First Published: Canadian Revolution No. 6, October 1976
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Malcolm and Paul Saba
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The definite purpose of this paper is to show concretely that the once socialist Soviet Union has been transformed into an imperialist superpower. The paper seeks to address itself principally to the question of the economic base of the Soviet Union, even though essential interaction with the superstructure will not – could not – be omitted.
This question, concerning the nature of the Soviet mode of production must be seriously investigated, analysed and debated since it is precisely on this question that tremendous disruptions have been caused within the world communist movement over the course of the past twenty years. These disruptions are not confined to the comunist movement but significantly affect the world, in general. This world being characterized by the social forces of the bourgeoisie and the social forces of the proletariat.
A secondary purpose of the paper is to dispel the false notion, held by many, (especially defenders of the Soviet Union) that all those who “try to equate the Soviet Union with the United States” blindly and dogmatically adhere to the political line of the Chinese Communist Party. When it is true that the Communist Party of China and the Party of Labour of Albania are responsible for the initial work done on the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, when it is also true that many opportunist groups[1] dogmatically follow the political lines of these parties, it is extremely false to make that kind of generalization. It is false since it excludes those Marxist-Leninists outside of Albania and China, who, through thorough study and analysis have arrived at the Albanian position, and have not “swallowed” the position from some ’imaginary communist patriarch’ without question.
A concrete manifestation of such a study, emanating from outside China and Albania, is the work by the revolutionary intellectual, Martin Nicolaus, called Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR. This work will definitely serve to strengthen and further consolidate the political line of the genuine communist movement in the United States.
It is extremely important that the question of methodology be raised, not to assert a philosophical introduction in abstraction, but to show the concrete relation between method and analysis or more specifically between dialiectical materialism and political economy. It is the fusion of the Marxist philosophical method and outlook with the political economic analysis which makes that analysis a Marxist-Leninist one. In other words the method of political economy must be dialectical materialism. In the Preface to Capital, Marx states:
whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually nxy method in this striking and (as far as concerns my own application of it) generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectical method?[2]
In respect to the importance of the diatectical method and its relation to political economy, V.I. Lenin stated:
It is impossible completely to understand Marx’s Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic (dialectical logic). Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx/[3]
In the same light, it can be stated that unfamiliarity with dialectical materialism can lead to an analysis that is not dialectical but metaphysical (i.e. one-sided, isolated and subjective). Hence there have been and still are “Marxist-Leninist” groups who parrot dialectics in isolation, but use the metaphysical method in analysis and practice.[4]
What then explicitly is dialectical meterialism? Materialism, in the Marxist sense, states that matter i.e. the total, real objective world exists independent of the human will (mind). Dialectics is as, expressed by Engels as follows:
It is . . . from the history of nature and human society that the laws of dialectics are abstracted. For they are nothing but the most general laws of these two aspects of historical development, as well as of thought itself. And indeed they can be reduced in the main to three: The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice-versa; The law of the interpenetration of opposites; The law of the negation of the negation.[5]
Dialectical materialism [6] is diametrically opposed to the idealist [7] world outlook and the metaphysical method (previously described), which are the ideological bases for the bourgeois forces the world over. Consequently, it can be seen that proletarian political economy differs from bourgeois political economy due to the true nature of the correct scientific method of dialectical materialism, this writer attempts to implement this proletarian (Marxist-Leninist) approach in this paper.
Definite lines of demarcation necessarily have to be made between the view expressed in this paper and the view of other ?left forces with a ’Marxist-Leninist’ appearance. The trotskyites view the Soviet Union, as having been always capitalist i.e. that there was no qualitative rupture in 1917. The modern revisionists led by the Soviet social-imperialists necessarily see the USSR as maintaining its red political colour, from 1917 to the present time. A third main group, the centrists [8], in the main, claim that they do not “adhere either to the Moscow line or the Peking line, but are ’independent’ and retain the right to criticize both China and the Soviet Union.” They see that there are serious ’contradictions’ in the Soviet Union, but nevertheless have no reason to term it, other than as socialist society. Close scrutiny of the three tendencies exposes that they all represent both in ideology and practice one social class – the bourgeoisie. The forms of each tendency are different, but their essence or content are the same. Theoretically and in practice trotskyites have been the curse of many revolutionary movements and still are today, they put forward their anti-Leninist, petty-bourgeois ideas vehemently in the service of the bourgeoisie.[9] The modern revisionists adhere to the bourgeois political line of the ’new Tsars’ in the USSR, as will be shown. The centrists by virtue of the fact that they claim not to take a position (on what is no longer the ’Sino-Soviet dispute’ but a split in the international communist movement) end up in the camp of the bourgeoisie. Why can’t there be ’independence’? Mao speaks directly to this question when he asserts, “In a class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class and every kind of thinking without exception is stamped with the brand of a class.”[10] The fact that centrists state that the Soviet Union is not capitalist, but socialist society with ’contradictions’, objectively places them alongside the revisionists. The correct view of the Soviet Union upheld and maintained by genuine Marxist-Leninists, particularly, the Chinese Communist Party and the Party of Labour of Albania, is that the October Revolution in the Soviet Union in 1917 ushered in the dictatorship of the proletariat under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party of which Lenin was the head. This proletarian state was further consolidated under the leadership of Stalin, as head of the party until his death in 1953. Three years after Stalin’s death a qualitative change had taken place in Soviet society, the bourgeoisie had retained their dictatorship, setting up Krushchev as their leader. As will be shown, this is the correct proletarian view of the Soviet Union. The other tendencies mentioned are firm defenders of the bourgeoisie and their ideology.
This paper will contain four sections: The first will deal with laying the theoretical foundation for the discussion. Essentially this section sets out to scientifically define the capitalist mode of production and the socialist mode of production. Arising out of those definitions comes the crucial theoretical question of what is the material basis for the restoration of capitalism in general? This will concretely be addressed. Second, the analysis will briefly trace the political-economic development of the USSR during the time of Lenin and Stalin. Third, the focus will be placed on how the new bourgeoisie gained power and what immediate and far-reaching policies and plans were implemented during the Krushchev era. Finally, and most important, the fourth section will outline the full restoration of capitalism to its highest stage – imperialism, in the Soviet Union, and consequently show the present day nature of Soviet society.
In the course of the life of a human being, he(she) does not move from childhood (a) today, to senility tomorrow. There is a process that occurs in the development of a child through to the stage where the person has experienced puberty and then on to ’old age’. From this primitive biological point of view can be detected a definite period in the process when the person is neither in the childhood stage nor had reached ’old age’ (biologically reaching a stage, where physical activity has slowed down considerably). This period between the development of puberty within the human being and the time when old age has set in, contains both the seeds of early childhood in terms of activity, for example, and the seeds of old age, in terms of the maturation of organs within the body.
Similarly, the process of transition from capitalism to communism is not one, as many persons think, where there is capitalism today, the revolution tomorrow and full communism the next day. This kind of error is related to the specific method one uses as has been pointed out in the introduction. The failure to see a process and to see only isolated forms, leads to statements like, “Marx’s description of communism is Utopia”, “Marx is just another religious prophet talking about the ’good life’." However a closer look at the dialectical materialist method – and Marx’s application of it tells a different story. On the basis of the seeds of communism that Marx detected in his monumental and historic study of the capitalist mode of production, Marx gave a general outline of what communism would be like. However, just like the example of the person cited, Marx also saw that distinct period where “two mutually opposing factors exist simultaneously, dying capitalism and growing communism.”[11] This period, which Marx termed “the first (or lower) phase of communist society”[12] is knows popularly as socialism. In order to understand the interconnection of these three stages it is necessary to focus on each separately to gain a clearer more specific and particular understanding of each. It is important to note that it is a scientific interpretation of each that is sought here.
If one were to ask people for their view of what capitalism is, one would ascertain different answers depending on who one asks. One answer might be, “Capitalism, is the system of free enterprise, democracy and freedom”, another might be “Capitalism is a system where the social class – the bourgeoisie exploits the social class – the proletariat.” The first assertion is undoubtedly an “extreme’ bourgeois one. The second, however, even though it may not, could lead to another statement, that “the Soviet Union is not capitalist because there is no identifiable bourgeois class like North America or Western Europe.” This previous statement is a more subtle bourgeois comment which confuses form and essence. What is crucial are the essential features, in a political-economic sense, of capitalism. What is crucial is the essential definite relations between people in respect to production, distribution, exchange and consumption. Karl Marx comes to firm grips with this question, when he states:
In themselves money and commodities are no more capital than are means of production and of subsistence. They want transforming into capital. But this transformation itself can only take place under certain circumstances that centre in this viz., that two very different kinds of commodity-possessors must come face to face and into contact; on the one hand, the owners of money, means of production, means of subsistence, who are eager to increase the sum of values they possess, by buying other people’s labour-power; on the other hand, free-labourers, the sellers of their own labour-power, and therefore the sellers of labour.[13] (emphasis added)
Marx goes on further to say that; “the capitalist system presupposes the complete separation of the labourers from all property in the means by which they can realise their labour.”
Marx again emphasizes the essence of the capitalist mode of production, in the section within Capital, where he discusses “the Buying and Selling of Labour-Power”, he reiterates:
The historical conditions of its (capitalism) existence are by no means given with the mere circulation of money and commodities. It (capitalism) can spring into life only when the owner of the means of production and subsistence meets in the market with the free labourer selling his labour-power.[14]
Marx further gives an insight as to the character of each of the commodity-possessors he is describing, in making a clearer demarcation between them. He asserts: “In order that a man may be able to sell commodities other then labour-power, he must of course have the means of production, as raw materials, implements etc.” And further that:
For the conversion of his money into capital, therefore, the owner of money must meet in the market with the free labourer, free in the double sense, that as a free man he can dispose of his labour-power as his own commodity, and that on the other hand he has
Marx has laid bare the essence of the social relations of capitalist society, as seen above. Marx is not only saying that capitalist society is characterized with the two opposite forces, which are represented by means of production being commodities and labour-power being a commodity. He is also saying that if one finds that in a particular capitalist society that means of production are commodities that one must also find labour-power as a commodity and vice-versa. This is due to the fact that one is the antithesis of the other, one cannot survive or perpetuate itself without the other. It will be shown, concretely that means of production and labour-power are commodities in the Soviet Union, the former category in fact, is freely discussed in the Soviet literature.
Another political-economic category, which is frequently seen, even more so in the Soviet economic literature is that of profit and the fact that production is geared around producing a money-profit. The cornerstone of Marxian economic theory is the theory of surplus value, more properly, the law of surplus value, (profit) which explains the blatant, stark reality of the exploitation of the working class by the owners of means of production. Yet Soviet leaders and economists still insist to speak of profit under ’socialism’. What did Marx actually have to say about profit, in relation to different economic systems (modes of production)? Precisely this, that:
The process of production considered on the one hand as the unity of the labour-process and the process of creating value, is production of commodities: considered on the other hand as the unity of the labour-process and the process ofproducing surplus-value, it is the capitalist process of production or capitalist production of commodities.[16]
Marx goes on to say in a later section of Capital, that, “Capitalistic production is not merely the production of commodities, it is essentially The production of surplus value.”[17] If one is still not oconvinced of the profit role in relation to capitalism and any other mode of production for that matter, Marx explicitly states, “. . . surplus value presupposes capitalistic production; . . .”[18] The relation of these three elements, the commodity character of means of production and labour-power and the question of surplus value (profit) are extremely important in viewing the similarities and differences of capitalisrn, socialism and full communism.
For individual capitalists profit and surplus value do not necessarily amount to the same quantity. However taking the capitalist in totality as a class, the sum total of profits made by each individual bourgeois is equal to the sum total of surplus value expropriated from the proletariat. Leontiev in Political Economy states:
Within the framework of the whole of society the sum total of production prices is equal to the sum total of the values of commodities and the sum total of profits is equal to the sum total of unpaid labour of the workers (emphasis added) (Leontiv: Political Economy, Proletarian Publishers, pg. 137-138.)
It is quite possible that in more efficient areas of socialist economy (e.g. socialist Soviet Union from the 1930’s to 1953 and today’s China) that profits can be generated i.e. the revenue gained from production can exceed the cost of production. In less efficient areas, the cost of production can exceed the revenue gained thus allowing for a loss. Hwever this loss can be termed a “planned loss” since the main force of central national economic planning under socialism is that production must be for use not profit. Hence funds from more profitable enterprises andor industrial branches are channeled to those operating at a loss with the aim of alleviating the uneven development of the national economy. Therefore surplus value is nonexistent under socialism.
