Was state-capitalism really progressive?
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Leninism in Russia and China and their satellite countries, whilst maybe progressive in overthrowing the preceding societies, was surely not progressive at the end.
Maoism and Sovietism left their subject populations frozen in the 1950s, did they not? Both had actually destroyed or suppressed unto destruction anything positive that had been produced by the preceding regimes, throttling with an iron hand anything that was of benefit. Technology too was frozen at 1950s levels, and with the fall of both Maoism and Sovietism the workers of those lands have culturally embraced, and frantically so, if naively and destined for disillusionment, everything western.In the Communist Manifesto Marx advocates state ownership to hasten the development of capitalism thus making socialism possible. Of course he did not believe that this was a form of socialism but in the case of Russia state ownership did accomplish an astonishing rate of industrial evolution that enabled them to beat Germany in WW2. In the 1960’s they were the first to launch a satellite, launch a man into orbit and, I think, send a probe to the moon so I don’t think your claim that they were stuck in the 1950s is entirely justified.
We have said before that Russia was the last capitalist country able to develop itself internally with their own ruling class and their own natural resources, and the western capitalists knew that, and Russia had a tremendous capitalist development in a few decades, and they were ready to compete for world hegemony with other capitalist powers. The case of China, Korea, Cuba is different they do need the influence of external capitalists for their own development, also Marx wrote about the uneven development of capitalism
I initially thought the story was an urban legend, but it isn’t.
The USA devoted lots of expensive research into developing a pen that worked under zero-gravity conditions for astronauts. The Russian cosmonauts instead chose to use a pencil.
I also have a vague distant memory that during the 1950s-60s the US disparaged the radio technology in Soviet planes as being obsolete but then it was pointed out that their more modern ones in a nuclear war would be inoperable due to the effect of electromagnetic pulse whereas the Russian would be less affected.
When discussing state capitalism, didn’t Engels refer to it as a development of joint-stock companies. Capitalism run by managers without individual capitalists?
I think the question of whether state capitalism was progressive vis a vis other variants of capitalism has to be in a temporal context: Are we talking about early capitalism or late capitalism? Also “progressive” with respect to what?
If we are talking about industrial output and the growth in GDP there is little doubt that state capitalism at least in the early stages of capitalist development was superior. Germany under Bismarck was arguably the first significant example of state capitalism in practice. By the end of the 19th century, it had decisively overtaken Britain in the industrial league table.
Similarly in the early decades of soviet state capitalism, GDP growth was remarkably high – though it started to peter off in the post-war era. The role of big American, and other, corporations in soviet industrialization in the Stalin era should not be overlooked, however.
The 1848 Communist Manifesto talked about the need to centralise capital and for the state to take over the means of production to hasten the development of the productive forces as rapidly as possible. Marx and Engels figured that this required the development of large-scale industry which in turn required the centralisation of capital. State ownership being the most centralised expression of capital ownership it seemed logical to them to call for the state ownership of capital as the means of accelerating capitalist development more rapidly than any other extant form of capitalism and so hasten the time when socialism might be materially possible
However, in the late 19th century and in light of the “great strides” already made in the development of modern capitalist industry, it seems they started to soft-peddle this particular notion of the “state capitalist road to socialism”. In the 1872 Preface to the Manifesto for example they seemed to distance themselves from, if not disown, much of the state capitalist reformist agenda set down in part 2 of the original manifesto
I think this provides us with a clue of sorts as to how to go about answering the question posed in this thread. State capitalism might have been progressive in the early days of capitalism but that is no longer the case.
Of course, we should be aware that there are not only different forms of capitalism but also different forms of state capitalism too. The current model of state capitalism in China is quite different from the so-called “command economy” of the Stalin era. At the recent Party Congress of the CPC Xi declared that it is the market, rather than a central plan, that will continue to play the “decisive role” in resource allocation.
In late capitalism which is much more economically diversified and complex than early capitalism, that is perhaps quite a predictable development
The expression progressive has several meaning, and it is used by the lefties like indicating that it is socialism, or advanced ideas, social reform, but progressive is a bourgeois current that emerged in Europe and then it was transferred to the usa, for some pro capitalist groups progressive means socialists which is totally wrong, it is a bourgeois political current
In our times state capitalism is not longer a progressive system, probably, it was used by the Russian capitalist to develop capitalism in certain historical period, but capitalism in or time is a reactionary and backward system in all forms,
The Bolsheviks tried to obtain investments from the western capitalists at the beginning of the revolts, and we have an article written by the WSPUS which indicates that Lenin tried to obtain foreign investment
State-capitalism was often held back by ideology, in the case of Mao especially.
After the Mao-made famine of the late fifties, Mao was squeezed out of politics for a few years. He was ignored, and his articles for the press were left unpublished.
During this time, capitalist development revived and progressed. Then Mao, desperate, attacked the CPC using the teenage Red Guards imbued with his cult, and both schooling and production again suffered. These are prime examples of state-capitalism being retarded in its purpose of capitalist development by the whims of the head of state.
We haven’t mentioned the development of the ‘industrial military complex’ where the state is in control of vast amounts of capital that employs millions of workers. Would it be true to say that within some states (the US?) the whole economy is dependent on military income and expenditure? I believe the armaments trade is very lucrative for the capitalists in this and many other countries? Could capitalist economy work at all without war and preparing for war?
It certainly shows that capitalism cannot exist without a state and that a pure “free market” capitalism is just a libertarian pipe dream. It has never existed and fortunately never will.
On the question of a “permanent arms economy” see this recent article (scroll down to the second item):
I read once on the SPGB’s website (though I don’t remember where) that Russia & China needed state-capitalist revolutions. This is because their respective capitalist classes were too weak to take over the State from the feudalists, therefore, they needed a state-bourgeoise to catch up with the West’s advanced level of industrial capitalism.
That’s Lenin’s conclusion (privately), and simplistic, but yes.
But factors could also impede capitalist development, for instance Mao’s megalomania in China.
(Which, by the way, hadn’t been feudal for two thousand years).“(Which, by the way, hadn’t been feudal for two thousand years)”
Not really? I thought most of the population of China were peasants in 1949. Unless peasants aren’t unique to feudalism?
Feudalism only existed in Japan, capitalism has replaced all the pre capitalist societies around the world. In Asia prevailed the Asiatic Mode of production or the despotic asiatic mode of production which was similar to soviet state capitalism.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/ethnographical-notebooks/notebooks.pdf
Capitalism without a state apparatus has never existed and will never exist, those are the allegations made by the Anarco capitalist and it has been proven that they are totally mistaken and they are not Anarchist either
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