This publication launches the translation of a series of essays on the Soviet economy written by Ivan Mikhailovich Potapenkov, a political economist who has been researching the subject for more than 20 years.

The originals of these essays were published in Russian, yet their theoretical significance for the entire international Communist movement is determined by the fact that they show for the first time the general laws of motion of the Soviet commodity-planned mode of production.

These essays reveal the objective contradictions of the Soviet economy, providing a materialist explanation of all its crises and paradoxes, and showing the basis that led to Perestroika and the restoration of capitalism.

@AFulcrum

Translated by @AnaStasiA1q

Link: https://telegra.ph/Ivan-Potapenkov-Preface-The-Soviet-economy-is-socialist-or-06-30

Essay 1 |Essay 2 |Essay 3 |Essay 4 | Chat |

#Ivan_Potapenkov #Soviet_economy

Is there a socialist mode of production, different from the communist one? How does the communist mode of production differ from capitalism? Was there socialism in the USSR as the first phase of communism according to Marx, or was it something completely different?

Potapenkov addresses all of these questions in his first essay in the spirit of Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme.

But this is just the beginning of a serious discussion of the Soviet economy. The laws and contradictions of the Soviet commodity-planned mode of production will be explained in his series of theoretical essays. They will provide the basis for practical conclusions on the fundamental goals and objectives of the Communist Movement today.

@AFulcrum

Translated by @AnaStasiA1q

Link: https://telegra.ph/Ivan-Potapenkov-Essay-1-Two-phases-of-the-Communist-mode-of-production-07-01

Preface |Essay 2 |Essay 3 |Essay 4 | Chat |

#Ivan_Potapenkov #Soviet_economy

This channel is dedicated to Marxist theory, mainly translation of theoretical works written by modern Russian Marxists on the Soviet economy and the communist mode of production. In the future, we will also publish notes on the philosophy and analysis of modern capitalist system.

We are open to discussion and collaboration with comrades from all over the world, and hope that our work will contribute to the strengthening of the International Communist Movement.

Feel free to use our chat https://t.me/FulcrumInternationalEng or send private messages to @Afulcrum

So far, there are two translated essays by I. Potapenkov available on this channel. And I'm pleased to know that comrades have taken an interest in the issues raised in them and have even subscribed to the channel and our chat to keep track of how they will be answered.

People started to give feedback, and I, as one of the creators of this channel and a supporter of Potapenkov regarding his views on the Soviet economy and future society, will give responses to these remarks.

Today, I will respond to the comment of comrade Max F Esc, who interpreted the sentence "No one deviated from Marxism; all Soviet history was made according to Marx" in the sense that "both Stalin, Khrushchev and Gorbachev were guided by Marx's theory, each of them had a different understanding of it, but all of them were right."

But no, that's not what this part of the preface really meant.

In fact, the meaning of this statement was different and we decided that the previous translation did not fully convey it. So we changed it to "The whole course of Soviet history is in accordance with the laws of Marx's theory". Because it is not a question of someone having true or false views of Marxism, or whether someone followed Marx's teachings correctly, or whether someone distorted those views, cheated on them, or pretended to be a Marxist, but secretly supported different position. The message intended to be conveyed is that the entire Soviet history unfolded in accordance with Marx's theory of historical materialism. Moreover, Soviet history has shown us that to build socialism on the basis of commodity production is simply utopian and absurd. On such a basis, large-scale industry can only develop in capitalist form, as Marx himself also noted.

Soviet experience has clearly demonstrated that commodity planning of the economy is a way in which producers will not be able to fully control their own productive forces and will remain hostage to their own relations of production. If commodity production is preserved, we will find ourselves in a situation where the goal of a factory will be the production of value rather than of useful things; instead of the state apparatus dying out, we will get its strengthening and alienation from society; and with the contradictions of commodity-planned economy becoming more intense, we will inevitably end up with a new restructuring and restoration of capitalism. Besides, the division of labor into intellectual and physical would remain, which means that some people would have to work in factories and others would be professionally engaged in teaching, science, art, management and etc.

At the same time, I do not believe that the role of the Superstructure should be ignored, I recognize the importance of the structure of classes, of the Party and the influence of an individual on the historical process, on what objective tendency will be realized. But it is only possible to give a correct historical assessment of the actions of some people, as well as to draw conclusions about the progressiveness or reactiveness of their views, when we understand the laws and specifics of the existed mode of production, which determined them and defined the limits of the possibilities of their activities. And what is most important is to find a way of progressive resolution of the contradiction that lies in the sphere of objective activity and does not depend on the will and consciousness of either an individual person or of humanity as a whole.

