The Stalinist System
(The Internal "Evolition" Towards "Liberalization")

Written by Hiroyoshi Hayashi (1972)
Translated by Roy West

1. The Laws of Commodity Exchange and Socialism
2. The Relations of Production Under the Stalinist System
3. The "Socialist" Planned Economy and the Category of Capital
4. Economic Reforms and the Bourgeois “Evolution” of the Stalinist System
5. The “Overall” Development of Commodity Production and the “Shift to Communism”
6. Criticism of ‘Socialist’ Economics

F. Criticism of ‘Socialist’ Economics
Economic Categories and the Actual Relations of Production

Second Observation: Economic categories are only the theoretical expressions, the abstractions of the social relations of production, M. Proudhon, holding this upside down like a true philosopher, sees in actual relations nothing but the incarnation of the principles, of these categories, which were slumbering ? so M. Proudhon the philosopher tells us ? in the bosom of the “impersonal reason of humanity”. M. Proudhon the economists understands very well that men make cloth, linen, or silk materials in definite relations of production. But what he has not understood is that these definite social relations are just as much produced by men as linen, flax, etc. Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist. The same men who establish their social relations in conformity with the material productivity, produce also principles, ideas, and categories, in conformity with their social relations. Thus the ideas, these categories, are as little eternal as the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products.    [Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, p. 80-1.]

* * * * * *

Nothing reveals more about the “evolution” of the economic system of the USSR than the history of Soviet “socialist” economics. Immediately after the Russian Revolution, in the period of “wartime communism”, none of the Marxists in the Bolshevik Party doubted (for a minute) that the commodity economy was the foundation of bourgeois society, which inevitably gave birth to capitalism, and therefore socialism was the sublation of commodity production in every form. For them, it was an obvious truth that this social mechanism determined by the anarchic form of commodity exchange, would be replaced by one consciously guided by human beings according to the “law of labor expenditure” rather than the law of commodity value. They believed that economics, in the original sense, would naturally disappear, along with the economic categories of the commodity, value, money, capital, etc.

With NEP, commodity production (and therefore bourgeois production) was officially recognized, but the Bolsheviks thought it self-evident that this was a compromise with the petty bourgeoisie, a step back from the viewpoint of socialism, and that as long as the commodity economy continued to exist one could not speak of socialism.

At the beginning of the thirties, when the policies of heavy industrialization and agricultural collectivization were enforced and the establishment of “socialism” in the Soviet Union was declared, little mention was made of the law of value or commodity production, and the idea was spread that planning and the policies of the state were the “principles of socialism”. However, agricultural collectivization and heavy industrialization were unable to overcome the commodity= capitalist production. Consequently, from the forties to fifties, the categories of capital and the commodity were constantly expanding their rights within the Soviet economy. It would not be an exaggeration to say that these economic categories, whose existence in the functional sense was at first only timidly recognized, now assert themselves to the full extent of their content.

Already at the beginning of the forties, Stalin, while saying that the Soviet Union had established socialism and was in a transition towards communism, also recognized the need to “utilize” the law of value because of the inability to directly calculate labor expenditure due to the differences in quality between labor in industry and agriculture. At the same time, however, he said that since labor had a direct social character and exploitation did not exist, this did not appear as the law of average profit. Scholars officially recognized Stalin’s view in 1943, thus marking the starting point of “socialist” economics. According to this “new” economics, the denial up to that point of the law of value was in contradiction to reality, and there was a necessity to understand and “utilize” the law of value. A debate was carried out on the “new” economics, but this was resolved by the publication of Stalin’s famous Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR in 1952.

In his essay, Stalin argued that the law of value was “objectively” used in the Soviet Union and that commodity production was necessary, but that the foundation for this was the “socialistic” property forms of the state-owned enterprises and the kolhozy. He claimed that “products-exchange” between state enterprises was not commodity exchange, and that through the development of products-exchange in the future, commodity exchange could be eliminated and a higher stage of socialism reached.

>Soviet “socialist” economics entered a new stage with Khrushchev’s official criticism of Stalin at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956. A criticism of Stalin also emerged in the field of economics, based mainly on the idea that it was incorrect to only recognize the kolhozy products as commodities, while not also recognizing the state enterprise products as such. Stalin’s view had been that the commodity form of state enterprise products was merely something formal “utilized” for economic calculation, whereas contemporary “socialist” economics holds that this commodity form is something particular and intrinsic to socialist production.

