Bordiga 1952
First published: as Dialogato con Stalin inIl Programma Comunista, in 4 parts, October-December 1952;
Translated: by Libri Incogniti, libriincogniti.wordpress.com.
By submitting another article, a good two years after his last article,(that infamous text on linguistics[1] which we had to deal with only incidentally, but whichwould be worthy of detailed treatment; nevertheless, quod differtur
By which we do not mean that Stalin (or his secretariat, whose networks spanthe globe) would have looked at this material and turned to us. We must notbelieve that if we are real Marxists, the great historical disputes requiredpersonified protagonists presenting themselves to the astounded humanity– as if an angel on his cloud were blowing into the heavenly trumpet, andDante’s demon Barbariccia responds with a sound that comes “deprofundis,” that is, from the depths, in the realest, known to you, senseof the word[4]. Or like theChristian Paladin and the Saracen Sultan, who, before they draw their sparklingsabers, introduce themselves in a loud voice, challenge each other with thelist of their ancestors and victorious tournaments and swear death to eachother.
That’s just what was missing! On the one hand, the highest leader ofthe world’s largest state and the “communist” worldproletariat, and on the other hand, a nobody, a nothing.
In reality, the facts and material forces acting in the substructuredeterministically take up the discussion among themselves; and those who thendictate the text or hack into the keys are, like those who give the lecture,mere mechanisms, loudspeakers that passively convert the waves into voices; andit is not said that a loudspeaker with a power of 2000 watts doesn’t justproduce the greatest nonsense.
It is therefore the same questions that emerge with regard to the importanceof both social conditions in today’s Russia and international relationsat the economic, political and military levels; they impose themselves just asmuch up there as they do down here, and they can only be clarified if they arejuxtaposed with the theory that grasps what has already happened and is known,and if these questions are juxtaposed with the history of this theory, which avery long time ago – which remains indelible – was a commonone.
So we know very well that Stalin’s answer from the upper Kremlinstories does not respond to our words and is not addressed to us. In order tocontinue the debate, it is not even necessary for him to know our theoreticalorgans[5]. The things and forces– whether large or small, past, present or future – remain thesame, despite the whims of symbolism. When the ancient philosophy wrote“sunt nomina rerum” (literally: the names belong to things), shewanted to say that things do not belong to the name. Translated into ourlanguage, this means: the thing determines the name, not the other way round.You can continue to dedicate 99% of your work to the name, portraits, epithets,lives and graves of the great men: we will continue in the shadows, knowingthat soon the generation will come who will only smile at you, you famous menof the great and very small calibre.
But the things between the lines in Stalin’s writing are too importantfor us to deny him the dialogue. For this reason, and not from a “átout seigneur tout honneur,” we answer and expect the new appeal –even if it takes another two years, because we don’t have a hurry(isn’t it true, ex-Marxist?).
All of the issues dealt with by Stalin are junctions of Marxism and almostall of them are old nails, which we insistently demanded that they be struckfirmly before we presume to forge the future.
Of course, the majority of the political “viewers” distributedamong the various camps were not impressed by what Stalin had come back to in asuggestive way, but by what he anticipated about an uncertain future. Rushingonto it (because that’s what is causing a stir) neither friend nor foeunderstood a single word and presented strange and exaggerated versions. Theperspective – that is their obsession. If the observers are a bunch offools, the machinist is no better off: He, who starts the machine from his highprison, the highest offices of governmental power, is currently in a positionin which he is least likely to be able to see and anticipate himself. So whileall of the impressive predictions cause excitement, we are concerned with whatcame to him as a result of his retrospect (where he is not blocked by kippersand a lot of whirlwind). In accordance with the existentialist credo, everyoneobeys the utterly dumb imperative: to talk, and the political press providesentertainment just when it reveals the future and reports about prophecies thata “great name” has lowered itself down to pronounce. This timesomething unexpected came about: nothing of world revolution, nothing of peaceanymore, but also no “holy” war between Russia and the rest of theworld, but rather the inevitable war between the capitalist states, whichRussia – for the time being – is not counted among. No news forMarxism, but also interesting for us who do not have a particular fondness forpolitical cinema, where the cinema-goer doesn’t care much whether what hesees is “really true” or not. And in the dream world of the land ofboundless opportunities, luxurious restaurants, white telephones or the embraceof a flawless supervenus made of celluloid, the spectator, the small employeeor the wage slave, returns contentedly to his hovel, where he approaches hiswife, who is embarrassed by the troubles of work, if he does not replace herwith a street beauty.
Well, instead of focusing on the starting point – because that isessential – everyone has rushed to the end. One would have to put a stopto this whole flock of half-idiots, who crumbled their heads over the“after,” and repulse the study of the “before”; thatwould be a lot easier, but they can’t think of that. Although one doesnot understand the opened page, one does not resist the temptation to turn thepage further, in the hope of becoming wise after all from the previous one; soit happens that the fool becomes more and more stupid.
In whatever shape the police commanding public peace, who the West is sodisgusted at (where the means of dulling and standardizing the skulls are tentimes bigger and more repugnant): The definition of the social stage reachedand the running economic wheelwork in Russia is a question that imposes itself– leading to the following dilemma: Should we continue to claim that theRussian economy is socialist, respectively in the first stage of communism, ordo we have to admit that despite state industrialism, it is governed by the lawof value inherent to capitalism? Stalin seems to be attacking the last thesisand slowing down economists and plant managers who are in a hurry to accept it.In reality, he is preparing the confession[6] that will soon follow and be useful in therevolutionary sense as well. But the bullshit organized by the “freeworld” reads from it the announcement of the transition to the higherstage of full communism!
In order to bring the question to the fore, Stalin makes use of theclassical method. It would be easy to bet on a different color that would freehim from any obligation to Marx and Lenin’s school, but even the bankitself could be blown up at this stage of the game. So instead we start fromovo. Well, that is all right for us, since we have not bet anything inhistory’s roulette and learned from childhood on: our cause is that ofthe proletariat, which has nothing to lose. Stalin explains that a“textbook of the Marxist economy” is necessary (we are in 1952),not only for the Soviet youth, but also for comrades in other countries. Sowatch out, inexperienced and forgetful!
To include a chapter on Lenin and Stalin as the founders of the politicaleconomy of socialism in such a book, even Stalin considers superfluous becauseit would not bring anything new. That’s right, if he wants to say what isalready known: they both didn’t invent it, but learned it – Leninalways emphasized this.
Now that we are moving on to the field of strict terminology and“school” wording, we must say in advance that we have a preprint ofStalin’s text, which the Stalinist newspapers themselves have taken froma non-Russian press agency. We will look up in the full text as soon aspossible[7].
The reference to the basic elements of Marxist economics serves Stalin todiscuss the “system of commodity production in socialism.” We haveexplained in various texts (avoiding to say anything new) that every system ofcommodity production is a non-socialist system; this is exactly what we willreaffirm. If Stalin (Stalin, again and again Stalin; we are dealing here withan article that could just as well have come from a commission that could“in 100 years” have replaced or discredited Stalin: forsimplicity’s sake, however, it is useful to use names as symbols forcomplex events and contexts) had spoken of a system of commodity productionafter the conquest of power by the proletariat, this would not have been amonstrosity.
Referring to Engels, it seems that some “comrades” in Russiahave said that the maintenance of the system of commodity production(respectively the commodity character of the products) after nationalization ofthe means of production meant to maintain the capitalist economic system.Stalin is certainly not the man who could theoretically prove them wrong. If,however, they say that, in case they say it, one had been able to eliminatecommodity production and had only neglected or forgotten it, then they shouldbe mistaken.
But Stalin wants to prove that in a “socialist country” (a wordbelonging to a questionable school) commodity production can exist, and hedraws upon the Marxist definitions and their clear, albeit perhaps not entirelyflawless, synthesis in Lenin’s propaganda brochure[8].
We have dealt several times with this subject, i. e. commodity production,its emergence and rule, its clearly capitalist character.[9] According to Josef Stalin, precise plans can be drawnup within commodity production without fearing that the terrible maelstrom ofthe commodity world will draw the careless pilot into the middle of the vortexand devour him in the capitalist abyss. However, his article reveals (to whomreading it as a Marxist) that the vortexes are becoming ever tighter and faster– as predicted in theory.
The commodity, as Lenin reminds, is a thing with a double character: itsatisfies some human need and is exchangeable for another thing. And the linesjust before say simply: “In capitalist society, the production ofcommodities is predominant, and Marx’s analysis therefore begin with ananalysis of commodity.”
The commodity thus possesses these two characteristics, and it does onlybecome a commodity when the second characteristic is added to the first. Thefirst, use value, is comprehendable even for flat materialists like us, evenfor a child. It can be sensually experienced: once licked on a piece of sugar,we stretch out our hands once more for a sugar cube. But the road is long– Marx flies over it in this great paragraph – until the sugartakes on an exchange value and one comes to the delicate problem of Stalin, whois surprised that one established an equivalence between grain and cotton.
Marx, Lenin, Stalin and we know very well what a hell dance is going on assoon as exchange value appears. What did Lenin say? Where the bourgeoiseconomists saw relationships between things, Marx discovered relationshipsbetween people! What do the three volumes of Marx’s “Capital”and the nearly 50 pages of Lenin’s work prove? Very simple. Whereconventional economics sees perfect equivalence in exchange, we no longer seeexchangeable things, but people in a social movement, we no longer seeequivalence, but a scam. Karl Marx speaks of a spook that gives the goods thisstrange and at first glance incomprehensible character. Lenin, like any otherMarxist, would have grabbed the cold horror at the idea of being able toproduce and exchange goods while at the same time expelling their inherentdevil through exorcism. Does Stalin believe that? Or does he just want to tellus that the devil is stronger than himself?
Just as the ghosts of medieval knights took revenge on Cromwell’srevolution by bourgeoisly haunting the castles left to the Landlords, so thegoblin fetish of the commodity runs inexorably through the halls of theKremlin, and behind the rush of words sounding from the speakers of thenineteenth party convention, one can hear gloating laughter
When he wants to establish that commodity production and capitalism are notabsolutely identical, Stalin again makes use of our method. Following thehistorical course backwards, he points out, like Marx, that in certain forms ofsociety (slavekeeper order, feudalism, etc.) commodity production existed but“did not lead to capitalism.” This is indeed what Marx says in apassage of his historical summary, but he has developed it quite differentlyand with a completely different aim. The bourgeois economist claims that thesystem of commodity production is the only possible mechanism to combineproduction with consumption – he knows all too well that as long as thismechanism is in place, capital will continue to dominate the world. Marxreplies: We will see where the historical trend is heading; first of all, Iforce you to acknowledge the irrefutable facts of the past: it wasn’talways commodity production that ensured that the consumer was supplied withthe product of labour. As examples, he mentions the primitive societies basedon collecting and direct consumption, the ancient forms of the family and thetribe, the feudal system of direct consumption within self-sufficient circles,in which the products did not have to take on a commodity form. With thedevelopment and complexity of technology and needs, sectors emerge that arefirst supplied by barter trade and then by actual trade. Which proves thatcommodity production, including private property, is neither“natural” nor, as the bourgeois claims, permanent and eternal. Thelate appearance of commodity production (the system of commodity production, asStalin says) and its existence on the sidelines of other modes of productionserve Marx to show that commodity production, after it has become universal,just after the spread of the capitalist production system, must go down withit.
It would take too long if we wanted to cite the Marxist passages directedagainst Proudhon, Lassalle, Rodbertus and many others, denouncing any attemptto reconcile commodity production with the socialist emancipation of theproletariat.
For Lenin, this is the cornerstone of Marxism. It would be quite difficultto reconcile it with Stalin’s current thesis: “Why then, one asks,cannot commodity production similarly serve our socialist society for a certainperiod” or “Commodity production leads to capitalism only if thereis private ownership of the means of production, if labour power appears in themarket as a commodity which can be bought by the capitalist and exploited inthe process of production, and if, consequently, the system of exploitation ofwageworkers by capitalists exists in the country.” This hypothesis is, ofcourse, absurd; in the Marxist analysis, any existence of a mass of commoditiessuggests that reserveless proletarians had to sell their labour-power. If inthe past there was commodity production limited to a few branches, it was notbecause the labour-power was sold “voluntarily” as it is today, butrather because it was squeezed by force of arms from enslaved prisoners orserfs in personal dependency.
Do we have to quote the first two lines of “Capital” again?“The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of productionprevails, presents itself as ‘an immense accumulation ofcommodities’.”
After the text has more or less skillfully demonstrated to show respect forthe origins of Marxism, it moves on to the question of today’s Russianeconomy. The task is to silence those who want to have determined that thesystem of commodity production inevitably leads to the restoration ofcapitalism – and thus also us, who even more clearly say: commodityproduction only survives in so far as we are within a totally capitalistsystem.
In the famous Stalin pamphlet one finds these concessions regarding theRussian economy: even if the large firms are socialized, the small andmedium-sized firms however aren’t expropriated: on the contrary, thiswould “be equal to a crime.” According to the author, they shouldtransition into cooperative firms.
Currently there are two sectors of commodity production in Russia: on theone hand the public, “nationally owned” production. In thestate-owned enterprises, the means of production and production itself, thusalso the products, are national property. How simplistic: in Italy, the tobaccofactories and accordingly their sold cigarettes are owned by the state. Doesthis already qualify for the assertion that one is in a phase of the“abolishment of the wage labour system” and the respective workersweren’t “forced” to sell their labour power? Surely not.
Let’s move on to the other sector: agriculture. In the kolkhozes, saysthe brochure, land and machines are state property, but the products of labourdon’t belong to the state, but to the kolkhoz. And the kolkhoz sheds onlyfrom them because they are commodities, which are exchangeable for othercommodities that one needs. There is no link between the rural kolkhoz and theurban regions which is not based on exchange. “Therefore commodityproduction and commodity circulation are still such a necessity as they havebeen thirty years ago for example.”
