The ABC’s of Communism Bolshevism 2011

Jason W. Smith, Ph.D.

 

Chapter 20: The Stage of Advanced Socialism

As it turned out, the post-1975 world became extraordinarily complex. The post-1975 turn of the Chinese Party and the post Soviet-East European collapse of c.1990 left foreign (to the Socialist Camp) communists totally confused as to what was going on precisely because no one had offered an acceptable (that is to say a “Marxist” or “Historical Materialist”) theoretical explanation of what had occurred. Hopefully, what I have explained in this regard now satisfies that crying need, at least for you cadre who have a use for this handbook. – And you, who will lead North American workers and veterans, are the important ones in history now – even if our enemies don’t know it – even if the established “Left” party leaders don’t understand it.

As for our enemies, the post-1975 world was not one in which the USA ruling oligarchs could act with impunity. They could not direct world affairs as they wished. For US traditional imperialism (with the gringo ruling families placing themselves in the locomotive engine of the historical train they had formed with the other capitalist classes in tow), the Soviet revisionists had their post-Vietnam policy too. It had been written for them by George Orwell. He had called it, 1984. For 15 years the US and Soviet rulers played the Orwellian Game of World Chessmanship where the struggles of the class forces in Africa, Asia and Latin America often were played out in some kind of way reflective of the interests of their sponsors.

In 1975, the Soviet New Czars were committed to the Big Lie idea because it had worked so well for them for over two decades. I mean by this, the “sheep’s clothing” approach to converting public property into their own private property. It took them fifteen years to get over that idea and to stand naked before their own people and the world for what they really were (c. 1990.)

However, after 1975, neither the Gringo capitalists nor the Soviet-lining “revisionist” capitalists, were preparing to attack Socialist China. That had been the diagnostic environmental criteria that created and necessitated Stalinist Socialism in the first place. That is to say, the absolute determination of the global capitalist classes to liquidate by war the first world Socialist Stage. In other words, with the Rockefeller (Nixon-Kissinger) initiative to "normalize" relations with China, the foreign pressure was off.

Cuba’s position wasn’t nearly as secure. The Gringo giant is right next door and without Soviet rockets and finances... As a consequence it has been impossible for Cuba to move as quickly into the Advanced Socialist Stage a la the PeoplesRepublic of China. Cuban reorganization away from Soviet guidelines did not really get under way until after 1990, and then had to be done virtually overnight. Cuba has had to be guarded in the way it deviates from established security patterns of proletarian dictatorship given the rapacious nature and determination of the US oligarchs and their flunkey politicos to reverse the Revolution - now 50 years old. Especially, careful of the Gusano garbage in Miami, and its strong influence within the gringo ruling circles.

China, Cuba, and Vietnam, are examples of nations moving nevertheless into the Second Socialist Stage {what I am calling the Stage of Advanced Socialism.}

There are the countries that collapsed altogether such as the USSR and Eastern Europe with varying opportunities to recover, since the time when their corrupt revisionist leadership gave up the charades. By January 2005, the elderly in Russia had revolted against the evils of the emergent capitalist system there. Soon Russians across the nation found the very essentials of life were beyond their ability to obtain. Collapsing oil prices have run Putin out of time. The opportunity is now at hand there for a Second Bolshevik Revolution. Will the Communists of the Soviet Union be up to the task? Can they bring over the necessary military units to overthrow the Putin Regime and re-establish Soviet authority? Or, will perhaps, Putin decide to throw in his and the New Class’s lot with us? Only time will tell.

There is the peculiar case of Democratic Korea where a perverse form of the old Stalinist Stage Socialist system is in place and it is quite uncertain what if anything the leadership is prepared to do differently in the future. We might call this regressionist stagnation.

Three outcomes to Stalinist Socialism as a global Stage. Nothing more, Nothing less. So history has proven what three roads may come from the way the Stage developed here on Earth. Were there other possible outcomes?

I think so. If the Red Army had taken Berlin in 1920 instead of 1945 and all of Europe had gone Red over the next couple of years. That’s one hypothetical one. It would have changed the entire century. I didn’t happen so that’s that.

China’s New Economic Policy; Three Systems One Country

The Soviet Union had to leave the leisurely pace of NEP behind in 1928, because it had to get serious about building an industrial base second to none. {At least as far as being able to produce armaments for the inevitable coming world war with capitalism. That Second World War would be a GNP war.} We have reviewed the cost and the success of that new Five Year Plan road. The Russian peasantry that had taken the Bolsheviks in hand in 1921 had, in turn, been taken in hand itself. The backbone of Russian capitalism had been in agriculture and now that back had been broken.

