Bureaucracy in the Socialist state?

[Heathen Communist]

Was the Soviet Union too bureaucratic to really work for the people?
It seems quite likely that the governments of the USSR and many other Socialist states became so complex that they could no longer be productive.

[Revmind84]

I think one of the main reasons behind the counter-revolution's success in the USSR and the former socialist states was the bureaucracy that eventually gave way to the emergence of capitalist restorationists. And absolutely, this was something the people rightfully hated. As Fidel said though, the socialist system in these countries was something that needed to be improved, but certainly not done away with.

[Astarte]

Was the Soviet Union too bureaucratic to really work for the people?
It seems quite likely that the governments of the USSR and many other Socialist states became so complex that they could no longer be productive.

I consider the USSR as bureaucratic collectivist, in the manner I guess Wittfogel or Djilas would have looked at it. Still, despite this, I do not take the position that it was "no better" than capitalism. The bureaucracy at least partially (besides coercive power like any other state) rested much on the idea that the living standards of the working classes had to keep rising for their own position as a kind of intelligentsia-bureuacratic-ruling-class to maintain legitimacy - and so, what sets it apart from all the ancient bureaucratic collectivist models (Wittfogel would have refer to them as "Asiatic Despotism") is that the official purpose of the state or "dictatorship of the proletariat" was building socialism, and communism, that is raising living standards and pursuing the pacification of existence (although that comes from Marcuse and the Soviets never would have used such a term) which forced the bureaucracy to more or less pursue such ends.

I really think the implosion of the USSR was more so due to economic isolation, and the draining of resources on arms production to compete with the West in a MAD world. Statist bureaucracy can last hundreds of years individually, like the Tang dynasty for instance, and the mode of power seems to have been able to continue almost perpetually throughout the pre-modern world, as an economic mode, it lasted for thousands of years in ancient Egypt and ancient China.

[Jose Gracchus]

I think excessively comparing the Soviet, Soviet-model, and derivative social formations to the various ancient state-bureaucratic-monarchical formations is more misleading than helpful. Those formations generalized often as "Asiatic"--with direct analogies drawn between Pharaonic Egypt and Ancient (as well as Classical) China--to group them together in the fashion as you and others have proposed, I think obscures more than it illuminates.

The USSR exhibited a kind of state-bureaucratic general commodity production. I think its overall character, taken holistically over its whole history, would be a special instance of the overall, global and epochical, capitalist mode of production. I think the workers' revolution had basically been smothered by the end of 1918, and the workers' position as an exploited, alienated producing class, consolidated by 1921. I am willing to be pulled away from this outlook, but I fail to see many alternatives which don't a.) fail to use Marxian methods and deny failing, b.) dismiss Marxian methods while denying dismissing them while failing to offer any clear alternative by consequence, or c.) dismiss them and offer alternatives which are quite flawed and often very weak themselves.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The generalized commodity production alternative which rejects the "capitalist" label because of class emphasis (to the credit of the "bureaucratic collectivist" side) uses Marx-based methods as a starting point to present a substantive alternative.

[Jose Gracchus]

Is that Michael Macnair's position? (Not accusatory: I'm genuinely curious if that is his line, because I've read his Banaji review and could not tease a clear position out.)

Also, as another thought to Astarte: but the Stalinist system was rather transitory in nature when you look at the big picture. So its fragility, and seeming link to underdevelopment of capitalism coming into the 20th c., together with its seeming sole task of accumulating capital stock, extensive growth in core industry, and a general incapacity to maintain itself in intensive growth and consumer good production, I think speaks to its special detour in a world which has long since become globally and thoroughly capitalist. They were not enduring and distinct, they were somewhat meta-stable, in my view.

[Die Neue Zeit]

It's actually Paul Cockshott's position. Mike Macnair AFAIK holds a "bureaucratic collectivist line" and downplays the subject of generalized commodity production, and for obvious reasons after the exchange between the two comrades.

BTW, the "general incapacity to maintain itself" borders on "vulgar Marxism." Comrade Cockshott noted the policy avoidance surrounding linear programming and multi-linear programming, convex and general mathematical optimization, computerization and Internet development, etc. and thus not spending more than what was spent in both the space program and nuclear weapons program.

