Adel El-Emary
This is a chapter of my book: The Ongoing Revolution
(in Arabic)
We will present this issue
considering the Soviet Union as a model.
The course of the Russian
Revolution gave rise to a social class system and a bureaucratic mode of
production that proved to be less advanced than capitalism, and ultimately
collapsed due to its internal contradictions beside Western pressures. Here we
will present an analysis of this issue.
Before
the revolution, Russia witnessed a major industrial advancement accompanied by marked
backwardness of agriculture. Besides, there was an educational and scientific progress,
represented in the proliferation of schools, even in the countryside, respectful
universities, and valuable scientific research. While the majority of the
population still lived in the countryside (82% in 1917) the number of workers
in large industry did not exceed three million workers, most of whom were
ordinary manual workers, with workers-peasant traditions, and they were linked
to the countryside to one degree or another. That is, they did not constitute a
mature or consolidated working class, even as a
class "in itself"; at the socioeconomic level, but rather, a class on
the way of formation.
It also had major civilized
cities, as centers of advanced industry, where highly cultural intelligentsia
was living. The latter inspired liberal and socialist theories, in addition to
the role of its members as skilled technocrats necessary for modern industry
and scientific research. So, both agriculture and industry belonged to
different historical eras; intelligentsia and some industrial workers belonged
to the modern time, while the rest of the population lived in the
early modern period.
As a result of this situation, the ambitions and dreams of the different
classes varied. In the countryside, peasants looked for bourgeois reform, while
the urban industrial workers and radical intellectuals looked for socialism.
Because the class of the large landowners was stronger than the bourgeoisie,
the latter was unable to wage an effective struggle against the existing
system, which was in a faltering transitional stage from feudalism to
capitalism. Ironically, the working class was politically stronger than
capitalism. It was not Russian capitalism that guided the process of capitalist
transformation, but the feudal state played a fundamental role in establishing
advanced industry in cooperation with foreign investors, driving the capitalist
growth at a rate exceeding the rate of growth of the domestic capitalism itself.
Thus the rate of growth of the working class exceeded the rate of that of
domestic capitalism.
However, because agriculture
was not capitalized yet, but was in a transition to capitalism, and even
industry in cities was still limited for the whole of Russia’s economy, the
idea of the socialist transformation that workers and Marxists demand was not
possible according to the Marxist theory, which asserted that this
transformation necessitates an advanced capitalist economy; that is, in western
Europe.
The Tsarist state was markedly
centralized, and the large number of external enmities prompted it to build a
strong and modern army. That required the spreading of education to form
sufficient administrative and technical cadres with a high degree of efficiency
(the same as what happened in the era of Muhammad Ali in Egypt). This exhausted
the economic surplus, which contributed to impeding its economic growth.
The Russian Workers' Party
had split into two factions (then two parties): the Bolsheviks (left wing) and
Mensheviks (a conservative wing similar to the Socialist parties in Europe);
besides, other small socialist groups were present. Unskilled workers formed
the rank of the Bolsheviks, while skilled and educated workers formed that of
the Mensheviks. Other opposition parties have also been found, the most
important of which were the Cadet Party, the bourgeois liberal party, and the
Socialist Revolutionary Party, which is essentially a peasant party.
These are, in short, the
social-political conditions of Russia before revolution
This uneven
and combined development of Russian economics
and culture was reflected in the political level; savage Russia, as called in
Europe, was more mature than the latter in the sphere of class struggle. In
Lenin's famous expression, Russia was the weakest link in the imperialist
chain; consequently this less advanced country was closest to the socialist
revolution than Europe. This was a dilemma for the Marxists that will
consolidate and explode during the revolution of 1917. The class of the large
landowners was disintegrating, while the bourgeoisie was not able to lead an
accomplished bourgeois revolution. That situation is reminiscent of France
just before its revolution from a certain
point: the weakness of the bourgeoisie, while the revolution was brewing. In Russia this situation gave the fiercely
rebellious peasants and workers the opportunity to overthrow the large
landowners without enabling the bourgeoisie to rule. At this point the
situation differed from that of France on the eve of its revolution. Russia was
experiencing a very strong workers' movement, having a well-organized political
party, and the peasants also had their large and radical party (one million
members in 1917), while Russian capitalism was much weaker than French capitalism.
The aforementioned dilemma
of Russia consolidated during and after its revolution. The pre-revolution
situation had - according to Marxist theory - only the potential of a bourgeois
revolution, which was taken for granted by Russian Marxists ([1]). Thus the role of
peasants in the revolution must be essential, not merely an addition to the
role of the workers. Lenin translated this in the slogan of "Democratic
Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry", without this slogan specifying
which of them would have the superior authorit ([2]),
which he changed later, insisting and affirming that the workers must be the
leading power.
To overcome this dilemma,
Trotsky proposed the theory of the Permanent Revolution: a bourgeois revolution
led by the workers and supported by the peasantry, which establishes the
dictatorship of the proletariat backed by the peasants. Since the workers will
rule, they will- after accomplishing the tasks of the bourgeois revolution-
build socialism without the need for a new revolution ([3]). Thus, the revolution will be proletarian – peasant at the same
time, in terms of its political content; bourgeois with socialist aspirations.
This theory holds a clear problem: the proletariat in power fulfills the tasks
of the bourgeois revolution then builds socialism. How can socialism be built
before the forces of production develop to the maximum extent possible under
the capitalist system? Can the capitalist system grow under the rule of proletariat,
not capitalists? What can be inferred from this plan is that the workers carry
out a socialist revolution that accomplishes the historical tasks of the
bourgeoisie instead of the latter, in the context of building socialism.
We can say that the role of
the proletariat in the case of Russia, according to Marxist theoretical ideas,
is the additional element of a bourgeois revolution in the first place, as it
was in the French Revolution. However, to lead a bourgeois revolution and take
over power, not temporarily (this is always possible in history), rather,
permanently, governs and establishes socialism. This means one thing: violating
the theory of the relationship between the forces and relations of production,
which is fundamental in Marxism. Certainly, there are Marxist explanations of
this theory, trying to justify it by ideas such as the Permanent Revolution and
the New Democracy (Mao).. But all we can find is dwelling on the subject, with
extensive elaboration without real engagement with the issue at hand. The
conclusion being that socialism can be built in a backward country, provided
getting aid by developed countries ([4]).
In the Russian revolution,
the peasants were - by far - the most numerous, the most powerful in terms of
their role in the economic system, and the most present in the army. So they
imposed their program: distributing the land to the peasants (against the
original Bolshevik program: confiscation of all the land), as well as the
Bolshevik slogan: peace and an immediate ending of the war. The first matter
led to dangerous conflicts later.
At last, the workers could
establish their authority in the cities. The dominant classes were quickly
liquidated, lost the land and factories, alongside the state instrument itself.
A workers-peasant power was established, which Lenin had previously called the Democratic
Dictatorship. In reality the official power was concentrated in the Petrograd
Soviet; the strongest. The peasant soviets were weak and absent in small and
dispersed peasant communities, to the point that on June 3, 1917 the All-Russian
Congress of Soviets of Workers and Soldiers deputies was launched in Petrograd and a central executive committee was elected
without inviting the soviets of peasants'
deputies. However, in December 1917 a meeting of the Soviets
of peasants was held, and the overwhelming majority of delegates voted in favor
of the October Revolution, declaring their union with the soviets of soldiers
and workers.
As an extension of the
dilemma of the Russian revolution, the post-revolution situation of the workers
was weak enough to fail to efficiently manage the country. After allocating
lands to the peasants, the latter became economically stronger than the
proletariat, as their industries were not able to balance with the huge
agriculture. Moreover, in the Civil War and the wars of intervention, Russia
witnessed massive devastation, especially in the cities. Many workers were
killed and most of the rest fled to the countryside to seek food and guaranteed
work in land. The few that remained in the cities showed failure to manage the
economy, due to lack of experience. The proletariat lacked the ability to
manage what was supposed to be its economy. While all that changed in the
countryside was the right to own land for the benefit of the peasants. This new
situation led to a higher standard of their living and their control of most of
the national production, including food, and could now control the working
class economically in reality. Thus the stronger peasant component imposed itself on the
revolution as a whole, even in the major cities.