The same sequence of agrarian reform would be followed in China where first the bourgeois capitalist landlord-gentry system was liquidated and then mass collectivization undertaken so that a new form of agricultural social organization supportive of the central government could be established. After collectivization in China came the communes and those lasted more or less as the basis of Chinese agriculture until after the 1978 new road forward began to take shape.

China was able to move into its own NEP after 1975. First of all because the pressure from international imperialism was off. Nixon’s visit to China, on behalf of his bosses the Rockefeller brothers, prepared the way for China’s leaders to move from a defensive posture to a national modernization and development posture. Secondly, somehow production had to be stepped up and accelerated on a continuing basis in China. For thirty years the new Chinese Party leadership has been struggling to do what they had to do – fully develop the capitalist stage industrial and agricultural systems and yet keep state power in their hands while they build the emerging Socialist Stage as best they can. - And a quarter century later the results can only be said to be incredible. China will be one of the most modern industrial countries in the world by AD 2050!

Initially, this Chinese NEP was called Two Systems, One Country. I think what our theory shows is that there are actually three systems. One is capitalism; the other is Stalinist Socialism; the third is the germinal of Communism. Together these constitute the Stage of Advanced Socialism in China.

We in the USA, Canada or the other advanced capitalist countries will not have to do the same thing; we won’t face the same problems in any way, since capitalism and its productive forces are already fully developed here. Yet there are lessons to be learned by the Soviet and Chinese experiences with regard to the level of development of the productive forces and what must be done to bring social relations into conformity. It’s time to review the essential features of China’s three economic systems in formulae (for the same systems will be present in the advanced capitalist countries at first – although it will be far easier to build down the capitalist component while building up the Socialist and Communist components in our societies.)

Finally, if communists in the USA or elsewhere are unhappy that China has had to take a road of modernization which as it did in Russia, requires a period of capitalist enterprise alongside other institutions, under the proletarian dictatorship, then let them make a revolution now in the USA and get on with their task. 

[1]  Capitalism  (from the past but modified to fit contemporary circumstances)

  lp + t --> V1, V2 + SV  

   profit/NGM

lp = human labor-power

t = automated machinofacture

V1 = wages

V2 = repair and maintenance of factory machinery

SV = surplus value

NGM = investment in the next generation of machinery

Profit = appropriated by capitalist (one half of the loci of the general crisis)

[2] Stalinist Socialism  (established in China in 1949 and continuing)

lp + t --> V1, V2 + SV        

      state/NGM/WI

New Classes

lp = human labor-power

t = automated machinofacture

V1 = wages

V2 = cost of repair and maintenance of machinery

SV = surplus value

state = military, police

NGM = cost of investment in next generation of machinery

WI = expenditures in raising human potential (workers interests)

New Classes = the old Stalinist bureaucracy and the new NEP type capitalists

(the other half of the loci of the general crisis.)

[3] Communism  (and future STAR TREK stage)

lp + rlp + t --> V1, V2 + SV

lp = human labor-power

rlp = robot labor-power

t = Star Trek level of technology

V1 = to each as needed

V2 = unlimited repair potential

SV = unlimited surplus value (for practical purposes) thus no sub-column crisis

The General Crisis of Advanced Socialism

The general crisis of Advanced Socialism is essentially the same as the general crisis of Feudalism. That is, the balancing act that the new ruling class of proletarians must perform in order to keep the New Class from separating itself; simultaneously preventing the new bourgeoisie from the capitalist sector from asserting itself (over state power) and building up the specter of communism in production while maintaining Stalinist socialist public property institutions along the way. This is a new stage and to understand it we have to closely analyze the details of China’s reforms since 1976 – that is, the past 30 years of an increasingly complex and detailed balancing act, and is beyond the scope of this handbook.

More on Transcending the General Crisis of Capitalism

The General Crisis of Capitalism was specifically caused by the irreversible absolute decline in the rate of profit. That means, unless labor-power was introduced on a one to one ratio with the introduction of the next generation of machinery the sheer output of those machines would be greater but the RATE of profit production would be less. Because, the decline in the labor-power input makes it so. For the capitalist to overcome this decline in the rate of profit he would have to hire more labor-power. This is self defeating. He bought the new machines to stay competitive; to reduce the amount of labor-power he had to buy per unit of commodity output. Furthermore, this decline in the rate of profit is exacerbated simply by the sheer investment in the sub-column (under Surplus Value) we call the next generation of machinery (NGM), for that investment will take surplus value that might otherwise have gone into the profit sub-column.