The Primitive Socialist Accumulation "campers" have one correct criticism: the Soviet economy switched to consumer goods production too quickly. With that, vodka problems and black markets were inevitable. Empowerment of labour need not have come with such a switch.

[Jose Gracchus]

Huh? Do you think he could his ass kicked? So Macnair has no position on GCP? What's his line on the USSR and USSR-model's content?

EDIT: What's Cockshott's general position on Stalinist regimes and economies?

[black magick hustla]

its interesting to look a bit at history for this. bukharin is one of my personal heroes, and although he was at the right of the party, he seemed like very genuine and concerned. he argued against the super industrialization posed by trotsky because it would lead to an elefantite bureacracy. how right he was.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Huh? Do you think he could his ass kicked? So Macnair has no position on GCP? What's his line on the USSR and USSR-model's content?

EDIT: What's Cockshott's general position on Stalinist regimes and economies?

Macnair's line has something to do with them being allegedly "peasant-based regimes," IIRC. Re. GCP, he's glued to $$$, and that's why he doesn't talk about GCP much, let alone transitions from $$$ to (non-circulable, electronic) labour credits.

[robbo203]

I think one of the main reasons behind the counter-revolution's success in the USSR and the former socialist states was the bureaucracy that eventually gave way to the emergence of capitalist restorationists. And absolutely, this was something the people rightfully hated. As Fidel said though, the socialist system in these countries was something that needed to be improved, but certainly not done away with.

How can we even talk of capitalist restoration when it is was made abundantly clear by people like Lenin himself that capitalism existed in post revolutionary Russia. Capitalism never disappeared in the Soviet Union - it was simply taken over by the state. Therefore all talk of capitalist restoration is absurd. The very most you can say is that one form of capitalism was stored at the expense of another

[Jose Gracchus]

It's actually Paul Cockshott's position. Mike Macnair AFAIK holds a "bureaucratic collectivist line" and downplays the subject of generalized commodity production, and for obvious reasons after the exchange between the two comrades.

Sounds like he got his ass kicked. You still didn't explain what Cockshott's position is. I know he uses the same Aristotelian gimmicky, but he must have a deeper scrutiny of the USSR and kin than "monarchies" of the General Secretary.


BTW, the "general incapacity to maintain itself" borders on "vulgar Marxism." Comrade Cockshott noted the policy avoidance surrounding linear programming and multi-linear programming, convex and general mathematical optimization, computerization and Internet development, etc. and thus not spending more than what was spent in both the space program and nuclear weapons program.

Except the finite limits of bureaucratically expanding the alienated production of the USSR, combined with the organic composition of the ruling class, all reflects, indirectly and directly, of Soviet material realities, makes it impossible that they were to finance some ex nihilo computational system to aid the bureaucracy at those costs. There's a reason why the space program and nuclear weapons programs got picked (and practically broken the bank themselves).

You're talking about airy idle possibilities based on Cockshott's politics emanating from the bureaucratic reformist pamphlet that Towards a New Socialism started out as. No intrinsic analysis whatsoever. Just because he thought he could pitch it as a long-shot proposal maybe to some true believers left in the Eastern elite policy-makers and specialists like economists. That doesn't mean its a coherent vision of socialism.

How does it "border" on "vulgar Marxism". I grow weary of you simply asserting statements on your own authority and not providing any support. How am I "bordering" on "vulgar Marxism"?


The Primitive Socialist Accumulation "campers" have one correct criticism: the Soviet economy switched to consumer goods production too quickly. With that, vodka problems and black markets were inevitable. Empowerment of labour need not have come with such a switch.

This is just idiotic. The rollback of the Stalinist coercive economy was natural and began even under Stalin. Khrushchevism was the inevitable result of trying to attempt something like a normal mode of exploitation, rather than the hyper-intensified one under High Stalinism.

The real shifts in the economy are based on the resistance to workers of yet more demands, real expectations in consumer expectations, the composition of the mature ruling class, and the like. Look at who is who's patron. You look at everything as these airy rootless "policy choices" when the different sources of policy, their constituencies, and the policy-makers composition and ultimate decision-making, are a reflection of material and class realities, if you use Marxian methods. Perhaps you do not, but you should provide something other than liberal abstract system-building, or idealist counter-factuals.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Sounds like he got his ass kicked. You still didn't explain what Cockshott's position is. I know he uses the same Aristotelian gimmicky, but he must have a deeper scrutiny of the USSR and kin than "monarchies" of the General Secretary.

