Communist mode of production
Dominion Lede
The Communist mode of production refers to a state of human society in which no one is born into a class and the means of production are owned by all members of society in common. As a mode of production it is the culmination of the development of human productive powers, which unfortunately was the subject a number of failed attempts in the 20th century. The next § has the separate merge candidates as found in the English wiki when this article was created. Rather than an end, the point at which human productive capacity begins to operate in a rational framework can be associated with the limit socialization of production, which, reaching fever pitch in Late Capitalism finally breaks free of the fetters of the old system to move to the new required rationalization of the relations of production. Necessarily, this process is integral with the decay of the nation-state system based on said relations.
Historical Attempts
Before and after the collapse of Soviet Communism, Trotskyists and other left communists held that the officially socialist states were "deformed" or "degenerated". The distinction is between a state where the workers at one point thru revolutionary action were in control of the state apparatus and those where that never happened.
Deformed Workers State
In Trotskyist political theory, deformed workers' states are states where the en:bourgeoisie has been overthrown through en:social revolution, the industrial means of production have been largely nationalized bringing benefits to the working class, but where the en:working class has never held political power (as it did in Russia shortly after the Russian Revolution). These workers' states are deformed because their political and economic structures have been imposed from the top (or from outside), and because revolutionary working class organizations are crushed. Like a en:degenerated workers' state, a deformed workers' state cannot be said to be a state that is transitioning to socialism.
The concept of deformed workers' states was developed by the theorists of the en:Fourth International after en:World War II, when the en:Soviet Union had militarily defeated en:Nazi Germany and created en:satellite states in en:Eastern Europe. Taking en:Leon Trotsky's concept of the Soviet Union as a en:degenerated workers state, the 1951 Third World Congress of the International described the new regimes as deformed workers' states. Rather than advocating a social revolution, as in the capitalist countries, the Fourth International advocated en:political revolution to oust the Stalinist en:bureaucracy in the Soviet Union (which was degenerated) however its attitude to Eastern Europe was different, as in Yugoslavia where it sent greetings to the en:Yugoslav Communist Party and requested attendance at their conference as it thought they could become revolutionary. This approach has been defended by the Trotskyist currents that trace their political continuity through the World Congresses between 1951 and 1965, such as the en:reunified Fourth International and CWI. The en:League for the Fifth International argues that the Eastern European states were degenerate workers states, in that they were "degenerate from birth" being qualitative degenerated rather than having quantitative deformations. Therefore a political revolution would be needed, which goes against the Fourth International who sought to reform the en:Yugoslav Communist Party among others.
Those Trotskyist currents that split from the Fourth International before 1948 over differences with Trotsky on the Soviet Union tend to disagree with this interpretation and have adopted theories describing the post-war Stalinist states as being en:state capitalist or en:bureaucratic collectivist.
Most Trotskyists cite examples of deformed workers' states today as including en:Cuba, the en:People's Republic of China, en:North Korea and en:Vietnam. The en:Committee for a Workers International has also included states such as en:Syria or en:Burma at times when they have had a en:nationalised economy.
Some Trotskyist groups such as Socialist Action, while having some disagreements with the Cuban leadership, consider Cuba a healthy en:workers' state. Others, such as the en:Freedom Socialist Party, say that the People's Republic of China has gone too far on the road of capitalist restoration to be considered a deformed workers' state.
Degenerated Workers State
In en:Trotskyist political theory the term degenerated workers' state has been used since the 1930s to describe the state of the en:Soviet Union after en:Stalin's consolidation of power in or about 1924. The term was developed by en:Leon Trotsky in en:The Revolution Betrayed[1] and in other works ,[2] but has its roots in Lenin's formula that the USSR was a workers' state with bureaucratic deformations.[3]
The Trotskyist definition
The en:Soviet state of the period between the 1917 October Revolution and en:Joseph Stalin's consolidation of power, was held to be a genuine en:workers' state, as the en:bourgeoisie had been politically overthrown by the en:working class and the en:economic basis of that state laid in collective ownership of the en:means of production. Contrary to the predictions of many en:socialists such as Lenin himself, the revolution failed to spread to en:Germany and other industrial en:Western European countries, and consequently the Soviet state began to degenerate. This was worsened by the material and political degeneration of the en:Russian en:working class by the Civil War of 1917â1923. After the death of en:Lenin in 1924, the ruling stratum of the Soviet Union, consolidated around en:Joseph Stalin, was held to be a bureaucratic en:caste, and not a new ruling class, because its political control did not also extend to economic ownership. The theory that the Soviet Union was a degenerated workers' state is closely connected to Trotsky's call for a en:political revolution in the USSR, as well as Trotsky's call for defense of the USSR against capitalist restoration.
The term "degenerated workers' state" is commonly used to refer only to the Soviet Union. The term en:deformed workers' state was coined by Trotskyists of the en:Fourth International to describe those states, like the Soviet satellite states of en:Eastern Europe, which are or were based upon en:collectivised means of production, but in which the working class never held direct political power.
Critics
Besides the supporters of the Soviet Union holding the belief that the state was a healthy en:workers' state, the theory has been criticised from within the Trotskyist movement, and by other en:socialists critical of the Soviet Union. Among the disputed issues are the relationships between a workers' state (of any type), and a en:planned economy. Some tendencies tend to equate the two concepts, while others draw sharp distinctions between them.
Among Trotskyists, alternative but similar theories include state capitalism and en:bureaucratic collectivism.
See also
References
- ↑ Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, 1936
- ↑ See, for example, Leon Trotsky, "The USSR and Problems of the Transitional Epoch", extract from The Transitional Program (1938), or "The ABC of Materialist Dialectics", extract From "A Petty-Bourgeois Opposition in the Socialist Workers Party" (1939), in Leon Trotsky, In Defense of Marxism, 1942)
- ↑ Cf. among other places: "Our Party Programme ... shows that ours is a workersâ state with a bureaucratic twist to it." V. I. Lenin, "The Trade Unions, the Present Situation and Trotsky's Mistakes", speech on December 30, 1920, in V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Volume 32.
External links
- Third World Congress of the Fourth International, Class Nature of Eastern Europe
- Pierre Frank, Evolution of Eastern Europe, Report to the Third World Congress
