On the Soviet Union

[Rafiq]

Anyone have a link or suggestion in regards to a Marxist analysiation, on the collapse of the Soviet Union, from a purly economic basis? (i.e. No Ideological garbage about Revisionism and No workers power or w/e)

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[Rafiq]

bump

[Rowan Duffy]

I think Ticktin is quite good - though I don't agree with all of his conclusions:

http://libcom.org/history/political-economy-disintegrating-stalinism-hillel-ticktin
http://www.scribd.com/doc/60028899/Theories-of-Disintegration-of-the-USSR-by-Hillel-Ticktin

Kornai and Goldman are also useful in terms of analysis, though I do get annoyed with their smarmy liberalism and the general overall assumption that capitalism was the only alternative. Despite this, it's useful to understand how the planning system functioned and some of the infernal dynamics which lead to serious problems.

In addition, Cockshott has useful suggestions about overcoming problems which the USSR faced, but I'm not aware of serious critique of his regarding those structural problems themselves.

I'm still not completely satisfied with anything I've read as I've had to piece together my understanding from a large variety of disparate documents ranging from all sorts of political persuasions. The real problems of the USSR are critically important especially from the perspective of those who would like a significant component of planning. But even beyond those who suggest something more decentralised than planning, there is the question of overcoming antagonism with labour generally in a way that produces egalitarian social relations while maintaining efficiency and careful stewardship of resources.

[jookyle]

Here's one. You may have already them, they seem to have become pretty well known

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/reynolds/SovietDecline.htm

Also, many would argue that the soviet decline had much more to do with politics than it did the economy, especially after this Gorbachev talk (Which was just recently shown to me by another Revleft member,Ismail )

http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv6n1/gorbach.htm

[Rowan Duffy]

A mod should take that Vdare link down for being run by nazis. Beyond the fact that it's a fascist site, the article is unsurprisingly complete and total rubbish.

[Tim Cornelis]

http://libcom.org/history/labor-discipline-decline-soviet-system-don-filtzer

Haven't read but I came across it yesterday. I don't think it's Marxist though.

[u.s.red]

1. Marx and Engels predicted the collapse of the state after the dictatorship of the proletariat had eliminated classes.

2. Stalin eliminated the capitalist and petit-bourgeois classes (along with several million others like Trotsky.)

3. After Stalin, a bureaucratic class developed which lasted from Khrushchev to Gorbachev. This class managed the economy of the Soviet Union but did not suppress a particular class (symbolically, Solzhenitsyn was released; Hungary, Czech and Afghanistan were attempts to support client states by a state which itself was in an increasing stage of collapse.) The state therefore collapsed. It doesn't matter whether the economy was well or ill managed. The essential characteristic of the Soviet Union in 1989 was that there was no class suppression.

4. The Soviet Union did not, however, collapse in a vacuum. It was surrounded by hostile capitalist powers. As soon as the state collapsed predatory capital rushed into the vacuum and established a kind of state capitalism/socialism.

If China had not deformed into a socialist-capitalist mixed economy the same thing would have happened there. The same thing is happening in Cuba.

The process is not perfect, it doesnt happen on any kind of schedule. The point, I think, is that the state, in the sense that Marx, Engels and Lenin meant, exists only to suppress a class, slaves, serfs, workers or capitalists. Once the final class is eliminated there is no other class to suppress and the state withers away (apparently this stage can happen very quickly) and dies.

At least, that is my take on the collapse of the Soviet Union.

[Paul Cockshott]

That is a very interesting and innovative idea

[Rafiq]

Us red, not what I was looking fo but wow... That actually is a very interesting analysis.

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[mykittyhasaboner]

The state therefore collapsed. It doesn't matter whether the economy was well or ill managed. The essential characteristic of the Soviet Union in 1989 was that there was no class suppression.

So what class was being suppressed before this period, after the elimination of the bourgeois classes? Then what happened in between the "bureaucratic class" period of management to 1989?

i think the economic factors are of grave importance when trying to figure out why the Soviet state ceased to exist. Why does this not factor into your view?


4. The Soviet Union did not, however, collapse in a vacuum. It was surrounded by hostile capitalist powers. As soon as the state collapsed predatory capital rushed into the vacuum and established a kind of state capitalism/socialism.
i find your take very interesting but i have one issue with it. Marx and Engels or anyone else did not say anything about the state collapsing, but rather dying out or withering away.