The fact that the criticism of Stalin took this form is not accidental. The main point of this criticism was that the products of state enterprises were also value, and therefore the arbitrary fixing of prices or their inefficient use would be detrimental to the national economy. The background of this criticism was the strong need for state capital, accumulated under the Stalinist system, to fully express its nature as “capital”. It was upon this objective basis that the brilliant (actually shameful) debates on prices(*) took place that culminated in the Liberman Proposal of 1962.

[(*) This was the debate over whether the policy of separating value and price was the “utilization of the law of value”, or if true “utilization” was the cause agreement between the two (Hayashi).]

Liberman argued that in order to raise the efficiency of the funds, i.e. constant capital (especially fixed capital), indexes of profit rates would have to be introduced by providing the enterprises with a wide range of autonomy. Up to that point profit rates had been calculated by “cost-price”, and even this had largely been ignored. Whereas Stalin recognized, in Economic Problems, the existence of products as commodities in the USSR, Liberman admitted that the means of production were not only commodities, but capital. In this sense, his essay was epoch-making. The Stalin criticism (1956), which recognized the means of production as commodities, thus represented a transitional stage from Stalin’s Economic Problems to Liberman’s 1962 proposal. In the autumn 1962 general meeting of the Central Committee, Khrushchev defended Liberman in the following way:

In the socialist economic system, the main objective is to meet the needs of society. Our industries produce products because society as a whole requires them, not in order to obtain profit. However, in terms of individual enterprises the problem is different. In this case, the question of profit has important significance as an economic indication of the efficiency of an enterprise’s activity. How is an enterprise operating, is it running a deficit or making a profit? These have crucial significance. Without considering profit, it is impossible to evaluate the standard of an enterprise’s management, or determine how much it is contributing to the social fund. When characterizing the socialist economic system, one cannot confuse the concept of profit which applies to the national economy as a whole, and that which applies to the case of individual enterprises.  [Translated from Japanese-source not listed.]

There is basically little difference here between the bourgeoisie talking about the “social responsibility” of companies. This is the view that individual companies produce for “profit”, but this is ultimately for the good of society. This is the thinking of bourgeois liberalism that can is typically seen in the thought of Adam Smith.

Unlike Soviet ideologues in the Stalin-era who felt obliged, from a criminal consciousness, to offer up excuses, their contemporary counterparts have no sense of shame. For example, in order to demonstrate that the existence of “cost-price” the Soviet Union has an “objective foundation” in commodity=capitalist production, rather than being simply something formal for economic calculation, they quote the following passage from Lenin!

Price is the manifestation of the law of value. Value is the law of price. In other words, the general expression of the phenomenon of price  [Lenin, Collected Works [Japanese Edition] vol. 20, p. 207.]

They are basically saying that since price is the appearance of value, value naturally exists as long as price exists, and the law of value is the law of the Soviet socio-economic system. Logically speaking this is impeccable, except that such a system cannot be called socialism. Lenin’s logic was aimed at the “legal Marxist” Peter Struve (i.e. bourgeois economics in general or the likes of Uno Kozo) who tried to deny the concept of value by equating price with value. The conclusion which should be drawn from Lenin’s logic is that as long as the phenomenon of price continues to exist, the law of value as the determination of commodity=capitalist production will continue. However, they completely ignore the fact that Lenin is talking about the law of value as a bourgeois economic principle, and focus exclusively on the statement that “price is the manifestation of value”. What sage simplicity!

If one says that in the Soviet Union the law of value operates because there are prices, i.e. the social relationships between individual producers are concealed by “relations of things”, one would have an equal right to say that the existence of self-augmenting value means that capital also exists, and one should be able to find the appropriate citation from Marx. Even in the age of Stalin, one of the goals of production was the “profitability” of a set sum of money (funds) thrown into production. Why can’t one plainly say that not only self- augmenting value, but also the exploitation of labor-power by capital exists?

Moreover, if one recognizes there is value because there is price, to be consistent one would have to say that the wage paid to workers is the money expression of the value of the labor-power commodity. We have already seen how workers’ income in the USSR increasingly takes the form of wage payments (e.g. payment to kolhozy workers is changing from payment in-kind to the money form). Therefore, one would be obliged to conclude that labor-power is a commodity, and that the payment of workers is according to the value of labor-power, and that workers are thus robbed of their surplus labor by capital.