Let’s put aside for a moment the argument about the remote possibilityof overcoming this situation. It is to be noted that what Lenin proposed in1922 is out of the question: “We wield the political power in our hands,and we will persevere militarily, but in the economic domain we need to fallback on the purely capitalist form of commodity production.” Corollary ofthis statement was: if we interrupt for a certain time the erection of thesocialist economy, we will get back at it after the European revolution.Today’s propositions are diametrically opposed to this.
One doesn’t even try anymore to make a case such as the following: inthe transition from capitalism to socialism certain sectors of production for awhile are still subjected to commodity production.
Instead, one simply says: everything is a commodity; there is no othereconomic framework but that of commodity exchange and accordingly of the buyingof labour power, not even in state-owned, large firms. Indeed, from where doesthe factory worker get his means of subsistence? The kolkhoz sells them to himmediated by private merchants; preferably it sells them to the state, fromwhich it obtains tools, fertilizer etc.; the worker then must procure the meansof subsistence in the state-owned stores for hard-earned rubles. Couldn’tthe state distribute the products, of which it can dispose, directly to itsworkers? Surely not, because the worker (especially the Russian one)doesn’t consume tractors, vehicles, locomotives, not to speak of cannonsand machine guns. And clothing and furniture are of course produced in thesmall- and medium-sized firms untouched by the state.
The state therefore can give the workers which are dependent upon it nothingbut a monetary wage, with which they then buy what they want (a bourgeoiseuphemism for: the little they can buy). That the wage-distributingentrepreneur is the state, which presents itself as the “ideal” or“legitimate” representative of the working class, doesn’t saythe slightest, if it wasn’t even able to begin distributing anythingquantitatively relevant outside the mechanism of commodity production.
Stalin approaches some Marxist goals, which we continuously brought backfrom the past: lowering of the gap, respectively sublation of the contradictionbetween town and country; overcoming of the social division of labour; drasticreduction (to 5 or 6 hours as an immediate measure) of the working day, as theonly mean to abolish the separation between manual and mental labour and toerase the leftovers of bourgeois ideology.
At the assembly in July 1952 in Rome, we dealt with the topic of the 12.chapter of “Capital”: “Separation of labour andfactory,” for “factory” read “business.” It wasshown: to leave capitalism, along with the system of commodity production, thesocial division of labour – of which Stalin also speaks – and aswell the technical, respectively managerial division of labour, which leads tothe brutalization of the worker and which is the origin of factory despotism,must be destroyed. The two axes of the bourgeois system are social anarchy andfactory despotism. In Stalin, we can at least recognize the struggle to fightagainst the former, whereas he remains silent about the latter. But nothing incontemporary Russia is moving towards the direction of the programmaticalgoals, neither those named by Stalin, nor those of which nobody talksanyway.
If a – today as tomorrow insurmountable – barrier is lowereddown between state firm and kolkhoz, which only lifts to allow for business“for mutual gain” to be made, what should bring town and countrycloser together, what should free the worker from the necessity to sell toomany working hours for little money, respectively a few means of subsistenceand give him therefore the possibility of disputing the scientific and culturalmonopoly of capitalist tradition?
We therefore not only haven’t got the first phase of socialism infront of us, but also not even a total state capitalism, that means an economy,in which – even though all products are commodities and circulate formoney – the state disposes of every product; so, a form in which thestate can centrally determine all proportions of equivalence, including labourpower. Such a state as well couldn’t be controlled nor conqueredeconomically/politically by the working class and would function in service ofthe anonymous and hiddenly operating capital. But Russia is far away from thatanyways: all that is there, is the after the anti-feudal revolution arisenstate industrialism[11]. Thanks topublic investment in extensive public projects, this system allowed for thequick development and dispersion of industry and of capitalism, accelerated thebourgeois transformation of agriculture and agricultural law. But the“collectivist economic” agricultural businesses have nothingpublic, much less socialist in them: they're on the level of cooperatives, justas they existed around the turn of the century in the Italian Padan Plain andwhich produced on leased or (often out of state ownership) bought land. Theonly difference is that in the kolkhoz without a doubt there’s a hundredtimes more thefts than in those modest, but honest cooperatives – butStalin, high up in the Kremlin, is not going to hear of that.
The industrial state must negotiate the buying of the means of consumptionon the “free market,” which means that wage and labour time are onthe same level as in the capitalist private industry. Concerning the economicdevelopment, it is to be said that for example America is closer to completestate capitalism than Russia: after all the Russian worker has to spend threefifths of his wage on agrarian products, whereas the American worker spends thesame ratio on industrial products; he even gets the food delivered by theindustry for the most part in cans – the poor devil.
At this point, there is another important question to be posed. Therelationship between agriculture and industry stays on an entirely bourgeoislevel, no matter how substantial the inexorable progress of industry. Stalinconfesses, that not even future interventions into this relation are to beexpected, which would amount to more statism, much less socialism.
This drawback also hides subtly behind the Marxist doctrine. What can we do?Expropriate the kolkhozes brutally? For that we would need to make use of thestate power. And precisely here Stalin reintroduces the withering away of thestate, which he wanted to do away with on another occasion, whereas he backthen put a mask on, as if he wanted to say: “You're only making fun,right guys?.”
Of course, the assumption, that a worker’s state could make a drawbackis indefensible – when the entire agrarian sector is still commoditybased and privately organized. Because even if one would for a moment acceptthe earlier contested thesis of the existence of commodity production undersocialism, it would be inseparable from the other thesis: If commodityproduction isn’t abolished everywhere, the withering away of the statecannot be on the table.
Ultimately, we can only reason that the fundamental relation between townand country (that during the dramatic development of thousands of years freeditself from Asiatic and feudal forms) is solved there exactly as capitalismplans and what is expressed by the classical, in bourgeois countries usedwords: To regulate the commodity exchange between industry- and agriculturalproduction rationally. This system “requires thus a giganticincrease” of industrial production [Stalin, p. 95]. Well then! If onedisregards for a moment the fantasized correct state – a virtually“liberal” solution.
The question of the relation between agriculture and industry was answeredby the confession of the impotence to do anything but to industrialize and toincrease production, thus at the expense of the workers. At this point, asalready mentioned, there are the other two great questions of the relationbetween state and business and among businesses to be posed.
For Stalin, it presented itself like this: Does the law of value whichapplies in capitalist production also exist in Russia? Does it also apply forthe state owned, large scale industry? This law determines, that commodityexchange always follows equivalents: the appearance of “freedom, equalityand Bentham"[12], which Marxdestroyed, when he showed that capitalism doesn’t produce for theproduct, but for profit. Command and control of the economic laws –between those two cliffs Stalin’s “manifesto” maneuvers backand forth and thus confirms our thesis: In its most powerful form, capitalsubordinates itself to the state, even when the state appears as the judicialsole owner of all businesses.
On the second day, oh Scheherazade[13], we will tell you of that, and on the third day ofthe world market and war.
To precisely define the economy of contemporary Russia, we on the first dayof this dispute with Stalin’s “answers” to our Marxistinquiries and demonstrations mainly concerned ourselves emphasizing theincommensurateness of commodity production and socialist economy. For us, everysystem of commodity production in the modern world, a world of associatedlabour, that is the aggregation of workers in production plants, is defined ascapitalist economy.
Let’s now get to the question of the stages of socialist economy(better: of socialist organization) and the distinction between lower andhigher stage of communism. To get away from the definition of“immovable” and thus abstract systems and to put ourselves on theground of history, let’s anticipate the central assertion of ourdoctrine: The transition from capitalist to socialist economy doesn’thappen in an instant, but in a long process. We must thus assume, that for arelatively long period there might be a coexistence of private and collectivesectors, of capitalist (and precapitalist) and socialist realms. But we specifyalready that every realm, every sector, in which commodities (including humanlabour power) circulate, are bought and sold, is capitalist economy.
In the now distributed and in the meantime for us available scripture,Stalin explains, that in the Russian agricultural sector commodity production,respectively market economy exists (he further confirms the existence ofprivate economy, insofar as some means of production are in private ownershipas well), and he asserts that the industrial sector (large scale industry) onlyproduces commodities when goods for consumption, but not when goods forproduction are produced. Nevertheless he acts convinced, to not only be able tocall the sector of large scale industry, but the entire Russian economysocialist, even though commodity production continues to prevail on a bigbasis.
We addressed all this already in our texts, which dealt with the basicdocuments of Marxism and the data of general economic history; today we mustmove over to the question of the “economic laws,” particularly“the law of value.”
Let’s first remark: To meet the objections of Russian economists, thatinvoke Engels to clarify that one can only leave capitalism if one leavescommodity production, that capitalism is only overcome where commodityproduction is overcome, Stalin only tries to read something different out of asingle paragraph in “Anti-Dühring” than what is written there,whereas in the entire section “Socialism: Theoretical – Production– Distribution” Engels develops the addressed thesis – andvery well-tailored for the Stalinist Dühring as well.
The paragraph reads: “With the seizing of the means of production bysociety production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, themastery of the product over the producer..”
Engels, remarks Stalin, didn’t specify whether this concerns“all” or only “a part” of the means of production. Thedistinction might, or might not, seem very smart to one, from a theoreticalpoint of view however, it is wrong. Only, so Stalin further, the social seizingof “all” means of production (Small and large scale industry,agriculture) allows to “get rid” of the system of commodityproduction. Caramba!
In 1919 we bestirred ourselves together with Lenin (and Stalin) untilexhaustion, to force down the stubborn social democrats’ andanarchists’ throats, that the means of production cannot be conquered ona single day and by coup, and that precisely because of this – and onlybecause of this – the terror, the dictatorship, is necessary. And today,new textbooks on political economy shall be published, that the absurdity, thatall products lose their character as commodities on the day on which afunctionary ascended to the Kremlin presents some Stalin with a decree forsignature, which expropriates the last chicken of the last member of the lastkolkhoz, is accepted.
In another paragraph, Engels talks about the seizing of all means ofproduction, which is why we now need to hear that the above cited“formula of Engels cannot be described as entirely clear and exact”[Stalin, p. 11].
By the beard of the prophet Abraham, that’s strong stuff! FriedrichEngels, of all people, the contemplative, calm, sharply defining, crystal clearFriedrich, master of the patience to get a holed ship going again and tostraighten the historical doctrine; whose modesty and prowess are unreachable(behind the impetuous Marx, who occasionally might seem difficult to understandbecause of his far sight and excellent language, and because of this strengthmaybe – maybe – might be easier to distort); Engels, whose languageis so fluid, and who by talent and because of scientific disciplinedoesn’t omit a necessary word, nor adds an unnecessary one: of allpeople, one accuses him of a lack of precision and clarity!
One must put things into their place: We are not in the organizationaloffice or in the agitation committee here, where you, ex-comrade Josef, mightbe able to persuade yourself to be able to have something on Engels. We are inthe school of principles here. Where is the talk of the seizure of all means ofproduction? Maybe there, where the talk is of commodities? Never. “Sincethe historical appearance of the capitalist mode of production, theappropriation by society of all the means of production has often been dreamedof, more or less vaguely, by individuals, as well as by sects, as the ideal ofthe future.,” reminds us Engels. Precisely because for us it is not athing of an ideal, but of science, we cannot let a “more or less”clear, respectively unclear, pass.
And when Engels, a few pages on, talks about society as mistress of allmeans of production, then precisely in the passage, where he deals with theentirety of demands: because only through this upheaval will the emancipationof all individuals be achieved. Engels then shows, that the sublation of thedivide between town and country, manual and mental labour, the social andprofessional division of labour was already demanded by the utopians,particularly the keen Fourier and Owen (Stalin indeed admits the first twodivides, but claims, again theoretically being gravely in the wrong:“This problem wasn’t dealt with by the classics of Marxism”[Stalin, p.28]): In both, population should dispense across the country ingroups of 1600 to 300, and mental and manual labour are in constant shift.Engels charges those justified and exalted demands only with one deficiency:the missing evidence (that only Marxism provided) of their realization giventhe basis of the then achieved and now excessive development of the productiveforces. Anticipating the highest revolutionary victory, Engels describes an“organization of production,” in which regarding productive labour“burden becomes passion” and reminds us of the closed reasoning inthe 12. Chapter of the first volume of “Capital” about thedestruction of the social division of labour and the human crippling factorydespotism. Neither Stalin nor Malenkov[14] can boast to have made a step in that direction. Onthe contrary: Stachanovism and sturmovchina[15] (dialectical reactions of poor, crippled victims tothe despotism in the haloed “sweatshops”) are the proof, that oneis marching into the direction of the all stifling capitalism.
Stalin is trivializing those postulates, by reducing them to the“disappearance of the contradiction of interest” between industryand agriculture, between physically working people and the “leadingpersonnel.” But something completely else is the point: The abolition ofa social organization, in which the allocation of people onto these sectors andfunctions adheres to a strict division of labour.
Where have these passages of Engels ever allowed to say, that itwouldn’t be necessary for the entire vast building of the future society,to destroy with every turn of the shovel the production of commodities, toshovel up post by post of its reeking trenches?
We of course here cannot recite for Stalin all the chapters, but as usual wecite the essential, because clear and unequivocal paragraphs, which we acceptwithout restrictions and not say cum grano salis [with a grain of salt]. Weknow by old experience, how such grains of salt have turned into mountains.
Engels: “The ‘exchange of labour for labour on the principle ofequal valuation’, in so far as it has any meaning, that is to say, themutual exchangeability of products of equal social labour, hence the law ofvalue, is the fundamental law of precisely commodity production, hence also ofits highest form, capitalist production..” It follows the famous passagein which Dühring is reproached for, just as Proudhon, imagining the futuresociety as a market economy and not seeing, how he is thus describing acapitalist economy. An “imaginary society,” Engels says. At leastStalin in his not to be despised scripture describes an actually existingcapitalist economy.
