Will the USSR become capitalist?

An Reabhioid - for a Workers Republic - Page 13 part 1 of a two-part article

WILL THE FORMER SOVIET UNION

BECOME CAPITALIST?

The changes taking place in Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union, now referred to.as the Commonwealth if Independent States (CIS), have a particular significance for Peoples Democracy and the Fourth International to which we belong. Our political origins are in the struggle lead by Leon Trotsky in the Soviet Communist Party against the degeneration of the Russian Revolution which was symbolised by the rule of Stalin. Fromas carly as 1923 Trotsky began to argueinside the CPSU that the gains of the Revolution were in danger from the bureaucracy which was taking control of the Soviet state. When he was expelled from the Communist Party and then from the Soviet Union he organised his.co-thinkersin t he International Left Opposition which became the Fourth International. As Marxists our starting point for trying to understand what is happening today in the CIS is the theoretical work done by Trotsky which finds its most finished expression in his classic book The Revolution Betrayed which was first published in 1937. Before we can go to describe the events of today and their possible outcomes it is necessary to explain something of theideas of Trotsky and the anti-stalinist Marxist tradition represented by the Fourth International which has been distorted and caricatured by both Stalinists such as the Workers Party and the Communist Party of Ireland and those who say that all Marxism is only a variety of Stalinism.

THE BOLSHEVIKS

‘The Russian working class, led by the Bolsheviks, seized power in 1917. The Bolshevik leadership knew that theircountry was the most backward in Europe but expected that successful revolutions would take place in more industrially advanced states within a short period. Between 1918 and 1923 there were revolutions in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland and other parts of Europe but all were defeated. This left the Soviet Union isolated and bankrupted by the civil war and the military intervention by every imperialist state. Combined with this extreme poverty was a severe restriction of democracy both within the Soviets (the elected institutions responsible for decision making in the country) when opposition parties were tendencies and factions within the Bolshevik Party political as well. This was intended as a short term emergency measure forced on the Bolsheviks as a means of defending the revolution during and just after the civil war but it played a part in assisting political control to become more narrowly concentrated in the hands of sections of the Communist Part’s bureaucracy. Socialist theory have always predicted that successful revolutions would take place in developed, industrialised countries firstof all. The new Soviet Union was unable to provide all its citizens with adequate clothes, housing. food to say nothing of luxury items taken for granted in some western countries. All this has a familiar ring. However, the great gain that the revolution gave the new state was a planned economy which permitted a rapid growth of productive capacity. But the working class was no longer able to participate in the economic or political decision making processes because its role had been usurped by the bureaucracy. As Trotsky put it: “The Soviet bureaucracy hasrisen abovea class which is hardly emerging from destitution and darkness, and has no tradition of dominion or command” (The Revolution Betrayed, P 248)

NEW BUREAUCRACY

Although this new bureaucracy had wrested political control from the working class this did not mean that the Soviet Union had ceased to be a worker's state.

For Trotsky and revolutionary Marxists it was a contradictory society between capitalism and socialism.

It is worth quoting at some length Trotsky's criteria for determining the class nature of the state. We will use these as a rough guide in examining today’s situation: “The nationalisation of the land, the means of industrial production, fansport and exchange, together with the monopoly of foreign trade, constitute the basis of the Sovietsocial structure. Through these relations, established by the proletarian revolution, the nature of the Soviet Union as a proletarian state is for us basically defined”(op. cit. p.249).

Through these relations the new economy and society

An Reabhloid - for a Workers Republic - Page 14 eS Oe —e—v—eogaoasnwaaes$»$SsSsSsSssSms oo was not ruled by the profit motive but by the priorities of the new ruling bureaucracy. This meant for example that resources were allocated according to the bureaucrat’s plan which often, as the western media is so often pointing out, led to massive investment in totally bankrupt enterprises throughout the whole economy. The bureaucrats were assured of their income and privileges simply by producing or even pretending to produce the goods demanded by the plan. Itdid not matter to them whether they actually worked and could be “sold”.

This is completely different to capitalism where the capitalists only gain their income after the sale of goods they produce.

CONCESSIONS

In addition to these distinguishing features the Soviet Union and the other states of Eastern Europe did provide extremely cheap transport and housing, huge subsides on the price of all basic foodstuffs, guaranteed employment.

Soviet workers did not have to worry whether or not their work was profitable. Of course it is true that there was an enormous chasm between the hospitals used by top CPSU officials and these used by a working class family but the Soviet citizen did not have to spend a lifetime dreading the hospital bills that would financially cripple his American counterpart. Because it claimed to rule in the name of the working class the Soviet bureaucracy had made these concessions at the same time that it prevented any attempt by the working class to independently organise. These are the gains that the IMF and the Bundesbank wish to eliminate as a necessary prelude to the reintroduction of capitalism. As we shall see it is around the defence of these gains that the working class of the CIS and Eastern Europe will mobilise and the outcome ofthis struggle will determine the shape of political developments in these states for the foreseeable future. Thus, althougha bureaucratic degeneration has taken place it still remains a worker's state. The task facing the Soviet working class was not to overthrow the capitalists and the Tsar again but to topple the parasitic bureaucracy and take control of the economy and the state. Trotsky's analysis of the negative effect of the bureaucracy on the Soviet econamy and the part it would play in the re-establishment of capitalism is breathtaking on its accuracy.

“The USSR thus embodies terrific contradictions. But it still remains a degenerated worker's state. Such is the social diagnosis. The political has an alternative character: either the bureaucracy becomes ever more the organ of the imperialists in the worker’s state, will overthrow the new forms of property and plunge the country back to capitalism; or the working class will crush the bureaucracy and open the way to socialism. (The death agony of capitalism and the tasks of the Fourth International) Due to its planned economy the Soviet Union wasable to industrialise at an unprecedented speed in the 1920s and 3()s, a time of economic depression in the capitalist world. Western style factories borrowing the most modern capitalist techniques were constructed by the central bureaucratic commend. But Soviet industry was notoriously inefficient and its products were of inferior quality even then. For Trotsky the problem lay in the fact that the working class had been denied political power by the bureaucracy. “Under a nationalised economy, quality (Trotsky’s emphasis) demands a democracy of producers and consumers, freedom of criticism and initiative - conditions incompatible with a totalitarian regime of fear, lies and flattery”(op. cit. p.276).

NAVIGATOR

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