Problems of Ticktin’s ‘political economy of the USSR’

We have devoted considerable space to Ticktin’s theory of the USSR since it provides perhaps the most cogent explanation of the nature of the USSR and the causes of its decline which has arisen out of the Trotskyist tradition. Shorn of any apology for Stalinism, Ticktin is able to develop a theory which seeks to show the specific internal contradictions of the Soviet system. As such, it is a theory that not only goes beyond the traditional Trotskyist theory of the USSR as a degenerated workers’ state, it also provides a formidable challenge to any approach which sees the USSR as having been in some sense a capitalist system.

Indeed, it would seem to us that any attempt to develop a theory of the USSR as being essentially a capitalist system must take on board and develop a critique of some of the central positions put forward by Ticktin. Perhaps most importantly, after Ticktin and of course the collapse he describes, it is obvious that the USSR can in no way be seen as some higher and more developed stage of capitalism, as some state capitalist theories might imply. What becomes clear from Ticktin is that any understanding of the USSR must start from its malfunctioning: it must explain the systematic waste and inefficiencies that it produced. If the USSR was in any way capitalist it must have been a deformed capitalism, as we shall argue.

However, while we accept that Ticktin provides a powerful theory of the USSR, we also argue that it has important deficiencies which lead us ultimately to reject his understanding of the nature of the USSR.

When we come to develop and present our own theory of the USSR, we will necessarily have to critique in detail the central premise of Ticktin’s theory — that the USSR was in transition from capitalism to socialism. For the moment, however, we will confine ourselves to criticizing the problems that arise within the theory itself.

As we have already noted, Ticktin not only fails to present a systematic presentation of a ‘political economy of the USSR’, he also fails to clarify his methodological approach. As a result, Ticktin is able to escape from addressing some important logical questions regarding the categories of his political economy.

Although he attacks state capitalist theories for projecting categories of capitalism onto the Soviet Union, Ticktin himself has to admit that many categories of bourgeois political economy appeared to persist in the USSR. Categories such as ‘money’, ‘prices’, ‘wages’ and even ‘profits’. In capitalism these categories are forms that express a real content even though they may obscure or deviate from this content. As such they are not merely illusions but are real. Ticktin, however, fails to specify how he understands the relation between the essential relations of the political economy of the USSR and how these relations make their appearance, and is therefore unable to clarify the ontological status of such apparent forms as ‘money’, ‘prices’, ‘wages’ and ‘profits’. Indeed, in his efforts to deny the capitalist nature of the USSR, Ticktin is pushed to the point where he has to imply that such categories are simply relics of capitalism, empty husks that have no real content. But, of course, if they have no real content, if they are purely nominal, how is that they continue to persist? This failure to address fully the question of form and content becomes most apparent with the all important example of the wage and the sale of labor-power.

The Wage-Form

As we have seen, the crux of Ticktin’s analysis of the USSR was his contention that, although they alienated the product of their labor, Soviet workers did not sell their labor-power. So, although they were paid what at first sight appears as a wage, on close inspection what the workers received was in fact more akin to a pension.

However, in his attempt to compare and contrast the form of the wage as it exists under capitalism with what existed in the USSR in order to deny the application of capitalist categories to the Soviet Union, Ticktin fails to gasp the full complexities of the wage-form as it exists within the capitalist mode of production. As we have already noted, under capitalism workers are obliged to sell their labor-power to the capitalists. However, to both the individual capitalist and the individual worker, this sale of labor-power appears in the wage-form as not the sale of labor-power as such but the sale of labor;[60] that is, the worker appears not to be paid in accordance to the value of his labor-power (i.e. the value incorporated in the commodities required to reproduce the worker’s capacity to work), but in terms of labor-time the worker performs for the capitalist.

There is, therefore, a potential contradiction between the wage-form and its real content — the sale of labor-power — which may become manifest if the wages paid to the workers are insufficient to reproduce fully the labor-power of the working class. There are two principal situations where this may occur. First, an individual capitalist may be neither willing nor able to offer sufficient hours for an individual worker to be able to earn a ‘living wage’. Second, the individual capitalist may pay a wage sufficient to reproduce the individual worker but not enough to meet the cost of living necessary for the worker to bring up and educate the next generation of workers. In this case, the individual capitalist pays a wage that is insufficient to reproduce the labor-power in the long term.

In both these cases the interests of the individual capitalist conflicts with the interests of capital in general which requires the reproduction of the working class as a whole. Of course, this is also true in the case of unemployment. An individual capital has little interest in paying workers a wage if it has no work for them to do that can make it a profit; however, social capital requires an industrial reserve army of the unemployed — unemployed labor-power — in order to keep wages down, and this has to be maintained. The result is that the state has to intervene, often under pressure from the working class itself, in order to overcome the conflict of interest between individual capitals and social capital. It was through this imperative that the welfare state was formed. Health care, free state education and welfare benefits all have to be introduced to overcome the deficiencies of the wage-form in the social reproduction of the working class.

Thus, under capitalism, there is always an underlying tension within the wage-form between the wage being simply a payment for labor-time and the wage as a payment to cover the needs of the worker and her family. As a result, under capitalism, the payments made to ensure the reproduction of the labor-power of the working class is always composed not only of the wage but also benefits and payments in kind. In this light, the USSR only appears as an extreme example in which the needs of social capital have become paramount and completely subsume those of the individual capital.

Labor-Power as a Commodity

Yet, in denying the capitalist nature of the USSR, Ticktin also argues that the working class did not sell its labor-power in the USSR because labor-power did not exist as a commodity. But then again, as Ticktin fails to recognize, labor-power does not exist immediately as a commodity under capitalism either. A commodity is some thing that is alienable and separable from its owner which is produced for sale. However, labor-power is not produced primarily for sale, although the capitalist may regard it as such, but for its own sake. It is after all simply the potential living activity of the worker and is reproduced along with the worker herself: and as such it also inseparable from the worker.

Labor-power is therefore not immediately a commodity but must be subsumed as such in its confrontation with capital. Labor-power therefore is a commodity which is not a commodity; and this does not simply cease to be the case when it is sold. Normally when someone buys a commodity they obtain the exclusive possession and use of it as a thing — the commodity ceasing to have any connection with its original owner. But this cannot be the case with labor-power. Labor-power, as the subjective activity of the worker, is inseparable from the worker as a subject. Although the worker sells her labor-power to the capitalist, she must still be present as a subject within the labor process where her labor-power is put to use by the capitalist.

Capital must continue to subsume labor-power to the commodity form and this continues right into the labor process itself. The struggle between capital and labor over the labor process is central to the capitalist mode of production. The attempt to overcome the power of the working class at the point of production is the driving force of capitalist development, with the capitalists forced to revolutionize the methods of production in order to maintain their upper hand over the resistance of their workers.

The fact that the workers in the USSR were able to assert considerable control over the labor process does not necessarily mean that they did not sell their labor-power. It need only mean that, given the state guarantee of full employment, the workers enjoyed an exceptionally favorable position with regard to management and were able to resist the full subsumption of labor-power to the commodity form within the labor process.

Again, as with the case of the wage-form, it could be argued that the difference between the USSR and the capitalism that exists in the West, at least in terms of the essential relation of wage-labor, was simply a question of degree rather than of kind. The failure to recognize this and grasp the full complexities of the wage-form and the commodification of labor-power could be seen as a result of Ticktin’s restrictive understanding of capitalism which he inherits from objectivist orthodox Marxism.

First, in accordance with orthodox Marxism, Ticktin sees the essential nature of capitalism in terms of the operation of the ‘law of value’. Hence, for Ticktin, if there is no market there can be no operation of the ‘law of value’ and hence there can be no capitalism. Having shown that products were not bought and sold in the USSR, Ticktin has all but shown that the USSR was not capitalist. The demonstration that even labor-power was not really sold simply clinches the argument.

However, we would argue that the essence of capitalism is not the operation of the ‘law of value’ as such but value as alienated labor and its consequent self-expansion as capital. In this case, it is the alienation of labor through the sale of labor-power that is essential.[61] The operation of the ‘law of value’ through the sale of commodities on the market is then seen as merely a mode of appearance of the essential relations of value and capital.

Second, Ticktin fails to grasp the reified character of the categories of political economy. As a consequence, he fails to see how labor-power, for example, is not simply given but constituted through class struggle. For Ticktin, there is the ‘movement of the categories and the movement of class struggle’ as if they were two externally related movements. As a result, as soon as the working class becomes powerful enough to restrict the logic of capital — for example in imposing control over the capitalist’s use of labor-power — then Ticktin must see a decisive shift away from capitalism. Ticktin is led to restrict capitalism in its pure and unadulterated form to a brief period in the mid-nineteenth century.[62]

The Question of the Transitional Epoch

As Ticktin admits, contemporary capitalism has involved widespread nationalization of production and the administration of prices, the provision of welfare and the social wage; moreover, in the two decades following the second world war, capitalism was able to maintain a commitment to near full employment. As such, contemporary capitalism, particularly in the years following the second world war, had features that were strikingly familiar to those in the USSR. However, for Ticktin, such social democratic features of twentieth century capitalism were simply symptoms of the decline of capitalism in the transitional epoch. The USSR was therefore only like contemporary capitalism insofar as both Russia and Western capitalism were part of the same transitional epoch: the global transition of capitalism into socialism. Whereas in the USSR the ‘law of value’ had become completely negated, in the West the advance of social democracy meant only the partial negation of the ‘law of value’.

The problem of Ticktin’s notion of the transitional epoch is not simply the restrictive understanding of capitalism which we have already mentioned, but also its restrictive notion of socialism and communism. For Ticktin, in the true tradition of orthodox Marxism, socialism is essentially the nationalization of production and exchange combined with democratic state planning. As a consequence, for Ticktin, the Russian Revolution must be seen as a successful socialist revolution in that it abolished private property and laid the basis for state planning under workers’ control. It was only subsequently that, due to the backwardness and isolation of the Soviet Union, the workers’ state degenerated and as a result became stuck half-way between capitalism and socialism.

Yet, as many anarchists and left communists have argued, the Russian Revolution was never a successful proletarian revolution. The revolution failed not simply because of the isolation and backwardness of Russia — although these may have been important factors — but because the Russian working class failed fully to transform the social relations of production. This failure to transform the relations of production meant that, even though the working class may have taken control through the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power and established a ‘workers’ state’, they had failed to go beyond capitalism. As a result, the new state bureaucracy had to adopt the role of the bourgeoisie in advancing the forces of production at all costs.

If this position is correct and Russia never went beyond capitalism, then the basic assumption, which Ticktin himself admits is the very foundation of his analysis, that the USSR was stuck half-way between capitalism and socialism, falls to the ground. Nevertheless, Ticktin’s notion that the USSR was a distorted system due it being in transition from one mode of production to another is an important insight. However, as we shall argue in Part IV of this article, the USSR was not so much in transition to socialism as in transition to capitalism. However, before considering this we shall in Part III look in more detail at the various theories of state capitalism that have arisen within the left communist tradition.