Marx: “Let us now picture to ourselves, by way of change, a communityof free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production incommon, in which the labour power of all the different individuals isconsciously applied as the combined labour power of the community..” Thissentence alone is a revolutionary programme. With the future achievement ofthis form of social organization, succinctly labelled as communism, one returnsto the Robinson with which one started. What does that mean? Robinson’sproduct was no commodity, but an object of use, because there was – ofcourse – no exchange. With eagle wings we fly over the entire history ofhumanity: “All the characteristics of Robinson’s labour are here[“here” means: in the communist association] repeated, but withthis difference, that they are social, instead of individual..” The onlynecessary textbook to learn to read is the primer! And one reads: The productof labour ceases to be a commodity, when society is socialist. Then Marxarrives at the juxtaposition of this “state of things” (ofsocialism) with commodity production, and shows, that one is the dialectical,utter, relentless and irreconcilable opposite of the other.
Before we however get to the question of economic laws, we must remark agreat deal to the Stalinist version of the socialist programme put forward byEngels in the “Anti-Dühring.” This is even more important, asStalin (in refutation of various Russian economists) refrains here fromdistortions and revisions of the classical texts and cites whole passages,while he in this subject utters a vehement “party condemnation”against any violation of orthodoxy.
Again and again Engels talks in his fundamental work about the seizure ofthe means of production by society, and first and foremost (we underline that ahundred times) about the seizure of the products – products, which todayrule over the producer and even the consumer, so that from our point of view,capitalism can be described as a system, which not only negates theproducers’ disposal of the means of production, but rather the disposalof the products.
In the Muscovite paraphrase the “society” disappears, insteadthe talk is about the transfer of the means of production to the state, thenation and (when in the terminal element of the events the point is to inflamepassions and invoke the ritual ovations) to the people, the socialisthomeland!
If one gives the summary of the Stalinist narrative, not without denying itthe merit of brutal honesty, the seizure of the means of production regardingland and the large equipment goods of agriculture proves to be a mere legalquestion, because any of its practical consequences is already contained withinthe statutes of Artel[16] or thelast Soviet constitution (which shall be revised). One must see, that thosesolemn statements about the rightful property have nothing to do with theeconomic disposal of agrarian products, which are divided between the kolkhozesand the single kolkohzniki. Factually true is the seizure through the stateonly in the large-scale industry, because the state only here disposes ofproducts, and those it sells, as far as they are products of consumption,again. In the small and medium sized businesses and in the commercialenterprises however, there is no seizure of products, not even of the means ofproduction, by the state. This also applies to the micro-equipment of thestate-sponsored family and parcel economy. Despite the existence of hugefactories and giant public construction projects, the self-proclaimed socialistand Soviet republic leads and controls not a lot; and not much was trulysocialized and nationalized. The meaning of state property in relation to theentire economy is probably bigger in some bourgeois states.
Who then, which institution, which power, wields what was wrested from theprivate hand after the revolution? The people, the nation, the homeland? Neverhave Engels and Marx used those words. The transformation of private propertyinto state property, “does not do away with the capitalistic nature ofthe productive forces,” Engels remarks.
Only when society disposes of the products, only then it is clear, that ithas overcome the class antagonisms and has become a classless society. But aslong as there are classes, society will be organized by that “classsolely,” which must sublate all classes, and as a dialectical consequenceitself. Here, it is tied on the masterful illustration of the theory of thestate, which emerged already in 1847: “The proletariat seizes the statepower and initially turns the means of production into state property.”(Engels is citing Marx here). “But, in doing this, it abolishes itself asproletariat, abolishes all class distinction and class antagonisms, abolishesalso the state as state..” Only then, and only on this royal road it issociety, which arises as the acting factor and finally disposes of theproductive forces, all products, as well as resources.
But the people, what the heck is that? A mishmash of different classes, an“integral” of expropriators and slaves, of political or businessprofessionals and the starving, respectively the oppressed. The“people” we already left to the associations for freedom anddemocracy, freedom and progress, before 1848. With its notorious“majorities,” the people is not the subject of economic planning,but merely an object of expropriation and fraud.
And the nation? As a necessity and perquisite for the emergence ofcapitalism it expresses the same mixture of social classes, not like“people” in the stale, legal and philosophic sense, but on ageographical, ethnographical and linguistic level. The “nation” aswell doesn’t seize anything: In famous passages Marx ridiculed theexpressions “national wealth” and “national income”(which plays an important role in Stalin’s analysis of Russia) andshowed, that the nation enriches itself precisely when the worker isscrewed.
If the bourgeois revolutions and the assertion of modern industry, whichextruded feudalism in Europe and various other systems in the rest of theworld, didn’t carry out in the name of the bourgeoisie and capital, butprecisely in the name of the people and nations, if this was in the Marxistconception a revolutionary and necessary transition, then we can deduce, howconsistently the Muscovite coincide with that: the jettison of Marxistpolitical economy and the renunciation of the proletarian, revolutionary andinternationalist “category” society (a category that is used inclassic texts), as well as an orientation towards the political categoriesimmanent in bourgeois ideology and propaganda: people’s democracy andnational independence.
One does not need to be surprised then, when 26 years later the outrageousslogan is repeated, which we Marxists burned all bridges with: to “pickup"[17] the banner of thebourgeoisie. The banner, which in the days of a Cromwell, Washington,Robespierre or Garibaldi was upheld and then thrown overboard; the revolutionin its march however, will leave it in the mud – because their lies andmyths of peoples, nations and homelands it counterposes with the socialistsociety.
In the Muscovite debate, the comparison between the laws of the Russianeconomy and the established laws of bourgeois economy by Marxism also came up.The namely text fights dialectically on two fronts. Some say: “If oureconomy was already socialist, we would not need to follow deterministicallythe tracks of certain economic processes, but could set the course differently:e.g. by the nationalization of the kolkhozes, the abolition of commodityexchange and monetary economy. If you show us, that this is impossible, thenlet’s deduce from that, that we live in a society, whose economy isentirely capitalist. What does it help to fool ourselves?” In contrast tothat, others want to shelve criteria that distinguish socialism in Marxism;Stalin bestirs to answer both. Those naïve researchers are of course noactive “political” elements: otherwise it would have been easy totake them out by a purge. We are only dealing with “technicians”and experts of the apparatus of production, through whose mediation the centralgovernment learns, whether the huge machinery runs smoothly or has stalled; andwhen they were right, it would not help to silence them: the crisis would showeither way. The difficulties, which are surfacing today, or put moreaccurately, come to light, are not of academic, critical or even“parliamentary” nature – to move beyond such stitches, no“great man” needs to come, a small political parvenu could handlethat. The difficulties on the other hand are real, material, they lie withinthe things, not in the heads.
For answering of the objections, the central government has to insist on twothings: first, that in a socialist society, people also have to obey toeconomic laws which cannot be suspended. Second, that those laws – inwhatever way they will differ in the future full communism all and sundry fromthe laws of capitalism – in the socialist phase partly correspond to thelaws of capitalist production and distribution, partly differ from them. And ifthe apparently insurmountable laws are settled then, one must not ignore themby the punishment of demise and one particularly must not contravene them. Sofar Stalin.
Then a special, albeit essential question arises: is the law of value partof those laws which continue to persist in the Russian economy? And if yes,isn’t every mechanism that adheres to the law of value pure capitalism?Stalin replies to the first question: Yes, the law of value is in effect overhere, though not everywhere. And to the second: No, not every economy in whichthe law of value operates is capitalist.
In the entire, solemnly presented theoretical “essay,” thestructure seems to be very fragmented and most notably it suits the book of theenemies of Marxism. Those, who employ “philosophical” weapons, willhave an easy job, because the effects of the laws of nature and the effects ofthe economic laws on the human species are equated; while those, who prefer theweapon of “economy” and who have been waiting for a century for arevanche against Marx, can believe to have made it: “The laws of economicprofitability and competition of social interests, like we understand them, youwill never be able to evade.”
One has to distinguish between theory, law and programme. In a certainpassage the following sentence slips out of Stalin’s mouth: “Marx,he, as we know, did not like [!] to digress from his investigation of the lawsof capitalist production” [Stalin, p. 82].
We already showed at the last assembly in September 1952 in Milan, thatMarx’s aim didn’t lie in the sterile description of the capitalist“status quo,” but that from every row the demand and the programmeof the destruction of capitalism stares one in the face. Our point wasn’tonly to destroy the old and stale opportunist legend, but to show the entirepolemical and militant nature intrinsic to Marx’s work. That’s whyMarx doesn’t lose himself within the description of capitalism, orrespective capitalisms, but instead he describes a capitalist system, anabstract, yes, non-existent, yes, typical capitalism, which neverthelessentirely corresponds to the glorifying theses of the bourgeois economists.Important is solely the clash of both positions (a clash of classes andparties, not a mundane dispute between intellectuals), of which one wants toprove the permanence, the eternity of capitalist machinery, while the otherproves its coming death. In this light the revolutionary Marx cared to admit,that the clockwork, perfectly centred and by the freedom of competition, andthe right of every individual, to produce and consume by the same rules, iswell lubricated. In the actual history of capital it has never been like that,it is not like that, it never will be like that, meaning: the concrete realitywould for our reasoning be much more convenient. Even better. If it, to make itshort, would have worked out for capitalism, to persevere another century withidyllic ease, the Marxian reasoning would have suffered shipwreck. But itcontinues to shine with full force, as capitalism continues, but only bymonopolization, suppression, dictatorship and massacre; and its economicdevelopment precisely follows the results of the analysis of the pure type:confirmation of our doctrine, refutation of the lackeys of capital.
In this sense, Marx has dedicated his whole life to the description ofsocialism, of communism; had it concerned only the description of capitalism,he wouldn’t have given a damn about it.
Marx investigated and developed the “economic laws” ofcapitalism indeed, but the method, in which he did this, indicates the systemof socialist characteristics entirely and in dialectical contradiction to them.So, does socialism adhere to those laws? Are they others? And if yes,which?
Just a moment! In the center of the Marxist work we put the programme, as amoment that follows a sober examination. “The philosophers have onlyinterpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it,”“Theses on Feuerbach,” and every educated dork adds:“youth” theses. But before the programme, and even before thedepiction of the discovered laws, the doctrine as a whole, the system of“theories,” has to be determined.
Some of those theories Marx has found ready-made at his adversaries, e.g.Ricardo’s value theory, and the theory of surplus value as well. Thosetheories (we don’t want to claim Stalin never knew of them) are somethingdifferent from the by Marx thoroughly treated “law of value,”respectively “law of surplus value,” which we here, to not confusethe less experienced among us, rather would like to call “law of theexchange of equivalents” and “law of the relation between the rateof surplus value and the rate of profit.”
It is important, to initially clarify the distinction between theory andlaw, a distinction, which also applies in science. Theory is the depiction ofreal processes and their relations, to ease the general understanding on acertain area – prediction and modification of those procedures onlyfollow that. Law is the precise expression of a certain relation betweenmultiple, particularly between two series of material circumstances: arelation, whose validity is verifiable at any point and which allows tocalculate unknown proportions (no matter, you philosophers, if it is aboutfuture, part or present ones. For example I am, with a well discovered law,able to determine, how high the sea level was a thousand years ago; the onlydifference, that I cannot test, is, how much more you stink to high heaventoday.). Theory is something universal, the law something strictlydifferentiated and particular. Theory is generally qualitative and serves thedefinition of certain magnitudes and essences. The law is quantitative and aimsat their measurement.
An example from physics: in the history of optics, two theories of lighthave superseded each other with varying success. According to the particletheory, the transmission of light consists of the movement of miniscule“corpuscles,” while the wave theory explains this by theoscillation of a permanent medium. Now the easiest law of optics, the law ofreflection, says that the ray that hits a mirror forms an angle of incidencethat is equal to the angle of reflection. A thousand times this law isconfirmed: the skirt chaser precisely knows where he must stand, when he wantsto observe the beautiful neighbour that is grooming herself in front of themirror: in fact, the law is compatible with both theories. It were differentappearances and laws that decided the choice.
Now, according to Stalin’s text, the “law of the exchange ofequivalents” is said to be compatible both with his “theory”:“In socialist economy there are forms of commodity production,” aswell as with our theory that says: “If commodity production and massproduction exist, then that’s capitalism.” The law is easilytested: One drives to Russia and one will see, that the exchange happens atdetermined prices with rubles, like on any arbitrary market: thus, the law ofthe exchange between equivalents prevails. To see now, which theory is thecorrect one, it’s a bit more difficult. We, for our part, deduce: InRussia one finds oneself within the pure and real capitalism. As for Stalin, hefabricates a theory – precisely: theories are invented, laws discovered– and in defiance of father Marx says: certain economic appearances ofsocialism obey usually to the law of exchange (law of value).
Before we get to the point – which laws of capitalism Marx putsforward, which distinguish capitalism from socialism, respectively which are(perhaps) common to both -, we must point at the common equation of laws ofnature with laws of society.
As students of Marx we must be militants and polemics; we must not solvesuch a question scholastically and insists on the theoretical analogy of bothareas, perhaps with the “political” goal, to dodge the followingargument: “Now, if the laws of society aren’t as insurmountable asfor example the law of gravity, then let’s go: let’s knock someover.”
How could we forget, that the fight between the giant Marx and the paid gangin the universities of capital flared up on the point, that the laws ofbourgeois economy are “no laws of nature,” and we therefore notonly want to bust this circle of hell, but can bust it. It is true, thatStalin’s scripture reminds, that with Marx the laws of economyaren’t “eternal,” but instead correspond to certain socialphases and epochs: slavery, feudalism, capitalism. But Stalin wants to pointout that “certain laws” are common to all epochs and thus alsoassert themselves in socialism, which allegedly has an own “politicaleconomy.” Stalin ridicules Yaroshenko and Bukharin, that said, thatpolitical economy is succeeded by a “technique of socialorganisation” [Stalin, p.65]. Harshly he replies to that, that this newdiscipline, which pseudo-Marxist and trembling before the Tsarist policeeconomists[18] would have attendedto, is in reality an “economic policy” – and as such heallows it [Stalin, p.74].