Cockshott says that the Soviet model proper was but one possible socialist model, though I disagree with his extension of the label to most of the satellite states.

Certainly in an era without computerization, it would be impossible to plan beyond the extent that Gosplan did, and it would be impossible to prevent under-the-table circulation of paper vouchers.


Except the finite limits of bureaucratically expanding the alienated production of the USSR, combined with the organic composition of the ruling class, all reflects, indirectly and directly, of Soviet material realities, makes it impossible that they were to finance some ex nihilo computational system to aid the bureaucracy at those costs. There's a reason why the space program and nuclear weapons programs got picked (and practically broken the bank themselves).

The computational system, certainly at least within the military-industrial complex, could have been derived both internally and through foreign espionage. The apparatus underlying Tetris should have been available in the 1970s at the very latest, and Chernenko's computerization efforts in the central bureaucracy during the 1970s (as head of the CC General Department) should have occurred earlier.


You look at everything as these airy rootless "policy choices" when the different sources of policy, their constituencies, and the policy-makers composition and ultimate decision-making, are a reflection of material and class realities, if you use Marxian methods.

Re. the rest of your post: It's all in the dynamics between structure and policy. Just because a given structure has certain boundaries doesn't mean that policies need to impose their own boundaries too distant from and inside those structural boundaries.


This is just idiotic. The rollback of the Stalinist coercive economy was natural and began even under Stalin. Khrushchevism was the inevitable result of trying to attempt something like a normal mode of exploitation, rather than the hyper-intensified one under High Stalinism.

The rollback in the Late Stalin years was a gradual one and not a sudden shift like during the Khrushchev years. Things like the implementation of the minimum wage and the increasing of the value of workers' savings, etc. could have occurred while the overall rollback would have remained gradual.

[Jose Gracchus]

Cockshott says that the Soviet model proper was but one possible socialist model, though I disagree with his extension of the label to most of the satellite states.

So he thinks it was some kind of "flawed workers' state". Jesus. I guess he thinks the political-social power of the empirical working class is something that just has to be bolted on to the side of GOSPLAN, no trouble.


Certainly in an era without computerization, it would be impossible to plan beyond the extent that Gosplan did, and it would be impossible to prevent under-the-table circulation of paper vouchers.

This is why self-management would be a vital complement to any pre-computerized planning scheme, and would naturally need to develop out of a greater degree of self-management. The simple fact is planning suffered a lot of extrinsic problems having to do with authoritarianism and alienated production - it was not a planned economy of the associated producers in the sense we can discern a Marxian program of socialism.


The computational system, certainly at least within the military-industrial complex, could have been derived both internally and through foreign espionage. The apparatus underlying Tetris should have been available in the 1970s at the very latest, and Chernenko's computerization efforts in the central bureaucracy during the 1970s (as head of the CC General Department) should have occurred earlier.

There's no money, and the organic composition of the Soviet ruling class prevents it from being allocated in this manner.


Re. the rest of your post: It's all in the dynamics between structure and policy. Just because a given structure has certain boundaries doesn't mean that policies need to impose their own boundaries too distant from and inside those structural boundaries.

Except there was no money and the ruling class had no interest in distributing it according to you and Cockshott's old illusions.


The rollback in the Late Stalin years was a gradual one and not a sudden shift like during the Khrushchev years. Things like the implementation of the minimum wage and the increasing of the value of workers' savings, etc. could have occurred while the overall rollback would have remained gradual.

I don't know how to take this seriously. Why exactly do you think stuff like a minimum wage and savings were provisioned? Maybe to increase the purchasing power of workers vis-a-vis increased availability of consumer goods in moving away from a coercive model back to a social democratic social contract model.

Its totally insane for you to act like these two factors had no intrinsic relation to each other. They were paying workers more so they could buy more shit. How is this difficult to understand?

