Reviews and Views
Volume One
Nasser Paydar
A significant part of the literature of the world’s left forces between the 1930s and the present has been devoted to the criticism and study of Russian socialism. The criticisms have had and continue to have more or less large and sometimes blatant differences in terms of content, depth, political approach, and class bias. The starting point of many of the tendencies of critics or those claiming to be fundamental critics has usually been nationalism, social populism, democracy, and generally a kind of oppositions based on specific social-bourgeois expectations. Some critics have also spoken of the search for practical and communist criticism to help the communist movement of the working class develop a more confident and conscious strategy.
Neither Russian communism and its rise and fall, nor its various critiques to date, are events or phenomena in the past history of the labour movement. On the contrary, they are all fully alive, present, and ongoing issues in the open book of class confrontations and ups and downs of this movement. Russian communism was the product of the failure of a great workers’ revolution in the history of the life of the world working class and the embodiment of an anti-worker and anti-communist alternative to the communism of the abolition of wage labour. Examining the material, social, and historical foundations of the failure that led to the long-term dominance of a type of capitalist production and political order in a vast part of the world under the name and symbol of communism, the Marxian understanding of the economic, civil, political, and social structure of this form of communism, and finally, the explanation of its fundamental differences from working-class communism, not only to this day, but as long as the capitalist system remains in the world, is an urgent and vital task for communist activists. If the future Octobers of the workers of the world are to be the true dawn of a free life, free from the concern of selling labour power and the dawn of the real freedom of man from the bondage of work, then a deep examination of what has happened to the October Revolution of 1917, a deep communist and Marxian recognition of the society resulting from the defeat of October, and an effort to ensure that another type of order of the relationship of buying and selling labour power as an alternative to communism is not imposed on the workers are a vital and inseparable part of the ongoing struggle process of the working class. In this regard, the critique and deepening of the different analyses, critiques, and investigations that have been carried out are also an ongoing part of this discussion and study. Every critical look at Russian communism carries a kind of horizon-building for the working masses of the world. This critical perspective may have been a spark, albeit a little misguided, on the way to a more conscious, stronger, and more successful struggle of the working class against wage slavery, and conversely, it may have placed new dark places or detours before the workers.
“Hillel Ticktin” is the editor-in-chief of Critic magazine, among those who have criticized, analysed and commented on the former Soviet Union and “camp socialism”. He has tried to explain the general lines of his criticisms and findings to the readers in the interview with Nagham No. 10. From our point of view, Tiktin’s criticism is not only homogenous and consistent with the communist criticism of the working class on Russian communism, which on the contrary has a bourgeois social origin. This critique is unable to explain the capitalist content of camp socialism, and based on this, its conclusions, instead of paving the way for the future struggle of the working class towards Marxian communism and the abolition of wage labour, are another twisted version to make the labour movement fall into the abyss of other forms of bourgeois socialism. This article deals with a detailed analysis of this issue. Let’s refer to the interview of Critic’s editor in “Negah” 10. While answering a question about the future of communism, he points out some important points and says:
“Over the past fifteen years, the Stalinist countries and parties have collapsed, and the few that remain, such as China, Vietnam, and Cuba, have clearly transformed into capitalism.”
Tiktin continues a little further down:
“The former Soviet Union has failed to become capitalist, and this is a disaster whose roots must be sought in the failure of efforts to establish a market.”
The editor-in-chief of the Critique then adds that: He does not evaluate the former Soviet bloc and societies such as Cuba, China, and Vietnam as capitalist countries, and does not consider the dominant mode of production in these countries to be capitalist. Of course, he does not consider the economic structure of the aforementioned societies to be socialist either, and thus, in practice, he is talking about a type of economy and mode of production that is neither capitalist nor socialist!! A certain version of the “material understanding of history” or a special look at the way of explaining political economy and the anatomy of civil society that has had a remarkable reflection in the literature of the “Trotskyist” spectrum of forces since the rise of Russian socialism and is more or less familiar to the conscious workers and communist activists of the world. Tiktin himself formulates the result of the application of this material understanding! or this special way of explaining the economy and society to the phenomenon of the former Soviet camp as follows. “Yes, I say that the Soviet Union was neither capitalist nor socialist, and with the possible exception of the Baltic republics, the subsequent states in this country have not been able to become capitalist either, and therefore Russia is definitely not capitalist at present.” (1)
He then explains the basis of his argument that the former camp was not capitalist very clearly:
“The basis of my argument is that the Soviet Union was not capitalist because the law of value played no role in its economy, and that it was not socialist because the country was run by a ruling body that exchanged power among itself. This fact indicates that what was called planning was not planning in reality, but the administration of society in the service of the interests of the ruling group… The state was simply in the service of this group.” (2)
Tiktin’s short but clear statements highlight the real basis of his inference about the most important and central problems of communism and the labour movement from the past to the present. These statements, with all their brevity and brevity, indicate that, according to Hilal Tiktin:
1. Government planning of the production process and social work, control of competition and the price of goods, including control of the purchase and sale rate of labour power by the government, leads to the elimination and disappearance of the law of value in a society.!!
2. The capitalist mode of production is not explained by the relationship between the purchase and sale of labour power.!!
The non-socialism of the former Soviet Union must be sought primarily in state totalitarianism, state oligarchy, and planning problems.!!
4 And finally, working-class socialism will be a type of productive, civil, political, and social order that, although the relationship of buying and selling labour power determines its economic infrastructure!! But its productive and economic order follows a democratic, egalitarian political order based on the norms of freedom, justice, and collective intervention!! It is necessary to remember that Tiktin himself does not formulate his perceptions and beliefs exactly as we propose, but the content of his words and theories is homogeneous and fused with these conclusions from all sides. This point also perhaps does not need explanation that the aforementioned statements or perceptions all constitute different aspects of a single theory. Tiktin’s narrative of capitalism and socialism is the common foundation or the main leaven for the formation and coordination of this entire political and theoretical discourse. In the perspective of this specific class tendency, the “law of value” prevails only in societies and relations where individual ownership of individual capital, free competition between individual producers, and unbridled anarchy of production and the labour market prevail. By denying these components, there is no reason for the existence and survival of the law of value!! And it is quite clear that in the absence of the dominance of the law of value, the basis of the existence of the commodity economy and the dominance of capitalist production over society is also irrelevant!!
Ticktin or any other theorist and ordinary person can judge the conditions of human work and life or the present and future reality of human societies in this way. But these kinds of standards, beliefs and theories not only do not shed light on the path of human struggle against the present situation, nor do they open any way out to a horizon of life free from exploitation, slavery and class oppression before the working people of the world. On the contrary, they constantly lead them to the altar of fruitless struggle to overturn an inscription on both sides of which the eternity of wage slavery is engraved in the largest letters. The Critique editor’s analysis of the “law of value,” the dominance and fall of this “law” in existing and future societies, is a guarantee for the perpetuation of wage labour, in conflict with the basis of human liberation from capitalist exploitation, and at the same time contradictory to Marx’s teachings on the commodity economy, the capitalist mode of production, and his anatomy of civil society. To examine the subject, we begin with the most basic part of Ticktin’s theoretical analyses and arguments, namely, his definition of the law of value and how this law is present and absent in the reality of a society’s dominant mode of production, and in this regard, we first turn to Marx’s Capital.
“Commodities acquire a reality of value only because they express the social unity of human labour, and therefore their reality of value is purely social. It then becomes self-evident that this reality can only appear in the social relation of commodities to commodities. In fact, we proceeded from the exchange value or exchange relation of commodities to obtain the value that is hidden within them.” (3)
Ticktin certainly does not deny the theoretical formulation of this summary by Marx, but his interpretation of such categories as the “social relation of commodity to commodity” or the unity of social labour as the basis of the value reality of commodities differs fundamentally from the content of Marx’s understanding of these phenomena. In the first place, and insofar as it concerns the explanation of the commodity economy, its distinction from collective production and the concept of the law of value, Marx draws a substantive distinction between two different cases or conditions. In the first place, he depicts conditions in which the direct participation of human labour in the general process of production determines the social character of labour, and in the second place, he looks at conditions in which the general character or social necessity of labour is determined solely on the basis of the exchange of products. He says:
“The factor of direct participation of labour, that is, the labour of each person in the general chain of production, is the collective nature of labour, which also determines the distribution of products. It is this collective nature of production that gives the product of production a general and collective nature. Therefore, the exchange that takes place at the beginning of production does not concern values, but rather specific activities and collective needs and goals that completely require the participation of the individual in the collective world of products. Whereas in the system of exchange values, it is exchange that gives labour a general nature. In the communal system, the generality of labour precedes exchange.” (4)
Thus, the very fact that in a society the products of labour and production are exchanged on the basis of the socially necessary labour time contained in them, we witness the presence of the law of value, and in this society, whenever labour power is a commodity, there is no room for doubt about the undisputed dominance of the law of value, and likewise no room for doubt about the all-encompassing dominance of the capitalist mode of production. Within this society, the exchange of the products of labour unquestionably implies the connection and interaction of their value expressions. This means that the products of production and labour, regardless of the specific form of their use value or quantity, are exchanged only in terms of certain quantities of abstract human labour, their exchange value is determined on the basis of this general abstract human labour or socially necessary labour time, and when labour power is a commodity as a whole, then the socially necessary labour time contained in the products is the same labour time that the working masses sell to the capitalist class of society or, more precisely, to the social capital that dominates the conditions of their work and life. The law of value reigns here with all its excludable authority, and the total socially necessary labour contained in all social products is a combination of the surplus labour and the necessary labour of the workers, or, to put it more simply, the cost of reproducing labour power plus the surplus value or profit of the capitalists.
For the law of value to be abolished in the social life of men, the products of labour must be essentially devoid of the character of commodities. What this means in our age and in every corner of the capitalist world is that, first of all, the relation of buying and selling of labour power must be completely destroyed. Only in such a situation will the use value of the products of human labour determine the sole motive for production and the labour process will be adapted to the natural necessities of human life.
Following these explanations, a serious question is whether, according to Hillel Ticktin, the process of exchange of the social product in the former Soviet Union corresponded to the priority of the universality and collectively of labour over the exchange process??!!! The next and much more fundamental question is whether, according to him, the foundation of the Soviet economy was based on something other than the relationship of buying and selling labour power? In other words, did the workers and citizens of former or later Russia perform and give labour as an activity to participate in the general chain of production or the collective and collective process of production and solely with the aim of creating public consumption values??!!! Wasn’t the sale of labour power a means of livelihood for the Russian worker??!!! Didn’t the former Soviet working class or all camp societies exchange their labour power for capital in order to pay for the means they needed? If the answer to the first and second questions is negative and the rest is positive, which is certainly the case, then why does the editor of the Critique speak of the absence of the law of value in the Soviet Union of yesterday and in Russia of today?! Isn’t it because the labour power of society there was a commodity to the greatest extent possible and is still a commodity today? Isn’t it because the Soviet working class earned its living solely and exclusively by selling its labour power and still earns its living in the same way. What was the wage of the camp worker other than the cost of reproducing his labour power? What else was this wage other than paying for the means of subsistence necessary for the reproduction of the labour power of the workers?
Why Ticktin speaks of the abolition of the law of value in his analysis of such a society is a matter whose roots can only be traced to the depth of his class perspective on the issue. What in the real world has objectively and tangibly distinguished the economic relations of camp societies or societies like China from those of Western-type capitalist countries has nothing to do with the indicators and components that distinguish the capitalist mode of production from other forms of social production. These distinctions have, at their deepest level, represented some formal differences in the way the capitalist production, political, and social order was implemented. But Ticktin makes these very secondary components the sure foundation of his argument for underlining the entire capitalist reality of the former Soviet Union. He says:
“Society was orderly and managed, and money, profit, and price had meanings distinct from those in capitalism. Profit played a minor role in the economy because, fortunately, it was tied to values ​​that were themselves arbitrary, not dependent on costs and supply and demand. Given the arbitrary nature of prices and the consequent permanent shortages, as well as the fact that distribution depended on social status and the indiscriminate and unaccountable confiscations carried out by decrees at any time, the Ruble could not become a store of value and could not be considered money, and therefore the Soviet Union was not capitalist.” Let us examine Ticktin’s assumptions, rulings, and arguments a little. According to him, money, profit, and price had meanings distinct from those of capitalism in the Soviet Union. (5)
Each of these categories has a specific definition in the realm of Marxist understanding of political economy, which we will discuss a little further down. But before any discussion and prior to explaining the fundamental contradictions of what the editor of the Critique has raised above, a fundamental and determining question arises. This question is why and for what reason should the capitalist or non-capitalist nature of the Soviet Union or any other society be explained by the contingent characteristics of the role of money, the form of price manifestation, and the smallness and largeness of the rate of profit? Another very fundamental question is that an explanation with this theme is a thoughtful expression of the problems and expectations of which social class in the world? If there is an answer to the first question, it is definitely an answer that contradicts the narrative of the workers’ communism and contradicts Marx’s teachings on the explanation of capitalism. The fact that the capitalist mode of production is characterized by the relationship of buying and selling labour power is not an issue that communists should be arguing about together and against each other in the first decade of the twenty-first century and several generations after the publication of “Capital”, “Grundrisse”, “Critique of Political Economy”, “Economic Manuscripts”, etc.!!
“The emergence and establishment of capital and wage labour require that objectified labour, as a value existing for itself, be exchanged for living labour, which has its own use value, which is not useful for a specific and specific use or personal consumption, but is used to obtain money and create new value. When labour is exchanged for money or a service that is directly consumed, this type of exchange is in fact an exchange of equivalent values. Quantities of labour are exchanged on both sides, but this exchange of equal quantities of labour is still a purely formal rule by which the use values ​​of the two sides are measured. This is in fact the form of exchange and not yet its historical content. However, with the emergence of capitalism, the exchange of capital for labour is no longer for the sake of the exchange itself, but for its use value.” (6)
We will discuss later why, despite the obviousness of all these points, Tiktin stubbornly insisted on denying the camp’s capitalism for so many years, but for now let’s consider a little more closely what he himself proposed as a framework for his argument. He claims that money, value, and price in that society had a different meaning from their meaning in capitalism. Tiktin does not explain these distinctions in his interview. For example, he does not say how the concept of price in the Soviet Union called into question the basis of that society’s capitalism!!! Except that price is the transformed form of the exchange value of commodities.
