A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism.
Karl Marx
A General Critique of Marxist-Leninist States (WIP)
The Marxist-Leninist implementation of the communist project is the most venerated communist movement among the various communist parties among the world. Despite the praise given to such a movement, this movement is not the real movement for the liberation of the proletariat, which Marx and Engels spoke of in their original texts, and we can see this through the "socialist commodity production" present within the USSR under the tenure of Joseph Stalin, the theoriser of Marxist-Leninist ideology. We can characterise socialism as the end of the commodity form, as well as the wage-labour system, which under the capitalist mode of production, has become our answer to the basic economic problem of scarcity. It is incorrect to suppose that socialism is merely a stage in which private ownership of the means of production is ended; this is not the fulfillment of the socialist project, otherwise, we would conclude that state capitalism is a form of socialism, which is clearly a false statement. The commodity is defined as having a two-fold value, a use-value, and an exchange-value, with the law of value determining that the value of a commodity is determined by its socially necessary labor time (the amount of time "required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity") Despite the nationalisation of industry within the USSR, the economy there still maintained capitalist properties, there was no transcendence of the laws of capitalist economy. Even if we were to suggest the means of production were put in the hands of the labourer, this is of course not the achievement of the socialist project, because without the transcendence of the commodity (which would itself eliminate private ownership of the means of production through the socialisation/decommodification of the MoP), we cannot say socialism exists. Under the USSR, workers were merely wage labourers under state capitalism.
But we need to prove this of course, this is multiple useless statements otherwise.
First, we look at Marx's critique of political economy.
Commodities come into the world in the shape of use values, articles, or goods, such as iron, linen, corn, &c. This is their plain, homely, bodily form. They are, however, commodities, only because they are something two-fold, both objects of utility, and, at the same time, depositories of value. They manifest themselves therefore as commodities, or have the form of commodities, only in so far as they have two forms, a physical or natural form, and a value form.
It is a basic of Marxist ideas that commodities, produced for the specific purpose of being exchanged, have both a use-value and an exchange-value, and the process of commodity production leads to alienation, where labour and its products become detached from the labourers due to the commodified means of production. In the USSR, despite the nationalisation of industries by the state, commodities still followed the law of value, which is not characteristic of a socialist society, as said by Marx in the Critique of the Gotha Programme,
Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor.
It is admitted by Joseph Stalin that the law of value operated within the USSR,
In our country, the sphere of operation of the law of value extends, first of all, to commodity circulation, to the ex-change of commodities through purchase and sale, the ex-change, chiefly, of articles of personal consumption. Here, in this sphere, the law of value preserves, within certain limits, of course, the function of a regulator.
Joseph Stalin, Economic Problems of the USSR
Therefore, despite claims of socialism, the USSR retained laws of capitalist economy within its structure, which can be seen as contradictory to Marx's view of socialism. It should not be controversial to suggest that if commodities were produced and those commodities were still subject to the law of value present within capitalist modes of production, the system failed to transcend capitalist law and therefore failed to achieve socialism, as the economy continued to operate within a framework that Marx opposed in his critique of political economy. Therefore, we can see the USSR as a state capitalist state.
A Critique of Market Socialism
Market socialism has become quite the disappointment, largely because its premise is one made to be as such in the first place. Market socialists subscribe to heterodox thought that markets can exist within a socialist mode of production, which is a completely flawed form of non-orthodoxy, rather than a revolutionary one seen by particularly beautiful revolutionary theorists across the decades. We can see that within the market socialist economy, the means of production are put in the hands of the producers, but this is of course, as noted with any critique of marxist-leninists to ever exist in the history of mankind, the achievement of socialism, it is merely a step, or even a step within a step. The true essence of socialism comes with the transcendence of the commodity form and the end of the system of wage-labour, and is reaffirmed with the end of capitalist law e.g. the law of value. To suggest that market socialism (which can be summarised no less or more than the social democracy with a fantastical love for cooperatives) is a socialist mode of production is an incorrect idea.
Reading List
Read
- The Communist Manifesto
- Value Price and Profit
- Wage Labour and Capital
- Critique of the Gotha Programme
- The German Ideology
Capitalist Realism
The Unique and its Property
The Wandering of Humanity
The Accursed Share (Requires re-reading)
Marxism and Gramscism- Introduction to the Politics of the Internationalist Communist Tendency
- The Fundamentals for a Marxist Orientation
Reading
- Erotism: Death and Sensuality
Taboo and Transgression (Part One) 
Eroticism in Inner Experience- Taboos and Transgressions
- The Link Between Taboos and Death
Taboos Related to Reproduction- Transgression
- Murder, Hunting and War
- Murder and Sacrifice
From Religious Sacrifice to Eroticism- Sexual Plethora and Death
- Transgression in Marriage and in Orgy
Christianity- The Object of Desire: Prostitution
- Beauty
- Some Aspects of Eroticism (Part Two)
- Currently Reading: Kinsey, The Underworld and Work
The State and Revolution- Currently Reading: Class Society and the State
To be Read
On the Genealogy of Morality- A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