Further translations of Potapenkov's essays will show the essence of commodity-plan relations, which are different from commodity-exchange relations, just as the Soviet economy is different from the capitalist economy. And many other questions will simply vanish if you read those essays carefully.

Replied by @AFulcrum
Translated by @AnaStasiA1q

#Alexander_Fulcrum

In this part, the author continues to explain the primary forms of the commodity economy of the Soviet Union, in particular after the Russian Civil War. At the same time, the essay focuses on two forms of the social product under the commodity-planned economy.

@AFulcrum

Translated by @AnaStasiA1q

Link: https://telegra.ph/Ivan-Potapenkov-Essay-2-Two-forms-of-the-social-product-07-09

Preface | Essay 1 |Essay 3 | Essay 4 |Chat |

#Ivan_Potapenkov #Soviet_economy

Comrades, if there is someone who shares our point of view on Communism, we are ready to collaborate. At the moment we are not only publishing essays on the theory of the Soviet economy and future society, but also translating them into other languages. If you are able and willing to translate from Russian or English into German, Hindi, French, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic or other languages, we need your help, please contact us: @AFulcrum

CAUSES OF THE USSR's COLLAPSE. [1/3]

Ivan Potapenkov's response to a comment made by comrade Justas:


Thank you for the critical feedback. These are just the first few essays and much of what the comments say is covered in later essays. So there is no hurry. But there is one point I would like to make, and it has to do with the statement that if we do not recognize capitalism in the USSR as an obvious fact, then we cannot justify why there was a restoration of it.

Regarding what mode of production existed under the Paris Commune, the question does not arise, because the period of its existence was too short, while the Soviet society lasted more than 70 years. There was material production that ensured the existence of the Soviet society. And quite naturally, in the process of creating material goods in material production, certain relations of production and the forms in which they manifested themselves emerged between people. Thus a mode of production with its own peculiarities emerged. It was neither a capitalist nor communist mode of production. The socialist character of this mode of production was that it rejected capitalism. This was the Soviet mode of production, based on a set of relations of production on the planned organization of social production, under the preservation of the commodity form of the products of labor.

Commodity relations were preserved not because they supposedly must exist in the first phase of communist society, but because of the fact that existing at the time of the formation of Soviet relations of production in Russia there was an insufficient level of development of productive forces. The predominant form of agriculture consisted of small individual peasant households. They covered 3/4 of the country's population. The peasant as a private owner demanded the preservation of commodity relations. This is evidenced by the mass peasant uprisings by the time the Russian Civil War ended.

Commodity production forms are capable of evolvement and mimicry. Commodity relations penetrated into the planned organization of production. The plans were evaluated on the basis of production volumes, and the measure of production volumes was the gross value of all commodities created. The state, represented by Gosplan, prepared plans, setting planned targets for industries in terms of production volume in monetary form, and the industries deployed these targets among enterprises. Enterprises had to find reserves to produce a mass of commodities, the gross value of which would not be lower than the planned target. In such a case, the planned value had to be fleetingly embodied in the produced commodities in order for its monetary form to be equal to the planned target. As a result, the production of the gross value of the total social product became the goal, and commodities began to be produced just to fulfill the gross value plan.

Enterprises, represented by the director, were given the right to hire workers to meet planned targets. Therefore, it was the directors who bought the labour-power. In conditions of large-scale production, when objects of utility appear in commodity form, labour-power is always reduced to commodity form, and wages are the proof of this. Yes, labor-power is a commodity, but this was not capitalism; the utility of labor-power for the capitalist and for the directors was different. For the capitalist, the consumption of labor-power must bring him the surplus-value. For the Soviet director, the utility of labor power lay in the fact that workers created gross value through their labor, and created it through both abstract and concrete labor.

The formed planned-commodity relations subjugated commodity-exchange relations, and buyers became dependent on the supplier. Everything that is produced must necessarily be bought, which means it will always be sold.

Next...

#Ivan_Potapenkov

CAUSES OF THE USSR's COLLAPSE. [2/3]

Previous...

