What lies behind the sudden rush of the imperialist countries to grant loans, donate food, release sophisticated technology — all presumably to help the USSR? Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Japan, Israel, Germany, Britain, Austria, Australia, and of course the U.S. are all rushing food to the USSR. What has caused this sudden attack of generosity toward a country which only a few years ago they were calling the Evil Empire?
Is the USSR in such dire need? Is there really such a critical food shortage?
Why is there no crash program to aid the really destitute parts of Africa where grain is scarce and the need is truly alarming?
Some might say that the generosity of the imperialists really stems from the record wheat stockpiles now pushing down global prices, as announced Dec. 11 by the U.S. Agriculture Department. Yes, this is true, and is responsible for the slowdown in U.S. exports of grain. There is also a glut of oil, notwithstanding the embargo and blockade against Iraq.
Both are evidence of the growing capitalist economic crisis, which now is assuming such alarming proportions that even the biggest bank in the U.S., Citicorp, is in deep trouble. But even in the deepest crisis yet of capitalism, which began with the stock market crash of 1929, there was no great flow of aid to any part of the world, including the many capitalist countries where unemployment and hunger were becoming universal among the masses. Wheat and other foods were burned or thrown into the oceans, not freely distributed.
Why then are they doing it now?
Up until now, the U.S. was unwilling to reverse its ban on trade with the USSR (the Jackson-Vanik Amendment), or open the vaults of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to the USSR. But today they are rushing to do it. On Dec. 12, Bush decided not only to lift the U.S. trade ban but also to rush the application of the USSR for membership in the World Bank and IMF. The aim has been clearly stated: It is for the purposes of restructuring, that is, to accelerate the dismantling of socialized industry and the introduction of every kind of capitalist market mechanism.
This extends all the way up to revamping the financial system of the USSR so as to conform to capitalist standards internationally.
It might be argued that U.S. imperialism has relaxed its trade ban now because it has succeeded so well in firmly reestablishing capitalism, and wants to give the coup de grace to the Soviet system. But such an interpretation flies in the face of the assessment of the imperialist bourgeoisie themselves, who greatly fear that the present chaos in the food supply can unleash a civil war against the bourgeois elements. (Newsday, Dec. 16, the Currents section.)
This sudden orchestrated rush of loans and food aid is also closely joined to the effort of the U.S. to get the USSR to join in the military attack on Iraq. The U.S. has for some time been making desperate attempts to get the USSR in as a cobelligerent. It is not enough that the USSR cosponsored the ignominious resolution which gives U.S. imperialism a blank check to attack an oppressed country. Washington will be satisfied with nothing less than military cooperation in the war against Iraq.
Only the struggle of living forces will demonstrate which motivation is more significant in extending this aid.
It is true that the USSR has considerable problems in storage and transportation. But are the difficulties technological or social in character?
What needs to be understood first is that all this aid doesn't add up to more than two or three billion dollars. While that might sound like a lot, it is very little when one considers the resources the Soviet government has at its immediate disposal. Without much trouble, it could purchase these same commodities. The foreign exchange the Soviet Union has in imperialist banks far exceeds a couple of billion.
Let's assume, however, that they want to conserve their foreign exchange — dollars, marks, yen, etc. How did the USSR in the past, when faced with real famine, deal with a food crisis? It never received or even asked for food. Even when there were export bans, blockades and so on, it was always able to purchase food from the capitalist countries.
A fundamental reason was that the Soviet Union has been for many decades the second-largest gold producer in the world, after South Africa.
As though to anticipate our saying this, capitalist economists say the Soviet Union is not using its immense gold reserves to purchase food because that would push the price of gold down.
However, the price of gold has been remarkably stable at around $400 an ounce, while the capitalist currencies are unstable. What if the USSR did throw a billion or two of gold onto the market? Would that so upset the Soviet economy? Would they lose so much cold cash? No, that's a bald lie. In any case, the South African racist government knows how to repurchase gold so as to keep the price up.
But that's not all. The truth is that there is no real food crisis in the USSR. In fact, there was a bumper crop this year. The problem is acute in a few big cities, most notably Moscow and Leningrad, and is due to failures in the distribution and storage of the food supply.
The shortages are artificial and are brought about by the attempt of the Gorbachev grouping to dismantle the socialist system, particularly in the distribution of food, and introduce market relations. This has brought on speculation, corruption, theft and sabotage of the food distribution system.
Food rationing has existed twice before in the USSR. It was adopted during the period of Civil War and imperialist intervention to prevent famine, and was abolished in the early thirties, immediately after the successful first five-year plan. Rationing was reintroduced during the Second World War, and abolished shortly thereafter. To introduce it now is to admit the bankruptcy, not of socialist planning, but of the attempt to overturn socialist achievements in favor of new forms of capitalist exploitation, as put forward in the "innovative," "imaginative" schemes of the bourgeois intelligentsia allied with Gorbachev.
It is the political situation in the USSR that explains why the imperialists are in a hurry with their "aid."
