Class Theory and History Quotes

“how that change might affect the communist class structure. We argue that private property can be consistent with and supportive of a communist class structure. Notwithstanding private property in means of production, a society’s rules and laws, customs and culture, wealth production and distribution could together propel individuals collectively to produce, appropriate, and distribute their own surpluses. Then private property and communist class structures could socially coexist. We can call that a private property form of communism to distinguish it from a collective property form such as that presumed in chapter 1. Suppose individuals who privately own productive property make it available to (invest in) enterprises with communist class structures. In return, the communist appropriators distribute to such private owners portions of the communist surpluses as dividends (much like dividends paid out of capitalist enterprises’ surpluses to their private share-owners). Laws and customs could make such investment in communist class-structured enterprises every bit as “normal” as investment in capitalist enterprises is now. The change from collective to private property in means of production need neither coincide with nor produce a labor power market. Individual workers might be guaranteed paid employment and allocated by state officials to communist enterprises whether or not those enterprises’ means of production were collectively or privately owned. Workers deprived of their share in collectively owned means of production do not, therefore, necessarily become sellers of labor power in the classically capitalist fashion. That is a possible outcome of changes in property ownership, but it is hardly necessary, as this example shows.”
― Stephen A. Resnick, Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR

“communist class structure exists if and when the people who collectively produce a surplus are likewise and identically the people who collectively receive and distribute it. As we shall argue, this is the relevant concept of communism for assessing efforts over the last century to establish communist societies. This concept of communism likewise serves well to demarcate it from the other major social organizations of surplus (capitalist, feudal, slave, and individual self-employment). Finally, this concept of communism is especially well suited to craft a systematic differentiation of socialism from communism and to organize the economic history of the USSR as the interaction of different, coexisting class structures presented in part 3 below. Our theorization of specifically communist class structures (in terms of surplus labor) will show that they can coexist with a vast range of different political, cultural, and economic arrangements—a vast range of nonclass processes. That is, communist class structures interact with the other nonclass aspects of the societies in which they exist. They cannot and do not alone determine them. Hence societies with communist class structures may exhibit varying political forms ranging from those that are fully democratic in nature to those that are clearly despotic. They may display property ownerships that range from the fully collective to the very private. They also may exhibit radically different ways of distributing resources and wealth, from full scale central planning to private markets, including markets in labor power and means of production. Chapter 2 explores these forms in some detail. We refer to property, markets, planning, power, politics, and culture in general as processes that together comprise a communist society’s nonclass structure. The term communism thus refers to a communist class structure interacting with the non-class structure that comprises its social context. The interaction between the class and nonclass structures changes both in a continual process of development. It thus follows that there are countless forms of communism corresponding to all the possible ways in which nonclass structures can affect a communist class structure with which they interact. Indeed, it is also possible that the interaction will go further and produce a transition from a communist to a different”
― Stephen A. Resnick, Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR

“since at least the early 1930s, workers’ private consumption in 1985 still remained far below that achieved in other (private) capitalist countries including even Spain, Portugal, and Turkey (Gregory and Stuart, 1998, 159). On the one hand, the state persisted in its commitment to heavy industry over the production of consumer goods and the associated heavy reliance on the turnover tax to absorb the excess demand for consumer goods. On the other hand, the inefficiencies and poor marketing skills of its underfunded retail organization further aggravated the privations of Soviet consumers. Dissatisfaction and long suppressed resentment turned to disenchantment with socialism and openly expressed anger as workers became aware of the gap between their individual consumption levels and those of workers in other countries. The state capitalist class structure—conceived to be socialist—seemed unable to secure for workers the rising standard of living it had long promised. This failure of socialism to deliver the desired appliances, television sets, and automobiles stood in sharp contrast to the stunning private consumption successes achieved by private capitalist economies with their ubiquitous private markets and property.”
― Stephen A. Resnick, Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR

“Capitalisms and Exploitation Capitalist class processes by definition involve exploitation. Because the producers of surplus do not also appropriate it, they are exploited.1 Capitalists and productive laborers are different persons whose relationship thus includes an exploitative dimension. In contrast, communist class processes are not exploitative: the producers of surplus are also its immediate, collective appropriators. The relationships among such communist producers/appropriators do not include an exploitative aspect.”
― Stephen A. Resnick, Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR

“Workers’ collective ownership of means of production introduces problems for capitalism but by no means makes it impossible. In some cases, collective ownership by workers can provoke capitalist growth and expansion. For example, in the United States today, certain groups of unionized workers accept longer hours and lower wages from boards of directors in corporations whose stocks their union pension plans own in significant quantities. In this case, collective workers’ ownership is positively correlated to the rate of exploitation. Even where collective ownership is virtually complete and the elimination of a market in labor power total, workers may well continue to produce surplus for capitalists. Chapter 3 illustrates exactly this possibility. In sum, collective ownership does not, by itself, prevent or preclude capitalism.”
― Stephen A. Resnick, Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR

“The particular Soviet state form of capitalism was more or less replicated in other “socialist” countries. In them, state officials centrally appropriated the surpluses produced by industrial workers as per the classic definition of capitalist exploitation. Moreover, state administrative (command) allocation replaced markets, and state ownership replaced private ownership of industries’ means of production (other than labor power)”
― Stephen A. Resnick, Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR