Well, while you try to realize what Wolff meant (hint: having managers = Capitalism; but Wolff never says it directly, because that's obvious nonsense), I'll post what Wolff says about Lenin and State Capitalism - as if Lenin could've shared Wolff's ideas, or those of Milovan Djilas (~1950) or some other post-Trotskyist. Even Trotsky was vehemently against this idea of State Capitalism, despite being exiled and effectively enemy #1 of Soviet bureaucracy.
But Wolff needs some authority to support his theories. So he uses Lenin.
Transcript from 2nd Part of Socialism for Dummies:
20:10 / 1:10:51 - So Lenin said "We've created State Capitalism". What does that mean?
20:20 / 1:10:51 - It means the State functions just like any Capitalist …
20:40 / 1:10:51 - State officials function as Capitalists. And what that means is …
20:53 / 1:10:51 - that Capitalism can be either private or state.
Except, Lenin never actually meant what Wolff says. State Capitalism was what it literally sounded like: regular Capitalism (old bourgeoisie) acting under state oversight.
For example:
Session of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, Apr 29th, 1918
- Report On The Immediate Tasks Of The Soviet Government (by Lenin)
> … The situation is best among those workers who are carrying out this state capitalism: among the tanners and in the textile and sugar industries, because they have a sober, proletarian knowledge of their industry and they want to preserve it and make it more powerful—because in that lies the greatest socialism. They say: I can’t cope with this task just yet; I shall put in capitalists, giving them one-third of the posts, and I shall learn from them.
Does anyone see "state doing things"? I don't.
And then there was War Communism (which is 100% Capitalism in Wolff's book, because bureaucrats everywhere), but Lenin never refers to it as such. He starts speaking again about State Capitalism when NEP (and concessions to foreign capitalists) are being introduced. And it is again about working with bourgeoisie under government oversight.
Report on the Tax in Kind Delivered at a Meeting of Secretaries and Responsible Representatives of R.C.P.(B.) Cells of Moscow and Moscow Gubernia, April 9, 1921
> … In no circumstances must we forget what we have occasion to see very often, namely, the socialist attitude of workers at state factories, who collect fuel, raw materials and food, or try to arrange a proper distribution of manufactured goods among the peasants and to deliver them with their own transport facilities. That is socialism.
NB: Lenin specifically claims state factories are already Socialism. STATE DOES THINGS, yes.
> The incredible havoc, the shortage of fuel, raw materials and transport facilities allow small enterprise to exist separately from socialism. I ask you: What is state capitalism in these circumstances? It is the amalgamation of small-scale production. Capital amalgamates small enterprises and grows out of them. It is no use closing our eyes to this fact. Of course, a free market means a growth of capitalism; there’s no getting away from the fact. And anyone who tries to do so will be deluding himself.
And a bit later reinforces the point:
Quite clear what State Capitalism meant in Lenin's time. And yet Wolff tries to present it, as if Lenin believed state bureaucrats to be some sort of government capitalists.
And a quote from Wolff's article:
truth-out.org/news/item/31567-socialism-means-abolishing-the-distinction-between-bosses-and-employees
> Yet precisely what Lenin had named state capitalism remained the Soviet industrial reality; indeed, Stalin extended state capitalism into Soviet agriculture.
See what he does?
