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a few points:
1: Stalinism, when it developed over the period from 1924-1928, didn't really create any clear break from existing soviet practice, merely codified and deepened what had been normal since the end of the civil war.

2: When in power and with influence, Trotsky was very anti-workers democracy, as stalinists like to constantly like to point out in the trade union dispute. He was in favour of inner party democracy, but that's different, more limited, and not open to the working class in general.

3: Trotsky himself was in favour of socialism in one country style policies, in practice, even though the theory didn't yet exist. Telling the communists in Persia and Turkey to abandon their revolutions and support the bourgeois forces.

4: Soviet Trotskyism as a tencency was based around collectivisation of agriculture and nationalisation of industry. Despite claims that it was also about workers democracy, soviet trotskyism collapsed once industrialisation began because all the Trotskyists, except Trotsky, said 'the Stalinists have accepted our programme, we have won!'

5: And here we come to some economic issues:
Capitalism is an economy of commodity production based on the capital circuit (invest capital, exploit labour to produce goods, produce more value than you pay for, sell goods for money, reinvest money and expand production of capital). When capital is nationalised, it's still doing this. There is still a dispossessed working class, forced by economic compulsion to sell their labour to produce goods for the market, to expand capital. It is still capitalism. So when the working class overthrows the capitalists, the new workers state takes over the managing of capitalism. It uses capitalism to dismantle capitalism. But what happens when the working class is no longer in control of this state that runs capitalism? Trotskyism says that the base of the workers state is not the rule of the working class, but the nationalisation of capital. I dispute this. The nationalisation of capital is just something the workers state does. Without workers ruling, then that state is no longer dismantling capitalism, but building up new privilages.

Trotskyism, then, agrees with the Stalinists that the core issue is the nationalisation of the economy, not the rule of the proletariat. And as such, I consider it a left wing of Stalinism. And since the Stalinists ruled over what was essentially a planned capitalism, both Trotskyism and Stalinism are, like the Social Democrats, the left wing of capitalism.

Both Stalinists and Trotskyists deny this, based on the idea that with the expropriation of the capitalists, there weren't any capitalists left, but that doesn't really mean much. Note that in response to ultra-leftist complaints that the early Soviet Union was state capitalist, lenin replied something to the effect of 'if only we had state capitalism! But what we actually have is petty producer capitalism ruled by a pro-working class party.' This was reflected in economic relationships while Lenin was still alive: Party and Soviet bureaucrats, and technical specialists had a maximum salary of 40 times the minimum salary. Most workers had a salary equal to about two times the lowest salary. In State and Revolution, Lenin/MMarx point out the need for all responsible officials to not only be elected and removable, but paid at the same rate as a skilled worker. Yet here we see in the early SU, bureaucrats and spetsi being paid 20 times a normal worker. Not including non-monetary compensation.

While State and Revolution is brought up, I might also mention all that stuff about workers democracy which no longer existed after the civil war. Stalinists typically just deny this, while Trotskyists try to explain it. The usual story runs that during the civil war, all the best workers were recruited into the red army or coopted into the party/soviet bureaucracies, while the rest of the working class fled to the countryside where they could get food in a period of famine and transportation breakdown. As such, there was simply no working class to exercise democracy. Proletarian democracy qwas then carried out within the party by people who were of the proletariat, but no longer had a proletarian relationship to the means of production. This generated material inequalities and privileges, and a 'policemen's consciousness' with Trotsky giving us the image of a que to get bread, and the bureaucracy is like the policeman who keeps order in the que, and who 'knows' who is to get bread. And with this situation and distinct material relationship, a group coalesced which saw its interests as a bureaucratic cast, and ended inner party democracy and so on.

The thing is, this is not exactly true. Yes, the story about the working class entering the army, party, or fleeing the cities was true enough, but within a year of the end of the civil war, the working class in the principle cities had been restored. Economic activity was still not yet at pre-war levels, but the working class population in the cities was. And that working class felt its interests in terms of higher wages, lower bureaucratic wages and powers, more political and economic decision making power, and so on. The party, interested in increasing economic output, and the party members, interested in maintaining their own new privilages (early on it was just an apartment, slightly better food, and guaranteed clothes, later it got more lavish, as the numbers above show), would have none of it. Striking workers were fired, ruthless factory mmanagers installed, ever higher bonuses given to bureaucrats, and more power givenn to formerly bourgeois technical specialists and factory managers. This happened at a time of military and political exhaustion of the working class, and economic recovery in the cities.

That doesn't sound much like State and Revolution, does it?

I find these things, after having read theory, to be some of the most dismaying facts out there. A really sad turn out for the whole deal.

I find myself closest to people who describe themselves as left-communists, though I don't know much about what left-communism actually is, however, so I can't honestly say that's what I am.

