unless the only reward is "prestige", which I disagree is a powerful motivator. Replace the word "prestige" with "power" and I might agree with you.Kind of. The primary difference is one is a bribe and the other is a salary. I suppose its all just semantics.Corruption and bribes are something different. Perhaps embezzlement is a more fitting word. But my point was that there need not be any large scale embezzlement in order for it to be exploitative.
"Exploitation" is hard to gauge. Is it measured by how much of the value from their work fails to come back to them, or is it measured by their quality of life?Well, exploitation is a relationship between the exploiter and the exploited, so it cannot be measured solely by the quality of life of one or the other.
Sure, but if exploit means to consume surplus value produced by others, than the statement "but the significance of their spending is much smaller quantitatively and different qualitatively than that of accumulation, and is of no basic historical importance" clearly indicates that any exploitation taking place is quite minimal, no?If - then, yes. But is the actual consumption of surplus value a necessary condition for an economic relationship to count as exploitative? Consider Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA and the richest person in Europe. He apparently leads a very frugal lifestyle, descriptions of which you are likely to find in some kind of panegyric on The Ideal Capitalist. So, he only consumes very little of the surplus value he accumulates. Would you say that it therefore follows that the economic relationship between him and the workers of IKEA (iirc, he's not an owner anymore, but that's besides the point here) is not exploitative, or that because of this, it is significantly less exploitative than the relationship between some other, not so frugal capitalist and his workers?
Well... But how does this become an either/or? As Red Dave said, "Trotskyists, of one stripe or another, including Cliff, have struggled to come up with a meaningful characterization of Stalinism." From a Marxist perspective, the question of who is exploiting whom is necessarily an important part of that question. Not the only part, but an important part.It certainly does not become an either/or. It's that one is directly relevant to evaluating how desirable a society is (and whether it can be called socialist), whereas the other explains what a given decision-making structure leads to, economically. If the answer to the first question is that the decisions are ultimately not made by the workers, then the system may or may not turn out exploitative, but it is ultimately undesirable, whereas when the decisions are ultimately made by the workers, it is both desirable and without exploitation. The nature of exploitation, of course, is important to comparing which of the unsocialist systems are better or worse.
I don't understand this. If at every level people are paid slightly less than what they produce, then the result is that overall consumption by the workers is less than production by the workers. So there is still extra production, whether it is all taken out at one level or whether it is taken out little by little as things go higher up the chain.

You reach the same problem: Where does it go? There should be then a huge pile of consumer goods, or whatever else it is they are producing, accumulating somewhere... Fields and fields full of merchandise no one has the money to buy.As far as consumer goods go, right. But most of the production of industry are not consumer goods. If the product goes into the expansion of the means of production (in the industry or agriculture), into building factories and making parts for factories or power plants or dams, then no-one need to consume the surplus value, the surplus is embodied as a contribution to the thing created, which is not consumed. In fact, the worker need not work directly in industry, if the surplus is taken by the state and then invested into some such state project. (And the better a person is in converting workers' power into such products, the better he is rewarded, thus motivating him to exploit the workers further - without him having to grab a significant part of the surplus value.)

Of course, that depends on how much of the production was consumable and how much wasn't. I was trying to find information on that - in vain - but given the notorious lack of various consumer goods in the Eastern bloc and especially the USSR (which is another sign of a disconnect between what people want and what the production is focused on), it doesn't seem far-fetched to suggest this mode of exploitation.

[IsItJustMe]

But is the actual consumption of surplus value a necessary condition for an economic relationship to count as exploitative? Consider Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA and the richest person in Europe. He apparently leads a very frugal lifestyle, descriptions of which you are likely to find in some kind of panegyric on The Ideal Capitalist. So, he only consumes very little of the surplus value he accumulates. Would you say that it therefore follows that the economic relationship between him and the workers of IKEA (iirc, he's not an owner anymore, but that's besides the point here) is not exploitative, or that because of this, it is significantly less exploitative than the relationship between some other, not so frugal capitalist and his workers?

I would say that the Ingvar Kamprads of the world are very much the exception, and that the general rule is that capitalists, like every other exploiting class in history, out consume the exploited by a huge margin.

It may be that the major difference between social science and the so-called hard sciences is that in social sciences you run across the occasional exception. But even in Ingvar Kamprad's case, the exception is likely to only be temporary and partial. He was never the entire owner, I don't think, for one thing. And for another, if he doesn't consume the surplus value he has accumulated, it's almost certain that his heirs will consume a large part of it.

To bring this back to the subject at hand, we have this: Even if we are willing to call this situation which we have described with the bureaucracy exploitation, we at least have to admit that it's an extremely unusual and perhaps even unique form of exploitation.

Furthermore, the picture becomes much more complicated in the post-war years. In the 1930s, individual consumption in the Soviet Union was very low. People had, at most, the basics.

But starting in the 1950s, as the rubble of the war was cleared, people started to have considerable salaries which they could spend as they chose on items for individual consumption. It is true that consumer goods production never reached the levels it did in the capitalist world, but that doesn't end the analysis. The point is that as military spending tapered off (it was still large, but nowhere near what it was in 1937 as a part of the overall economy) and growth rates tapered off, a larger and larger portion of production was for consumer goods.

