Phil Walden: It was a bourgeois state because it was part of a world system of bourgeois relations - all states extracting a surplus from their populations. Thus the Soviet Union could not have been some form of workers state. But it wasn't capitalist because the surplus extracted in the Soviet Union was not surplus value.
CB: Why use the term "bourgeois" if it wasn't form of capitalism ? Comment Here in a nutshell is the political and ideological divergence. Anyone "truly revolutionary" self appointed task is organize the workers to overthrow the bourgeois state. Since the Soviet state was an organization of violence in the hands of the bourgeoisie, it was the task of those who viewed the Soviet State as bourgeois, to overthrow it. Therefore, the functionaries making manifest the organization of the proletarian state; that did not think it was the organization of violence protecting the value relationship and anarchy of production, hunted down those who sought to overthrow the state and restore . . . exactly what? Such is how the functionaries of the state - not the state as such, thought things out. I do agree that the Soviet state was not a worker state. The workers state is an abstraction, according to Lenin. I would prefer Lenin's language on this matter. It was a proletarian state, "learning on the peasants." The worker-peasant alliance. ("Leaning on the peasants" is Trotsky precise formulation). The task of the proletarian state as state is to protect the proletarian property relations. The role of the government which sits upon the proletarian state - as a superstructure, is to implement the economic and political agenda in conformity with the property relations. And in the Soviet Union this included hunting down the counterrevolution, whose stated aim was the overthrow of the state, rather than changing the government. . WL. Post S. Extracting a surplus does not define the property relations in as much as every society on earth, outside of the initial communist organization of society, extracts a surplus. What was the surplus extracted in the Soviet Union? What was this surplus material physical appearance? Surplus product? If by change some of these "things" that are the "surplus," . . . was food stuff, . . . . then this "thing" . . .had a use-value and exchange-value, or a commodity form; because of the nature of small scale agricultural production, and the law of commodity exchange. Wheat was sold as a commodity in the Soviet Union. However, commodity production predates capitalism, which is to say, all commodity production does not = capitalist commodity production. The surplus extracted was perhaps a . . . . surplus product? Money? That is to say one runs backwards into the theory of value. The bourgeoisie appropriates the SURPLUS PRODUCT, which CONTAINS the value manifestation, over and above, the value equivalent in wages, paid to the total laborers. That is to say, the workers create a total mass of commodities and the bourgeoisie pays them a value well below the value in the total commodities they create. Hence surplus value. There is no other way to extract surplus value outside the surplus product, (that I am aware of) as the act of bourgeoisie production, distribution and circulation of commodities. WL **************Get a jump start on your taxes. Find a tax professional in your neighborhood today. (http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=Tax+Return+Preparation+%26+Filing&ncid=emlcntusyelp00000004) _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis