State Capitalism in Russia

by Tony Cliff

Over a quarter of a century after the Soviet Union's collapse, many continue to associate socialism with Joseph Stalin's totalitarian regime. State Capitalism in Russia, first published in 1955, offers a radically different interpretation of what happened in the decades after the Russian Revolution: that Stalin's assault on the gains of the 1917 revolution caused the reemergence of class divisions and capitalist modes of production. This argument about the development of state capitalism became a cornerstone of an anti-Stalinist socialist movement that insisted that socialism must be founded on workers' power and mass democracy. Long out of print, this classic work of rigorous, unflinchingly honest analysis remains essential for anyone trying to understand the degeneration of a revolution which had once inspired the world.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Russia, History

377 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1974

About the author

Born in Palestine to Zionist parents in 1917, Ygael Gluckstein became a Trotskyist during the 1930s and played a leading role in the attempt to forge a movement uniting Arab and Jewish workers. At the end of of the Second World war, seeing that the victory of the Zionists was more and more inevitable, he moved to Britain and adopted the pseudonym Tony Cliff.

In the late 1940s he developed the theory that Russia wasn’t a workers’ state but a form of bureaucratic state capitalism, a theory which has characterised the tendency with which he was associated for the remaining five decades of his life. Although he broke from “orthodox Trotskyism” after being bureaucratically excluded from the Fourth International in 1950, he always considered himself to be a Trotskyist although he was also open to other influences within the Marxist tradition.

Reviews

[Rory Gee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not only is this the most thorough study of the nature of Stalinism in Russia, the counter revolutionary disgrace of the socialist movement. But it is the best book I have read to understand the central dynamics of capitalism. Not just private markets and internal competition, but accumulation for accumulations sake, competition on a world scale and crucially a division of labour between capitalists and workers. So if Russia is a class divided capitalist society, then the final victory of socialism in Russia is still possible. As Cliff finishes "The final chapter can be written only by the masses, self mobilised, conscious of socialist aims and the methods of their achievement, and lead by a revolutionary Marxist party."

[Martin Empson · Rating 5 out of 5]

By way of a review for Goodreads, I offer this quote from Chris Harman and a link to the 2009 article, "State capitalism – the theory that fuels the practice" it comes from.

"One additional point followed from the theory. If the crisis in the Eastern states was a result of competitive accumulation within a world system, then simply moving to the Western model of capitalism would not bring it to an end. How right we were was shown by the way economic crises that had begun under Brezhnev and Gorbachev deepened in the early 1990s – and have now returned with a vengeance during the present world crisis. Some people will ask, is any of this relevant today? It is, in two ways. First, state capitalism as a theory never simply applied to the Eastern states. It also had relevance in the West, since at least a third of every Western economy is in the state sector. While otherwise excellent Marxists like David Harvey continue to see this sector as somehow standing outside capitalism, we see it as an integral part of the system. And that leads to a very practical conclusion. When I joined the Socialist Review Group, our statement of aims started, “War is the inevitable result of the division of society into classes.” War is still with us, precisely because the state is part of the capitalist system and one of the forms that the competitive struggle between states takes is the accumulation of armed strength. There can be no revolutionary practice, Lenin once wrote, without revolutionary theory. He was exaggerating a little. But there is no doubt that the left as a whole would have been stronger if more people had accepted our arguments about state capitalism."

[Felix Feliks · Rating 1 out of 5]

