Let Them Eat Glasnost (1987)

Editorial from Issue 4 of the World Socialist Review

Everyone knows the old joke about Russia's top-down brand of state capitalism: capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, whereas communism is the opposite. In fact, of course, there are no socialist republics (socialism not being compatible with government), nor are any of the Soviet Union’s republics examples of socialism (which requires a classless, moneyless society functioning on a worldwide basis), nor are there even any soviets (councils acting as the workers' democratically elected delegates) in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. What's in the name, then? An immense majority who go to the market everyday to sell their only commodity—their ability to do work—to a small minority who. . . . roll up their shirtsleeves and plunge into the "work” of supervising and directing the country’s capital investments so as to make them yield a profit (someone' s got to do it, after all!).

And now that the USSR’s workers, women and men alike, have glasnost, Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of ’’openness,” they will presumably become happier and more productive and, not least, more accessible to multinational penetration. For even the spectre of communism has at last been incorporated into the marketplace!

Common Ownership

It is no academic exercise to point out that the word ’’communism” means only common ownership of the means of producing wealth: the right to decide on the use of the mechanisms by which society recreates and reproduces itself. The state is designed, on the contrary, to enforce the will of a minority against the wishes of the majority (in modern times, perversely enough, through the use of "majority rule”). As "open” as the CPSU and its politburo may now be projecting themselves, all the glasnost in the world (though there isn’t that much of it floating around anyhow) will not make them communists.

Are We “Commies” ?

As communists (socialists) ourselves, our policy has often been confused with theirs. During the second world war, when the Allied Powers calculated it was to their advantage to court Russia’s ersatz ruling élite, a great deal of treacle and syrup poured forth from the US government about the heroic Soviet Union, led by that epic working-class genius, Joseph Stalin.

If you were too young during the days of world war II, or not yet born, there are books and articles readily available dealing with the cooperation and friendship between the bolshevik-style Communists on the one hand, and the professed champions of "democratic” capitalism on the other. (For starters, try The Pocket Book of the War, Quincy Howe, Ed., Pocket Books, Inc., Hew York, 1941.)

However, when the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Great Britain were wining, dining and dealing with Stalin in the Kremlin, the World Socialist Party and its Companion Parties in other countries were openly opposing the war as a carnage not worth the shedding of a single drop of working-class blood. When the secret police of the Soviet Union and the secret police of the United States (the forerunner of the present CIA) were acting in unison, we were speaking out and writing articles attacking the war.

When the Communist Party was recruiting for the war effort, selling Victory Bonds, waving the flag and singing the national anthem of America, as well as that of Russia, we of the World Socialist Party were speaking from the rostrum on Boston Common as our comrades in England spoke in Hyde Park; continuing to urge our fellow workers to organize for the abolition of capitalism everywhere—the basic cause of war.

Are They Communists?

Thus, we are not Communists in the popularly accepted meaning of that much-maligned word. We do not support or sympathize with Russian or Chinese or Cuban or any other state capitalism. We are communists, though, in the classical meaning of the term. We are scientific socialists who advocate the complete and immediate abolition of the buying and selling system in all its forms around the world and the immediate introduction of a system of production for use.

If the workers of the Soviet Union want an ’’opening” that is socially authentic, they would do well to press for the immediate elimination of the system that keeps them exploited in more or less the same way as it does everywhere else. Perhaps glasnost will inadvertently give them some space in which to think about organizing for a real socialist revolution.

Sting in the Tail: Another Dud Czech (1992)

The Sting in the Tail column from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Another Dud Czech

It Is difficult to run capitalism, whether the free-enterprise or the state model. The latest politician to learn this harsh truth is Tomáš Ježek, privatisation minister in the Czechoslavakian government.

Part of Mr Ježek's scheme was the issuing of books of vouchers that can be exchanged for shares in the privatised companies. This scheme is the subject of the usual speculation and sharp practices that can be expected in a market system. According to The Guardian (21 January 1992):

The Czech privatisation minister Tomáš Ježek has threatened to take away the license of any firm shown to be speculating. . . . But the public has been shocked by reports of agents tempting little old ladies with food hampers if they sign over their vouchers.

This Tomáš Ježek is the same out and out defender of capitalism with its wonderful "speculation" who wrote to the Socialist Standard in June 1991 accusing us of "calculated drivel" and "utter self-deception".

Mr Ježek has yet to learn the bitter lesson of capitalism. It is not politicians who control the market system — it is the market system that controls the politicians.

Labour of Sisyphus

The futility of dealing with effects rather than causes has been proved once again by the re-launch of the Anti-Nazi League.

The League was first formed in 1977 to combat the rising National Front. Street battles duly took place and the League was wound up in 1980 when the NF went into decline for reasons which, incidentally, had little to do with the League.

What has brought the League back again is the growth of another bunch of would-be Nazis, the British National Party, and punch-ups between the two are likely.

So the League which thought it could "drive the Nazis off the streets” has it all to do again! That's the fate of all those who think they can deal with capitalism's evils in isolation.

Of Bikes & Bangs

I am fed up with politicians who say "you can't disinvent nuclear weapons". You can't disinvent penny-farthing bicycles either, but I haven't seen many just lately.

(Letter in The Guardian 1 February1992) 

Obviously the penny-farthing didn’t have to be disinvented for it to disappear: it was simply replaced by more effective means of transport as society's technical knowledge advanced.

The same thing happened to the cannonball when high explosives and then nuclear weapons came along, and the latter is still the most devastating means of waging war that society knows.

That letter writer probably wants to see nuclear weapons banned, but this is impossible when the profit-driven capitalist system churns out the conflicts which make weapons, nuclear or otherwise, so necessary and therefore so inevitable.

The Front-Man

The demise of Gorbachev had politicians, journalists, etc., rushing to endorse the Great Man theory of history.

According to this theory, significant changes in science, art or political direction are down to an outstanding individual, and John Major expressed It very well:

It is given to very few people to change the course of history, but that is what Gorbachev has done.

(The Guardian 27 December 1991) 

This shallow thinking ignores the social forces which shape history and which brought down the "communist" dictatorship. Look at how America's economic might bled-white the USSR economy through the arms race and how this in turn produced massive discontent among workers in the USSR with their living standards.

The reform of the USSR economy and political system had to be attempted sometime, and if Gorbachev hadn't started it then another front man would have. To paraphrase Henry Ford, the Great Man theory of history is bunk.

Tough at the Top

The plight of Lloyds’ "names"who find themselves a little strapped for cash has moved the nation to tears and the journalists and TV commentators to indignation and pleas that "something must be done".

At the risk of appearing a little unfeeling about the plight of our "betters" we would just like to point out what kind of wealth you need to become one of these "names".

To be a name you have to show that you have £250,000 in readily realisable assets, a total over and above the value of your first home.

(The Independent 20 February 1992)

An interesting side issue to the "names" affair is that 40 Tory MPs, Including some cabinet ministers, have suffered in this insurance crisis. We suppose that they will all be very philosophic about it — after all they never tire of telling us how we all live in a classless society now.

And of course in this classless society we all have £250,000 in readily realisable assets, don't we?

Easing the Pain

In 1990 the Marquess of Cholmondeley was left £118 million in his father's will — we assume that his dad reckoned that even in Mr Major's classless society the money might come in handy.

Unfortunately the Marquess has three sisters and dear old dad didn't leave 'em a bean. Anxious to see that his sisters don't starve the Marquess has decided to sell a Holbein painting that was part of the estate. This painting is estimated to fetch about £15 to £20 million — so even divided three ways this should ensure that the three sisters will be able to afford the occasional knees-up.

Heartwarming stories like these from the national press are the sort of thing that must cheer those other citizens of the classless society who are huddled In the doorways of shops, shivering in cardboard boxes and wondering where tomorrow's breakfast is coming from.

Running Commentary: Patriots at work (1987)

The Running Commentary column from the September 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Patriots at work

In the whole of the world there are probably no more fervent patriots than Peter Wright and Oliver North.

To prove it, they were prepared to go to unusual lengths. North arranged to supply arms to the Contras in defiance of a Congressional decision against it and then made elaborate arrangements to hide the evidence in the memory holes and the shredding machines of Washington. One senator described it as a military junta established to circumvent the checks and balances of the American Constitution.

Wright, in his own words, "bugged and burgled" his way wherever and whenever it suited his purpose. He knew of other officers in M15 who tried to organise a romantic covert operation to undermine the democratically-elected Wilson government — on the grounds that, in the view of these officers. Wilson was a "menace". And he kept quiet about all this until he went into an embittered retirement.

Both of these men justify what they did on the grounds that they were acting in the "national interest"; both deny that they would ever contemplate doing anything likely to harm "their" country. Peter Wright is now rather too old and sick to look like an example of tragic heroism; but Oliver North — well, we all know about the adulation his confessions provoked among his fellow patriots in America.

But one thing patriots are supposed to worship and to protect is the way of life in "their" country — which must include its system of government and its laws. Obeying the law is not a matter of convenience or expediency — something to be done at one time and not at another, something for others to do but not for yourself. If a country's governmental system and its laws are "good” — as Wright and North, as staunch patriots, must think — then to obey them and to conform to them should be a matter of pride and pleasure rather than of anguish and hardship.

So what are we to make of these patriots, who claim the right to choose when and how they accept what "their" country represents? Of course they cannot claim to be consistent or sincere in their beliefs. But that is only the beginning. Patriotism — which, as we have said, is no more than a belief — is not consistent or logical. We are justified in being proud only about our achievements but the place where we are born, our parents, the nationality label which is stuck on us, are accidents and not achievements. So the basis of patriotism — pride in country — is false.

Patriotism claims that the artificial national state boundaries of capitalism divide the human race not just in terms of territory but of ability and temperament: but there is no evidence to sustain this. Across all the boundaries — of race and sex as well as of nation — the class divide of capitalism operates and it is the only one which is of any significance when we consider human interests and progress to a better society.

So if Wright and North are confused — or deceitful, cynical, ruthless, whichever is preferred -— they are really only behaving as patriots must. And that should be enough to convince anyone of the case for international working class unity.

Gorbachev’s gift

We all know how Mikhail Gorbachev is seen as a "liberalising reformist" leading the Russian people to "communism". He urges people to work harder and improve productivity and factories to become more independent in pursuit of greater profit.

Gorbachev, however, is not just good at telling others what to do. He is himself participating in the process of glasnost and perestroika (openess and restructuring). With this aim in mind the state capitalist boss has donated 50,000 roubles (£50,000) to the Soviet Cultural Fund for a statue of Vasili Tyorkin to be built in Smolensk (Central Russia). Vasili Tyorkin is the soldier hero in a poem by Alexander Tvardovsky.

This money, we are told by Soviet Weekly (11 July 1987) came out of the foreign royalties for Gorbachev's books and other writings. As a member of the Russian ruling class, with a few roubles to spare, Gorbachev is quite happy to use his pin money like this for two reasons.

Any new monument which is not another tribute to Lenin will be welcome by most people and will enhance the popularity of the present leader.

A statue which helps to spread absurd patriotic notions that Russia is worth dying for is likely to be welcomed by the whole Russian capitalist class since it is their way of life that the working class might one day be called on to defend in war.

Mike Tavener

Dictatorial democrats

This is a good time to remember that the Gang of Four broke with the Labour Party partly because of their anger and dismay at that party's persistent internal feuding. Break the mould of these outworn, traditional parties, they argued, and instead fashion a new one in which reason and moderation would prevail. Then all disputes would be settled simply because nobody would be adopting preformed, dogmatic stances. Sounded good, thought a lot of people who were also fed up with Labour's apparent will for its own destruction.

Trouble — serious trouble — started when the Alliance, having kidded themselves that they were about to become a serious prospect to have an influence in the government, were so badly mauled in the last election. The response of the mould-breakers to this was anything but innovative. They resorted to the excuse which Labour and Conservative Parties regularly use when they lose an election. There is nothing wrong, they asserted, with our principles or our policies; the problem lies with our failure to present them effectively enough.

In the case of the Alliance, they decided that they had suffered precisely because they were an alliance — that the regular appearance of two Davids on our TV screens cost them crucial support among workers who like consistency, strength and single-mindedness in their leaders. It was thus that the Alliance came up with the idea of a formal merger between the Liberals and the SDP — one party, one leader.

Now moderation and reasonableness should have welcomed such an idea — or at least been prepared to discuss it in an objective. constructive frame of mind. In fact, the campaign leading up to the referendum on the merger was notable for its lack of these very things. Abuse and mud-slinging would be moderate terms to describe what was said by some Alliance members about others.

If that were not enough many members of the SDP. including some of its leaders, made it quite clear that if the vote went against their wishes they would not accept it. David Owen adopted this attitude. Rosie Barnes was another: "If merger takes place." she said. "There will be a Social Democratic Party which remains behind. Four of the MPs will remain Social Democrats and David Owen will be our leader

So this is a good time to ask: What sort of democrat is it (and what sort of democracy do they envisage) who contests an issue leading to a vote but has no intention of being influenced if the majority is against them.

The merger debate in the Alliance has revealed, if it were still needed, the true nature of that organisation — as another party of capitalism with all the cynicism and trickery of those they claim to despise.

What about Russia? (1991)

From the September 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is the Soviet Union socialist?

Of course not. Nobody believes that any more, do they?

But didn't they try socialism and it failed?

No. The Soviet Union has never at any time been socialist. Socialism has always meant a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production where goods and services are produced directly to satisfy people’s needs, not for sale on a market with a view to profit. Since 1917 the Soviet Union has always had state ownership not common ownership and this under a one-party dictatorship with goods and services still being produced for sale and profit. Lenin, whose government introduced this system, called it “state capitalism”. It was an accurate description. What has failed in the Soviet Union is this state capitalism not socialism.

But they called themselves socialists, didn't they?

Yes, but that is not enough to make someone a socialist. All sorts of people have called themselves socialist, including Hitler, Idi Amin and Colonel Gaddaffi. without anybody taking their claims seriously. The claims of the Soviet dictators should have been dismissed in the same way, and probably would have been if parties like the Communist Party which once had some influence amongst workers in Britain had not talked about "the socialist sixth of the world” and painted the Soviet government as governing in the interests of the workers.

So you say that this wasn't true?

Yes, that's right. It was a lie. and we exposed it right from the start earning ourselves the undying hatred of the Communist Party. The Soviet Union has never been socialist and the workers have never held power there. Socialism means a classless society but ever since their coup of 1917 power has been exercised by the Party bosses. Over time these evolved into a new ruling class, collectively owning the means of production and enjoying a privileged lifestyle—the notorious nomenklatura.

OK, you say the Soviet Union was state capitalist but whatever it was it failed, didn't it?

Sure, but don’t forget that all forms of capitalism in all countries have always failed to solve the problems facing wage and salary workers, and always will because capitalism is based on exploitation, whether the exploiters are rich private capitalists or privileged state bureaucrats. It is true that by the 1950s the centrally-planned state-capitalist economy completed under Stalin after Lenin’s death did begin to show signs of stagnation. Sections of the Soviet ruling class did realise this and under Khrushchev some reforms allowing market forces more freedom to operate were tried, but when the political implications of this for the rule of the Party bosses became clear Khrushchev was removed. Brezhnev took over and so began "twenty years of stagnation". Then came Gorbachev.

Wasn't Gorbachev forced to abandon Marxian economics and embrace the market?

No. You can’t abandon something you never accepted in the first place. Marx, who always insisted that socialism had to be democratic, would turn in his grave at what has been done in his name in the Soviet Union. It is quite true that he was against the market since it represented everything that he as a socialist saw as wrong with capitalism: impersonal forces controlling people’s lives instead of their own conscious democratic decisions; relations between people reduced to the cash nexus; profits being put before needs. Nor did Gorbachev have to restore the market in the Soviet Union since it has never ceased to exist there. Workers have always had to work for wages and purchase their needs. Enterprises have always tried to make a profit and have supplied each other on a buying and selling basis. It was these market relationships that the state tried to plan, with the aim of maximising profits not necessarily at enterprise level but on the economy as a whole.

So what was perestroika about then?

What Gorbachev inherited from Brezhnev was a stagnating state-capitalist economy where the attempt to control the market by central state commands had failed, resulting in a fall in the rate of profit in the Soviet Union—a serious matter in a profit-seeking economy such as the Soviet Union has always had. since profits are the source of funds not only for the privileges of the nomenklatura but also for re-investment in the more up-to-date productive equipment and techniques needed to remain competitive by international standards. To restore the rate of profit in the Soviet Union and make the Soviet economy more competitive, Gorbachev proposed abandoning the central command economy and allowing enterprises much more freedom to respond to market forces and profits.

So why did they overthrow Gorbachev?

Gorbachev represented that section of the Soviet ruling class who realised that things could not go on as before if the Soviet Union was to remain a powerful state in the capitalist world. They were prepared to move in the direction of western-style capitalism, even if this meant abandoning the dictatorship of the Communist Party and finding some other way of maintaining the power and privileges of their class. Those who overthrew him represent another section of the Soviet ruling class who are not prepared to surrender their political and economic privileges under the nomenklatura system.

So do you support Gorbachev?

No.

What about Yeltsin?

Not him either.

So who do you support?

We are always on the side of the workers in any situation. Gorbachev and Yeltsin are capitalist politicians who represent one section of the Soviet ruling class. They merely have a different programme for increasing working class exploitation in the Soviet Union and restoring the rate of profit there from that of the military junta who seized power. Workers should not follow leaders in Russia any more than they should in any country. Instead they should look to their own democratic self-organisation both to defend their interests within capitalism and, once they have become socialists, to get rid of capitalism and replace it by real socialism. This means a society of common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by all the people with goods and services being turned out to satisfy people's needs not for the market and profits.

Russia's crisis congress (1990)

From the August 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The party is not quite over yet – but nearly. Everybody knows that the party has been a disaster. There was not enough food. The waiters got drunk on bad vodka. The speeches were foolish, uninspiring and full of lies. The books on the shelves, left there purposely so that guests could delude themselves with stories of the raving success of the party, were written by committees which were briefed to make hell look like a sunshine holiday. It was a useless, horrible, miserable party and now they are leaving in droves, despite threatening looks from fat guys in uniforms who stroke their Lenin badges.

It is the Communist Party of the Soviet Union which is marching steadily into its own shallow grave. Its past has been exposed as tyranny in the name of workers’ dictatorship. Its present is surrounded by a ruined state-capitalist economy and a disillusioned workforce. Its future is a fantasy in the minds of fat-cat bureaucrats who cannot conceive of the idea that they are no longer to be an unelected ruling class. In reality, the future of the Communist Party in the Russian Empire is about as optimistic as were the futures of genuine socialists and communists in the days of Stalin.

Death cries of Leninism

The 28th Congress of the CPSU last month was the most important since 1917. By comparison, the 20th Congress, when Khrushchev denounced Stalin after Stalin was dead and the damage had been done, can be seen as a bit of political posturing by politicians who wanted to distance themselves from the fascistic history of Stalinism. The second most important Congress since 1917 was the 27th in 1986; it was there that the newly-appointed boss of the Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev, declared the need to reform the economy. There is a great deal of talk, mainly by naive leftists and media pundits, about the immensity of Gorbachev’s role in bringing about change.

Capitalist observers of history always need the Great Men: Stalin – Bad; Gorbachev – Good – and that’s that. The fact of the matter is that Gorbachev is a Leninist hack, a careerist political climber who worked his way up the party dictatorship without ever denouncing its undemocratic rule or false claim to be a workers’ state. Gorbachev is a Leninist, even though he is now having to play down such unpopular imagery .The difference between the 27th and 28th Congresses can be sensed from Gorbachev’s closing speech at the former:

“What can be said today is that our Congress was held in an atmosphere of Party-principledness and unity, exactingness and Bolshevik-style truth . . . It is precisely in this way, in Lenin’s spirit, that we have acted at our Congress. It is precisely in this way that we are going to act in the future as well.” (Tass, 6 March, 1986)

Since then the party has fallen to pieces. Monolithism, which was forced on the party by Lenin’s tyrannical resolution banning internal party opposition at the 10th Congress in 1921, has been abandoned. The article (number Six) of the national constitution banning the existence of other political parties was repealed in February. This did not happen because Gorbachev and his cronies fancied the idea of a little political pluralism. On the contrary, Gorbachev was persistent in declaring that Article Six could not be abandoned in the foreseeable future; in short, one-party dictatorship must prevail. The change came because millions of the party’s subjects no longer believe in “Bolshevik-style truth”. They see it as consisting of an Orwellian vocabulary where a state-capitalist prison is defined as a socialist paradise.

Gorbachev may have been certain that “we are going to act in the future” in the spirit of Lenin, just as Hitler thought that he would rule for a thousand years and Thatcher probably does too, but the utter bankruptcy of Leninism as a method of ruling over people has reached a point of crisis. By 1990 it became clear to those who would see that offering the workers a touch of democracy from above (glasnost) or attempting piecemeal reforms of the economy (perestroika) would not keep them obedient. The clamour for change was too loud to be ignored.

There were two options which were available if the 28th Congress was to be avoided. The military could try to stage a coup. There are quite a few Russian generals and KGB chiefs who think with admiration of the way that the Deng gang saved their skins in Tiananmen Square. That talk of a military coup is widespread in the upper ranks of the army is no secret. An attempted coup could still happen – certainly local attempts to use military force to hold on to state power by the party rulers could be envisaged – but it is uncertain whether the conscript soldiers would carry out such orders on a broad enough scale to make it effective. Remember that in Rumania, the only state capitalist dictatorship where the party men have so far attempted to resist the will of the majority, most of the soldiers, being workers themselves, went to the side of the majority. In the so-called Soviet army the workers in uniform have formed a union called Shield and the first article of its constitution is that its members refuse to fire on workers of their own country.

The other way in which Gorbachev could have tried to hold back the demise of his party would have been to cancel the 28th Congress. It is reported that he was advised to do this, but as soon as reports were circulated it became clear that the congress would take place whether it was cancelled formally or not. Communist Party branches from throughout the Empire (no, not the USSR – what is Socialist or Soviet about a one-party tyranny?) were determined to voice their anger at the condition they found themselves in.

Splits and factions

What was it, then, that delegates came to say at the 28th Congress? There were four main factions. Firstly, there were the so-called radicals. The term “radical” has a nice sound about it. It makes these people seem like fresh-thinking progressives. This is far from being the case. The “radicals” are those who have seen that state capitalism cannot be reformed and want to see a non-statist market economy set up in the Russian Empire as soon as possible. They are intoxicated by illusory information about the success of Britain and the USA. Just as media simplifiers have pushed the myth that Gorbachev invented the changes in eastern Europe, so they repeat the idea that Boris Yeltsin is the chief “radical”. To be sure, Yeltsin is the most popular politician amongst Russian workers who want quick change, but his radicalism is based upon populist posturing which appeals to Russian national chauvinism, and wholly ignorant economic promises about the benefits for workers within a free market. Amongst the other “radicals” there is much debate about how to run a market economy without the state. Their main concern is to become the beneficiaries of the capital that is now state-owned. The “radicals” are a private capitalist class in waiting. Indeed, some of them are already investing their roubles in the non-state co-operatives (private businesses, in fact) which have a major growth area in the economy. The “radicals” have formed a faction called Democratic Platform: although it only had less that 10 percent of the delegates at the 28th Congress, its grass roots support within the Communist Party is nearer to 50 percent.

Opposed to Democratic Platform are the conservatives. These are the party men whose whole lives have been spent on rising within the ruling class by means of spewing out its hollow Leninist clichés to order. Their main symbol is Yegor Ligachev, the last remaining Politburo Brezhnevite, until the Congress, when he was removed. Most of Brezhnev’s men have either died or been purged. The conservatives maintain that the seventy-year tragedy of Leninism has been a great success story. They are the ravers at the party, dancing away into the early hours as if it does not really matter that the peanuts have all gone and there is a lynch-mob at the front door. One should not feel sorry for these old swines. They have built careers on the harsh exploitation of workers who were forbidden by law to fight back. They dared to tell the wage slaves of the Russian Empire that a “Socialist Republic” had been achieved in 1917. While the mass of the population were miseducated by the propaganda of Leninism, the members of the Leninist vanguard were living in the country dachas, driving the limousines and shopping in special stores which stock luxury goods. Is it any wonder that they are now hated? They are fighting for their survival as a class. They deserve what is coming to them.

A third faction at the Congress were the nationalists. The break-up of the Russian Empire is very likely. The nationalist delegates want to be part of the new ruling class within the new states. Fourthly, there are the Gorbachev crowd. They want to hold on to party control over capitalism, but they know that they must make certain democratic concessions and introduce major economic reforms in order to do so. In order to please the “radicals” they are abandoning support for state capitalism and declaring full support for a market economy of the German or British type. This has kept some “radicals” within the party, but the more that centralised party planning fails the quicker the rush to leave will be. They do not want to take the blame. At the same time, the Gorbachev leadership must convince the conservatives that their power will not end with the demise of state capitalism. Frankly, unless there is a military coup, the conservatives have little choice but to sit tight and hope that Gorbachev is right. To the nationalists, Gorbachev is offering state funding and the chance to be part of a successful economy. To most nationalists the offer is not of the sort that leads to ecstasy.

Change beyond the Change

At the 28th Congress the Communist Party split. Having split it will now face competition from other parties – notably the party to be formed in the autumn by Lysenko and the “radicals” – and it is highly likely that millions of workers will respond, if only negatively, by voting for anything but the Communist Party. In some cases, this “anything” is not a very savoury entity. In the non-Russian republics the non-Leninist outfits will be nationalistic and will drift quickly into extreme right-wing economic thinking. In Russia, which is where the battle is really going to be fought out, the prospect of widespread support for chauvinistic, religious, racist and ultra-Thatcherite policies is high on the agenda. There is a degree of free-market utopianism which has affected Russian “intellectuals” which is similar to the kind of myopic instant love felt by many Western “intellectuals” towards the Stalinist utopia.

There are too many politicians playing with the dreams of the workers of the Russian Empire. One thing is for certain: these workers are going to be hurt terribly. After years of putting up with the illusion of socialism, they will now be forced to endure mass unemployment, price inflation and wage cuts to pay for Western loans. All of this in the name of capitalist freedom. Marxism is a dirty word amongst these workers. They were taught that Lenin and Stalin and Brezhnev were all good Marxists and they are sick of the product. The present writer wrote an article for a Russian newspaper called ‘Socialism Without Bolshevism’, but was advised by the editor to cut out the positive reference to socialism as it would stick in the throats of the paper’s sixty-million plus readers.

William Morris wrote of “the change beyond the change”. He was writing about people in late feudal society looking at the dawn of capitalism and how they must look not only to the change which was before them, but to the change after that. We socialists must do the same thing now. As we look at eastern Europe we have mixed feelings: the end of Leninism and the democratic struggle by which this has happened is a source of inspiration, but the changes which are happening . . .

We are Marxists who see change not as a single event with a beginning and an end. The victory of Bolshevism in Russia marked the defeat of autocratic Tsarism, which was a mighty advance, but it also marked the emergence of the myth of a socialist state, which was arguably the greatest obstacle that has since stood in the way of the revolutionary socialist movement. Now that Bolshevism is dying – almost dead, we would be foolish to waste time mourning the victory of the free-market antithesis. Our eyes are upon the struggle of the morrow, not for the victory of this faction of that party, or of this nationality or that reform, but for the realisation on the part of our fellow workers that however you organise this rotten system it will still be rotten. It is rotten under Gorbachev; it is the same under Bush, Kohl or Mitterand. And its rottenness will give rise to men and women who will not be content with less rotten: they will go for the change beyond the change.

Steve Coleman

Bird’s Eye View: Democratic, Stateless, Commonwealth (2022)

The Bird’s Eye View Column from the November 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism: Democratic

‘The curtailment of the rights of local government began back in the 1990s. In 1993, liberal reformers, represented by President Boris Yeltsin, came into conflict with the system of councils that was left over from revolutionary times and given a new lease of life during Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika’ (Jacobin, 11 September,).

Actually the rot set in over a century ago with the forceful dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in 1918. Ironically, one supporter of this measure provided an excellent account of why the Social Revolutionary Party, representing the peasants, who were in a large majority, should be denied their victory:

‘It may certainly appear as a monstrous crime against democracy on the part of a regime which regards itself as Socialist to have suppressed an institution which had been the dream of generations, which the Bolsheviks themselves had been championing ever since the first revolution of 1905 with more enthusiasm than any other party… What better proof could have been furnished that the Bolsheviks were trampling on the people’s will in a manner hitherto exhibited by the worst tyrants in history, that they were afraid of the verdict of the nation gathered through its representatives in the highest assembly known to democracy …?” (The Bolshevik Revolution, Maxim Litvinoff, 1918).

For a contemporary account, see our article ‘The Revolution in Russia: Where it Fails’ (Socialist Standard, August 1918). With regard to Gorbachev and life in state capitalist Russia post 1917, this candid comment from journalist Vitali Vitaliev is worth repeating:

‘The main mistake of Western analysts trying to assess Gorbachev’s career is the attempt to treat him as a kind of God-sent Messiah who emerged to save Russia from ‘socialism’. Nothing can be further from reality. Throughout his political career Gorbachev was part and parcel of the apparat. He came not to dismantle ‘socialism’ but to preserve it. I am putting ‘socialism’ into inverted commas because there has never been anything of the kind in Russia. No other country is so far from the ideas of equality and fraternity as the Soviet Union. If there was a socialism, or even a Communism at all, it was only for the ruling elite who lived and are still living in a separate world. It is a world of privileges, starting from birth (special maternity homes) going on all through their lives (special shops, hospitals, hairdressers’ salons, canteens, toilets and what not) and not ending even with the end of their physical existence (special cemeteries). Yes, yes, special cemeteries for the rulers of ‘the first working-class State in the world’, where workers are not supposed to be buried’ (Observer, 11 March 1990).

Stateless

Margaret Thatcher in a meeting with Gorbachev reportedly argued at one stage about the merits of capitalism versus ‘communism’ and she told him ”’We are all capitalists. The only difference is that for you it’s the state that invests, while for us it’s private individuals.” Gorbachev was apparently flummoxed’ (Mission to Moscow, Sunday Times 5 April 1987).

She was correct. Capitalist hallmarks, such as class society, commodity production, profit motive, exploitation of wage labour, markets, etc., exist in Russia, both pre- and post-Gorbachev, as they do worldwide. The very idea of socialism in one country is akin to being a little bit pregnant! People who insist otherwise are living in a world of make believe, which is home, alas, to billions, including fans of the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea.

‘The North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly gathered for its first session on Wednesday. According to state news agency KCNA, the chamber agreed to adopt laws on landscaping and rural development. However, it also pledged to help turn the nation into a “beautiful and civilised socialist fairyland”. The two laws are intended to help advance efforts made by the governing party to bring about “a radical turn in the rural community and its policy on landscaping to achieve a rapid development of the Korean-style socialist rural community and spruce up the country into a beautiful and civilised socialist fairyland”. Kim Jong-un, who did not attend the parliamentary event, also promised to improve people’s livelihoods and boost rural development amid spiralling economic crises. Economic difficulties have been blamed on self-imposed Covid-19 lockdowns, international sanctions over the country’s nuclear weapons programme and also natural disasters’ (Daily Express, September 8).

The February 2012 Socialist Standard’s cover features a young-looking ‘Great Successor’ under the title ‘Kim, All Ye Faithful. Leaders in the Land Time Forgot’ and related article ‘Death of a Dictator’.

Commonwealth

‘Everything seems to tick in “Unrest” the latest effort from Zurich-born writer/director Cyril Schäublin. “Unrest” depicts the working lives of 19th century anarchist watchmakers in the Swiss mountains, laying bare the absurdities of the wage system’ (Roger Ebert.com, 12 September). During the interview, Schäublin states: ‘Kropotkin, contra Karl Marx… believed in the abolition of any kind of wage labor whatsoever.’ Au contraire. In Value, Price and Profit (1865) Marx stated:

‘At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerrilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: “Abolition of the wages system!”

Russia's fate (1989)

From the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The March 1924 edition of the Socialist Standard had this to say on the death of Lenin:

So far was he from changing the course of history. . . that it was the course of history which changed him . . . Today Russia stands halfway on the road to capitalism. The communists in their ignorance may howl at this, but Russia cannot escape her destiny.

The Socialist Party stood alone at the time in rejecting claims that Russia had achieved anything more than this: it stood not on the threshold of socialism, but on its way to full integration into the capitalist world economy.

Today we can test the socialist argument against the historical record. Has Russia escaped the destiny predicted for it by us in 1924? President Gorbachev answered the question in his speech to the United Nations in December:

The world economy is becoming a single organism and no state, whatever its social system or economic status, can normally develop outside it.

Alan D'Arcy

Russia drops the pretence (1992)

From the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (or Union of So-called Socialist Republics, to be more accurate) is no more. When, on 25 December, the red flag over the Kremlin was lowered for the last time, the 74-year association of Russia and “socialism” came to an end. In each of the member-states of the new Commonwealth of Independent States nationalism has replaced Leninism as the official ideology.

Socialists can only welcome the abandonment by the Russian authorities of any claim to be socialist. That claim was never justified, not under Lenin any more than under Stalin, and did uncalculable damage to the cause of genuine socialism. Now Russia can be seen as what it always was in reality: one other capitalist state in a world of capitalist states.

What has happened in Russia—the emergence of a political regime relying more on the consent of the ruled than on their coercion—was bound to happen sooner or later since a developed capitalist economy cannot be run for any length of time on police-state lines, at least not without creating serious economic difficulties.

A modern industrial economy requires an educated working class to operate it, and such a working class cannot be bullied into working efficiently. Their co-operation has to be sought, and to this end they have to be granted certain rights both at work and in society generally, such as the right to form trade unions that can bargain over wages and working conditions and the right to have a say via the ballot box in the choice of political leaders.

State capitalism

All developed capitalist countries have been forced to grant the working class such rights. So it was possible to predict that this would happen sooner or later in Russia too. but not precisely when and how. We detected the beginning of this process in Russia under Khrushchev in the late 1950s and early 1960s and it seemed then that some sort of political democracy would emerge there within a decade or so. But then came Brezhnev. And we must confess to being as surprised as anyone else at the speed with which events have moved in Russia and Eastern Europe over the past three years.

The point is that the actual course of events depends on the precise historical background and on the choices made by those involved—the ruling class and their political representatives, and the working class. Those who seized political power in Russia in 1917 used it to force the pace of capitalist development there. The state was used not only to drive the peasants off the land and into the factories, mines and construction sites (as had happened in the early stages of capitalism in England too) but also to organise the extraction of surplus value from the newly-created working class and its accumulation as more and more capital, a task which in other capitalist countries had been left to the private initiative of capitalist enterprises.

As a result the type of capitalism that emerged in Russia was one where the state was the capitalist. As the state was monopolised by a clique of Party and state officials, known in Russian as the “nomenklatura”, this made them the effective owners of the means of production, even if collectively as a body rather than as individuals, and enabled them to enjoy a privileged lifestyle.

From the point of view of Russian capitalism, this system was relatively successful in that it built up an industrial infrastructure which allowed Russia to emerge from the Second World War as the second greatest military power in the world. However, by the 1950s there were signs that it was beginning to become a drag on further capitalist development in Russia in the same way that previously the Tsarist regime had been.

An educated urban working class had emerged that could no longer be treated in the same brutal way as the dispossessed peasants who had been slave-driven into building Russia's basic industries. A section of the Russian ruling class realised this and under Khrushchev a number of reforms were made: Stalin's methods were criticised, the labour code was made less strict, and central state control was relaxed in both the economy and the field of ideas. Another section of the ruling class, however, saw where this would logically lead: to some measure of political democracy and the end of the nomenklatura system and their privileged position in society. Khrushchev was deposed in 1964 and Brezhnev took over.

Brezhnev pursued the policy of trying to carry out economic reform while leaving the political structure—the one-party state and its privileged nomenklatura—unchanged. It didn’t work. The working class in effect refused to co-operate. "They pretend to pay us. and we pretend to work", as a popular saying of the Brezhnev era put it. Industrial development and productivity continued to stagnate. It eventually became clear to the dominant elements within the Russian ruling class that the process begun under Khrushchev in the 1960s would have to be resumed if economic stagnation was not to undermine Russia’s military strength. Gorbachev was chosen in 1985 as the man to preside over this process.

Ruling class split

Glasnost (“openness”) was introduced and the working class was allowed a degree of freedom of speech such as they had never known before, not even under Khrushchev. Gorbachev and the section of the ruling class he represented wanted to use the working class against another section of the ruling class which opposed his policies and wished to retain the old political regime. It was a classic case of the working class being drawn into the political arena by one section of the ruling class to settle scores with another section, as had occurred in Britain in the 19th century when the industrial capitalists sought the support of the working class against the landed aristocracy.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that, once in the political arena, the working class were not going to settle for anything less than the complete elimination of the nomenklatura as a privileged ruling class. They didn’t know what they wanted to put in its place but they did know that they wanted the privileged Party bosses, who had exploited and duped them for so many years, off their backs. In this respect. Yeltsin who embraced this view at a relatively early stage proved to be a shrewder politician than Gorbachev who continued to believe that the old regime could be gradually phased out of existence without upsetting the nomenklatura too much.

In the event it was the stupidity of the conservative wing of the nomenklatura that precipitated events. In staging a coup in August against Gorbachev, they brought about the complete destruction of the old political system. Most of the armed forces refused to follow the putschists and Gorbachev returned to power. Within a few days the Communist Party had been banned. As this party wasn’t a party in the conventional sense of the term but the political institution which allowed the nomenklatura to control the state and maintain its privileges, this amounted to the abolition of the nomenklatura. With this act in September 1991 Russia’s political structure caught up with its economic base.

Decolonization

Effective power passed into the hands of Yeltsin who had been elected President of Russia in a country-wide poll (whereas Gorbachev had merely been appointed by a parliament largely composed of nomenklaturists). Yeltsin's analysis of what to do to save Russia's status as a great power in the capitalist world was more radical than anything Gorbachev was prepared to contemplate: granting independence to Russia’s colonies in the Caucasus and Central Asia as well as to the Ukraine and Belorussia.

This represents the break-up of the Soviet Union as a single political unit, but since Russia made up 90 percent of the former territory and 72 percent of the former population of the USSR it is not all that of a sacrifice. Of the 10 (11 if Georgia is included) new stales only the Ukraine (population 52 million, making it the fifth largest state in Europe after Germany, France, Britain and Italy) counts for anything and will be a serious loss if it really does go its own way. The others, all apart from Belorussia and Moldavia in Asia, are unviable statelets which will remain as dependent on Russia as France's ex-colonies in Africa have on France.

Russia may have lost its super-power status—which, in any event, was based on a military might well beyond its economic capabilities—but it remains a world power still armed with many more nuclear weapons than any of the other nuclear powers except America. Strengthened by a popular allegiance the old Soviet Union never had, Russia will eventually re-enter the world arena to compete alongside greater Germany and Japan against the currently world-dominant America. At least it won't be doing so in the name of socialism, not that that will make the capitalist world of competing stales a safer place.

Adam Buick

Between the Lines: From Russia With Confusion (1991)

The Between the Lines column from the October 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

From Russia With Confusion

The mind-numbing simplicities of cold war propaganda dominated the British media's coverage of the Russian coup. News programmes offered a cartoon image of events. Gorbachev the Rather Good had been overthrown by The Big Bad Reds who could only be defeated by Boris the Great. As ever in the capitalist picture of history, the workers were depicted as mere spectators — extras in the scene: the BBC News called them "Yeltsin's people". Is that what all the bravery of the crowd was for — the standing in front of tanks and the demand that democratic rights be retained? All that to become Yeltsin's people?

For the media there was no question that the coup was successful. Great Man Gorbachev had been replaced by Judas Yenayev. And that was that. The media never once considered the possibility that people could alter their history — that the power struggle would be more than the in-fighting of a ruling elite. On the first night of the coup both BBC and ITN News broadcast effective obituaries for Gorbachev. When the crowd began to assemble, the media was shocked. But they did not explain this as the action of thousands of workers fighting against a dictatorship. The defence of the Russian parliament was explained entirely in terms of the will of leaders, notably Yeltsin. When the coup was overthrown the BBC and ITN continued to explain the whole affair in terms of a power battle at the top. But this was not so: the collapse of the Communist Party dictatorship after the coup's defeat was not decided by Yeltsin and his political allies (whose political careers had been carved out within that dictatorship), but by the will of the people, the working class majority. From BBC l's children's news programme Newsround to BBC2’s fairly sophisticated Newsnight the analysis of the collapse of state capitalism and the Russian Empire has been over-simplified to the point of utter distortion. Good has prevailed over Evil. Good equals the market which is portrayed as a redeemer. Yeltsin, a political opportunist, nationalist and populist demagogue, compared by those who know him well as a modem Mussolini, is given an uncritical press. Two days after the coup the ITV News at Ten included a ludicrous report about the failure of "Marxist economics" in Russia. This report claimed that Russia had been run according to policies stated by Marx in The Communist Manifesto written in 1848. This unsubstantiated rubbish was put out without a thought given to the long-standing Marxist analysis of Russia as a state capitalist country — which is exactly what Lenin himself called it at the outset. (Speaking of crazy historical claims, the school's supplement to The Guardian in the week after the coup claimed that Marx supported the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 — thirty-three years after he died!) On the day that Yeltsin's elite banned the Communist Party in Russia (an unpromising start to a liberal democratic government) the ever-mistaken CNN opened its midday news with the proclamation that the Russian people were at last free. Indeed, CNN's American hysteria was reflected on the British news broadcasts by reporters making wild comments about the euphoria of the Russian people. In fact with continued empty shelves in the shops, rent food and fare increases on the way and 30 million plus to become unemployed soon, the delight of feeling free was about as great as in the British cities where workers have spent the nights celebrating with street riots.

On 7 September BBC2 had Charles Wheeler introduce a programme showing excerpts from Leningrad's archives of propaganda films. The Orwellian character of what was shown was chilling. Never again, we suspect will such crude propaganda con the wage slaves. But what of the less crude methods of keeping the proles in their place? We expect that Yeltsin's new TV controllers are studying the methods of the BBC and the US networks for newer, more subtle tricks of deceit; less conspicuous forms of ideological doping.

In the modern battle of ideas the media is crucial. The media bosses are accountable to no-one, least of all the workers. They continue to lie, to twist, to omit, to push workers into believing half-truths, non-truths and cartoon views of the world in which we live. It was no coincidence that the first action of the coup organisers in Moscow was to close the TV stations which they could not rely on. If the parish priest was the ideological mouthpiece of feudal rule, the newscaster is the high priest of capitalist ideology.

This writer cheered at the overthrow of the Leninist dictators. Their downfall and the tremendous political fire within the bellies of the workers who took to the streets, who tragically do not know what they do want but only what they don't, was a great moment to live through. As the cheering of the media hirelings started, with all their phoney talk of the downfall of Communism and triumph of Freedom through Market Forces, this writer's cheering slopped abruptly. Solidarity with our fellow workers, yes; but with the cynical pimps whose champagne corks were popping at the thought of new profits to be made — Never!

Steve Coleman

The State and Chernobyl (1990)

From the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is now four years since the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor on April 26, 1986. Information about its consequences is now becoming available in spite of attempts by the Russian government to prevent knowledge leaking out into the public domain. Glasnost may be Gorbachev’s policy in most things but not where Chernobyl was concerned. The scale of the disaster is far greater than has been supposed till now.

A significant feature of this disaster is that it was partly caused, and to a large extent made worse, by state secrecy. For instance, it was the state’s obsessional secrecy on all matters nuclear which meant that the reactor’s operators were not allowed to know that withdrawal of all the control rods could cause an explosion. All they were told was that this was “forbidden” (New Scientist, 11 November 1989).

Similarly, it was a military secret that a previous graphite fire had occurred, in 1958, at Kyshtym in the Urals. Not only did the Chernobyl management and engineers know nothing of this (except what had leaked back to them from the West), but again according to the New Scientist “those who had dealt with it were not called to Chernobyl until three weeks after the accident”. During those weeks a lot of harm was done. Fruitless attempts to dowse the fire were unsuccessful, only resulting in contamination of the watertable. Meanwhile radioactive material continued to escape into the atmosphere.

Political considerations led Gorbachev, in his TV statement about Chernobyl 18 days after the accident, to allege that the western media had lied and exaggerated the scale and nature of the disaster with their claims that there would be “thousands of casualties” (quoted in Frederick Polil’s novel, Chernobyl, 1987). This was part of the cover-up agreed to by the politbureau and recently exposed by Gorbachev’s opponent, Boris Yeltsin.

This cover-up involved misleading the people at risk so that many of these within Russia believed themselves to be safe. Chernobyl is in the north of the Ukraine, very close to the southern border of Byelorussia and not far from the border, to the east, with Russia proper. The plume of radioactive particles drifted north and east, and seriously contaminated a large part of Byelorussia and adjacent provinces of Russia.

“They were not told. They had to guess…”

The original disaster was bad enough. What made it worse was misinformation, the attempt to pretend that the only areas at risk were within a neat, circular, 18 mile (30 km) “exclusion zone”. The result of this official policy was that people have still not been evacuated from many seriously contaminated areas. In the week after the disaster, official policy decreed that “communities were left to rot in ignorance…”. Over the border, in Russia proper, people “were very frightened. They were not told. They had to guess …. Nobody knew what was happening. Burly peasants were collapsing in the fields” (Sunday Times, 29 April 1990).

The cover-up meant that the May Day parades were ordered to proceed, in Kiev and Minsk, as though everything was normal. Thousands of schoolchildren were thus exposed to radioactive open air. It also meant a delay even in evacuating Pripyat, the nearest town to Chernobyl. It is now thought that 4 million people are living with radiation, including 34,000 in areas very seriously contaminated. Yury Cherbak, a Ukrainian Green politician, claims that 85 villages in Byelorussia, 19 in the Ukraine and 14 in Russia should be urgently evacuated (The Independent on Sunday, 22 April 1990). In these unevacuated areas, where people are still growing food crops, not only are they eating the contaminated food they grow but, according to the Sunday Times again, “Soviet trade officials collected it and distributed it in Moscow, Kazakhstan and elsewhere”.

Now, four years later, the consequences of Chernobyl are becoming apparent. Children are suffering from leukaemia or cancer of the thyroid. There are a number of babies born with serious congenital abnormalities, a disaster similar to but worse than that caused by thalidomide in Britain or Agent Orange in Vietnam. In Byelorussia, over 2 million people are at risk, one-fifth of the population. Yet in the capital city, Minsk, there are no ultrasonic scanners (essential for diagnosis and treatment of leukaemia) or intensive care units. Medicines, even for pain relief, are in short supply. The authorities have decreed, harshly, that no treatment at all, not even for pain relief, be given to terminal cases. In the West, leukaemia cases have an 85 percent chance of survival. There, they only have a 15 percent chance.

Acute food shortages mean that children are not getting a proper diet. They die of quite common illnesses, with their immune system weakened by radiation. Experts claim that “it is not ‘Chernobyl Aids’ that kills them, it is the lack of proper food” (Sunday Times).

The state showed its “concern” in February 1988 by decreeing the sort of information which should be made available to the media. The increased incidence of anaemia, hypertension and hyperplasia of the thyroid was hushed up as a result of “official policy”, and there was to be no mention of any “loss of physical capacity for work or professional skills” (New Scientist, 28 October 1989). Who was the state trying to protect?

Delay and Disinformation

The role of the state in this disaster has been to make things worse: the delay in issuing warnings, the misinformation as to which areas were at risk, the suppression of information on the deaths and diseases related to or caused by Chernobyl, the refusal to allow scientists to do research, the publication of underestimates of the amount of radiation released, the refusal to arrange for evacuation from areas known to be contaminated, the despatch of contaminated foodstuff from these regions to uncontaminated regions, the lack of provision of decent medical facilities, the secrecy surrounding the lessons learnt earlier at Kyshtym – the state and its officials bear a heavy load of responsibility for this massive catastrophe and its (too-often avoidable) tragic consequences.

Probably this is the worst environmental disaster the world has yet seen. Large areas of land are uninhabitable yet in many of these people are still living – living a nightmare. In one village, in a single year, 30 babies were born with serious deformities.

The danger to humanity, and to the planet, of continuing to allow capitalist priorities – production of cheap, rather than safe, energy – and capitalist political structures – such as rule by a Party hierarchy, determined to control the information released to the population under its rule – this is the lesson of Chernobyl. The land is poisoned with pollution, the forest trees produce abnormal mutated growths, and the watertable is polluted. On the farms cows give birth to deformed calves, in the villages young women dread giving birth to monsters. Children are not allowed out of doors except to go to and from school.

Genetic mutation is a high price to pay for the government’s mistakes, for cheap electricity for export to Poland and Rumania, and for plutonium for the military, a by-product of the Chernobyl reactor. It is a price being paid partly because the world has trusted technical experts too much. There were experts in the Ukraine who claimed that Chernobyl’s four reactors were totally safe. After the accident Britain’s best-known expert on nuclear power, Lord Marshall, asserted that the risk from radiation inside the exclusion zone (less than 20 miles away from Chernobyl itself) was “no worse than smoking a couple of cigarettes a year” (Observer, 4 May 1986).

The likes of Lord Marshall have been making reassuring noises in the Soviet Union and doing their best to prevent doctors and scientists revealing the truth about Chernobyl’s legacy, Gorbachev’s glasnost did not apply in this special case. So long as society’s class divisions mean the necessity for the continued existence of states and national governments, and so long as production is for profit not for use, the danger of continuing to use such extremely risky technology will be too great – the victims are already too many.

Charmian Skelton

Running Commentary: Property-Owning Democracy? (1987)

The Running Commentary Column from the March 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Property-Owning Democracy?

Remember the Tories' 1983 election promise of turning Britain into a "property-owning democracy"? The prospect of "owning” their own house was undoubtedly an attractive proposition to many workers fed up with the insecurity of renting their homes from unscrupulous landlords or penny-pinching councils. However for many the dream has turned into a nightmare. As fewer council houses are built and fewer properties are available to rent, many people have been forced to "choose" a mortgage, which the building societies have been only too pleased to give them.

