Can there be a “workers budget”?
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Workers Liberty has replied to this article in this month’s Socialist Standard:
Their reply is here:
https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2024-12-22/tax-rich-demagogic
They seem to be conceding that we had a bit of a point.
Those leftwing organizations continue believing that the capitalist state is financed by the working class instead of being financed with capitalist surplus value. The post war boom is already gone, and capitalists want to provide less surplus value for the state apparatus and its agency, wage are just the necessary means to keep the stave alive
Probably, they have not read Marx and David Ricardo about taxation, Inter class capitalist conflicts is not an issue for the working class .
They are also the ones who motivated workers to believe that they are one paying for the social services provided to the undocumented workers by the state agencies, that is the preferable topic of the populists right winger leaders
Some workers can not even pay their own rent, and buy grocery, and workers do not finance wars either, and they do not bail out banks and financial institutions, the capitalist state saved them with Fictitious capital
Capitalists invest money in out shores sources and tax haven in order to cheat other capitalists and obtain higher profits, they always cheat other, workers do not have to get killed, or beaten by the police in the streets fighting for that problem
If their leader known as Leon Trotsky was confused his followers are more confused too. Trotsky never knew what socialism really is, but Stalin did know what socialism really is, but all of them opted for state capitalism and the vanguard party to lead, and bourgoise nationalism
If their leader known as Leon Trotsky was confused his followers are more confused too. Trotsky never knew what socialism really is
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I am not quite sure that this is the case. It would actually be very surprising if he did not know about socialism as it was much more widely understood back then in Trotsky’s day than it is today. Same with Lenin. Kautsky referred to Lenin´s idea of a moneyless version of socialism but of course, Lenin defined socialism in other ways too that contradicted each other. For example, he talked of socialism as being a form of “state capitalist monopoly” run in the interest of the whole people and also a society in which everyone is an employee of the state. That is a non-Marxist definition of socialism, clearly.
I think both these individuals knew of socialism in its classical Marxian sense but decided to put forward another definition of it or else advocated an approach that would allegedly lead to socialism (but could not possibly do so). In that sense, they were not really socialists but propagandists for state capitalism. But even non-socialists or anti-socialists can “know about” socialism without being socialists themselves.
In Trotsky´s case, there is a passage in his book on Terrorism and Communism (Ch 8) where he actually talks of socialism being a non-statist society just as Stalin did (as you point out) in his book on Anarchism (1906)
Here´s the passage;
In point of fact, under Socialism there will not exist the apparatus of compulsion itself, namely, the State: for it will have melted away entirely into a producing and consuming commune. Nonetheless, the road to Socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the State. And you and I are just passing through that period. Just as a lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the State, before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the most ruthless form of State, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction (25)
That’s a revealing quote from Trotsky and doesn’t conform to what Stalin wrote in 1906. Stalin there envisaged a gradual weakening of the state till it disappeared, not it getting stronger before it finally did. Ironically, Stalin and his supporters later adopted the position Trotsky outlined to justify their own ruthless rule.
I think it is fair to say that Trotsky didn’t really understand what socialism was. In his early writings he identified socialism with nationalisation and he always thought that the state sector in Russia was socialist. His refusal, when deposed and in exile, to describe Russia as state capitalist was based on this belief that the nationalised sector represented a change in property relations and was why he still regarded Russia as a non-capitalist, “workers’ state”, even if a “degenerate” one (due to Stalin rather than him being in charge).
“I think it is fair to say that Trotsky didn’t really understand what socialism was”
__________________________________________But the quote from Terrorism and Communism written by Trotsky indicates that he, at least, understood that socialism would be a stateless society. There is another quote from him (which I will try to track down) where he talks about the feasibility of a system of purely voluntary labour (which corresponds to our definition of socialism).
My reason for saying that he must have known about this definition of socialism is because it was so widely circulated at the time. For example, before the Bolshevik-Menshevik split the Russian social democrats published a text in 1897 called A Short Course of Economic Science, written by A Bogdanoff, that talked of socialism being “the highest stage of society we can conceive”, in which such institutions as taxation and profits will be non-existent and in which “there will not be the market, buying and selling, but consciously and systematically organised distribution”. A revised edition, published in August 1919, was used as a textbook in study circles of the Russian Communist Party.
I would be inclined to say not that Trotsky – or Lenin or Stalin for that matter – were unaware of the Marxian definition of socialism but rather, that they sought instead to displace it with their own essentially state-capitalist definition of “socialism”. Their goal was state capitalism – and their view of socialism was purely academic, meaning they were not really interested in it as a goal. Nevertheless, as a goal it was endorsed at the time by the various social democratic parties (the maximum programme of the German SDP) and so it suited them to opportunistically pay lip service to socialism as we understand the term but only as some ultimate long-term goal that they were not really interested in realising themselves (Lenin talked about socialism in our sense being 500 years into the future)
Lenin saw state capitalism as a kind of preparation for socialism to the point where he saw it as being part of the very definition of “socialism”. It was just a dishonest way of trying to elicit support for his own programme of state capitalism.
Perhaps, one can say that while Lenin and Trotsky were aware of the formal definition of socialism as we understand the term, they were not aware of what it entails or in what way it is flatly incompatible with the state capitalism they advocated. In that sense, perhaps, we can say they did not really understand socialism….
Ernesto Che Guevara believed in a moneyless society and he ended up becoming the head of the Central Bank of Cuba, and minister of industry and commerce, and he himself volunteered to motivate the workers to produce more at the sugar plantation and factories for the soviet union
All the time Trotsky enarbolated bourgeois nationalization as socialism and he supported the hitler -stalin pact as a protection to socialist russia.
He died believing that the Soviet Union was a socialist country, but Lenin at the end of his life he did recognize the bureaucratic aspect of the soviet state similar to the old czarist state .
Lenin did recognize that the vanguard party to lead was only applicable to Russia and it was a temporary measure and Trotsky and Stalin made a permanent policy of the Soviet Union and the bolshevik party
He paraphrased certain socialist principles that the never supported which has been a pretext for his followers to say that he was a socialist and he knew what socialism really is.
He supported the militarization at the point of production and whoever did not show up to work should be dismissed, it does sound like Ford assembly line which later on was adopted by Joseph Stalin.
We have an article which say that Bolshevism is just a combination of Karl Kautsky vanguard party and leon Trotsky theory of the permanent revolution
They have now publicised their reply (and publicity for our view) on Twitter:
https://x.com/workersliberty/status/1872650056723263548
Not surprising that they have sprung to the defence of their slogan. Search “workers liberty tax the rich” and see what comes up. It seems to be their answer to everything.
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