Those changes had several
consequences: First, the Labor base of the Labor party became limited, while
the party's cadres found themselves in power, not only responsible for managing
their own economy, but had also to work to rebuild the working class that had corroded
in the civil war and war of intervention. Secondly: The Bolshevik Party while
holding the state power found itself in a state of war with the developed world
(14 countries participated in the conquest of Russia), without having a
coherent social support at home. Thirdly: the Bolsheviks (according to their
theory of the social revolution in the weak link of the imperialist chain)
looked for a proletarian revolution in Europe to help them, but their
calculations were mistaken, as the workers' revolutions in Europe failed. Fourthly:
What made matters worse was the necessity of the Bolsheviks in 1921 to grant a
new concession to the peasants, by following the liberal "New Economic
Policy", which led to the growth of the "kulaks"; the rich
peasants, who Stalin later resorted to confiscating their lands by force and
killed millions of them ([5].(
In these circumstances, the social structure of the Soviet Union began
to being formed.
*************************
The social transformations achieved by the
revolution led to an increase in the standard of living of the peasants, the
absence of rent, and the lack of agricultural surplus. The peasants consumed
almost all their production, so that they could no longer save at their will.
Moreover, the industry deteriorated drastically; its production became not
sufficient enough to rebuild the country or provide the army supplies, rather,
it was not enough to exchange for food for city dwellers, resulting in famine.
The revolutionary proletariat was unable to control
the countryside. The presence of the Bolshevik Party was very weak among the
peasants and in their soviets, which prompted the Bolshevik government to give
the worker five votes to one vote for each peasant in the soviet elections, to
maintain the official status of workers and to achieve the dictatorship of the
proletariat.
This was a strange historical precedent, expressing
the dilemma of the revolution that had bourgeois potential with socialist aspirations.
Likewise, the workers themselves were unable to impose their authority, even
within the cities, because they were simply lacking the efficiency, thus the
workers' rulership really did not last more than a few weeks or months in the
large cities. Actually, destruction of the old system was relatively easy, but
the process of building a new system was the Russian dilemma while it was being
consolided (incomplete sentence). Here, everything began to change, especially
after the failure of the dream of extending the revolution to the entire
imperialist chain. However, the revolution was victorious in the wars of
intervention and civil war, the Bolsheviks could crush the right and left
opposition completely. At last the party's political authority became
omnipotent in the cities.
Because of this dilemma, everything began to change.
The revolution gradually declined during the period from 17-1928. Each step was
taken under pressure from the economic and military conditions that the
Bolsheviks and their allies exploited in their favor. The Bolshevik party
completely dominated, thanks to the balance between the workers and peasants. Rather,
it played on this balance even since before the rise of Stalin, which means
that the objective conditions were a favorable climate for the forces of
"evil" in the heart of new political power and the new deep state.
The party of the proletariat – supposedly - has become based on a small
proletariat; rather, it had to recreate the proletariat in order to operate the
industry. In order to strengthen its corroded base, it appealed to the help of
the old administrators and the Tsar's officers; the deep Caesarian state, with
the utmost use of violence to transform the peasants into workers and compel
them to work. This step was the first sign of the failure of the socialist
revolution and the beginning of the counter-revolution.
The emergence of "villains" inside and at
the head of the new state power had old seeds: the party that looked to itself
as the bearer of the consciousness of the proletariat, having truth, and the
pioneer of socialism. It now regards its absolute power the most necessary
guarantee for the stability of the revolutionary regime that would build
socialism. Therefore, the Bolshevik party, using the social and political
contradictions, struck here and there, supporting its absolute power, and
gradually centralized it in the hands of a single leader. To achieve this goal,
it practiced all forms of "evil", from killing opponents, stripping
all rights of workers and peasants, and using methods and men of czarism,
claiming that it had made great sacrifices for the sake of the capstone
doctrines.