These facts Marx proved many years ago. Thereby unlocking the secrets of Capitalist production in a never-ending series of crises. When Frederick Engels said at Marx’s (1883) London funeral, that Marx had “discovered the laws of history and unlocked the secrets of capitalist production,” the latter claim was in reference to this discovery of the inherent General Crisis of Capitalism being caused by the absolute decline in the rate of profit.

There is a superficial similarity with Stalinist Socialism in this regard, as in the latter Stage, NGM also absorbed surplus value as quickly as it was created. But, the end-use was altogether different.

The end-use was not “profit” (nor NGM for the ultimate [equipment installed] goal of more profit) but the satisfaction of the diagnostics of the “stage” which fundamentally are always the advancement of the interests of Working People. If this had not been so, the New Class in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, would not have had to throw off its sheep’s clothing and grab as grab can.

It was this fact of proletarian dictatorship in Russia which changed what might have been state capitalism in Germany, England, France, Italy, or America, into a capitalist sector in a backward society undergoing socialist transformation by Bolshevism. Bukharin pointed this out in his 1922 official article Economic Organization in Soviet Russia, which was the succinct ideological presentation of Lenin’s position on the reintroduction of capitalism in the Soviet Republic, made on behalf of the Russian Politburo and the Comintern (where he was number two after Zinoviev by the time of NEP).

At bottom, the economic "category" source of all this trouble is that element of the equation that involves labor-power.  To transcend this problem one must at least supplement human labor power, and eventually replace human labor-power, with robot labor-power, so that labor-power can be introduced on a one-to-one, unit-by-unit, basis with the introduction of new machinery.

So, what are we looking for in China or anywhere in the Socialist world? What changes in the equation allow us Bolsheviks to transcend the General Crisis of Capitalism?

Robot labor-power

In the science and technology sense robot labor-power is simply an elaboration of a component of constant capital {fancier machinery.} But, in a strictly economic sense, it is an entirely different category altogether. Since we see artificially intelligent computerized robotics at work today in virtually every advanced industrial factory, we must conclude that robot labor-power as a new category, separate from human labor-power, is practical. In fact it is already a critical component of machinofacture is it not? Even if not yet fully in existence we can see the future as one where robots will create robots, fix and maintain them, without human input.

In the technological (e.g., science fictional, ”Foundation”) sense, when labor-power of the robotic type is extant, then we have a truly new kind of mode of production. One in which there is no end to the amount of social product that can be produced and distributed. In the political sense, we are building our way into the Era of Freedom. Robot labor-power may well be essential, to Communist and/or Truly Human Society. It has been the genius of Gene Roddenberry, and his followers (writers) that have shown us the future. Which is to say the technology and the social relations of the STAR TREK series of great episodic adventures in the Mode of Production of future humanist societies.

The Mode of Production and the Evolution of Capital

It must be assumed, as a given, that the Workers Party will keep a firm grip on State power (the military and the police) as the three systems evolve. - And, that the class struggle within the Second Socialist Stage will have a conclusion that is not in doubt. With those assumptions as the condition of the evolutionary sequence in process let us turn to the key questions of capital, value and superstructure in the Socialist countries.

Variable Capital: the working classes in the factories and on the land need to have their educational levels raised as quickly and as steadily as possible. Along the way we need not expect the great sacrifice of several generations with regard to the creature comforts of life because the pressure from without has been normalized.

{At least as long as imperialism is on the defensive, as it has been since the US ruling families stumbled in Vietnam, stumbling again in Iraq and putting themselves at war with the World Islamic billion-plus people. An unexpected windfall of good luck for us Bolsheviks, ironically making up in many ways for the temporary disadvantages we accrued from the collapse of modern revisionism. In recruiting their “Dogs of War” to overthrow the best government Afghanistan ever had the Gringo bosses, dialectically, brought themselves to the brink of destruction.

Constant Capital: investment from surplus value in the next generation of machinery will come (as it is coming) from three sources. The savings of the Chinese people (and others as they enter this Stage) that constitute a significant section of the GNP. From foreign industrial and manufacturing capitalist direct investment. From international finance capital. The consequences are clear. Speedy modernization of all of the industrial and agricultural technology to the most advanced possible levels as quickly as possible.

