CLR James's State Capitalism and World Revolution is a short but dense critique of Trotskyism, Stalinism, and the state capitalist dominant order of the world (as it was in the post-WWII period in an era of Fordism and planned economies with bureaucrats administering capital). Much has changed since the neoliberal order, but James offered profound critiques of limited definitions of socialism which assume state-owned property and industry rather than private control automatically meant a transition from capitalism and labor exploitation. As scholars like Matthew Quest have indicated, James's perspective here is central for understanding workers must have direct control of the means of production rather than bureaucrats, otherwise socialism is not achieved. James spends too much time basing his theory of state capitalism upon Lenin's criticisms of bureaucracy and nationalization for my taste, but this is a key insight upon which the failures of the Russian Revolution, Tito's Yugoslavia, and numerous other revolutionary moments provide learning moments on the central importance of the emancipation of labor.
In addition to the theory of state capitalism, James develops an intriguing idea in the final chapter. Philosophy, according to James, must be proletarian in order to overcome the role of the division of labor in manual and intellectual workers. If this division is not overcome, bureaucracy and bourgeois rationalism can only culminate in state capitalism, fascist reaction, and the reactionary (anti-egalitarian, anti-democratic) Christian Humanism. One wonders how this plays out in terms of bureaucracy, the neoliberal phase, and the contemporary crisis we face globally. How useful is the theory of state capitalism for today and where does one begin to see the future of the emancipation of labor in a post-Fordist economy?
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