“Socialist” economists, of course, have no intention of recognizing the existence of capital or the commodification of labor-power. They approach the concept of capital with the same cowardly attitude that the Stalinist once took towards the concept of value. They cannot admit that the USSR is a capitalist society based on the exploitation of labor. If they were to do so, they would seriously endanger the continuation of their own class rule. Therefore, they only recognize profit as a “concept”, while not recognizing the actual relations. Just as value was said to be simply a form, they are now saying that “profit” is a content-less form. Since they relied on Lenin concerning price, we will rely on Marx on the subject of “profit” and emphasize his idea that surplus-value appears as the profit ratio in proportion to the aggregate invested capital, and so profit is nothing but the changed form of surplus-value. Therefore, profit presupposes capital and surplus-value. There is no escape route for Soviet “socialist” economics.

In the past it was argued that the “law of value” was necessary in the Soviet “socialist” system as an expedient or functionally “utilized” for economic calculation because production could not be directly evaluated by labor (at least in the means of production). This view suffered a “subjective” and “objective” setback in the fifties and it was recognized that the products of state enterprises were commodities, but today they have fallen into an identical standpoint regarding “profit”. They are now claiming that this is only a “category” to be “utilized” to raise the “efficiency” of the management of enterprises. They say this is not a category that expresses real production relations. But what on earth is it then? This is said to be a substance-less “category”, i.e. an illusion. This is nothing but idealism. They claim that ultimately the existence of economic categories, such as value, price, money, “funds” (capital), profit, interest, and rent (!), are only introduced because of the need for calculations and distribution, not because the real relations that these categories represent actually exist. The categories are seen as the cause, not the outcome, and the real relations are conversely seen as the outcome rather than the cause. Categories are thus not the theoretical expression of the relations of reality, but instead the categories create the relations of reality. This is the sort of subjectivism particular to the Stalinist system, and it has reached its apogee in contemporary China (the period of the Great Cultural Revolution).

In his Critique of Political Economy, Marx analyzed economic categories, (such as value, money, capital, or income) which the bourgeoisie thought to be natural or eternal, thereby revealing the historical nature and contradictions of bourgeois society. For Marx, the economic categories are “only the theoretical expressions, the abstractions of the social relations of production”; something historical only proper to bourgeois society. These categories correspond to the production relations of bourgeois society and are not some sort of idea created by the human brain.

However, for the Soviet ruling class and their theoretical representatives, economic categories are only “socialistic” categories. In words only, they say that in the future communist society?when speaking of the a faraway paradise one can promise anything of course?these categories will disappear. But according to their view, this “communist” society is only possible through the “full-scale” development of the relations these categories express (commodity production) and that until then, commodity production will unfold throughout the entire period of “socialism”. We have already pointed out that the full-scale unfolding of commodity society is nothing but capitalist society. They say that “communism” can be reached through the fullest development of commodity=capitalist development. In this way, they turn economic categories into “socialistic” categories thereby eternalizing them. Of course, this is not in the least bit surprising since the Soviet ruling class’ interest in developing “profit” production run through this theory like a red thread.

On the “Utilization” of Economic Laws

Finally, we will examine the unique logic of “socialist” economics according to which economic categories or laws can be “utilized”. Here, once again, the theoretical starting point comes from Stalin. He says that nature and society have “objective laws” irrespective of the desires of human beings, but still people are not powerless in the face of these laws, because they are able to “know the laws of nature, reckoning with them and relying on them, and intelligently applying and utilizing them”.(*) According to this philosophy, the law of value is an “objective law”, and it would be mistaken to think of it as some sort state policy or legal law, but by understanding the law of value it can be “utilized”. [(*)Economic Problems p.3.]