As was mentioned previously Marx could describe the general outline of what full or the second and higher stage of communist society would be like, based on its roots, being present under capitalism. What precisely was Marx referring to, as the higher phase of communism? Is it a society where there are equal wages for all? Does it have any resemblance to a society flowing with milk and honey topped off with angels? The best source to seek clarity on this question is Marx himself:
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour and with it also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished, after labour has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want, after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round 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![19]
Marx not only has described very generally the conditions for the higher stage of communism, but also by negation has informed us, of what communism will not contain. It will not be characterized by commodity production either in the sphere of means of production, labour-power or distribution of consumer goods. The former two mentioned have been quite adequately shown to be part and parcel of capitalism, the latter is an issue in question and will be dealt with later. The point to be made here is that negating all the spheres of commodity-character, also means negating money and exchange. In other words, production takes place for the well-being of the whole society, and each person takes from the public stores ’according to their needs’. In essence buying and selling is eliminated. When the Soviet revisionists say that they are now at the stage of “communist construction” at the height of free market in means of production, labour-power and consumer goods. Also at a time when profit is the sole aim of the Soviet enterprise. These revisionist leaders must be attempting to play a practical joke on the world – they can’t be serious! Having outlined the essential features of capitalism and communism (the higher stage), the definite character of socialism (the lower stage of communism) can be more clearly seen and understood. It was mentioned earlier that socialism contains elements of capitalism and communism. The question at this point is, what specifically and concretely are the similarities and differences socialism has in respect to its predecessor and to that which supersedes it? In respect to the relationship of capitalism to socialism Marx states:
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 birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.[20]
Lenin, summing up Marx’s view, is more specific when he states:
Marx shows the course of development of communist society which is compelled to abolish at first only the “injustice” of the means of production having been seized by individuals, and which is unable at once to eliminate the other injustice, which consists in the distribution of articles of consumption, “according to the amount of labour performed” (and not according to needs).[21]
Socialism, then, differs from capitalism in this way, that the means of production are now social property i.e. individual ownership of means of production can not take place i.e. means of production can not assume commodity-character (neither can labour-power, see pg 9). Socialism shares similar ground with capitalism, in “the distribution of articles of consumption, ’according to the amount of labour performed’.” It is crucial to understand that the latter characteristic described is similar to that in capitalism but not the same. Marx adamantly points out that:
Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labour, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass into the ownership of individuals except individual means of consumption.[22]
Lenin, referring to “the scientific difference between Socialism and Communism” states that, “in so far as the means of production become common property, the word ’Communism’ is also applicable, providing we do not forget this is not complete Communism.”[23] (emphasis in the original). Thus, Lenin laid out the similarity between socialism and communism. What is it though, that makes the stages of communism qualitatively different? Lenin answers:
Hence the interesting phenomenon that Communism in its first phase retains ’the narrow horizon of bourgeois right’.[24]
It can been seen then, that the concrete form of bourgeois right, in the sphere of distribution of articles of consumption, is a remnant of capitalism existent in socialist (lower stage of communism) society. Likewise, the concrete form of a blossoming full communism, is the character of the means of production being social property. Consequently, the proletarian state remains throughout the whole historical period of socialism in order to, in the short term restrict and, in the long term, eliminate bourgeois right (remnants of capitalism) and subsequently enter the era of communism, where the state is no longer necessary. However, the purpose of this paper is to show what takes place when bourgeois right is not restricted and expands until the point where the whole society is contaminated and capitalism is restored. Socialism, in respect to the previous statement, is identical to capitalism, in this, that class struggle still exists. Its marked difference is that instead of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie there is the dictatorship of the proletariat – the working class is ruling class. In summing up the process of development from capitalism to communism, Lenin concisely hits the nail on the head in asserting that:
The great significance of Marx’s explanations is that here, too, he consistently applies materialist dialectics, the theory of development, and regards Communism as something which develops out of capitalism.[25]
In concluding the question of the scientific concepts of socialism and capitalism, it is useful to be acquainted with certain secondary attributes of each mode of production, which certain renegades, being students of metaphysics, try to elevate to primary or essential importance. The revolutionary intellectual Martin Nicolaus states the case well when he says that:
If the direct producers, the workers, are not divorced from the means of production, and if consequently neither these means nor labour-power function as commodities, then no survivals of ’bourgeois right’, nor any amount of other inequities and injustices, can allow of such a society being properly termed capitalist.
Inversely, if the direct producers have been separated from the means of production, and consequently both labour power and means of production are exchanged as commodites, then no amount of social welfare benefits, no nationalizations, no statutory curbs on excess profiteering, no ameliorative measures whatever can conceal or modify the capitalist character of such a society. [26]
In other words it is not the form, but the essence which is crucial.
The ability to identify, whether a society is a socialist or capitalist one, will definitely allow the answering of the question as to what is the nature of the Soviet mode of production. However, what has to be dealt with here is a socialist state, which degenerated into a capitalist state. Marx, himself, and many other economists have discussed the development of capitalism out of feudalism, but not the phenomenon of the restoration of capitalism, once socialism has been consolidated. It is only in keeping with materialist dialectics that the how and why of the restoration of capitalism i.e. the material basis of such an occurence, to gain a clearer picture of the restoration process, is viewed.
As has been mentioned that category which makes socialism qualitatively different from full communism, and that which aligns socialism and capitalism along similar ground is the phenomenon of ’bourgeois right’. It is the continuance of this bourgeois right in the area of the distribution of consumer goods, which is the crucial element in question, with regard to the restoration process. What precisely is bourgeois right? It is equality in form and inequality in essence. What does this mean? Simply this, that equality reigns in the fact that the producers of society, “are regarded only as workers, and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored.”[27] Consequently, the fact that labour is the common measure used to determine the distribution of articles of consumption is also a sign of equality. The inequality lies in the fact, that Marx clearly points out in saying that “everything else is ignored” (i.e. that the producers are only workers.) What is it that is being ignored? The unequal endowment of attributes among persons i.e. that some persons are superior to others mentally and/or physically and can thus labour more intensively and for a longer period of time than others. Therefore for labour to be actually an equal standard of measurement it must take into account duration or intensity of labour. Hence, “this equal right” (to articles of consumption) “is an unequal right for unequal labour”. Apart from the inequity just illustrated, there is the injustice which is found in responsibilities. For example, one worker may be married, another single, one workers may be married with six children, another married with only one child. The consequences of this Marx frankly explains:
Thus, with an equal performance of labour, and hence an equal share in the social consumption fund, one will receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on.[28]
Marx’s solution to this problem is that, “to avoid all these defects, right instead of being equal would have to be unequal”. He further continues to make it emphatically clear that, “these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society . . . To get to understand bourgeois right, in a thorough way it is important to look at some of its features. Lenin outlines its function under socialism as follows:
However, it (bourgeois right) continues to exist as far as its other part is concerned; it continues to exist in the capacity of regulator (determining factor) in the distribution of products and the allotment of labour among the members of society.[29]
In describing the nature of bourgeois right Lenin makes no bones about the fact that it presents itself as an opposing force to the construction of socialism and communism. He says, bourgeois right is that “which compels one to calculate with the cold-heartedness of a Shylock whether one has not worked half an hour more than somebody else, whether one is not getting less pay than somebody else. . . .”[30]
The most important lesson that Lenin gives, however, is on the question of how to contain bourgeois right, how to, at first restrict and eventually eliminate, bourgeois right. It is on this question that Lenin is quite categoric:
And therefore there is no other standard than of ’bourgeois right’ (since right can never be higher than the economic and cultural structure of society). To this extent, therefore, there still remains the need for a state, which, while safeguarding the public ownership of means of production, would safeguard equality in labour and equality in the distribution of products.[31]
Lenin does not stop here, but a few pages later in State and Revolution, he points out the character of this state that he refers to, and also the duration of its existence:
Until the ’higher’ phase of Communism arrives, the Socialists demand the strictest control by society and by the state of the measure of labour and the measure of consumption: but this control must start . . . , with the establishment of workers’ control over the capitalists, and must be exercised not by a state of bureaucrats, but by a state of armed workers.[32]
Essentially, Lenin is saying that until socialist society has made that qualitative leap to full communist society, that there must be strict workers’ control of the state. In other words the proletarian character of the state does not change until it withers away and communist society reigns supreme.
Viewing these facts in light of the bankrupt revisionist theory and practice of the “state of the whole people”, it not only shows that the Brezhnev-Kosygin renegade clique (and Krushchev before them) need to take lessons in the most elementary ABC’s of Marxism-Leninism, but also more seriously that this “state of the whole people” is merely a smoke screen, an attempt to conceal the reality of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in the Soviet Union.
It is extremely important to concretize the theory previously outlined, the aim of Marxist-Leninists is not to simply analyze but to show with their Marxist-Leninist tools that practice, which is the criterion of truth, is their aim – the practice of advancing the interests of the proletariat on to the domain of communism and classless society. Consequently, it is useful to cite concrete experiences given by Chinese Marxist-Leninists, in how the Chinese state restricts bourgeois right, and how it has successfully combatted attempts of a restoration of capitalism by revisionists and old bourgeois elements in China. There are two specific articles to be drawn from, both originally appearing in the Chinese theoretical journal Red Flag (Hongqi). They are: On the Social Basis of the Lin Piao Anti-Party Clique by Yao Wen-Yuan and Grasping the Dialectical Concept of the Unity of Opposites by Yen Feng.
Yao, by citing the example of the attempt of a coup d’etat by the Lin Piao restorationist, bourgeois force of the Chinese Communist Party, clearly shows the methods of such cliques attempting to seize political power from the proletariat. Yao states:
As an agent in the Party, an agent of the bourgeoisie working hard for a restoration, the Lin Piao anti-Party clique was wild in its attack on the Party and the dictatorship of the proletariat, so much so that it set up an organization of secret agents and plotted a counterrevolutionary coup d’etat. Such frenzy is a reflection of the fact that the reactionaries who have lost political power and the means of production inevitably will resort to every means to recapture lost positions of the exploiting classes.[33]
Yao goes on further to give clarity on the nature of the bourgeois forces involved in the attempt at restoration in China; he says:
The Lin-Piao anti-Party clique represented not only the hope of the overthrown landlord and capitalist classes for a resotoration but also hope of the newly engendered bourgeois elements in socialist society for usurping power.
Yao draws a very clear picture of the insidious character of the restorationists and shows the form they adopt, realizing that it is the proletariat they are attempting to subvert. Yao points out:
The new bourgeois elements who arise as a result of erosion by bourgeois ideas and the existence of bourgeois right generally share the political features of double-dealers and upstarts. In order to carry out capitalist activities under the dictatorship of the proletariat, they always put up a certain socialist signboard, since their restoration activities aim not at seizing back any means of production of which they have been dispossessed but at grabbing the means of production they have never possessed, they are especially greedy, anxious to swallow at one gulp the wealth belonging to the whole people or the collective and place it under their private ownership.[34]
In spelling out theoretically the conditions for restoration, Yao asserts that:
The existence of bourgeois influence and the existence of the influence of international imperialism and revisionism are the political and ideological source of the new bourgeois elements, while the existence of bourgeois right provides the vital economic basis for their emergence.[35]
More concretely, Yao states that:
The programme advanced by the Lin-Piao anti-Party clique in Outline of Project “57V neither dropped from the skies nor was it innate in the minds of those who described themselves as “super geniuses” it was a reflection of social being.[36]
In summing up the occurrence of restorationist attempts by bourgeois proponents, and the conditions that give rise to it, and doing this in the same dialectical materialist way as Yao, Yen has this to say:
The two mutually contradictory aspects of an objective thing are not dead and rigid, but living, conditional and mobile and they transform themselves into each other. In socialist society, the communist factors and the capitalist factors and the proletariat and the bourgeoisie interact interpenetrate and in given conditions transform themselves into one another.[37]
In discussing the ways in which the revisionist elements, whose social basis is bourgeois right can be contained, restricted and kept under strict control of the proletarian state, Yao comments thus:
... in our socialist society there are still classes and class struggle, there are still the soil and conditions for engendering capitalism. In order to gradually reduce such soil and conditions and finally eliminate them altogether we must persevere in continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.[38]
The final comment taken, here, from Yao gives the grim view of what would take place (take place in China and what has taken place in the USSR) if bourgeois right, and the bourgeois elements in society that it gives rise to, were not restricted. Yao’s words are:
If we do not follow this course, but call instead for the consolidation, extension and strengthening of bourgeois right and that part of inequality it entails, the inevitable result will be polarization, i.e. a small number of people will in the course of distribution acquire increasing amounts of commodities and money . . .
And further that,
. . . when the economic strength of the bourgeoisie grows to a certain extent, its agents will ask for political rule,. . .and (try to) openly restore and develop the capitalist system. Once in power, the new bourgoeisie will first of all carry out a bloody suppression of the people and restore capitalism in the superstructure including all spheres of ideology and culture; . . .(What will inevitably take place is that) a handful of new bourgeois elements (will) monopolize the means of production. . . . Such is the process of restoration that has already taken place in the Soviet Union.[39]
These facts stated in the lengthy quotations by Yao will be shown as the paper develops. However, first it is necessary to take a brief political-economic view of the socialist period of Soviet history.