The imperialist countries, led by the U.S., have recognized that the attempt of the Gorbachev restorationist elements to transform the socialized economy of the USSR into capitalist relations is no easy matter. Capitalism, like socialism, cannot be effectuated by mere decree. Even when accompanied by force, which has not happened on a wide scale, such a decree will fail of its purpose.
Capitalism grew and developed spontaneously out of feudalism. It succeeded not because of forced measures, not with the encouragement of the state, but despite feudal restrictions.
The bourgeois parliament in the USSR can and has passed dozens of decrees to facilitate the transformation of the socialist aspects of the USSR into abiding capitalist relations. But this has failed, as of today. The resistance is too great.
It is not just because of entrenched bureaucratism. That has been a problem, all right, but it is not the main problem. There is also the growing resistance of the masses, but that too has been of a limited character thus far.
What stands in the way of the transition to capitalism is that the October Revolution ushered in and developed over decades a complex of social, political and economic institutions which cannot be wiped away or destroyed by mere governmental ukase.
When the Gorbachev administration took over in the latter half of the 1980s, it inherited a social system that is deeply antagonistic to capitalist enterprise; it cannot be demolished by a tiny group of bourgeois economists entranced with the progress of capitalism (which was much more attractive in the eighties than it is now, with a world recession on).
So it is that the inner forces for capitalist development in the USSR are proving to be too meager; they cannot on their own successfully overthrow this great progressive complex of social, political and economic institutions. For nearly three-quarters of a century, this new social order has overcome internal counterrevolution and imperialist invasion and even now, after 40 years of imperialist cold war and nuclear intimidation, is holding the restorationist forces at bay.
There are features of the Soviet system which have sunk deeply into the consciousness of the workers and cannot be legislated away. They are embodied in the provisions of the Soviet Constitution that guarantee every worker a job, health care, housing, education and recreation. The reality of these social benefits may not be everything the Soviet people want, but they are free and available to all, and are built into the system. None of the most bourgeois legislative bodies has been able to wipe this out.
On the question of food itself, the progressive institutions put in place by the Revolution are functioning. The media here have to admit that while there are shortages in many stores, Soviet workers are provided with much of their food through their places of work, i.e., the marketplace has been at least partially supplanted by other forms of distribution.
The imperialist media view with alarm the workers' control committees which have spontaneously begun a struggle against speculation and hoarding, calling them "vigilantes." These groups finally received Gorbachev's stamp of approval, if only to try and bring them under his control.
The October Revolution was the product of the international situation as well as of the internal class forces in czarist Russia. For the revolution to survive and to lay the groundwork for socialist construction in the face of a hostile capitalist world, the international support of the world working class and oppressed people was necessary. Thus, the October Revolution and the accomplishments of socialist construction were an international achievement.
Sheer vandalism, theft, misappropriation of funds, sabotage of the food industry, and incalculable other acts of destruction have shown themselves inadequate to undo the achievements of the October Revolution and of socialist construction.
This explains why the imperialists have come to the conclusion that it is only with their direct and swift intervention that the counterrevolutionary elements will be able to achieve their objective.
The Gorbachev administration was aware of the transport problem the year it took over, in 1985. Gorbachev himself had been in charge of agriculture, and identified the distribution of food as the most pressing problem facing the government.
In these five years, it was possible to construct a whole system of transportation. The USSR has the means to do it. If it could build up a space industry capable of competing with and in some cases overtaking the U.S., if it could overcome the grain and food embargo imposed on the USSR by the Carter administration and actually force the Reagan administration to lift the embargo or face a so-called revolt of agribusiness, then why couldn't it set up a crash program to either renovate or rebuild the transport system?
When Gorbachev came in, he promised to introduce the scientific-technological revolution begun in the West and modernize Soviet industry, transportation, etc. Everybody seemed perfectly in agreement with that. Presumably it would change social relations in a progressive direction, put them on a higher level, although with some emphasis on a market economy and decentralization for the purposes of cutting down bureaucracy and encouraging democratization.
But instead of proceeding with the scientific-technological revolution, his grouping put the priority on changing social relations. They put the market economy into effect first, before modernizing industry. That's why the transport system is in chaos. He put the cart before the horse. The scientific-technological revolution has been left behind while a social counterrevolution was unleashed.
The Central Committee leadership went along at first, and found themselves trapped when the apparently innovative and imaginative plans to modernize the economy turned out to be mostly an effort to change the social relations from socialism to capitalism.
By the time of the June 1988 Party Conference, however, it was pretty plain what was involved.
Only in the last couple of years have the masses begun to realize what Gorbachev is really up to — not modernization, not overhauling the economy to make it more efficient, but introducing capitalist relations. Capitalism first; then modernization is supposed to follow.
We have never maintained that there was a fully developed socialist system in the USSR. But the magnitude of socialist achievements is far more formidable than either the new crop of bourgeois types in the USSR or the imperialists had calculated.
Of course, for several years now they have been admonishing the Gorbachev leaders to go faster, to accelerate the reforms, by which of course they mean to hurry the destruction of socialist achievements. Now it appears that the reformers have reached a point where they cannot proceed further without significant imperialist intervention, economic and financial.
Last updated: 23 March 2018