Message from @Segvloger

Socialism is a period of transition where you have some leftover relations from the capitalist mode of production co-existing with an emerging communist mode. Nobody, not even Stalin, denied that there was commodity production in the USSR and that as long as it existed it would be an obstacle to achieving communism. However, Stalin still considered the USSR distinct from a capitalist society in that:

The most important means of production were no longer produced as commodities (that is, they were not produced to be bought and sold but were instead allocated based on the needs of the workers)

The proletariat planned production through the state

There was no longer production of surplus value, in the sense that the social surplus was no longer appropriated by a class standing above the proletariat.

There can be a debate about to what extent these things were actually true. I'm of the opinion that they were true for the most part during the Stalin years, but that all of those things were eroded significantly from the mid-50's onward, culminating in the outright collapse of the USSR. But even if one wishes to make an argument that the USSR was never distinct from capitalism, i think you have to tackle the points that Stalin and others actually made. The mere existence of commodity production doesn't prove the USSR was simply capitalist.

With that said, you are right that commodity production even in socialism provides an economic basis for the return of capitalism. But Marxist-Leninists and Maoists have always believed that the goal is obviously to eliminate commodity production. In past socialist projects, the maintenance of a sphere of commodity production was considered at the time a temporarily necessary evil. In today's world, it will probably be easier to eliminate commodity production more quickly than it would have been in the 20th century.

Borzo

2019-04-07 08:37:04 UTC

"And so, in the first phase of communist society (usually called socialism) "bourgeois law" is not abolished in its entirety, but only in part, only in proportion to the economic revolution so far attained, i.e., only in respect of the means of production. "Bourgeois law" recognizes them as the private property of individuals. Socialism converts them into common property. To that extent--and to that extent alone--"bourgeois law" disappears.

In fact, when a learned professor, followed by the philistine, followed in turn by the Tseretelis and Chernovs, talks of wild utopias, of the demagogic promises of the Bolsheviks, of the impossibility of “introducing” socialism, it is the higher stage, or phase, of communism he has in mind

But the scientific distinction between socialism and communism is clear. What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the “first”, or lower, phase of communist society. Insofar as the means of production becomes common property, the word “communism” is also applicable here, providing we do not forget that this is not complete communism"

-The State and Revolution, Lenin V.I.