Capitalist Mode of Production - State Capitalist Interpretation

State Capitalist Interpretation

As mentioned, Marx never explicitly summarised his definition of capitalism, beyond some suggestive comments in manuscripts which he did not publish himself. This has led to controversies among Marxists about how to evaluate the "capitalist" nature of society in particular countries.

Supporters of theories of state capitalism such as the International Socialists reject the definition of the capitalist mode of production given above. In their view, claimed to be more revolutionary (in that true liberation from capitalism must be the self-emancipation of the working class - "socialism from below"), what really defines the capitalist mode of production is:

• means of production which dominate the direct producers as an alien power;
• the existence of a wage-earning working class which doesn't hold or have power;
• the existence of an elite or ruling class which controls the country, exploiting the working population in the technical Marxist sense.

If true, then ownership relations generally and private ownership in particular are irrelevant to the definition of capitalism. The existence of commercial relations and commodity production are also irrelevant.

Many of the state capitalist theories, (which actually originated in Germany, where they were already criticised by Frederick Engels), define "capital" only as a social relation of power and exploitation.

This idea is based on some passages from Marx, where Marx emphasized that capital cannot exist except within a power-relationship between social classes which governs the extraction of surplus-labour. It is this power-relationship that is most important for the proponents of theories of state capitalism; everything else is secondary.

The underlying argument is that:

• Calling societies such as the USSR, China, Cuba and Vietnam etc. genuinely "socialist" or "communist" makes no sense and is confusing - because those societies have been just as oppressive and exploitative as capitalist societies.
• True socialism would mean workers' power, which would consist precisely in eliminating the exploitation and oppression of workers, and is impossible without workers' democracy.
• Trotskyist attempts to explain their oppressive nature by viewing them as "degenerated" or "deformed" workers' states are rejected for various reasons. For example, the spread of the same system to Eastern Europe without an indigenous "organic" revolution "from below" (except Yugoslavia), and the continuity of many of the same people in power before and after the collapse of the USSR and its satellite regimes, are said to prove that one variety of state capitalism just led to another.
• Other Marxist explanations that posit a new mode of production in Soviet-type societies, neither true socialism nor capitalism, such as "bureaucratic collectivism", are rejected as implausible.
• It is claimed that despite their autarkic policies, these countries of "actually existing socialism" effectively competed in the international (capitalist-dominated) market anyway through the arms race, as well as limited direct international trade, and thus were still subject to capitalist pressures, even although most of the weaponry was not commercially traded. This international competition it is claimed, forced them to function much like giant corporations, and so, it is argued, they shared key characteristics of capitalism anyway.
• Therefore, the USSR, China, Cuba, Vietnam etc. must be state capitalist, just as much as Western "state capitalisms."