[20 May 1988, pamphlet „Stalinism in Crisis“, p. 10-17]
“Revolution starts from the top”, said Marx. Sensing an impending revolt by the working class, the summits of society begin to split into different camps, one looking for reforms to stave off the deluge, while another looks towards increasing repression. Marx was speaking about differences within the capitalist class being the most visible symptom of the coming storm, but his words apply with equal force to a ruling caste like the Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia.
Even without the fresh evidence of the tumultuous events in Armenia, Poland, Hungary and practically every state in Eastern Europe, the open splits within the Russian bureaucracy would in themselves indicate impending social upheavals. The ferocious struggle between different wings of the bureaucracy has unfolded in a manner not seen since the inter-war period, in the battle between Stalin and Bukharin’s ‘right opposition’. Open warfare broke out in the run-up to the June ‘extraordinary conference’ of the ‘Communist Party’, the first of its kind since 1941. Gorbachev has publicly flailed ‘conservative’ critics of his policy: “We must defeat conservatism blocking our path. We must root out all that hinders the process of perestroika (restructuring).”
In November we witnessed the clash between Gorbachev and the former Moscow party boss Yeltsin. Representing that section of the bureaucracy more responsive to the feelings of the mass of the population – he rode on public transport, something unparalleled for a bureaucrat – Yeltsin began to echo some of their criticisms and the niggardly effects of glasnost (openness) and perestroika. He even dared to criticise Gorbachev and his wife Raisa, as representatives of the new ‘enlightened’ bureaucracy. His brief rebellion ended with the recantation of his ‘errors’ and removal from the Politburo. His confession was reminiscent of Stalin’s show trials. Now he has sensationally revealed in the German language edition of Moscow News that he had been “brought out of hospital and drugged in order to attend the November meeting at which I was dismissed”. Whether he is telling the truth or merely covering up for his ignominious ‘confession’, the very fact that he is allowed to state this publicly is a symptom of the open clashes within the bureaucracy.
Faced with criticisms from the ‘conservative’, more openly Stalinist wing of the bureaucracy represented by Ligachev, Gorbachev has probably been compelled to lean on Yeltsin and his supporters. The Ligachev wing is correctly terrified that Gorbachev’s measures have opened the floodgates. They are attacking him for opening the door for the emergence of the working class and the danger of political revolution.
From the first day of Gorbachev’s rise to power, Militant pointed out that in no way was he prepared to challenge the rule of the bureaucracy, but that he stood for greater privileges for the top layers of the elite. His measures were an attempt to cut down the swollen privileges, particularly of the middle layers of the bureaucracy. Staunchly defending the ‘legal’ privileges of the elite, he conducted a war against the ‘illegal’ waste and corruption which was swallowing a colossal amount of the surplus produced by the working class.
While loudly proclaiming the virtues of ‘democratisation’, his regime has arrested and imprisoned the organisers of the recent feeble and ineffective ‘democratic conference’ and the editor of the journal Glasnost. Dismissing any idea of “returning back to capitalism”, Gorbachev is at pains to stamp on anything which challenges the foundations of bureaucratic rule: “We are not destroying the social system or changing the forms of ownership … Just think of it, 70 years on and they are still trying to scare us with descendants of capitalists and Trotskyists.” “They” are Ligachev supporters. For “Trotskyists” read the ideas of workers’ democracy and the political revolution.
Gorbachev’s policy has been “reform from the top to prevent revolution from below”. But by lifting the lid of the pressure cooker of Russian society, a process could be begun which could threaten the very foundations of bureaucratic rule. The tumultuous events in Armenia in the past three months completely vindicate this. Two demonstrations, each a million strong have taken place in this the smallest of the 15 republics of the ‘Soviet Union’, whose population is no more than four million! While the strike in Armenia in February was called off with promises by Gorbachev of concessions, the strike in Nagorno Karabakh, an autonomous, predominantly Armenian region within Azerbaijan, continued for more than a month. It was only called off after the bureaucracy in revenge closed a number of factories.
While refusing the central demand for Nagorno Karabakh’s right to link up with Armenia, Gorbachev has promised a massive 2,000 million roubles (£2,000m) of investment in Armenia. Other concessions have been granted by the ‘Supreme Soviet’, though they have warned that “strikes are not part of glasnost”. These concessions may temporarily mollify the Armenians, but they will not solve the central denial of the democratic right of the population of Nagorno Karabakh to determine its own fate.
The unresolved national question throughout the USSR could lead to further upheavals in the next period. The bureaucracy will not be able to continue to make concessions on such a scale as in Nagorno Karabakh. While these protests were partly connected with the people’s national aspirations, they also arose from protests against the despoliation and pollution of Armenia and indeed the whole of the Transcaucasus. The protests began with a demonstration about the proposed building of a rubber factory. Between 1965 and 1985, cancer, arising from environmental pollution, quadrupled in the region. Indeed every state in the USSR and Eastern Europe now has examples of ecological disasters arising from the untrammelled rule of an uncontrolled bureaucratic elite.