The Soviet economy was an economy of paradoxes and even absurdities. In the Soviet economy, the growth of labor productivity at an individual enterprise was accompanied by a decrease in the social productive powers. The increase in the productive forces of social labor leads to a decrease in value, which is the basis for lower prices; however, in the Soviet economy the increase in prices led to an increase in labor productivity. Unfortunately, labor productivity and productive forces of labor are, alas, different concepts.

The Soviet economy could deliver coats to buttons; this economy could create total output value without increasing, and sometimes even decreasing, the quantity produced. And there are many such paradoxes that could be pointed out. All of them started in the 1920s, i.e. along with the formation of Soviet planning.

As the years went by, production volumes grew, and at the same time the volume of total output inflated at the expense of material-intensive production also grew. Executed plans this way served as a basis for the plans for the next period. In short, the far it goes, the messier it gets.

Therefore, when Perestroika took place, a crisis of Soviet planning had already formed. It became impossible to plan further in this way, but the Gosplan had no other way to develop plans. If you take away the commodity form of the products of labor, Gosplan will fall miserably; there was no clue as to how to plan without money. After all, everything was counted in money.

But most importantly, the Soviet economy proved unwilling to embrace the advances of science on a massive scale. Yes, we have achieved a lot in terms of space, nuclear power and science, but many scientific developments were not implemented in production, because their application led to a decrease in production in monetary terms. Developers of new equipment often created machines to make it more profitable to meet total output plans, so machine prices rose significantly faster than the useful effect of their implementation. And there were even cases when the price went up and the performance of the new equipment turned out to be lower than the old one.

Therefore, the Soviet mode of production, alas, cannot be called progressive. On the ground of commodity production, big industry can only develop in capitalist form.

Therefore, there was no retreat from a more advanced to a less advanced method; and the example of the impossibility of moving backwards from capitalism to feudalism has nothing to do with the Soviet past. Every new way defeats the old mode of production by creating higher productive forces of labor. Soviet relations of production could not achieve this. Soviet society could invent and produce, but had an extremely difficult time with implementation in mass production.

And one more word regarding the instruments of labor. I recognize that eras differ from each other not in what they produce, but HOW they produce it. And it depends on the instruments of labor. However, it's hard to agree with it in this case. Even the formation of bourgeois relations in the depths of feudalism initially relied entirely on the same instruments of labour used by handicraftsmen. The bourgeoisie has changed the way productive forces are organized, which also includes workers. The individual labor process was replaced by a collective process based on the division of labor and this alone led to the growth of productive forces.

The future society cannot all of a sudden pull new and better instruments of labor out of the stash and thereby defeat capitalism. No, everything will have to be carried out with the same instruments of labor, the very organization of productive forces must change; this was shown by the Stakhanovite movement, which emerged and began to spread throughout the country spontaneously. But the laws of commodity relations stopped this movement. The revision of workers' wage rates that has begun has served as a setback.

Next...

#Ivan_Potapenkov

CAUSES OF THE USSR's COLLAPSE. [3/3]

Previous...

A worker should feel like a master in his workplace, and this is possible only when the increase in the welfare of an individual depends on the increase in the productive forces of social labor. If the Stakhanovite movement led to lower prices as a consequence of increased productive forces of labor, then people would feel their benefit. Lower wage rates resulted in having to work harder for the same income.

And in conclusion to the topic of profitability. The enterprises were not chasing profits. Trying to show by numbers that there has been profit growth in manufacturing proves nothing. The increase in the profitability of manufacturing enterprises is a consequence of the directors' desire to provide their workers with a sufficient wage fund. Besides, when prices were stable, there was a transfer of value from the extractive industry to the manufacturing industry, and then subsidies were made from the growing profits of the manufacturing industry to unprofitable enterprises in the extractive industry and agriculture.

The future society implies the direct participation of workers in the management of production, but the worker can manage only if everything is measured by the amount of labor in hours and minutes. This is what the Soviet economy did not have, so the organization of production largely copied the capitalist organization, which made the transition to capitalism much easier. All they had to do was take down the sign saying the enterprise was public and put up a sign saying it was private. The worker was alienated from his labor and its products, because his daily routine set examples that production did not work for him, that the worker was made for production, not production for the worker. Therefore, the workers did not defend the Soviet mode of production.