This is how the state was re-established in Russia
with iron and fire against the will of the population. This was supported by
the ignorance of the workers, the greed and the narrow mind of the peasants,
and of course the aspirations of the new leaders of the party. In fact, the
Russians never ruled themselves either during or after the revolution. The
workers' soviets were concentrated in major cities, and the peasants' soviets
were also in the larger villages and towns, most of which were formed after the
October Revolution by the government. The power was effectively transferred
from the Tsar's hands to the Kerensky government, to the Bolsheviks, initially
supported by workers, soldiers and peasants. Then it ended up in the hands of a
few Bolshevik party leaders.
Despite all the circumstances, we
can not find any objective justification for the new rulers to: suppress the
peasants by armed gangs formed of workers, abolish the trade union authority, suppress
the workers-peasant left, the monopoly
of political power , the brutal liquidation of the other revolutionary parties,
then selecting the authoritarian Stalin as a leader. Last of all, the plots
performed to liquidate the most revolutionary elements of the Bolshevik party
itself. However, the greed of the few for power, the narrow mind of the Russian
people as a whole, and their liability to submit in exchange for a piece of
land, constituted the deep foundation of Stalinism.
The idea of organizing a revolution, while relying
on the support of another possible revolution is an absolutely utopian one. The
Russian Marxists were unanimous that socialism could not be established in
Russia without direct assistance from proletarian revolutions in Western
Europe. It is totally impractical to start a revolution on the basis that
others will complete it. So that this process of support must continue for
several decades in order to advance the relatively backward Russian economy, a period
that is sufficient for the bureaucratization of soviet power and the separation
of the workers' party from workers.
Just as this aid can only be conceived as an
addition, it does not immediately create a proletariat capable of
self-administration, which also means strengthening the authority of the state
and the ruling party. Likewise, this support cannot be free of charge; so who
will provide free support to a country with a population of 130 million people
for ideological or moral motives? This perception is based on a Marxist firm
belief in the unity of the interests of the "world proletariat",
which no practical politician can imagine. We add that the peasant component
here is neglected, that is the supposed support would be provided mainly to the
Russian peasants, because they are the majority of the Russians. So, why would
European workers provide support to Russian peasants in huge quantities for a
long time? For the sake of Russian workers?! If this is possible, capitalism
can also give up its private property in favor of an egalitarian - autonomous society, by mere discussion and
persuasion. Finally, it was never possible to ascertain the success of the
revolution in Europe, and then it was necessary to precisely conceptualize the
situation of revolutionary Russia in this case. Kautsky commented on this
perception, saying about Lenin: "although he lived for
decades as an emigrant in Western Europe, still never achieved a full
understanding of its political and social peculiarities. His politics, which
was completely adapted to the peculiarities within Russia, was with regard to
foreign countries based on the expectation of a world revolution, which to
anyone who knew Western Europe must have appeared from the start as an
illusion"([6]). The more utopian is Trotsky's additional perception: that the Russian
revolution would transfer the revolution to Europe ([7]).
Many factors prompted the
revolutionary authorities to resort to oppression to stabilize the system: the
inability of the Russian proletariat - its lack of educated and trained cadres
to run the country - the party became entrusted with its rehabilitation, and
indeed with its restructuring, as a necessity to preserve the new system - the
scarcity of economic surplus - the inability of the industry to provide goods
to peasants in exchange for food. The authorities resorted to seizing crops
from the peasants by force; the police force. In the beginning, the Bolshevik party
formed gangs of city workers to plunder the agricultural surplus at gunpoint. Later,
this process was organized in a better and more efficient way. The oppression
extended up to exclude the masses of workers from any exercise of authority.
