JT:
Doesn't your objection to the term state-capitalism rest on your definition of capitalism. Even in the FSU one was forced to sell their labor for wages. Labor market as imperative rather than opportunity is part of what defines capitalism. It was certainly an imperative rather than an opportunity in the FSU. There was a need to reinvest surpluses and a need to improve labor-productivity. There was certainly competition for resources as well. You need more than this objection if you want to object to the term state-capitalism for the FSU.
JG:
Hey JT,
I've overposted for the day. Rather than answer you personally now, I'll post a reply to the whole list tomorrow.
Well, what the hell, here's the gist of it. I don't know as much about employment conditions in the former USSR and its E European satellites as you, perhaps. But my impression is that, yes, able-bodied adult citizens were required to work, but the state also guaranteed said citizens a job. This non-commodification of labor-power, plus the absence of price competition betweem firms based in part on the wage bill, meant that something other than being able to treat workers as so much variable capital is what drove whatever imperatives there were for labor productivity improvements. Among other forms, these imperatives took the form of Cold War competition with the US-led capitalist West (cheaper -- so to speak -- inputs for military hardware), the need to prop up party-state legitimacy via increases in the average household standard of living (especially in the post-Stalin period), etc. Insofar as the competition was waged with advanced capitalist states in an ineluctably capitalist world, then I suppose that the former USSR was "state capitalist." But for me geopolitical rivalry with capitalist states, pressuring the Soviet Union's political bosses, economic planners, and plant managers to increase labor productivity -- or hell, a high degree of internal exploitation so that nomenklatura can live high off the hog -- does not qualify the former USSR as capitalist as long as there was no right for employers to hire and fire according to shifting market needs, as long as there was no reserve army of labor, etc.
As for the simple act of reinvesting surpluses, what kind of socio-economic formation doesn't do that, short of hunters and gatherers? (Although I suppose this turns to some degree on what you mean by "reinvesting".) The question is, if all the surplus is not eaten up in luxury consumption, or ceremonial feast, or what have you, WHAT is it being used for and under what PRESSURES?
*THIS HAS GOTTA BE MY LAST POST OF THE DAY. AUTO-PILOT OFF*
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