So the Soviet mode of production was a failure, having lost the fight against capitalism economically; but all the programs of the different parties that I know of, as well as the comments in the chat, show that everyone wants to build the USSR 2.0. Today the bourgeois media criticizes the pioneers of building a communist mode of production, accusing them of cruelty. But as Engels once said, "it wouldn’t matter a rap. It would be far worse if we were called bête." And in my opinion, another repetition of the failure will just lead to us being labelled as exactly that. We cannot make the same mistake again. Socialism and commodity production are incompatible. Commodity forms must be overcome during the transition period, during the formation of communist relations of production. Socialism (as the first phase) and communism are two stages of the same mode of production, which is commodity-free. In any case, the bitterest truth is better than the sweetest lies. And I don't want our descendants to repeat the same mistake.

Translated by @AnaStasiA1q

#Ivan_Potapenkov

Greetings, comrades!
At the moment we have started to translate essays on the Soviet economy into French, and even created a separate channel for this: https://t.me/FulcrumFR
This language is known to be spoken by more than two hundred million people all over the world, and in many countries French is recognized as official. We are looking for Communists for whom French is their native language. If you can help with chat rooms, channels, other resources where interaction and theoretical exchange can take place - let us know. Feel free to write in the comments or in private messages to @AFulcrum

This chat welcomes people with different opinions, but especially those interested in Marxism and the Communist Movement.

However, there are a few rules here to ensure that the chat does not turn into a mess:

1. You are not to retell your ordinary life, have personal chitchat, or advertise your products and services.

2. It is also forbidden to post suspicious links, pornographic, entertaining and provocative content.

3. Try to formulate your ideas in one single comment, so as not to flood messages and create inconvenience for other users.

4. Anyone who expresses support for preservation of private ownership of land and factories, especially for some “chosen nation”, has no place in our chat.

5. If, due to your upbringing, education or other factors, you feel a resentment or disgust towards a person's ethinicity, gender, nation, body size, disability, or sexual orientation, it is not a reason to hate that person, much less to be violent towards them. In our chat room it is forbidden to express hatred towards people based on the mentioned factors, as well as to call for violence, to show mockery or bullying.

6. Despite the fact that the administration of this chat are materialists and atheists, who consider it necessary to conduct anti-religious propaganda, we, however, find it unacceptable to insult people for their religious views, or forbid them to believe that something is true. Our goal is to learn ourselves and to teach others.

———————————————————-

Russian channel: https://t.me/FulcrumRUS
Portuguese channel: https://t.me/FulcrumPOR
Italian channel: https://t.me/FulcrumITA

In the third essay Potapenkov gives a brief historical review of the formation of planned organization of social production in the initial period of 1918-1924. However, these are not just historical facts, but logical summary made from them. Here you will learn that the planned organization of social production had two stages, which gave rise to two types of social product belonging to the same planning period. You will see how its dual nature influenced it, and whether it was possible for a new form of commodity relations to emerge within the planned organization of social production.

In spite of the fact that we will be talking here only about the simplest categories of the commodity-planned mode of production, their understanding helps to uncover the whole structure of the Soviet economy. Since the relations between the two types (planned and produced) of social production already contained, like a fetus, the entire future organism, there was that duality of the aim of production which led to all those contradictions and paradoxes of the Soviet economy, about which we shall speak further on.

@AFulcrum

Translated by @AnaStasiA1q

Link: https://telegra.ph/Ivan-Potapenkov-Essay-3-Two-types-of-the-social-product-07-25

Preface | Essay 1 | Essay 2 |Essay 4 | Chat |

#Ivan_Potapenkov #Soviet_economy

We are organizing a new project, the INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST CORRESPONDENCE, which will be focused on covering the economic and political situation of wage workers throughout the world.

What will make it special is that the news will be analyzed from a Marxist point of view, first from the perspective of Dialectical Materialism, and secondly in connection with the ultimate aims and fundamental interests of the working-class Movement.

We need people who are willing to 1) gather information about the economy and political struggles in their area, 2) seek out and interview workers about their situation, 3) can themselves share information about how things are going at their workplace, and 4) help process and analyze the incoming information from a Marxist perspective.

We also kindly ask everyone who is subscribed to this channel, who is interested in the published materials, who wants to help with their propaganda - invite your friends, share the posts with those who you think might be interested in them. And we are still looking for people willing to help with translations.

Text to @Afulcrum

FAST FOOD CHEF FROM KAZAKHSTAN. [Part 1\2]

Wage workers - who are they?

These people work in factories and create all the goods we buy in stores. These people work in the fields and grow all the things we eat. These people build schools, hospitals, roads, parks, and homes. These people teach our children, heal our elders, and keep order in our society. These people are us.