Oppression definitely
required specialized apparatus, after shrinking of the number of workers and
the industry's need for them. These apparatus should require expenses and their
members must look for a share of the economic surplus. Therefore, the task of
rebuilding the degenerated state appeared (Lenin described the Soviet power in
March 1923 as: "Our state apparatus is so deplorable, not to say
wretched"([8])).
That state found that it is necessary to extract the
surplus by itself and to concentrate it in its hands. By this we became in front
of the new Soviet state: the leaders of the party that Stalin had opened to
non-workers, technocrats whom Lenin had to return them back in 1919 to their
positions and gave them payments generously ([9]), old and new senior statesmen, senior officers requited from
the old Tsar's army and new ones, a mixture of Bolsheviks and Caesarean
elements. That clique began working to build the new system. Its excellent
position was codified by special ceremonies. The theory was
"developed" from Marxism-Leninism to Stalinism to suit the new
system; it became the official philosophy of the state. The new plan of the new
Bolsheviks became: Socialism in One Country and after that they said: "the
state of the whole people"! Rather than making Russia a mere base of the
international revolution as Lenin and Trotsky wanted, the world communist
movement became a reserve and a fifth column for the Soviet Union.
Initially Lenin and Trotsky
liquidated all parties except the Bolshevik Party, then the same principle went
along; the left wing members of the same party, or those opposing the
leadership were physically liquidated, and even all the thinkers, leaders and
prominent militants of Russian socialism, including Trotsky himself. At the end, the party
structure reformed to match the regime of one party rule.
Bureaucratic
mode of production:
The mode of production is -
in broad terms, according to the perfectly reasonable Marxist definition - the
social form of the social surplus.
In the Soviet Union, the
social surplus was being generated under
the supervision of the organized state bureaucracy (its core was the party
elite), while the workers and peasants were squeezed out of any political or
non-political authority. The party has been integrated into the state
apparatus, including the army and security. Thus a bureaucratic ruling class
had been formed. That class established all system policies and supervised
their implementation. It sat the objectives of the investment process and the
mechanisms of its implementation. At the end it determined the mechanisms of
distributing the surplus, its fate, and the proportions of distribution among
the different groups that constituted the new ruling class. The member of this
class, was merely a position and nothing more, representing power only in terms
of her professional status, and her entire activity is directed toward the
interests of the system as a whole, not her own interest. If that member had come
out of it for one reason or another, she became nothing, especially during the
rise of the system, before the emergence of secret private properties of the
bureaucrats. As for the surplus, it was being distributed through mechanisms
determined by the ruling elite to its members in different forms: “wages”,
bonuses, percentages of “profits”, “state awards”, incentives, special
services, excellent special products, and other not codified forms that emerged
later. These mechanisms were linked to the nature of the bureaucracy itself,
where specific responsibilities are defined for each individual plus giving him
specific power; a margin of movement that enables her to practice unregulated
forms of looting, as a margin, related to any bureaucracy in general - even in
the private sector – for the purpose of providing the administration with some flexibility.
Everyone in the bureaucratic
system received "wages", but there was a qualitative difference
between the "wages" of workers and the "wages" of senior
statesmen. The workers received a ration in exchange for their labor power,
while the big bureaucrats received a share of the surplus, not corresponding to
professional work, but a socio-political position. The most important sector of
the bureaucracy; its heart, consisted of highest military ranks, security guys, the secret service, leading
intellectuals of the ruling class, politicians, and technocrats in their
administrative rather than technical capacity, just as the rest of the upper
bureaucracy. That was ruling class. All this is not completely intended or
planned; Stalin himself lived as an austere, but running the system required
the purchase of loyalties.
Bureaucracy is a social
stratum, a position, more than a real class; it is a legal personality, an
institution. It is more important and stronger than its members as long as the
system remains coherent. It does not consist of specific individuals; rather,
it begins its existence as an institution; a social position, an apparatus that
includes individuals, whom it may get rid of some and recruit others.
