(Militant No. 688, 24 February 1984 p. 8-9)
The death of Andropov and his replacement by the even greyer and older Chernenko has been the occasion for the hirelings of capital in Fleet Street to predictably point to the deficiencies of the Stalinist regime, its totalitarian character, massive corruption, etc. By this means they seek to extol the virtues of their own system and at the same time smear the genuine ideas of socialism with the brush of Stalinism.
Perhaps no-one has typified this more than Brian Walden an ex-right wing Labour MP would could write (seriously!) in the Evening Standard about the leaders of the Russian Revolution Lenin and Trotsky … „neither of them could have run a successful fish and chip shop in Brighton“. This from someone who when a Labour MP presided over a Constituency Labour Party with a total membership of less than 100 and whose agent just happened to turn out to be a British Movement sympathiser.
Even more nauseating has been the spectacle of Thatcher, the former “Iron Lady”, and even Reagan cooing like sucking doves about „international peace and understanding“. This represents a complete somersault by Thatcher who boycotted Brezhnev’s funeral fifteen months ago but seized the opportunity of Andropov‘ death to immediately declare her intention to visit Moscow.
Productive forces
Puffed up like a bull frog, Thatcher imagines that she is now able to play a decisive role in the international arena particularly as a broker between Stalinist Russia and American Imperialism. However, such pretentions were brutally punctured by George Bush who stated bluntly that America did not need any intercession on its behalf with the Russian regime, particularly by a third-rate power like Britain.
But much more decisive in Thatcher’s and also Reagan’s volte face towards the Stalinist states, first Hungary and now Russia, is the need to be seen to mollify the growing “anti-war movement” throughout the capitalist world by appearing to do something about „peace“.
For the working class however the replacement of Andropov by Chernenko is of entirely secondary importance. Stalinism will do anything but get off the backs of the working class. Even if the regime was headed by a mere stripling of 61 like Romanov or the 53 year old Gorbachev, it would not fundamentally alter the perspective for the coming upheaval in Russia. –
This upheaval is being prepared by the complete incapacity of Stalinism to further develop industry and society.
It was Marx who pointed out that the key to the development of society was the growth of the productive forces, science, technique and the organisation of labour.
Marx‘ aphorism now applies with equal force to the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe and Russia. In the past the advantages of nationalisation and a plan of production, the main conquest of the Russian Revolution, were evident in the colossal development of the productive forces and the increased living standards of the Russian working class and peasantry.
The productive forces developed at two and sometimes three times the rate of capitalism in the West. Thus despite all the horror of Stalin’s regime – the purge trials, the slave labour camps, the „gulag“ – Stalinism, given the lag of the world revolution, played a relatively progressive role.
It fulfilled in Russia the tasks which capitalism was incapable of carrying out, developing industry, borrowing technique from the West and constructing the infrastructure, through the development of heavy industry, of a modern industrial country.
It is true that this was achieved at two or even three times the cost under capitalism. Nevertheless, no economy in history has managed to increase the productive forces on such a scale as the Russian economy since 1917.
Incredibly, The Times, which since Murdoch took control has assumed the character of an „upmarket“ Sun, recently declared „Projected into the present the figures for industrial development under the Tsars reach higher than Russia has climbed today“ (13 February).
Unparalleled progress
Before the Russian Revolution Russia was the India of Western Europe. Any objective analysis of Russia’s progress in the last 66 years could not fail to record unequalled progress of the economy despite the disadvantages of the one party Stalinist regime.
Thus, even the Japanese economy over a similar period of time has not had the rate of growth of the Russian economy. Even in the post-war period we saw the enormous advantages of nationalisation and a plan of production in Russia’s rapid economic recovery from the terrible destruction of the war.
Catastrophic decline
The economy increased in general at twice the rate of capitalism in the 1950s. It increased by an average of 12% during this period. Yet only in one year – 1967 – did the economy increase by 10% in the following decade.
In the 1970s the rate of growth was only half the rate of the previous decade. And in the two of the last four years there has been a catastrophic decline in the rate of growth in the Russian economy.
In 1981 and 1982 there was a yearly increase of 2½%. This is the lowest since the Second World War. In 1983 it probably increased by about 4%. Agriculture grew by 4% in the same period after four years of decline. But despite an enormous investment in agriculture this figure is still below the 1970 level.
Recent estimates of Russia’s national output puts it at only 60% of America.
In heavy industry – steel, cement, etc. – Russia outstrips most of the capitalist powers. But also now in the most modern industries such as micro-processors Russia is only two to three years behind America in the design and development in this key field.
It is planned that 100,000 computers will be introduced into Russian industry by 1985-86. Thus the productive potential, if not the actual productivity of labour, is similar to the most advanced capitalist countries of the West.