Do you think the manner in which the Soviet state 'collapsed', was the same phenomenon as communists have theorized about; the state ceasing to exist after classes cease?

i would imagine the process of the state withering away to be much more.......orderly. i wouldn't guess that such a thing can be possible while the hostile capitalist powers you mention are still around, because after all the state exists to suppress counter revolution. Rather than the Soviet state collapsing merely because class suppression had become superfluous (which in a sense could be true), i tend to piece together that it was a combination of many factors that lead to its demise.

[Rafiq]

While I don't concur with him(that this was the situation in the USSR), he is trying to say that the state's sole purpose is class rule, and since class supression ceased to exist, as did the state.

Of course, this would imply the USSR was classless..

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[u.s.red]

I agree that economic analysis is extremely important (what Marxist would not?), however, if an economy is no longer based on class rule then the state will collapse regardless of economic conditions.

As to "withering away" or collapsing, I don't think it is really an important distinction. Either way, the state ceases to exist for its own internal reasons. This is the first time in history that a superpower has simply stopped functioning. All other great states have been invaded, etc. Of course, the Soviet Union was the first communist state in history, and, in my view, the first state to wither away, collapse and die.



I would like to thank you all for your positive feedback.

[u.s.red]

Of course, this would imply the USSR was classless..

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That is mostly correct. The bourgeois classes had more or less ceased to exist. By 1989 the only classes left were the working class and an aging, sclerotic and ineffective bureaucracy. Gorbachev was not part of any suppressing class. The Soviet bureaucracy, probably since about 1985, had only been functioning, as Marx said, as an "administration of things."

[Tim Cornelis]

1. Marx and Engels predicted the collapse of the state after the dictatorship of the proletariat had eliminated classes.

2. Stalin eliminated the capitalist and petit-bourgeois classes (along with several million others like Trotsky.)

3. After Stalin, a bureaucratic class developed which lasted from Khrushchev to Gorbachev. This class managed the economy of the Soviet Union but did not suppress a particular class (symbolically, Solzhenitsyn was released; Hungary, Czech and Afghanistan were attempts to support client states by a state which itself was in an increasing stage of collapse.) The state therefore collapsed. It doesn't matter whether the economy was well or ill managed. The essential characteristic of the Soviet Union in 1989 was that there was no class suppression.

4. The Soviet Union did not, however, collapse in a vacuum. It was surrounded by hostile capitalist powers. As soon as the state collapsed predatory capital rushed into the vacuum and established a kind of state capitalism/socialism.

If China had not deformed into a socialist-capitalist mixed economy the same thing would have happened there. The same thing is happening in Cuba.

The process is not perfect, it doesnt happen on any kind of schedule. The point, I think, is that the state, in the sense that Marx, Engels and Lenin meant, exists only to suppress a class, slaves, serfs, workers or capitalists. Once the final class is eliminated there is no other class to suppress and the state withers away (apparently this stage can happen very quickly) and dies.

At least, that is my take on the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I think this is quite clearly wrong, although an entertaining theory. But for this thesis to hold you have to claim that

1. The USSR was a classless society--no working class existed.
2. The state existed because of foreign capitalists, and collapsed for no apparent reason.

Both these statements are quite ludicrous imo.

3. The state collapsed of itself because internal class antagonisms (internally) were non-existent.

This also is quite ludicrous. You can't tell me that there is no class antagonisms between the workers and a small caste who decide how much they need to work, how hard, their salaries, etc. Moreover, the USSR outlawed strikes.

Especially if you consider that the states collapsed not of their own but due to working class-lead revolutions. Especially in Poland where the trade union helped bring down the state; as well as Albania were the working class organised a strike to bring down the state. In Romania the state fought back which contradicts what we would expect if the thesis is correct (namely, peaceful, self-collapse).

If the following (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_unions_in_the_Soviet_Union) is correct then quite clearly social classes existed:


Unlike labor unions in the West, Soviet trade unions were, in fact, actually governmental organizations whose chief aim was not to represent workers but to further the goals of management, government, and the CPSU. As such, they were partners of management in attempting to promote labor discipline, worker morale, and productivity. Unions organized "socialist competitions" and awarded prizes for fulfilling quotas. They also distributed welfare benefits, operated cultural and sports facilities, issued passes to health and vacation centers, oversaw factory and local housing construction, provided catering services, and awarded bonuses and prepaid vacations.

