: So state capitalist that evreything was state owned? If an individual owns nothing, and if the system is in place as a result of a one party law, and if people have no freedom(unless they're party members), then it is a communist party state. If the state has absolute power, then it is not capitalism, that would be impossible.It was a party state, although individuals had property rights, and inhereitance rights, actually, and likewise workers were free to sell their labour (there were nominal government controls over labour as over all industies, but the reality was that policy announcements would actually be compensation for the underlying economic realities, thus wage rises and cuts would be market driven).
Capitalism existed because Russia was producing goods for sale on teh market, and deriving profits from surplus value on teh labour of teh working class. think of teh Catholic church, teh embers there don't privately own, but do gain communally from property. Anotehr way of seeing it, is that Communist Party staff were share holders in teh single state company.
: I think that Lenin made that statement as a political move, much like his statement 'imperialism is the purest form of capitalism', which it certainly is not.
Highest stage of capitalism, actually. No, he was deadly earnest, Russia's economy was shot to buggery, production barely existed, most of the economy was srtill semi-feudal. He knew Russia was not socialist, nor communist, and he knew he had basically recreated the Tsarist state. The NEP was something of a Liberalisation...
: The US as free as it can sensibly be? I thought that you belived in limited power of the state. The reason that the USSR had a similar economy to the US's is that they had aproximately the same population, the same size military, and they were in the same position, as they were both the superpowers.
Actually, I meant structure wise- the USSR never had a comparable econopmy to the US, at most it equalled the Ntherlands, it was far and away inferior- no, I meant more that in America there is a share holding class that more or less communally owns the biggest part of industry, and that it is propped up by a powerful bureaucratic state.
I beleive in abolishing the state, but to do that means abolishing capitalism first, because as a system it creates the state.