Well, whether there will be an economic science in socialism, we willdiscuss once things have been put in their correct place again
As to the general question of laws in nature and history, it will be dealtwith in our theoretical investigations there, where we reply to the expectedattacks, which Marxism – which indeed has for 999 of 1000 writersestablished fixed abode in Moscow – will be subjected to: Attacksregarding Stalin’s banalization of the theory of historical materialism(that’s a theory, not a law) and regarding the questions of determinismand will, causality and ambition. The original content of the Marxian position(barely understood and very inconvenient for people, that pursue a policy ofopportunist success) is always that of the direct class struggle and thehistorical antagonism between the classes, a struggle, which alternatelyresorts to the typewriter and the machine gun – provided one isn’table to talk of “feather and sword” anymore. We conceded to thebourgeoisie the achievement, in its war against the old classes, to havepromoted the critical-scientific method and to have boldly applied it to thearea of nature and then to that of society. It discovered and proclaimedtheories, which today are ours: value theory (the value of a commodity isdetermined by the socially necessary labour time required for its production)and the surplus value theory (the value of every commodity contains advancedcapital and surplus value, therefore a refund and profit). And triumphantly thebourgeoisie then proclaimed: “If you admit” (and science will admitit one century later), “that the same physical laws apply for theprimordial nebula as for our planet today, then you must also admit, that thecurrent social conditions will apply for all future societies, because weconsensually banish both the intervention of god as well as pure thought fromnature and society.” Marxism by contrast delivers the scientific proof,that within the social cosmos, a cycle carries out, which will destroy thecapitalist forms and laws, and that the future social cosmos will adhere toother laws. Since you don’t mind to remodel and banalize this mighty workbeyond ridiculousness because of domestic and foreign political purposes,finally do us the favour to omit the adjectives “Marxist,”“socialist” and “communist,” and instead use“economist,” “populist,” “progressive,” andit fits like a glove.
Engels acknowledged Marx as the founder of historical materialism. Marxexplained, his contribution in the application of this theory to the modernworld consisted not of discovering class struggle, but to introduce the conceptof the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Thus, theory leads to the class and party programme, to the organization ofthe working class for the insurrection and the seizure of power. In this greatperspective, the investigation of the laws of capitalism lines up. Two real andfundamental laws are put down in “Capital.” In the first volume,the general law of capitalist accumulation, also known as the law of increasingimpoverishment (often dealt with by us): with the increasing concentration ofcapital the number of proletarians and the “reserve army” grows; wehave explained multiple times already, that this not necessarily implies a fallin the level of consumption or real living standards of workers. In the secondand third volume, the law of the reproduction of capital is developed (which isinterrelated with the law of the tendency of the average rate of profit tofall, which we will get back to): a part of the product and thus of labour,must be put aside by the capitalist, to ensure the reproduction of depreciatedmachines, factories etc. (capital goods, for economists). If the capitalistincreases the share destined as reserve asserts, he “invests,”meaning he expands the stock of production facilities and means of production.Marx’s laws on the allocation of the social product between immediateconsumption- and investment goods prove, that as long as commodity exchange andwage system persist, the system faces crises and revolutions.
The first law certainly cannot be applied to the socialist society, becauseit organizes precisely for the reason that the social reserve constitutes anindividual security for everyone, although this reserve neither belongs toanybody, nor how in precapitalistic times, is divided into x little parts. Thesecond law, Stalin tells us, persists in socialism; and he assures, Marx hadforeseen that. Marxism merely established (among others in the known passage inthe “Critique of the Gotha Programme”), that in communism therewill be a social deduction of individual labour as well, to keep the productionfacilities in good condition, to ensure the public services etc. This deductionwould not be of expropriative character, precisely because it doesn’tneed to be mediated market-based and therefore the social reserve funds willestablish a stable equilibrium – instead of serial tremors – namelybetween the products for consumption and the products which are included in thefollowing cycle of production as means of production.
The crucial point in all that is the following: Stalin makes the valuableconcession, that – because in the state industry the law of value is ineffect – its businesses function based on “cost accounting andprofitableness, production costs, prices, etc.” [Stalin, p.20]. For“etc.” we pose: profitable. Additionally, he explains that thefuture programme consists of an increase of the production of the means ofproduction, meaning, that the “plans” of the Soviet government forthe industrialization of the country not so much allow for goods of consumptionfor the population, but instead mainly consists of producing machines, agrariantools, tractors, fertilizer etc. and to tackle giant public projects.
Plans aside: The capitalist states make plans, the proletarian dictatorshipwill make plans. But the first true socialist plan (which must be understood asan immediate despotic inroad, see the “Manifesto”) will eventuallybe a plan to the increase of the costs of production, shortening of the workday, divestment of capital, quantitative and especially qualitative levellingof consumption (which is under capitalist anarchy to nine tenths an absurdwaste of product), because only in this way it will be possible to cope with“business profitability” and “profitable prices.” So, aplan of underproduction for the drastic reduction of the share of capital goodsin production. The law of reproduction will run out of breath immediately, whenthe Marxian “department II” (production of means of consumption)eventually succeeds in knocking out “department I” (production ofmeans of production). In any way, the capitalist “concert” has fortoo long punished our eardrums.
The means of consumption are for the workers, the means of production forthe entrepreneurs. If the business master is the workers’ state, it shallof course immediately be accepted, that the workers are interested to“invest” and to sweat from four to eight hours for department I! Ifnow Yaroshenko abridges the critique of the staggering increase of the means ofproduction to the formula “primacy of consumption instead of primacy ofproduction,” he becomes very mundane. No less shallow – to smugglein state industrialism under socialist banner – are agitational formulaslike: “He who doesn’t work shall not eat” or “Abolitionof the expropriation of humans through humans,” as if it was the highestgoal of the expropriated class to oversee its own expropriation.
Even if we only stick to the analysis of the domestic economy, the Russianeconomy in reality makes use of all laws of capitalism. How can it increase theproduction of goods not meant for consumption, without proletarianizing humans?Where shall it take the humans from? The course is that of primitiveaccumulation, and mostly the means are as horrible as those, that are depictedin “Capital”: sometime it hits the kolkhozniki, who suddenly standthere without their cow; sometime the nomadic shepherds of Asia, which getsnatched from their submersion into the view of the Ursa Major; or the feudalserfs in Mongolia, which are uprooted from their millenniums-old soil. Theslogan is with certainty: more production goods, more workers, longer worktime, higher work intensity – in other words: expanded accumulation andreproduction of capital in infernal pace.
Precisely that is the honour, that we, in defiance of a bunch of dorks,bestow upon the “great Stalin.” Just in the dimension in which theprocess of the beginning accumulation of capital takes place and embraces theprovinces of the giant China, the mysterious Tibet, the legendary Central Asia(out of which the European tribe emerged), will it be revolutionary and spinthe wheel of history forward. But this is not a socialist, but a capitalistprocess. In this big part of the globe, the glorification of the development ofproductive forces is necessary. Stalin correctly says, that this is not hiscredit, but that of the economic laws, which enforces these“policies” upon him. His entire undertaking is made up offraudulent labelling: this is as well a classical mean of the bearers ofprimitive accumulation!
In the west, however, the exuberant productive forces for a long timetrigger flood waves, one after another, which prompts the states to suppress,to devour markets and regions, to prepare blood baths and wars. Here no plansto increase production help, instead only the plan to smash a gang of criminalscan help here. Especially the plan, to trash their reeking flag of freedom andparliamentarism.
We will conclude the economic argument with a synthesis of the stages of thefuture society – a topic, in which the whole of Stalin’s“document” (we were looking for that word the entire time) iscausing confusion. “France Press” accused Stalin of plagiarizingthe scripture of Nikolai Bukharin about the economic laws of the transitionperiod. Stalin however mentions the texts several times and even draws upon acritique authored by Lenin[20].Commissioned with the preparation of the programme of the Comintern (whichstayed a draft), Bukharin deserves the great credit of emphasizing thecommodity-negating postulate of the socialist revolution as an issue of primaryimportance. He also followed Lenin in the analysis of the transformation period“in Russia” and the assessment, that during the dictatorship of theproletariat, forms of commodity production were to be tolerated.
Everything becomes clear, if one bears in mind, that these investigations ofLenin and Bukharin didn’t concern themselves with the two stages ofcommunist society, of which Marx talks and which Lenin in a wonderful passageof “State and Revolution” outlines, but with a phase, whichprecedes both those stages.
The following scheme can serve as a summary of the certainly not easy topicof today’s “dialogue.”
Transition stage: The proletariat has conquered political power and rendersall non-proletarian classes politically powerless, precisely because it cannot“get rid” of those classes in an instant. This means, theproletarian state controls an economy, in which partly, even if in decreasingamount, both a market-based distribution as well as forms of private disposalof products and means of production exist (these be fragmented orconcentrated). The economy is not yet socialist, it’s a transitioneconomy.
Lower stage of communism, or if you want, socialism: society disposesalready generally of products, which are allocated to members of society byquotas. This function doesn’t require commodity exchange or money anymore– one cannot let Stalin’s statement pass, according to which thesimple exchange without money, but still based on the law of value, shouldbring us closer to communism: rather it is about a kind of regression tobartering. The allocation of products on the contrary follows from the center,without return of an equivalent. Example: If a malaria epidemic breaks out, inthe affected region quinine is distributed for free, but solely one tubule perperson.
In this phase, not only compulsory work is necessary, but also the recordingof the performed labour time and its certificate – the famous“labour voucher,” so much discussed in the last century. Thepeculiarity of this certificate is, that it cannot be kept in reserve, so thatany try to accumulate it leads to the loss of the performed labour quantumwithout compensation. The law of value is buried.
Engels: “Hence, on the assumptions we made above, society will notassign values to products.”
Higher stage of communism, which can be unhesitatingly can be calledintegral socialism: the productivity of labour is in such a way, that, apartfrom pathological cases, neither coercion nor rationing are necessary, toexclude the squandering of products and human energy. Free consumption for all.Example: The pharmacies are distributing quinine free and without constraints.And if one would take ten tubules to poison himself? He would obviously be justas stupid as the people, which confuse a rotten bourgeois society withsocialism.
In which stage does Stalin find himself? In none of the three. He is in atransition period, not away from capitalism, but towards capitalism. It’salmost honourable and certainly not self poisoning.
On day one we argued the fact, that any system of commodity production is acapitalist system, ever since through the labour of masses of humans enormousaccumulations of commodities are produced. Capitalism and commodity productionwill together fade out of the spheres of influence that they graduallyconquered in the modern world.
On the second day this got taken up again; and coming from the generalprocess to today’s Russian economy, we thought of the laws stated byStalin regarding the structure of the Russian economy as appropriate. Thediagnosis of pure capitalism, in the stage of “great stateindustrialism” was confirmed.
According to the notion of our dialogue partner, this sufficiently definedand concrete process can, applied to giant areas and populations, lead to theaccumulation and concentration of a heavy industry, which doesn’t rankbehind others, and indeed solely on the basis of the since 1917 ensuedelimination of big landowners, without inevitably repeating, as at that time inEngland, France etc., horrible expropriation of the lower population strata,who are caught in the subsistent, local economic circles and the fragmentedlabour technique.
Would one only say with this last point, that the extensive introduction ofmodern labour technique with the means of applied science plays out entirelydifferently because of the changed situation all over the world, then was thecase centuries ago, then this could be subject of a separate investigation,namely with the treatment of the “agrarian question.” Could be,that Stalin will show, attaining complete capitalism not by horse and cart, butby plane – but he should at least state the “direction.” We,the rank and file, transmit to him from many ground stations a set of data– however even the radar can go haywire.
And now a third point: the international relations within the complexoverall context of production, exchange and consumption; political and militarybalances of power.
The three points are only aspects of one and the same big question. Thefirst could be called the historical, the second the economic and the third thepolitical aspect. Direction and goal of the investigation must be set inone.
In his theoretical corrections and the correspondingly harsh referralsagainst the objections of the “comrades,” the Russian state andparty leader apparently needs to change fronts every time, when he gets on fromthe circulation within the country borders to the transcending circulation. Wealready alluded, the reader will recall, that the western “borderguards” at this point have perked up their ears. Far from again strikingup the song of a millenarian autarky, the man in the Kremlin calmly has set thebinoculars on the areas beyond the Iron Curtain; and old stories about thedivision of spheres of influence as an alternative to the sabre rattling andthe abandonment of relations get a chance. At least one thing, thatdoesn’t sound as spectacular and impertinent, as the litany aboutgenocide and craze of aggression.
Stalin claims, the manner, how within Russia (and the sister countries)industry items are assigned to the rural population and agrarian products tothe urbanites, is perfectly in accordance with socialism – while slayingeveryone and everything with quotes of Marx and Engels, and, when necessary,correcting their words, sentences and wordings ex officio. The kolkhozes“freely” sell their products – there is no other way ofgetting hold of their makings; so after all through the market, but there arespecial rules: state administered prices (Novelty! Specialty of the house!) andeven special “contracts” about commodity deliveries with“non-commodity character"[21], because the state business don’t operate withmoney, but undertake offset agreements (Highly original! Role models are thehuckster at the next corner, the American marine, which precisely knows aboutthe equivalence of kissing and cigarettes, and the mundane“clearings” of the western countries!). However, the masterdoesn’t find the expression “commodity delivery” appropriate,one should talk about product exchange. (Adding this only, so the mistakeisn’t searched for in the translation). In short, all more or lessconventional equivalent systems, from the barter of the savages to money asuniversal equivalent for all products, the gazillion systems to issueperformance and reward, which reach from the housekeeping book to thecomplicated banking business, where electronic brains add up endless queues ofnumbers, while daily the stifling flood of kicking their heels sellers oflabour power swells – why did all this emerge, what is it good for, ifnot for the exchange of products, and solely for it?
But Stalin wants to crack the gnawing core of the problem, namely, that outof the “salaries” of exchange between equivalents a privateaccumulation emerges; and he says, there were guarantees against that.
Even for a generalissimo it is difficult to stay in the saddle with such athesis and alternately fence in two directions – one blow againsttheoretical rigour, one blow against the revisionist concessions. Elasticity ofthe real Leninist Bolshevism? No, eclecticism, was our answer; back then thatwas the last straw for the Bolsheviks.