The full control of the
bureaucratic stratum or class - if we want to call it - over the society
requires the prohibition and proscription of the individual property of the
means of production. Individual ownership means that the bureaucracy is
deprived of part of its power as an owner class, and of some amount of the surplus (because it depends on direct
robbery). Therefore it tends to confiscate it to the fullest extent, and
becomes less and less able to do so as it goes into disintegration as an
institution.
In this system, the ruling
class, or stratum was the state itself. Thanks to this concentration, the
surplus was being produced and distributed according to economic plans, by
distributing investments, determining wages and gifts, and developing the labor
power in a way that serves the long-term interests of the system. It is
inevitable that the state would provide services such as education, health
services..etc., to an appropriate extent for that goal. The system was
extracting the social surplus through a general plan that included the
distribution of labor, the determination of working hours, workers' rights,
etc. Thus the surplus was being generally extracted from the working classes,
as a single block, being organized by administrative methods in the production
process. The state employed the worker in a specific place, specifies his
rights, and it might need to consider his inclinations, if the authorities were
reasonable enough, in order to achieve the highest possible performance. As for
peasants, the state was "buying" from them a percentage of their
crops at prices that it determined, and obligated them to purchase certain
"public" services. In the early periods, peasant's farms were
compelled to provide a certain number of them annually to the state to become
workers in the cities. In addition, the peasants were being subjugated to
generalized servitude, which resembles that of the Asiatic mode of production,
in the form of public works. Moreover, the state imposed certain taxes on the
products, not related to their cost; with the purpose of guaranteeing a
predetermined income. This is not to mention the concentration camps, set up by order
of Lenin([10]), reached
its peak during Stalin's rule, and incarcerated
millions; estimated to be 8-15 million people in 1942([11]).
This system, therefore,
consisted of two classes: the upper bureaucracy and the forced laborers. All
work was carried out under coercion. In addition, the striking laborer became
subject to execution at the late 1920s ([12]). Workers were not distributed among the various production
sectors by bureaucratic decisions only, but also by indirect mechanisms, such
as the types and quantities of taxes (for example, during the Khrushchev era,
the livestock farmers were obliged to sell their products to the state at the
price that it set, which meant their conversion from private producers into
laborers for the state).
The fact that the
bureaucracy is the only owner of the means of production compelled the workers
to work for it. Moreover, the worker did not have the right to move from one
job to another except after the approval of the state, because his employment
contract was being done with the state not with the work place. The citizen had
no right to work in other countries, except with a mandate from the state that
shared his salary in this case. In all cases, he was not receiving a wage, but
rather a ration (like soldier's
portion of the daily food), which he had
no right to bargain about it; rather he had to receive. In fact, the worker had
no role in the determination of his income, was not allowed to bargain, as
there was no labor market at all, but the state determined everything for him,
according to its own calculations.
Under this system, the
working class can not be considered proletariat, in the Marxist sense of the
word for many causes. It did not pay surplus value to the state. The mode of
bureaucratic exploitation prompted the state to employ the entire population;
otherwise they will starve to death. Besides, the working class is not
separated from the possession of the means of production; it cannot choose to
work, and at the same time the state used non economic means to force it to
work; including very dreadful ways. The state also controlled the movements of the
workers, their fields of study and specialization... etc. The worker was just a
"someone", working for the bureaucracy as the farmer in ancient Egypt
used to work for the king, with some difference, as we will see.
In conclusion, the surplus
was extracted from the workers as a whole in favor of the bureaucratic stratum
as a legal personality; an institution. This method of looting was not related
to the market mechanisms, but rather there was no market at all. The state
imposed both wages and prices according to its goals, regardless of the cost.
It was not concerned with the profit rate of each enterprise, not even the
general profit rate in the first place, but rather it was concerned mainly with
the stability of the system as a whole. The state in such system was more
important than anything else: politics was first. Economic policy was an
element in a policy aimed at securing the social system against both internal
and external pressures, whatever the economic cost and losses. This was evident
in what is called the inefficiency of the Soviet economy; economic projects
were created in the service of the state policy, not for profit - making.
