[Marxism] Bureaucracy and Revolutions

[S. Artesian]

On a completely different note,  Tom Cod and I had a very fruitful exchange offlist-- despite the terms we used on list.

And the issue for me is exactly how do we account for the simultaneous stabilization of capitalism, internationally,  and by stabilization I don't mean STABILE, I mean preservation/existence, at the same time as revolutions occur which expropriate the bourgeoisie, usually of less than the first tier, elite status, in "less developed" countries?  

Sometimes I think in biological terms, that capitalism, reptilian system to the core that it is, just concedes a leg or a tail when that lag or tail is grabbed by a revolution.

There is little doubt that the uneven and combined facets of social relations, property forms, technical developments in "less developed" countries makes the revolutionary potential that much greater, at the same time as it makes the "fulfillment," completion of the revolutionary process that much more problematic.  And we can explain that by the nature of overproduction, private property, the relations of land and labor, and landed labor.

But we cannot get away from the fundamental fact that in China, in Vietnam, in Cuba the bourgeoisie were expropriated.  And that for significant periods, the living standards of the poorest, most oppressed [although not necessarily the most exploited] improved.  Nor can we get away from both the militant conflict with and continuous accommodation to the demands of the world market, and to capitalism.  

I don't think it does much good to describe the revolutions in China, Vietnam, Cuba, or the consolidation and contraction of the Soviet revolutionary impulse as "state capitalist."  Of course, the state acts as an analogue to capitalism, accumulating the means of production through the exploitation of surplus labor; but it, the state cannot be capitalist without a class of capitalists, and if these states have been produced, or produced in term, a new class, with a new property form, then Marx really missed the boat, and by a mile, and we should be able to see, somewhere in the premier league of capitalist states the embryo of this new class, and if there is an embryo of a new class, then the articles so produced by the property giving rise to this new class must be something other than the commodity as Marx described.

Believe it or not, wrestling with this sometimes keeps me awake at night.