[Paul Cockshott]

You're talking about airy idle possibilities based on Cockshott's politics emanating from the bureaucratic reformist pamphlet that Towards a New Socialism started out as. No intrinsic analysis whatsoever. Just because he thought he could pitch it as a long-shot proposal maybe to some true believers left in the Eastern elite policy-makers and specialists like economists. That doesn't mean its a coherent vision of socialism.

The opponents of Perestroika were unlikely to be from the elite policy makers. But for any group opposed to the policy being followed by Gorbachov to form a credible pole of opposition they would need some alternative economic policy and an alternative idea of how the Soviet Economy could have been organised. Andreyeva was able to articulate a political opposition but what was her economic policy?

[Die Neue Zeit]

So he thinks it was some kind of "flawed workers' state". Jesus. I guess he thinks the political-social power of the empirical working class is something that just has to be bolted on to the side of GOSPLAN, no trouble.

He doesn't subscribe to the Trotskyist "degenerated workers state" theory. His position on demarchy arose in observation of the privileges of the Soviet bureaucracy.


This is why self-management would be a vital complement to any pre-computerized planning scheme, and would naturally need to develop out of a greater degree of self-management. The simple fact is planning suffered a lot of extrinsic problems having to do with authoritarianism and alienated production - it was not a planned economy of the associated producers in the sense we can discern a Marxian program of socialism.

Comrade Cockshott's point is that computerized planning, so long as it's not taken to the level of a panacea, is a counter to panaceas regarding self-management.

Bordiga was against the "democratic principle" and his line of thinking suggests that computerized planning could have arisen by bureaucratic development.

[And again, Chernenko did his computerization thing.]


There's no money, and the organic composition of the Soviet ruling class prevents it from being allocated in this manner.

What do you mean there was no money? There was the Soviet ruble. :confused:


I don't know how to take this seriously. Why exactly do you think stuff like a minimum wage and savings were provisioned? Maybe to increase the purchasing power of workers vis-a-vis increased availability of consumer goods in moving away from a coercive model back to a social democratic social contract model.

Its totally insane for you to act like these two factors had no intrinsic relation to each other. They were paying workers more so they could buy more shit. How is this difficult to understand?

Saving for big assets like vacation trips, countryside dachas (not privileged state dachas but regular ones), automobiles, etc. is quite different from more regular consumption like that of tobacco and vodka. Strictly from the perspective of technical development, it would have been better if other working-class apparatchiks like "Iron Lazar" were in charge instead of that hare-brained buffoon (or his partner-in-crime Malenkov, for that matter), who was only right about sovkhozization and even then whose own views here were shared by others.

A limited consumption development focus on durable goods would have provided space for computerization development and other needs tied to the defense industrial complex.

[Astarte]

Is that Michael Macnair's position? (Not accusatory: I'm genuinely curious if that is his line, because I've read his Banaji review and could not tease a clear position out.)

Also, as another thought to Astarte: but the Stalinist system was rather transitory in nature when you look at the big picture. So its fragility, and seeming link to underdevelopment of capitalism coming into the 20th c., together with its seeming sole task of accumulating capital stock, extensive growth in core industry, and a general incapacity to maintain itself in intensive growth and consumer good production, I think speaks to its special detour in a world which has long since become globally and thoroughly capitalist. They were not enduring and distinct, they were somewhat meta-stable, in my view.

In Russia, China, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, Yugoslavia, Korea, etc, etc, yes the driving historical force which brought Marxism-Leninism to power was the rather transitory factor of the need for pre-industrial nations to experience the great undertaking of the industrial revolution. By the time of the 20th century Russia and China simply could not go through large-scale industrialization on a capitalist basis as in the West since most of the capitalists that controlled finance or industry in these countries were foreign imperialists - retarding, slowing down, and stalling the industrial revolution in weak fellow imperialist nations like semi-feudal Tsarist Russia, or completely dominated and colonized nations like China was in their interests - this is the same reason why much of sub-Saharan Africa is still not developed.

Thus, even from a national perspective, the only thing for say Russia and China to do to accomplish the industrial revolution was to do it on an economically nationalized, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist mode, which meant denouncing and combating private property in the name of national development.

