With or Without Comment (1943)

From the November 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Socialism” in Russia: The Archbishop steps in where angels fear to tread

Dr. Garbett, Archbishop of York, after his visit to Russia, has taken it on himself to give us a little lecture on Socialism : —

“Russia is at its present stage a Socialist rather than a Communist State : that is, while the means of production and distribution belong to the State, the individual may keep for his use or dispose of as he thinks fit whatever he has himself earned, including the houses built by individuals on collective farms.” (Daily Express, October 12, 1943.)

This is, of course, not really Dr. Garbett speaking, but the usual propaganda hand-out of the Communists. In recent years the Communists have found it convenient to misapply the term Socialism to Russia’s present form of State capitalism, with its new rich, the rouble millionaires, and to use the term Communism to describe what they used to call Socialism

Exactly 20 years ago the Communist Party of Great Britain published “A Short Course of Economic Science,” by A. Bogdahoff. This book was a textbook used by the Russian Bolsheviks. In it Bogdanoff used the term “socialist system” to describe “the highest stage of society we can conceive” (p. 391). Dealing with distribution, he distinguished between a first phase when, owing to low production, distribution will have to be on the basis of giving products to each individual “in proportion to the amount of labour he has given to society,” and a later phase when “complete freedom of consumption will be established for the worker. Giving society all that he is able in strength and ability, society will give him all that he needs” (p. 385); but he did not seek to justify vast inequality and call it Socialism. Compare, too, his statement : “Under Socialism the question of profits will disappear in production also” (p. 380) with the following statement in the “U.S.S.R. Handbook,” 1936 (compiled from Russian sources with the help of “distinguished Soviet scientists and writers”) : —

“The State farms are operated in the same manner as mills and factories—on ‘business principles’—i.e.. on the basis of yielding profits defined according to the balance sheet of each farm.” (p. 158.)

Socialists do not need the help of the Archbishop to decide what is Socialism and what isn’t.

The Labour Theory of Value

Capitalist economists reject the Marxian labour theory of value, according to which : —

“That which determines the magnitude of the value of any article is the amount of labour socially necessary, or the labour-time socially necessary for its production.” (“Capital,” Kerr Edition, p. 46.)

As this applies to all commodities, including gold, it explains why gold, the money commodity, can serve as a measure of value and medium of exchange for other commodities. A curious illustration of the labour theory has arisen in trade between Sweden and Germany. Not wishing to accept from Germany gold which may have been looted and which may therefore be reclaimed after the war, the Swedish Government has refused to accept payment in gold. Instead, “the Swedes in their barter trade with Germany were now working their exchange on a ‘man-hour’ standard. For example, the Swedes, when importing one ton of coal from Germany, would settle the transaction by exporting as much iron ore as could be produced with the same number of man-hours as went to the production of the ton of coal.” (News Chronicle, July 10, 1943.)

Questions and Answers on Religion

Under the heading, “Why Keep Dog-collar?” Canon T. P. Stevens wrote in the Evening Standard (October 6. 1943) about a soldier’s doubts and difficulties on the subject of religion. He said that he had received a letter “of enormous length” which asked among other things, “Why not get rid of the parsonic voice and the parsonic collar? ” Canon Stevens is sensible enough to realise that those strange whining, toneless voices we hear on the radio are not an asset to the Churches. He is also easy on the subject of the dog collar.

We, too, have received a letter on the subject of religion, but it is not of enormous length. All it says is, “Why keep the dog ? ”

Millionaires of the World, Unite !

The Daily Worker (October 14, 1943) announces that a pamphlet by Reg Bishop has been published entitled “Soviet Millionaires,” explaining the whole nature of Soviet “millionairedom.” “The key point,” says the Daily Worker, is made plain—namely, that no person in the Soviet Union can acquire wealth by exploiting other men’s labour for profit, nor can he use acquired wealth for such exploitation.”

The same day the Daily Telegraph published figures about the top salaries paid by various companies in the U.S.A. to film stars, newspaper cartoonists, and others. Mr. Louis B. Mayer, head of the Metro-Goldwyn Film Corporation, receives a salary of £237,000 a year, while Mr. Thomas Watson receives a salary of £115,000 a year from the International Business Machines Corporation.

The point of mentioning these high salaries is that the gentlemen in question can (and do) put forward precisely the same justification as the Daily Worker puts forward for the high salaried individuals and prosperous farmers in Russia. “Do we not work for our money?” they can say. “Is it not payment for the work we do?"

And having saved some part of their salaries and invested it in War Loan or other investments, they can likewise argue that their accumulated wealth and the income they derive from their investments is not “exploitation of other men’s labour.” There is nothing in the Russian finaincial system to prevent those who inherit large sums of money, win big prizes in lottery loans, receive big salaries, or make big profits by the sale of their farm products, from investing in State loans and deriving a larger and larger proportion of their total income from those investments.

A quarter of a century ago Lenin, proclaiming the principle of reducing salaries to the standard remuneration of the average worker (“Soviets at Work,” 1918), said that to pay high salaries was a “regrettable necessity” and “a step backward,” and that to pretend otherwise was to “cheat the people.” Cheating the people seems to be the order of the day among Lenin’s successors.

Of course, the new-rich in Russia have a long way to go before they reach U.S.A. levels, but it seems they will always be able to count on the Communists giving them their blessing.

Edgar Hardcastle

Soviet Capitalism: Bonds (1967)

From the May 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

State bonds are a feature of capitalism which the Bolsheviks inherited from the Tsarist regime. A few details show to what an extent the Imperial government relied on this method for obtaining revenue. For example, in just five years (between 1909-1913) 4,100 million roubles were raised by issuing these stocks and, during the same period, 4,040 million roubles were needed for interest and redemption payments on loans which had been floated previously. When the Bolsheviks seized power they took advantage of the change in government and refused to recognise the pre-revolutionary foreign and internal loans. This was a logical step because by then many of the rich bond-holders were living abroad, exiled enemies of Russian state capitalism.

As soon as the chaotic conditions of the Civil War started to settle, the Bolsheviks set about floating new loans. Thus, between 1922-25 bonds were issued which brought 396 million roubles into the state budget — this being 7.5 per cent of all government revenue. This was followed, in the years of forced industrialisation under Stalin, by a succession of state loans. The bonds carried interest rates which the wealthy found it difficult to resist and Russia was dubbed, by the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain, the “land of high profits”.

By the time of the Third Five-Year Plan, the capital being invested in the loans was dwarfing the figures of Tsarist days. Thus, between 1938-41, four state loans were floated, bringing in a total of about 3,400 million roubles. In the war years revenue from the sale of state bonds was as follows:

Investment came from three principal sources. First, there were the state industries — the banks, insurance companies and so on —which made use of their vast reserves. Thus, figures in the government budgets for 1941-44 show that more than 580 million roubles were obtained from the insurance business, a large percentage in the form of subscriptions to state loans. Secondly, individuals from the ruling class were eager to sink their capital in state bonds, which guaranteed a steady return in interest payments. As a random example, we can mention Vladimir Stefanov — a priest of the Moscow Church of the Assumption — who, recognising that war is good business, invested 73,000 roubles in the Defence Fund during World War II. That this was no exceptional case was made clear by R. Bishop in his pamphlet Soviet Millionaires, issued by the Russia Today Society in 1943. He presented figures which showed that in one state of the USSR alone (Kazakstan) at least eighteen individuals had invested a million roubles or more. Bishop attempted to justify this with the incredibly weak comment that “in the Soviet Union the millionaire has acquired his roubles by his own toil and by service to the Soviet State and people.” A few years later T. Cliff was very neatly to smash that lame argument, as follows.

If we examine this statement we find that, as late as 1940, the average annual income of workers and employees being only 4.000 roubles, to collect a million roubles would have taken an average worker 250 years — provided he spent no money on himself at all. The Soviet millionaire gets, in interest alone, 50,000 roubles for every million, which is many times more than the income of any worker. (Russia: A Marxist Analysis—T. Cliff).

The third source was from the working class. There were mass-subscription loans, described as “semi-voluntary” — which meant that workers “bought” their bonds by means of compulsory stoppages from their wages. In the factories and offices, it was the branches of the state-controlled trade unions which were responsible for seeing that their members contributed. These loans were organised on a lottery basis — something like British premium bonds — and the prizes represented at first 4 per cent then 3 per cent and finally 2 per cent of the total sum subscribed. This compared unfavourably with the interest-bearing loans which at times carried rates of up to 11 per cent.

In the decade following the Second World War the issue of bonds went on unabated. During the Fourth Five-Year Plan the state loans brought in almost 11,700 million roubles and the comparable figure for the Fifth Five-Year Plan was 13,600 million roubles. As Khrushchev explained, at several public meetings in early 1957, the state debt had reached 26,000 million roubles, while interest and redemption payments were in the region of 2,900 million roubles annually. This situation led to a drastic reversal of government policy. The central committee of the Communist Party decided to discontinue, from 1958 onwards, the floating of further compulsory loans aimed at the working class. At the same time it suspended lottery-prize drawings on the already existing, mass-subscription bonds and, in addition,, repayment on these was postponed for a period of twenty years or more. It should be emphasized, however, that the sale of bonds to wealthy individuals on a voluntary basis was not discontinued; neither were the interest payments on these stocks defaulted on. (See The Soviet Economy— A. Nove. 1965. p. 107).

The latest figures available show that the issue of state bonds is still running at well over a thousand million roubles each year.

Investment today comes mainly from the banks — as before — and also from members of the ruling class, who can die with the comfortable assurance that their bonds are free from inheritance tax. On the other hand, the individual Russian worker, like wage-earners everywhere, is not in a position to invest. His wages are barely sufficient to keep him in working order from week to week, and from generation to generation. The most he can aspire to is buying a few premium bonds and then hoping against hope that he will land one of the big prizes. It is his function to produce the surplus value from which interest is derived, not to share its distribution.

It was Professor Allakhverdyan of the Moscow Financial Institute who was responsible for the pathetic remark that “the loans floated by socialist states express the new economic relationships . . " Any thinking worker can see that the very fact that interest-bearing bonds exist in Soviet Russia is plain evidence of capitalism in that country. They are one of the mechanisms by which the ruling class gets its hands on the surplus value extracted from working men and women.

John Crump

“Local Boy Makes Good,” or “Alone He Did It” (1944)

Pamphlet Review from the February 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

A very great war produces, out of profound social tragedy, its mordant satirical humorists. This one is no exception; in addition to biting ironists of the Nat Gubbins school, "Yaffle," and others, we may now acclaim one Reginald Bishop as the wittiest cynic of the day. With elephantine solemnity, Mr. Bishop has turned out a little booklet on “Soviet Millionaires” ("Soviet Millionaires," Russia To-day, pamphlet, 2d.), in which he playfully pretends that he is "explaining" that they are the result of "the establishment of socialism in Russia in 1934 " (p. 12).

The result is the funniest piece of satirical writing since this war broke out. For this we thank him very much.

How to do it! Mr. Bishop chides those who are shocked to hear of millionaires in Russia, and "to whom the very word millionaires represents an evil influence in society." He points out that Russian millionaires are “only" rouble millionaires; they do not possess the equivalent of a million pounds sterling (p. 3). "But even were a rouble millionaire possessed of as much money as a sterling one, it would still not be anti-socialist . . . because in the Soviet Union tho millionaire has acquired his roubles by his own toil" (P- 3).

"In all countries the law smiles upon the acquisition of wealth/’ says he (p. 3). (Our italics.)

It all started when the Society for Cultural Relations with Russia published that troublesome little pamphlet reporting how a few rich farmers and priests had "presented" (or lent) millions of roubles to the Russian Government. “ One, Berdyebekov, was publicly acclaimed as a millionaire" (p. 4). "Perhaps it is easier to understand how Soviet millionaires are made by studying the career of Berdyebekov than by any amount of abstract and theoretical discussion" (p. 4).

Just as simple as that! Like those physical culture adverts before the war—"You, too, can have bulging biceps in 10 minutes; send 2s. 6d."

In the new "Bishop" version of the classical figure of bourgeois political economy—the imaginary single individual—the Robinson Crusoe, who, on his uninhabited isle, becomes a "self-made" man. That same "Robinson Crusoe’’ who is the butt of Karl Marx’s scornful lash in Vol. I of “Capital"—not that Mr. R. Bishop would know anything about that!

And our Soviet millionaire really started from nothing. He was "an agricultural labourer" (p. 4).

It is rather handy that we’re not having any nasty old "abstract," "theoretical" discussions, because on the next page (p. 5) "17 other Kayak farmers also made similar gifts"—that is, seventeen more millionaires have popped up in the same neighbourhood, “who twenty-five years ago were more poverty stricken than the Russians themselves" (p. 5).

However, we’ll stick to Millionaire No. 1—Berdyebekov. This is how he did it. "In 1929 his village organised one of the earliest collective farms in Kasakstan ” (our italics) (P.4). "They (he and his family) have been collective farmers for close on fourteen years " (p. 4).

“The family had worked hard; the farm is prosperous; the family has accumulated savings, entirely the fruit of their own labour’’ (p. 4).

But on the same page: “In part, this prosperity has been due to the work and initiative of the farmers themselves, and in part, too, to the enterprise of the Soviet State, which developed cotton growing in that territory to an enormous extent’’ (p. 4).

So you see, the "Revolution gave them the land," “the village organised the farm." and "the Soviet State developed cotton growing" (p. 4)—that is, the Government supplied machinery and equipment, transport, etc., produced by social labour of the Russian working class—but—the one million roubles is STILL the fruit of the millionaire and his family’s own labour—just like Henry Ford, Tommy Lipton, and Lord. Nuffield.

No wonder Joe Davies, the American Ambassador, liked it so much!

Mr. Bishop says the Berdyebekov family have been farmers (really cotton growers) "close on fourteen years." Let’s give ’em fifteen years and see how much they’ve accumulated per annum. One million divided by 15 years amounts to 66,000 per annum, which is nearly 200 times as much as the average wage of an industrial worker per annum. (3,447 roubles in 1938—Daily Worker, February 13. 1943.)

Mr. Bishop tells his readers that it is quite wrong to think that a class of rentiers is being created in Russia—because they have to lend their money to the Government on "hard" terms. These terms are that only one-third of their investment bears interest by way of lottery prizes—two-thirds is redeemed at face-value (p. 8). Interest at two per cent. is open to organisations only, that is, collective farms, etc. But citizen Berdyebekov is the "chairman" of a collective farm, and therefore controls funds invested by it. He also has personal investments to the tune of one million roubles. Mr. Bishop tells us that the number of subscribers to the State Loan has grown to 60 millions, the amount to 41,000 million roubles. Mr. Berdyebekov, our millionaire, may draw interest at 2 per cent, on 300,000 roubles', that is 6,000 roubles a year. What chance a Russian factory worker has of investing in Government stock on a wage of under 300 roubles a month may be well imagined.

But Mr. Bishop, gifted artist that he is, saves his piece-de-resistance to the grand finale: brushing aside as mere trifling chicken-feed the "misunderstandings’’ about lieutenants in the Russian Army getting 200 times as much as a private, and a colonel 400 times, "and so on for the higher grades’’ (p. 13) (maybe "Marshals" are millionaires!); you see: "it’s their careers" (p. 14). Yes, they’ve even got those in Russia, too, the "successful ones are entitled to more" (p. 14), just like home. Oh! and even a private in the Russian Army gets "free travel’’ (p. 13).

Why all this fuss about farmers, he says. "As is well known, the Bishops of the Orthodox Church . . . vied as to which could make the most generous contribution. But the contributions made by the Church dignitaries do not represent the only effort of the clergy ” (p. 10).

Stevanov, priest of the Moscow Church, donated his life savings (73,000 roubles) to the Defence Fund last year. He wrote to Stalin:

  "As a shepherd of souls I deeply mourn the fate of our brothers and sisters. ... I have deposited 73,000 roubles in cash at the State Bank ’’ (p. 11).

We must admit that Mr. Bishop has us there. After all, if a master cotton-grower can’t claim to have produced a million roubles worth of cotton by his own hands—who shall gainsay a "shepherd of souls’’ his 73,000 roubles. Perhaps he is a "Stakanovite" soul-saver, who has stepped up his output to world record heights during the war. Our "study’’ of the Soviet Millionaire does not seem to be very successful so far. Perhaps we’ve been studying the wrong book. Maybe if we leave the modern humourist Reginald Bishop—and turn to another satirical writer of the last century—who was sometimes "theoretical’’ and "abstract’’—Karl Marx, it might help.

In the "Handbook of Marxism" published by Mr. V. Gollancz, and edited by one of Mr. Bishop’s colleagues, Mr. Emile Burns, we read in an extract from Vol. I of "Capital" on page 376:

  "This primitive accumulation plays in Political Economy about the same part as original sin in theology. Adam bit the apple, and thereupon sin fell on the human race. Its origin is supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote of the past. In times long gone by there were two sorts of people; one the diligent, intelligent and above all frugal elite; the other lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living. The legend of theological original sin tells us certainly how man came to be condemned to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow; but the history of economic original sin reveals to us that there are people to whom this is by no means essential. Never mind ! Thus it came to pass that the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at last nothing to sell except their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority that, despite all its labour, has up to now nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly though they have long ceased to work. Such insipid childishness is every day preached to ns in defence of property."

There was a man in Russia once, generally known by tho name of Lenin, who wrote a little booklet (abstract and theoretical) called "The Teachings of Karl Marx," wherein he quoted the following from Vol. Ill of "Capital":—

  "The transformation of rent in kind into money rent is not only necessarily accompanied, but even anticipated by the formation of a class of propertyless day labourers, who hire themselves for wages. During the period of their rise, when this new class appears but sporadically, the custom necessarily develops among the better situated tributary farmers of exploiting agricultural labourers for their own account, just as the wealthier serfs in feudal times used to employ serfs for their own benefit. In this way they gradually acquire the ability to accumulate a certain amount of wealth and to transform themselves even into future capitalists. The old self-employing possessors of the land thus gave rise among themselves to a nursery for capitalist tenants, whose development is conditioned upon the general development of capitalist production outside of the rural districts." (Handbook of Marxism," p. 58.)

Leu in said that this theory of Marx, "of the evolution of capitalism in agriculture," was of especial importance in its bearing on backward countries such as Russia” (p. 558, Handbook of Marxism). It might even apply to cotton growing in Kasakstan.

We agree with the Daily Worker, wherein Mr. W. Holmes averred that Reg Bishop has done very well in dealing with statements by "Hyde Park spotters," that in Russia to-day the social system is one based on wage-labour and capital. The "Hyde Park spouter" is the Socialist Party platform, and Mr. Bishop's pamphlet is so good that it can be confidently recommended to any political sap who still swallows the guff about Socialism in Russia

Horatio.

Capitalism in Poland (1970)

From the November 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are about 500 zloty millionaires amongst Poland’s big market gardeners, according to the Financial Times (3 October). As a zloty is only worth a few pence the wealth of a Polish millionaire is "only" £17.000. but their existence shows that there still exists a privileged class in Poland. Says the Financial Times:

  Wealth here shows itself in tight bundles of 500 zloty notes, town houses, seaside villas, expensive Western cars, lavish parties, and other more blatant manifestations which from time to time draw bursts of criticism from the official Press. Friends of Pani Barbara estimate that she spends more in one month on massage and beauty treatment than a computer programmer earns in the same period.

It would be a mistake to think that Poland's wealthy individuals are all private-enterprise market gardeners. Others will have amassed personal wealth out of the bloated salaries they are paid while occupying the top posts in the government, army or industry.

Nor is the existence of millionaires in an allegedly socialist country new. During the last war supporters of Russia were shocked to learn that some people were contributing millions of roubles to Stalin’s war loan. In Britain the Russia Today Society had to rush out a special pamphlet, Soviet Millionaires by Reg Bishop, to try to explain this away. Apparently the first Russian millionaire, Berdyebekov, was. like Mrs. Barbara in Poland today, a farmer.

Bishop never did succeed in explaining what wealthy individuals were doing under "socialism”, but that was because he avoided the obvious answer: there are capitalists in Poland and Russia because these have never ceased to be capitalist countries.

50 Years Ago: Soviet Millionaires (1994)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

A very great war produces, out of profound social tragedy, its mordant satirical humorists. This one is no exception: in addition to biting ironists of the Nat Gubbins school, "Yaffle," and others, we may now acclaim one Reginald Bishop as the wittiest cynic of the day. With elephantine solemnity, Mr. Bishop has turned out a little booklet on "Soviet Millionaires" ("Soviet Millionaires," Russia To-day. pamphlet. 2d.), in which he playfully pretends that he is "explaining" that they are the result of "the establishment of socialism in Russia in 1934" (p. 12).

The result is the funniest piece of satirical writing since this war broke out. For this we thank him very much.

How to do it! Mr. Bishop chides those who are shocked to hear of millionaires in Russia, and "to whom the very word millionaires represents an evil influence in society." He points out that Russian millionaires are "only" rouble millionaires: they do not possess the equivalent of a million pounds sterling (p. 3). "But even were a rouble millionaire possessed of as much money as a sterling one, it would still not be anti-socialist. . . . because in the Soviet Union the millionaire has acquired his roubles by his own toil" (p. 3) . . . 

We agree with the Daily Worker, wherein Mr. W. Holmes averred that Reg. Bishop has done very well in dealing with statements by "Hyde Park spouters." that in Russia to-day the social system is one based on wage-labour and capital. The "Hyde Park spouter" is the Socialist Party platform and Mr. Bishop's pamphlet is so good that it can be confidently recommended to any political sap who still swallows the guff about Socialism in Russia.

[From an article by "Horatio’ in the Socialist Standard. February 1944.]