The scientific prediction of Marx and Engels became a concrete reality on October 25th, 1917 in Russia, when the Bolshevik Party seized state power thus leading the broad masses in general and the working class in particular to depose the Russian bourgeoisie. This seizure of state power and expropriation of the bourgeoisie marked the beginning of the end of the supreme dominance of world capitalism, and the triumph of socialism in one country. The second historic introduction of the dictatorship of the proletariat (the first being the Paris Commune) was to have far-reaching international consequences as well as develop profound political-economic change within the Soviet Union itself.
In the immediate months following the October Revolution up until the middle of 1918 several important political and economic measures were taken to consolidate the Soviet power. The Bolsheviks realized that “in order to consolidate the Soviet power, the old bourgeois state machine had to be shattered and destroyed and a new Soviet state machine set up in its place.”[40] It was necessary also for the Soviet government to suppress all counter-revolutionary forces. In terms of the economy, there was nationalization of the land, and also of all large-scale industry. However, the political and economic state of the country was far from being efficient and stable. This period of strife, which in fact was an extreme test of strength for the Soviet government and the masses of Soviet people, was characterized, in the main, by three main components: Within the international arena, the Soviet Union was the prey of fourteen imperialist states, including the major imperialist states of that period – Germany, France and Great Britain. The Soviet government hastily set out to bring about peace in order to safeguard the birth of the young socialist state.
The Soviet Government called upon ’all belligerent people and their governments to start immediate negotiations for a just democratic peace.’ But the ’allies’ – Great Britain and France – refused to accept the proposal of the Soviet Government. In view of this refusal, the Soviet Government, in compliance with the will of Soviets, decided to start negotiations with Germany.[41]
The second component was the rise of the White Guards as counter-revolutionary forces, trying to extinguish the Soviet proletarian dictatorship in its embryonic stage. These reactionary elements represented the aspiration of the just recently fallen bourgeoisie and landlords wanting to regain power. These desires expressed in a concrete way gave rise to a violent civil war. It is also important to note that the fallen bourgeoisie of the Soviet Union was most definitely in collusion with, and receiving aid and military support from the international bourgeoisie, who (as mentioned before)’were also attempting to snuff out the Bolshevik state. The final aspect to be mentioned is that concerning the contradictions within the Bolshevik Party itself. Those contradictions reflected essentially what was taking place in the society at large. The forces in the party which were representative of the views of the bourgeoisie inside the party were led by Leon Trotsky.and Nicolai Bukharin. In relation to the prevailing international situation of the time it was documented that:
Lenin, Stalin and Sverdlov had to wage a stubborn fight on the Central Committee against Trotsky, Bukharin and other Trotskyites before they secured a decision in favour of conclusion of peace. Bukharin and Trotsky, Lenin declared, ’actually helped the German imperialists and hindered the growth and development of the revolution in Germany.’ (Lenin, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Vol. XXII, pg. 307)[42]
In light of these three aspects, which left not only political life, but also economic activity in disarray, a series of political-economic measures were instituted between 1918-1921, appropriately designated – ’War Communism’. Due to the de-vasted character of the industrial sector of the economy, which felt most the ravages of civil war and imperialist invasion, the essential feature of the policies of war communism was the expropriation of all the surplus from the peasantry. This surplus from the rural sector contributed to the welfare of the industrial workers in the cities and the soldiers.
Having weathered the hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes of the period of War Communism, in 1921 the Soviet Union embarked on a course of reconstruction with the aim of consolidation of Soviet socialist power. This new course took on the contradictory character of the Soviet working class in particular and the masses in general led by the Bolshevik Party taking one step backward in order to make two steps forward. These new measures succeeding those of war communism were known as the New Economic Policy. (NEP).
The NEP period of Soviet history comprised three broad phases: The retreat in the direction of capitalism, the consolidation and the new offensive toward socialism. All three phases, and not only the retreat, formed part of the NEP design.[43]
The total design came to an end in the late 1920’s however Lenin himself called to an end the first phase of the NEP in March 1922. The NEP programme can be described as a strategy to dig up the capitalist economic base and cultivate in its place a socialist one. What was the step backward that the NEP advocated? What was this ’retreat’ referred to, by Lenin? Lenin answers thus:
In particular, a free market and capitalism, both subject to state control, are now being permitted and are developing; on the other hand, the socialised enterprises are being put on what is called profit basis i.e. They are being organised on commercial lines. . . .[44]
Lenin further states:
Or else the proletarian state proves capable, relying on the peasantry, of keeping the bridle on Messieurs the capitalists in order to direct capitalism that will be subordinate to the state and serve the state.[45]
Why restore capitalist relations within the economic base? The devastation of the previous period had virtually eliminated the proletariat as a class involved in production, consequently in order to regenerate, recreate and bring back into existence a flourishing proletarian class, the proletarian state allowed the reorganization of the antithesis of the proletariat – the bourgeoisie – under set, restricted conditions. This bourgeoisie under the strictest supervision of the proletarian state would be phased out, having fulfilled its task of restoring the proletariat, and at the same time socialist forms and principles, such as State ownership, were to be phased in. This phase-in socialism and phase-out capitalism is an apt dialectical description of the transition to a full socialist economic base. As Lenin briefly puts it, it is the period of transition when “capitalism has been smashed but socialism has not yet been built.”[46]
Beginning with the period starting from October 1917 up to 1956 the Soviet society was under the dictatorship of the proletariat, with the working class as ruling class. In summing up the NEP period under Lenin, Stalin makes it clear:
The question of NEP I have in mind Comrade Krupskaya and the speech she delivered on NEP she says: In essence, NEP is capitalism permitted under certain conditions, capitalism that the proletarian state keeps on a chain . . .“ Is that true? Yes, and No. That we are keeping capitalism on a chain, and will keep it so as long as it exists, is a fact, that is true. But to say that NEP is capitalism is nonsense, utter nonsense. NEP is a special policy of the proletarian state calculated on permitting capitalism while the key positions are held by the proletarian state calculated on a struggle between the elements of capitalism and the elements of socialism, calculated on an increase in the role of the socialist elements to the detriment of the capitalist elements, calculated on the victory of the socialist elements over the capitalist elements, calculated on the abolution of class and on the building of the foundations of socialist economy. Whoever fails to understand the transitional dual nature of NEP departs from Leninism. If NEP were capitalism, the NEP Russia that Lenin spoke about would be capitalist Russia . . . Lenin did not say . . .: “Capitalist Russia will be socialist Russia.“ but preferred a different formula, NEP Russia will be socialist Russia.[47]
This penetrating dialectical-materialist view put foward by Stalin of the NEP seeing it is an ever changing process in motion under the guidance of the class of the future (proletariat) relegates to the morgue any metaphysical notion emphasizing the rigidity of capitalist relations during this period of proletarian dictatorship (socialism) in the Soviet Union.
On January 21st, 1924 Lenin, our great leader and teacher, the creator of the Bolsehvik Party, passed away in the village of Gorki, near Moscow.[48]
Two years following this tragic loss of profound leadership, the Party took up the struggle for the socialist industrialization of the USSR between 1926-1929, and immediately following in the early 1930’s extended these socialist principles to the agricultural sector in the form of collectivization. It is the latter struggle which is quite controversial, and which will be dealt with here, first.
The NEP period apart from restoring capitalist relations within the industrial sector, also allowed in agriculture the freedom of private commodity production and exchange. This state of affairs heavily reinforced the political-economic status of the kulaks – the rural bourgeoisie – who were no longer to give up their entire surplus product to the government, but rather a tax in kind. With the positive socialist new things that were constantly implemented in the industrial sector, this sector began to transcend the level of private ownership and ever more characterize public ownership, (even during the early 1920’s in the time of Lenin, take for example the subbotniks). It was in the light of the disparity between the consolidating socialist industrial sector and the strong bourgeois elements in the area of agriculture which led the Bolshevik Party under the leadership of Stalin to undertake the policies of socialist collectivization of agriculture. It must be emphasized that collectivization was not an over-night affair, already during the mid-1920’s collectivization of agriculture was being gradually introduced and at the same time the policy of restricting the kulak elements was vehemently enforced. Progress within the gradual process of ’phase-in the collective and state-farms and phase-out the kulaks’ can be seen as follows:
In 1927 the kulaks still produced over 600,000,000 poods of grain, of which about 130,000,000 poods were available for sale. In that year the collective and state farms had only 35,000,000 poods of grain available for sale.[49]
However, with the further development of the collective and state farms and “like-wise . . . the progress made by socialist industry in supplying the countryside with tractors and agricultural machinery . . ..”, by 1929
. . . the collective farms and state farms already produced no less than 400,000,000 poods of grain, of which over 130,000,000 poods were marketed. This was more than the kulaks had marketed in 1927. And in 1930 the collective farms and state farms were to produce and actually did produce, over 400,000,000 poods of grain for the market which was incomparably more than had been marketed by the kulaks in 1927.[50]
It was at this juncture that the Bolshevik Party led an open offensive against the kulak class in order not to restrict but to eliminate them, now that the new socialist forms held a firm grip on the agricultural scene. The policy of restricting the kulaks was one of imposing high taxes and requiring them to sell grain to the state at fixed prices; the policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class took on a revolutionary posture of violent struggle, class against class, i.e. the peasantry against the kulaks. The CPSU(B) documents three problems which this revolution solved as follows:
It eliminated the most numerous class of exploiters in our country, the kulak class, the mainstay of capitalist restoration.
It transferred the most numerous labouring class in our country, the peasant class, from the path of individual farming, which breeds capitalism, to the path of co-operative, collective, socialist farming.
It furnished the Soviet regime with a socialist base in agriculture – the most extensive and vitally necessary, yet least developed, branch of national economy.[51]
Like any other revolutionary social transformation of which force is the midwife, the struggle against the kulaks, led by the CPSU and the proletariat and based on the proletariat-peasantry alliance, was violent and bloody and also contained the mistakes and excesses that are usual accompaniments of such upheavals.
One of the major errors made concerned the degree of collectivization. The Party resolution stated “. . . that the chief form of the collective farm movement at the given stage must be the agricultural artel, in which only the principal means of production are collectivized.”[52]
Many Party workers distorted the Party policy, some in their zeal to force the pace of collectivization too rapidly, employed incorrect tactics in persuading peasants to join the collective farms. In fact, it was found that the voluntary principle of forming collective farms was being violated, and that in a number of districts the peasants were being forced into the collective farms under threat of being dispossessed and so on.[53]
Another aspect in which errors previaled was in the fact that “. . . pigheaded attempts were made to skip the artel form and pass straight to the commune; dwellings, milch-cows, small livestock, poultry, etc., not exploited for the market were all collectivized.”[54]
These mistakes by the Party workers did not go unseen by the kulaks and their agents, consequently they fanned the flames of these errors, attempting to gain support from the peasantry against the Party and the proletariat. This caused serious discontent among the peasant masses. Thus on March 2nd, 1930 by decision of the Central Committee of the CPSU Stalin’s article, “Dizzy with Success”, was published. Stalin pointed out the gross mistakes made by Party workers which were essentially distortions of the Party line and warned that Party workers not be carried away by the success of collectivization. “The Central Committee, (emphasizing the importance of exposing Party mistakes of dissidents), "pointed out that these ’Left’ distortions were of direct service to the class enemy. (Therefore), the broad masses of the peasants now saw that the line of the Bolshevik Party had nothing in common with the pigheaded ’Left’ distortions of local authorities.”[55]
The main and decisive factor of this revolutionary upsurge were not mistakes or errors but the victory of the peasantry over the kulaks, the victory of socialism over capitalism in the sphere of agriculture.
In the mid-1930’s the socialist economic base was consolidated and socialism flourished throughout the Soviet Union under the tutelage of the dictatorship of the proletariat. However, there are many who accept the thesis that the Soviet Union today is state capitalist, but who also claim that Stalin and the Party of his period were actively involved in its construction. This view metaphysically lumps Leninism, upheld by Stalin, and trotskyism, a form of bourgeois ideology, into one parcel thus masking reality. Two proponents of this view Bettelheim (b) and Sweezy (c), accuse Comrade Stalin of bowing to economism, of not recognizing that class struggle still exists under socialism and following from this having an erroneous view of the state. In a book review of Bettelheim’s work Les Luttes de Classes en URSS (Class struggle in the USSR) Sweezy makes clear his affiliation to Bettelheim’s thesis concerning the Stalin period. In fact there is a semblance of truth in the position held by these theoreticians. It is true that Stalin erred in stating in 1936 that Soviet society was classless society. However the remaining charges, that Stalin upheld the productive forces theory and that he held a non-Marxian view of the state are totally without basis. This is not surprising since amidst the unceasing praise for socialist China and the big noise made about dialectical and historical materialism as a method, the dictatorship of the proletariat is not once mentioned as the foundation-stone principle of socialist construction. Neither do these academicians put forward much less distinguish – in a theoretical framework – the political-economic elements and compenents of socialism and capitalism.
