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Continuing with the matter of ‘abolition of money’ during bolshie ‘war communism’, there was the abolition of currency in Pol Pot Cambodia. Just come to my attention there are two texts by the same author, separated by three years, written from a marxist perspective of some sort or another on Democratic Kampuchea:
1) James A Tyner: FROM RICE FIELDS TO KILLING FIELDS — Nature, Life, and Labor under the Khmer Rouge (2017, freely downloadable from libgen, which is not a typo for ‘libcom’).
Table of contents:
1. A Critique of Khmer Rouge Political Economy
2. Revolution
3. Reconstruction
4. Production
5. Manufacturing Indifference
6. Abolishment and Reproduction
7. Dead LaborFrom the Preface:
‘The dominant interpretation, known as the Standard Total View, of Cambodian history during this period presents the CPK as a totalitarian, communist, and autarkic regime seeking to reorganize Cambodian society around a primitive, agrarian political economy. Under the STV, the victims of the regime died as a result of misguided economic policies, a draconian security apparatus, and the central leadership’s fanatical belief in the creation of a utopian, communist society. In short, according to the STV, Democratic Kampuchea, as Cambodia was renamed, constituted an isolated, completely self-reliant prison state. This present work disrupts the standard narrative and provides a documentary-based Marxist interpretation of the political economy of Democratic Kampuchea.’and
‘Communism, according to Marx, was necessary to overcome the alienated life that typified capitalism. This, I argue, was a central concern of the CPK. However, what the CPK actually brought about was anything but a socialist or communist society, but not for lack of trying. I do not doubt that many members of the CPK were committed to what they believed Marxism entails, that there was a concerted effort to bring about a socialist revolution in preparation for an eventual communist society. However, I also maintain that notwithstanding their attempts to establish and defend socialism and to move toward communism, they could not and did not install a communist structure as the prevailing social organization of production. Rather than erecting a nonexploitative system, the CPK merely replaced one form of exploitation with another. Indeed, the CPK reaffirmed a system of production for exchange, thereby negating its own philosophical premise. Quite simply, I will argue that the CPK—similar to the former Soviet Union and other so-called communist or socialist governments—installed a variant of state capitalism. As employed throughout this book, the term state capitalism refers broadly to a mode of production whereby a ruling class controls the state apparatus and, through this control, manages the means of production and subsequently appropriates surplus value.’
2) James A Tyner: “Currency is a Most Poisonous Tool”: State Capitalism, Nonmarket Socialism, and the Elimination of Money during the Cambodian Genocide (2020)
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341260328_Currency_is_a_Most_Poisonous_Tool_State_Capitalism_Nonmarket_Socialism_and_the_Elimination_of_Money_during_the_Cambodian_Genocide
2020 (PDF click-available without fuss)Fragments from which:
‘It is implausible to conclude with any degree of certainty the entirety of the productive apparatus envisioned by a regime that collapsed in just under four years. This holds especially for a regime that so clearly was fraught with internal dissent. Nevertheless, surviving CPK planning documents allow for a partial reconstruction of Democratic Kampuchea’s economy as it lurched forward. Far from a ‘pure’ form of socialism or communism, the mode of production begun by the CPK resembles more a Frankenstein’s monster of state capitalism and nonmarket socialism, with the apparent paradox of Democratic Kampuchea’s hybrid economy explained by geographic scale.’
and
‘In Democratic Kampuchea, the suspension of currency effectively precluded these strategies. Neither could CPK officials rely upon non-capitalist forms of organization to generate necessary revenues. Simply put, a barter system as that proposed by Chhit Chhoeun does not provide surplus value; and some CPK officials apparently understood this limitation. Indeed, the resultant economic order of Democratic Kampuchea resembled more so a hybrid form of state capitalism and nonmarket socialism than it did either a barter economy or an economy of associated producers as envisioned by Marx.’