“The exchange value of commodities, expressed in the form of a general equivalent and at the same time as the degree of this equivalence in terms of a particular commodity, that is, the single equation in which different commodities are placed equal to a particular commodity, constitutes price. Price is the transformed form in which the exchange value of commodities appears in the process of circulation” (7).
As far as the structure, role and basic function of price in the capitalist system are concerned, no difference can be explained between the process of price emergence in the Soviet Union and other capitalist societies. The price of commodities there, like everywhere else, has been the form of manifestation of their exchange value. If in a society labour power and the products of labour and production are exchanged independently of all the characteristics imposed on this process, one thing is assumed. That the products are exchanged with each other on the basis of the universal labour materialized in them, and that prices are merely a form for the manifestation of the exchange value in commodities. In this respect, the former Soviet Union has not differed from any other capitalist society. This was and is also completely true of money and its place and objectivity in the Soviet economy. When we speak of the product of labour as an exchange value, it is natural that this value must acquire a separate and distinct existence from the product. Money plays this role. In the history of the development of the commodity economy, we witness how the connection and opposition of the value expressions of commodities with each other ultimately leads to the emergence of money as a universal equivalent.
“Accordingly, the definition of the product as exchange value necessarily requires that exchange value acquire a separate existence, separate from the product. This exchange value, separate from the commodities, which itself exists side by side as a commodity, is money. In the form of money, all the properties of the commodity as exchange value appear as something distinct from the commodity itself, as a form of social existence, separate from the natural existence of the commodity.” (8)
Ticktin insists that the Soviet rubble was not money!!! Prices were arbitrary, society faced a shortage of goods, distribution was related to people’s social status. There were confiscations here and there, and given all this, the rubble was not a store of value, and the Soviet Union was not capitalism!!!
These arguments are truly devoid of theoretical validity. The gist of his point is that capitalism without “free competition” and individual ownership of separate capital is not capitalism at all! Revolving around these excuses that prices have been arbitrary, that society has faced a shortage of goods and that distribution has been affected by people’s social status, and so on, all end up with the fact that free competition and the legal form of ownership have been absent in the process of reproduction and circulation of Soviet social capital. In his view, in order for a price to truly be a price, it must necessarily be created in the competitive market of goods by individual capitalists who have planned to lower the final price of goods by resorting to all possible levers, such as buying labour power as cheaply as possible, reducing the cost of fixed investment as much as possible, and so on. If this process has not been completed, then price has also abandoned its capitalist credibility, role and origin, and society has become suspended in a vacuum of neither capitalism nor socialism!!! Ticktin observes the mysterious stature of capital with the old camera of nineteenth-century liberalism, and the truth is that his critique is a critique of the liberal camp from the very beginning. For Marx, price is only the form in which the exchange value of products manifests itself. If in a society labour power is a commodity, if the price of this power is paid with the value of the means of subsistence required for its reproduction, if the products of production and labour in general are commodities and are traded, it is clear that in this case the exchange value of products seeks a form of expression for itself, just as in the process of forming the general rate of profit, under the pressure of the lever of competition, the price of production of goods surrenders to the market price. Price is nothing more than the form of representation of value. At the same time, the exchange value of products needs a general equivalent of value to realize the exchange, and this general equivalent of value is money. In other words, the money that exists in society is money regardless of whether or not it satisfies the narrow-minded eyes of this or that ambitious capitalist.