Such is the situation created by Gorbachev’s ‘reforms’, that now in the USSR on any one of a number of issues, from the national question to the poisoning of the environment, to wages and other social issues, a social explosion could develop. Gorbachev was absolutely correct to characterise the situation before he came to power as one of “pre-crisis”. He has characterised his programme as “revolution without shots”. He has a section in his book Perestroika justifying the concept of “revolution from above”. This turmoil within the bureaucracy is rooted in the catastrophic economic situation. Marx pointed out that the key to the development of society is the development of the productive forces. No system, he said, leaves the scene of history without exhausting all the possibilities inherent within it. This holds as true for the Stalinist regimes as for capitalism, although they are two entirely different social systems.
The bureaucracy in Russia has been allowed to maintain its rule over decades because it presided over a colossal development of the productive forces – science, the organisation of labour and technique. Rates of growth of 10-20 per cent, far exceeding anything seen under capitalism, were recorded because of the advantages of a planned economy. Despite the waste and crimes of the bureaucracy, while the economy was developing at such a pace, it was able to play a relatively progressive role. It maintained a grip on power by this economic growth and also by playing on the Russian workers’ fear of imperialist intervention. These factors stayed the hand of the mighty Russian working class. But the bureaucracy, like capitalism in the west, is now an absolute fetter on the further development of society. This had become obvious under Brezhnev, when the economy grew by a meagre three per cent a year, below the rate of development of many of the capitalist countries, particularly Japan.
This is not at all, as the capitalist economists have argued, because of the inherent weaknesses of a ‘planned economy’. Faced with the impasse of their own system, they never fail to point to the waste, mismanagement and shortfalls of the planned economies.
But these are a product of Stalinist mismanagement rather than the planned economy. They deliberately underestimate the colossal economic achievements and potential of the planned economy.
Russia is about ten years ahead in space exploration. One and a half million scientists, a quarter of the world’s, are Russian. It has the most educated population in the world, with one third of the population having some kind of university degree. In computers, it is estimated to be only two to three years behind America. The productive potential, at least in ‘European Russia’ is similar to the most advanced capitalist countries of the west.
The Economist commented recently that “Russia’s problem is not any shortage of inventiveness”. But because of the dead hand of the bureaucracy, two years after Soviet inventions have received a patent, called an ‘author certificate’, only 23 per cent of them have been put into production, whereas in America the figure is 66 per cent and in West Germany 64 per cent. It gives the example of a revolutionary method developed in the Russian steel industry in 1955. 27 years later only 12 per cent of Russian steel industry was using this method, whereas 62 per cent of the factories in West Germany and 79 per cent of those in Japan were using it. Thus as with Britain, although for different reasons, the inventiveness and ingenuity of the Russian workers has been squandered. The dead hand and wastefulness of the bureaucratic elite, rather than the limits of the market as under capitalism in Britain, has prevented the use of this technology for the benefit of the peoples.
Gorbachev’s main economic advisor, Abel Aganbegyan, has argued that there was no real growth at all in the first half of the 1980s! Since the soviet population was increasing by one per cent a year, this meant that the average Russian was getting poorer or being compelled to turn to the black market or a second job in order to maintain living standards. All the advantages of a planned economy have been vitiated by the bureaucracy. Rather than overtaking capitalism as Khrushchev had boasted, Russia has fallen behind. Factories have become rusty – the proportion of metal-working machinery that was more than 20 years old had risen from 16 per cent in 1980 to 21 per cent in 1985.
With almost the same amount of machinery at the elbow of the working class, the output of Russia is about 55 per cent of that of the USA. That fact alone will condemn the rule of the bureaucracy. For it was Marx who pointed out “all economy comes down in the last analysis to an economy of time”1. An even greater mismanagement and waste is revealed in the agricultural sector. Russia, under Tsarism the granary of Europe, is now compelled to import grain. This is partly of course due to the terrible crimes and mistakes of Stalin’s enforced collectivisation in the 1930’s which leaves its mark on Russian agriculture right up to the present.
At the same time it reflects the indifference, waste and mismanagement of the Stalinist regime. A recent study in Memo, the journal of Moscow’s Institute of World Economy and International Relations, points out that the Soviet Union has over 24 million farmers, more than in all the countries of the industrial west and Japan combined; yet Russia’s farm output is only 22 per cent of the West’s. The Economist points out that “the Soviet labour productivity in agriculture is about one fifth of western Europe’s and one tenth of the United States’.” Russia produces four times as many tractors as the United States and yet cannot get the same results in agriculture! In Uzbekistan, Pravda has revealed that “a vast system of organised crime, racketeers, ‘underground millionaires’ and ‘professional killers’ have operated.” A total of £4 million was skimmed off the state by panning out cotton production figures.
Gorbachev’s campaign against corruption, particularly among the middle strata of the bureaucracy, has undoubtedly met some success. ‘Together with the war on alcoholism, it has initially given a boost to the economy, but will inevitably run into the sand on a bureaucratic basis. Seventy years after the Russian revolution, and moreover with capitalism on the eve of a new recession, one wing of the bureaucracy now looks towards the ‘market’ as a solution. One of Gorbachev’s political advisors has condemned “the concept of state socialism” as a “Stalinist error”. Fyodor Burlatsky has declared: “So far we can only see the broad contours, (which) would include a planned, although market economy, based upon profit and loss accounting, with many different forms. of social property and ownership.”