Although unions in the Soviet Union primarily promoted production interests, they had some input regarding production plans, capital improvements in factories, local housing construction, and remuneration agreements with management. Unions also were empowered to protect workers against bureaucratic and managerial arbitrariness, to ensure that management adhered to collective agreements, and to protest unsafe working conditions. However, strikes were illegal.

Also, if there were no class antagonisms internally, then the existence of domestic secret services to subvert the working classes in the Eastern bloc cannot be explained. The state would only exist for external threats if this thesis is correct.

Moreover, it was the domestic capitalist class that took over, and not foreign capital per se. Which seems to contradict your thesis.

[u.s.red]

Do you think the manner in which the Soviet state 'collapsed', was the same phenomenon as communists have theorized about; the state ceasing to exist after classes cease?

Yes.


i would imagine the process of the state withering away to be much more.......orderly.


well, when a plant "withers" it's really not an orderly process. I would say it is like a tree when its roots suddenly die.


i wouldn't guess that such a thing can be possible while the hostile capitalist powers you mention are still around, because after all the state exists to suppress counter revolution.

The communist state existed independently of the capitalist states around it. I would say the state exists specifically to suppress a particular class, which function Stalin carried out against the counter-revolutionaries after the civil war. But if the counter-revolutionaries are the bourgeoisie then once they are dead, at least within the state, there is no longer any basis for the existence of the state. I don't think it is a question whether such a thing is possible, but rather that it is inevitable.

[wsg1991]

i would say massive military spending + an economy that cannot keep it up

unlike what some people pretend , Stalin himself anticipated this problems , and wanted to prevent any future hostility with USA , and even proposed treaties

there is book worth downloading on piratebay ( hegemony or survival for Noam chomsky ) chapter 9 : a passing nightmare
and he is here quoting an anti-communist scholar (Adam Ulam)
his work is based on declassified russian archives
Stalin proposed unification of Germany in March 1952 , as long as it did participate in any military alliance directed against USSR

Meylvin letver an other scholar said that Stalin was ready to give up Eastern Germany , so he can reduce foreign hostility and improve his economic conditions , if Germany stay neutral


Khrushchev did propose mutual reduction of offensive capabilities , USA refuses in order to concentrate on economic growth . he knew that the arm race will destroy USSR economy

USA in the 60ies was provoking USSR that was trying to do a policy of minimum deterrence (( Kenneth waltz ))



there is also something i heard from an Egyptian scholar :


USSR planned economy managed to work until 50ies since the country was underdeveloped and the planning cannot go horribly wrong. but can no longer meet the more complex need of the society , so further decentralization was needed : allowing local provenance to make their own planning the need of minimum direction from the capital bureaucrats as there is no longer great need of national central planning level , which was against the e
interest of bureaucracy ,



that's the only 2 ''economic" explanations i know , here they are , just so you can consider , there is of course a third one
socialism don't work explanation , which is a piece of garbage

[Zulu]

1. Marx and Engels predicted the collapse of the state after the dictatorship of the proletariat had eliminated classes.
...
The state therefore collapsed. It doesn't matter whether the economy was well or ill managed. The essential characteristic of the Soviet Union in 1989 was that there was no class suppression.
Wow... Just wow...

[Rafiq]

I think this is quite clearly wrong, although an entertaining theory. But for this thesis to hold you have to claim that

1. The USSR was a classless society--no working class existed.

Not necessarily, it would simply rely on the notion that the only class in existence was the proletarian class.. I.e. No class antagonisms.


2. The state existed because of foreign capitalists, and collapsed for no apparent reason.


I don't think this was exactly what U.S. red was proposing. Indeed, the state did exist as a means of fending off foreign powers, and this was quite clear since the begginings of the Russian Civil War.

As for the accusation that the collapse was for "no reason", I think that's quite dismissive of you to put forward as an accusation. The reason, to him, was that since the state serves only as an organ of class supression, and that no class antagonism had existed, it's purpose became obsolete, and that, in the end, it had to collapse. But considering that the rest of the world consisted of large capitalist powers, Russia was merely coerced into the world economy.

I'd have to look into it more to concur, but it's more credible then the nonsense you've deployed about the "State creating mechanisms to sustain itself" which entails that it becomes, in itself, a class external from the mode of production.

The truth is I've never had a solid understanding of the class nature of the Soviet Union, and the very concept is something I've been wrestling with for a while. Since then, I've categorized the Soviet State as administrators, or agents of capital (They simply can't be called 'Bourgeois'). This was weak, imo. It's why I find us red's theory interesting.



3. The state collapsed of itself because internal class antagonisms (internally) were non-existent.


Yes, this is what he was trying to get at.


This also is quite ludicrous. You can't tell me that there is no class antagonisms between the workers and a small caste who decide how much they need to work, how hard, their salaries, etc. Moreover, the USSR outlawed strikes.


I suppose that's true, though I don't know if that's a solid class antagonism. There definitely existed a class contradiction between the proletariat and some other class, perhaps one unique to this specific form of capitalism (in the USSR).


Especially if you consider that the states collapsed not of their own but due to working class-lead revolutions.

Now that's absurd. These weren't revolutions, these were mere significations of the state crumbling to pieces. In a lot of cases, yes, the charges of foreign involvement are valid. (That doesn't mean that they were better off the way they were, though).


Especially in Poland where the trade union helped bring down the state; as well as Albania were the working class organised a strike to bring down the state.

That's a bit of a stretch of events. It assumes all was going well and that these sudden 'revolutions' overthrew the existing social order. When in truth, this social order was already destroying itself.


In Romania the state fought back which contradicts what we would expect if the thesis is correct (namely, peaceful, self-collapse).


No one was asserting anything was 'peaceful'. But yes, I suppose your point stands in this regards.



Also, if there were no class antagonisms internally, then the existence of domestic secret services to subvert the working classes in the Eastern bloc cannot be explained. The state would only exist for external threats if this thesis is correct.

It did, though. Things got out of hand and we ended up with mass paranoia. What would make sense is to say that it doesn't explain the role of capital, and it's devouring of whole societies (including the secret police).

Perhaps it is to say that the secret police didn't exist to protect just the state, but capital itself.


Moreover, it was the domestic capitalist class that took over, and not foreign capital per se. Which seems to contradict your thesis.


After the collapse? These were the embodiment of foreign capital, actually.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

1. Marx and Engels predicted the collapse of the state after the dictatorship of the proletariat had eliminated classes.

2. Stalin eliminated the capitalist and petit-bourgeois classes (along with several million others like Trotsky.)

3. After Stalin, a bureaucratic class developed which lasted from Khrushchev to Gorbachev. This class managed the economy of the Soviet Union but did not suppress a particular class (symbolically, Solzhenitsyn was released; Hungary, Czech and Afghanistan were attempts to support client states by a state which itself was in an increasing stage of collapse.) The state therefore collapsed. It doesn't matter whether the economy was well or ill managed. The essential characteristic of the Soviet Union in 1989 was that there was no class suppression.

4. The Soviet Union did not, however, collapse in a vacuum. It was surrounded by hostile capitalist powers. As soon as the state collapsed predatory capital rushed into the vacuum and established a kind of state capitalism/socialism.

If China had not deformed into a socialist-capitalist mixed economy the same thing would have happened there. The same thing is happening in Cuba.

The process is not perfect, it doesnt happen on any kind of schedule. The point, I think, is that the state, in the sense that Marx, Engels and Lenin meant, exists only to suppress a class, slaves, serfs, workers or capitalists. Once the final class is eliminated there is no other class to suppress and the state withers away (apparently this stage can happen very quickly) and dies.

At least, that is my take on the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Point three, in particular is problematic. The bureaucracy existed in the USSR from the early twenties on. And the characters that made up the bureaucracy after Stalin, had been leading bureaucrats during Stalin's period of leadership. How did they suddenly become a new class when Stalin died? Certainly, their relationship to the means of production did not change in 1956.

The collapse of the USSR had almost nothing in common with Marx's idea of the withering of the state. The USSR was a single country, still somewhat behind the advanced capitalist countries, materially (except regarding military matters). Want had not been, by any means abolished. The Russian bourgeoisie had most certainly been decisively defeated by the end of the civil war. But the world bourgeoisie was still around, you know. And of course, the corrosive effect of Stalinist dogma (especially nationalism) and the bureaucratic stranglehold on any real political discussion ultimately led to a significant layer of bureaucrats that were pro-capitalist, like Yeltsin and who were willing to make common cause with imperialism to make counter revolution. This was not a withering of a state, but the smashing from within and without. And yes, it was fairly enfeebled by then.

To call this, merely the lack of class suppression, is IMO, missing the forest for the trees.

[Zulu]

Want had not been, by any means abolished.

Actually, WANT was abolished.

And, it's quite remarkable that instead of attempting something like Dengism, most Russian economists, even those not connected to the Yeltsin-Sobchak wrecking crew, not to mention the general public, bought right into the Chicago school "minimal state" creed.

[Zulu]

@ u.s.red

Ok, now that I've put my mind back together after it'd been blown up by your idea (kudos, btw), I have a suggestion: why don't you start a separate thread about it. It's definitely threadworthy even as is, but you really need to expand on it and explain in detail what you think and put some discussion in motion.

Personally, I like the idea very much, but am not ready to accept it right away. Most Trotskyists and anarchists will dismiss it out of hand simply because they can't get over their "workers were exploited by bureaucracy since [1929, 1921, 1918 - tick up the necessary]" crap. But you'll also have to formulate how this withering of the state factors into the commonly accepted economic analysis of the USSR's demise, which consists mainly of these points:


gradual abandonment of the principle of central planning and restoration of the law of value and separate enterprise profitability as the guiding principles of the economy

exhaustion of the surplus labor, which had been the main resource of the rapid growth in the Stalin era

disproportionate development of branches of industry, especially the export-focused raw materials sector, which, with the further integration of the USSR into the world market made the Soviet economy dependent and vulnerable to the world price fluctuations

foreign political pressure


Also, how is your point any different from this anti-revisionist train of thought:

After Khrushchev announced his "peaceful coexistence" and "communism by 1980" program, it was only natural that the state should have been withering away as Marx and Lenin had predicted. Of course, those Khrushchev's assertions were ill-placed and quite baseless, so the state persisted, but the public and indeed the rank-and-file ML scholars saw a contradiction there, which gave them the ideas of the necessity of deliberate dismantling of the state. Those ideas gained some popularity during the Perestroika, with many people sincerely believing that Gorbachov's "new thinking" was genuinely Leninist (as opposed to "Stalinism's distortions and crimes"). And indeed, without pursuit of the task of the world revolution, a socialist state has little reason to exist...

The same can be said about the internal class contradictions in the USSR. They were not completely dealt with, but their suppression, if only by inertia from the Stalin's times, as well as Khrushchev's welfare reforms (that led to bourgeoisification of the widest social strata) made them quite innocuous and unnoticeable. That made it look like the state was redundant from the ML perspective, although in reality it was just sleeping on its job! But the masses, misguided by the decades of the revisionists' rule, could not even think of fixing it, so instead they just smashed it, letting out the capitalist genie that had grown quite eager and restless over those decades and was quick to re-establish the oppressive capitalist state.

[u.s.red]

Thanks for the suggestion. I was reading last night Trotsky's "Class Nature of the Soviet Union." He argued that the Soviet bureaucracy was "sick," which would indicate that it was in the first stages of dying. Also this: ". Squandering unproductively a tremendous portion of the national income, the Soviet bureaucracy is interested at the same time, by its very function, in the economic and cultural growth of the country: the higher the national income, the more copious its funds of privileges. Concurrently, upon the social foundations of the Soviet state, the economic and cultural uplift of the laboring masses must tend to undermine the very bases of bureaucratic domination."

I hope to continue with an analysis of the class structure of the soviet union in the post wwII period.

[Thirsty Crow]

Not necessarily, it would simply rely on the notion that the only class in existence was the proletarian class.. I.e. No class antagonisms.

How could the modern class of wage labourers even exist as a class - as a group of people dispossessed of the means of subsistence and production and thus forced to sell their labour power to the capitalist class engaged in the production of surplus value - when there are no other classes left in a society?

[Rafiq]

How could the modern class of wage labourers even exist as a class - as a group of people dispossessed of the means of subsistence and production and thus forced to sell their labour power to the capitalist class engaged in the production of surplus value - when there are no other classes left in a society?

The notion, of course, isn't a valid one.

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