It is extremely important to refute such rubbish, with the ample evidence available which testifies to the existence of a proletarian dictatorship and hence a proletarian state and the full implementation of socialist economic relations throughout the 1930’s, the 1940’s right up until Stalin’s death in 1953 through to 1956 when the new Tsars actually seized power. In 1952 Stalin made it clear that:
Today there are two basic forms of socialist production in our country: state, or publicly-owned production and collective farm production, which cannot be said to be publicly owned. In the state enterprises, the means of production and the product of production are national property. In the collective farm, although the means of production (land, machines) do belong to the state, the product of production is the property of the different collective farms since the labour, as well as the seed, is their own, while the land, which has been turned over to collective farms in perpetual tenure, is used by them virtually as their own property, in spite of the fact that they cannot sell, buy, lease or mortgage it.[56]
This means that means of production, whether in the industrial sector or the agricultural sector were not privately owned i.e. they were not commodities but public property, and consequently labour-power could not assume a commodity character. (See section I. What do the concepts of capitalism and socialism mean in a scientific Marxist-Leninist sense Stalin continues to point out that the only “sphere of action” of commodity production “is confined to items of personal consumption . . .”[57] “As a matter of fact,” Stalin reiterates, “consumer goods, which are needed to compensate the labour power expended in the process of production, are produced and realized in our country as commodities coining under the operation of the law of value. It is precisely here (and only here) that the law of value exercises its influence on production.”[58] The political-economic state described by Stalin above existed since the early 1930’s in the USSR.
In addressing the question of socialist construction and consolidation in the Soviet Union more concretely, the industrial sphere will be focused on, since many argue, just like Bettelheim and Sweezy that the struggle for public ownership “... was never even begun.”[59]" This is not only a vilification of Lenin and Stalin, but also a distortion of history. Bettelheim states that: “Hence the watchwords of the (Stalin) period: ’technique decides everything’ and ’overtake and surpass the most advanced capitalist countries”[60]#8221; is proof of the economism of Stalin. However the bourgeois scholar David Granick disagrees slating: “Instead they start from the basic premise of the unity of economics and politics. . .”[61] Granick does not stop at that conclusion but goes on to point out that aspect of the unity which is of primary concern saying that, “they (the CPSU(B)) declare that political questions should always take priority over those limited to economics.”[62] In order to concretize his assertions Granick makes it clear that:
The executives of Soviet heavy industry (in the Stalin era) contrast sharply with the managerial group of modern industry else where in the world. Political reliability is stressed as an even more important qualification than expert knowledge. There is no place in management ranks for those who view their work from a technical as opposed to a political standpoint.[63]
Bettleheim also puts forward that the Soviet regime during this period was highly bureaucratic and that, “in fact, the consolidation in the factory of the relations of authority and command between administration, cadres, specialists, and technicians on the one hand and the direct producers on the other has provided fertile ground for the growth of Soviet revisionism.”[64] Stalin himself refuted this nonsense in 1937, not only of the question of bureaucracy, but also refuted the fact that he was disseminating economism. Stalin definitely viewed the masses of toiling people as the subject of history. Stalin said:
In order to arrive at the correct resolution of a question it is necessary to combine these two experiences (the limited perspective of the masses and the one-sided view of the leadership) only in that case will leadership be correct. That is what it means not only to teach the masses but to learn from the masses[65]
The concrete implementation of putting politics in command and learning from the masses during the Soviet socialist period is also historical fact. There were four main components to “mass participation” in the management of industry. First, there was the supervision of the work of management by the workers and firm criticism of its shortcomings. There was the system whereby workers offered suggestions and recommendations which would improve management and make production more efficient. Third there was the actual performance of administrative duties by the workers who did this in addition to their regular work and finally “... the movement upward of rank-and-file workers into posts in management and into leading positions in Party and trade union organizations.”[66] All components of this mass participation were implemented with success; however, the second and fourth items were the most widespread. The second item took the form of a conference. “Sometimes all the employees of the whole plant will be welcome. . .”[67] In 1938, Director P. Taranichev, gave the following report concerning a production conference which Granick summarizes thus:
One director describes how on taking office, he called a production conference of all workers in an assembly department which was lagging behind in plan fulfilment. Only after the conference, and on the basis of the discussion there did the plant administration work out a concrete program of organizational and technical measures designed to secure increases in production.[68]
Directors and department superintendents were often reprimanded and severely admonished for acting as though they should not heed the concrete criticisms of the workers. These production conferences where the rank-and-file workers were able to exercise their right of decision-making over the means of production which they owned, were a commonplace occurrence, during the 1930’s and 1940’s of Soviet Russia, and indeed up until the Khrushehevite revisionists seized state power. “A study of 1,852 firms”, states David Granick, “from all industries in the fourth quarter of 1933 showed that brigade and group conferences had taken place in 83.4 per cent of the firms”. The onslaught of World War II provided no exception to the system of management and workers’ direction of production, on the contrary! “During 1943 and 1944, armament firms alone held 93,000 department, shop and brigade conferences.”[69] It has been adequately concretized that “mass participation” in management was a reality in the Soviet Union, during the period in question. However, it may be asked: How far did the workers’ criticisms and suggestions really go? Were they really seriously and consistently implemented? The answer is quite categoric. In 1933 seven suggestions per hundred workers were received. “During 1943 and 1944, 130,750 suggestions were offered at the production conferences of the armament industry.”
In 1946, there were 473,000 inventions and suggestions for rationalization and technical modernization brought forth in all firms of the country; 253,000 suggestions were introduced into production the same year. In 1949 . . . 450,000 inventions and rationalization suggestions were introduced into production.[70]
This form of participation by workers in managing the affairs of the country’s production, gave rise to quite impressive workers’ movement to zealously and vigorously improve technique and increase production. One such movement was the Stakhanovite movement, which Stalin stated as having started “almost spontaneously from below, without any pressure by the management of our firms. More than this, the movement was born ... in spite of the desire of our firms’ managements and even in conflict with them.”[71]
The Stakhanovite movement was a movement of rank-and-file workers, who participated in the improvement of production mainly through a change in work organization (like Stakhanov himself) or through a technological change (like Busygin, the worker who introduced Stakhanovism to the vehicle-construction industry). The facts produced here, give ample proof to the credibility of the unfettered relations of production in the socialist Soviet Union, especially between 1933-1953. It is the consistent revolutionizing of the relations of production (which has been discussed here at length) which led to the rapid development of the productive forces during this period. Not economism, not ’technique deciding everything’ but ’Putting Politics in Command’ and liberating the capacity of the broad working masses to innovate, initiate, organize, criticize and create.
Having dealt with the role workers played within the Soviet system of the Stalin era, it is crucial to briefly view the role of the managers or directors of the industrial firms of Soviet socialist Russia. It is definitely true that the principle of one-man-management initiated by Lenin during the N.E.P. period and existent to this day in the USSR was also upheld in this period. Even though this form of management is not to be steeped with praise, (much can be learned from the revolutionary committees set up in China after the Cultural Revolution) it is important to bear in mind the political-economic character of enterprise directors of this period: “Divided according to “social position” in a 1936 study, almost two thirds of the directors were found to have been workers and somewhat over one-third were listed as white-collar personnel”[72] i.e. engineers, technicians, bookkeeping personnel, doctors, lawyers, teachers etc. Granick further states in magnifying the previous data that: “the personal background of the vast majority of this group” – enterprise directors – “was that of manual hired labour, and the fathers of half of them had also been workers. Thus they personally epitomized the Soviet slogan of “Dictatorship of the Proletariat.“[73]
This shows that management, as is the case today in the Soviet Union, was not composed of technicians, engineers, academics and intellectuals but proletarians. Even though the political-economic character of the directors in itself was no cause for alarm, any tendency towards careerism and bureaucratism was restricted in an extremely iron-fisted manner. In a precis of a quote of Central Committee member V.M. Molotov’s report of March 1937 this trend can be seen, he states“ . . .that any director who interprets one-man-management authority and responsibility as meaning that he is free from supervision by the masses and active workers should be quickly awakened to the facts of Soviet life.”[74] Another principle arose, in that even though the director was personally responsible for hiring and dismissing, he was obliged to seriously heed the opinions of the Communist Party and trade-union organizations. Finally, on the question of directors and all executives for that matter, the recruiting ground was the Communist Party itself. This meant that the directors were not only workers but Marxist-Leninists, thus another indication of politics leading the way forward.
This section of the paper testifies to the fact that the proletariat owned the means of production, that a dictatorship of the proletariat was consolidated led by a Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, which was steered by a consistent, reputable and prestigious figure, Joseph Stalin, indeed one of the five great teachers of the proletariat. Although he was not unerring he was a great Marxist-Leninist. In short the socialist mode of production was a concrete fact of day-to-day activity in the Soviet Union, at first being constructed and consolidated between 1917-1933 and then flourishing between 1933-1953.
The era of the glorious triumph of socialism in one country, did not exist in the Soviet Union, without the Party and its leader, J.V. Stalin making serious errors. The main theoretical error made by Stalin and the Party, which had the gravest practical implications was that which Stalin made in 1936 in stating that Soviet socialist society was classless society. This assertion served to numb the minds of the Party cadre and the general masses to the reality of budding careerists and bureaucrats in governmental and managerial positions with the desire to attain power. Not to mention the sphere of agriculture where the collective farms actually had control over the sale of their product. This function still existent in agriculture could quite easily breed a definite bourgeois mentality and the desire to control not only the product but also the means of production! These realities compounded with the principle of one-man-management in industry (see Section I: Dictatorship of the Proletariat) led to a tragic situation. The theory of no classes in socialist society then, led to lack of vigilance on the rise of new bourgeois elements that are objectively nurtured under socialism. It led to a slack restriction of the economic material basis of the new bourgeois elements i.e. bourgeois right. It led to the concrete rise of a new set of Tsars, whose political spokesman was none other than Nikita Khruschev. It must not be underplayed that blatant saboteurs of socialism were efficiently dealt with by the Party. Neither can the intense Party struggles that took place during the period be neglected. However, the more sophisticated and subtle agents of the new bourgeoisie hiding not only behind the mask of Marxism-Leninism, but also under the cloak of the theory of classless socialist society, awaited the strategic moment to launch their offensive against the Party, the proletariat and socialism in general.
This strategic moment arrived immediately after March 5, 1953, when Comrade J.V. Stalin drew his last breath of life. Following this, between 1953-1956 there was the most protracted and intense struggle for power within the higher levels of the Party on the one hand Khruschev the representative of the new bourgeoisie on the other Malenkov, Molotov and Kaganovich, all highly tempered, experienced and veteran Bolsheviks, who were now viewed as the “anti-party group.” Nicolaus draws a clear map describing the important dates and manoevres that occurred between 1953-1956 as follows.
Politically the broad course of events was this: Khruschev rose in power and influence by posing as the heir and defender of Stalin and of Marxist-Leninist ideology for over two years. He declined very sharply in power when he suddenly turned against Stalin openly at the 20th Congress in 1956. He was rescued from certain overthrow in 1957 only by the intervention of the general staff of the army and air force.
The key events .. .were these: the Beria putsch of March 6, 1953; the struggle between Khruschev and Malenkov during 1953-1955; the 20th Congress in 1956 and the bloodless Khruschev Zhukov coup of June 1957.[75]
An important feature of this map to note is the fact that in late 1956 and early 1957 Khruschev had to make a remarkable retreat. This retreat came as a response to sharp objections and rebuttals to the anti-Marxist-Leninist policies e.g. the revisionist theses of the ’three peacefuls’: ’peaceful coexistence’ (between socialist and imperialist states), ’peaceful competition’ (of socialism with capitalism) and ’peaceful transition’ (to socialism in the capitalist countries), which was put forward in 1955. However, the view which caused the most unrest was the one Khruschev created about Stalin. A ’secret speech’ read at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in February of 1956 was nothing more than an exercise of subjectivism and metaphysics in its one-sided slanderous approach in particular to Stalin and generally to Soviet socialism.
