Letter: Russia & China (1966)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Russia & China

Dear Sir,

You state in your journals that China and Russia are state capitalist countries but this is different to what Engels had to say on capitalist countries:—

Active social forces work exactly like natural forces, blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand, and reckon with them . . . and this understanding goes against the grain of the capitalist mode of production and its defenders . . . With this recognition, at last, of the real nature of the productive forces of today, the social anarchy of production gives place to a social regulation of production upon a definite plan, according to the needs of the community, and of each individual (Socialism, Utopian and Scientific).

With Russian and Chinese plans for production this would surely mean that they are in no way capitalist.

Harold Brown, 

Carshalton, Surrey.

Reply:

It is true that we deny that Russia and China are socialist and describe them as state capitalist. We say this because we see in these places the basic features of capitalism, namely, class rule, production for sale and the wages system.

We don't of course believe that a quotation from Engels can settle anything. Even so we can't see how Mr. Brown's quotation helps this case at all. In the passages he quotes Engels is saying what socialists have always said: under capitalism where production is for sale anarchy reigns as it is the market and not society that controls production. As soon as the means of production are commonly owned production for sale is abolished and replaced by production for use. Production for use, by its very nature, involves planning for the various needs of people, both as individuals and as a community.

Mr. Brown implies that in Russia and China "social anarchy of production” has been replaced by the "social regulation of production upon a definite plan, according to the needs of the community and of each individual". We must ask him to prove this since what socialists mean by anarchy of production is the results of production for sale. And production for sale has most certainly not been abolished in Russia and China.

In fact in the passage following where Mr. Brown ends his quotation, Engels, discussing distribution in a socialist society, makes it quite clear that he is talking about the abolition of production for sale:

Then the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which the product enslaves first the producer and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products based upon the nature of the modern means of production: upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the maintenance and extension of production—on the other, direct individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of enjoyment.

Direct appropriation means what it says: people (and society) get what they need not by buying them but by taking them directly.

Is this so in Russia and China?

In a later passage Engels is just as explicit:

With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organization.

Has commodity production (that is, production for sale) been done away with in Russia and China?

We think we have shown that the passage Mr. Brown quotes from Engels does not mean what he takes it to mean. We can only suggest that he reads the excellent socialist pamphlet that Socialism, Utopian and Scientific is once again, this time more carefully.

Editorial Committee.