Do these words or our kind of narration of the important phenomena of capitalist production imply a denial of the role of supply and demand or the importance of competition in the process of organizing capital and forming values?! The answer is completely negative. There is no doubt that competition is a phenomenon in the nature of capital and that supply and demand also play a role in the process of forming market prices and the formation of the general rate of profit of capital. There is also no doubt that the existence of competition is present in the presence of a lot of capital. These are all points that were correctly and clearly emphasized by Marx, but Ticktin draws a completely incorrect conclusion from Marx’s correct emphasis on these points. Let us examine the matter more closely. Marx says:
“In order for a commodity to be sold at its market value, i.e. in proportion to the socially necessary labour contained in it, the total quantity of social labour, which becomes the total mass of these commodities, must be matched with the quantity of social need for this type of commodity, that is, with the socially payable need. Competition, fluctuations in market prices that correspond to fluctuations in the relationship between supply and demand constantly strive to increase the total quantity of work that is required in each One of the types of goods is used to reach this level. (9)
Marx, regarding the relationship between the market value of commodities on the one hand and the problem of supply and demand on the other, firstly. Contrary to the idea of ​​Tiktin, he gives primacy to the first and not the second, in the sense that he considers market value to be the determinant of the relationship between supply and demand and summarizes the effect of the relationship between the two on the flow of trade in commodities in determining the deviations of market value from market price and the tendency to eliminate these deviations. Secondly. In this regard, he describes three different cases. First, the case where commodities produced under average conditions of production create the market price. The second case is that the products of better conditions of production determine the market price and finally the third case when commodities resulting from worse conditions of production are able to determine the market price of commodities. It is clear that each of these three cases relies on a specific situation in the relationship between supply and demand. Marx also carefully explains the role of competition between capitals and its determining effect on the set of these relations and equations. He states that:
“What competition in one environment does first is to establish a market value and a market price equal to the different individual values ​​of commodities, but it is competition between capitals in different environments that gives rise to a price of production which equalizes the rates of profit between different environments. The latter requires a more complete degree of capitalist mode of production than the former.” (10)
When Ticktin speaks of the randomness of prices and their lack of reliance on supply and demand in the former Soviet Union, he inevitably refers to the absence of a competitive mechanism in the commodity market and considers the vacuum of supply and demand affected by the pressure of free and fierce competition to be the cause of the non-capitalist nature of the process of price formation and the “rubble” as a store of value. He believes that the absence of an active competitive system has caused the process of transforming individual commodity values ​​into market values ​​to be devoid of its capitalist content because, in his probable belief, in this case the lever of pressure from various and numerous commodity sellers and the role of the relationship between supply and demand in determining prices would have been ineffective, and this is still the case today!!! First of all, let us assume that, for example, Ticktin’s observations of the process of organizing the social product in the former Soviet Union are correct!! Even in this case, why should the basis of society being capitalist be doubted?!! All that he insists on, even if it were true!! Which it is not, affects in its greatest extent such factors as the movement of individual capitals to increase the productivity of social labour, how the surplus value derived from the total labour of the working class is distributed among the different sectors of capital, the competitive power of the total social capital in the international capitalist market, the general rate of profit of capitals, and the like, but none of these give any reason for the slightest doubt about the reality of society being capitalist. If all of these characteristics were true without any deficiency or deficiency, what still depicts the objectivity of that day and today of the camp or Soviet society is the existence of a working class that sells its labour power, a working class whose labour is transformed into capital and again into capital. Once again, we are faced with a society that is the complete and perfect embodiment of the domination of dead labour over living labour. A society in which the requirements of capital’s profitability determine the fate of its inhabitants, and whose state and the structure of its political and civil order are an apparatus of terror and terror that defends the relationship of buying and selling labour power.
All this is only if Ticktin’s observations of the circular process of social capital in past and present Russia are confirmed, but even then, the matter is not so. What is true is that one main feature distinguished camp capitalism from Western capitalism. Here, all social capital was in the ownership of the bourgeois state, but this feature not only had no effect on the basis of the capitalist nature of society but also did not violate any of the basic tendencies and mechanisms related to the process of reproduction of social capital. For example, Marx’s absolutely correct observation that “capital is not one and can only exist in the form of many capitals” is fully and objectively true here, in camp capitalism as well. Capital is not personified, on the contrary, it is the capitalist who is personified. If all world capital were owned by one state or even one individual, it would not create any fundamental disruption in the multiplicity of capitals. The legal form of capital ownership is not a determining factor, and whether it is state-owned or private does not change or transform the laws of the capitalist mode of production. Leaving aside the discussion of “multiple capitals,” the impact of the difference in the form of competition in camp capitalism and Western-style capitalism on issues such as the formation of the general rate of profit, the distribution of surplus value among different sectors of capital, or the internal dynamics of individual capitals to increase the productivity of social labour, etc., also have no significant determining character. It is evident that despite the existence of many capitals, competition between individual capitals has clashed with state control, but this does not mean at all that each separate capitalist institution has not been striving to increase the productivity of social labour, to lower the cost of production and the final price of goods, to obtain a greater share of the total surplus value produced, etc. The tendencies and dynamics of which competition is the mechanism of their expression in general and their presence are evidence of the presence of a type of competition, albeit distinct from the conventional form, in Western capitalism. Marx says:
“Competition is in the nature of capital. The essential characteristic of competition is the mutual influence of all capitals. That is, an intrinsic tendency imposed as if from without. (Capital is not one but can only exist in the form of many capitals, and for this reason it is influenced by the action and reaction of all these capitals.) Capital has a similar effect in creating and disturbing the equilibrium of production. As soon as an equilibrium is achieved, it is disturbed again by the creation of surplus value and the increase of the productive forces. Those who want a balanced and simultaneous increase in production everywhere want in fact to impose on capital a law that is alien to the nature of capital.” (11)
The fundamental mistake of the editor of the Critique is that he tries to explain whether a society is capitalist or not by the form of capital competition and the characteristics of the relationship between supply and demand. By committing this gross error, he places himself in a position where, while seeing and touching all the laws or functions of capital in a capitalist society, he still insists on seeing everything as non-capitalist or neither capitalist nor socialist! The choice of the wrong perspective in the dissection of society closes Tikten’s eyes to the facts to such an extent that it prevents him from seeing the omnipresent reality of society, that is, from seeing the relationship of buying and selling labour power as the basis of the social existence of the former Soviet Union. He very seriously states that the Russian worker did not sell his labour power!!! and the rubbles he received were not money!!! According to his definition, the worker can work for capital and receive a certain amount of means of subsistence for the reproduction of his labour power in return for a certain amount of work time, but he must convince himself that he is not a wage worker at all and does not sell his labour power to any capital or capitalism!! According to this understanding, the worker can own no goods other than his labour power, have no rights in determining the type of consumption of his labour power, but despite this, he is not a worker and does not feel himself in the position of a seller of labour power!!
