State Capitalism in Russia by Tony Cliff

Author:Tony Cliff [Cliff, Tony]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Non-fiction, Politics, Russia
ISBN: 9780906224441
Publisher: Bookmarks Publications/Marxists Internet Archive
Published: 1988-07-29T23:00:00+00:00

The Stalinist bureaucracy – the extreme and pure personification of capital

Marx wrote:

Except as personified capital, the capitalist has no historical value, and no right to that historical existence ... But, so far as he is personified in capital, it is not values in use and the enjoyment of them but exchange value and its augmentation, that spur him into action. Fanatically bent on making value expand itself, he ruthlessly forces the human race to produce for production’s sake; ... So far, therefore, as his actions are a mere function of capital – endowed as capital is, in his person, with consciousness and a will – his own private consumption is a robbery, perpetrated on accumulation ... Therefore, save, save, save, i.e., reconvert the greatest possible portion of surplus value, or surplus-product into capital! Accumulation for accumulation’s sake, production for production’s sake.[4]

The two functions – the extraction of surplus value and its transformation into capital – which are fundamental to capitalism, become separated with the separation of control and management. While the function of management is to extract the surplus value from the workers, control directs its transformation into capital. For the capitalist economy these two functions alone are necessary; the bondholders appear more and more only as consumers of a certain part of the surplus value. Consumption of a part of the surplus product by the exploiters is not specific to capitalism, but existed under all class systems. What is specific to capitalism is accumulation for accumulation’s sake, with the object of standing up to competition.

In capitalist corporations most of the accumulation is institutional; the corporation finances itself internally, while the greater part of the dividends disbursed among the shareholders is used for consumption. Under a state capitalism which evolved gradually from monopoly capitalism, the bondholders would appear mainly as consumers while the state would appear as the accumulator.

The more that part of the surplus value devoted to accumulation increases as against the part consumed, the more purely does capitalism reveal itself. The more the relative weight of the factor of control increases as against that of bondholding, in other words, the more the dividends are subordinated to internal accumulation by the corporation or the state-owner, the more purely does capitalism reveal itself.

(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.)

We can therefore say that the Russian bureaucracy, “owning” as it does the state and controlling the process of accumulation, is the personification of capital in its purest form.

However, Russia is different from the norm – the concept of state capitalism evolving gradually from monopoly capitalism. This divergence from the concept of state capitalism which evolves gradually, organically, from monopoly capitalism, does not render the question of the concept of state capitalism unimportant. Far from

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.