12. THE NATURE OF THE SOVIET BLOC
We learn in Russia how Communism cannot be introduced.
Peter Kropotkin, June 1920, "Message to the Workers
of the West", in P. Avrich (ed), The Anarchists in the Russian
Revolution, (Thames and Hudson), p151. Documents of Revolution
series.
1. INTRODUCTION
While there have been many changes in Eastern Europe, the Soviet
Union and parts of Asia since 1988, it is important to state that
these countries were not in any way socialist and to explain why
<1> .
1. Since at least 1918, Anarchists have recognised that the
Russian command economy was State capitalist because
1.1. it maintained the separation of the producers from their
means of production and undervalued their labour power in order to
extract surplus value for a ruling class which owned and controlled
the means of production. This is the case in all capitalist
countries.
1.2. it was also subject to the same law of constant accumulation.
1.3. In the case of the Soviet Union, all property/ means of
production belonged to the Soviet state so all surplus value accrued
to it, and, more specifically, to the bureaucratic elite which
controlled that State.
2. The absence of internal markets in the USSR and other
Marxist-Leninist countries did not mean that the capitalist mode of
production was not in operation.
2.1. Surplus value is incorporated into goods at the point of
production under capitalism. Value is not created in the process of
distribution (e.g. the market), but by labour-power in the process of
production.
2.2. In the West, this surplus value is realised as money profits
by selling these goods on the market. But the surplus value is
incorporated into goods whether or not they are sold. This can be
used directly for providing use values for the capitalists such as
weapons or extra plant or machinery.
2.3. This is the way that State-capitalism worked. Internally
surplus value was realised directly as use-values (e.g. weapons,
plant ) which (i) kept the system ticking over (ii) maintained the
bureaucracy in its privileged class position. It is also important to
note that many goods were sold on the international market
(particularly raw materials and arms) and the money shared out
amongst the bureaucratic elite in the form of bribes, wages and
awards.
2.4. In any capitalist system profit is extracted at the point of
production by undervaluing labour power (remunerating the producers
with less than the full value of their production). Whether or not
this profit is realised as cash money on the market is not of primary
importance. Much of this surplus can be fed directly into the system
as means of production. A system in which all value is fed back as
means of production is possible in theory. All capitalist systems
tend towards this with more and more profit going into plant and
machinery and less and less labour from which to extract a profit
being used over time (this has been called "the tendency for the rate
of profit to fall").
2.5. The Soviet Union exemplified this, it was a night mare form
of capitalism where weapons systems and heavy machinery proliferated
but basic consumer needs were not met.
3. The absence of private property rights (e.g. individual legal
ownership) is often put forward as evidence that the Marxist-Leninist
countries were not capitalist but some sort of new "post-capitalist"
system.
3.1. Property forms (in the sense of who owns what in law) can be
a convenient legal fiction concealing the essential relations of
production. For example, in the lineage mode of production, property
was supposedly collective but in practice it was held "for the
people" by an oligarchy of patriarchal leaders and their direct
descendants. So all tributes and profits passed to them SEE POSITION
PAPER ON CLASS STRUGGLE REGARDING
THE LINEAGE MODE. State- Capitalism in Russia employs a similar ruse
to conceal its exploitative nature.
3.2. Ownership of the means of production cannot be reduced to
individual legal title to stocks. Ownership can be disaggregated into
3 components: legal ownership (title to property, and legal status as
an employer); economic ownership (control over investments and
resources); and possession (control over the physical means of
production, and over the labour power of others).
3.2.1. In the West, the ruling class are juridical owners of the
means of production, and also control the accumulation process,
decide how the physical means of production are to be used, and
control the authority structure within the labour process, whilst the
"working class" has no legal rights over the means of production (and
must thus sell its labour power), and is excluded from control over
authority relations, the physical means of production, and the
investment process . That is one reason why top corporate executives
and managers of parastatal enterprises can be classified as bosses
<2>.
3.2.1. In the East, the ruling class had economic ownership and
possession. It also had collective legal ownership in the sense that
it was legally entitled to run the economy on behalf of the working
class and peasantry, both as the ruling vanguard party and as the
"legitimate" occupants of the appropriate posts in the State
apparatus.