Stalin’s view is that the difference between commodity=capitalist society and socialist society is the question of whether the “objective” economic laws can be utilized or not by means of understanding. The question of whether “objective” economic laws exist or not is thus not the decisive distinguishing feature. But is this really the case? Marx certainly did emphasize that the economic laws of commodity= capitalistic society penetrate with the “inevitability of a natural process”. But this would be the case as long as the social process governed people rather than the reverse. If human beings were in control of the social relations, such economic laws would not function, and there would be no need for them. When Marx and Engels spoke of the “inevitability of a natural process”, they meant that the history of human beings was still a “natural-historical” process, and had yet to attain a truly conscious human level. They thus said that overcoming commodity=capitalist society would bring the “prehistory of man to a close”. Therefore, the identification of the natural-historical process with the socio-historical process, in the manner of Stalin, and the introduction of “objective” economic categories into socialism is completely mistaken from a theoretical standpoint, and incredibly muddled from a practical standpoint. Still, from the perspective of the situation in the USSR, this view is justified. That is, it is a confession that despite the talk about “planning”, the Soviet Union is still under the rule of economic laws. Under socialism, people do not understand “objective” economic laws and “utilize” them. Under socialism, for the first time, human social relations do not appear as “objective” economic laws (i.e. as relations of “things” mediated by the commodity relations). Commodity=capitalist society is a stage of human history in which social relations are not yet under the truly conscious control of human beings, and the social relations between people are governed by external “objective” relations independent of their will. As Engels’ writes in Anti-Duhring:

We have seen that the capitalistic mode of production thrust its way into a society of commodity producers, of individual producers, whose social bond was the exchange of their products. But every society based upon the production of commodities has this peculiarity: that the producers have lost control over their own social interrelations. Each man produces for himself with such means of production as he may happen to have, and for such exchange as he may require to satisfy his remaining wants. No one knows how much of his particular article is coming on the market, nor how much of it will be wanted. No one knows whether his individual product will meet an actual demand, whether he will be able to make good his costs of production or even to sell his commodity at all. Anarchy reigns in socialised production. But the production of commodities, like every other form of production, has its peculiar, inherent laws inseparable from it; and these laws work, despite anarchy, in and through anarchy. They reveal themselves in the only persistent form of social interrelations, i.e., in exchange, and here they affect the individual producers as compulsory laws of competition. They are, at first, unknown to these producers themselves, and have to be discovered by them gradually and as the result of experience. They work themselves out, therefore, independently of the producers, and in antagonism to them, as inexorable natural laws of their particular form of production. The product governs the producers.   [Engels, Anti-Duhring, p. 259.]

As long as the law of value exists, production exists in an anarchic state. It is said that over several decades the USSR has not had a crisis, but there is the constant appearance of disequilibrium in production (partial crisis). It has become clear that “plans” in the USSR and China are often not achieved or prove to be impossible. In worse cases, the results of production achievements are later revised (e.g. China’s Great Leap Forward), or not presented at all. In the Soviet Union, from the fifties to sixties, concealment of the means of production was widely practiced, and a mountain of unsold goods piled up, particularly in the textile industry, and the “planning” authorities were busy compiling long lists of commodities whose production was prohibited. What is this, if not a particular manifestation of anarchical production in the “socialist” states? Today, the Soviet ideologues claim that this disequilibrium is due to the distortion of the law of value up to now, and that this can be expected to disappear with the creation of “efficient” production through economic reforms. But even granting that the distortion, or whatever one wishes to call it, of the law of value under the Stalinist system in the past led to this kind of disequilibrium in production, this doesn’t change the fact that this contradiction will only become more conspicuous with the deepening of the principles of anarchic competition and the law of value. This contradiction reveals the bankruptcy of the “socialist” economists’ premise that the law of value can be “utilized”. If the blind operation of the law of value could be understood by society in general (not just by certain individuals), this would signify the direct realization of its content, not that these laws could be “utilized” by society. In other words, this would be to organize socialist society. On the other hand, if the law of value could be understood, but not realized, this would mean that it operated as a coercive law of competition and would “manifest itself as a blindly operating natural law”. Premised on the penetration of these economic laws, which operate as a blind natural law, can one really speak of “utilization”? This in fact is the extreme control of the commodity economy, but no matter how controlled, it remains a system of commodity production and is not sublated. Ultimately production is still anarchistic.