This, together with his distasteful approach to foreign policy and international affairs with respect to Yugoslavia vis-a-vis Albania and India vis-a-vis China, led to a very dubious position for Khruschev. In fact on June 18, 1957 the presidium voters ousted him from his post in the party leadership. Undaunted, Khruschev refused to accept the decision of his fellow presidium members and instead enlisted the aid of his faithful colleague Marshal Zhukov, who could in his own persuasive way change the minds of most of the voters, in favour of Khruschev his power hungry ally. This is an account of what took place:
. . .the Khruschev faction staged a spectacular operation. With the help of Marshal Zhukov and the army’s transport planes, Khruschev’s supporters were rushed into Moscow from the remotest provinces, while those who were already there staged a filibuster until the majority for Khruschev was assured.. . .[76]
This was in essence a bloodless coup d’etat instrumental in the rise to power of the new Soviet bourgeoisie and a move calculated on the degeneration of the state-machinery into a bourgeois apparatus (the army under the renegade Zhukov) to defend physically the material interests of the blossomed capitalist class of Soviet Russia of 1956-1957.
As can be seen, between 1956-1957 the state had become its political opposite i.e. it became bourgeois in nature, having followed a period of decay throughout the whole superstructure between 1953-1956. Consequently the state being in the hands of the bourgeoisie meant that the bourgeoisie had now gained control of the means of production, since these means were state-owned, it also meant that capitalism had successfully raised its head again in the Soviet Union, precisely in 1956-1957. However just as the task of the dictatorship of the proletariat had, to crack up the capitalist economic base while simultaneously implementing the new socialist forms in its place between 1917 and the early 1930’s, the opposite task faced the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in 1957 that of hacking to shreds the socialist economic base while at the same time planting the seeds of capitalist economy, nurtured carefully to secure the full growth of imperialism! Unlucky for him Khruschev did not remain in power long enough to reap the fruits off the plants of the seeds he sowed, but he did an excellent job of seed growing.
In 1958 Khruschev implemented the policy of selling off the Machine and Tractor Stations to the collective farms, thus not only allowing them authority over the sale of their product but also owners of means of production. This tainted the character of means of production as one of a commodity nature once more, in the agricultural sector and quite effectively restored capitalism in this sector of the economy. Khruschev’s most ’plausible’ accomplishment was the conversion of socialist industry into its opposite. The policies that were implemented immediately following his consolidation were extremely extensive. Khruschev abolished the industrial ministries which controlled the main areas of industry in the Soviet Union in a democratic-centralist fashion. These he replaced with his own ’gems’, 105 regional economic councils known as Sovnarkhozy. All major industrial enterprises were subordinated to Sovnarkhozy, but it was not allowed in agriculture, thus allowing for the split in the 40-year-old constructed unity of city and rural area. Explains Alec Nove: “The sovnarkhoz . . .together with ’its’ enterprises . . . drafted a regional plan and submitted it to the government.”[77] This measure instituted by the bourgeois Soviet government introduced a most blatant decentralization, anti-Leninist in character, and filled with antagonistic contradictions that would riddle the Soviet economy with problems. Nove in pointing out the ludicrous nature of the decentralization and its ill-effects on the economy as a whole cites the example of the narrow regional outlook as follows:
Plans and resource allocation therefore tended to be geared to these purposes or to the greater glory of the region (i.e. expansion, the attraction of investment resources from central funds).[78]
In another book by Nove, he spells out more explicitly the evil of the decentralization policy in the industrial sphere:
The minister in Moscow may have had his views distorted by narrow departmentalism, but at least he was able to look at things on a national scale. The chairman of the ’sovnarkhoz’ at Omsk cannot see beyond the confines of the Omsk province.[79]
Once again in his book The Soviet Economy Alec Nove states clearly the confusion that faces the enterprise director in these decentralized circumstances by quoting the outcry of one dismayed director of an agricultural machinery factory in Tula; the director states:
The multiplicity of planning organs, the absence of agreement among them, have become a brake upon the initiative of the director. The basic plan for farm machinery for the Tula combine factory is decided by the USSR Gosplan; to this Gosplan RSFSR adds hemp and reed cutters; VSNKH, Rosselkhoztekhnika and Soyuzavtosel-mash send us plans for motor vehicle spare parts and farm machinery components; and on top of this the sovnarkhoz gives us a variety of tasks for the manufacture of metal parts, units, sections and machines for the chemical, electrical, metallurgical and other industries of its economic region.[80]
This kind of situation left the enterprise directors one choice, in order to acquire more efficiently the needed supplies i.e. ’blat’ (personal influence) and ’tolkachi’ (a broker-a person who would be able to ’get around’ the legal channels and supply the enterprises with the needed materials through ’devious means’). This kind of black market operation was nothing more than a product of the objective conditions of the decentralized Soviet economy on the one hand and on the other the rise of capitalist relations between the enterprises. Margaret Miller comments thus on the illegal market in means of production:
A veritable army of’tolkachi’ (’pushers’, ’expediters’) assisted industrialists in dealing with their most difficult problem, that of securing supplies. These specialized middlemen made it their business to know where equipment and materials of all kinds could be obtained on the ubiquitous ’free market’. Sometimes they worked on a commission basis for several undertakings, sometimes they were carried on the books of one business as ’special representatives’.[81]
The widespread use of ’blat’ and ’tolkachi’ throughout industry meant the rise of the widespread use of commodity-exchange relations between the enterprises. Although those relations were not legal, they became a characteristic of the economy of this period, a necessary one in order to survive the confusion of the decentralization process. Thus Nicolaus terms this budding market not a ’free market’ –it was not legal – not a ’black market’ – it was a necessary relation – but more correctly a ’grey market’, fast losing its colour!
One of the ways that Khruschev designed to allow the capitalist relations to surface into the light of day and shed its grey character was the super-hypocritical program that Nikita put forward at the 22nd Soviet Party Congress on October 1961. The main theme of this revisionist program was that communist society would be constructed in the Soviet Union by 1980. Thus Khruschev argued that the Soviet Union was in the ’transition’ to communism, that socialism had been victoriously and fully accomplished. Therefore there was no need for a dictatorship of the proletariat i.e. a proletarian state, but the need for a Khruschevite ’innovation’ of the Marxian theory of the state – a state of the whole people. This view raised to a principle the theory of classless society under socialism, and led to the liquidation of the party of the proletariat and to the institution of the party of the whole people. This is in fact the crucial difference between Stalin and Khruschev on this question. Stalin, although erring still upheld and maintained the dictatorship of the proletariat and the Marxian view of the state, both demarcating factors between Marxism and revisionism. However, Khruschev’s thesis advocated unity between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the liquidation of class struggle. This meant nothing but the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie pure and simple. Both Marx and Lenin addressed the question of the state of the whole people as so much garbage. Marx stated:
The question then arises: what transformation will the nature of the state .. .undergo in communist society?" (the first phase), “In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analgous to present functions of the state? This question can only be answered scientifically, and does not not get a flea-hop nearer to the problem by a thousandfold combination of the word people with the word state.
Between capitalist and communist society (the second phase) lies the period of revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.[82] (Italicized passage emphasized in original; bold face passage emphasis added.)
Lenin reiterated:
The “free people’s state” was a program demand and a widely current slogan of the German Social-Democrats in the seventies. This slogan is devoid of all political content except for the fact that it describes the concept of democracy in the pompous philistine fashion.
He went on further to mention:
Furthermore, every state is a “special force for the suppression” of the oppressed class. Consequently every state is not “free” and not a “people’s state”. (or state of the whole people) “Marx and Engels explained this repeatedly to their party comrades in the seventies.[83]
This moribund theory of the people’s state sealed the issue of total degeneration in the superstructure, however the economic base did not escape the ’bullets’ of revisionism. In this respect Khruschev declared:
In the course of communist construction it is our task to make still greater use of, and to improve, the financial and credit levers, financial control, prices and profits. We must elevate the importance of profit and profitability.[84]
It has already been mentioned that the profit motive and the construction of communism are as incompatible as the Queen of England with factory labour. (See I: What Do The Concepts of Capitalism and Socialism...). Hence this further solidified the relations between enterprises of commodity-exchange with the motive of profit. The effect on the agricultural sector was just as devastating, as they already fully controlled means of production. The rising commodity-character of means of production could not maintain and reproduce itself, just simply on the quest for profits,.its antithesis, its opposite (in a dialectical sense) had to be resurrected in order to fully perpetuate and consolidate capitalist production relations. This meant that labour-power had to also assume a commodity nature. At this point under the rule of the new bourgeoisie and its agent, Khruschev, workers still could not be expelled or fired for economic reasons, in fact this was a law instituted in the 1936 constitution by Stalin.
Alas – Khruschev’s hare-brained, mercurial and problematic tactics soon caught up with him. He built up tensions on the international scene, he caused a massive slowdown in the productivity of the Soviet economy due to his ’expert’ economic package policies. Thus, by 1964 Khruschev was ousted. His successor was one of his close associates Leonid Brezhnev. Brezhnev and his colleague Alexei Kosygin wasted no time in solving the problems of the Khruschev era, reversing many of his decisions and policies, this however did not mean for sure the rehabilitation of socialism on the contrary, it meant the rise of imperialism.
In a historic speech to a plenary session of the CPSU in September, 1965, Alexei Kosygin spelled out the principles that would consolidate the Soviet bourgeoisie, not only within the USSR, but also on the world stage. In effect, this class of ’New Tsars’ were to take on a distinct imperialist character, with the full implementation of the 1965 Economic Reform.
The reforms in a thorough-going fashion made concrete each essential economic category for the further continuance and abundant growth of capitalism. Even though some blatant capitalist measures were not addressed in explicit terms, the masses of Soviet working people did not experience such a dilution with the actual implementation of the reforms.
The Economic Reform re-emphasized the principle of profit as the motive force of production. Kosygin states:
If the assignment for goods sold is aimed at establishing closer ties between production and consumption, to orientate the enterprise toward efficiency, it would appear better to use the profit index, the index of profitability.[85]
Kosygin ensures his audience that raising profit to a position of primary importance is not by any stretch of the imagination anti-Marxian, by mentioning that, “Lenin stressed that each enterprise must work at a profit, i.e. completely cover its expenditures from its incomes and make a profit.”[86] This is clearly a case of vulgarization of Lenin’s statement, which was one historically specific to the NEP period, (see section: The Soviet Union Under Lenin And Stalin: The Dictatorship Of The Proletariat).
The commodity-character of means of production was legalized and strengthened through the reform which encouraged, “ . . .the principle of cost accounting in the relations between enterprises. . .“[87] However the most far-reaching aspect of the reforms in terms of the development of the capitalist economy and the status of the masses of Soviet people, was the question of labour-power and its character. Directors of two of the Moscow motor transport organizations gave a report on the new methods employed in their enterprises, in which after “... 4 months of work under the new conditions . . . Labour productivity went up by 31 per cent and profits more than doubled. . . .” What in fact were these new methods that raised the level of profits and productivity? Kosygin succinctly answers that the enterprise directors, “ . . .sold the lorries and equipment they did not need, and reduced their staffs.”[88] Aside from the fact that Kosygin is also referring to a market in means of production; in announcing that the enterprise director has the right to dismiss staff, Kosygin has resurrected an essential demarcating factor between socialism and capitalism: the commodity-character of labour-power. This also amounts to a total separation of the workers from the means of production and a further consolidation of these means in the hands of the Soviet bourgeoisie.
The last major territory that the reforms covered was the area of ’centralization-decentralization’, with its obvious effect on central planning. What is meant by ’centralization-decentralization’ is that both methods were implemented, one necessarily taking the lead and having priority over the other. There was centralization in the sense that, “... Khruschev’s regional economic councils were abolished, and industrial direction was returned to about 20 central industrial ministries. . . .”[89] However the factor taking precedent was definitely that of decentralization, the following statements made by Kosygin in his speech leave no doubt, when he says: “ . . .a series of measures are proposed to expand the economic independence and initiative of enterprises and amalgamations. . . .”[90] Kosygin again emphasizes, “ . . .we must create conditions in which the enterprises will be able to solve problems of improving production independently and will be interested in making better use of the fixed assets assigned to increase output and profit.”[91] Kosygin, however, does not just restrict himself to mere generalities of ’independence’ and ’initiative’. He states specifically that:
The enterprise will enjoy wider powers in the use of its working capital, depreciation funds, and also the receipts from the sale of surplus equipment and other material values. ... The enterprise will enjoy wider powers in the use of the money saved on the wage fund during the year. It will decide independently, without registering in financial bodies, on its structure and staff and on administrative expenses.[92]
What is the fate of the central planning organs in this new state of affairs? What do they have left to plan, with more and more of their duties being assumed by the individual enterprises and amalgamations? One of the areas in which the central planning boards exercised constraint over the national economy was that of the system of prices. Kosygin, amazingly announces that, “Prices should increasingly reflect the expenditures of socially necessary labour, cover production and circulation outlays and insure that each normally functioning enterprise makes a profit.”[93] Kosygin is not content with just subtle implications of punching holes in the principles of central planning, he constructs a good model of anarchy, and asks “ ... is it really necessary to hand down all these assignemnts to the enterprise from above? Experience has shown that such planning” he continues, “fetters the initiative of the enterprise in search for means and ways of increasing labour productivity.”[94] These measures which objectively obstruct the role of the central planning organs, must be viewed as a consequence of the construction of a market system thoroughout the economy, which does not allow for planning of production but anarchy of production?