Ticktin trivializes the anatomy of the economy and civil society to the point that he introduces the “non-reserve value of the rubble”!!! as an indicator of Russia’s non-capitalism. According to this definition, any capitalist society whose currency is not among the highly valued currencies is also highly questionable as capitalist!! And on this basis, it seems very unlikely that he would call any Latin American, African or Asian country capitalist, except perhaps Japan. The task of Eastern Europe and the like is already clear in his calculations!! Beyond all this, the question arises that if the low creditworthiness of the “rubble” indicates that production and work there are not profitable, then how and by what force did Russia rise to one of the two giant industrial and militaristic poles of the world in the 1920s and 1930s, over the course of several decades? The huge mountain range of capitals that towered to the sky everywhere there and during those years and still stands today, if it was not and is not from the surplus value produced by the working class of society, then from the windfall treasures of which centuries and eras where they take?!! The editor of the Critique can, with his analyses, confuse the working masses of Eastern Europe and the working class of all countries of the world in understanding the chain of wage slavery and in doing so, without wanting or intending to deal a serious blow to their struggle to break this bondage. However, the problems of Russian society and all that Ticktin lists are all problems of capitalism. These problems have nothing to do with “being neither capitalist nor socialist.” Gorbachev has delved into the depths of these dilemmas much more directly and directly than Tiktin. He writes:
“The continuous growth of gross output, especially in heavy industry, had become the first priority and the goal in itself. For this reason, the activity in the expansion of capital facilities caused a large part of the national wealth to remain idle in the form of idle capital. There were costly programs that were never commensurate with the standard level of technology and science. The worker or workshop that consumed the most labour, materials and money was simply considered the best. While it is natural that the producer should – to put it simply – satisfy the consumer, in our country the consumer was completely dependent on the mercy and compassion of the producer and had to make do with what the producer was willing to supply.” (12)
Gorbachev, like any politician of a capitalist country, spoke about mismanagement in the work of the advance of capital or a kind of capitalist ignorance in the matter of thinking about the conditions for increasing the value of capital and the maximum amount of exploitation of the labour force, and he believed that with his pro-Strike, the level of labour productivity and the competitiveness of Russian social capital should be increased at the world level. He had recognized that the problem of Russian capitalism is the decrease in the capital’s profit rate under the pressure of the increase in the organic composition of capital and the falling behind of the Russian bourgeoisie from the western competitors in the matter of taking more and more share of the exploitation of the global working class. He realized that he should use his hands to shift the burden of the crisis of the capitalist system on the shoulders of the working class of Russia. Gorbachev had accurately understood the difference between the capitalist situation of Russia and the capitalist societies of the West. At the same time, he was touching the threshold of the storm of the capitalist crisis in the Soviet and the camp, and on this basis, he sounded the trumpet of pro-Strike. His pro-Strike was a capitalist pro-Strike for the internal refinement of capital and increasing the anti-crisis capacity of Russian capital at the cost of deepening the exploitation of the Soviet proletariat. Tiktin’s gross class error is that he turns Gorbachev’s simple observations into components and proofs of the “neither capitalism nor socialism” of the camp. Tiktin’s unforgivable crime is that with this work, he undermines the power of understanding and the vision of the world’s workers in correctly identifying capitalism and communism.