Still, no matter how “incorrect” it may be theoretically speaking, Stalin’s theory of the “utilization” of economic laws did emerge from certain historical conditions. Concretely speaking, this theory signified that the state set prices of commodities in order to accumulate state capital. The purchase price of agricultural goods was much lower than their value, but with the added turnover tax of hundreds of percent, the consumers were not able to purchase them cheaply. This turnover tax functioned as the main means of exploiting the peasantry and accumulating state capital. On the other hand, to speed up accumulation, the price of industrial articles was set very low, and enterprises unable to raise “profitability” relied on state subsidies. The free market was limited to just one area of agricultural goods (mainly products from individually-run plots of land). Moreover, industrial articles had the form of commodities, but were “distributed” by the state. But, as we have already seen, this was not the sublation of the law of value, but its “utilization”. Thus, we can see how the theory of the “utilization” of economic laws corresponded to the Stalinist system and was its typical ideology.

Of course, the fact that the “economic laws” were distorted and controlled, and in this sense commodity=value principles were “formalistic” in the USSR, was not because the Soviet Union was in a transitional period from capitalism to socialism (although Kuroda Kannichi still hasn’t given up the fantasy of a transitional period). If it were in fact a t tnsfiguration from a transitional period to socialism, this would not take the form of the tremendous separation of price and value. Rather, price would be headed for extinction, and there would be a shift to the index of direct labor time. In fact, the laws of commodity=value are only becoming more profound, and revealing their essence. We have already fully explained the historical necessity for the “utilization” of the law of value in this shape. The “utilization” of the law of value springs from the historical necessity of Soviet society, and has nothing to do with the transfiguration of a transitional society towards socialism as Kuroda and others think. Therefore, the law of value is not just a form, but has real content, even though this is often concealed.

Soviet ideologues can be divided into two camps concerning the “utilization” of the law of value. One group views “utilization” as the strong revision of the law of value by the state, as in the Soviet Union in the past. But the dominant view today says that the “utilization” of the law of value is its free operation, the agreement between price and value, and the use of “profit” to measure the “efficiency” of enterprises. Whereas the first camp asserts that the free operation of the law of value will harm socialistic elements, the second group counters with the argument that without its free operation “efficiency indexes” such as profit will lose their meaning, and it will be impossible to develop production. If the views of the latter are pushed forward, this ultimately will lead to the use of a “price mechanism” and the recognition of free markets. This is already being proposed in the USSR, and has been enacted in eastern European countries such as Czechoslovakia and Hungary. This is essentially the view of the industrial bourgeoisie, i.e. the reappearance of the views of Adam Smith who denied the intervention of “extra-economic compulsion”, and thought it most efficient and profitable to leave society to the “invisible hand” of the market. Of course, the Soviet debates (as well as economic reform itself) are still limited to the idea of “utilizing” economic laws, and in this sense remain within the framework of state capitalism, not “liberal” capitalism. Nevertheless, we cannot overlook the meaning of this historical “evolution” of Soviet society. In the past, “utilization” was an ideological reflection of the period of the forced formation of national capital, whereas today “utilization” is an expression of the internal demands of this national capital as capital, and in this sense presents many characteristics of bourgeois ideology. This corresponds to the “evolution” of the Stalinist system towards a bourgeois society.

Criticism of “Socialist” Economics in Japan

We have discussed ‘socialist’ economics in the Soviet Union, but now we will take a quick glance at “socialist” economics in Japan. What needs to be emphasized, first of all, is that the JCP, along with the Socialist Party, have no other idea apart from the official view that the Soviet Union and China are socialist states, or headed in the direction of the construction of communism. Consequently, they have nothing at all to say about the so-called “liberalization” which started in the latter half of the sixties. On the other hand, the JCP affiliated “socialist” economists have written about Soviet revisionism when they relied on Chinese Communist “socialist” economics, and then criticized the Chinese Cultural Revolution when they relied on the Soviet Union. But here we will not bother with such phenomena, and stick to the example of the typical ideologues.