Now, no matter in what shape the domestic conditions might be (whoseinvestigation is neither finished today, nor in the scope of this study), assoon as the talk is of the foreign relations, even Stalin raises concerns. Thecomrade Notkin had to get an earful, because he claimed that even the machinesand tools produced in the state businesses are commodities. They have value,their price is determined and yet they aren’t commodities? One canliterally see Notkin being aghast. Value and price are, according to Stalin,“needed in order, in the interests of our foreign trade, to conduct salesof means of production to foreign countries. Here, in the sphere of foreigntrade, but only in this sphere” (underlined in the original), “ourmeans of production really are commodities, and really are sold (in the directmeaning of the term).” [Stalin, p. 53].
The last parentheses originate in the officially released text. Presumablythe improvident Notkin put the word “sold,” which a Marxist andBolshevik is quite fed up with, in quotes. He must have missed the latesttraining courses.
In a few years, we would be interested in the following information: Thevolume of the balance of trade please, so the ratio of commodity import andexport. And another thing: should this balance turn out positively ornegatively? From the so called law of the well-planned“proportional” development of the national economy we know that thesocial product should grow at a furious speed. We don’t speak Russian,but assume that thereby it is to be understood: plans for the“uninterrupted growth of production,” that is analogous to the lawof population growth or compound interest. We therefore propose the following,correct denotation: planning of growth in geometric progression. The“curve” drawn right, we would write up the following law with thelittle brains we have: socialism starts where this curve breaks down.
For today we record Stalin’s concession: the products destined forforeign trade, among them the means of production, are commodities, not only“formally,” in accounting, but also in “character.”
That is one thing. It is enough to discuss across a few thousand kilometersto finally come to understanding regarding anything.
A little bit more patience, then we will talk of high politics and strategy,and then the frowning will end, because everyone understands the point: willCaesar attack? Pompeius flee? Do we meet at Philippi again? Will we cross theRubicon? That is welcomed fodder for conversation that lifts the spirits.
We must point to another point of Marxist political economy. The power ofthings leads the marshal to the explosive problem of the world market. TheUSSR, he says, supports its sister countries through economic aid, whichaccelerates their industrialization. Does that also apply for Czechoslovakia aswell as China, that is, for an already capitalist country, as well as for acountry, in which the capitalist mode of production is still in the earlystages and only constitutes a fraction of aggregate production? Let’ssee. “It may be confidently said that, with this pace of industrialdevelopment, it will soon come to pass that these countries will not only be inno need of imports from capitalist countries, but will themselves feel thenecessity of finding an outside market for their surplus products.”[Stalin, p.32]. Which again brings up the question: if production (and export)is done for the west, then those are commodities; and if it is done for Russia,what are they then?
The point about this return to the system of commodity production,consummated with flying colours, which is identical with the capitalist systemin form and character (if one does not fall for the economic make-up), is thatit is founded on the imperative: export to produce more! Effectively it is thesame imperative which also pertains within the supposed “socialistcountry”: the relations between town and country, between the famous“associated classes,” are about an import-export business, becausehere also, as already mentioned, the law of geometric progression applies,which says: more production! More production!
What remains of Marxism? Barely anything! Since “the working class,[is] now in power,” it is “necessary” to“abandon” the offensive formulas which distinguish betweennecessary labour and surplus labour, paid and unpaid labour [Stalin, p.18/19].While the law of surplus value (which here according to Stalin’s criteriais a theory and not a law), first somewhat was spared, from today the followingapplies: “It is said that the law of the average rate of profit is thebasic economic law of modern capitalism. That is not true. Modern capitalism,monopoly capitalism” (there you go: what did you know, poor Marx?)“cannot content it-self with the average profit, which moreover has atendency to decline, in view of the increasing organic composition of capital.It is not the average profit, but the maximum profit that modern monopolycapitalism demands.” While the subordinate clause (“which itneeds...”) seems to bring the extinguished Marxian law into being for amoment, the new law is decreed after all: The demand for maximum profit“will be the basic economic law of modern capitalism” [Stalin,p.39].
If the flamethrower in the library isn’t halted, not even hismoustache is going to be spared.
Those twisted counter-theses, which try to secure themselves against anyobjection, are unbearable. First, it is stated that the economic laws ofmonopoly capitalism would entirely differ from the capitalism “ofMarx.” And then the same counter-theses assert that the economic laws ofsocialism could very well be the same as those of capitalism. Fresh air,quick!
Let’s heroically return to the ABC. One here has to remind of thedistinction between the mass of profit and the mass of surplus value, betweenrate of profit and rate of surplus value, and of the meaning of the Marxian lawof the tendency of the average rate of profit to fall, which is stated indetail at the beginning of the third “Capital” volume. Reading– understanding! It is not the capitalist that tends to decrease profit.It is not profit (the mass of profit) that decreases, but the rate of profit!Not the rate of any profit, but the average rate of social profit. Not any weekor in any issue of the “Financial Times,” but historically, in thedevelopment predestined by Marx towards the “social monopoly of the meansof production” in the grip of capital, whose definition, genesis, lifeand death are written.
He who understands this, can see that the effort, not of the singlecapitalist (a minor figure in Marx), but of the historical machine of capital(this “ensouled corpus” talented with “vis vitalis”),to escape the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is futile; andprecisely this law let’s us conclude the following, classical theses (towhich Stalin, confusing the west, again confesses):
First: Inevitability of war between the capitalist countries.
Second: Inevitability of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism,wheresoever.
It is a giant effort that the capitalist system deploys in fight against itsown collapse, and which expresses itself in the slogan: evermore production!Not only no stagnation, but achieving the maximization of the maximization atany time. In mathematics: geometrical progression; in music: “crescendoá la Rossini.” And for that purpose (once the entire motherland ismechanized): export. And to memorise the doctrine of the last five centurieswell: “Trade follows the flag.”
But that, Jughashvili, is their doctrine!
For our line of argument, we once again have to return to Marx and Engels.This time not to the self-contained and complete texts, as if made from onepiece by one or the other, written with full power and the groundbreakingeagerness of those who know neither doubt, nor are flustered and who removeobstacles in the way, without caring about their resistance. It is about theMarx, of which his “executor of testament” gives account in thealmost dramatic prefaces to the II. (5.5.1885) and to the III. (4.10.1894)volume of “Capital.” First it is about explaining the state of theenormous mass of materials and manuscripts – they reach from chapters inelaborated form to loose pages, notices, summaries, illegible abbreviations,promises regarding later to be developed points, as well as uncertainly andcautiously composed pages provided with annotations – with thedeteriorating health of Marx, with the inescapable ramifications of theprogressing disease which forces interruptions upon him, which quail and attackthe mighty brain more than rest lets him heal. The work accomplished by thishuman machine between the years 1863 and 1867, among it the flawlessly composedfirst volume of his main work, is immeasurable. Already in the years 1864 to1865 the disease showed first signs of health disorders; the imperturbablesight of his great “colleague” Engels notices the traces of itsdevastating aftermaths in the unreleased notebooks. But after that the samebone-grinding work – deciphering, examining, dictating, reorganizing oftexts, classification of material: all that with the will not to composeanything distinct – exceeds also the power of the extremely robustEngels. For too long he spent nights awake over the scriptures of his friend; aworrying eye weakness “for years [restricts] [his] writing time to aminimum,” as he got disallowed from “taking the quill into the handunder artificial light.” Neither defeated nor discouraged he apologizessincerely and humbly to the task – more was not granted to him. Modestlyhe reminds of all the other areas, in which the brunt more and more fell to him“solely.” One year later, he died.
This is neither incidental nor conceited. It should only make clear that theaspiration of editorial diligence which determined Engels’ compilationwork engendered that in the last two volumes of Capital the periodicallyreturning sections of synthesis and summary almost fully are missing.Engels’ quill we also owe such parentheses, and not few or of little useof them; but he doesn’t want to manage something “which justwasn’t in Marx’ book,” and so he confines himself toanalysis. Had it been different, certain shady interpretations (today as half acentury ago) would have been futile, for example the sad legend, according towhich Marx in the third and last volume revoked – according to thepersonal taste of the author: in the philosophy, the economic science or thepolitics – something. In truth in the first volume there are as manyexplicit references to the early scriptures or the “Manifesto” asconnections between the last two scriptures and the first volume –thousands of passage of correspondence reinforce this.
Here it is even less than in Engels’ work about conducting“Capital research.” Let’s just remark that Marx in one ofthose short summaries says, why he is so thoroughly dealing with the law of thetendency of the rate of profit to fall. Engels hesitates to recite the fragmentand puts it in parentheses, “because, though a rehash of the notes of theoriginal manuscript, it goes in some points beyond the scope of the materialfound in the original.”
“[The law of increased productivity of labour is not, therefore,absolutely valid for capital. So far as capital is concerned, productivenessdoes not increase through a saving in living labour in general, but onlythrough a saving in the paid portion of living labour, as compared to labourexpended in the past, as we have already indicated in passing in Book I (Ch. XIII, 2, 5. 409/398). Here the capitalist mode of production is beset withanother contradiction. Its historical mission is unconstrained development ingeometrical progression of the productivity of human labour. It goes back onits mission whenever, as here, it checks the development of productivity. Itthus demonstrates again that it is becoming senile and that it is more and moreoutlived.]”
Unaffected by the pharisaic objection that after another 60 years ofcapitalism (however with a strong dash of decay) one should with the as always“careless” Marx triple the parentheses instead of cancel them out,we emphasize the programmatic theses which Marx so “gladly”inserted in the discerning and profound analyses. So capitalism will collapse.And post-capitalism? It is like that: As the productivity of every work unitincreases, we do not increase the mass of products, but decrease the workingtime of the living. Why does the West not want to know something about that?Because there is only one single way to flee from the law of the fall in therate of profit: overproduction. And the East? Ditto. But for the sake offairness let’s remark that capitalism there is still undergoing itsadolescence.
It is time to again turn towards the deduction of the law: As long as we arenot smitten with blindness, it is anyway not on the scrap heap. We will therecircumvent both the language of numbers as well as algebraic symbolism and, asfar as possible, preserve the brevity and the polish of the fable. “Couldcommodities themselves speak,” Marx says in one of those wonderfulpassages of “Capital,” “they would say: Our use value may bea thing that interests men. It is no part of us as objects. What, however, doesbelong to us as objects, is our value. Our natural intercourse as commoditiesproves it. In the eyes of each other we are nothing but exchangevalues.”
So we attached a microphone on the marketplace on which the commoditieshailing from Russia and America meet. The ones from the “higherlevels” have allowed them to speak a common economic language. For bothcommodities, the sacrosanct principle applies that the targeted market pricemust lie above the cost of production (otherwise they would not have travelledthe long way). In both homelands one is concerned with producing them at lowcost and to sell at high price.
The commodity hailing from the land of capitalist theory has the word:“I am made of two parts and therefore only one weld is visible on me: thecost of production (a living and used up advance of my producer) and theprofit, that together add up to the precise sum below I, don’t deludeyourselves, don’t meet my principles. To encourage the buyer, I contentmyself with a modest profit: through a simple calculation – profitdivided by cost of production – you can check the rate of this profit.Suppose my cost is 10 and you can own me for 11, do you want to be stingy andclaim that the ten percent rate is excessively high? Step right up, ladies andgentlemen...”
We now hand the microphone to the other commodity. It talks like this:“For us Marxist economics is critical. You see two welds on me. I have noreason to hide that: Because I consist of three and not of two parts. The trickwith the other commodity is that it isn’t visible there. To produce me,there are two expenditures: raw materials, consumption of instruments ofproduction and suchlike, which we call constant capital invested in me –and the compensation of human labour, which we call variable capital. The sumforms what the lady before me called cost of production. For me as well youhave to add a yield, an earning or profit, which is my third and last part:called surplus value. For the advanced constant capital, we calculate nothingon top, as we know that it does not add value: only labour, meaning thevariable part of the advance creates value. So, if you want to determine thepercentage or the rate, not of profit but of surplus value, it is very easy aswell: you just have to divide the surplus value by the second part of thecapital advanced for me, that is, the wages.”
Whereupon the ordinary buyer replies: “Explain that to yourhairdresser! The only thing my wallet is interested in is the end cost, thatis, your respective sale price.”
There is spat between the two commodities, in which each claims to want toclose the less profitable deal and to settle for the lowest profit rate. Asneither of them can press it down to zero, the one that actually has the lowestcost of production wins, as Stalin also incessantly indicates. For the constantpart, quantity and quality of raw materials are given. The competition in bothexport countries is staged on the variable part. And certainly, there is thesolution to pay the workers less, to let them work longer, but predominantlylabour productivity is backed, which is conditioned by technological progress,the use of more powerful machines and the ever more rational organization offirms. Already both sides are displaying glossy prints of their large-scaleplants, where each prides itself in having reduced the number of employees atconstant or larger scale of production. But one thing that the buyers care evenless about is knowing on which side of the contested market the workers arebeing paid and treated better.
The reader will, so we think, without effort determine the differencebetween both methods of value analysis. The rate of surplus value is alwaysmuch higher than the rate of profit, and all the more as the constant capitaloutweighs the variable.
Now, the Marxian law of the fall of the average rate of profit deals withprofit as a whole, that is, the total return of all spheres of production,regardless of the later to deal with distribution (between the banker, theindustrialist and the landowner). In the 13. chapter of the third volume of“Capital,” Marx reminds: “We intentionally present this lawbefore going on to the division of profit” (“Profit is for us, forthe time being, only another name for or another category of surplusvalue”) “into different independent categories.” This“shows from the outset that this law is, in its entirety, independent ofthis division.” And so it also applies if the state behaves as owner,banker and entrepreneur.