On the basis of this
concept, we argue that the surplus in the bureaucratic society is the Generalized
Labor Rent. The logic of the economic plan determines from the start the
division of labor and the distribution of workers over the means of production.
It also determines the quantity and quality of workers "consumption", the level of bureaucracy’s income, and the rate and areas of
capital accumulation. The plan determined everything, and the income of the members
of the dominant class was determined according to their roles in developing and
implementing the policies of the system as a whole. As for the exchange, it did
not take place in a free market, but rather in a central market, which was
under the control of the state and subject to the general plan, without
regarding the cost, production price, or exchange value.
This surplus is not a
surplus value, because it is not produced through buying and selling labor
power, but is extracted through uneconomic ways; by coercion. However, it is
not purely feudal surplus; rather, it is an intermediate form, having
characters of both.
We call this the Modern
Bureaucratic Mode of Production, which differs from the old bureaucratic
systems - such as ancient Egypt - because the surplus in our case is extracted
as a Generalized Labor Rent from the working class as a whole, not from its
members as individuals, or from its divisions (for example, villages
communities). Here the rate of exploitation of the individual workers varied,
and there were even privileged workers who high wages, and workers who were
receiving wages in establishments that were loss -making. But there was a
generalized labor rent going to the state.
This system arose as a
result of the Russian revolution with its dilemmas as we dealt with, and the conditions of Russia and its own
social composition. This was not a historical inevitability in any way. Rather,
the establishment of that system was the result of the balance of powers in
Russia. It would have been certainly that things go differently if the
Bolshevik revolution had failed for subjective reasons; even that might be
better for Russia.
The Soviet power had to
extract the surplus from the peasants by coercion, because it was the only
surplus that was available at the beginning. Meanwhile, the backward industry
alongside the foreign blockade pushed the state to prioritize heavy industry at
the expense of the consumer goods industry. This option led to achieving a high
accumulation rate and a low rate of consumption. Besides; the wages were very
law, with brutally suppressing the workers and forcing them to work, and
prohibiting the work outside state sector, otherwise labor camps, especially
most of the population were peasants, with a shortage of labor needed for rapid
industrialization.
We consider this system a
pre-capitalist socio –economic formation, not in the Marxist sense, but in the
sense that it is less technologically advanced, based on backward forces of
production, and its development had blocked after little decades. It is also
less modernized than capitalism; the state imposed Marxism over the people as a
religion, not allowed to be criticized or refused, so one is not able to think
freely without
the guidance of another (this is the definition
Enlightenment presented by Kant). This is backing out secularism.
Despite
achieving a
great development of productive forces in the
beginning, the formation of modern bureaucratic society implies a strong tendency
for stagnation. It does not have a strong internal impulse to develop the means
of production as quickly as it actually did (note that the high rate of China's
growth began actually after starting transition to capitalism). Rather, western
pressures and blockade were the biggest motivation for rapid growth. Moreover,
the continuation of the bureaucratic system requires its success to maintain
its isolation from the influence of the global market. So the extremely fast industrialization
at the beginning, especially for machinery and equipment, arm industry in
particular, was very concerned by the bureaucracy.
The
disintegration and disintegration of the
bureaucratic system:
Despite the development of
rapid means of production in the Soviet Union, the bureaucracy failed to catch
up with capitalism. The latter possesses a vast global market, a special
internal mechanism for growth and stimulating development, and it was much more
advanced than Russia. A costly conflict took place between the two parties. The
capitalist countries sought vigorously to restore this part of the world that
had almost left the global market. This prompted the Soviet bureaucracy to work
to strengthen itself, which explains its focusing of the entire Soviet economy
around the manufacture of weapons (while this did not happen in the socialist
countries which the Soviet army was protecting, or benefited from the Cold
War). This heavy cost of the army and armament placed enormous pressure over the
Soviet resources, accelerating the collapse of the system.