The debate between the Stalinist scholar Nonomiya Kazuo and Soejima Tanenori, who is respected by Uno K ?z?, although it took place over a decade ago, is particularly interesting. The difference between them was whereas Nonomiya started from the idea that the USSR was socialist and recognized the general existence of commodity production under socialism, Soejima, also on the premise that the USSR is socialism, said that for this reason commodity production does not exist in general, but remains a form or outer-crust (clearly he relied on the Chinese Communist view). Soejima loudly denounced Nonomiya for revising the essence of Marxism, and said that socialism is incompatible with commodity production, and that general commodity production signifies capitalism not socialism. For his part, Nonomiya countered that Soejima shut his eyes to reality, and was a pedant who could only brandish general Marxists propositions. In other words, Nonomiya dealt with the reality of the USSR, and directly glorified the capitalist relations in the Soviet Union by treating it as socialism, whereas Soejima didn’t deal with the reality of the USSR and projected an ideal of socialism onto the USSR, and glorified the USSR by saying that capitalist relations did not exist, or could not exist because the USSR is socialism. Soejima confessed that his “socialist economics” was written on the model of the Soviet Union. He is correct to say that the theory of the Soviet leaders is not Marxism, and Nonomiya is correct to say that their theory is inevitable and a reflection of reality. However, Soejima is a petty bourgeois intellectual afraid of reality who takes refuge in socialism as an ideal, while Nonomiya is nothing but a scholarly lackey who provides theoretical embellishment for the official views of the Communist Party.

At the time of the Soviet economic reforms around 1958, neither of them had yet to suffered decisive damage, but with the “liberalization” at the beginning of the sixties, their theoretical foundation crumbled. Soejima was no longer able to say that commodity production in the Soviet Union was only an outer-crust, while Nonomiya admitted that it was impossible argue that it was “socialist”. Thus, the collapse of “socialist” economics in Japan (and throughout the world) was inevitable.

“Socialist” economics today, represented by Kihara Masao, is only capable of saying that socialism is “essentially a non-commodity economy”, or that the commodities in the Soviet Union are “not something intrinsic”. Such “socialist” economists express their serious misgivings concerning the view of the Soviet leaders that the overall use of the law of value or full-scale development of commodity production will lead to communism. They recognize that commodity production is generally operating in the USSR, but instead of saying this is a property of socialism, they think that this is a sign of the backwardness or undeveloped state of Soviet socialism. Therefore, according to this view, the Soviet Union is not in a transitional stage to communism, but rather in a transition form a low stage of socialism to a high stage of socialism (they seem to have discovered the existence of two different kinds of socialism!). They repeat that it is mistaken for Soviet economics to say that the USSR is in a transition to communism, or that this can be reached by the development of commodity production. They add that the higher stage of socialism, not to mention communism, cannot be reached by developing commodity production, but rather it must be extinguished. Their conclusion, in a word, boils down to the idea that Soviet economics has committed a “theoretical” mistake.

In this way, they are focusing on the theoretical mistake, rather than the actual relations of production. They make no attempt to see that in the USSR commodity production is actually developing, and that this has reached the stage of the open demand for a “concept of profit”, etc., and that the Soviet state capitalist ruling layers have come to have an interest in the development of commodity=capitalist production, and that their call for the more active “utilization” of the law of value and profit is only a reflection of these interests. They talk about the mistakes of Soviet economics, but they are unable to explain how this clear mistake came about.

The idea that socialism is essentially a non-commodity economy is a perfectly clear proposition that all Marxists would agree on. However, when this is said about the systems in China or the Soviet Union, what meaning does this have. This leads either to the completely mistaken conclusion that commodity production in the USSR and China is merely a form, or the totally vacuous and ridiculous conclusion that the theory of the Soviet and Chinese leaders is mistaken. They then try to salvage the fantasy that the Soviet Union is “socialism” with the reasoning that even though the theory is mistaken, the system is socialism. In this manner, they draw the attention of people away from the reality of the socio-economic systems in China and the USSR, and deceive them with the fantasy of the non-existent “socialism” in these countries.

Today the essence of “socialist” economics is clear. This has many different varieties, but all have the same content in the sense of justifying the bourgeois relations in the USSR and China; therefore they share a bourgeois essence and are reactionary. In the Soviet Union, Marxism has been turned into its opposite, and become bourgeois “revisionist” economics. A true theory of socialism would certainly “contradict” the reality of the Soviet Union. This is the precise reason that it has been torn apart and buried. However, the reason that the theory of socialism “contradicts” Soviet reality is not because it is mistaken or anti-Marxist, but rather because this reality is bourgeois. What needs to be negated is not the theory, but the reality. However, starting with Stalin, the apologists for state capitalism have revised Marxism to agree with this reality, and have continued to use the word “socialist” to refer to categories that appear under the relations of bourgeois society. In this way, similar to the role of present-day vulgar bourgeois economics, “socialist” economics has become the ideological expression of state capitalism, and continues to be so today.