The law is based on the general historical process – denied by no one,apologized for by everyone – of the incessant development of productivitydue to the application of ever more complicated instruments, tools, machines,ever more diverse technical processes and of scientific achievements on manuallabour. For a given mass of products, fewer and fewer workers are needed. Thecapital advanced that needed to be invested to get hands on this mass ofproducts continuously changes what Marx calls the organic composition: evermore substance-based capital, ever less wage capital. Few workers suffice tobestow an enormous “increase in value” on the to be processedmaterial, because they can process a lot more of it in comparison to the past.In this too one agrees. And further? Even assumed that capital exacerbatesexploitation and increases the rate of surplus value by paying the workers less(even though this often happens, it only has the character of a law from thepoint of view of lounge revolutionaries), the squeezed out surplus value,respectively profit, will indeed increase, in face of the much strongerincrease of the mass of purchased raw materials, with equal number of labourpowers, the profit rate will continue to fall: Precisely because the rateexpresses the relation of the slightly bigger profit (profit mass) to theenormously increased total advance in wages and material.
Capital demands the “maximum profit"? For sure, it demands it and itfinds it as well, but it cannot prevent that meanwhile the profit rate falls.The mass of profit increases, because the population and still more theproletariat grows, the processed material becomes ever more impressive and themass of products increases. In infancy: small capitals, divided between manyand invested at a good rate; in old age: giant capitals, divided on few(consequence of concentration which develops in parallel to accumulation),admittedly invested at a low rate, however with the result of the exorbitant,vertigo-inducing increase of social capital, of social profit, of averagebusiness capital and profit.
There is no contradiction with the Marxian law of the fall in the rate ofprofit, which could only be detained by the reduction of labour productivity,by “degeneration” of the organic composition of capital; an issueagainst which Stalin at the moment hauls out the big guns, a terrain on whichhe desperately tries to subdue his enemies.
In no. 2 (1952) of “Il programma comunista” we published someplain numbers from capitalist sources about the American economy. They provethe law determined by Marx and negated by Stalin. According to statistics 1848,that is, at the appearance of industrial capitalism in the USA, of 1000 valueunits which were added to the processed material in the process of production,510 units went as wages to the workers and 490 as profit to the entrepreneurs.If one disregards depreciation of machines, general expenses etc., thosenumbers on the one hand represent variable capital, on the other hand representsurplus value. Their ratio, or the rate of surplus value, is 96%.
How did the bourgeois calculate the rate of profit? To answer this, we haveto know the value of the processed raw materials. We can only guess it, byassuming the hypothesis that in the crawling phase of industry every workerproduces the quadruple of his wage on average. If the wages amount to 510, theconstitute 2.040 units. The costs of production amount to 2.550 in total. Highrate of profit: 19,2%. We notice anyway that it always lies beneath the rate ofsurplus value.
In the year 1929, after a long cycle of insane growth, the workers onlyreceived 362 of 1.000 newly added value units, the capitalists however 638.Don’t start to get confused now: Until “black Friday” thewages increased, and the living standard of the workers increased strongly– that doesn’t change a thing. As one sees, the rate of surplusvalue, respectively exploitation increased drastically: from 96% to 176%. Ifnow, after one has written one’s fingers to the bone, there is stillsomeone who doesn’t understand that one can be exploited even moredespite higher wages and better food, then he should go home! He has notunderstood the consequences of the increased productivity of labour power,consisting of sweat and blood of hard workers and ending up in the pockets ofthe bourgeois.
Let’s now determine the value of total production. Let’s assumethat between 1848 and 1929 thanks to improved machines and with same number ofworkers ten times more raw materials than before could be processed. We canquietly assume those low numbers: with the certainty of one, who is somewhatfamiliar with scientific syntheses and therefore without problems starts withpreconditions which are inconvenient for the own thesis and which benefit theenemy, those hair-splitters, which take delight in checking everything fifteentimes. Because the workers now receive 362 as opposed to the 510 before, onecould think that the share in raw materials decreased from 2.040 to 1.448; theopposite is the case: the share rises to 14.480. With a total expense of 14.842in investments and a profit of 638, one has a rate of profit of about 4,5%. Thefall of the rate of profit: here we have it. It is enough to pull offone’s head before Marx; it is not necessary to hand a tissue to“Uncle Sam” to dry his crocodile tears! You have understood, wesearched for the rate and not the mass of profit. To get an image of the totalextent of production – even if not in real values, then still in form ofa comparison between both epochs – one has to consider that a nationalproduct of 3040 in the year 1848 is faced with 15.480 in 1929: withnon-noteworthy increase of worker hands. In reality however, the workerpopulation has multiplied by ten in the course of the 80 years. One can thusestimate the total product at 154.800, about the fiftyfold of the year 1848.While the average rate of profit of the factory owners fell from 19,2% to 4,3%,the mass of profit increased from 490 to 6.390, meaning it is fourteen times ashigh. Surely our numbers are still far too modest. Important was only to prove,that American capitalism in the race to the maximum profit adheres to the lawof the fall in the rate of profit. Stalin cannot educe any new laws from it.Additionally, we didn’t account for the concentration; if we apply afactor of 10 here, the average profit (in mass) of the American enterprisesamounts to the 140-fold. There it is: the course for crisis, and theconfirmation of Marxism.
We will allow ourselves an even bolder calculation now. Let’s assumethe American working class assumes power in a situation as in that of 1929;let’s repeat the numbers: 14.480 raw materials, 362 labour powers, 638profit, meaning 15.480 total product.
And then the workers read Marx and use “the increased productive powerof capital for the saving of living labour as such.” A decree of therevolutionary committee pushes down production to 10.000 (where it is pusheddown we will see; remind yourselves that there won’t be any presidentialelections or similar events anymore). The workers will first settle for notadding the entire profit (which is burdened with dues and general expenses) totheir wage of 362, but much less, so they arrive at, let’s say 500. Forthe functioning of public facilities and state-run administrative bodies wededuce even more than the 638 of the now removed capitalists, let’s say700. According to our calculation there are only 8.800 of to be processed rawmaterials instead of 14.480; if the number of workers stays constant, theworking day of each is reduced by 40%: from 8 to less than 5 hours. As a firststep, that’s neat. If we now calculate the hourly wage, we would see thatit increased by about 132 percent: from a bit, more of 44 to about 103.
This would not be socialism. But while Stalin assumes to have discovered anew law of socialism, which is in truth a law of capitalism (with the increaseof labour productivity production grows), we confront him with the oppositelaw: the increase of productivity leads to the decrease of human labour effort,where the extent of production either stays constant or later, after the poisondripping and blood sucking branches of the capitalist trunk has been removed,begins to increase in a smooth curve and in a way adequate for humanity.
As long as the call resounds to increase production by mobilization of allpowers, that just means to desperately resist against the Marxian law of thefall of the rate of profit. Because the rate of profit decreases, even thoughthe mass of surplus value and profit do not decrease, progress rhetoric andhurries will shout at a scampered humanity ever more loudly: work more, producemore! And when the local workers faced with their frugal compensation cannotbuy the surplus product, one needs to find means to conquer markets in foreigncountries to ensure consumption. That is the vicious cycle of imperialism,which inevitably has found its solution in war – and a temporary escapefrom the final crisis in the reconstruction of the destroyed works of humanity,created in centuries.
Reconstruction of the destroyed, then construction of capitalist productionfacilities in vast areas, and today the race for markets: Those are all railswhich Stalin is following; and this train, undertaken by whoever, knows onlytwo changing points: low costs of production or war.
We will finish the depiction of this fundamental law with another wordingabout capitalism, which Marx adds in the fifteenth chapter of the third volume.As always, it simultaneously stands for the programme of communist society.
“Three cardinal facts of capitalist production:
1) Concentration of means of production in few hands, whereby they cease toappear as the property of the immediate labourers and turn into socialproduction capacities. Even if initially they are the private property ofcapitalists. These are the trustees of bourgeois society, but they pocket allthe proceeds of this trusteeship.
2) Organisation of labour itself into social labour: through co-operation,division of labour, and the uniting of labour with the natural sciences.
In these two senses, the capitalist mode of production abolishes privateproperty and private labour, even though in contradictory forms.
3) Creation of the world-market.”
As usual the “thread” lead us where it needed to lead us. Andthe reader should know that the “day” still has not drawn to aclose, but that it is only noon. The “morning” might have been ashard and complicated as a symphony by Wagner.
Will the concluding “afternoon” play a lighter music on thesteep way? Maybe. "L'après-midi d'une faune"[22]? However, our faun appears in the coarse figure andwith the threatening gesture of the blood red mars.
On the first two days and during today’s morning we dealt with allpassages in Stalin’s scripture which allow to find those laws by whichthe Russian economy can be directed.
In theoretical regard, we have fundamentally refuted that an economy denotedby such laws could be defined as socialism or its lower stage, equally wedisputed that one is able to appoint to Marx’s and Engels’fundamental texts for such a purpose. In those scriptures, we find, even if notin the banal ease which one glazes over a comic, the economic characteristicsof capitalism, as well as those of socialism and the phenomena which allow toverify the economic transition from one to the other mode of production.
In empirical regard, we could draw a series of definite conclusions. In theRussian domestic market, the law of value prevails; therefore:
The products have commodity character; A market exists; The exchange takesplace, according to the law of value, between equivalents; and the equivalentshave a monetary expression.
The great mass of agrarian businesses works solely with regard to commodityproduction and partly in form of an individual appropriation of products on theside of parcel farmers (which in the other part of his labour time functions ascooperative farmer, kolkhozniki), a form therefore, which is even further awayfrom socialism, in some sense precapitalistic and barter economic.
The small and medium sized businesses, which manufacture factorycommodities, also work for sales on the market.
The large enterprises finally are owned by the state, which doesn’tmean much: their bookkeeping carries a monetary character and by prices –in which the reign of the law of value is already implied – expenditures(for raw materials, wages) and revenues (sold products) are confronted witheach other, therefore audited whether the enterprises operate viable, meaningwhether they yield a profit, a surplus.
The reasoning about the scope of the Marxist law of the rate of profit andits fall was good for exposing Stalin’s hollow antithesis: Because theproletariat wielded power, the gigantic apparatus of nationalized industrywouldn’t aim for maximum profit (like in the capitalist countries), butis concerned for the maximum welfare of the workers and the people.
Towards the thesis according to which between the interests of the workersin the state industry and those of the “Soviet people” – thismishmash of individual- and cooperative farmers, hucksters, managers of smalland mid-sized industrial firms and so on – there weren’t anyfundamental antagonisms, not on the level of daily demands either, we have thebiggest reservations. But apart from that, we have got the proof precisely outof the “law of the planned development of the national economy ingeometrical progression” confirmed by Stalin, that the capitalist law ofthe fall in the rate of profit is in effect. If a five year plan purports anincrease in production by 20%, meaning from 100 to 120, and the following planagain purports a growth of 20%, then this means that production should not growfrom 120 to 140, but from 120 to 144 (20% increase of the new cycle, which nowstarts with 120). He who is a bit familiar with numbers knows that thedifference at the start seems marginal, later however assumes giganticmagnitudes. Do you remember the story of the creator of chess, who wanted tomake a present to the emperor of China? He asked for one corn on the firstsquare, two on the second, four on the third... all corn chambers of theheavenly empire wouldn’t have sufficed to fill the 64 squares.
Now, his law is de facto nothing else than the categorical imperative:produce evermore! This imperative belongs solely to capitalism and thefollowing chain of causes is at its foundation: Increase of labour productivity– increase of constant capital in relation to variable capital, thus theorganic composition – fall in the rate of profit – necessity tocompensate the fall with the rampant increase of capital investments andproduction of commodities.
If we had really started to build up the socialist economy in a rudimentaryway, we would have noticed that the economic imperative had changed, and thatit would have turned out to be ours: since the power of human labour ismultiplied by technical achievements: with steady production, work less! Andwhere the conditions of a revolutionary power of the proletariat really doexist, that is to say, in those countries which are already over-equipped withfacilities: produce less and work even less!
The mere fact that Russia has to issue the slogan of “increasingproduct mass” confirms our thesis. It is finally confirmed by the factthat a significant proportion of the products of major state-owned industry aresold on foreign markets, and here Stalin openly states that the relationship isnot only for accounting purposes, but by the very nature of things a commodityrelation.
Basically, this includes the confession that “building socialism inone country” is not possible, even if it were only because of worldwidecompetition (which is always prepared to shoot with cannons and atomic bombsinstead of the artillery of low prices). Only in the absurd hypothesis that the“socialist country” could close itself off behind a real ironcurtain would it be possible for the country to take the first steps in onedirection (planning “by society in the interest of society”),which, thanks to the labour productivity achieved by technical achievements,would lead to a reduction in labour efforts and exploitation of the worker. Andonly within such a hypothesis could the plan be, after the insane geometriccurve of capitalist madness has been abandoned: Let us determine a certainstandard of consumption for all residents, set by the plan; once we havereached that level, we will stop production and resist the criminal temptationto push it further, just to see where we get rid of it again, who we can forceit on.
However, the Kremlin’s full attention, both ideologically andpractically, is focused on the world market.
A superficial approach places the Marxist theories of modern colonialism andimperialism next to the Marxist description of capitalism of free competition(which supposedly unfolded until about 1880), as if these were differenttreatises or at best supplements.
In various speeches we have insisted that the allegedly sober description ofa “liberal” and “peaceful” capitalism in Marx, which bythe way never existed, is in reality nothing more than a gigantic“polemical demonstration from a party and class point of view,” onthe basis of which – if one recognises for a moment that capitalismfunctions in accordance with the unrestricted dynamics of free exchange betweenthe bearers of equivalent values (which doesn’t express anything elsethan the famous law of value) – the character of capitalism can beconceived: Namely, to be a societal class monopoly which, from the firstepisodes of primitive accumulation up to today’s robbery, incessantlystrives to heist the generated “balances” under the mask of thecontractually secured, free and equal exchange.
Starting from the exchange of equal commodity values, Marx shows thecreation of surplus value, which is invested, leading to the accumulation ofnew, increasingly concentrated capital; he further shows that the only way(compatible with the continuation of capitalist production) to resolve thecontradiction between the accumulation of wealth on one pole and theaccumulation of misery on the opposite pole and to escape the resulting law ofthe fall in the rate of profit is to produce more and more beyond what isnecessary for consumption; by pointing this out, it becomes clear that from theoutset the clash between the capitalist countries is looming; everyone feelsthe irresistible urge to sell their own commodities on the territory of theother and to avert their own crisis by stirring it up at the rival.