4. Despite the claims of Stalinists and Trostkyists of various
hues, there has always been unemployment in the Soviet Union,
especially high in oppressed outlying regions such as Armenia and
Azerbijan. This unemployment was concealed as unpaid slave labour
(labour camps), low paid work, and seasonal and migratory work in the
outlying areas. There was also homelessness, poverty and all the
other common features of capitalism.
2. HOW DID RUSSIA BECOME STATE-CAPITALIST?
5. Basically, after October 1917, the organised working class had
expropriated most of the means of production, and most land was
seized by the peasants. But before the masses could consolidate and
expand these gains, they lost power to a rising bureaucratic class
comprised of the remnants of the Tsarist bureaucracy and also the
Bolshevik (Communist ) Party. The new ruling class placed the means
of production under the control of a one-party State run by the
Communist Party <3>.
6. This was not an inevitable or an accidental development. This
transfer of class power was partly rooted in Marxism. Marx had
proposed the centralisation of all finance, land and means of
production in the hands of the State as an essential step towards
socialism. The Bolsheviks developed these views into a rigorous
attack on workers self-management. Workers control was seen simply as
a step on the road towards nationalisation, with socialism placed
very far down the road. Such a philosophy led directly to
State-Capitalism (ads predicated by Bakunin in the First
International). the transition from capitalism was seen as a process
in which an enlightened vanguard party would assume State power too
impose "socialism" (in the sense of State ownership) on the
"backward" masses. As we have discussed elsewhere (SEE POSITION
PAPER, FIGHTING RACISM), nationalisation is not real socialism, it is
a policy that places the means of production under the control of a
State managerial elite.
7. By 1921, the emerging ruling class had wrested power from the
workers and peasants. this process was completed in essence in 1918,
and accelerated by the "war communism" of the civil war period and
Trotsky's "militarisation of labour" proposals. The civil war
contributed to this degeneration of the revolution insofar as it
provided an excuse to impose repressive anti-worker measures, and
insofar as it weakened the working class's ability to resist the
Communist-led counterrevolution.
8. The process of State-capitalism was finalised by Stalin in the
1920s and 1930s, but the actual transfer of power had already been
completed by the old Bolsheviks (Lenin, Trotsky and co.). The only
small difference was that the "New Bolsheviks" recruited after 19171
were subjectively as well as objectively State-capitalists.
3. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN RUSSIA AND EASTERN EUROPE
9. Russia and Eastern Europe have never been without workers
opposition to the one-party State-capitalist regime. These reflected
workers grievances with the political and economic hardships under
which they lived. They were not "imperialist plots" which had to
crushed but progressive popular struggles.
9.1. Examples include Kronstadt 1921 in Russia. Also the revolts
in East Germany and Hungary in 1953 and 1956. In Czechoslovakia in
1968 regime attempts to liberalise the economy snowballed into a
popular revolt that had to be put down with Soviet tanks.
9.2. In Poland there were riots in 1970 and 1976 and in 1980 a
mass strike movement spread out of the Gdansk shipyard. The
Solidarnosc movement that developed was a mass trade union that
included many left currents advocating workers self-management.
However, the leadership was made up of reformists like Kurion and
Walesa, These made common ground with the Catholic Church and
reform-minded Communists. Demands for workers' self-management were
channelled into power-sharing in a liberal capitalist economy.
Reformist and conservative currents dominated the union from the
start, despite notable rank and file action such as the take-over and
management of the ebnitire city of Lodz by the local Solidarnosc in
1981. The imposition of martial law in 1981 was aimed almost
exclusively at destroying rank and file opposition: while the leaders
served brief terms under house arrest or in prison, the base
resistance in the factories and mines were crushed. The union leaders
were then released to help supervise the rush from State-capitalism
to market-capitalism alongside the reform- minded Communists .
9.3. These years of struggle in Poland found an echo in other
parts of the Eastern bloc. I n Romania an embryonic freed trade
union, the SLMOR, took government officials hostage and in Russia the
Free Workers Inter-Professional Association (SMOT) was formed. In
China, autonomous unions played an important role in the Tianamenn
Square movement that was crushed by the Communist Party.