What these figures mean is that all the advantages enjoyed by Russia and other Stalinist states in the past which resulted from nationalisation and a plan of production are now almost completely cancelled out by the monstrous incubus of Stalinism. The rate of development of the Russian economy is hardly different to the measly growth rate of the capitalist countries in the West. America grew at 3½% in 1983.
Economic zig-zags
The Stalinist bureaucracy is now an absolute fetter on the further development of the Russian economy and of Russian society. It is a monstrous historical road block which can only be removed by the political revolution of the Russian working class acting in consort with the working class throughout the whole of Eastern Europe.
The Stalinist autocracy is no longer capable of presiding over the further development of industry and society. It lurches from one expedient to another; each economic zig-zag is less effective than the previous one.
Thus Andropov launched his reforms with an „anti-corruption“ drive in the early part of 1983. Like Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev before him Andropov, while representing the privileged bureaucratic stratum nevertheless was alarmed at the mismanagement, the waste and the enormous part of the surplus consumed by this elite.
Raids on bureaucrats
In an attempt to cut down the swollen privileges of the bureaucracy special brigades swooped on fashionable cafes, raided saunas and the other luxury palaces of the bureaucracy, in Leningrad, Moscow and other cities. For a very short period this seemed to have some effect. In the early part of the year the economy seemed set to increase by 5% or 6% but by May or June the economy dropped back. The same problems, only in a more aggravated form, which beset Brezhnev and Khrushchev confronted the feeble and ailing Andropov.
The history of the Stalinist regimes has been a history of one economic zig-zag, of one economic adventure, piled upon another. In a dizzying change of policy the Stalinist regimes have moved from centralisation to de-centralisation and back to re-centralisation.
No modern economy could work with the rigid centralised control exercised by the privileged stratum in Moscow. Even 10,000 Lenins, Trotskys, Marx’s and Engels‘, would not be capable alone or running a highly sophisticated economy like that of Russia.
Capitalism has at least the imperfect check of the market. In a planned economy only the conscious control and management of the state and society by the working class can exploit its full potential.
Only worker’s control and management could eliminate the monstrous wastage which blights Russian society and economy at the present time. The untrammelled rule of the Kremlin elite has led to the absurdity of the central ministries in Moscow trying to determine the plans of thousands of mile away.
Crude methods
These plans, moreover, were determined with the crudest methods; by targets of weight and output. Thus in one factory the plan was set in volume per output and bonuses were awarded on the basis of the total output of the factory. Huge nails were therefore produced which were sometimes bigger than the wood they were supposed to go into!
The plan was then changed to the number of products turned out. Tiny nails were then produced which were equally useless! The centralised control exercised was equivalent to the British Treasury attempting to determine the output of a small factory in Rochdale.
The Brezhnev regime attempted in the 1960s to escape from its impasse with experiments in „controlled“ de-centralisation and the introduction of the „profit motive“ together with one-man management in individual factories. As we predicted then, this merely duplicated the deficiencies of the centralised bureaucracy many times over.
Limited control was ceded to the different „nationalities“ which created 16 mini-bureaucracies in the national republic which added to the inefficiency and waste of the centralised Moscow bureaucracy. At the same time, bribery and corruption have reached monumental proportion
18 million Party members
In 1936 Trotsky pointed out that the bureaucracy swallowed a considerable part of the surplus value created by the labour of the working class. The bureaucracy in the trade apparatus consumed one-tenth of the total production of Russia at that time. He estimated that the bureaucracy as a whole numbered 5 to 6 million out of a total population of 170 million.
Yet the privilege enjoyed by the Stalinist apparatus of 1936 seems almost like the „kick backs“ to a village policeman compared to the monstrous corruption and squandermania of the latter day Stalinist grandees. The so-called „Russian Communist Party“ is in effect the party of the bureaucracy. This has swollen to a nominal membership figure of 18 million out of a population of 270 million.
Of course this privileged officialdom stretches from the lords in the Kremlin down to the village town official. The bribery and corruption has reached such a monumental scale that not even Trotsky could have anticipated. It is now estimated that up to 50%of the total output of Russia’s economy is wasted either through inefficient mismanagement or outright corruption.
Diamond-studded sword
Andropov before he died recently revealed the extent of corruption amongst Brezhnev’s immediate entourage. He criticised Brezhnev himself only after the latter was incapable of answering back from beyond the grave.
Brezhnev had been awarded a diamond encrusted sword from the leader of the Azerbaijanian Republic just before he died. The Minister of Fisheries was shot for „economic crimes“. This involved the smuggling of vast amount of caviar to the West in boxes which were labelled as herrings!
Similarly, the Airways Minister has been executed for similar crimes which caught up in the web of corruption thousands of people in his ministry. No matter which way they turn the bureaucracy cannot solve the insurmountable problems that beset their regime.