Another part of the interview of the editor of the Critique is related to the judgment about the present Russia. This part is much more regrettable and surprising than the previous part. In this part, Ticktin also strongly denies that the present Russia is capitalist!! He introduces factors such as “huge and long-term credits, inflation, the malicious nature of finance capital, industrial companies engaging in back-to-back transactions, the sale of machinery by criminal networks, unemployment and the under-sale of labour power”!! as evidence of the continued non-capitalist situation of Russia!! I wish the editor of the Critique would explain to the reader of the Look that if these data and components are not all the usual and natural manifestations of the capitalist mode of production, then from which mode of material production do they originate? “Morteza Mohit” speaks in the ears of the Iranian workers about “capitalism that has been exploited” and invites them to build a proud and arrogant capitalism!! Mr. Tektin and his social and class orientation have also discovered a new mode of production in history. The name of this mode of production is “Stalinism”. The Russian worker and the workers of the whole world should learn from him and his political movement that instead of fighting against capitalism, they should struggle with the phenomenon of Stalinism. Stalinism has great miraculous power. Most importantly, it is possible to hang the entire burden of the savagery and corruption of the capitalist system on it at once and in this way capitalism can be made a system free from huge credits, inflation, the harmfulness of finance capital, back-to-back transactions, unemployment and certainly free from exploiting and making the workers miserable!!
So far, all of Ticktin’s conversation has been devoted to denying that the former Soviet Union and Russia are capitalist at present. From now on, it is his version of socialism that follows in the interview. Ticktin, in response to the question “Look”: “It seems that you equate socialism with planning. Wouldn’t it be more correct to explain socialism with the abolition of wage labour, taking into account the Marxist tradition?”, replies:
“No, I do not accept that every economic relationship is reduced to a single method. All economic relationships, including planning, are social relationships. Marx addresses this issue in the first chapter of the first volume of Capital, contrasting a planned society with a society that is subject to the law of value. The point here is that planning is the regulation of the socio-economic foundations of society by the actual producers. In other words, this requires that everyone has a stake in the management of society, which in itself is subject to the abolition of the division of labour and the overthrow of the system based on the division of labour. …” (13)
Ticktin cites Marx, and for this reason it is necessary to examine the accuracy of this citation first of all. The editor of the Critique does not give the exact reference to Capital, but what he insists on, given his reference to the first chapter of Book I, must be the following:
“The social form of the flow of life, that is, the material face of the production process, sheds the mystical and foggy veil that covers it only when it comes to being the product of the work of people freely cooperating with each other, under their conscious control and according to their plan. But the attainment of this stage requires the existence of a definite material basis in society or the accumulation of a series of material conditions in life, which are themselves the result of a long and painful historical development.” (14)
A very simple and unadorned translation of Marx’s words is that planning and planning, like the free participation of efforts or the conscious control of people over the fate of the product of their labour and production, are among the conditions for a socialist economy. But nowhere in this statement or anywhere in Marx’s teachings can one find the trace of such a statement as if socialism can be explained by planning itself.!! The reality is that neither capitalism can be explained by the component of anarchy of production, nor can socialism be defined by planning. The anarchy of production in capitalism is a consequence of the relationship of surplus value production, just as competition, the tendency of the rate of profit to decline, etc., stem from this relationship. Planning in socialism is also one of the consequences or requirements of a form of work, production, and social life whose foundation is based on the abolition of wage labour and production for profit. Ticktin claims that the mere planning of production implies the regulation of the socio-economic foundations of society by the hands of the real producers!! But this is by no means the case. Planning is a phenomenon that exists both in capitalism and in socialism. It must be seen what specific character and role the plan, plan and organization of production assume in each of these two systems, given their fundamentally opposite material infrastructure.
The program in the capitalist mode of production is an inseparable part of the laws of accumulation and reproduction of capital. All social laws and contracts, all determinations of the political and civil order, the entire legal, cultural and moral structure of capitalist society are all in response to the exigencies of the situation, and the survival and self-expansion of the relationship of buying and selling labour power or the reaction of this relationship to the attacks of the labour movement are planned and planned. Capital and the relationship of production of surplus value are the driving force of a vicious and brutal social order. An order, a plan and a program that rains filth, blood, crime and brutality from every part of its existence, but for capital all these are continuous parts of a productive and social order. The economic laws or internal mechanisms of the capitalist mode of production, such as the nature of concentration, competition, the general rate of profit, the downward tendency of the rate of profit, etc., all follow a certain order in the system of the life of capital and the relation of the production of surplus value. The same certain order that is the material basis of all the exploitation, oppression, and misery of contemporary humanity. The brutality and corruption of capitalism cannot and should not be concluded from the anarchy or unplanned nature of work and production in it. In the current situation, global capital practically plans the entire existence and non-existence and all the conditions and conditions of existence and non-existence of humanity. Capital is about what is produced and what is not produced, how much of each thing is produced, how the process of work and production is realized, how labour power is bought and sold and how and where it is consumed after sale and purchase, the terms and conditions of this trade, the standard of living of the sellers of labour power, employment or unemployment, how people think and do not think, what to consume and what not to consume, what interests to have and what not to have, whether to learn or not to learn, to study or not to study, to be full or hungry, to have a home or to be a refugee, to die in wars, to be crushed under the wheels of factories or sometimes to die at home and in hospitals, to be loved or humiliated, to be healthy or sick, to have a doctor and medicine or to die without a doctor and medicine, what to travel with, the kind of air to breathe, the shape and appearance of the house and residential environment, if any, where Being born, where to live, where to die, in which cemetery to be buried, and everything related to the moment of human life, is routinely planned from above. The capitalist system designs all the requirements for the imposition of the productive order of capital on the working and subordinate people through the state and various civil, legal, cultural, and social infrastructures, and expands them into the content of the plan. Regulating education, health, and treatment, retirement affairs, etc. at the lowest possible cost for the benefit of social capital is an act of planning carried out by the state of capital, and…
When Ticktin speaks of the absolute plan as the characteristic index and component of socialism, he forgets that the existing order, in its entire structure of terror and horror, is also the crystallization of a plan. A kind of plan, plan, and organization that is very organic, related, and complementary, revolves around the life of the relationship of buying and selling labour power. It is absolutely impossible to judge whether a society is capitalist or socialist by the criterion of whether production is planned or not.