Cliff muss selbst zugeben, dass innerhalb der Sowjetunion kein Wertgesetz und kein Warenproduktion mehr gilt. Daher stellt er die These auf, für die Sowjetunion verwirkliche sich das Wertgesetz nur auf den Weltmarkt, nur um dann zugeben zu müssen, dass die sowjetische Wirtschaft relativ autark ist und praktisch kein Außenhandel mit den kapitalistischen Ländern existierte als er das Buch schrieb. Daher stellt er die noch steilere These auf, die sowjetische Kapitalakkumulation und das Wertgesetz würden sich im Wettrüsten realisieren, diese allein halte den sowjetischen Kapitalismus am Leben. Aber da die Sowjetunion nicht versuchte, die Werteproduktion durch die Eroberung neuer Märkte zu erweitern, bedeutete die militärische Produktion die dauerhafte Unterdrückung des Wertes und des Wertgesetzes, da es sich schlichtweg um die Produktion von Nutzungswerten handelte. Die sowjetische Rüstungsindustrie war Verschwendung und kein Gewinn. Wird das Wertgesetz bei Marx noch im Austausch sichtbar, verwirklicht es sich bei Cliff in der Konkurrenz und Waffenproduktion und dessen Wettrüsten. Es scheint Tony Cliff weiß nicht, was das Wertgesetz ist. Dieses Gesetz ist nicht einfach Ausdruck der Beziehung zwischen Dingen, sondern vielmehr eine Beziehung zwischen Menschen. Während das Gesetz des Wertes das Verhältnis der Preise für verschiedene Waren bestimmt, darf man nie vergessen, dass hinter den verschiedenen Kategorien - Wert, Preis, Mehrwert usw. - Menschen stehen, deren soziale Beziehungen nur verschleiert werden. Cliff scheint dem Warenfetisch verfallen zu sein. Doch es geht noch weiter das Wertgesetz hat als Grundlage die Arbeitswerttheorie. Kurz gesagt, sie postuliert, dass der Tauschwert einer Ware durch die durchschnittliche Menge an sozial notwendiger Arbeit bestimmt wird, die zu ihrer Herstellung erforderlich ist. Jede Ware hat zwei Arten von Wert, den Gebrauchswert, der durch ihren tatsächlichen oder imaginären Nutzen bestimmt wird, der eine Voraussetzung für ihre Ankunft auf dem Markt ist, und den Tauschwert, der die durchschnittliche Menge an sozial notwendiger Arbeit ausdrückt. Der Tauschwert oder Wert ist also abstrakte Arbeit in dem Sinne, dass alle Waren diesen Wert haben, obwohl sie durch verschiedene spezifische Arten von Arbeit geschaffen wurden. Doch wenn diese Gesetze schon nicht mehr in der Sowjetunion gelten, wie sollen sie plötzlich auf den Weltmarkt geschaffen durch die sowjetische Produktivkraft herkommen? Da sowjetische Produkte keinen Waren sind und auch kein Wert besitzen aber auf den internationalen Markt zu einer Ware werden müssen, muss die sowjetische Führung sich an den internationalen Preisen richten, welche von den kapitalistischen Staaten durch nationale Zölle oder Wechselkurspolitik oder eine reine Marktmacht manipuliert werden können. Ein Verlustgeschäft aber keine Bestätigung für Kapitalismus in der Sowjetunion.

[jojo · Rating 4 out of 5]

great read with a "womp womp" last chapter


also i'm gay

[Tony Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is dry: heavy in abstractions and economic detail. But its ideas are of central importance for the understanding of the USSR and constituted a breakthrough in the development of Marxist theory.

After 1928, Russia could not be understood as any sort of workers’ state, a state more advanced or progressive than the openly capitalist west – because a workers’ state must be defined in terms of class power rather than public ownership by itself. Cliff quotes Marx’s statement that “the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy”. Cliff shows how Russian workers had become atomized under Stalinism, no longer able to organize at all, never mind rule.

He shows how military competition worked to discipline the Russian economy and drive compulsive capital accumulation in a form analogous to market competition.

The book was written shortly after WW2, when Marxists faced enormous pressure to fall behind the ruling classes of the East or West. Theories that portrayed Russia as more progressive than the West encouraged capitulation to Stalinism, while other theories could portray Russia as qualitatively worse than capitalism, allowing some socialists to give way to the ferocious wave of McCarthyism in the USA. The theory of state capitalism helped its adherents defy both Washington and Moscow.

[Süleyman Kayğaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Engels’in asalak olarak bahsettiği ve Stalinist sistemde billurlaşan “bürokrasi sınıfı” ile Rusya’da devlet, üretim araçlarının toplandığı bir kurum halini almış ve umduğumuz anlamıyla sosyalizmden ziyade SSCB’de devlet kapitalizmi yürürlükte kalmıştır. Tony Cliff dönem ile ilgili bolca belge ve döküman (bazen yorucu olan bu tablolar) ile “devlet kapitalizmi” düzlemini ifşa ederken devrim öncesi ve sonrası ile Rusya’yı iyice anlamımızı da sağlıyor. Lenin döneminde zorunlu bazı tedbirlerin Stalin diktatörlüğü ile sabite haline gelişini ve devrimin içinin bomboş hale getirildiğini sayfalar ilerlerken görebiliyoruz. Bu arada yazar, Troçki’nin belki de hala umut dolu “dejenere olmuş işçi devleti” tanımlamasını da aşacak şekilde ve ısrarla devlet kapitalizminin devrimin daha başlarında devrimi massettiğini ve dolayısıyla tek ülkede sosyalizmin bile mevcut olmadığını ifşa etmiş oluyor.