Finance Capital: The deepening General Crisis of Capitalism has produced an enormous amount of liquid finance capital looking for a home. It is a matter of historical fact that at this moment only the PeoplesRepublic of China can absorb one trillion US dollars a year of this money, let alone greater amounts.

As the few hundred richest families on the globe search for a place to put their annual income {they have as much cash as the annual income of 2.5 billion people on this planet} it requires only astute financial engineering to give them both security (PRC guarantees on capital invested) and high returns (from a combination of reinvestment tiers on interest paid. For a discussion of how I began in this kind of work in the late 1970's I refer interested readers to High Finance, South American Style! 2003, Jason W. Smith, Writers Press, Boise 300 pp.)

The Mode of Production and the Evolution of Value

The way Value is being produced in China, as it is currently being produced (via 3 systems or 3 different productive formulas), tells us exactly what must be done in the 21st century, in similarly situated countries. Even in the advanced capitalist countries, when revolution comes to them. The formula of the future must gradually replace the formula of the past. Which is to say the productive relations of communism must gradually replace the productive relations of capitalism. Although in places like Western Europe, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan the transition will be much faster.

There is a strictly technological frontier that will fall down and disappear in the phases of the reinvention of the means of production, year by year, decade after decade. Along the way, the formula of Stalinist Socialism with its government and state owned (publicly owned) means of production in industry, and on the land, will also take on new forms more appropriate to the Communist Stage of the future.

In practice, one large-scale way of doing this is already afoot. That is the total roboticization of automated factories, to produce both heavy and light industrial goods. But, this is only one way forward. Its drawback is that these early applications of robot labor-power still require human administrators. This is a structural guarantee for a New Class of “classless intellectuals” once again. So, it is essential that the roboticized factories eventually be run, by completely independent artificially intelligent machines and that “eventually” comes at the earliest possible moment. So, that rather than building a growing New Class, we should see the point come when we will be building that class - down. Out of existence.

Along the way there is no reason why these professional bureaucrats should not be phased out by computer assisted workers who administer on a part-time basis. Ideally these will be workers who take on an increasingly large supervisory scope of administration, as their skills and their computer assisted work places, improve. The ideal would be that people who have a multitude of other life goals and activities take on these administrative tasks more-or-less voluntarily. Perhaps doing their volunteer community administrative work from computer terminals at home. People whose interest is in the public welfare which, they see in everyday life, means their own personal welfare.

People working at home and interfacing with each other in socially recreational ways, can be people working at home and interfacing with each other in economically supervisory ways, controlling the dominating heights of economy and ruling over a massive base of robot labor-power “manned” by cybernetically organized, modernized machinofacture and STAR TREK level technological installations.

In this way Value and Surplus Value are produced without a Capitalist General Crisis, and in never ending amounts, so that the wishes of any one and indeed all, of the citizens, for whatever material things, can be instantly satisfied. The Era of Freedom will be here when the slogan of communism becomes a reality.

From each according to her ability; to each according to her wishes and needs. When that day arrives the Era of Necessity will be over.

The Evolution of the Superstructure

Basal imprinting of infants and children will change as the mode of production changes. As scarcity is eliminated and the social relations of production reflect an increasingly egalitarian attitude. Yet this is going to take at least the five generations of the 21st century.

This means that the Workers Party must keep a firm grip on the state. Using the police and the military to suppress those elements who do not welcome the rebirth of the egalitarian altruism of the ancient gens in modern cybernetic production forms. Until such times as classes have become an anachronism this “state” apparatus will be at the core of Worker’s Party Governments.

One of the tasks of Party and State must be to see that the official ideology of the future is as clearly spelled out and understood as possible. In a word, success will be heavily dependant on "education." In the last analysis the consciously internalized and understood philosophy of science is the next best guardian (after the state apparatus itself) of the future, and humanity’s ability to get there. I think of such a future as being both exciting and well worth striving to achieve. We have Mr. Roddenberry to thank for showing us what everyday life should be like. In his work we have a popularized model of a future Communist society, so you cadre should not hesitate to call upon that model in explaining what it is we want to achieve to the masses. By contrast, what the capitalists visualize for the future is a return to chattel slavery of a new and technically more hellish type, as illustrated by the society of the Borg. A nice, easily understood, contrast for everyday agitation purposes.