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Richard wolff understanding socialism5/28/2023 ![]() ![]() The hallmark of capitalism, what distinguished it from feudalism (lord/serf) and slavery (master/slave), was the employer/employee relationship structuring its enterprises. It was a “communism” described by slogans such as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” It named a party with communism as its goal, but socialism as its present reality. The “different from and beyond” faded into a vague goal located in a distant future. The state capitalism originally conceived as a transitional stage en route to a socialism different from and beyond state capitalism came instead to define socialism. ![]() Stalin’s USSR came to define socialism as state power in socialists’ hands overseeing an economy that mixed private and state enterprises with market and state planning mechanisms of distribution. In any event, conditions inside and outside the USSR effectively halted further transition. He never spelled out exactly what that meant, but he clearly saw that transition as the revolution’s goal. The socialists’ state could achieve transition to a genuinely post-capitalist economy. He explained that socialists had taken state power and could thereby take the post-revolutionary economy-which he labeled “state capitalism”-further. Near the end of his life Lenin gave a speech that referred to the USSR as a transitional society. ![]()
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