The measures contained in the 1965 Economic Reform, did not just remain a set of proposals, but were implemented in an all-round way into the mainstream of Soviet economic life. This concrete application of the reform measures was undertaken so rapidly and decisively that:
By the end of 1968, the new system embraced industrial enterprises producing about 72 per cent of all industrial output and contributing about 80 per cent of the total profits realized in industry. By the end of 1970, the figures stood at about 92 per cent and more than 95 per cent respectively... .[95]
What does this all-round implementation of capitalism mean for the Soviet working class? What rights do they have in a society which has regressed from a socialist essence to a bourgeois content? These questions are brilliantly answered by A. Sukhov, who is a Candidate of Economic Sciences in the USSR, who states:
. . .that upon becoming legally free, and under socialism economically free as well, a working person constantly retains the right to dispose freely over his labour power. He realizes this right by concluding a labour contract with the enterprise. He has the opportunity to make a free choice of the place for the application of his labour and to change his place of work. Such disposition over labour-power as the adequate reflection of economic freedom imparts still greater mobility to it.[96]
Assistant Professor Sukhov could have spared himself and the readers of his essay this lengthy exposition on the “freedom of labour” and simply acknowledge that labour-power is a commodity in the Soviet Union. First, Sukhov refers to legal freedom of the worker under socialism, this is true, but it is also true for capitalism in which the worker is not owned like his counterpart in slave-society or tied to the land like the serf or peasantry under feudalism. Secondly, Sukhov brazenly attempts to con his audience with his revisionist view of “economic freedom”, which he says is the freedom of a worker to dispose of his labour as he pleases. If this is economic freedom then, according to Sukhov, there is no difference between capitalism and socialism. Under capitalism a worker is free to sell his labour-power to any capitalist he pleases. Sukhov fully agrees, stating, “He (worker) realizes this right (freedom) by concluding a labour contract with the enterprise.”[97] This contract signifies on the one hand that the Soviet worker will sell his labour-power to the (enterprise director) bureaucrat capitalist for a definite period, and on the other hand that the bureaucrat-capitalist will only pay for that amount of labour, which is socially necessary to barely sustain the worker, thus appropriating the remainder of the worker’s labour as surplus value. If the proletariat are the owners of the means of production as is the case under socialism, why is it necessary to conclude a contract with the enterprise in the first place? Why would it be necessary to be in the unstable position of constantly changing jobs if the workers really owned the means of production? The answer is simple; the workers no longer own the means of production. Sukhov’s silence on the question of ownership of the means of production is not accidental. However Karl Marx, over a century ago approached this crucial question of “freedom of labour”, but in a more explicit fashion stating that “ . . .the free labourer,” (under capitalism, is) “... free in the double sense, that as a free man he can dispose of his labour power as his own commodity, and that on the other hand he has no other commodity for sale, is short of everything necessary for the realization of his labour-power.”[98] It can be seen that Sukhov is almost verbatim Marx, the difference is that Marx refers to capitalism not socialism and emphasizes the material basis for this “freedom of disposition of labour,” which is that the worker is devoid of all means of production and owns only his labour-power as a commodity.
The commodity-character of the Soviet worker’s labour-power began to crystallize exceedingly more, as the reforms were concretized. Two years after the Economic Reform proposals, and the experimental application of the Moscow motor transport organizations, there was a further experiment which was initiated in July 1967 at the Shchekino Chemical Factory. This experiment went along the same basic lines as the previous one, and sought to keep the planned wages fund for 1967 unchanged for the following years. How, one may curiously enquire, does one keep the wages fund fixed and constant over a period of years, and at the same time increase salary rates? No need to boggle the mind. Professor Y.L. Manevich in his paper, “Wages Systems” describes quite vividly the findings of the Shchekino experiment as follows:
The savings obtained as a result of releasing workers, engineers, technicians and other employees have been handed over to the workers at the factory; about two-thirds has been used to increase wage and salary rates all round. Thanks to collective and individual material incentives, the factory has succeeded in releasing about 1,000 people by combining trades, extending working area, improving the structure of management and so on.[99]
The solution to the problem of obtaining savings on the wages fund is very simply unemployment. This is not the only component of the Shchekino system, however, since Manevich gleefully remarks that, “In the course of the experiment average wages rose by 24.4 per cent and labour-productivity by 86.6 per cent.”[100] Apart from the fact that the increase in wages, was a result of the discontinued employment of numerous workers, the vast increase in labour productivity is due to the old bourgeois method of ’speed-up’ in the enterprises i.e. they “reduced their staffs,” and forced the remaining labourers to work thrice as hard for a pittance of an increase in wages.
The Shchekino experiment opened the way for a further expansion of the profit-appetite of the Soviet ruling class. Consequently they did not waste time ’pouring the Shchekino acid’ all over the Soviet industrial enterprises. “At the beginning of 1971,” relates Manevich, the Shcheckino experiment had been adopted at 121 enterprises employing 700,000 people.[101]
Manevich, in his quest to enlighten his audience that labour productivity is indeed increasing and also unconsciously that unemployment is rapidly on the rise, makes it abundantly clear that, “In the last four years labour productivity has risen by 45 per cent and the total labour force has decreased by 11.9 per cent.”[102]
What, though, is the fate of those workers that are released from their employment and classified as ’superflous personnel’? In the magazine, Soviet Panorama a publication geared for a foreign audience, (Originating from the USSR Embassy in Canada) an article named “Trade Unions and Workers Training” announced that:
Automation has released more than 1500 workers at Moscow’s No.2 Furniture Factory, almost one half the total manpower. (It then continues to ask the million dollar question:) Have these workers become unemployed?“ “Of course not,” said Stanislav Zakharchenko chairman of the trade-union committee. “The factory management cannot dismiss a single worker without the trade-union committee’s consent” (and what consent, they agreed to release not a single worker but half the factory manpower! Stanislav continues,) “Part of the manpower was released some of the workers were transferred to related factories with the help of the city trade-union committee and others were given jobs in the factory’s branches that keep expanding. Still others had to learn new trades”.[103]
Even if this does take place at this particular furniture factory, is this characteristic of industry and, in fact, the national economy as a whole? In order to gain clarity on this question, it is necessary to revisit Professor Sukhov, who, “Writing in the secluded pages of (a) specialized academic or professional publication, behind a protective screen of jargon – with other economists and ’planners’ as (his) audience. . . .”[104] admits, without reservation that: “On the average, as yet only 25-30% of the workers and employees obtain employment through the organized job placement service.”[105] In the same study, which appeared in Ekonomicheskie nauki in 1974, Sukhov explains that, “ . . .in Leningrad in 1968 workers getting jobs on their own changed occupations in 56 out of 100 cases. . . .”[106] The crucial point to be made here, is that a large number of workers are forced to seek employment on their own. Secondary to the aforementioned feature, but extremely significant is the existence of labour force exchanges or as Sukhov put it “organized job-placement services.” It is quite evident that these “organized job placement services” serve as a go-between, as a viable market-place where the buyers and sellers of labour-power meet to engage in business, giving the worker the right to realize his ’freedom’ “by concluding a labour contract with the enterprise.” (enterprise director or bureaucrat capitalist). An article appearing in the June 3rd, 1975 issue of Sovietskaya Litva (Soviet Lithuania), was reported in Peking Review to have “disclosed that such exchanges exist in five major cities and two development centres in the Lithuanian Republic. Last year they recruited workers for over 1,000 enterprises and organizations or found employers for tens of thousands of residents. Another Soviet newspaper,” the Peking Review article continues, “Kommunisti Tochikiston (Communist of Tadghikistan) revealed in an article on May 24th, (1975) ...that since its establishment in 1969, a’residents’ conditions and employment bureau had registered over 58,000 persons looking for jobs and 43,000 of them have been hired by ’enterprises and organizations’.”[107]
The main factors behind labour mobility in the USSR is what Sukhov’s study intends to discover. One of the reasons, he finds, is precisely that the average worker is seeking the highest price for his (her) labour-power, Sukhov states: “A study of migrants in the regions of new industrial development in the West Siberian lowlands, with a relatively unfavourable climate, revealed that over 50% of the migrants came in quest of higher earnings.”[108]
It is important to come to grips with the dictatorial position of enterprise director. In the midst of Kosygin’s 1965 proposal ’to construct imperialism’, which was subsequently carried out, he mentioned firmly that, “the industrial manager is personally responsible for the job assigned him by the state. This responsibility, and one-man-leadership in industry, is of special importance now.”[109] Therefore in terms of salaries and wage-rates it is the enterprise director whose job it is to set these items. It must be remembered, however that the enterprise director’s primary goal is to make sure that his enterprise makes a profit, secondarily to that is the question of wage-rates of the workers. In spite of this, the wage fund is still divided with gross unevenness, Y.L. Manevich gives a small peep view of this arrangement stating that: “The Regulations grant enterprise directors the right to pay highly skilled engineers, technicians and foremen a salary up to 30 per cent higher than the basic salary. . . .”[110] This is only the legal stipulation! Manevich further goes on to admit that, “It is mainly wages, as we have seen earlier that ensure the remuneration of the expenditure of labour-power.”[111] This refers not to the mental labouring technician or engineer, but those workers actively involved in the “expenditure of labour-power.” The other benefits arising out of social consumption funds, are just the usual ameliorative measures employed by other forms of capitalism in the West.
Similarly, as in the West, the Soviet working class is limited in its buying power. A case-study of a Soviet working couple in Soviet Panorama disclosed that, “Lydia (Dorofeyenko) says they (she and her husband) spend more on household goods every year.”[112] This is not surprising since “prices should insure that each enterprise makes a profit.”
In making an analysis of capitalist Soviet society it is not enough to just point out the oppression and exploitation of the down-trodden masses of the Soviet people. It is also extremely important to view the activities of that class which does not engage in labour, yet reaps the ’sweets’ of labour. This class, is the one which has ownership and control of the means of production, a class which not only perpetuates a market in the commodity of labour, but also in the means of production. It is by making the most economical use of both means of production and labour-power which allows for, not only the churning out of ever more profit, but also the added move toward further concentration and centralization of capital.
In order that means of production can become commodities, in order for the enterprise to constantly produce “... not only the amount and increment of profit obtained, but also the level of profitability, i.e. the amount of profit per ruble of fixed assets,”[113] capital in the form of money must be left at the disposal of the enterprise. This was categorically stipulated by Kosygin in his measures, their implementation has definitely added significantly to the ’treasure-chests’ of the new Tsars of Soviet Russia.
The fact that money-commodity relations run rampant thorugh the connections of the enterprises with each other, is not hidden in the Soviet economic literature, but brazenly presented, as if it were a virtue. Indeed it is a virture for the Soviet bourgeoisie, who deviously try to dress the commodity-character of means of production in socialist clothing. “In socialist society,” states Professor V.M. Batyrev, (he really means Soviet society) “commodity – money relations appear ... (in) enterprises using their money receipts to pay other enterprises for supplies of raw and other materials to pay wages and make other payments.”[114] The use of money-capital by the enterprise directors is not limited to merely the buying and selling of labour-power and means of production in order to produce a profit, but this profit must create more profit. In other words, the Reform stipulation, that a large proportion of the profits must stay at the disposal of the enterprise is adhered to, and the enterprise directors are free, like all capitalists, to further reinvest their profits for the unlimited expansion of capital. V.M. Batyrev correctly shows that, “Economic stimulation funds remain at the disposal of an enterprise and are spent on the development of production. . . .”[115] Already by 1970, five years after the reform proposals were made, the “new system” had been so efficient as to allow the enterprises to control the majority of investment in the national economy as a whole. This is clearly shown by the revolutionary political economist Martin Nicolaus, who states that, “ . . .investment financed out of the enterprises’ own funds amounted to 78.8% of total (non military) investment in the USSR.”[116] This kind of investment activity demarcates this period of Soviet economic history from the Soviet socialist period, in which the enterprises were not the possessors of liquid assets, and any form of profit made by the enterprises were to be returned to the central planning organs for reallocation to less profitable areas of the national economy.
