Re: Socialism Betrayed/4 - value and the industrial system

[Waistline2]

The intention was to do perhaps two more pieces on "Socialism Betrayed" focusing on the Epilogue. In my opinion how one assess Soviet socialism and its overthrow pushes the boundary of how the past generation of communist workers and Marxist understood the law of value, its operations and the context called the industrial mode of production - with the property relations within.   The question of the second economy or the black market as an attribute of the industrial mode of production is important because one cannot liquidate the act of exchange - outside the bound of legality, under conditions of relative scarcity and industrial bureaucracy.   For instance the pipes under the kitchen stink leaks and one sign up for repair and goes on the waiting list. A waiting list exits in the first place as a manifestation of shortage of plumbers or plumbers being deployed for more important work in the national economy.  I happen to know Ivan the plumber next door and we go back twenty years and he does things for me and I do things for him to shortcut the system. These simple and not so simple acts of exchange of labor cannot be outlawed and becomes a vortex drawing people into the value relationship because acts of exchange of labor under these conditions must reach a certain equilibrium or you deny the labor input to your family.   People turn to the second economy (SE) for the same reason they do it in America . . . and everywhere else on earth, today . . . to increase consumption and gain access to greater services.    Yes, this is simplistic but far to often true in real life. The point is that the industrial mode of production is advanced productive forces looking through the prism of history and primitive looking through the prism of a vision of the future . . . on hundred years of development of computers, digitalized production processes and advance robotics.    "Socialism Betrayed" assembles all the pieces of the puzzle and I do not object to their treatment of leaders as manifestation of classes, class fragments and policy. How the puzzle is assembled is what challenges everyone's ideology and thinking.   The authors pose in an easy to read framework every fundamental question in my opinion. I assemble the puzzle differently. The fact of the criticism of Stalin and the actual policy of those putting forth the criticism cannot be dismissed, although Stalin remains the bone in the throat of the communist movement that can neither be swallowed of spit up. The fact of the matter is a policy shift - beginning with Nikita K. on the emphasis of developing heavy or light industry, which determines the rate of reproduction and extensive expansion of the industrial mode of production.   This is an issue that may never be solved in our lifetime. Sides were taken and I never took Nikita K. side . . . and have always been firmly within the Stalin polarity concerning the operation of the law of value and why it cannot be abolished under industrial socialism.   This question of democracy is not an abstract category depending on ones belief system. To ascertain "where was the working class" one has to dig into the fact of society administration, the culture of the average Soviet citizen, rates of incarceration compared to say . . . bourgeois America today . . .  forms of organizations engaging the average citizen . . . scale of trade union organizations . . . actual working of Soviets and cooperative societies . . . vacation time . . . educational levels, etc.   How the Soviets developed industrial socialism has no framework of real comparison in the sense that we can speak of how America developed the bourgeois mode of production and compare it with say Germany, England or Japan.   Ones ideological bent . . . which in American tends to be utterly bourgeois, needs to be suspended and Soviet society be looked at on the basis of tits own internal development on a hostile mode of production in a hostile world.     These are sharp questions that cannot be treated lightly.   Why could they not overcome the law of value?     Melvin P.           Waistline2 wrote: >"Socialism Betrayed" by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny contains  an underlying theory grid that evolved from the evolution of the Communist Party USA . . in my opinion  . . . and limited to the industrial phase of  development.< I read "SB" as well and also consider it worth reading, but was less impressed. I was disappointed that the book almost solely focuses on inner-party conflict and, contrary to what one might expect from an historian like Roger Keeran, it presents a socialist version of the "great man" history (if that is possible) we were supposed to have rejected from bourgeois historians. Their conclusion: one man, specifically Mickail G. is responsible for the collapse of the USSR, and along the way competing personalities representing two trends in the CPSU fought over the direction of development. Where is the working class? Also, questions such as why a second economy necessarily arose out of the planned economy aren't really addressed except as they relate to the history of the personalities that dominate the book? Why would workers and the mass of the population turn to the SE? Why would they need to? What does this say about how the USSR was developing socialism? Does it have anything to say about planning itself? Also, I have to say I didn't think the unqualified (or at the most very underqualified) defenses of Stalin were just way too much to handle. Likewise the attacks on those in the Soviet party that criticized Stalin by the authors of this book (and by implication everyone else), calling them social democrats or  being aligned with imperialists etc., was unconvincing. Also, (another also) the authors handling of the question of democracy seemed out of another era altogether. The book does contain a lot of useful information, I think, about the Soviet economy and some Party-related history. I'd give it 2 and 1/2 red stars. Joel Wendland