About co-ops, meh. They can be nice, I guess, and afaik England had a decent history with them. But at the end of the day they are still just the working class managing its own exploitation.

About nationalising the means of production:


In short, nationalisation doesn't abolish capitalism. All it does is turn the state into the biggest capitalist. When the working class is in control of the state, then it is just like a co-op, the working class is managing its own exploitation. However with this difference: with control over the whole economy, the working class is able to use capitalism to dismantle capitalism and eventually abolish property and ownership entirely. Nationalisation, then, is only a step forward when carried out by the working class.

As for where I get this info from, well the theoretical stuff I get from reading 'the classics', the historical stuff, which is what I think you're most interested in sourcing:
Socialism in One Country Before Stalin about Turkey
The Russian Revolution in Retreat about the relationship between party and class in Moscow in the period 1920-1924
They are the main sources relevant to my position in this thread.

So basically you're saying that central planning, nationalization, and co ops all dont abolish capitalism? In that case how do the working class abolish capitalism and state? Would money still exist? How would a society based on production for use work?

Sorry I have so many questions, but you seem to be very knowledgable in the subject.

Also, thanks for the sources. I'll have to read them, they seem to have some good info.

Comparing this to the United States is like comparing apples and oranges since they were not transitioning to socialism, an ideology that everybody around strives to see destroyed.

Economic planning CAN abolish capitalism, but it's never really existed in the manner that would enable capitalism to be transcended. Above I characterised capitalism as an economy of commodity production based on the capital circuit (the investment of capital > production of goods > sell those goods and get more money in return which is invested to start cycle again, but at a higher level), with a class of dispossessed labourers forced by economic compulsion to sell their ability to work.

Simply nationalising the economy doesn't do away with that. It just makes the state the capitalist. In a situation where the working class controls the state, then what we have is the working class overseeing its own exploitation. This is not a bad thing, however. It is necessary in the early stages. With the working class in control of the economy, then production can be organised in such a way to abolish capitalism. It will take a while, though I don't think we can predict how long that 'while' will last. It might last less than a decade, or it might take a generation. The thing is, as long as the working class is in power, but unable to engage in communist construction, due to economic devastation, civil war, imperialist intervention, whatever, then the longer it will have to spend managing the capitalist economy as a collective capitalist. This will mean that there are more chances for a division of labour to occur within the working class and a group to take hold of economic and political power, as in the course of the Russian Civil War, and to cement its own privileges and s**t.

In such a situation where there is capitalism, but the working class is in control, then that's building towards communism. With the working class ousted from power, the economy is run in the interests of the ruling group, and moves away from communism until the ruling group transforms itself into a new capitalist class, i.e., takes private possession of the nationalised property.

About how the working class can abolish capitalism and the state:


Since we can't make an economy from scratch, the period in which we are transforming the economy in that way will be a decline of capitalism under workers control.


Interestingly the terror in the American Revolution killed more people than the Great Terror in the French Revolution 15 years later.

However that's not what you meant. The American terror was during the revolution, and is therefore comparable with the Red Terror during the Russian Civil War. Stalin's Purges, and Mao's Cultural Revolution were entirely different. In the American revolution, there was a country seeking independence and the establishment of a local capitalist regime that would work in the interests of its own capitalists, not those of England. The terror was against sympathisers of England. After the revolution, the capitalist regime was in place. There was need for another revolution 80 years later, when the economies of the North and South had grown so different as to tear the nation apart, but that was, again, a revolution.

In Russia what occurred was the working class took power. By the end of the revolution, however, the working class was no longer in power. It was no longer in control of the workers councils, nor was it in control of the ruling party. Jana pointed out that this was unavoidable, and I agree. The difference is that because it was unavoidable, she says it was still fundamentally good and pro-communist (working toward socialism) where I say that it was simply an unavoidable defeat. Over the next 15 years the party was progressively purged of those who sought a more equitable distribution of power and wealth within the party. The purges were therefore a consolidation of counter-revolution. In China it wasn't even that: It was simply a fight between different sections of the ruling bureaucracy over who got to rule.

This is more of a question than a proper reply (unless doubts can form a reply of some type). That problem is one of the problems that I find as the ones that (possibly?) are the harder to overcome. How to ensure that such a thing doesn't happen in any said future example, that a clique cements their own privileges and demeans the very purpose of what they had to do?



I agree with you there to some level, however I don't think that what happened in both of those countries was uniquely because of the conditions of both countries. Yes, the fact that they were both essentially feudal societies had a big impact. However in the long run I think that the impact of the failure of the german revolution and other revoluions in Europe had the deepest impact of all on the country, as it essentially 'marginalised' it and prevented it from developing internationally (which is also quite an important thing).



Wouldn't that just depend on the party that would take power or have the majority?



How so? I've never see too much of a parallel between both events.