USSR after Stalin

[EL KAISER]

Hello Comrades, i open this thread just to ask a few simple questions:
Everyone here knows that after Stalin died, his succesor Kruschev initiated a series of reforms (clearly in the direction of capitalism). My questions are:

1: In the period from 1953 to 1985, was the USSR still Socialist? I know that there was revisionism. But what i want to know if Socialism was gone when Gorbachov initiated his destructive policies or if it was gone when Kruschev initiated his.

2: The removal of Socialism was gradual or it occured from night to day?

3: This is the most important. Kruschev and Brezhnev and Kosygin initiated various reforms oriented to capitalism. Until Gorbachov rose to power, was the USSR still Socialist? (nevermind if it was much less Socialist than in the period of Stalin).

[Ismail]

I think the argument that capitalism was restored at any time between 1953 and the last years of the USSR is inconsistent with Marxism. The Soviet economy did not fundamentally change throughout that period.

I'll quote what I wrote elsewhere:

There was no "ruling class" in the USSR distinct from the working-class. Neither Party officials nor managers owned the means of production or exhibited any of the behavior of the bourgeoisie as Marx defined it. Employees of the state, as should be reasonably obvious, are its servants.

Now it is entirely possible for employees at the same time to be corrupt, morally lackluster, or whatever. But at the end of the day they're stealing from and otherwise abusing their job, provided by the state whose class interests they must serve unless they want to lose that job.

What happened in the late 80s was that the black market, which expanded throughout the 1970s and 80s, was practically legalized through Gorbachev's policy of promoting business "cooperatives" in towns and cities which promptly ignored the fairly benign rules regulating them and proceeded to hire labor and exhibit other capitalist practices. This was followed by the dismantling of nationwide economic planning and the privatization of state assets, which allowed managers and Party officials to turn into capitalists overnight.

Thus developed a situation where state officials had every incentive to "quit their job" by overthrowing the socialist state and the property forms it represented. If you read news reports, books and articles back in the day, the owners of those aforementioned "cooperatives" lived in fear that all the policies allowing them to become capitalists could be revoked at once if the political wind in the CPSU blew leftward again. A new state, sworn to protect the interests of private property and ruled by the bourgeoisie, was necessary.
If a Soviet official from the 1930s up to the mid-80s had called for the restoration of a labor market (i.e. reserve army of labor) in Soviet industry, for collectives to be disbanded, for the transfer of enterprises to private ownership, or any other capitalist measures, they would have been completely rebuked by every other facet of Soviet society. Again, it was only toward the end of the 1980s that Party and state officials finally had incentives to "quit their jobs" by going against the state and the socialist economic system it was based on. There were no prospects for becoming a capitalist any time before that.I've seen nothing to suggest that the economic reforms pursued by the CPSU in the 1950s up to the mid 80s had the intention of restoring capitalism, much less that it actually did so.

A phrase like "much less Socialist" doesn't make much sense. We don't say that Sweden is "less capitalist" than the US due to regulations or that Somalia is "more capitalist" because of the absence of a strong central government. The USSR, China, Yugoslavia, Cuba, the DPRK, etc. were all socialist, but they obviously operated quite differently in many ways. One could argue for example that Yugoslavia's system of workers' self-management was quite flawed (seeing as how it led to widespread unemployment, a phenomenon basically unknown in the USSR and likeminded countries) and that its foreign policy, especially in the 1950s, practically allied it to American imperialism in many respects (just as China's did in the 1970s), but that doesn't change the fact that it was socialist.

When one reduces capitalism versus socialism to a matter of personalities, you end up abandoning Marxism. The subjective views of a particular person somehow results in an entirely different mode of production becoming dominant in a country.

I think that one can criticize Soviet economic policy after 1953 (e.g. some authors have argued that an excessive emphasis on consumer goods undermined economic development in the long-term) while still acknowledging that socialism existed and that many of the tasks on the road to communism did come closer to realization, such as narrowing differences between town and country with the introduction of minimum wages to cooperative farms in the 1960s and inducting peasants into the trade unions in the 1970s.

[EL KAISER]

I think the argument that capitalism was restored at any time between 1953 and the last years of the USSR is inconsistent with Marxism. The Soviet economy did not fundamentally change throughout that period.

I'll quote what I wrote elsewhere:
I've seen nothing to suggest that the economic reforms pursued by the CPSU in the 1950s up to the mid 80s had the intention of restoring capitalism, much less that it actually did so.

