The Soviet opposition (1978)

From the October 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the most part the Party maximum was an operative rule until the end of the twenties and early thirties. Then it began to be undermined, primarily by the decline in the real wages of most workers. The limited increase in money wages did not cover the rapid rise in prices; a considerable number of workers found their small circle of high officials was protected by the creation of a system of special stores, distributing centres, and dining rooms, where goods could be obtained at fixed prices. Gradually they acquired other privileges too: their own hospitals, free rest homes, dachas, and so on. In the same period a peculiar habit began to appear: the Party activ were given expensive gifts for holidays, congresses, and conferences. On February 8, 1932, the Party maximum was formally abolished, bringing a new increase in the real income of leading officials.

When the economic situation improved, permitting the abolition of rationing in 1935 and a steady increase in real wages, the privileges of high officials were not terminated. On the contrary, they were increased. A system of representatives’ subsidies (predestavitel 'skie dotatsii) was established for all officials at the level of the chairman of a city Soviet or higher. Moreover, the direct salaries of higher officials rose much faster than wages of ordinary workers. Many officials increased their salaries even more through a system of pluralism (sovmestitel ’stro); that is, one man held several offices, receiving full pay for each. Thus the l-to-5 ratio between an average worker’s salary and that of the highest official, which Lenin evidently considered optimal, was violated even before the war.

Subsequently the ratio grew still greater. During the war and the first post-war years, when the real wages of ordinary workers were falling once again, the salaries of the highest officials continued to rise. That was the period when the disgraceful system of “packets” (pakety) was introduced in the higher State and Party institutions. Each month almost every high official would receive an envelope or packet containing a large sum, often much higher than the salary formally designated for his post. These payments passed through special financial channels, were not subject to taxes, and were kept secret from the rank-and-file officials of the institution.

Russian dissident Roy Medvedev on the growth of the Russian rulers’ privileges, in Let History Judge, Knopf, N.Y. 1972, pp 539-40.

State capitalism and the Russian dissidents (1978)

From the August 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to Andrei Sakharov, a leading Russian dissident, the view that Russia is state capitalist is fairly widespread there:

In my opinion, contemporary Soviet society can be concisely characterised as a society based on state capitalism; that is, a system differing from contemporary capitalism of the Western type by virtue of complete nationalization, a Party-State monopoly of economic affairs—and therefore in culture, ideology, and other basic aspects of life. This opinion is apparently shared by a great many people abroad and in the USSR—although in most cases the latter of course do not voice it (My Country and the World, p. 14)

To call Russia state capitalist is to reject the claim of the Russian leaders to have established a classless egalitarian society. That there is no social equality in Russia is evident to any impartial observer. Even a superficial glance at Russian society will reveal that the mass of the people are poor and at the same time have no say whatsoever in the way society is run. On the other hand, the group which does take the key economic and political decisions can be seen to enjoy considerable material privileges too. The term “state capitalism” however conveys not only that a situation of social inequality exists in Russia but also that the society has a definite class structure and, like capitalism everywhere else, is based on the exploitation of the working class.

The Soviet oppositionists do in fact give us a fairly detailed picture of the class structure of Russia. In 1969 there appeared a samizdat document Time Does Not Wait written by two authors using the pseudonyms Zorin and Alexeyev. Here we read:

The Party and government leaders not only possess total political power but also have at their disposal the entire economy. State ownership of the means of production and the centralized planning system mean that all the budget figures, all the surplus products created by the people’s labour, are disposed of collectively by a closed circle of people, according to each one’s rank. Here the nomenclature appears as a form of property. In reality this is a single state-monopoly trust in which positions and posts are equivalent to the ownership of shares, (translated for the Socialist Standard by C. S.)

So the ruling class is here seen as the select group wielding, on the basis of the State monopoly of the means of production, complete economic and political power and is identified with the “nomenclatura” which is thus a legally-recognised hierarchical corporation collectively exploiting the surplus labour of the Russian people.

The “nomenclatura” is a list of posts, appointment to which is the prerogative of the Party. All the leading posts in national and local government figure in the “nomenclatura” and nearly all are filled by members of the Party. The “nomenclatura”, then, in so far as it is a list of posts the ruling Party itself considers it should fill in order to maintain its control is a reasonable enough starting point for defining the Russian ruling class. We say starting point because there are others not strictly in the “nomenclatura” who would also need to be considered part of any ruling class; the full-time bureaucracy of the Party itself for instance.

Andrei Sakharov himself, in his rather naive first public pronouncement in 1968 of his differences with the Russian government entitled Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom, made a passing reference in a footnote to the view that the “nomenclatura” constituted a ruling, exploiting class enjoying material privileges:

It is sometimes suggested in the literature that the political manifestations of Stalinism represented a sort of superstructure over the economic basis of an anti-Leninist pseudo-socialism that led to the formation of a distinct class—the bureaucratic élite of those who figure on the nomeclatura lists and who appropriate the fruits of social labour by means of a whole series of officially recognised or concealed privileges (Sakharov Speaks, p. 84, changed on basis of French version)

By 1975, Sakharov, without doubt because of his experiences during the intervening period, had come to fully accept this view himself. By then he realised that he was fighting not just to change the policy of the government but against an entrenched ruling class determined to defend its power and privileges. In his book My Country and the World he writes:

Although the appropriate sociological studies either have not been carried out in our country, or have been classified as secret, it may be affirmed that as early as the 1920’s and 30’s — and definitively in post-war years—a special Party-bureaucratic stratum was formed and could be discerned. This is the nomenclatura, as its members call themselves; or the “new class”, as Milovan Djilas has named them. This élite has its own life style, its own clearly defined social status—"bosses” and "chiefs”—and its own way of talking and thinking. The nomenclatura has in fact an inalienable status, and has recently become hereditary. Thanks to a complex system of covert and overt official privileges, along with contacts, acquaintanceships, and mutual favours—and also thanks to their high salaries—these people are able to live in much better housing, and to feed and clothe themselves better (often for less money in special ‘closed’ stores or for currency certificates, or by means of trips abroad—which, under Soviet conditions, constitute the highest award for loyalty) (pp. 25-6)

Sakharov had first used the actual term “state capitalism” to describe Russia in an interview given to a Swedish radio and television correspondent in July 1973 (see Sakharov Speaks, p. 167).

One of the weaknesses of Sakharov’s analysis and that of Zorin and Alexeyev is the way they seek to show that the “nomenclatura’s” rights are legally-based and hereditary. Both Sakharov and Zorin and Alexeyev state that the “nomenclatura’s” right to a privileged situation is “inalienable” and Sakharov adds that it “has recently become hereditary”. What they have in mind is clear: a member of the “nomenclatura” who ends up on the losing side in an internal party controversy may lose his top Party or government post but he will not be thrown out of the “nomenclatura”. The members of the “anti-party group” of die-hard Stalinists (Molotov, Malenkov, Bulganin and Kaganovich) ejected from power in 1956 were all given other, though comparatively minor, posts in the “nomenclatura” and Khrushchev died a wealthy man in his own private dacha. In describing the “nomenclatura” as hereditary Sakharov no doubt has in mind the fact that children of members of the “nomenclatura” can enter, and have been entering, its ranks without any difficulty and almost automatically.

No doubt both these facts are true, but to include them as key features of the Russian ruling class is to accept a legalistic rather than a sociological definition of class and to lay yourself open to the criticism that the individual member of the "nomenclatura’s” position and privileges are not in fact legally enforceable. From a legalistic point of view, such a criticism has some validity. The members of the “nomenclatura” have no legally-recognised and legally-enforceable right either to a post in its ranks or to transmit such a post to their children. Their position may in practice be virtually permanent and it may in practice always be possible for them to get their children a post in the “nomenclatura”, but if, for some reason, they were thrown out of the “nomenclatura” or if their children were refused entry into its ranks they could not have recourse to the courts to enforce their claim.

The legalistic definition of class suggests that, to constitute a possessing class, a group must have legal property rights over the means of production including the legal right to bequeath their property to their descendants. But this is not so. Marx’s method was to judge a society not by its political or legal superstructure but by its real social relations of production. A possessing class in the Marxist sense can be discerned in any society if an empirical investigation reveals that a distinct and reasonably stable group exerts a de facto monopoly control over access to the use of the means of production. This monopoly will always (except in periods of revolutionary social change) be backed by political power and may also be legally recognised, but this latter is by no means essential. The absence of legal recognition would not negate the existence of a possessing class.

On this definition, a ruling, possessing class, as a group exerting a de facto monopoly over the means of production, has long existed in Russia. This does not mean, however, that a class of individual private property owners might not still evolve, either from the ranks of the bureaucracy or from the at present severely restricted illegal and semi-legal private entrepreneurs of Russia.

State capitalism and private capitalism

None of the Soviet oppositionists are Socialists in the Marxist sense of the term (they do not stand for the establishment of a moneyless, wageless, Stateless society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by the whole community). So what do they stand for? What do they wish to see established in Russia in place of state capitalism?

Their key demand is for the establishment of a genuine political democracy in Russia with freedom of expression, freedom to organise in political parties and trade unions, a democratically elected parliament, etc. There can be no doubt at all that they are sincerely and courageously struggling for this aim. But since politics and economics cannot be separated it is pertinent to ask what sort of economic system they envisage, even if by default, for a democratic Russia.

Here it is hard to resist the conclusion that many of those who speak of “state-monopoly capitalism”, including Sakharov himself, are more opposed to "state-monopoly” than to “capitalism”. In a sense this is understandable in that what they are fighting against day by day is the monopoly exercised by the State in the fields of politics and ideas—the dictatorship of the leaders of the CPSU—while the term “capitalism” is not properly understood and is being used as a term to express their rejection of the claim of the CPSU leaders to have established a classless society in Russia.

However, class society in Russia has certain features in common with pre-capitalist class societies in that the privileges of the rulers—even though they derive in the end from a monopoly over the means of production—are expressed in political terms. Thus, just as in feudalism society was divided into legally-defined estates, so in Russia today society appears to be divided according to political criteria: into those in the top and middle ranks of the CPSU who, by virtue of their political status, enjoy access to the top jobs (through the “nomenclatura” system) and to the best goods and services (through exclusive shops and politically-motivated “prizes” as well as through high salaries), and into the rest of society.

This special feature of the Russian class structure has given rise to the illusion that the mere abolition of the political monopoly of the CPSU of the “nomenclatura”, of the exclusive shops and other perks would be equivalent to abolishing class privilege in Russia. But this would no more be the case than the abolition of feudal privileges established a classless society in Western Europe, as imagined by 19th century democrats.

What the abolition of these politically-derived privileges would do would be to leave no class distinction but the ownership (or non-ownership) of wealth. This is the grain of truth in the claim made by the CPSU leaders that what their opponents seek is the “restoration of capitalism” in Russia. "Restoration” is of course the wrong word since it suggests that capitalism was at one time abolished in Russia (which was never the case), but it is still true that in practice what the Russian dissidents would achieve if successful would be a transition from the existing “bureaucratic” or “state-monopoly” capitalism to a type of capitalism similar to what has emerged in the West.

Such a transition would not need to involve the complete denationalization of land and industry in Russia For, after all, a large proportion of industry in Western countries is now in the hands of the State. There is, however, a difference between Western state capitalism and Russian state capitalism in that in the West the State sector is subordinate to the private sector, whereas in Russia the state sector, the source of power and privilege for the political bureaucracy which controls it, completely dominates (but has not entirely suppressed) the private sector. The establishment of democratic political institutions in Russia would create the same sort of relationship between the private and State sectors as currently exists in the West: the nationalised industries would be run in the interests of a political bureaucracy.