Official economics tried in vain to prove the possibility of achieving astable equilibrium on the world market with the rules and mechanisms ofcommodity production, even claiming that crises would be a thing of the pastonce the “civilized” organization of capitalism had spreadeverywhere. That is why Marx had to engage in an abstract discussion of thelaws of a single, non-exporting, fictitious country of fully developedcapitalism – and he proved that this country will “explode.”It is all the more obvious that, where the above-mentioned commodity relationsarise between two closed economic zones, they are not an element ofpacification but one of shock and the thesis of the “civilized worldorganization” becomes all the more obsolete. Only in one case would we bein serious theoretical embarrassment: if the first 50 years of this century hadcontinued to be wrapped in economic and political cotton wool, with seriousfree trade, neutrality and disarmament agreements. Since the world on thecontrary has become a hundred times more capitalist, it has been shaken ahundred times more by earthquakes in every respect.
To show who doesn’t twist the words here, we quote a footnote from the24th chapter of Capital volume I: “We here take no account of exporttrade, by means of which a nation can change articles of luxury either intomeans of production or means of subsistence, and vice versà. In order toexamine the object of our investigation in its integrity, free from alldisturbing subsidiary circumstances, we must treat the whole world as onenation, and assume that capitalist production is everywhere established and haspossessed itself of every branch of industry.”
The work of Marx – in which, as we always emphasize, theory andprogramme form an inseparable whole – was conceived from the outset insuch a way that it concludes with the phase in which the contradictions of thefirst capitalist centers are reproduced on an international level. Thedemonstration that a “social partnership” between the socialclasses of a country is impossible as a definitive solution and regressive as atemporary solution, attends the in all points analogous demonstration of theillusory character of a peace treaty between states.
It has been recalled several times that in the preface to his 1859 book“A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,” Marxoutlined the order of the headings as follows: “capital, landed property,wage-labour; the State, foreign trade, world market. The economic conditions ofexistence of the three great classes into which modern bourgeois society isdivided are analysed under the first three headings;” and he adds:“the interconnection of the other three headings isself-evident.”
When Marx began writing down “Capital,” whose first partintegrates the subject of “A Contribution to the Critique of PoliticalEconomy,” the plan was on the one hand deepened and on the other hand itseemed to be restricted. In the preface to the first volume (“The Processof Production of Capital”) Marx announced that the II. volume deals withthe “process of circulation” (simple and extended reproduction ofthe capital invested in production) and the III. would deal with “theforms assumed by capital in the course of its development.” Apart frombook IV about the history of the theories of value, whose materials have beenavailable since the “Critique,” volume III indeed deals with therepresentation of the overall process, examines the distribution of surplusvalue between industrialists, landowners and bankers, and concludes with the“discontinued” chapter on “The classes.” The finalversion was obviously intended to develop the question of the state and theinternational market, for which the preparatory work had been done before andafter Capital in other landmark texts of Marxism.
Already in the “Manifesto” and the volume I of Capital, theemergence of the overseas market in the wake of the geographic discoveries ofthe 15th century is highlighted as a fundamental factor of capitalistaccumulation and the primary importance of the trade wars between Portugal,Spain, Holland, France and England is pointed out.
At the time of the polemical and class-struggling portrayal of“typical” capitalism, the English Empire dominated the world stage,and so Marx and Engels paid the greatest attention to it and its economy. Intheory, this economy pretended to be liberalism; in reality, it was animperialism that had held the world monopoly at least since 1855. In“Imperialism,” Lenin refers in this respect to letters from Engelsand to the foreword that he 1892 put in front of the new edition of his study“The Situation of the Working Class in England” of 1844. Engelsrefused to “strike out of the text the many prophecies, amongst othersthat of an imminent social revolution in England” from the text bearingthe “stamp of the author’s youth.” Much more important to himseemed to have foreseen that England would lose its industrial world monopoly;and he was right a thousand times. While the “world market and colonialmonopoly” had the effect of putting the English proletariat to sleep– the world’s first proletariat with a pronounced class character– the end of the British monopoly spread the seeds of class struggle andrevolution throughout the world. Clearly, this takes more time than in the“fictitious single, thoroughly capitalist country”; but for us, therevolutionary solution is already theoretically foreseen, the detours andreasons for its “postponement” only confirm its validity. It willcome.
Let’s go back to the foreword by Engels (which is reproduced a littledifferently in Lenin’s case): “The Free Trade theory was based uponone assumption: that England was to be the one great manufacturing centre of anagricultural world. And the actual fact is that this assumption has turned outto be a pure delusion. The conditions of modern industry, steam-power andmachinery, can be established wherever there is fuel, especially coals. Andother countries besides England-France, Belgium, Germany, America, even Russiahave coals. And the people over there did not see the advantage of being turnedinto Irish pauper farmers merely for the greater wealth and glory of Englishcapitalists. They set resolutely about manufacturing, not only for themselves,but for the rest of the world; and the consequence is that the manufacturingmonopoly enjoyed by England for nearly a century is irretrievably brokenup.”
A paradox? We could only refute the comedy of “liberal”capitalism because this was the – for a limited period –unprecedented historical fall of a world monopoly. "Laissez faire, laissezpasser"[23], but keep the fleet(larger than all the others put together) on alert so that none of theNapoleons escape from the Saint Helena’s....
In the “morning” we have quoted a passage from volume III,concluding a new synthesis of capitalist characteristics with the words:“Creation of the world-market.” It will not do us any harm torepeat another powerful passage.
“The real barrier of capitalist production is capital itself. It isthat capital and its self-expansion appear as the starting and the closingpoint, the motive and the purpose of production; that production is onlyproduction for capital and not vice versa, the means of production are not meremeans for a constant expansion of the living process of the society ofproducers. The limits within which the preservation and self-expansion of thevalue of capital resting on the expropriation and pauperisation of the greatmass of producers can alone move – these limits come continually intoconflict with the methods of production employed by capital for its purposes,which drive towards unlimited extension of production, towards production as anend in itself, towards unconditional development of the social productivity oflabour. The means – unconditional development of the productive forces ofsociety – comes continually into conflict with the limited purpose, theself-expansion of the existing capital. The capitalist mode of production is,for this reason, a historical means of developing the material forces ofproduction and creating an appropriate world-market and is, at the same time, acontinual conflict between this its historical task and its own correspondingrelations of social production.”
Once again, it remains true: Russian “economic policy” hascertainly developed the material productive forces, has indeed expanded theworld market, but within the capitalist forms of production. It does indeedrepresent a useful historical tool: no less than the industrial invasion at theexpense of the starving Scots and Irish or the Wild West Indians, but it cannotloosen the relentless grip of the contradictions of capitalism, which very wellpotentiates the forces of society, but which for that must debilitate andsubjugate the workers’ association.
No matter from which side you look at it, the end point is always the worldmarket – just as with Stalin. It has never been “uniform,”except in abstract terms, as in that hypothetical country of absolute andchemically pure capitalism, whose unrealizability we have mathematicallyproven. Should it ever arise, it would immediately disintegrate into itsindividual parts, such as certain atoms and crystals that only exist for afraction of a second. Therefore, when the dream of a unified sterling markethad been over, Lenin was able to give a fitting description of the colonial andsemi-colonial division of the world between five or six imperialist monsterstates on the eve of World War I. The war was not followed by a system ofequilibrium, but by a new and different division; even Stalin admits, thatGermany “having broken out of bondage and taken the path of independentdevelopment,” had reason to turn its forces against the imperialistFranco-English-American bloc during the Second World War. But how can all thisbe reconciled with the hypocritical propaganda that for years represented thewar of this bloc as non-imperialist, even “democratic"? How can this bereconciled with the hysterical shouting about the pardon of the “warcriminal” Kesselring[24]? Woebetide comrades Tomovich, Dickovich and Harryvich if they dare to ask suchquestions!
So, new division of the world, and a new reason to wage war. Before comingto Stalin’s judgement of the division resulting after the Second WorldWar, we cannot resist the temptation to mention another passage fromLenin’s “imperialism,” which we dedicate in particular to theeconomic part of the “dialogue” of the previous days. Lenin mocks aGerman economist named Liefmann, who wrote the following song of praise forimperialism: “Commerce is an occupation having for its object thecollection, storage and supply of goods.” Lenin gives him a blow thathits him with many other Liefmanns: “From this it would follow thatcommerce existed in the time of primitive man, who knew nothing about exchange,and that it will exist under socialism!” The exclamation mark is ofcourse from Lenin. Moscow, where will you put it?
According to Stalin, the most important economic outcome of the Second WorldWar is not so much to have knocked out two major industrialised countries,namely Germany and Japan (although disregarding Italy), in search of salesmarkets, but rather to have split the world market into two parts. First heuses the expression “disintegration,” then he specifies “thatthe single all-embracing world market disintegrated, so that now we have twoparallel world markets, also confronting one another.” It is clear whothese two camps should be: on the one hand, the United States, England, Franceand all the countries that first came under the spell of the Marshall Plan forEuropean “reconstruction,” then the North Atlantic Pact for“defence,” better the rearmament of Europe and the West; On theother hand, Russia, which together with the “people’s democraticcountries” and China, which are exposed to a blockade, forms a new,separate market. Geographically, this is correct, but the wording is not veryfortunate (save for the usual translation errors). Let us assume for a momentthat, on the eve of the Second World War, there would have been a genuine,uniform world market, the trading places of which would have been accessible toall products from all countries, then it would not have been able todisintegrate into “two world markets,” but the world market wouldhave ceased to exist and would have been replaced by two international markets,separated by a rigorous curtain which would not allow commodities and paymentsto pass through (theoretically, and only according to what the customsauthorities are aware of, which is very little today). Two such markets are nowfacing each other, but in parallel, indirectly admitting that the domesticeconomies of the two major camps into which this globe is divided are“parallel,” i. e. of the same historical type; this is consistentwith our theoretical treatise and contradicts the thesis that Stalin’swritings are intended to put into circulation. In both camps the market exists,ergo the commodity system, ergo the capitalist economy. So we allow theexpression of the parallel markets to pass through, but what we completelyreject is the definition according to which there is a capitalist market in theWest and a socialist one in the East, a contradictio in adjecto
Well: Two “half-world” markets, whose dividing line, by the way– at least if it is about the more developed part of the populated world– does not run on a parallel circle or latitude, but on the longitude ofthe defeated Berlin. This line leads Stalin to a most remarkable conclusion(especially when compared to the failed hypothesis of the single world market,which would have been either under the control of a confederation of allwinning states or under the sole control of the Western bloc led by the UnitedStates), namely, that the sphere of exploitation of the world’s resourcesby the major capitalist countries (U.S.A., Britain, France) will not expand,but contract; that their opportunities for sale in the world market”(means: on the foreign market) “will deteriorate, and that theirindustries will be operating more and more below capacity. That, in fact, iswhat is meant by the deepening of the general crisis of the world capitalistsystem in connection with the disintegration of the world market.”
This has, of course, stirred up some dust; while various puppets have beensent off, of the batch of an Ehrenburg or a Nenni[26] to fight for “peaceful coexistence” and“competition” between the parallel economic areas, Moscow issending the message that it is still expecting the West to suffocate under amountain of unsalable commodities (which could not even be given away becausethen the debts would pile up even more) and blow up as a result of this crisis.Not even in the unbridled arms race or in the Korean war and other imperialistraids, Moscow sees an opportunity to save the West.
If this has shaken the bourgeoisie, it is not enough to get us Marxistsgoing. We have to ask what will determine such a process in the other“parallel” camp – on the basis of the official text we havealready shown that it is subject to the same constraints: produce more and sellmore products to the outside world. And then, as always, we must draw thedecisive conclusions from the rise of this historical movement [of Stalinism]and the contradiction that we are witnessing today: On the one hand, theposthumous attempt to “rehabilitate” Marx/Lenin’srevolutionary vision of the future – accumulation, overproduction,crisis, war, revolution; on the other hand, in the course of a long period ofdevelopment, to have established virtually irreversible historical andpolitical positions that are still persistently defended by the“communist” parties operating in the West (which will soon beplagued by the crisis) and diametrically contradict any unfolding of classantagonism and the revolutionary preparation of the masses.
Before the First World War, two perspectives collide. The inevitable disputeover the markets will lead to war; regardless of who wins from the war,imperialist tensions will persist until the proletarian revolution or until anew global conflict: that is Lenin’s perspective. The opposite is thetraitor of the working class and the International: after the suppression ofthe “aggressor” (Germany), the world will again be civilised,peaceful and open to “social progress.” Different perspectivescorrespond to different solutions: the traitors call for national Burgfrieden,Lenin for revolutionary defeatism within each nation.
The war was postponed until 1914, because the world market was still in its“formation phase” in the Marxist sense. As we have shown withregard to capitalist commodity production, the Marxist basic concept of“creation of the world market” is based on the limited“spheres of life and spheres of action” characterizingpre-capitalism, in which a local, self-sufficient economy is used to produceand consume (as in the aristocratic principalities and Asian feudal states) isdissolved in in the single economic magma of commodity trade and sales. As longas these “oil stains” of the autarchic economies“merge” with the universal solvent of capitalism both internallyand externally, the bourgeois bubble of production can sustain the tempo of its“geometric” swelling without bursting. However this is not yet thereason why these islands will enter into a global and unified market that isfree of barriers: Protectionism is an ancient affair for the nationalterritories, and for the foreign trade centres discovered by seafarers itapplies that the various nations are trying to place them under their monopoly– be it by means of concessions from the colourful rulers and tribalprinces; be it through trading companies, such as those of the Dutch,Portuguese and English; or be it under the protection of the war fleet and, inthe beginning, even the pirate ships of roaming “marinepartisans.”
In any case, according to Lenin, we are not only facing an almost worldwidesaturation, but the ones who have arrived most recently are in a crisis on thesales markets; hence the war.