A phrase like "much less Socialist" doesn't make much sense. We don't say that Sweden is "less capitalist" than the US due to regulations or that Somalia is "more capitalist" because of the absence of a strong central government. The USSR, China, Yugoslavia, Cuba, the DPRK, etc. were all socialist, but they obviously operated quite differently in many ways. One could argue for example that Yugoslavia's system of workers' self-management was quite flawed (seeing as how it led to widespread unemployment, a phenomenon basically unknown in the USSR and likeminded countries) and that its foreign policy, especially in the 1950s, practically allied it to American imperialism in many respects (just as China's did in the 1970s), but that doesn't change the fact that it was socialist.

When one reduces capitalism versus socialism to a matter of personalities, you end up abandoning Marxism. The subjective views of a particular person somehow results in an entirely different mode of production becoming dominant in a country.

I think that one can criticize Soviet economic policy after 1953 (e.g. some authors have argued that an excessive emphasis on consumer goods undermined economic development in the long-term) while still acknowledging that socialism existed and that many of the tasks on the road to communism did come closer to realization, such as narrowing differences between town and country with the introduction of minimum wages to cooperative farms in the 1960s and inducting peasants into the trade unions in the 1970s.

Thanks a lot for the quick answer! :)Good explanation. It clarified pretty much all my doubts.:thumbup1: Any works/writings/books i could read thart speaks of the topic?

[Ismail]

Thanks a lot for the quick answer! :)Good explanation. It clarified pretty much all my doubts.:thumbup1: Any works/writings/books i could read thart speaks of the topic?Albert Szymanski's Is the Red Flag Flying? (https://archive.org/details/IsTheRedFlagFlying) remains the best defense of the socialist nature of the USSR against the "state-capitalist" thesis. It covers both domestic and foreign Soviet policies. His Human Rights in the Soviet Union (https://archive.org/details/HumanRightsInTheSovietUnion) can be read as a sort of sequel which covers other areas.

Socialism Betrayed (http://bookzz.org/book/1246151/ea7f45) by Keeran and Kenny is the best account of why and how the USSR collapsed. Also, not directly connected to the issue but still worth reading is Michael Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds (http://bookzz.org/book/981420/378c5d) which besides busting a few anti-communist myths points out how as early as 1989-1991 citizens in the USSR, Poland, GDR and other countries were supportive of continued social ownership of the means of production and were disenchanted with the "freedom" of the capitalist system that wrecked their economies.

[EL KAISER]

Thanks for the recommendations! Also, if you are not very bussy, could you list me the ECONOMIC reforms Kruschev did?
I want to CONFIRM that, despite Kruschev's reforms, the economy of USSR remained essentially and fundamentally unchanged.

[Ismail]

Thanks for the recommendations! Also, if you are not very bussy, could you list me the ECONOMIC reforms Kruschev did?
I want to CONFIRM that, despite Kruschev's reforms, the economy of USSR remained essentially and fundamentally unchanged.In agriculture the major reform was the abolition of machine-tractor stations. In the 1930s and 40s the MTS had played an important role in collective agriculture by supplying farms with trained tractor-operators. The MTS were also used as a means of promoting the Party's influence in the countryside, since there were initially few Party members within the collective farms. By the 1950s this had changed; the CPSU was well-representedw within the farms and it was felt that peasants could take control of the tractors rather than having to rely on the MTS to lease them out. There were also many disputes between collective farm and MTS officials which reduced efficiency.

Stalin had explicitly argued against abolishing the MTS in his last work, Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. He argued that while it was permissible for peasants to own small implements of production, he gave the following argument against their ownership of tractors and other major machinery:

The outcome would be, first, that the collective farms would become the owners of the basic instruments of production; that is, their status would be an exceptional one, such as is not shared by any other enterprise in our country, for, as we know, even the nationalized enterprises do not own their instruments of production. How, by what considerations of progress and advancement, could this exceptional status of the collective farms be justified? Can it be said that such a status would facilitate the elevation of collective-farm property to the level of public property, that it would expedite the transition of our society from socialism to communism? Would it not be truer to say that such a status could only dig a deeper gulf between collective-farm property and public property, and would not bring us any nearer to communism, but, on the contrary, remove us farther from it?

The outcome would be, secondly, an extension of the sphere of operation of commodity circulation, because a gigantic quantity of instruments of agricultural production would come within its orbit. What do Comrades Sanina and Venzher think — is the extension of the sphere of commodity circulation calculated to promote our advance towards communism? Would it not be truer to say that our advance towards communism would only be retarded by it?He never actually said that their abolition would equate to capitalist restoration in the countryside, just that it would be a retrogressive step. After his death Stalin's book was pretty much entirely trashed as wrongheaded.

Stalin's warnings didn't come true. The way the abolition of the MTS was carried out was marked with incompetence (Khrushchev wanted to liquidate them as soon as possible and peasants ended up incurring a lot of debt due to having to buy them within a short period of time), but once it was done there was no great "extension of the sphere of operation of commodity circulation." Peasants simply operated their own tractors. I can't find any logic to his argument that MTS were necessary in terms of the transition from socialism to communism, and neither could subsequent Soviet authors.