It is precisely because this reallocation principle has beer liquidated and the fact that profits are in command at the enterprises and amalgamations, and indeed the national economy, that distribution of the means of production, unlike the socialist period, takes on a lop-sided, anarchic nature. Those enterprises which obtain greater profits than others, objectively have a greater access to means of production. This undoubtedly within the relations between enterprises give rise to intense competition, apart from the fact, that it also relegates planning ’to the shelf of an antique store.’ The fact is that each enterprise in its quest for ever more profit, seeks to concentrate and centralize capital, not only on the strength of exploiting the working class but also by eliminating their opponents, who also act as buyers in the labour market, and who act as buyers and sellers in the market of means of production. As was mentioned, previously, “The industrial manager is personally responsible for the job assigned him by the state.”[117] What is the specific job of the industrial manager? He is to operate as a shrewd industrial entrepreneur, whose sole aim is the increase of profit and the expansion of value. Politically, the industrial manager is assigned a job by the state and in this respect is necessarily a bureaucrat. Economically, his concrete purpose and activity give the enterprise director a distinct capitalist character, which is definitely the decisive side in the character of the director. If the director does not do his job well he is “personally responsible” to the state. His (her) job: to be a good, efficient capitalist. Thus these Soviet industrial entrepreneurs are nothing but bureaucrat-capitalists. These bureaucrat-capitalists have developed a vast market in the means of production which, in 1970, was responsible for two-thirds of the nation’s entire volume of sales. This large market has a great bearing on the character of the intense competition over resources needed for production. What measures are used by those enterprises and amalgamations, who have a greater profitability and consequently greater power within the market to dispose of their lesser opponents? Economist, V. Budagarin, in his study, “The Price Mechanism and Circulation ot the Means of Production” draws a picture of the viciousness involved in the market, he states:
The producer dictates the price, especially in establishing one-time and temporary prices on newly developed types of products, and frequently uses existing shortage for a given group or type of resources to bring pressure to bear on the customer.[118][119]
It seems then that Professor V.M. Batyrev is highly mistaken when he rhetorically remarks that, “Through the mediation of price, commodities are exchanged between socialist enterprises. The establishment of a single price for the consumer on a particular type of goods, at a level reflecting the average socially necessary expenditure of labour, places enterprises which utilise that good in equal conditions.”[120] (emphasis added) Batyrev confuses form with essence, it is clear that the equality he refers to, is formal equality. In essence, as has been mentioned, enterprises and amalgamations with greater supply of resources exercise their power in the market, by way of the price-mechanism, for example. This inequality in essence and equality in form is nothing but the manifestation of bourgeois right in the sphere of means of production, which under socialism exists only in the sphere of distribution of articles of consumption. No wonder that in an exclamatory statement the economist, L. Maizenberg warns, “Our experience points to the existence of a dangerous trend toward arbitrary price rises.”[121]
Thus this competition-subjugation-elimination syndrome which haunts the relationships between the enterprises like a vulture slowly disposing of its dead prey, leads to concentration and centralization of capital. This is the form of centralization referred to earlier, not centralization of a proletarian kind, of a democratic kind, which undergoes central supervision of the national economy. It is centralization of a bourgeois nature, centralization devoid of central, national economic planning, a centralization of capital obtained by forcing weaker bureaucrat capitalists out of the respective markets. Apart from the reestab-lishment of the central industrial ministries already mentioned, the 1965 Economic Reform also stipulated the formation of production associations. This actual fostering of the monopoly character of this bourgeois economy by the state necessarily is a determinant in the form of capitalism that prevails in the Soviet Union. Nicolaus commenting on the development of monopoly formation in the USSR-economy says “ .. .that by 1970, there were some 1400 of these (production) associations in operation, incorporating more than 14,000 industrial enterprises.” And further that, “A landmark decree of April 1973 made it compulsory for every enterprise to join. A total of around 5,000 ’production associations’ of different types now exist.”[122]
In other imperialist countries the monopolies subjugate the state to them in a less than obvious fashion, allowing the prevalent bourgeois propaganda to represent the state as a neutral force. In the Soviet Union, today, there is virtually no distinction between the monopolies and the state, which is borne out by the legal compulsion which hovers over the formation of monopolies. Thus the equations: the state equals the law, the state and monopolies are the same, hence the monopolies enforce the law. This state of affairs clearly shows the state-monopoly character of Soviet capitalism. Consequently this form of the Soviet capitalist economy differs sharply from its counterparts in the west, in this, that, “In no other capitalist country, however, are all enterprises in a given industry compelled by law to join the trust or cartel: and nowhere else are they required by law to follow the orders of its dominant ’leadership’.”[123]
Another aspect of the Soviet economy, the relationship between the industrial enterprises and the Soviet banking system, like a magnifying glass vividly brings to light certain concrete measures taken to ensure the formation of trusts and cartels, to ensure that the allocation of resources and capital constantly flows in the direction of the more powerful associations.
First, it must be made clear that the Soviet state socialist bank like every other sphere of Soviet economic activity has degenerated into its opposite, a state capitalist monopoly bank. K.N. Plotnikov, in his study, “Soviet Finance and Credit”, illustrates the metamorphosis of the Soviet banking system, when he remarks, “The State Bank and the Bank for Construction charge interest for the use of bank credit ”[124] More specifically, the interest rate rose from 2 to 3% before 1967 up to 6%,[125] when the reforms and new system were firmly riveted into the character of the system. Plotnikov goes further to make categoric statements condoning the state bank's discriminatory policy toward the smaller, and less powerful enterprises, which are consequently forced to operate under the hegemony of the more “productive” and “efficient” production associations. Plotnikov states that to ensure that construction organizations reduce costs and raise the efficiency of inputs – i.e. that the organizations ensure the maximum profit-that, “This is achieved by a system of differential financing which provides certain benefits for well-run contracting organizations and construction sites and, on the contrary, imposes financial penalties on those that are badly run”.[126] As was mentioned before the question of ’badly run’ enterprises or construction organizations, is not necessarily one of bad management and planning, but could be a problem of lack of funds or resources, as was explained by the fact that bourgeois right totally permeates this area of the economy. Therefore the conscious effort to favour “well-run contracting organizations” is ample proof that the state bank is in the service of the more “efficient” trusts and cartels. On the other hand it forces (or attempts to liquidate) the smaller capitalist enterprises into the submission of the larger by imposing “financial penalties”. In magnifying his previous assertion, Plotnikov adamantly confirms that, “In substance stricter credit regulations are applied to enterprises which do not fulfill assignments for the reduction of costs, accumulation plans, or do not properly maintain their circulating assets. On the other hand, well-run enterprises receive credit concessions.”[127] This statement more blatantly points out that, “enterprises that aren't producing enough profit will be discriminated against." Another form of ’squeezing’ the smaller to benefit the larger, in this survival of the fittest strategy, is by raising the bourgeois principle of collateral, Plotnikov remarks:
Enterprises and economic organizations obtain credit on the security in stocks of goods and materials or their production expenditures (raw and other materials, finished goods, etc.). Only in special cases (for example, for paying wages or replenishing circulating assets) are loans issued by the State Bank without such security, in which case future accumulation funds or special appropriations serve this purpose.[128]
This statement further consolidates the position that the Soviet state bank is in the service of the state-monopoly bureaucrats. There are two sides to this servility, however, since the bank is interested in increasing its own funds as well as the profitability of the enterprises, thus, “Long-term credits are granted for periods ranging from one to six years depending on the profitability and the length of the recoupment period of the particular project.” The chairman of the Soviet state bank, explicitly yet proudly announces in confirmation of Plotnikov's remark that, “The bank is actively to promote the stepped-up growth of labour productivity.” Chairman M. Sveshnikov further states that, “When crediting enterprises and organizations, it is essential to have them improve capital efficiency, cut production costs, raise profitability of production and eliminate operation at a loss.”[129] This is adequate proof, which verifies how banking capital welded in partnership with industrial capital aids in the increased exploitation of the Soviet working masses, since the interest gained by the bank in its loans is nothing but a share in the surplus value appropriated from the Soviet working class.
An important feature to note in the relationship between the State bank and industry in general, is the self-financing characteristic of the industrial monopolies. Already pin-pointed is the fact that the industrial monopolies control the vast majority of the investment in the national economy which is financed out of their own funds. In noting where these “own” funds originate, Plotnikov says that “Depreciation charges are .. . (an) important source of enterprise funds for financing investments, let us note that in 1971 more than 20 per cent of total investment came from this source as compared with 14 per cent in 1958.” This incidentally occurred during the period of revamping and hiking up the rates of depreciation charges, which corresponds with the period of transfer of the means of production from the proletariat to the ’new Tsars’. Of course, a “ . .. most important source of enterprise funds for financing investments is profits.. . .”[130] Plotnikov states. However the point to be made is that unlike the corporations of the other advanced capitalist countries whose dependency on bank-capital ranges between 30% and 70%, the industrial monopolies of the USSR are virtually independent.[131] As Nicolaus clearly shows, “Only 3.3% of total long-term investments in Soviet industry in 1972 were financed with bank credits. . . .”[132] It is on this count that parallels can be drawn with the fascist German economy, during the period of Nazism. Since it is precisely this kind of character that finance-capitalism assumed in Nazi Germany. Apart from the factors already viewed, such as the legal compulsion for monopoly formation leading to rapid centralization and reproduction of capital, the vast amount of funds that the industrial enterprises are allowed to retain; the hallmark of such an arrangement is the most severe repression and exploitation of the working class. Therefore it is no subjective assertion that characterizes the Soviet Union as social-fascist, but an entirely objective scientific fact arising from the specific organization of production in the USSR. The political repression of the Soviet state of so-called “dissidents” is second only to the extreme denial of the democratic rights of the workers at the point of production. Rights, such as the right to strike, the right to wage-bargaining, which is thrown down the drain by the state-controlled trade unions. This is the crux of the self-financing, independent nature of the Soviet industrial monopolies, a result of the rule of the most reactionary section of the imperialist bourgeoisie.
The final and very crucial aspect of this specific Soviet form of finance-capitalist production organization entails the overabundance of capital within the most “efficient”, “productive”, and most powerful monopolies. The head of the Department of New Planning Methods of Gosplan, Y.N. Drogichinsky writes:
During operation under the new condition, some enterprises, and at times even ministries, quite often raise the question that the production development fund, set up in accordance with the operating normatives, cannot be rationally utilized because an enterprise does not need it on such a scale.[133]
It is in accordance with this phenomenon existent in the Soviet economy that Martin Nicolaus writes, “Thus the economic pressures stemming from a superabandance of capital (relative to existing opportunities to invest at the going rate of profit or better), and hence the pressure to export capital abroad are very much present in the “;new” Soviet system.[134] There is no doubt that the new bourgeoisie of the Soviet Union have completed the degeneration of the once socialist USSR into the imperialist superpower that it now characterizes.
Even though there are those who agree with the preceding statement, there are those who hold that traces of national economic planning still prevail in the USSR. This view is a myth. The blind, uncontrolled quest for profits characteristic of all capitalist systems regardless of their form does not allow for planning on the national scale. The autonomy, independence and initiative-ridden nature of the various industrial monopolies has been spelled out within this paper. The fact that plans intended for the national economy are drawn up by Gosplan, definitely does not automatically mean that there is actual planning. Even ’Comrade’ Alexei Kosygin in his own way agrees to this. In his address at the 24th Congress of the CPSU he states; “All too often the rights of enterprises operating on a profit-and-loss” (Kosygin must be referring to the profit of the capitalists and the loss of the working class) “basis are impinged upon while economic methods are being superseded by administrative ones.”[135] In essence Kosygin seems to be suggesting less administration more profit. However those who know most about the non-planning of the Soviet national economy are the central planners themselves, speaking on behalf of his comrades, deputy Gosplan department chief V. Kotov makes the admission:
“. . .in fact, the planning of distribution never attains completed form. Merging with operational management of production, it is completed only with the end of the planned period.” He states further that in a “considerable and ever increasing” section of the economy that there is “the actual cessation of planning” and thus the plan “essentially loses its meaning” and “an objective assessment of the fulfillment of the plan is impossible”.[136]
This is not to say, though that the length and breadth of the Soviet economy is devoid of any plan or conscious calculated action. In the same way as General Motors has its long term objectives, around which it plans, so do the individual industrial monopolies of the Soviet Union, however on a national basis, the “every monopoly doing its own thing” affair manifests itself in an anarchic fashion. This is scientifically summed by Frederick Engels, in his work Anti-Duhnng, when he asserts:
The contradiction between socialized production and capitalistic appropriation now presents itself as an antagonism between the organization of production in the individual workshop and the anarchy of production in society generally.[137]
It would be sufficient to say that any traces of national economic planning are buried under the quest of profit maximization which rules the Soviet economy. Like any other imperialist state, economics is firmly in command in the Soviet Union and anarchy of production within the society on the whole is a general characteristic of the restoration of capitalism in that country. The proletarian answer to the question: What is the nature of the Soviet mode of production? is clear. It is a capitalist mode of production, which has advanced to the highest stage – imperialism. The next question is, where does the Soviet Union go from there? This question is answered briefly, yet powerfully by a middle-aged Soviet worker who boldly speaks out:
WE FIRMLY BELIEVE THAT A SECOND OCTOBER REVOLUTION WILL COME. WE ARE PREPARED FOR THIS REVOLUTION [138]
(a) period between the time born and puberty.
