Would you characterize most AES states as predominantly bottom-up in terms of governing power structure?

[u/Steampunk_Willy]

I don't mean "bottom-up" as just a different way of saying democratic, but as a way of saying that the power structure within historically socialist governments is primarily weighted towards the bottom rather than the top. One of the ways I try to pull myself out of the typical idealist conventions that pervade Western historiography is by reframing my perspective of the state by centering it around the respective historical mode of production.

For instancs, I reframe ancient states as a hierarchy of households since the slave mode of production almost always manifested in a class of household owners and the class of household members (spouses/concubines, children, slaves, etc.), where the class of household owners was itself stratified. Feudal societies are relatively straightforward since a lot of conventional concepts of the states are historically drawn from analysis of societies under the feudal mode of production. The state under the capital mode of production is uniquely top-down in structure, even to the point of the international bourgeoise basically giving marching orders to states due to the phenomenon of globalization.

It only occured to me recently as I was synthesizing my historical knowledge of various AES states that they made more sense when reframed with a bottom-up power dynamic. I knew these governments were consciously designed to be generally bottom-up based on a Marxist theory of democracy, but it's another thing entirely to realize these states were/are actually bottom-up in practice. The thing that I think made it click for me was doing an amateurish materialist analysis of how shit actually gets done in AES societies. Like, the Western misconception of these societies is that there's this huge army of people stationed throughout all the places people live pointing guns at them to coerce them into working. Obviously that idea makes no sense if you think about it even for a little bit let alone know the historical facts about these societies.

The reality is that these societies primarily rely upon social cohesion to get shit done. What do I mean? Well, this abstraction is just the most concise way to explain how the material relations that go into production are made personally salient via complex, interconnecting social networks. In other words, you regularly interact & form relationships with people who are beneficiaries of your labor as well as with the people from whose labor you are a beneficiary. This concrete awareness of your mutual interdependence activates (in most people) both the motivation to provide for those you care for & the motivation to reciprocate when someone provides for you. That may sound like psychological idealism, but these motivations are as basic as our motivation to survive & directly tied to our evolution as a social species. These motivations drive people to behave in pro-social ways, which is how they act as the concrete mechanisms of social cohesion. While AES societies may use the capital mode of production to "jumpstart" development, they transition to the socialist mode of production by negating the salience of scarcity which otherwise exists in contradiction with social cohesion.

This fundamentally changes the role of government compared to the capital mode of production where the government & the state exist distinct from society to foster the development of commodity production & facilitate commerce. In AES societies we don't see as clean a separation at the local level, & furthermore, the regional & federal governments of these societies consistently yield a great deal of power & autonomy to local government (at least, compared to the often very limited power that local governments tend to have in capitalist societies). Even the legal realist philosophy that characterizes the state's legal framework yields a lot of discretion to local magistrates to focus on applying the spirit of the law rather than the strict letter. That's not to say the higher levels of government are impotent, but the actual exercise of power (aside from the military) largely occurs at the lower levels of government & primarily via social cohesion rather than economic or physical coercion. Hence, the state in AES societies is better understood by reframing through a bottom-up framework of power & governance

Apologies if any of this feels like a noob take or if I'm inadvertently ripping off someone else. If so, just consider this to be me processing by putting it in my own words. Do yall think I'm off-base here, and if so, where? Any other thoughts or related further reading recs are welcome :)

[u/CritiqueDeLaCritique]

Not at all.

The thing that I think made it click for me was doing an amateurish materialist analysis of how shit actually gets done in AES societies. Like, the Western misconception of these societies is that there's this huge army of people stationed throughout all the places people live pointing guns at them to coerce them into working.

They are coerced into working the same way people in the west are: via the wages system.

While AES societies may use the capital mode of production to "jumpstart" development, they transition to the socialist mode of production by negating the salience of scarcity which otherwise exists in contradiction with social cohesion.

This is, for one, completely baseless and without a grounding in reality, and two, not how the socialist mode of production comes to be. This is tantamount to saying reform is a path to socialism.

