Trotsky, Trotskyism and the Transition to Socialism by Peter Beilharz

Author:Peter Beilharz [Beilharz, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780709939955
Google: hpc9AAAAIAAJ
Publisher: CUP Archive
Published: 1987-01-15T02:41:18+00:00

Dunayevskaya’s theory of state capitalism and its outcome

Marx’s most prescient political prophecy, for Dunayevskaya, was the ‘prediction’ that capitalism would develop into state capitalism, that the entire social capital would be united in the hands of one single capitalist or corporation.105 Marx is therefore seen as explaining not only the impending doom of the capitalist mode, but also as anticipating its new totalitarian forms. Totalitarianism is viewed as an effect of the essence of capitalism. The existence of labour power as a commodity is the defining characteristic of capitalism for Dunayevskaya.106 As in James’s theory, so here the argument for Soviet state capitalism departs from the point of labour as it is experienced in the immediate production process.107 The state capitalist argument has its moral foundations in Dunayevskaya’s interpretation of Marx’s humanism, most notably in the priority given by young Marx to the labouring activity over its material result or product.

Dunayevskaya’s argument about the social character of the USSR is the obverse of Trotsky’s: property forms are taken to reflect production relations rather than determine them. Whereas for Trotsky the existence of state property indicates the existence of socialism, for Dunayevskaya the continued existence of production relations of domination indicates the existence of capitalism, with the difference that the function of the capitalist is performed collectively by the state. Trotsky’s acknowledgement of the existence of ‘bourgeois norms of distribution’ in Russia actually indicates for Dunayevskaya the presence of that which he cannot accept: the existence of bourgeois methods of production.108 The USSR, for Dunayevskaya, is the site of the full ‘statification’ of production, followed on later by historical repetitions in Eastern Europe and China. State power is defined here reductively as the power to dispose of the labour power of others; state power, that is to say, is defined as economic power. Russian state capitalism is viewed as the ultimate extension of Western capitalism.

An extended definition and characterisation of Russian state capitalism is offered in Dunayevskaya’s major work, Marxism and Freedom. Dunayevskaya rejects the bipolarised scheme of ‘market’ and ‘plan’. Market and plan are rather part of the same problem. The Plan is a specifically capitalist form of organisation, the planner functions as effective capitalist. The resulting class struggle between planner and planned does not differ in substance to the struggle between capital and labour. The dominance of Department I over Department II of the Soviet economy is symptomatic of state capitalism, Khrushchev’s consumerist gestures notwithstanding.109 The increase in production of luxury consumption goods at the expense of mass consumption goods indicates that the existence of the Soviet ruling class can be established by its role in consumption as well as in production. The single outstanding peculiarity of Russian state capitalism is the existence of forced labour in labour camps:110 though it could be added that labour in general is neither geographically nor socially ‘free’. Further characteristics include the existence of piecework, Stakhanovism, and later, the application of the conveyor belt system. Piecework was finally legitimised by the Stalin Constitution,

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