But having encouraged people to become home owners, the government has now decided to punish those home-owners who have the misfortune to become unemployed. New rules have just been introduced which will mean that anyone who becomes unemployed will have only half their mortgage interest paid while they are in receipt of Supplementary Benefit and only for the first four months of unemployment. Under the old rules all the interest (but not the capital) was paid. This is bound to increase the rate of repossessions. Already one in ten homeless families are homeless because their home has been repossessed due to mortgage default.

Families faced with the prospect of unemployment and inability to pay their mortgage may decide to sell up to avoid arrears and repossession. If they do, however, the local authority would have no obligation to rehouse them since they would be deemed to be "intentionally homeless”.

For workers in this situation the security promised by the slogan "property-owning democracy" has turned out to be as illusory as it is for those who depend on paying rent in order to keep a roof over their heads.

It Pays to Advertise

It is even more profitable if you can get someone who has nothing to gain to pay you for the privilege of so doing!!

Strange as it may seem, the same person who objects strongly to paying a few pence for a carrier bag printed with the name of a supermarket, will pay pounds to advertise something else.

Guinness started the fashion years ago. In return for a cheque made out to them for the correct amount (something like 20 guineas if memory serves) you would receive a sweater with 'GUINNESS' — not even the toucan —  emblazoned across the front. Today for £18.95 you may buy a plain wool sweater by post; this price is already considerably higher than for a similar garment bought across the counter. However, for only an extra £ 1, you can have' The Times' discreetly embroidered on the left-hand side. Of course, if you don't have the odd £20 to spare, you can go downmarket and buy a Coca Cola — or if you prefer, a Pepsi — T-shirt. Slightly upmarket again, you could, in gold on black, advertise Biba. If you really want to dredge the bottom, feature the Sun with the screaming front page headline 'SID VICIOUS DEAD. Punk Star Killed By Overdose'.

One T-shirt we have not yet seen is the one advertising the fact that we are all being killed by an overdose — of capitalism!


Gorbachev the democrat?

"We need democracy like we need air to breathe", said Gorbachev in a speech to the ruling Central Committee. What he means by "democracy" is that there will be more than one candidate standing for office in elections and a bit more public debate with officials prepared to admit from time to time that things occasionally go wrong, that there are shortages and production quotas aren't always fulfilled.

Well it's better than nothing. But no-one should be conned into believing that the new, reforming Russian leadership is really concerned about giving ordinary Russian workers a voice in decision-making. What Gorbachev is undoubtedly concerned about is the failure of the Russian economy. Giving people a little in relatively unimportant areas is a time-honoured way of getting them to give back a lot more.

If Russian workers are made to feel that they do have a voice, that they are listened to, then it is quite possible they will be conned into working harder and producing more wealth for the Russian ruling class. A little bit of political liberalisation will not affect the fundamental division of Russian society into those with wealth and power and those without, unless Russian workers recognise that fundamental division and then exploit the small window of opportunity that Gorbachev has opened for their own political ends.


Bullets on the beat

Officially Britain has an unarmed police force. Unofficially things are rather different. A curious incident involving a car chase down the M1 which ended when the car being pursued ran out of petrol and shots were fired, led to revelations that for the past eight years traffic police patrolling the Nottinghamshire section of the M1 motorway, the A1 and Nottingham city centre have been carrying guns.

Charles McLachlan, Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire, said at a press conference:

  The vehicles are double-manned and weapons are carried in a locked container in the vehicle. They are two pistols, a pump-action shotgun and body armour. They are not allowed to take these weapons from the container which is permanently locked, without approval from a senior police officer.

No doubt this was meant to reassure people. But these words sound rather hollow given the trigger-happy mentality of certain armed police as shown by a series of tragic incidents over the last six years in which people have been "accidentally” shot by armed police.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the militarisation of the police is that the decision to arm police officers is not taken in public after debate and discussion but instead is made behind closed doors by the police themselves. As such decisions are deemed to be "operational" even the elected police authorities, to whom the police are nominally responsible, do not have to be consulted or even informed.

Russia Was Never Socialist – and Why (1997)

From the November 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

What We Said Over The Years

1920

When we are told that Socialism has been obtained in Russia without the long, hard and tedious work of educating the mass of workers in Socialism we not only deny it but refer our critics to Lenin’s own confessions. His statements prove that even though a vigorous and small minority may be able to seize power for a time, they can only hold it by modifying their plans to suit the ignorant majority. The minority in power in an economically backward country are forced to adapt their programme to the undeveloped conditions and make continual concessions to the capitalist world around them. Offers to pay war debts to the Allies, to establish a Constituent Assembly, to compensate capitalists for losses, to cease propaganda in other countries, and to grant exploitation rights throughout Russia to the Western capitalists all show how far along the capitalist road they have had to travel and how badly they need the economic help of other countries. It shows above all that their loud and defiant challenge to the capitalist world has been silenced by their own internal and external weaknesses as we have so often predicted in these pages.

( . . .)

We have often stated that because of a large anti-Socialist peasantry and vast untrained population, Russia was a long way from Socialism. Lenin has now to admit this by saying: ‘Reality says that State Capitalism would be a step forward for us; if we were able to bring about State Capitalism in a short time it would be a victory for us. How could they be so blind as not to see that our enemy is the small capitalist, the small owner? How could they see the chief enemy in State Capitalism? In the transition from Capitalism to Socialism our chief enemy is the small bourgeoisie, with its economic customs, habits and positions’ (The Chief Tasks of Our Times, p. 11).

(. . .)

Here we have plain admissions of the unripeness of the great mass of Russian people for Socialism and the small scale of Russian production.

If we are to copy Bolshevik policy in other countries we should have to demand State Capitalism, which is not a step to Socialism in advanced capitalist countries. The fact remains, as Lenin is driven to confess, that we do not have to learn from Russia, but Russia has to learn from lands where large scale production is dominant.

(. . .)

That Socialism can only be reached through State Capitalism is untrue. Socialism depends upon large-scale production, whether organised by Trusts or Governments. State Capitalism may be the method used in Russia, but only because the Bolshevik Government find their theories of doing without capitalist development unworkable—hence they are forced to retreat along the capitalist road.

“A Socialist View of Bolshevist Policy”, Socialist Standard, July 1920.

* * * * *

We have always contended that the Bolsheviks could only maintain power by resorting to capitalist devices. History has shown us to be correct. The January 1920 Congress of Executive Communists in Russia abolished the power of workers’ control in factories and installed officials instructed by Moscow and given controlling influence. Their resolutions printed in most of the Labour papers and the Manchester Guardian here show how economic backwardness has produced industrial conscription with heavy penalties for unpunctuality, etc. The abolition of democracy in the army was decreed long ago, but now that the army is being converted by Trotsky into a labour army it means rule from the top with an iron hand.

Russia has agreed to repay foreign property-owners their losses and allied Governments their ‘debts’. This means continued exploitation of Russian workers to pay foreign exploiters. With all the enthusiasm of the Communists they find themselves faced with the actual conditions in Russia and the ignorance of the greater part of its population.

There is no easier road to Socialism than the education of the workers in Socialism and their organisation to establish it by democratic methods. Russia has to learn that.

“The Super-Opportunists. A Criticism of Bolshevist Policy”, Socialist Standard, August 1920.

* * * * *

1924

The Bolsheviks will probably remain in control for the simple reason that there is no one in Russia capable of taking their place. It will be a question largely as to whether they will be able to stand the strain, for the task is a heavy one, and they are by no means overcrowded with capable men. But this control will actually resolve itself into control for, and in the interests of, the Capitalists who are willing to take up the development of raw materials and industry in Russia. The New Economic Policy points the way.

“The Passing of Lenin”, Socialist Standard, March 1924.

* * * * *

1928

Trotsky presents a long list of remedies which serve only to confirm what we have always said as to the necessity for Russia to go through capitalism. Trotsky does not admit this in so many words. In fact, he vigorously denounces Stalin’s ‘capitalist tendencies’. But when we examine his programme we find that it is all based implicitly on the continuance of capitalism in Russia until such time as a developed capitalist industry and a Socialist revolution outside Russia make Socialism possible.

Most of his proposals might have been lifted out of the programme of any trade union in Germany or England: ‘Equal pay for equal work’, less overtime; more unemployment pay; no more Government faking of labour and industrial statistics; retail prices to be brought down to the world price level; no profiteering by capitalist middlemen; no increase in the rents of working class houses; every effort to be made to lower the cost of production in order to promote the growth of industry; more taxes on rich peasants; abolition of the State sale of Vodka, etc. A long programme of reforms, but no mention of the abolition of capitalist farming, capitalist trading and capitalist investment. Both Trotsky and Stalin draw up their programmes within the framework of state and private capitalism which prevails in Russia.

