Hi comrades. I was in a discussion last week about socialism (like I usually am) and I think we can do some self crit.
I think it’s important to remember that multiple modes of production can (and almost always do) exist in a single soceity at once. There is a dialectic between the systems along with within them.
So when we discuss the social democracies, the soviet states, and modern communist projects like China, we should keep that in mind. There are capitalist, socialist, and communist sectors in many countries now. One of them will dominate, however (Marx says this in the first sentence of Capital).
When looking at the USSR, is had basically no capitalist sector, a very large socialist sector, and a big communist sector. But communist sectors are not unique to the USSR or a DotP. Denmark and the UK both had small communist sectors in things like their healthcare. The period before Thatcher actually saw a UK mix quite similar to post-Deng China–a large capitalist sector, a big socialist sector, and a sizable communit one. (This is likely why the economic performance and worker gains were so high during this time comared to other waning empires like France).
Modern China is very similar. And we should not be ultra leftists and ignore that these are all states in transition. We as communists, and Marxist Leninists do not deny that socialist sectors and communist sectors can appear in other societies. We simply state that unless there is a DotP established, the capitalist sector will erode them away.
Note: The definition of sectors here is whether production is governed by exchange value or use value. Capitalist ones have commodity production i.e. their productive forces are guided by exchange value. Communist sectors are governed by use value (to each according to their need and from each according to their ability). This means Communist sectos don’t have commodities. Socialist sectors are ones where commodity production does exist but exchange value takes a secondary role in governing production.
UPDATE: Two comrades said they did not agree with how I defined socialist here. I don’t think the definition of what true socialism is effects this argument. Feel free to replace “socialism” with whatever word you would describe for a sector where production is not entirely governed by exchange value but still is to some degree.
I hope you all gain something from this. Everyone in our discussion did. I look forward to any other perspectives. I’m originally a USonian so I know I may be narrow sighted.
All good points!
I think that in many socialist sectors there is a focus on use value for sure, but exchange value is still there in many ways. The USSR had plans but they were monetary plans, for example. At its height, Gosplan only planned around 10k goods in an economy of almost 2 million. Clearly it’s not purely capitalist, but there are still exchange value determinations there (it’s in transition) because these firms were producing things to be sold (though not ALL of what they did was for this).
Maybe this is just semantics over the term “socialism”. It did, afterall, change definitions after the first successful revolution (the USSR). I hope my definition made clear what I meant by this. I don’t think the exact definition of socialism effects the idea that there are industries where production and distribution are not entirely determined by exchange value but in a dialectic with use value.
I am of course simplifying but I just wanted to share a nice synthesis that helped us avoid infighting. Thanks for your reply.