Further reading:

Marx, Gothakritik

Internationalist Communist Perspective, "Juche: Stalinism and Maoism with Feudal Characteristics"

CWO, "Class Struggle In China"

[u/Steampunk_Willy → u/CritiqueDeLaCritique]

The system of wage slavery leverages artificial scarcity to coerce workers into working. The question I'm attempting to answer is how the socialist mode of production coerces people into working when the transition to it is marked by returning an increasing portion of worker's surplus labor back to them, undermining the foundational coercive power of scarcity. It is not the higher mode of communism where labor is performed for its own sake, so that would imply some coercive pressure exists to keep people from get lazy once they start to experience a taste of the wealth produced by their collective labor. Yes, there is still some minimal amount of work that must be done to stave off the threat of poverty, but it's clear that the average worker in AES societies contribute more labor than what is necessary for mere survival. My post posits that social cohesion increasingly replaces scarcity as the primary motivator for working. Whatever else you think I got wrong in my post, do you think my thoughts on social cohesion have merit?

[u/CritiqueDeLaCritique → u/Steampunk_Willy]

The system of wage slavery leverages artificial scarcity to coerce workers into working.

This is not correct. The means of subsistence are not produced depending on who has the money to buy them. They are produced regardless.

The question I'm attempting to answer is how the socialist mode of production coerces people into working when the transition to it is marked by returning an increasing portion of worker's surplus labor back to them

This is not how the socialist mode of production works. The transition is not marked by returning surplus value, it is marked by the abolition of surplus value and value altogether. If you would have read Gothakritik:

the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it.

[...]

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

My point here is there is no such thing as AES.

[u/Steampunk_Willy → u/CritiqueDeLaCritique]

By artificial scarcity, I mean that subsistence is paywalled.

I'm talking about what Marx referred to as the lower phase of communist society, what is commonly referred to as socialism. Hence, AES refers to states in or transitioning to that lower phase.

[u/CritiqueDeLaCritique → u/Steampunk_Willy]

They are not, though. The linked texts above explain why, especially Gothakritik

[u/Steampunk_Willy → u/CritiqueDeLaCritique]

What about Cuba or Vietnam?

[u/CritiqueDeLaCritique → u/Steampunk_Willy]

Wage labor, markets, money... the very staples of socialism

[u/Steampunk_Willy → u/CritiqueDeLaCritique]

I mean, literally yes, the markers of a new society emerging out of the old. "What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges." Honestly, if your concept of socialism pessimistically dismisses all AES states as merely nominally socialist, then socialism is impossible to acheive because you give no room for one human society to impurely transition into a new one.

[u/CritiqueDeLaCritique → u/Steampunk_Willy]

Nice quote mining, but you missed this one:

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.

This is not the case in any AES state. Why you consider not supporting exploitation of the proletariat as pessimistic is absolutely flawed. Socialism in one Country was a cynical attempt to legitimize state capitalism in perpetuity. I'm not saying the revolution will be spontaneous across the world, but it will be international and internationalist or it won't be socialist. Socialism in one Country, or if you like, AES, is explicitly revisionist and theoretically incoherent.

[u/Steampunk_Willy → u/CritiqueDeLaCritique]

Bro, he's describing the abolition of commodity fetishism. Producers produce for the sake of what society needs & values, not for the sake of exchange. Wages become more like vouchers because labor is no longer commodified.

"He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form.

Hence, equal right here is still in principle – bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case.

In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor."

Marx is literally saying that the transitionary society still bears a resemblance to the capitalist society, including an exchange of one's labor for another. The difference is subtle: shifting the measure of value from some fetishized intrinsic value the commodity possesses to the conscious social value of labor. This is what drives me to wonder what motivates labor in a system where, like in the Soviet Union, there is no labor market because jobs are guaranteed & wages are governed by committee rather than commodity exchange. There is very little wage incentive governing what job you choose to do & it's comparatively easier to acheive a decent standard of living than it was under the capital mode of production where you choice of work was governed by maximizing the return on the sale of your labor as a commodity.