Once again, I will say that I do not believe it was the Party institutions themselves which caused the fragility in the USSR, but its peculiar historical circumstance of being economy isolated from the rest of the world, in conjunct with the many different ethnicities and nations inside of the USSR which resented Russian hegemony, such as Poland, and the Baltic states. History will show a prevalence of bureaucratic centralist state apparatuses which have managed to perpetuate themselves for hundreds of years at a time.

I would say that capital accumulation was not the driving goal of the Soviet bureaucracy, just as the accumulation of gold and silver was not the sole motive of the Ancient Egyptian or Ancient Chinese despots - it is more like a modernization of "Asiatic Despotism" - state power for its own sake, property, privilege and capital then come along with such things.

This is an excerpt from Djilas's "The New Class"


If we assume that membership in this bureaucracy or new owning class is predicated on the use of privileges inherent in ownership - in this instance nationalized material goods - then membership in the new party class, or political bureaucracy, is reflected in a larger income in material goods and privileges than society should normally grant for such functions. In practice, the ownership privilege of the new class manifests itself as an exclusive right, as a party monopoly, for the political bureaucracy to distribute the national income, to set wages, direct economic development, and dispose of nationalized and other property. That is the way it appears to the ordinary man who considers the Communist functionary as being very rich and as a man who does not have to work.

The ownership of private property has, for many reasons, proved to be unfavorable for the establishment of the new class's authority. Besides, the destruction of private ownership was necessary for the economic transformation of nations. The new class obtains its power, privileges, ideology and customs from one specific form of ownership - collective ownership - which the class administers and distributes in the name of the nation and society.

[Jose Gracchus]

The opponents of Perestroika were unlikely to be from the elite policy makers. But for any group opposed to the policy being followed by Gorbachov to form a credible pole of opposition they would need some alternative economic policy and an alternative idea of how the Soviet Economy could have been organised. Andreyeva was able to articulate a political opposition but what was her economic policy?

Nina Aleksandrovna Andreyeva was a Brezhnevite. So you identify the necessary changes in the USSR to be purely top-down administrative reform. Did you really think the conservatives were really workers' communists with any concrete connection to workers' struggle in the USSR? Their politics was the political content of the central planners and the ossified bureaucracy.

Besides, macro-computerized-planning solves none of the troubles of relations within the factory, the city, the social fabric of Soviet society. It is a one-dimensional view. I do like your work for proving the possibility of working a computerized calculation in-kind using labor time and physical resources planned economy in the abstract. However, I think it would have to be laid down through the process of workers' struggle, which if it is to be a true class process, must come through productive workers and industrial workers organizing in their workplaces and challenging control of the productive fabric in favor of the working-class systemically. I think that there needs to be a direct taking of control of production by the working-class there, and social spaces like working-class communities. From there, it follows that self-management should be instituted in some fashion, and that larger institutional organs of social organization and coordination, organized at the various levels that exist in bourgeois capitalist industry and state, by whatever means (you're a sortitionist, so presumably these organizations should be responsible to randomly-selected jury from among the constituents involved, I'd say delegate control by the organic constituency, we both think more direct democracy the better). So you have systems of organization industrially, economically, territorially, and sectorially as appropriate, and they would be responsible for organizing in their own fashion, a program of substituting for circulation in currency, commodity markets, private ownership, etc. the whole capitalist fabric.

I think your proposals are simple, straightforward, and are, in fact, more like what the French workers of May 1968 needed, than fossilized Soviet apparatchikki pining for High Brezhnevism.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The French workers of May 1968 had no concrete program. :(

[Rowan Duffy]

Besides, macro-computerized-planning solves none of the troubles of relations within the factory, the city, the social fabric of Soviet society. It is a one-dimensional view.

As with an post-revolutionary economic proposal (Parecon, inclusive democracy etc.), it does not describe how it is to be implemented.


However, I think it would have to be laid down through the process of workers' struggle, which if it is to be a true class process, must come through productive workers and industrial workers organizing in their workplaces and challenging control of the productive fabric in favor of the working-class systemically.

"The emancipation of the working class must be the act of the bureaucrats themselves" - Marx

Clearly we need to have a working class programme by which workers can come into control of the means of production. That still leaves us with a relatively large number of questions about how to do this concretely. The question is probably worth its own thread.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Correction: Institutional movement/act of the worker-bureaucrats themselves. ;)