Gorbachev has sought to imitate the ‘Hungarian model’ precisely at a time when this is breaking down. Hungary found some escape on the world market at a time of capitalist world economic upswing, but at the cost of piling up colossal debts of $1,600 per head of the population. Servicing this debt is having a crippling effect on the Hungarian economy. Now Prime Minister Grosz, who on a recent visit to Britain expressed admiration for Thatcher, proposed ‘privatisation’ and the aping of capitalism.
In Russia and in Eastern Europe a pro-capitalist wing of the bureaucracy exists. It is a minority and there is no possibility of a return to capitalism. But the very fact that such tendencies can develop is a symptom of the impasse of the regimes. Only by tapping the colossal reserves of initiative and improvisation of the masses would it be possible for Russian society to extricate itself from its blind alley. In the West, private ownership and the nation-state provide the major barrier to an enormous development of the productive forces. In the East the rule of the bureaucracy and the nation-state, with its harmful duplication, is the main barrier to the further development of society.
Gorbachev does not represent some ‘new force’ to de-bureaucratise Russian society. Indeed the very measures he is advancing can enormously aggravate the problems and ignite a movement of the working class in the direction of political revolution. As in Poland and Yugoslavia, Gorbachev’s advisors are advocating the withdrawal of subsidies and ‘greater efficiency’ by allowing managers to ‘release surplus workers’. One estimate by the government reckons that about 16 million workers, as many as in the whole of Spain, will be evicted from the factories by the year 2000.
In Yugoslavia, the consequences of ‘decentralisation’ are revealed in the one million ‘unemployed’ and the 200 per cent inflation which is ravaging Yugoslav society. In Kosovo province it has resulted in open conflict between the populations of Albanian and Serbian extraction, with armed clashes, murder and rape and the fleeing of the Serbian population from the area. The gap between Kosovo and the richer republics of Slovenia and Serbia is wider than between Yugoslavia and America. One commentator said it was like having West Germany and India within the borders of the same country.
The recent price increases in Poland provoked upheavals in Nowa Huta and Gdańsk The regime has only managed to hold the situation by a combination of concessions and repression. Compared to the other regimes of Eastern Europe, Russia has enjoyed relative price stability. But the combination of withdrawing subsidies and the squeezing of a smaller workforce for greater production, which is at the root of Aganbegyan’s proposals, could result in similar explosions as in Poland – only on a far wider scale.
The zig-zags of the bureaucracy from centralisation to decentralisation and back to centralisation and re-decentralisation, have not removed the fundamental impediment to the further development of Russian society, and that is the rule of the bureaucracy. But the inter-bureaucratic struggle will itself encourage the working class to come out into the political arena. Already Gorbachev supporters in letters to the Russian press have warned that he could be removed, but that “the masses would not remain silent”. This is a veiled threat to organise counter- demonstrations in the as yet unlikely event that Gorbachev could be removed. But while Gorbachev can permit a move in the direction of greater ‘freedom’ for the bureaucracy to discuss and debate the perspectives for Russian society, no such rights will be accorded to the working class. It is impossible for a Stalinist regime to permit free trade unions and democratic rights, as exist in the capitalist West.
Capitalism can tolerate these rights because of their roots in society as a result of their ownership of the means of production, whereas the Stalinist bureaucracy are a parasitic excrescence. Once the working class possesses the right to criticise and participate in elections, the very function of the bureaucracy will be called into question. As soon as the Polish workers in 1980-81 had established effective dual power, it was not just wages and trade union issues they wished to discuss, but the monstrous corruption and very role of the bureaucracy.
The only thing that prevented a political revolution in Poland – the establishment of workers’ democracy – was the absence of a far-sighted leadership. The representatives of KOR, like Kuroń and accidental figures like Lech Wałęsa played the main role in derailing the Polish revolution. Now, when the Polish workers, after seven years of repression, have regained the confidence and strength to go into battle, Kuroń and Wałęsa are warning them not to ‘provoke’ the regime, with veiled and not-so-veiled advice to keep quiet in order not to upset and ‘antagonise’ Gorbachev. Wałęsa has even, pathetically, offered a united front with Gorbachev for the democratisation of Russia and Poland.
Without the development of a far-sighted Marxist leadership, armed with the programme worked out by Trotsky for the political revolution, there can be a protracted period of upheavals, followed by an uneasy calm, as we have seen in Poland. To succeed, the political revolution – like the social revolution in the West – will now need the ‘subjective factor’. Because of the smallness of the forces of Marxism, the political revolution will not be in one act, but a process that develops over a period of time.
But recent developments in Russia, and the open clashes within the bureaucracy, are a harbinger that the process of the political revolution has now begun to unfold in Russia itself.
1Different translation: „Economy of time, to this all economy ultimately reduces itself.“
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