It the worker is being allowed to keep most of what he needs, beyond the obvious requirements for national defense and moderate growth, is he still being exploited because he does not directly choose the direction of that growth or directly control the defense forces? Surely this argument becomes more and more difficult to make.

It certainly does not become an either/or. It's that one is directly relevant to evaluating how desirable a society is (and whether it can be called socialist), whereas the other explains what a given decision-making structure leads to, economically.

The only part of this statement I disagree with, or at least am dubious about, is the part in parentheses. Of course democracy and freedom (not tm) are values, as are economic goals. And at no point in here have I attempted to affirmatively discuss the political problems in the Soviet Union in the Stalin years, although those questions are very important to me. All that I have endeavored to do here is to show the negative: that the term "state capitalism" is not an accurate description of the situation.

Economics, according to Marxists, is the motor of history. But it is not the only important question, and economic determinism is imperfect. For this reason, in no other prior economic system has there been an exact one to one correlation between the economic system and the political system.

Thus under capitalism we have hereditary monarchies, military juntas, and republics. The republic is the most typical political system of capitalism, but it is not a sine qua non.

In general, the group of people at the levers of power is smaller than the ruling class. And this is because in practice the government is answerable to the people in more ways than those which are formally enshrined in a country's law.

Thus, although a member of the Nepalese bourgeoisie before the recent democratic revolution there had no legal right to challenge a decision by the king, there can be little doubt that he was in fact a member of the ruling class.

As far as consumer goods go, right. But most of the production of industry are not consumer goods. If the product goes into the expansion of the means of production (in the industry or agriculture), into building factories and making parts for factories or power plants or dams, then no-one need to consume the surplus value, the surplus is embodied as a contribution to the thing created, which is not consumed.

Sure. But it still shows up somewhere. In this case, not as fields full of unused consumer goods, but as an out of control growth rate or an army which is better equipped than the situation actually requires.

Of course, that depends on how much of the production was consumable and how much wasn't. I was trying to find information on that - in vain - but given the notorious lack of various consumer goods in the Eastern bloc and especially the USSR (which is another sign of a disconnect between what people want and what the production is focused on), it doesn't seem far-fetched to suggest this mode of exploitation.

Aside from the complaint I have made above, I would like to say that the relative lack of consumer goods in the Eastern Bloc is certainly at least partially explained by other factors. One which all too often gets left out of this analysis is colonialism. It is often said, of course, that the Eastern European countries were, in effect, Soviet colonies. But avoiding the semantic question of whether or not that word is applicable, in economic terms, Noam Chomsky has pointed out that in distinction from Latin American countries in the U.S. "sphere of influence" the flow of money and goods was on the whole from the Soviet Union to Eastern Europe rather than the other way around.

[Preno]

I would say that the Ingvar Kamprads of the world are very much the exception, and that the general rule is that capitalists, like every other exploiting class in history, out consume the exploited by a huge margin.

It may be that the major difference between social science and the so-called hard sciences is that in social sciences you run across the occasional exception. But even in Ingvar Kamprad's case, the exception is likely to only be temporary and partial. He was never the entire owner, I don't think, for one thing. And for another, if he doesn't consume the surplus value he has accumulated, it's almost certain that his heirs will consume a large part of it.Well, laws in social science really do have exceptions. Definitions, however, should not - they should allow you to accurately and as unambiguously as possible (given the level of abstractness of the concept, of course) to judge individual cases, in order to be able to formulate valid generalizations (which then may have exceptions). If you say that "to exploit means to consume surplus value produced by others", you are then committed to saying that if X consumes no (or little) surplus value, there is no (or little) exploitation on part of X. Underlying definitions should be as stringent as possible in order to allow valid generalizations in the form of laws, and saying that X means Y should commit one to then actually treating X as synonymous to Y. (That often a term is defined one way and used in another is indeed one of my gripes with much of the actual practice of social science.)
To bring this back to the subject at hand, we have this: Even if we are willing to call this situation which we have described with the bureaucracy exploitation, we at least have to admit that it's an extremely unusual and perhaps even unique form of exploitation.

Furthermore, the picture becomes much more complicated in the post-war years. In the 1930s, individual consumption in the Soviet Union was very low. People had, at most, the basics.

But starting in the 1950s, as the rubble of the war was cleared, people started to have considerable salaries which they could spend as they chose on items for individual consumption. It is true that consumer goods production never reached the levels it did in the capitalist world, but that doesn't end the analysis. The point is that as military spending tapered off (it was still large, but nowhere near what it was in 1937 as a part of the overall economy) and growth rates tapered off, a larger and larger portion of production was for consumer goods.

It the worker is being allowed to keep most of what he needs, beyond the obvious requirements for national defense and moderate growth, is he still being exploited because he does not directly choose the direction of that growth or directly control the defense forces? Surely this argument becomes more and more difficult to make.I admit that later on, exploitation diminished (I do not admit that it diminished to negligibility, however). But given the time when the book was written, its arguments were quite understandably more tuned to Stalin's era.