Why do we have to work for wages? Because we need the means to live, we need products and services that we can only buy with money. In order to get money to survive, we sell our labor power to those who are called entrepreneurs, businessmen, capitalists.

Not only do we perform all the basic physical labor, but we also engage in science, commerce, law, banking, management, accounting, etc. Why then do businesses remain owned by a small circle of capitalists who appropriate profits that are absolutely not equivalent to their labor participation in the public economy?

Many conscious wage earners are already uniting and fighting for their liberation. Their goal is to destroy private ownership of the means of production, their goal is to take over the enterprises and control the results of their labor by themselves. Such conscious wage laborers are Communists.

But do all wage workers realize that their interests are common and are they willing to fight for them?

Today we will tell you about the working conditions and views of an ordinary cook from Kazakhstan who works in fast food. The worker we interviewed is a twenty-two-year-old Kazakh guy. He has a degree in exterior and interior design, and has previously worked as a teacher of Fine Arts, a loader, and an administrator in a restaurant.

As he himself tells about his current place of work, it is a team of 18 people, where there are both men and women, Russians and Kazakhs. There are no conflicts on ethnic or religious grounds, the environment is friendly.

His shift starts from 12 pm to 1 am, and the main work starts in the evening. He is paid 10,000 tenge (21 USD) per shift, although in the same region others can earn 15,000 KZT (31 USD) and 20,000 KZT (42 USD) for similar work. He himself does not consider his salary fair, as he has author's recipes and cooks half of the menu: shawarma, pizza, ramen, khachapuri, wings, etc. Now it is his first month of work in this place and with the growth of revenue he was promised to earn a higher salary, and he expects to receive up to 30,000 KZT per shift (62 USD).

For a better understanding, to rent an apartment in this region one currently need about 120 000 KZT (249 USD) per month. Food costs are as follows: potatoes cost 250 KZT (0.51 USD) per kg, tomatoes and cucumbers cost 700 KZT (1.45 USD) per kg, 1 kg of rice costs 1000 KZT (2.08 USD), a bottle of milk - 600 KZT (1.25 USD), and 1 kg of beef costs 3000 KZT (6.23 USD).

Our cook believes that for now his salary is enough to meet his needs, and in the future he plans to sell his plot of land and open his own small business.

Read more...

#INCORR

FAST FOOD CHEF FROM KAZAKHSTAN. [Part 2\2]

Read from the start...

Speaking of his views, he tends to lean towards liberalism and even to be apolitical, as long as no one bothers him. We asked him what his opinion would be if the factories were to be owned by all the workers, to which he replied, “it's impossible, they'll always fight over who's in charge”. However, he is favorable to the idea of everyone receiving from society the amount of benefits corresponding to the amount of time they had worked in a particular area of production. He is also positive about the elimination of national borders and the possibility for everyone to be able to live, work and freely travel all around the world. He is strongly opposed to wars between countries and peoples, suggesting that politicians who start conflicts should just fight each other, leaving millions of common people out of their disputes.

We asked whether he would agree that every able-bodied person of equal ability should work in material production, say one week a month, and the rest of the time have the opportunity to engage in science, art and management. He answered that it was necessary to take into account the predisposition of some to physical and others to intellectual labor, that in this way everyone would be able to do more and perform better. He himself would like to work as an operator in a computer club, as well as to travel and paint a “badass” painting. He considers the most important thing in his life is to ensure a prosperous future for his children and grandchildren.

We were interested to talk to this wage laborer, who apparently has never been interested in political economy and is not aware of any Marxist ideas. He does not believe that the current governments think of the ordinary people, and his views could be considered internationalist and tolerant to communist principles.

In our questionnaire we ask people "how to improve the lives of working people?" His answer was that everything depends on the family upbringing, and that workers should have their own demands for better life. In this sense we can say that idealistic views are not foreign to him.

The following case from his past is also of interest: when, after constant complaints from customers, several cooks went on strike, he went to work instead of them. As a result, they had to apologize and start working again. According to him, these cooks themselves “screwed up” and then agreed not to come to work and not to answer the phone to put pressure on the bosses. Nevertheless, his streikbrechery immediately broke up the protest, which did not even last three days.

This interview was just the beginning of a major social survey on the life situation and views of wage workers around the world. We want to give the voice to the workers themselves and show them that they share common interests. However, we still have a long way to go in connecting Marxism with the labor movement.

#INCORR