this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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chapotraphouse
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I think the important element here is simply to understand that the DOTP is secure, arguably much more secure than it has ever been in the past. As long as it remains secure I think incremental improvements are always going to occur.
I do not agree with using this term "state capitalism" and think it was a mistake for it to have ever been used in the past to describe anything within a socialist state. Capitalism is, by definition, a state controlled by the capitalists. Socialism is, by definition, a state that is not controlled by the capitalists but by the people, working towards the goal of communism. All states under a DOTP are socialist regardless of the current economic mode of production, what percentage is marketised, etc etc.
Ultimately we probably won't agree on this point though. Just please be wary that it's a contentious and likely sectarian point of disagreement that is liable to blow up into a struggle session whenever it's raised. I don't really mind so much whether we disagree on it though just so long as you're not actively trying to destroy these states, which would only help the capitalists at the end of the day, not to mention ruin the lives of 1.7billion people with a 1990s-like collapse on a terrifying scale.
I mean, I think their reading of Lenin is correct but they are just applying it carelessly. This is why I always say "liberalism" to describe the political system is more useful.
Yeah it's not so bad. I just think that Lenin was in the wrong using the phrase to begin with, and that we seem to all acknowledge it's a shit phrase by not using it, and instead using "socialism" or "AES" to describe states doing this.
In my experience people that want to adhere to Lenin's term are usually doing so because they want to imply that these states aren't socialism and that they are just capitalism. This is where we can easily get into conflicts.
To clarify, I was not trying to do this. I was, and do, talk about it as a socialist strategy. I don't call it socialism alone, because that erases other, non-statist forms of socialism such as cooperativism, syndicalism, or parecon. We might call this "state socialism", but I have found that term to be less understood than "state capitalsm"