ZJW
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reply to # 225403
Surely the matter should not be left here, without attention to response from the other side.
Alan, you are charged with finding more substantive vegan rejoinders to what his lordship says than what I off-hand offer below:
https://www.surgeactivism.org/articles/farmers-ahdb-campaign-against-veganuary
I did not know until reading your post above who was in charge of doing covers, but in any case apologise for my extremely intemperate tone.
Forgot to give the link: http://www.slp.org/pdf/others/marx-stal.pdf
I also clearly recall the SLP using ‘industrial feudalism’ It must be that they had no fixed term; thus the pamphlet linked to above uses something different.
… ah here is such a usage in a pamphlet of their’s from 1950.
Page 3, end of para 2 :’The system they have built up is in fact better described as a form of industrial feudalism’
(The site is set up so that you *cannot* copy-paste text. Why in God’s name [just joking!] do such a thing?)
‘Simon Wiesenthal Center Releases its Global Anti-Semitism 2021 Top Ten List’: https://www.wiesenthal.com/assets/pdf/global_anti-semitism_2021_top_ten.pdf
Number 3 is the BBC. Number 5 is Jewish Voices for Peace.
Re the differences over time and space among the various leninist states: when/if the social surplus extracted from the producing class by the appropriating class does not take the form surplus *value* but rather surplus *labor/product*, I greatly favor the term ‘state-feudalism’ over an incestuous use of ‘state-“capitalism” ‘. (And it’s also better than the De Leonists’ ‘bureaucratic state despotism’, about which see note below.
Here is someone, hardly a social-revolutionist but simply a sinologist it seems, who uses and defends the term ‘state-feudalism’ in talking about maoism:
Satya J. Gabriel:
‘What do you mean China is socialist?’:
https://bit.ly/3pbm3Xr‘Political Economy of the Great Leap Forward: Permanent Revolution and State Feudal Communes’:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210302060526/https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/sgabriel/economics/china-essays/4.html(Gabriel does, though, at least in the first of those, confusedly use the term ‘surplus *value*’ when he’s clearly refering to surplus labor/product.)
SLP pamphlet ‘The Nature of Soviet Society’: http://www.slp.org/pdf/others/sov_soc.pdf read from part II on page 23; or for the less patient, from the section heading ‘A New Form of Class Rule’ on page 28; or for the even less patient, from ‘One final question needs to be taken up before closing: What should these new societies be called?’ on page 31. And the second to the last paragraph on page 32 apologising for such an ad hoc term (as ‘bureaucratic state despotism’.)
Re #225077 —
Reading the book (written three years later) is preferable to reading the article. As I said, the author’s position shifted. (For example no more mention of ‘non-market socialism’.) And, as I said, the book is easily downloaded from libgen.
And I don’t think it is at all important (after all, how *long* a suspension?), but in the book, he often refers to money having been ‘abolished’ or ‘eliminated’. He never uses ‘suspend/suspension’. For example: ‘Under the Khmer Rouge, following the abolition of currency, wages were not paid. Instead, food rations assumed the role
of “minimum wages.” ‘Re the differences over time and space among the various leninist states: when/if the social surplus extracted from the producing class by the appropriating class does not take the form surplus _value_ but rather surplus *labor/product* I greatly favor the term ‘state-feudalism’ over the incestuous use of state-capitalism. (And it’s also better than the De Leonists’ ‘bureaucratic state despotism’, about which see note below.
Here is someone, hardly a social-revolutionist but simply a sinologist it seems, who uses and defends ‘state-feudalism’ talking about maoism:
Satya J. Gabriel:
‘What do you mean China is socialist?’:
https://bit.ly/3pbm3Xr‘Political Economy of the Great Leap Forward: Permanent Revolution and State Feudal Communes’:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210302060526/https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/sgabriel/economics/china-essays/4.html(Gabriel does, though, at least in the first of those, confusedly use the term ‘surplus value’ when he’s clearly refering to surplus labor/product.)
SLP pamphlet ‘The Nature of Soviet Society’: http://www.slp.org/pdf/others/sov_soc.pdf read from part II on page 23; or for the less patient, from the section heading ‘A New Form of Class Rule’ on page 28; or for the even less patient, from ‘One final question needs to be taken up before closing: What should these new societies be called?’ on page 31. And the second to the last paragraph on page 32 apologising for such an ad hoc term (as ‘bureaucratic state despotism’.)
schekn_itrch:
1)’In contrast, the whole organisation of society was not thought through well: I would think that people who are interested in doing things well and showing off would have a different organisation of cafes and pubs, for instance.’
Hmm, probably so, yes, good point.
2) ‘how come you are able to make no mention of Strugatsky brothers in your comment?’
Good question. Books I mention in my comments on that libcom page are books I’ve personally read. I’ve never read anything by the Strugatskys, so didn’t mention them. (Or Yefromov — whom sshenfield mentions — either.) …. Just now, I have added an additional comment there on libcom calling attention to the Leon/SS page/Strugatsky&Yefromov.
(I did give Noon Universe a try a few months ago, but owing to certain defects of mine as a reader of fiction (including impatience), in conjunction with the particular structure of that book (a bit like a series of not too connected short stories, it seemed), I didn’t get very far. That’s no reflection on the worthiness of the book of course.)
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’.