But what is, or would be, the Russian private sector? There already exist in Russia today many people who are individually wealthy. Not so much those who have made money out of illegal or semi-legal private enterprise, but mainly those who. after years of privilege deriving from membership of a corporation which collectively owns and controls the means of production have amassed considerable fortunes and become wealthy individuals in their own right. But there is no legal way in which they can invest this wealth productively so it is generally hoarded in the form of dachas, precious metals and art collections. The partial denationalization of industry proposed by Sakharov in My Country and the World, as a means of weakening the “state monopoly” would provide such an outlet. For who does Sakharov think would have the money to buy the factories he proposes should be sold off? The only people who could are bureaucrats who have become individually wealthy — and others, we might add without being unfair, like Sakharov himself who became so by providing special services to the political bureaucracy in the scientific or artistic fields.

So, ironic as it might seem, the main beneficiaries of the democratic programme proposed by the Russian oppositionists would most probably be a section of the very bureaucrats they are so courageously struggling against. Which is why other dissidents like Roy Medvedev may not be entirely mistaken in expecting democratic reform in Russia to come from above, from a section of the bureaucracy itself.

This, then, is the ambiguous position of those in Russia who recognise the system there to be a state capitalism. Not being socialists, the only alternative they can offer—even if they don’t always do so explicitly—is private capitalism. The Russian oppositionists’ fight for political democracy is in effect a fight against state capitalism on behalf of private capitalism. Which is why we, as Socialists, cannot support them.

Adam Buick

Russians and their "Rights" (1977)

From the June 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the Helsinki Conference (1975), the question of “civil rights” in Russia has become a football to be knocked about in the arena of international politics. Jimmy Carter pontificates on human rights, eternal verities and God-given etceteras. Brezhnev’s reply is that he should go count peanuts as the Helsinki Final Act emphatically says domestic matters are private. Which is true.

It is the only treaty dealing with human “rights” which actually begins with a “get-out” clause, before it gets to poetic phrases. Its very first principle says: “The participating States will respect each other’s sovereign equality and individuality as well as all the rights inherent in and encompassed by its sovereignty . . . They will also respect each other’s right freely to choose and develop its political, social, economic and cultural systems as well as its right to determine its laws and regulations”.

Other Covenants do at least give you the fine phrases and sweet nothings first; for example, the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (articles 1-3) guarantees that “under no circumstances may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence”.

But along with these sweet nothings there are the “get-out” clauses. Article 12 says “the above- mentioned rights shall not be subject to any restrictions except those which are provided by law, are necessary to protect national security, public order, public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others”.

For many years Soviet dissidents have, in the face of very real difficulties, been actively organizing, cooperating together, publishing news and views, communicating with the West and developing their analyses of the Soviet political and economic system. They have to contend with social and financial problems. Most lose their jobs as soon as they become actively dissident: many scrape by in casual labouring jobs or rely on their wives’ pay. In any capitalist country, the monopoly employer has a powerful weapon in the blacklist. Russia is no exception. Hardly surprising that so few in each generation have the courage to be actively critical of the Partocracy.

Governments do not operate on any principle save expediency. The Helsinki agreement came about because the Russian, American and European bosses found a common cause for concern in their heavy expenditures on defence systems, their self-interest in markets, and their growing need for international understanding on pollution, energy, space etc.

To achieve agreement on the issues involved meant horse trading. Western governments wanted more information to go into and come out of Russia, more journalists to work there. As a quid pro quo, the Russians are now sitting in on a lot of scientific seminars, including those dealing with genetic engineering — a sensitive subject, since it has terrifying “defence” possibilities. The West proposed a liberalization of Russia’s attitude to travel, emigration etc., and presumably the Russians agreed because the Helsinki Final Act so strongly emphasized the “sovereignty” of States and the principle of “non-intervention in internal affairs”.