10. Gorbachev inherited (sic!) a Russian economy in severe crisis.
For the Communist Party to survive and maintain control, he realised
that some economic liberalisation , a move towards a more
market-driven form of capitalism, was needed, the threat of mass
revolt and economic bankruptcy was hanging over the CP's head.
10.1. In terms of economic restructuring ("Perestroika"), his
initial aim was probably to bring about some form of limited internal
market in consumer goods while maintaining bureaucratic planning and
power and arms in heavy industry. However, this form of hybrid
capitalism proved impossible to maintain and there was a rapid move
towards a market form of capitalism. At first, these reforms had
substantial mass support.
10.2. In order to achieve support for Perestroika, Gorbachev had
to allow a large amount of political liberalisation ("Glasnost").
This opened space for the expression of popular dissent and thus
increased the opportunities for popular resistance to attempts to
reimpose a one-party State.
11. The reforms in the Soviet Union prompted a massive popular
response in Eastern Europe, with Gorbachev unwilling or even unable
to intervene to crush dissent as had happened previously. In
Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland and Romania mass demonstrations
and (in the Romanian case) armed insurrection swept the ideology of
Marxism-Leninism into the dustbin of history, and led to the
establishment of parliamentary regimes. In Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and
Hungary the change over to a multi-party system ,was brought a bout
gradually by reform Communists thus avoiding mass demonstrations.
12. In all of these countries there has been a rapid shift towards
more market-based forms of capitalism. This was often far from the
intentions of the masses who were demanding more political rights and
economic well-being.
13. While many of the enterprises in the formerly State-capitalist
countries have been closed or privatised to foreign investors, others
are now "owned" rather than merely "managed" by their former
directors.
14. Neither of the two ridiculous orthodox Trostkyite notions that
(1) the reforms were the vital injection of workers democracy that
would transform these countries into socialist paradises or (2) that
workers would actively defend the so-called "post-capitalist"
property forms has been borne out in fact.
15. However, there have been strikes and other working class
actions in defence of some of the welfare and employment measures of
particular State-capitalist countries, such as greater access to
abortion (East Germany), cheaper transport etc. We absolutely support
workers in defence of jobs and better facilities if these exist. This
in no way commits us to the defence of State-capitalism any more than
, for instance, a defence of greater freedom of speech and freedom of
movement in the West commits us to defending market-capitalism. Our
criteria and concern here is whether these facilities and rights are
in the interests of the working class. If they are, we are for their
defence and enhancement through mass struggle; the niceties of
different forms of regulating the capitalist economy are not our
concern. we are here to fight capitalism and the State, not to give
them tips on how to run things better.
NOTES
<1> . A useful discussion of the theory of State-Capitalism
is J. Crump and A. Buick, (1986), State Capitalism: the Wages System
Under New Management. Macmillan.
<2> . See, for example, E.O. Wright (1978), Class, Crisis,
and the State, New Left Books. London. Although Marxist, this book
develops a model of the class system which is fairly similar to the
Anarchist model outlined in an earlier section (except it fails to
deal with the position of those who occupy military and bureacratic
positions separate to production, strictly defined). See POSITION
PAPER ON CLASS STRUGGLE, CAPITALISM AND
THE STATE.
<3>. On the degeneration of the Russian revolution, the
classic studies are still Voline, The Unknown Revolution. Black Rose;
A. Berkman, The Russian Tragedy; P. Archinov, (1987), The History of
the Makhnovist Movement; G.P. Maximoff, Bolshevism: Promises and
Reality; E. Goldman, My Disillusionment in Russia. More contemporary
accounts can be found in WSM, Stalin Did Not Fall From the Moon!
Ireland.; WSF, 1997, What is Anarcho-Syndicalism? Johannesburg. On
the history of the Russian Anarchist movement is outlined also in P.
Avrich, The Russian Anarchists . P. Avrich (ed.), The Anarchists in
the Russian Revolution is very useful as it brings together an uneven
collection of Russian Anarchist literature from the time of the
Revolution. Also useful is J. Westergaaard-Thorpe, "The Workers
Themselves": Revolutionary Syndicalism and International Labour,
which looks at the conflicts between the international
Anarchist/Syndicalist movement and the new Russian Marxist State in
the 1920s.
POSITION PAPERS OF THE WORKERS SOLIDARITY FEDERATION (SOUTH
AFRICA), 1997
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