In addition, the domination
of the bureaucracy always leads immediately to great corruption, despite all
laws and the instruments of oversight and control. As we aforementioned, this
bureaucracy gives its members a margin for private movement in their
implementation of the system policy, like any bureaucracy in general. With the
growth of sources of the surplus, the private interests of the members of that
class grow, over time. Hence, peripheries of the system ultimately achieve triumph
over the institution as a whole, and this is what actually occurred for the
bureaucratic systems. As the external pressures continued, the peripheries of
the system; the new rich bureaucrats, met with capitalism abroad; hence, the
capitalist transformation started. This process was gradually reinforced by the
breakdown of the Iron Curtain, under the effect of the communication revolution
and the public access to the conditions of the opposite world; the capitalist..
Then the bourgeois revolution came in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, while
China had preceded a decade or more.
*************************
The summary of
this analysis is that what actually took place in the socialist countries was a
path which followed the situation of those countries at the time of their
transformation to socialism. It was never the result of some errors or
problems, neither in practice, nor - certainly - of foreign conspiracies as some
Marxists claimed. The fact that the socialist revolution did not take place in the
developed countries, as predicted by Marxism, was not a coincidence, but rather
a challenge to the theory about the socialist revolution, and with it, all the
predictions of Marx and Engels.
The idea of
the dictatorship of the proletariat constitutes a fatal weakness in the
Marxist socialist theory; it led to an ambiguous talk about the proletarian
state; sometimes a state, a state - commune - and a state that vanishes because
it is not needed. How can we imagine that "special bodies of armed men, prisons,
etc." - in the words of Lenin - confiscates the means of production and
then chooses for vanishing of its volition? How can such a state be a non -state
at the same time, as described also by Lenin, except on paper? Then how can we
imagine - assuming all good intentions - that the state of armed workers will
not be an oppressive state, while peasants - in the case of Russia – account
for 85% of the population?
This theory had
been adhered to in the socialist revolutions following that of Russia: the party
rulership on behalf of the working class, even in countries almost have no workers;
so who represents this party?! How can we imagine that this party state will be
dissolved autonomously?
***********************
Because of
failure of the socialist state, there was almost a consensus in the ranks of
the socialists on the necessity of finding another socialist alternative in which
the state is subjugated to the people, but there is no practical
"recipe" yet for implementation. Practically speaking, we do not
think that there can be a state that is subject to the people. Actually the good
state is the dead state.
We end this
section by referring to what is being said by the Marxists that the aforementioned
socialism is not really socialism, but rather another system, which they called
a bureaucratic workers' distorted state, state capitalism..etc. What we want to
call attention to is that we also considered it (what does it refer to?) a stratified
and bureaucratic system; but this is the Socialism as it had been implemented.
It does nothing to say that another socialist ideal was not established, that
history should achieve, just to deny the charges of socialism. Our goal was to
analyze the actual reality, not the name: an autopsy.
***********************
‘Despite all the
disasters, socialism had achieved great steps in the path of development and welfare
for people who were markedly underdeveloped, and some of them were primitive in
the full sense of the word. For example, we cannot imagine how the peoples of
the Tatars and Central Asia could witness this modernization without socialism,
as there were no other promising political currents. However, it is not easy to
imagine what would happen to Russia and China without the socialist revolution.
Would the bourgeoisie have achieved greater freedom, welfare, and development
for those peoples? Maybe'
([1]) The idea of a socialist revolution in Russia was brought up by Marx in
a much earlier period, before the great transformations that the Russian
countryside witnessed and led to the disintegration of the village communities. Letter from Marx to Editor of the Otecestvenniye
Zapisky: "If Russia
continues to pursue the path she has followed since 1861, she will lose the
finest chance ever offered by history to a nation, in order to undergo all the
fatal vicissitudes of the capitalist regime".
([5])
This policy liberated
domestic trade, encouraged foreign capital to work in the Soviet Union, and
established the right to private property that was previously abolished by the
Bolshevik government. It also abolished the policy of forcibly seizing crops
and replaced it with a tax on agricultural production. It also abolished forced
labor. This policy resulted in private sector recovery; artisan workshops,
trade and agriculture, and has led to a significant improvement in the
conditions of the economy as a whole.
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