Second World War. According to Stalin, Germany’s reappearance as alarge industrialized country was at the instigation of the Western powers, whowere only too happy to rearm the stronghold against Russia. In reality, thereasons for this are primarily to be seen in the fact that the German territorywas not devastated during the war and was not occupied by military forces afterthe ceasefire. In the same breath, Stalin admits that the imperialist andeconomic causes, and not the “political” and“ideological” ones, were decisive for the outbreak of the SecondWorld War, especially since Germany had rushed first to the West and not toRussia. Thus it remains true that the war of 1939-45 was an imperialist war.Consequently, there were again the two perspectives: either new wars(irrespective of who would win) or revolution (provided that the war would notbe responded to with national “social partnership” but with classstruggle) and, in contrast, the bourgeois perspective, identical to that of theFirst World War: Everything depends on the repression of the criminal Germany;if this succeeds, the way is clear for peace, general disarmament, freedom andprosperity of the peoples.
Stalin is now taking up the first Leninist perspective, and puts theimperialist cause of war and the struggle for markets in the foreground; but itis too late for someone who yesterday threw the full potential of theinternational movement onto the other perspective: the fight for the liberationfrom fascism and National Socialism. Today, the incompatibility of the twoperspectives is acknowledged; but why does one then continue to drive the (nowshattered) movement on the path of liberal and petty-bourgeois progressthinking, of “war for ideals"?
Perhaps to have a politically easy game in the next war by presenting it asa battle between the capitalist ideal of the West and the socialist ideal ofthe East? To shoot themselves into the politicians’ stupid competition,in which each camp insists on smothering the other under the terribleaccusation of “fascism"?
Now, the interesting thing about Josef Stalin’s text is that hereplies to this with “no.”
Completely unimpressed by his historical responsibility to have destroyedLenin’s theory on the inevitability of wars between the capitalistcountries and on proletarian revolution as the only way out of World War II,and equally serene in the face of the even more serious responsibility to havebroken with the only political orientation corresponding to Lenin’stheory by ordering the Communists, first in Germany and then in France, Englandand America, to make “Burgfrieden” with their own state andbourgeois government, the head of today’s Russia reprimands thosecomrades who believe in the necessity of an armed clash between the“socialist” and the “capitalist” world or demimonde.But instead of evading the prophecy of a war between capitalism and socialismwith the worn-out ideology of pacifism, competition and the coexistence of thetwo worlds, he says that it is only “theoretically” correct, that“the contradictions between capitalism and socialism are stronger”now and in the future “than the contradictions among the capitalistcountries.”
True Marxists must take seriously all possible predictions about thecontradictions within the Atlantic group of states and the resurgence ofautonomous and strong capitalisms in defeated countries such as Germany andJapan. But Stalin’s conclusion with regard to the next conflict is to betreated with caution, since he invokes the situation on the eve of the SecondWorld War by analogy: “Consequently, the struggle of the capitalistcountries for markets and their desire to crush their competitors proved inpractice to be stronger than the contradictions between the capitalist camp andthe socialist camp.”
What socialist camp? If, as we have shown in your own words, your“socialist” labelled camp produces export commodities at the to bemaximally increased speed, is it not the same “struggle formarkets” and “desire to crush competitors” (or not to becrushed, which amounts to the same thing)? Will you not and will you not haveto join the war, as producers of commodities, which in the Marxist languagemeans: as capitalists? The only difference between you Russians and the othersis that the fully developed industrialized countries have long since leftbehind the alternative of “inner colonization” of survivingpre-commodity producing islands while you are still going through this process.The consequence of this can only be one thing: the western states will squeezeyou out on the ground of market competition like a lemon (don’t forget,you have accepted the movement of commodities and money, and as long as you areat the level of competition, you also can only take the path of low costs,meagre wages and a mad rush to work for the Russian proletariat); because itwill inevitably come to war and the others will have better“armament,” they will beat you militarily after they have done awaywith you economically.
So how can we proceed in order to prevent an American victory, which is alsothe greatest of all evils for us? Stalin’s formula is quite clever– but above all, it is best suited to keep the revolutionary proletariatin stunned condition and doing the greatest service to Atlantic imperialism. Heavoids at all costs declaring the famous “holy war,” which wouldput him in a bad light to a world public that has been caught up in theentertaining discussion about the aggressor; he therefore backs out on an“economic determinism,” which in no way causes him to return to theground of class struggle and class war (a return that is historicallyimpossible anyways).
The Stalinist language is rather dubious: as Lenin said, the war is foughtbetween the capitalist states. And what are we gonna do? Do we call, as he did,the workers of all countries on both fronts to the class war, to turn the gunsaround? Never again. We'll repeat the same elegant manoeuvre we did in WorldWar II. We are joining with one of the two coalitions, for example France andEngland against the USA. In this way, we are breaking the front line and theday will come when we will take on the “last Mohawk” no matterwhether it is a former ally or not.
Such pills are administered to the last gullible proletarians in dark backrooms, as long as they have not yet been converted to conformism by even worsemeans.
But, have many asked the supreme leader, if we now believe again in theinevitability of war, what will happen to the huge apparatus we have built forthe peace campaign?
The answer reduces the possibility of a peace campaign to a meagre degree.It could “result in preventing a particular war, in its temporarypostponement, in the resignation of a bellicose government” and itsreplacement by a peace-keeping government (is this likely to curb the appetitefor markets, which has been presented as a decisive fact many times before?).But “the inevitability of wars” remains. “It is possible thatin a definite conjuncture of circumstances the fight for peace” (ademocratic movement, not a class movement) “will develop here or thereinto a fight for socialism.” And in this case, it is no longer a questionof securing peace (which is impossible), but of overthrowing capitalism. Whatwill the tens of thousands of fools who believe in world peace and“Burgfrieden” say?
To eliminate the wars and their inevitability, that is Stalin’s finalsentence, “it is necessary to abolish imperialism.”
Good. And how do we do that, how do we destroy imperialism?
Stalin: “In this respect, the present-day peace movement differs fromthe movement of the time of the First World War for the conversion of theimperialist war into civil war, since the latter movement went farther andpursued socialist aims.” Completely clear: Lenin’s slogan was thesocial civil war, i. e. the proletariat’s war against thebourgeoisie.
But you, however, have already left the Leninist way before World War II andinstead practised national “collaboration” or “partisanwar”; you have rejected the social war, defending one bourgeois andcapitalist camp against another.
So we will be attacking imperialism – but when, in war or in peace? Ifone day imperialism and capitalism fall, will it be in times of peace or war?In peaceful times you say: Leave the USSR alone, and we will abide strictly bythe laws – no talk of overthrowing capitalism. In times of war you say:the times of civil war are over, the situation is no longer that of 1914-18;the workers will have to coordinate their actions with our respective politicaland military alliances with this or that capitalist camp. That’s how,country after country, the class struggle gets smothered in mud.
Whatever nonsense the parliament and the press may say, big capital caneasily understand that Stalin’s “document” is not adeclaration of war, but a life insurance policy.
As in his accountability reports, Stalin likes to talk about the great deedsof the Russian government on a technical and economic level. So now, too: onehad to face a virgin ground, “in view of the absence in the country ofany ready-made rudiments of a socialist economy, it had to create new,socialist forms of economy, “starting from scratch,” so tospeak.” This “unprecedented” task, Stalin says, was“accomplished [...] with credit.”
Well, it’s true: you were facing a virgin soil. That was your fortuneand the misfortune of the proletarian revolution outside Russia. A revolution– no matter which kind it may be in history – then storms forwardwith full force when it only has to do with the obstacles of a wild, mercilessbut untouched ground.
But when, in the years following the conquest of power in the vast tsaristempire, the delegates of the Red Proletariat of the whole world met in theKremlin’s baroque gold-plated halls to set the guidelines for thatrevolution which was supposed to destroy the imperial fortresses of the Westernbourgeoisies, something essential was said in vain, not even Lenin understoodit[28]. If, therefore, the balancesheet of the large dams and power stations, the balance sheet of thecolonisation of the vast steppes, is concluded with honour, the balance sheetof the revolution in the capitalist West was not only concluded dishonourable,which would not be the worst, but with a defeat from which it would not recoverfor decades to come.
What has been said in vain: in the bourgeois world, the world of Christianparliamentary civilisation and production of commodities, the revolution facesa prostitute ground.
You let it contaminate itself and die of it.
But even from this dark experience IT will arise again.
1. Refers toStalin: “Marxism and Problems of Linguistics,” 1950, Criticized in“The Factors of Race and Nation in Marxist Theory” (I fattori dirazza e nazione nella teoria marxista), Il programma comunista, No.16-20,1953.
2. Quoddiffertur, non aufertur (lat.): postponed is not cancelled.
3. Stalin:Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, 1952
4.Barbariccia:"curly beard,” one of the devil’s names inDante’s “Divine Comedy”: “Hell,” 21st chant,where verse 139 says: “and he used his butt as a trumpet.”
5. Thetheoretical organ of the communist left in Italy has been called“Battaglia comunista” since 1945; after the split in 1951, theorgan of the movement to which Amadeo Bordiga belonged was called “Ilprogramma comunista.”
6.Confession: Bordiga means that the economic and social structure of Russia willforce Russian politicians to admit (the present paper dates from 1952) that“socialism” in Russia is nothing more than capitalism, even if theydo not formulate it explicitly.
7. All quotesmarked with “Stalin” are taken from: “Economic Problems ofSocialism in the USSR.” 1952.
8. V.I.Lenin: "Karl Marx,” 1914, Lenin’s Collected Works, Moscow, 1974,Volume 21, pp. 43-91.
9. See amongothers: Filo 92,"In the Vortex of Capitalist Anarchy”; Battagliacomunista, no. 9, May 1952, where the Marx chapter: “The Fetishism ofCommodities and the Secret thereof” is taken as a basis.
10. The 19thParty Congress of the CPSU took place in October 1952 and coincided with theeconomic debate discussed here.
11. Stateindustrialism here means that the state is the owner of the industry which italso manages and administers, while agriculture is hardly affected at all(except for the small part of the Soviets). For Lenin, state capitalism was thehighest goal that the proletariat’s dictatorship could set itself inanticipation of the international revolution. It was to serve as a lever forthe transformation of agriculture, which remained at the level of small-scaleand patriarchal natural production. The Stalinist counterrevolution maintainedstate leadership and property rights in industry (without excluding privateforms of enterprise), but in agriculture, in the form of the collective farm,it fortified a mode of production that was even far below the state capitalistlevel.
12. See:Karl Marx, Capital Volume I, 1867, Chapter 6, p. 123.
13. Allusionto the closing sequence of each fairy tale from “Thousand and OneNights.” Scheherazade is the narrator’s name. Through hernarrative, the clever Scheherezade captivates a king who intends to kill her.She spins the fairy tales from night to night, through 1001 nights, andachieves that life is given to her.
14. Malenkov(1902-88): Member of the Politburo. After Stalin’s death, the primeminister was removed from his post in February 1955, after a failed “coupattempt” against Khrushchev in July 1957. He then became director of anelectricity plant in Kazakhstan.
15.Stachanov movement: another attempt to increase labour productivity andestablish the piecework wage. For Stalin, she prepared the “transitionfrom socialism to communism.” But soon enough, however, the Stachanovists(“heroes of labor”) seemed to have a rather inhibiting effect onproductivity, and so they were gradually “dismantled” as leadingpolitical figures. See also Trotsky: the Stachanov movement in “TheRevolution Betrayed “.
16. Artel:an old form of peasant, cooperative union of Tatar origin; it served Stalin asthe basis of the collective farm.
17. The 26years refer to the year 1925, when Zinoviev had given the Italian communiststhe slogan: “Long live freedom! In 1952 at the 19th Party Congress,Stalin said: “The flag of national independence and sovereignty wasthrown overboard [by the bourgeoisie]. There is no doubt that you, therepresentatives of the communist and democratic parties, will have to lift thisflag and carry it forward if you want to be patriots, if you want to become theleader of the nation. You are the only one who can pick them up “.
18. Allusionto Bukharin and Bogdanov.
19.“As long ago as 1844 I stated that the above-mentioned balancing ofuseful effects and expenditure of labour on making decisions concerningproduction was all that would be left, in a communist society, of thepolitico-economic concept of value. (Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher,p. 95) The scientific justification for this statement, however, as can beseen, was made possible only by Marx’s Capital.” – FriedrichEngels, Anti-Dühring, 1877
20. Lenin:Remarks on Nikolai Bukharin’s “Economy of the TransformationPeriod,” 1981.
21. In thiscontext, Stalin puts the word “commodity” in quotation marks. Heproposes to replace the term “commodity delivery” with“product exchange” and suggests that the “transition fromsocialism to communism” would mean narrowing the scope of circulation ofcommodities and broadening that of product exchange.
22. L’apres-midi d’ une faune: “The Afternoon of a Faun”; music byDebussy.
23. Laissezfaire, laissez passer (French): “Laissez faire, laissez passer, le mondeva de lui-même” (“Let it happen, let it pass, the world willgo on on its own”), a statement by Vincent de Gournay (1712-59),attributed to a French economist. Applies as a buzzword of economic liberalism,as an invitation to the state power not to intervene in economic processes.
24.Kesselring: from 1941-45 commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht in Italy and NorthAfrica.
25.Contradictio in adjecto (lat.): Contradiction in itself.
26.Ehrenburg: Russian writer. Apologete of peaceful coexistence and the“thaw.” Nenni: Secretary General of PSI. Otherwise seeEhrenburg.
27. Jusprimae noctis (lat.): “Right to the first night”; the right of thefeudal lord to the first night with the newlyweds of his serf.
28. AmadeoBordiga refers to the discussions of the first Comintern congresses on tacticsto be used in the capitalist countries, which are no longer“virgin” but rather overripe. The Italian left has emphasised thedanger of an “elastic” tactic towards the social democraticparties, particularly with regard to the tactics of the political (non-union!)united front and a common workers government with these parties. The Leftconsidered that the young Communist parties should not compromise themselves byacting in concert with social democratic or similar parties, while otherdelegates and the Bolsheviks argued that they should first gather all forces to“sift” at a later date.