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What Was the USSR? - Part IV[Comment on Concluding the Series] [Note: Aufheben #9 (Autumn 2000) concludes the four-part series, "What Was the USSR?" with its own analysis, "Towards a Theory of the Deformation of Value." Like the other three parts it is a heavy read and at 18 pages much too long for the DB. At the same time I'd like to give readers a taste of it. To that end I am including Aufheben's introductory comment, part of the Introduction to Part IV, a list of main- and sub-headings, and the conclusion. Readers can obtain the other parts of this series (Aufheben Nos. 6,7,and 8) for L1.50 each in the UK and Europe and L2.00/$3 elsewhere from Aufheben, Brighton and Hove Unemployed Workers Centre, 4 Crestway Parade, Hollingdean, Brighton BN1 7BL UK -fg]
What Was the USSR? So our saga on the nature of the USSR draws to a close. While some readers have awaited avidly for each exciting instalment, others from the beginning thought we gave disproportionate space to this rather tired old topic.' Another dissatisfied group may be the partisans of particular theories which were not given the recognition they feel they deserved . This was unavoidable considering the sheer number of theories one could have dealt with. The list of political tendencies which have considered that the USSR was a variety of capitalism includes 'anarchism, council communism, "impossibilism", many types of Leninism (including Bordigism, Maoism and a number arising out of Trotskyism), libertarian socialism, Marxist Humanism, Menshevism, the Situationist International and social democracy. 3 Some might also question why, of our previous parts, only one dealt with (state)capitalist theories outside Trotskyism. Yet what is striking in looking at these alternatives is that none dealt adequately with the orthodox Marxist' criticisms coming from Trotskyism. If Trotskyism itself has been politically bankrupt in its relation to both Stalinism and social democracy --and this is not unrelated to its refusal to accept the USSR was capitalist--at a certain theoretical level it still posed a challenge. We restate the issues at stake in the first few pages below. While fragmented ideological conceptions satisfy the needs of the bourgeoisie, the proletariat must acquire theory: the practical truth necessary for its universal task of self-abolition which at the same time abolishes class society. Clearing some of the bullshit and clarifying issues around one of the central obstacles to human emancipation that the 20 th century has thrown up, namely the complicity of the Left with capital, may help the next century have done with the capitalist mode of production once and for all. Introduction The problem of determining the nature of the USSR was that it exhibited two contradictory aspects. On the one hand, the USSR appeared to have characteristics that were strikingly similar to those of the actually existing capitalist societies of tile West. Thus, for example, the vast majority of the population of the USSR was dependent for their livelihoods on wage-labour. Rapid industrial isation and the forced collectivisation of agriculture under Stalin had led to the break up of traditional communities and the emergence of a mass industrialised society made up of atomised individuals and families. While the overriding aim of the economic system was the maximisation of economic growth. On the other hand, tile USSR diverged markedly from the laissez-faire capitalism that had been analysed by Marx. The economy of the USSR was not made up of competing privately owned enterprises regulated through the 'invisible hand' of the market. On the contrary, all the principal means of production were state owned and the economy was consciously regulated through centralised planning. As a consequence, there was neither the sharp differentiation between the economic nor the political nor was there a distinct civil society that existed between family and state. Finally economic growth was not driven by the profit motive but directly by the need to expand the mass of use-values to meet the needs of both the state and tile population as a whole. As a consequence, any theory that the USSR was essentially a capitalist form of society must be able to explain this contradictory appearance of the USSR. Firstly, it must show how the dominant social relations that arose in the peculiar historical circumstance of the USSR were essentially capitalist social relations: and to this extent the theory must be grounded in a value-analysis of the Soviet Union. Secondly it must show how these social relations manifested themselves, not only in those features of the USSR that were clearly capitalist, but also in those features of the Soviet Union that appear as distinctly at variance with capitalism. Main and Sub-Headings
Conclusion As we pointed out in Part I, the Russian Revolution and the establishment of the first 'workers state' has had a profound impact in shaping our world. At first the apparent success of the Russian Revolution showed that there was a realistic alternative to capitalism. It showed that capitalism could be overthrown by the working class and that a socialist, if not communist, society could be constructed on its ruins. As such it inspired generations of socialists and workers in their conflicts with the capitalist system, defining both their aims and methods. However, as the true nature of the USSR began to emerge, the perception that it was 'actually existing socialism' became an increasing barrier to the development of an opposition to capitalism. If the socialist alternative to capitalism was a totalitarian police state in which you still had to work for a boss, then most workers concluded that it might be better merely to reform capitalism. At the same time the attempts of the Stalinist Communist Parties across the world to subordinate working class movements to the foreign policy needs of the USSR further compounded this problem. The struggle against both Stalinism and social democracy demanded an understanding of the USSR. The question of what the USSR was therefore became a central one throughout much of the twentieth century. It was a question, which as we have seen, was bound up with the associated questions of what is socialism and communism? What was the Russian Revolution? And indeed what is the essential nature of capitalism? From a communist perspective that takes as its touchstone the abolition of wage-labour as the defining feature of communism, it would seem intuitive that the USSR was a form of capitalism. However, as we have seen, the 'state-capitalist' theories of the USSR have proved inadequate compared with the more sophisticated theories that developed out of the Trotskyist tradition. To the extent that they have shared the traditional Marxist conception of the Second and Third Internationals that state capitalism is the highest forin of capitalism, state capitalist theories of the USSR have proved unable to explain either the apparently non-capitalist aspects of the USSR nor its decline and eventual collapse. Indeed, while the Trotskyist theory of the USSR as a degenerated workers' state has become untenable given the chronic economic stagnation of the USSR that became increasingly apparent after the 1960s, and which culminated in the collapse of the USSR in 1990, it has been Ticktin's radical reconstruction of this theory that has so far provided the most convincing understanding of the Soviet system and its decline and fall. However, as we showed in Part 2, Ticktin's theory still falls short of the mark. Rather than seeing the USSR as being a social system stuck in the transition between capitalism and socialism, we have taken up the point of departure suggested by Bordiga to argue that the USSR was in transition to capitalism. We have argued that in order to break out of its backwardness and subordinate position within the world division of labour the state bureaucracy, which had formed after the Russian Revolution, sought to make the transition to capitalism through the transitional form of state capitalism. In its efforts to industrialise, the Russian state sought the forced development of productive-capital that required the suppression of the more cosmopolitan and crisis ridden forms of money and commodity capital. However, while such forced capitalist development allowed an initial rapid industrial isation, the distortions it produced within the political economy of the USSR eventually became a barrier to the complete transition to capitalism in Russia. As such we have argued that the USSR was essentially based on capitalist commodity-production. However, as a consequence of the historical form of forced transition to capitalism there was a dislocation between the capitalist nature of production and its appearance as a society based on commodity-exchange. This dislocation led to the deformation of value and the defective content of use values that both provided the basis for the persistence of the distinctly non-capitalist features of the USSR and led to the ultimate decline and disintegration of the USSR. As we saw in the last issue in relation to the war in Kosovo the question of Russia remains an important one on the geo-political stage. The economic and political problems of breaking up and reintegrating the Eastern bloc into the global structure of capitalism is one that has yet to find a solution, and this is particularly true of Russia itself (which is, after all, the world's second nuclear power). The forced development of productive-capital for over half a century has left Russia with an economy based on huge monopolies unable to compete on the world market. At the same time the insistence by the ideologists of Western capitalism that all that Russia needed was deregulation and liberalisation has simply given rise to the emergence of money-capital in its most parasitical and predatory form. As a consequence, Russian resubordination to the dictates of the international law of value has left it with one part of its economy reverting back to barter while the other is dominated by a Mafiacapitalism that is blocking any further economic development. Hence, despite all the efforts of the USA and the IMF, Russia still remains mired in its transition to capitalism.
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