‘In short, CPK officials initiated and implemented a hybrid economy. On the one hand, Party leaders participated in the monetary-based global economy as state capitalists while, on the other hand, they instituted a nonmonetary, nonmarket domestic economy. Under an economic system of import substitution industrialization, the Cambodian people produced rice not as a use value, that is, a grain produced primarily for subsistence and biologic consumption, but instead, as a means of acquiring exchange value. Khmer Rouge policy and practice effectively transformed rice into a commodity for export. In the process, however, senior leaders of the CPK instituted a fatal contradiction into Democratic Kampuchea’s economy. Under the system of exchange introduced by the CPK, the provision of higher rations (in the form of rice) would decrease the amount of capital (rice) the Party had available for surplus accumulation in the global economy. However, decreased rations would facilitate the accumulation of capital. When CPK leaders suspended currency, they did not negate capital but merely substituted one form of capital (wages) with another (rations), while leaving the basic exploitative relationship intact.’
His references are to Cliff, Resnick-Wolff, Bettelheim, …though in the bibliography to the book three years earlier, Buick/Crump is also listed, but no mention in the text.
I have not yet read through the book, but from looking at its preface it seems his use of ‘state capitalist’ shifted by 2020 to the Tony Cliff sense where ‘state capitalist’ means carrying on international trade with a view to monetary profit (regardless of the workings of the internal economy, ie the ‘law of value’ somehow regulating production or *not*. ) Thus he can have Pol Pot Cambodia as both ‘non-market socialism’ [sic] on the one hand, and also ‘state capitalism’ on the other.)
Against this use of ‘state-capitalist’, thesis 23 by the group gegen Kapital und Nation in theirs 2011 article on Pol Pot Cambodia (https://gegen-kapital-und-nation.org/en/if-we-have-rice-we-can-have-everything/ )
‘Incidentally, this should not lead us to the converse fallacy that the Khmer Rouge’s reign had been some kind of ‘state capitalism’. The Khmer Rouge did indeed relate to the world market with their aims and would have loved to transform Cambodia into an agricultural supplier for international capitalism. But they never got that far. And unlike in the USSR they did not even try to turn wage, price and profit into factors of planning. Instead of trying to plan in terms of money, which would not have meant bad capitalism but a badly planned economy, it was rice that had to be delivered in Kampuchea. A ‘domestic market’, whether of a capitalist or state socialist kind, did not exist; the money of ‘democratic Kampuchea’, which had already been printed, was not introduced as currency.”
— which just goes to show that like ‘socialist’, ‘state capitalist’ can mean almost anything.
Anyway, my interest is focused on the non-use of currency and how this compares to ‘war communism’ in bolshie Russia.
(Robbo are you still on this forum?)
Webmaster:
A day and a half later, I believe I may have over-reacted a tad. If it is possible, can you change ‘disgraceful’ to ‘unfortunate’ in the thread-title for me? (I don’t see a way of doing it myself.) Thanks.They are not homonyms in Cantonese either. And of course they are written differently — 躺 and 唐 — regardless of areal pronunciation — Cantonese, Pekinese [so-called ‘Mandarin’], Shanghainese, or what-have-you. This would be so even in the hypothetical case of a dialect in which the pronunciations had merged.
(‘Merger’ here meaning as with ‘pane/pain’, two words whose pronunciation is now merged for most English speakers but which used to have have different vowels. If interested in such things, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_diphthongs#Pane–pain_merger)
Well of course it was an honest mistake. I used ‘disgraceful’ in the literal sense of something that brings disgrace. Certainly no suggestion of it being deliberate (!?).
As for the two syllables being non-homophones (they are of different phonemic pitch, or ‘different tones’ as it is commonly put), yes, and this can be seen from the difference in diacritics in my first post: ‘tǎng’ vs ‘táng’. Unfortunately, these diacritics are not used (and thus not seen by readers) in journalism. (Only in pedagogy and certain academic writing.)
