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I think Paul's post is helpful as we actually try to circumnavigate the problem; the problem being social revolutions that expropriate the bourgeois class and then manifest themselves as a "substitute bourgeoisie." Couple of items-- I disagree over the evaluation of China's ascendancy-- actually I don't think it is an ascendancy at all. It certainly is a transformation, but as everyone knows, I think China is the "paper tiger" in network of capitalism. Secondly, somewhere, somehow China, and Russia before it, fit in to the world market as much as they were isolated from it, even before the restoration of capitalism. The history of the Soviet development is not quite that segregated from Great Depression. There are certain enormous quantitative differences-- like expanding output in the Soviet Union, and declining output in the US, etc. but the precipitating forces for the 5 year plans were very much keyed to terms of trade with the West and the worsening of those terms and that trade as well as the internal limits of the peasant based agriculture prior to the 5 year plans. Secondly, the growth of industry in the USSR is accompanied by dramatic declines in consumption among urban and rural workers, and... a real decline in labor productivity. The decline in consumption, certainly, is not that different from what workers experienced in the rest of Europe and North America. The decline in labor productivity reflects that decline of consumption, reflects an analogous appropriation of "absolute surplus value," an absolute decline in workers' subsistence levels, as well as the Soviet's ability to organize and direct masses of labor-power at specific projects. And somehow, despite the bourgeoisie's antipathy to both revolutions, China and Russia perform critical functions in stabilizing the "order of battle" of capital. We see this most clearly in political terms-- the roles played by the CP's in revolutionary struggles in other countries. I think there has to be an economic equivalent to this-- somewhere there is a participation of China and Russia in the actual accumulation processes that serves to stabilize capital. Maybe it's as simple as, after WW2, taking productive assets out of the circulation process of capital [i.e. the DDR, Czechoslovakia]. I have difficulty with the notion that the USSR was ever isolated from the world markets during the depression [despite the results of the 5 year plans] when it certainly wasn't isolated from what happened next. It's quite possible, IMO, when we talk about the "modernization" of the USSR, pre and post WW2, we're missing the boat, the boat being Russia's history, the boat being that the modernization we think we see is another iteration of uneven and combined development as labor productivity in general and agricultural productivity specifically lagged behind that of advanced capitalist countries. Anyway, this is mostly thinking out loud on my part. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Flewers" <rfls12...@blueyonder.co.uk> To: "David Schanoes" <sartes...@earthlink.net> ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