The major reform in industry was the splitting up of government ministries into regional councils (sovnarkhozy), with a similar division of the CPSU into industrial and agricultural sections. This ended up being really unpopular and was reversed after his removal.

Again, none of this impacted whether or not the USSR was socialist. As far as I can tell, the worst that can be said of Khrushchev is that he was a lousy communist, but not some secret agent of capitalist restoration. His "Secret Speech" was self-serving and one-sided (it's worth noting it was never published in the USSR until the Gorby period, and that the go-to for the official evaluation of Stalin was the June 30, 1956 resolution of the CPSU's Central Committee.) His policies were often half-baked, and he was impulsive and prone to conceit. He was removed from his position due to his personal defects and economic blunders.

As a note, there's an amusing document of a 1984 Politburo meeting where those present criticize Khrushchev for his aforementioned misdeeds in-re Stalin and economics: http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/111231

[EL KAISER]

Thanks againn. This clarifies a lot. And regarding Brezhnev:
During the Brezhnev years the economy and party were re-centralized, right?
Did Brezhnev restored the MTS or he didn't?
The Kosigyn/Liberman reforms gave much more authority and liberty of action to Managers and Supervisors within the economy, but these were still employees, right? I mean they didn't own the industries or owned a portion of them, right? This last question is to confirm that they were not some kind of Propietor Class.

[Ismail]

Thanks againn. This clarifies a lot. And regarding Brezhnev:
During the Brezhnev years the economy and party were re-centralized, right?
Did Brezhnev restored the MTS or he didn't?
The Kosigyn/Liberman reforms gave much more authority and liberty of action to Managers and Supervisors within the economy, but these were still employees, right? I mean they didn't own the industries or owned a portion of them, right? This last question is to confirm that they were not some kind of Propietor Class.The machine-tractor stations were not restored. They had outlived their purpose, there was no reason to restore them. Some socialist countries continued to use MTS, whereas some others didn't.

Szymanski discusses the Liberman-Kosygin reforms in pages 38-41 of Is the Red Flag Flying? (which I linked to in a prior post.) These reforms had nothing to do with transferring ownership to managers of enterprises, nor did they aim to replace central planning of the economy. They were concerned with creating material incentives for workers and managers to create better products and managing their resources better. In any case, these reforms were rescinded a few years later.

Under Brezhnev there was less emphasis on outright decentralization (as noted, the sovnarkhozy established under Khrushchev were abolished) and more on trying to combine central management with initiative at different levels of the economy. For example, there were efforts at taking existing collective farms, state farms, retail outlets and enterprises supplying agricultural materials in a given region and grouping them all under a single entity which would coordinate their activities in accordance with the central plan. Industrial regions had something similar.

[Blake's Baby]

Hello Comrades, i open this thread just to ask a few simple questions:
Everyone here knows that after Stalin died, his succesor Kruschev initiated a series of reforms (clearly in the direction of capitalism)...

Absolute rubbish, the USSR was always capitalist.

[Ismail]

Absolute rubbish, the USSR was always capitalist.Not by any Marxist definition, unless Marx spoke of a capitalism where private ownership of the means of production and land, business cycles, anarchy of production, the reserve army of labor and an actual capitalist class didn't exist.

[Blake's Baby]

What distinguishes capitalism from other forms of economy is the generalisation of commodity production through wage labour.

The Soviet Union produced commodities that were traded on the world market, it produced commodities that were sold in shops internally to the working class.

It was a stupidly inefficient form of capitalism I'll grant you, but capitalism nevertheless.

[Ismail]

What distinguishes capitalism from other forms of economy is the generalisation of commodity production through wage labour.Except the vital ingredient of "the generalisation of commodity production through wage labor" is labor-power being a commodity, which it wasn't in the USSR.


The Soviet Union produced commodities that were traded on the world market, it produced commodities that were sold in shops internally to the working class.As Marx noted in his critique of the Gotha programme, the worker under socialism "receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another. Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form."

The law of value did not determine production in the USSR, whereas it very clearly does in capitalist countres. Consequently production in the USSR was based on creating use-values rather than producing for exchange. Prices existed both for accounting purposes and to regulate consumption.

As far as the world market goes, I'll quote Szymanski: "The Soviet economy is isolated from world market (i.e. capitalist) forces by the system of trade planning and centralized prices. Domestic enterprises are thereby shielded from fluctuations in world market conditions. The lack of correspondence between domestic Soviet prices and world market prices more or less requires bilateralism in trade relations, i.e. agreements to trade a certain set of commodities for a certain other set of commodities because there is no common scale of value that might serve to measure trade volume." In addition, "By 1959 the Soviet Union was in a position to supply virtually all the industrial ingredients necessary for its growth without engaging in any trade at all.... Soviet foreign trade is geared towards imports rather than exports, which is pretty much the opposite of capitalist countries' trade that focuses on exports and maintaining an export surplus." (Is the Red Flag Flying? pp. 104-106.)