As to why I think he is still being exploited, see a few paragraphs below.
The only part of this statement I disagree with, or at least am dubious about, is the part in parentheses. Of course democracy and freedom (not tm) are values, as are economic goals. And at no point in here have I attempted to affirmatively discuss the political problems in the Soviet Union in the Stalin years, although those questions are very important to me. All that I have endeavored to do here is to show the negative: that the term "state capitalism" is not an accurate description of the situation.Curiously, I may agree with this, because at first glance, the nature of exploitation in capitalism and in Soviet-style economies are pretty different. Or at least, the term seems quite off the mark. Whether the actual theory is, I can't say before I read it for myself. Seeing as he doesn't argue that the bureaucracy actually consumed large amount of surplus value, it may well be that the theory itself is fine (although the title may have been chosen for much the same reason for which capitalists often call the most trivial social measures "socialism" in order to denounce them).
Economics, according to Marxists, is the motor of history. But it is not the only important question, and economic determinism is imperfect. For this reason, in no other prior economic system has there been an exact one to one correlation between the economic system and the political system.

Thus under capitalism we have hereditary monarchies, military juntas, and republics. The republic is the most typical political system of capitalism, but it is not a sine qua non.

In general, the group of people at the levers of power is smaller than the ruling class. And this is because in practice the government is answerable to the people in more ways than those which are formally enshrined in a country's law.

Thus, although a member of the Nepalese bourgeoisie before the recent democratic revolution there had no legal right to challenge a decision by the king, there can be little doubt that he was in fact a member of the ruling class.This is all true, but I don't see how it undermines the point you said you disagree with - that socialism is defined in terms of who makes decisions about the means of (and thus the process of) production, and it is only this decision-making structure that directly defines it, not the presence of absence of exploitative relationships.

I didn't intend my points to apply to the political system, except insofar as it directly affects the economy, but I'll just point out that while the government indeed is answerable to the people in more ways than those which are formally enshrined in a country's law, the people are also subject to the government's (or their superiors') decisions in more ways than those which are formally enshrined etc.
Sure. But it still shows up somewhere. In this case, not as fields full of unused consumer goods, but as an out of control growth rate or an army which is better equipped than the situation actually requires.Well, the "beauty" of the Soviet system is that it needn't, certainly not in full. It may simply dissipate in the system, squandered by an inefficient mode of production and mix-ups in distribution. In fact, it may dissipate even before it reaches the system, if the method the worker uses is itself inefficient (and he is thus forced to work proportionately harder).

Collectivization was a shining example of this. The people there were not exploited primarily not because of the products being transformed into permanent means of production or because some superior took the surplus value (although no doubt this happened to some degree, too), but simply because a criminally inefficient mode of production was enforced. No-one needed to have expropriated the surplus value in order for this to happen, all that was needed was for someone "up there" to consider it desirable and for the system to reward people more for the implementation of such orders than for making economically efficient decisions.

Now, as I said above, whether you want to call this exploitation or not depends on whether your definition of exploitation concentrates more on what the exploiter gains than on what the exploited lose (I would understand exploitation in general as something like enforcing one's will on another to the latter's detriment, and choose the latter kind of definition). Still, it is very undesirable, whatever name you call it. (And if I may make a guess, the "game of exploitation" will likely be less zero-sum - thus making the two kind of definition label more different, the former being less strict than the latter - in Soviet-style economies than under the more competitive conditions of capitalism, where inefficiencies are punished and most of the time, no single economic player has the power to enforce inefficiency on others.)

I should also point out that there is a mode of exploitation (which, while obviously less extreme than the capitalist mode, still counts as exploitation, and will become the more salient the more egalitarian the society is otherwise) that does not imply any big disparity in wages and spending, and that is the one where "people of position", officials and supervisors, earn a salary relatively close to that of the workers without actually doing a comparable amount of work. This should count as exploitation even under the definition in terms of consumption of surplus value, yet it would not result in any large wage or spending differentials (and thus slips under the radar of your current argument, so to speak). I suspect (based on anecdotal evidence, true) that this mode was indeed quite common in Soviet-style economies.
Aside from the complaint I have made above, I would like to say that the relative lack of consumer goods in the Eastern Bloc is certainly at least partially explained by other factors. One which all too often gets left out of this analysis is colonialism. It is often said, of course, that the Eastern European countries were, in effect, Soviet colonies. But avoiding the semantic question of whether or not that word is applicable, in economic terms, Noam Chomsky has pointed out that in distinction from Latin American countries in the U.S. "sphere of influence" the flow of money and goods was on the whole from the Soviet Union to Eastern Europe rather than the other way around.Well, the lack of consumer goods in the Eastern Bloc as a whole cannot be explained by exchange of consumer goods within the Bloc itself. True, we were only talking about the Soviet Union so far, but I think similar arguments should be applicable, perhaps with less force, to other Eastern economies. And iirc, while the flow of money and raw materials was indeed predominantly in this way, the flow of goods went mostly the other way within the Comecon. This may have been to the ultimate detriment of the Soviet Union due to the underpricing of those raw materials, but it cannot explain the lack of consumer goods in the USSR, as it was used precisely in order to get more (both consumer and non-consumer) goods.