In communism, too, everything is definitely planned and planned. The theme of the plan and order of production here is not the requirements of capital, but simply the requirements of freedom, well-being, equality, and the transcendence of all human beings. If in the capitalist mode of production, the “law of value” and the principle of exploitation of wage labour determine the essence of the program, in socialism, on the contrary, it is the elimination of exploitation and wage labour that determines the real theme of this phenomenon. Here, everything revolves around man and the requirements of free development and comprehensive equality of humans. Creative, effective, direct and equal participation of members of society in the planning of work and production and welfare services, free and direct decision-making by individuals about what to produce or not to produce or how much to produce, freedom of humans from the bondage of work, along with the guarantee of the widest possible opportunity for physical leisure and their spiritual development, in addition to the highest possible level of living and social welfare, the elimination of any state above the head of society and, in a word, the elimination of any type of exploitation, inequality, classes and cultural, political, legal and moral traces and remnants of class society, are the starting point, essence and content of socialist planning.
Thus, what distinguishes socialism from capitalism is not the program itself and planning, but the economic basis of this planning. In the first, it is man and the basis of man’s control over the fate of life and production and the results of his labour that are the moving chain of the program and the organization of labour, and in the second, it is the law of value and the relation of production of surplus value that determine the starting and return point of the program. In the first, the dominance of living labour over dead labour is the essence of the program. In the second, on the contrary, it is the dominance of dead labour (capital) over living labour (man) that determines the theme of the program. In the first, it is man’s liberation from the bondage of everything except himself that is planned. In the second, it is man’s alienation and metamorphosis into the necessities of the process of capital’s reproduction that is the subject of planning.
Ticktin turns a blind eye to the existence and dominance of the labour-power purchase and sale relationship in the former Soviet Union and refers all the problems and sufferings of the working class of that society to planning problems. It is quite clear that with this view, he interprets the entire dictatorship, political order, and state apparatus in the former Soviet camp not as the structure of the political and civil order of capital but as the bureaucracy of Stalinist violence and rage. Ticktin’s critique is not a Marxist critique but a deeply liberal critique. Based on Tiktin’s analysis of the camp, what plunged the former Soviet Union and other camp societies into the abyss of collapse was not the inherent contradictions of the surplus value production relationship and the crisis of capitalism, which is Stalinism! According to this narrative, the Russian, Chinese, or Eastern European worker of yesterday and today must fight not against capital and wage labour but against the mysterious and unearthly phenomenon of Stalinism! The last word is that, while judging the working class of the advanced industrial countries as “non-revolutionary” in their current situation, Ticktin comes to the conclusion that they are not considered a class theoretically! If we put this together with what he says about the huge mass of labourers in the former camp and its existing ruins, in addition to the explanation he gives of capitalism in general, and the consequent cryptic interpretation of the existence and non-existence of the working class in other parts of the world, the question finally arises: what kind of world does he really think the current world is and who is fighting against whom and against what??!!
November 2002
References
1. Negah No. 10
2. Ibid.
3. Marx, Capital, Volume I, translated by A. Alexandria 101
4. Marx, Grundrisse, Volume 1, translated by Parham and Tedin, p. 112
5. Negah 10
6. Marx, Grundrisse, Volume 1, translated by Parham and Tedin, p. 465
7. Marx Critique of Political Economy, Persian translation, p. 16
8. Marx, Grundrisse, Persian translation, Volume 1, p. 78
9. Marx, Capital, Volume 3, translated by Alexandria, p. 206
10. Ibid., p. 193
11. Marx, Grundrisse, Volume 1, translated by Tadin and Parham, p. 401
12. Gorbachev, The Second Russian Revolution Perestroika, translated by Abdelrahman Sadriya, p. 20
13. Negah No. 10
14. Marx, Capital, Volume 1, translated by Alexandria, p. 109