The Helsinki document gave the Russian workers no “rights” they did not already have. Their constitution “guarantees” freedom of assembly and political opinion, also the freedom of the Press. But constitutions, like covenants, treaties and “final acts”, are merely scraps of paper. What is required is that working people should struggle, not for more paper rights, but for ownership and democratic control.

“It implies that the people are to have complete control of all social institutions, the ordering of all social activities, the domination of the whole social life. Such a condition of affairs presupposes at the very outset the ownership by the people of all the means of life . . . There can be no other foundation for democracy than this common ownership of all the means of life, for where these fall into private possession social distinctions at once spring up, the owners become dominators, and it becomes impossible for the people to control the social activities — because . . . they have not control of the means and instruments through which most important of those activities — those directed to the production of social wealth — are applied”, (Socialist Standard, Oct. 1913.)

The history of Russia since 1917 has emphatically proved our point. Abolition of Tsarism, the nationalization of land, factories, mines, railways, control by a small group of despots — all this has left the people, the working, wealth-producing people, as they were before. In Dostoyevsky’s words, “the insulted and injured”.

Government in Russia is a closed shop. The ruling party recruits almost exclusively among top management, among the nomenclatura, the apparatchiks. A party card is an essential qualification for many jobs. In terms of ideology it means nothing. In social terms, it means the possessor is a lackey, a hireling of the state. In economic terms, it provides him with money prizes, country estates, and privileges denied to mere workers. Only a tiny fraction of Russians are admitted to this exclusive club. The rest of the population keep their noses bravely to the grindstone. Only a few criticize and attack aspects of the system.

The dissidents today are not united. There are the religious, racial and ethnic groups — Christians, Jews, Ukrainians, Georgians, Crimean Tartars, often excluding members of other groups. There are writers and artists who want to do their own thing without bureaucratic hindrance or control. Among those who want a more liberal political system there is a tendency to analyze and criticize the social and economic systems as well as the political superstructure.

Sakharov has described Russia as “a society based on state capitalism” (My Country and the World). A writer in Seyatel declared in 1971 that “our country is the purest and most developed example of state capitalism”. In an article about the similarity between the western and soviet economic systems, Agursky wrote that this resemblance was due to the fact that “the economic and social system of the ‘socialist’ bloc is not in any sense socialist, but is merely a variation of State monopoly-capitalism” (Cahiers du Samizdat, June-July 1974). However an opposing view is put by Roy Medvedev, an ex-member of the CPSU, who still believes that Russia enjoys that mythical state of bliss, “the dictatorship of the proletariat”.

The Socialist does not argue for “rights”. The concept of “rights” in a property-based society is a fraud and a sham!

“What becomes of the ‘right’ to live if the means by which alone it is possible to live are in the hands of others?” (Socialist Standard, February 1911).

Some at least of the Russian dissidents are aware that Socialism has not yet happened and that the Russian political dictatorship is a reflection of the economic tyranny which is capitalism. We hope that they will advance beyond demands for political “rights” to the revolutionary position of outright opposition to exploitation, to the wages system, and to the class division which is characteristic of capitalism in all its forms. In doing this they will be expressing their awareness of their common interest with the working, wealth-producing people of all lands in ending this enslaving system.

That struggle is the only one which offers a worthwhile goal — the end of poverty, conflict, war. Those who dream of the “Rights of Man” are the Utopians of whom Plekhanov wrote: “The Utopian is one who, starting from an abstract principle, seeks for a perfect social organisation” (Anarchism and Socialism). The fine words of the Helsinki Final Act — “human rights and fundamental freedoms” — are mere sham-words, good for those who still believe in the crock of gold at the other end of the rainbow. The real fight is the opposition of the exploited class to the system which enslaves it.

Charmian Skelton