Now, in some parallel universe (apart from the one where socialism has already been established world-wide), the Chinese government’s 1928 quickly dead-ended promulgation of the romanisation system called National Romanisation (aka Gwoyeu Romatzyh ) has been in use until this day. In this system, syllables differing in phonemic pitch receive different spellings. Thus ‘tǎng’ is ‘taang’; ‘táng’ is ‘tarng’ (silent <r>). Immediately and obviously different to the eye. For any who have interest in such things, see the section titled ‘Tones’ here: https://www.angelfire.com/pop2/pkv/ipa.html .
Thus, in this universe, typing ‘taang’ into Google Translate could not have caused the (wrong) hanograph ‘唐’ to appear; and there would be no such thread on this forum as ‘the disgraceful cover of the Dec 2021 issue’.
What I found alarming in the article was this:
‘What can be said with near certainty is that a revolution that does not have substantial participation from engineers is doomed to fail at implementing communism.’ […] ‘t is indeed mass manufacturing and global distributive capacity that makes a planned social system, controllable by the collective human desire for wellbeing, possible.’
and
‘The past two decades have seen a rebirth of mass politics brought on by decreasing proletarian access to the means of subsistence. These struggles signal the start of a new phase in proletarian activity qualitatively different from the mass worker mobilizations of the 19th and 20h centuries. Unlike many of these older struggles, the mass mobilizations of today tend to take place outside of the workplace and, insofar as they have demands or specific complaints, are focused largely on a lack of the means of subsistence rather than on workplace issues or other matters relating directly to capitalist productive activity. The reasons for this lie outside the scope of this essay; however, a significant causal factor is the simple fact that a far smaller proportion of the global proletarian population is today employed directly in the commodity production process. This is why much contemporary communist theory [[whose? one of the ‘communiser’ factions?]] focuses on the role of surplus population (the growing number of people superfluous to commodity production) in today’s struggles and uprisings; this is now the defining dynamic of proletarian self-activity. **The problematic aspect of this dynamic is that these movements cannot build towards communism without the involvement of workers with the technical know-how of commodity production and the willingness to deploy that know-how towards communist ends.**’ [my emphasis]
Well, regardless of the truth or non-truth of his ‘ [now] defining dynamic of proletarian self-activity’ (as ‘the growing number of people superfluous to commodity production in today’s struggles and uprisings’), the longer that the tendency described earlier by him continues (that is, (a) knowledge increasingly concentrated in the engineer; (b) concomitant deskilling of others involved in direct production) — all the more will the role of the engineer in socialist revolution become all the more critical/pivotal. Because: if only the engineers really knows how to ‘do anything’, then without them, the forces of production can hardly be freed in the direction of providing abundance.
Regarding the ‘Why England?’ question —
1) Aside from Meiksins Wood’s book ‘The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View’ (easily downloadable free from libgen) also see George Comninel’s 2000 ‘English Feudalism and the Origins of Capitalism’ which can be read at http://www.yorku.ca/comninel/courses/ComninelPDF/English_feudalism(JPS).pdf . An earlier version of it was favorably referred to in a footnote in an previous book by Meiksins Wood.
The abstract of the Comninel is the following:
‘The specific historical basis for the development of capitalism in England — and not in France — is traced to the unique structure of English manorial lordship. It is the absence from English lordship of seigneurie banale – the specific political form of parcellised sovereignty that figured centrally in the development of Continental feudalism – that accounts for the peculiarly ‘economic’ turn taken in the development of English class relations of surplus extraction. In France, by contrast, the distinctly ‘political’ tenor of subsequent social development can equally specifically be traced to the central role of seigneurie banale in the fundamental class relations of feudalism.’
(By the way, based on both political and economic criteria, he draws a distinction between ‘manorialism’, ‘feudalism’ , and ‘absolutism’:
‘All three of these systems of class relations of exploitation were based upon the ‘extra-economic’ appropriation of surplus from peasants, and the differences among them are far less than the qualitative difference between capitalism and them all. Yet distinctions may be drawn between manorialism, feudalism, and absolutism in precisely the same way that Marx distinguished the extraction of labour-rent in Asia from European feudalism – specifically in relation to differing structures of extra-economic coercion of the peasants.’)