It was a stupidly inefficient form of capitalism I'll grant youExcept it wasn't, either as a supposed form of capitalism (considering this "capitalism" miraculously got rid of economic crises and permanently abolished unemployment) or in terms of the efficacy of central planning. See: https://gowans.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/do-publicly-owned-planned-economies-work/

[Blake's Baby]

So you're admitting they were commodities, while trying to claim they also weren't, and admitting there was wage labour... the very fact that there were differentials proves that the system in the USSR was nothing like Marx's labour-time vouchers, and workers were in fact paid wages just as in other capitalist countries. Workers were paid at the cost of replication of their labour-power, so wage labour was treated as a commodity - just one that wasn't traded on as 'free' a market as western capitalism.

As I said, a particularly inefficient form of capitalism.

That doesn't mean worse necessarily, free-market capitalism is shit, 'mixed' capitalism (as in the social-democratic Keynesianism of the '70s in western Europe, or the 'Nordic model') is shit, state-monopoly capitalism a la Eastern Bloc is shit.

[Ismail]

So you're admitting they were commodities, while trying to claim they also weren't...Yes, that's exactly the point Soviet economists made. Commodities assumed a new function under socialism. I already explained that in a socialist economy production is oriented toward creating use-values, as opposed to capitalism producing for exchange.

This is why the USSR never suffered from a crisis in overproduction, since production of commodities and their prices were planned rather than the law of value determining their ratios.


the very fact that there were differentials proves that the system in the USSR was nothing like Marx's labour-time vouchers, and workers were in fact paid wages just as in other capitalist countries.Marx explicitly says that there will be differentials under socialism in his critique of the Gotha programme.

Furthermore the idea that money would continue to exist under socialism did not originate with the Soviets. It existed among the "Orthodox Marxists" as well. Kautsky, for instance, said the following in 1902: "Money is the simplest means known up to the present time which makes it possible in as complicated a mechanism as that of the modern productive process, with its tremendous far-reaching division of labor, to secure the circulation of products and their distribution to the individual members of society. It is the means which makes it possible for each one to satisfy his necessities according to his individual inclination (to be sure within the bounds of his economic power). As a means to such circulation money will be found indispensable until something better is discovered."


Workers were paid at the cost of replication of their labour-power, so wage labour was treated as a commodity - just one that wasn't traded on as 'free' a market as western capitalism.Marx in his aforementioned critique notes that the worker under socialism, contrary to Lassallean claims, does not get the "undiminished proceeds" of his labor. Various deductions are made on behalf of society. As for labor-power somehow still being a commodity despite the absence of a reserve army of labor, that's nonsensical.

To quote Szymanski again, "The total wage payments for the economy, as well as their distribution by region, industry and occupation, are determined by the central plan.... allow a balance to be struck between total consumer purchasing power in the economy and the total value of consumer output, thus preventing either inflation or underconsumption... the tendencies of wage markets to perpetuate and generate inequality, as well as a reserve army of labour functioning to keep the level of wages down, are not manifested." ([I]Is the Red Flag Flying? pp. 47-48.)

In other words, this paragraph of Marx in the first volume of Capital does not apply: "The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth, and, therefore, also the absolute mass of the proletariat and the productiveness of its labour, the greater is the industrial reserve army. The same causes which develop the expansive power of capital, develop also the labour power at its disposal. The relative mass of the industrial reserve army increases therefore with the potential energy of wealth. But the greater this reserve army in proportion to the active labour army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated surplus population, whose misery is in inverse ratio to its torment of labour. The more extensive, finally, the lazarus layers of the working class, and the industrial reserve army, the greater is official pauperism. This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation."

One can see that "the absolute mass of the proletariat and the productiveness of its labour" in the USSR during the early 30s resulted in the direct opposite of the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation. The reserve army of labor driving wages down did not exist.

As for referring to the USSR as "state-monopoly capitalism," what were the Soviet monopolies which relied on the state to protect their interests at home and abroad? Who were the capitalists who headed these monopolies? In Nazi Germany (one example of state-monopoly capitalism) you had I.G. Farben, Krupp, Siemens, etc., and it was not difficult to locate the capitalists in control of these firms.

Then there's the fact that imperialism is inherent to state-monopoly capitalism, and you'd need to demonstrate how the Soviet Union was an imperialist power in its economic relations with other states.