The attempt to ape some features of the capitalist market in the so-called Lieberman reforms in the 1960s were only partially applied in Russia itself. The Hungarian regime of Kadar, on the other hand, took up some aspect of Lieberman’s proposal and implemented them in Hungary.
Andropov toyed with the idea of imitating the so-called „Hungarian model“. Thus the Russian bureaucracy seek to imitate their own imitators in an attempt to extricate themselves from their difficulties. The much-vaunted Hungarian reforms gave a certain independence to factory managers.
It also represented an attempt on the part of the bureaucracy to draw a section of the Hungarian working class into sharing out the privileges enjoyed by the elite. It was coupled with an attempt to introduce into Hungarian conditions a kind of Stakhanovite movement like that in Russia in the 1930s.
Trotsky pointed out that this represented an attempt by Stalin to involve a section of workers in sharing out the privileges of the bureaucracy. Stalinist regimes are incapable of inspiring the workers to develop industry and society. Instead the Kadar bureaucracy sought to buy the support of a section of the Hungarian workers through bribery. The outcome of the „Hungarian reforms“ has been the huge growth of disparities within Hungarian society.
Hungarian model
Now even a former Hungarian prime minister Hegedüs has estimated that the income of the top 5% in Hungary was 80 times that of the bottom 5%!Corruption is now so widespread that every layer of Hungarian society, even including Hungarian football teams, have been drawn into an enormous web of corruption.
Throughout all the states of Eastern Europe and not just in Poland there is enormous simmering discontent that could easily boil over in the next period.
Hungary experienced a growth in its economy following the revolution of 1956. This arose partially from the participation of the Hungarian economy on the world market. But in 1983 the Hungarian national income was expected to drop by 2%.
The situation that now obtains in Eastern Europe and Russia is qualitatively different to what existed in the past. All the objective political pre-requisites for a successful political revolution against the bureaucracy have matured in all the states of Eastern Europe and Russia itself.
Fear of working class
The bureaucracy itself is riven into different factions with one section seeing the need for reform from above in order to prevent revolution from below. Another section insists on „harsh measures“ to prevent the coming revolt of the workers and peasants of these states. It feels itself as an excrescence, as an impediment to the further development of society.
Some of the most visible signs of opposition have come precisely from within the ruling stratum itself, from their sons and daughters. In January 1982 we had such an example with the arrest and trial of a discussion group of 40, mostly young people who came together to discuss Trotsky’s ideas because, in their own words, he described „the betrayal of the Russian Revolution“. Stalinism is utterly rotted and decomposing before our eyes.
The bureaucracy feels and fears the power of the Russian working class today. Like the capitalists in the West they have presided over the mighty development of industry. They have therefore given a gigantic impulse to the growth of their own grave-diggers the Russian working class.
Without doubt the Russian working class is now the most powerful on the planet. Russia is no longer a backward society with a predominantly rural population. Agriculture now employs only 20% of the labour force.
The increased power and social weight of the working class is shown in the following figures. There are now 18 cities of more than one million people: there were only five in 1970! 270 cities now have a population of 100,000 or more. This is fifty more than in 1970. Twenty new towns are created each year in Russia alone.
There are huge concentrations of workers in individual factories which dwarf those in the capitalist West. For instance, in the Gorky automotive factory there is a total of 200,000 workers in the factory complex! In the Togliatti factory there are 170,000 workers! A strike in protest against rationing in 1980 in these two factories-alone assumed almost the character of a general strike!
In Poland the bureaucracy used fear of Russian intervention as one of the means of derailing the revolution. But once a movement takes place in Russia, the bureaucracy will be powerless to stop it. Particularly if the revolution began in Moscow or Leningrad.
Political Revolution
Where will the forces for the bureaucratic counter-revolution come from? The population of Moscow now is 20 million. Once the working class in one of the major centres of Russia begins to move this will be the beginning of the end of the bureaucracy.
Moreover with correct leadership, a peaceful political revolution is entirely possible. Trotsky pointed out that despite the enormous size of the bureaucracy, it is more heterogeneous than the peasantry. It reaches from the humblest policeman in the town and village right up to the lords in the Kremlin. Once there is a movement of the Russian workers, the bureaucratic elite at the top will be suspended in mid air.
Therefore the present situation in Russian and Eastern Europe points towards the coming political revolution in Russia and throughout the whole area. There is not one regime which is now stable, which does not face opposition from the workers.
There is growing opposition in Czechoslovakia and in East Germany, where 100,000 youth gathered to protest under the banner of the Lutheran church in early 1983. It is also visible in Hungary, and in Rumania, where the miners actually stoned Ceaușescu’s helicopter in the Jiu valley and he was forced to flee. The crew on his private yacht have recently fled to the West!
To a much greater extent than 1956, 1968, or even 1980, all the conditions for a continental political revolution are being prepared in Russia and Eastern Europe.
By Peter Taaffe
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