Regarding the Bird-recommended book by Spencer Dimmock from 2014, ‘The Origin of Capitalism in England, 1400–1600’, its detailed table of contents, on Google Books, can be seen here: shorturl.at/gqvCZ . This book (likewise downloadable from libgen) ought to be reviewed in the SS.
(Dimmock might be surprised at Bird’s characterisation of the Political Marxism current in Bird-comment #208026. Near the beginning of the chapter ‘Orthodox Marxism versus Political Marxism’, Dimmock writes:
‘As we shall see, the accusation of voluntarism – among other things – against Robert Brenner and Ellen Meiksins Wood (the Wood referred to in the above quote) stems from a total misreading of Brenner’s thesis and its application by Wood and other political Marxists such as George Comninel, Benno Teschke and Charles Post. Far from abandoning historical materialism, Brenner’s social-property
relations perspective has sought to bring it to life by rejecting the tendency to teleology and techno-determinism in earlier orthodox accounts.’Re my #215880, relatedly see this by Chomsky in 1989: https://chomsky.info/1989____/ .
(edit: I suppose this would probably have been better posted on the Anti-zionism is not anti-semitism thread.)
A left-communist friend remarks on it:
‘Not a bad critique, right about the basics. However, their understanding of both science and Marxism seems a bit crude – you would think they’ve never read Pannekoek’s critique of Lenin’s “Materialism and Empiriocriticism”!’
In the June 2021 Brooklyn Rail / Field notes:
Chris Knight: ‘Did communism make us human? — On the anthropology of David Graeber’:
https://brooklynrail.org/2021/06/field-notes/Did-communism-make-us-human
He opposes Graeber’s insistence on the non-existence of primitive communism and demonstrates the opposite.
Some keywords: ‘immediate return’, ‘delayed return’ …. ‘selfish gene’.
Young Master:
Bauerism (as well as a voting system that might overcome the danger of ethno-majority tyranny) both came up in this thread: https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/topic/against-lesser-of-the-two-evils-ism-on-the-article-was-the-jewish-bund-anti-semitic/#post-132981
Glenn Greenwald: ‘AOC’s Attack on Yang’s Meaningless Israel Statement Shows Her Role: Protect Dem Leaders — Real power over U.S. policy toward Israel and Gaza rests with Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer, Blinken — not Yang. But AOC’s function is to shield them from leftist anger.’:
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/aocs-attack-on-yangs-meaningless
A new article from the autonomist-colored left-communist group Mouvement Communiste/Kolektivně proti Kapitălu:
“RACES” AND THE WORKING CLASS IN THE USA
https://mouvement-communiste.com/documents/MC/Letters/LTMC2148 ENvH.pdf ENvH.pdfIt includes these sections:
An antiracist movement against the police but in defence of the state
BLM, a stack of anti-worker ideas
The present situation of Blacks in the USA (with 11 subsections)
Capital and imaginary communities
Intersectionality, a counter-revolutionary instrument for dividing the proletariat
An ideology soaked in philosophical indifferentism
Intersectionality and the politics of identity
Intersectionality and antiracism: a pillar of racialisation
A counter-revolutionary impasse
ALB:
‘Anarchists (and “Utopian Socialists”) argued that it could have been and could be established anywhere and at any time in history. Marx argued that *one of its conditions was productive forces capable of providing plenty for all*.’
Can you supply some Marx-text for that? Thanks.
(I don’t know if he exactly rates as a utopian socialist or anarchist, but if I am not too mistaken, what you characterise as the anarchist view is also that of, say, Jean Barrot/Gille Dauvé — as well as some of the other ‘communisers’.
‘New antisemitism definition excludes BDS, but Palestine activists say it’s still flawed’:
New antisemitism definition excludes BDS, but Palestine activists say it’s still flawed
‘The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism: a critical view’:
