By model in this context I mean a political system or approach that may serve to inform the creation of another. I support public ownership of the economy, but that is not the only thing I support. So if an approach to public ownership involves the suppression of individual liberty, I am unlikely to find utility in it as a model. If it can be adapted to that end, though, maybe it could be.
The point I am trying to drive home is that if I am to build socialism in a given country, I can of course begin with an analysis of existing class society and the material conditions surrounding me. I can look to successes elswehere, and compare the general and the particular. What I cannot do is treat different societies as models or templates to emulate. Perhaps specific elements can be, but the particularities of each country determine the nature of socialist construction, and the fact that nothing is static means that socialism is a process and not an end.
That’s all fine. Would you at least deem it appropriate to evaluate a country on it’s likelihood of moving a society closer to communism? Or do you not see that as a relevant goal?
If a country is on the socialist road, it is moving towards communism. Communism is built on collectivized production and distribution, and this is economically compelled by the centralization of markets and even more compelled once socialized production becomes the principal aspect of the economy.
I find this idea dubious. I think that state control of the economy could lead to communism if that state is managed democratically by a majority underclass that does not own property, because such a class might develop a system of governance that abolishes class and private property and distributes political power. I do not see communism as an inevitable outcome of any given state run economy.
Workers in socialism collectively own the commanding heights of the economy, sometimes much more as in the DPRK. They are not an underclass, they are the ruling class. Communism isn’t inevitable, much can go wrong as was seen with the dissolution of the once great USSR. However, it remains that socialism is a process, and that process involves developing towards communism as is economically compelled.
I think that the process of an underclass becoming a ruling class is important in the development toward communism. It seems like you’re suggesting that there is only one metric with which a communist should evaluate a country and that is whether or not they have a socialized economy. Is that right?
No, socialization of the economy is not the only metric. It is not even the key metric. The class character of the state is primary. Socialization is a single, highly important factor within that determination, but it remains derivative. A nationalized industry under bourgeois state command functions as state monopoly capital.
Evaluation proceeds from the principal contradiction to its secondary aspects. The principal question: which class holds monopoly over political power and the means of coercion? This determines the direction of all other processes. Secondary metrics, the rate and depth of socialization, the trajectory of productive forces, the composition of administrative personnel, the character of ideological struggle, these are not irrelevant. They are conditional. They either consolidate proletarian state power or undermine it. There is no neutral technical criterion. The same policy, e.g. grain procurement or industrial planning, produces opposite class effects depending on which class commands the state apparatus.
The state is not a passive vessel for economic measures. It is the organized expression of class rule. Transitionary societies contain multiple modes of production in contradiction. The state resolves which mode dominates. Empirical assessment must therefore begin with the class basis of political power.
No, it’s not right. Socialization is a process that happens in socialism (and even capitalism) that forms the economic basis for capitalism. It’s crucial for the working classes to have siezed and gained state power, ie political power and supremacy to develop society in their interest. Public ownership being the principal aspect of the economy goes along with that.
By model in this context I mean a political system or approach that may serve to inform the creation of another. I support public ownership of the economy, but that is not the only thing I support. So if an approach to public ownership involves the suppression of individual liberty, I am unlikely to find utility in it as a model. If it can be adapted to that end, though, maybe it could be.
The point I am trying to drive home is that if I am to build socialism in a given country, I can of course begin with an analysis of existing class society and the material conditions surrounding me. I can look to successes elswehere, and compare the general and the particular. What I cannot do is treat different societies as models or templates to emulate. Perhaps specific elements can be, but the particularities of each country determine the nature of socialist construction, and the fact that nothing is static means that socialism is a process and not an end.
That’s all fine. Would you at least deem it appropriate to evaluate a country on it’s likelihood of moving a society closer to communism? Or do you not see that as a relevant goal?
If a country is on the socialist road, it is moving towards communism. Communism is built on collectivized production and distribution, and this is economically compelled by the centralization of markets and even more compelled once socialized production becomes the principal aspect of the economy.
I find this idea dubious. I think that state control of the economy could lead to communism if that state is managed democratically by a majority underclass that does not own property, because such a class might develop a system of governance that abolishes class and private property and distributes political power. I do not see communism as an inevitable outcome of any given state run economy.
Workers in socialism collectively own the commanding heights of the economy, sometimes much more as in the DPRK. They are not an underclass, they are the ruling class. Communism isn’t inevitable, much can go wrong as was seen with the dissolution of the once great USSR. However, it remains that socialism is a process, and that process involves developing towards communism as is economically compelled.
I think that the process of an underclass becoming a ruling class is important in the development toward communism. It seems like you’re suggesting that there is only one metric with which a communist should evaluate a country and that is whether or not they have a socialized economy. Is that right?
No, socialization of the economy is not the only metric. It is not even the key metric. The class character of the state is primary. Socialization is a single, highly important factor within that determination, but it remains derivative. A nationalized industry under bourgeois state command functions as state monopoly capital.
Evaluation proceeds from the principal contradiction to its secondary aspects. The principal question: which class holds monopoly over political power and the means of coercion? This determines the direction of all other processes. Secondary metrics, the rate and depth of socialization, the trajectory of productive forces, the composition of administrative personnel, the character of ideological struggle, these are not irrelevant. They are conditional. They either consolidate proletarian state power or undermine it. There is no neutral technical criterion. The same policy, e.g. grain procurement or industrial planning, produces opposite class effects depending on which class commands the state apparatus.
The state is not a passive vessel for economic measures. It is the organized expression of class rule. Transitionary societies contain multiple modes of production in contradiction. The state resolves which mode dominates. Empirical assessment must therefore begin with the class basis of political power.
No, it’s not right. Socialization is a process that happens in socialism (and even capitalism) that forms the economic basis for capitalism. It’s crucial for the working classes to have siezed and gained state power, ie political power and supremacy to develop society in their interest. Public ownership being the principal aspect of the economy goes along with that.