“Trotsky States His Case”, Socialist Standard, December 1928.

* * * * *

1930

The facts given in this Year-Book sufficiently illustrate how illusory the communist dreams have been. Like many pious hopes embodied in the official documents and constitutions of the rest of the capitalist world these phrases have no relation whatever to the actual facts. Russian capitalism, although administered by the Communist Party, reproduces almost down to the last detail the paraphernalia of the capitalist world as we know it here.

The lesson of this is the one we have tried to drive home for so many years, that it is not possible for a minority to impose Socialism upon a majority who are hostile or indifferent; nor is it possible to remedy backward economic development by means of fine-sounding but ineffective decrees, issued by dictators.

“Russia: Land of High Profits (review of Soviet Union Year-Book 1930), Socialist Standard, September 1930.

* * * * *

1934

As Russia has not established Socialism and is not doing so in spite of the repeated statements of Communists, it has to carry on its work and build up its industries on lines similar to normal capitalist countries; it must therefore enter into normal trade relations with the rest of the world, and it does so.

(. . .)

When, in 1924, the Bolsheviks decided to throw overboard the ‘world revolution’ (except as a mere phrase to give lip-service to) and to concentrate on building up the internal resources of the country on the plea that they were building up Socialism in a single country (a complete reversal of their former views), the Communists of the world, who take their policy from Moscow, have simply been used to help on this object.

The foreign policy of Russia is aimed at living more or less amicably with the rest of the capitalist world, and they can only do this because they are building as the capitalists do. Socialism is a system diametrically opposed to capitalism and impossible in a predominantly capitalist world. It is impossible in one country alone, owing to international economic interdependence. It is international not national.

The extravagant claims held out of the success of Socialism in Russia have one by one been proved by time to be groundless and Russia is rapidly approaching the stage of taking its place as a first-class capitalist power.

“Changing Russia”, Socialist Standard, September 1934.

* * * * *

1937

Russia is not a Socialist country—its low industrial productivity and the non-Socialist outlook of the vast majority of its population do not bring such a thing within the realms of present possibility. It is based on various forms of State capitalism. Goods are produced, not for use only, but for sale at a profit. Industry is carried on largely on lines familiar to us in the Post office and other State-capitalist organisations outside Russia. The Russian Government borrows from investors (mostly Russian citizens) hundreds of millions of pounds for investment in industry, and pays them a high rate of interest on their investments; this payment to the investors being the first charge on industry. Inside the industries there are the same kind of gradations of pay as in capitalist industry generally from the mass of workers on or about the bare subsistence level at the bottom up through numerous grades to the very favoured few at the top who can enjoy the most pleasant and interesting work and live on a high standard of comfort and luxury.

“The New Russian Constitution”, Socialist Standard, January 1937.

* * * * *

1943

Certainly Russia has its privileged section of the population and they will buy (because they can afford to do so) the bulk of the luxury articles which the average worker cannot afford. These privileged people are the party officials, technical experts, writers, doctors, lawyers, etc. Some of these people receive incomes a hundred times bigger than that of the average worker. With the legality of inheritance in force, accumulation of wealth is today bound to be taking place in Russia among the wealthy. They are the exploiters, and the Dean is wrong when he says (p. 282) ‘exploitation of man by man is entirely abolished’. They can obtain their big incomes only out of the wealth produced by the workers.

“Is Russia Socialist?” (review of The Socialist Sixth of the World by Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury), Socialist Standard, July 1943.

* * * * *

1948

The reader of these reprinted articles will have seen that the attitude of the SPGB has been consistent from the start of the Bolshevik regime. We said then as we say now, that it is impossible for Socialism to be imposed from above even if the minority who hold power genuinely have that as their object.

The articles are important also to help to combat the efforts of various political groups which seek to discredit the Socialist movement by holding up Russia as a proof of the impossibility of abolishing capitalism. It is not true that Marxian Socialists at first approved of the Bolshevik dictatorship and Bolshevik policy and only later discovered that Socialism would not be the outcome. As these articles prove, the SPGB foresaw from the first that the attempt must fail.

Nor is it correct that the failure in Russia has been the failure of the men in control—though dictatorship inevitably corrupts those who wield it—it has been the failure of the whole mistaken policy of the Bolsheviks. Had Lenin lived or Stalin died the result would not have been appreciably different.

Postscript to Russia Since 1917 pamphlet, 1948.

* * * * *

1963

The 1917 Revolution overthrew Tsarist Absolutism and allowed nascent capitalist industry to develop more freely and rapidly, but only at the expense of submitting the country to a more barbarous absolutism, the Stalinist regime. Now this absolutism has in its turn become a fetter on capitalist expansion and is being cast aside.

(. . .)

Russia now has the productive forces of a developed capitalist country yet still the political regime of a developing country. This contradiction shows itself in the disagreement between the liberal and conservative elements in Russia, in the campaign against police excesses, in the demand for more freedom of expression in poetry and art, in the Liberman controversy and in anti-Stalinism. Russian industry has developed to such a stage that political and other changes are required before it can develop further. Once liberalisation has triumphed in Russia, as it will, the capitalist character of Russian industry will have become more obvious. Russia will lose its attraction in ‘left-wing’ circles. History, by destroying the illusion that Russia is Socialist, will once again have done our work for us.

“Changing Russia”, Socialist Standard, August 1963.

* * * * *

1967

The social system in Russia can be described as capitalist since the essential features of capitalism predominate: class monopoly of the means of production, commodity production, wage-labour and capital accumulation. (. . .)

A class is made up of people who are in the same position with regard to the ownership and use of the means of wealth-production and distribution. One class has a monopoly over these means of production if the rest of society are allowed access to them only on terms imposed by the group in control. This monopoly does not have to be legally recognised though in fact, as in Britain, this is generally so. Here the privileged minority, the capitalist class, have titles backed by law to the wealth they own. In Russia the ownership of the privileged minority is generally not given formal legal backing, but, as in Britain, they maintain their monopoly through control over the machinery of government. They occupy the top posts in the party, government, industry and the armed forces. Their ownership of the means of production is not individual but collective: they own as a class. Historically this is not a new development as is shown by the position of the Catholic church in feudal times. The privileged class in Russia draw their ‘property income’ in the form of bloated salaries, bonuses, large monetary ‘prizes’ awarded by the government, and other perks attaching to the top posts.

from chapter “Capitalism in Russia” in pamphlet Russia 1917-1967, 1967.

* * * * *

1988

If it is implemented—and it remains to be seen whether or not this reform will suffer the fate of previous ones—perestroika will represent a fundamental change in the form of capitalism that has existed in Russia until now. It will represent a transition from centrally planned commodity-production and exchange to a more competitive system in which the competing units would be, as in the West, legally and economically autonomous enterprises. The economic laws of capitalism will come to operate in Russia through competition rather than through the State which (. . .) has proved to be an inadequate substitute.

“Where Is Russia Going,”, Socialist Standard, September 1988.

* * * * *

1990

It is the longer-term implications of the decision to abandon the Leninist principle of one-party dictatorship that could prove to be the most significant though, as this could herald a change in the way the means of production are monopolised in Russia with the ruling class there changing itself from a class of collective owners into a class of individual owners as in the West.

(. . .)

The transformation of the Russian ruling class from a collectively-owning state bureaucracy into a class of private capitalists with private property rights vested in them as individuals certainly won’t take the form of the present members of the nomenklatura abdicating and handing over their power and privileges to the small group of privately-owning capitalists who have always led a precarious existence on the margins of the Russian state-capitalist economy. Nor would it need to take the crude form of them simply dividing up the presently state-owned industries amongst themselves. It would be more likely to take the form of the Russian government gradually introducing more and more opportunities for private capitalist investment—which only those who have already accumulated wealth would be able to take advantage of. Most of these will inevitably be individual members of the nomenklatura as the group which for years has enjoyed bloated salaries, cash prizes and opportunities to speculate on the black market (. . .).

Gorbachev (. . .) realises that it is now no longer possible for the nomenklatura to rule in the old way and that some sort of flexibility is called for, if only to be able to push through perestroika without provoking a workers’ revolt. He probably isn’t consciously working towards ushering in a Russia where the nomenklatura has disappeared as such and has succeeded in converting itself into a class of Western-type privately-owning capitalists, but it is in this direction that his reforms can now be seen to be leading.

“Russia and Private Property”, Socialist Standard, April 1990.