(b) Charles Bettelheim – French socialist theoretician.
(c) Paul Sweezy – editor of Monthly Review
[1] Take for example the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) see Canadian Revolution Vol. 1. No. 2. See also, Caricature of Communism – MREQ.
[2] Karl Marx: Capital Vol. 1, International Publishers, New York, pg. 19.
[3] V.I. Lenin: Collected Works. Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966.
[4] See How Capitalism Has Been Restored in the Soviet Union – And What This Means For the World Struggle – Revolutionary Union, Chicago, October 1974. (This U.S. based organization now calls itself the Revolutionary Communist Party). Also see Class Struggle No. 2, Summer, 1975, published by the October League. The Article Metaphysics Can Not Defeat Revisionism, by Martin Nicolaus.
[5] Frederick Engels: Dialectics of Nature. Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, pg. 62.
[6] Idealism – places the spiritual, the supernatural primary to matter. Whereas materialism views matter as primary and the spiritual as its derivative.
[7] For further clarification on dialectical materialism; see J.V Stalin: Dialectical and Historical Materialism; Mao Tsetung: On Contradiction; Frederick Engels: Dialectics of Nature; VI. Lenin: Philosophical Notebooks in Collected Works. Vol. 42; Karl Marx: Preface to Capital, Vol.1.
[8] See Canadian Revolution, Vol. 1 No.3, Unite to Build the Marxist-Leninist Party – Workers ’ Unity.
[9] See e.g. V.I. Lenin: Selected Works Vol. IX pg ’s. 40-80. History of the CPSU (B): A Short Course, pg ’s. 136-138, 264-270, 286-299. Political Economy, A. Leontiev, Proletarian Publishers, San Francisco, pg ’s. 213-232. Canadian Revolution Vol.1 No. 3, pg ’s. 10 and 11. Unite to Build the Marxist-Leninist Party Workers ’ Unity.
[10] Mao Tsetung: On Practice.
[11] Peking Review: No. 51.. Dec. 19, 1975, pg. 4. Grasping the Dialectical Concept of The Unity of Opposites.
[12] Karl Marx: Critique of the Gotha Programme, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, pg. 17.
[13] Karl Marx: Capital Vol. 1, pg. 714.
[14] Ibid; pg. 170.
[15] Ibid; pg. 169.
[16] Ibid; pg. 197.
[17] Ibid; pg. 509.
[18] Ibid; pg. 713.
[19] Op. cit., pg. 17.
[20] Ibid; pg. 15.
[21] V.I. Lenin: State and Revolution, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, pg. 11. Also see Critique of the Gotha Programme, pg. 15.
[22] Karl Marx: Critique of the Gotha Programme, pg. 15.
[23] VI. Lenin: State and Revolution, pg. 117.
[24] Ibid; pg. 117-118.
[25] Ibid; pg. 117.
[26] Martin Nicolaus: Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR, Liberator Press, Chicago, 1975, pg ’s. 28-29.
[27] Karl Marx: Critique of the Gotha Programme, pg. 16.
[28] Ibid; pg. 17.
[29] V.I. Lenin: State and Revolution, pg. 112.
[30] Ibid; pg. 115.
[31] Ibid; pg. 113.
[32] Ibid; pg. 116.
[33] Peking Review: March 7, 1975, No. 10, pg. 5, On the Social Basis ofthe Lin-Piao Anti-Party Clique – Yao Wen-yuan.
[34] Ibid; pg. 8.
[35] Ibid; pg. 6.
[36] Ibid; pg. 8.
[37] Peking Review, pg. 5, Grasping the Dialectical Concept of the Unity of Opposites – Yen Feng.
[38] Peking Review, pg. 8, On the Social Basis of the Lin-Piao Anti-Party Clique – Yao Wen-yuan.
[39] Ibid; pg. 6.
[40] History of the CPSU (B): A Short Course, Proletarian Publishers, San Francisco, pg. 214.
[41] Ibid; pg. 215.
[42] Ibid; pg. 217.
[43] Martin Nicolaus: Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR, pg. 16.
[44] V.I. Lenin: Collected Works, Vol. 33, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966, pg ’s. 184-185.
[45] V.I. Lenin: Selected Works, Vol. IX, Lawrence and Wishart Ltd., London, 1939, pg. 262.
[46] Martin Nicolaus: Restoration of Capitalism, pg. 17. (quoted from C. W. Vol. 30, pg. 513.)
[47] J.V. Stalin: Political Report of the Central Committee to the Fourteenth Congress of the CPSU (B) – 1925, F.L.P.H., Moscow, 1950, pg. 136-137.
[48] History of the CPSU (B), pg. 268.
[49] Ibid; pg. 303.
[50] Ibid; pg. 304.
[51] Ibid; pg. 305.
[52] Ibid; pg. 306.
[53] Ibid; pg. 307.
[54] Ibid; pg. 309.
[55] Ibid; pg. 308.
[56] J.V. Stalin: Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1972, pg. 15.
[57] Ibid; pg. 16.
[58] Ibid; pg. 19.
[59] Monthly Review, February 1975, pg. 6, The Nature of Soviet Society II, Paul M. Sweezy.
[60] Monthly Review, November 1974, pg. 7, The Nature of Soviet Society I, Paul M. Sweezy. (quoted from Les Luttes de Classes en URSS, Charles Bettelheim, pg. 23).
[61] David Granick: Management of the Industrial Firm in the USSR, Columbia University Press, New York, 1954, pg. 51.
[62] Ibid; pg. 58.
[63] Ibid; pg. 56.
[64] Op. cit., pg. 7, (quoted from Bettelheim, pg. 76.)
[65] D. Granick: Management of the Industrial Firm, pg. 232. (quoted from: J.V. Stalin: Concluding Remarks of March 5, 1937 to the Plenum of Tskvkp(b) Z.I. April 1, 1937, pg. 2.)
[66] D. Granick: Management of the Industrial Firm ..., pg. 233.
[67] Ibid; pg. 236.
[68] Ibid; pg. 237.
[69] Ibid; pg. 238.
[70] Ibid; pg. 239.
[71] Ibid; pg. 243. (quoted from: J. Stalin: Speech to the First All-Union Stakhanovite Conference on Nov. 17, 1935. Z.I., November 22, 1935, pg. 1.)
[72] Ibid; pg. 46.
[73] Ibid; pg. 48.
[74] Ibid; pg. 28.
[75] Martin Nicolaus: Restoration of Capitalism . . ., pg. 58.
[76] Ibid; pg. 68-69. (quoted from E. Crankshaw: Khrushchev: A Career. New York, 1966, pg. 249-250.)
[77] Alec Nove: The Soviet Economy, George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London, 1968, pg. 75.
[78] Ibid; pg. 79.
[79] Op cit., pg. 82. (quoted from: A. Nove: Economic Rationality and Soviet Politics, New York, 1964, pg. 59.)
[80] A. Nove: The Soviet Economy, pg. 82.
[81] Margaret Miller: Rise of the Russian Consumer, Merritt and Hatcher Ltd., London, 1965, pg. 33.
[82] Karl Marx: Critique of the Gotha Programme, pg ’s. 27-28.
[83] V.I. Lenin: State and Revolution, pg. 22.
[84] Martin Nicolaus: Restoration of Capitalism . . ., pg. 87. (quoted from Documents of the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, New York, 1961, Vol. 2, pg. 157.) The Soviet Union Under Brezhnev and Kosygin (1964) The Full Restoration of Capitalism to Its Highest Stage Imperialism in the USSR.
[85] New Directions in the Soviet Economy, Washington, 1966,pg. 1043. On improving management of industry, perfecting planning and economic stimulation of industrial production: speech by Premier A.N. Kosygin (Pravda, September 28th, 1965.)
[86] Ibid; pg. 1046.
[87] Ibid; pg. 1046.
[88] Ibid; pg. 1051.
[89] Howard J. Sherman: The Soviet Economy, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1969, pg. 317.
[90] Op cit., pg. 1042.
[91] New Directions . . ., pg. 1046.
[92] Ibid; pg. 1057.
[93] Ibid; pg. 1051.
[94] Ibid; pg. 1044.
[95] Martin Nicolaus: Restoration of Capitalism..., pg. 100.(data from N.Y. Drogichinsky, The Economic Reform in Action, in Soviet Economic Reform: Progress and Problems, Moscow, 1972, pg. 200, 202.)
[96] A. Sukhov: Labour mobility and its Causes, Ekonomicheskie nauki, 1974, No. 4. Translated in Problems of Economics, Nov. 1974, pg. 29.
[97] Ibid.
[98] Karl Marx: Capital, Vol. 1, pg. 169.
[99] Y.L. Manevich: Wages Systems, in Soviet Planned Economy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1974, pg. 258.
[100] Ibid; pg. 258.
[101] Ibid; pg. 258.
[102] Ibid; pg. 259.
[103] Soviet Panorama, January 1976, pg. 41.
[104] Martin Nicolaus: Restoration of Capitalism ..., pg. 116.
[105] A. Sukhov: Labour Mobility . . .Problems of Economics, Nov. 1974, pg. 28.
[106] Ibid; pg. 28.
[107] Peking Review, No. 38, September 19th, 1975, pg. 24, Merchandised Soviet Society.
[108] Op cit., pg. 26.
[109] New Directions . . ., pg. 1060.
[110] Y.L. Manevich: Wages Systems, in Soviet Planned ..., pg. 255.
[111] Ibid; pg. 260.
[112] Soviet Panorama, January 1976, pg. 40.
[113] New Directions .. ., pg. 1043.
[114] V.M. Batyrev: Commodity-Money Relations Under Socialism, in Soviet Planned Economy, pg. 153.
[115] Ibid; pg. 154.
[116] Martin Nicolaus: Restoration of Capitalism .. ., pg. 121. Statistics taken from (I. Sher, Long Term Credit for Industry, Voprosy Ekonomiki, 1970, No. 6 in Problems of Economics, Dec. 1970, pg. 46 and T.S. Khachaturov, The Economic Reform and Efficiency of Investments in Soviet Economic Reform pg ’s, 156, 164.)
[117] New Directions . . ., pg. 1060.
[118] Op. cit., pg. 128.
[119] Op. cit., pg. 128-129. Quoted from (The Price Mechanism and Circulation of the Means of Production, Ekomomockeskie nauki, 1971, No. 11 in Problems of Economics, July 1972, pg. 8.)
[120] V.M. Batyrev: Commodity-Money Relations ..., in Soviet Planned.. ., pg. 165.
[121] Martin Nicolaus: Restoration of Capitalism..., pg. 130. Quoted from (L. Maizenbergjmprovements in the Wholesale Price System, Voprosy Ekonomiki, 1970, No. 6 in Problems of Economics, Feb. 1971, pg. 64.)
[122] Ibid; pg. 157. Quoted from (B. Gubin: Raising the Efficiency of Socialist Management, Moscow, 1973, pg. 86.)
[123] Ibid; pg. 160.
[124]. KN. Plotnikov: Soviet Finance and Credit in Soviet Planned Economy, pg. 221.
[125] Op. cit., pg. 145.
[126] Plotnikov: Soviet Planned Economy, pg. 218.
[127] K.N. Plotnikov: Soviet Finance ... in Soviet Planned .... pg. 221.
[128] Ibid; pg. 222.
[129]. Martin Nicolaus: Restoration of Capitalism . . ., pg. 147-148. Source: (USSR State Bank After 50 Years: The Banker, December 1971, pg. 1479.)
[130] Op. cit., pg. 218.
[131] Martin Nicolaus: Restoration of Capitalism, pg. 149.
[132] Ibid; pg. 148.
[133] Ibid; pg. 151. Source: (The Economic Reform in Action in Soviet Economic Reform: Progress and Problems, Moscow, 1972, pg. 218.)
[134] Ibid; pg. 152.
[135] 24th Congress of the CPSU Information Bulletin, Peace and Socialism Publishers, Czechoslovakia, 1971, pg. 179.
[136] Op. cit., pg. 116-117. Source: (Prices: the Instrument of National Economic Planning and the Basis of the Value Indices of the Plan translated in Problems of Economics, May 1973, pg. 62, 64, 69, 61.)
[137] Anti-Duhring, Frederick Engels, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1962, pg. 374.
[138] How the Soviet Revisionists Carry Out All-Round Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR, pg. 72.