Where did the USSR go wrong?

[RedMaterialist]

The Russian proletariat were dealt a shit hand by the material conditions of the time. They were never able to consolidate class rules, a dotp. Filling in the void, the Bolsheviks as a party divorced from the class, and not as "the party", took the reigns of a bourgeois state. Born of that was state capitalism.

So, what caused the collapse of the Soviet Union? A capitalist state that powerful should never just have collapsed. The SU survived a civil war fought against the Western Entente, survived mass famine, survived Hitler, became the second largest economy in the world, had one of the highest credit ratings in the world, had very little debt, fought the U.S. to essentially a draw in the cold war, got into space first. Does this sound like a country on the verge of collapse?

It's important to remember the actual state of the Soviet economy in the early 1980's. Most reputable western economists were saying that the Soviet economy was in pretty good shape. See, for instance, Paul Samuelson's analysis of the Soviet economy in the 1980's. (I think it was Samuelson.) Since then, of course, Samuelson has been deleted from history.

[Tim Cornelis]

Wither away, disintegrated quickly...what is the difference? Sometimes a tree appears to be solid, then it collapses from within.

This reinforces what I wrote earlier, you are ignorant of the nature of a workers' state and what it entails to wither away.

Here's what withering away means.

A workers' state forms in a social revolution. This workers' state consists of organs of workers' power; political power is in the hands of the revolutionary working class. Decisions are made below, in lower organs, and then deputies are delegated upward and these decisions are generalised and then imposed on the whole of the revolutionary territory. This workers' state wields coercive power, to generalise the revolutionary gains and to repress the reaction -- as well as out of necessity due to the immature nature of the new organs, but this is secondary. Then, as the workers' state is gradually defeats the reaction and the reaction withers, so does the requirement for coercive power. The existence of the coercive functions of the workers' state becomes obsolete. What remains of the workers' state, the organs of workers' power, is the free association of equal producers and consumers. The free association of equals is the organs within workers' state matured, consolidated, and stripped of coercive functions. Therefore, a requirement for the withering away of the state is the existence of the basis of associations of producers (and consumers).
In the Soviet Union this did not exist. The fundamental basis for the withering away of the state did not exist. The state was top-down, political power was not in the hands of the working class, there was therefore a class society that repressed workers and activities geared toward workers' rights such as strikes. From this alone we know that it was impossible for the Soviet state to wither away, and we saw, beyond a shred of doubt, that it did not happen. You have to ignore every and all events leading up to the disintegration of the Eastern bloc and the USSR to maintain the state withered away. There were protests, strike actions, demonstrations, reforms (perestroika and glasnost). None of this would be seen in a state withering away. And only if you utterly ignorant of what it entails for a state to wither away can you seriously consider your laughable hypothesis.

Let's look at the first Eastern bloc state to "wither away", Poland:

On December 13, 1981, Jaruzelski proclaimed martial law, suspended Solidarity, and temporarily imprisoned most of its leaders. This sudden crackdown on Solidarity was reportedly out of fear of Soviet intervention (see Soviet reaction to the Polish crisis of 1980–1981). The government then banned Solidarity on October 8, 1982. Martial law was formally lifted in July 1983, though many heightened controls on civil liberties and political life, as well as food rationing, remained in place through the mid-to-late-1980s. Jaruzelski stepped down as prime minister in 1985 and became president (chairman of the Council of State).
This did not prevent Solidarity from gaining more support and power. Eventually it eroded the dominance of the PUWP, which in 1981 lost approximately 85,000 of its 3 million members. Throughout the mid-1980s, Solidarity persisted solely as an underground organization, but by the late 1980s was sufficiently strong to frustrate Jaruzelski's attempts at reform, and nationwide strikes in 1988 were one of the factors that forced the government to open a dialogue with Solidarity.
From February 6 to April 15, 1989, talks of 13 working groups in 94 sessions, which became known as the "Roundtable Talks" (Polish: Rozmowy Okrągłego Stołu) saw the PUWP abandon power and radically altered the shape of the country. The semi-free June elections brought a victory for the Solidarity movement that took all contested (35%) seats in the Sejm, the Parliament's lower house, and all but one seat in the fully free elected Senat.
The Communists' longtime satellite parties, the United People's Party and Democratic Party, broke their alliance with the Communists and threw their support to Solidarity. Left with no other choice, Jaruzelski, who had been named president in July, appointed a Solidarity-led coalition government with Tadeusz Mazowiecki as the country's first non-Communist prime minister since 1948.
On December 29 the Parliament amended the Constitution to formally restore democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. This began the Third Polish Republic and effectively ended the Communist Party's hold on the government. PZPR was finally disbanded on January 30, 1990, even if Wałęsa could be elected as President only eleven months after.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish...lic#Late_years

Does this sound like a state that withers away because of the absence of class antagonisms? A state that represses a mass trade union that uses strike action to defend and expand workers' rights? A state that declares martial law? A state that withers away by finally conceding to this trade union and then holding liberal-democratic elections?

Is that really what it looks like for a workers' state to wither away? Use your fucking head.

So, what caused the collapse of the Soviet Union? A capitalist state that powerful should never just have collapsed. The SU survived a civil war fought against the Western Entente, survived mass famine, survived Hitler, became the second largest economy in the world, had one of the highest credit ratings in the world, had very little debt, fought the U.S. to essentially a draw in the cold war, got into space first. Does this sound like a country on the verge of collapse?

It's important to remember the actual state of the Soviet economy in the early 1980's. Most reputable western economists were saying that the Soviet economy was in pretty good shape. See, for instance, Paul Samuelson's analysis of the Soviet economy in the 1980's. (I think it was Samuelson.) Since then, of course, Samuelson has been deleted from history.

Here's my explanation:

Trade unions in the USSR were functionaries of management, seeking to promote and enhance labour productivity at the expense of the workers' well-being.

"Workers' living standards declined sharply from 1928 to 1933 by at least half, to a bare subsistence level. Part of this was the disastrous outcome of agricultural Collectivization, but part of it was deliberate policy: to finance the forced industrialization of the First Five-Year Plan (1928-1932) by squeezing the workers with simultaneous pay-cuts and production speed-ups. After 1933, living standards began to recover, but only precariously. For example, by 1937, wages had climbed back to 60% of the 1928 level. Nearly all investment was directed to heavy industry and weapons, rather than consumer goods for working families. Despite a shortage of workers for new industrial projects, fierce repression of independent union activity ensured that wages would remain low."
http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/labor-discip.html

This doesn't sound like any policy designed by working people, it sounds exactly like policy designed by a ruling class seeking capital accumulation (or economic growth) at the expense of the working class). It is delusional to think that any sort of workers' democracy existed, or that a workers' democracy would choose to increase the rate of exploitation immensely. And trade unions, as functionaries of the Soviet ruling class, facilitated this increased rate of exploitation through various means.

As Marxists, we should argue that the reforms in the Soviet Union were in response to the material conditions, the economic base, and economic stagnation. There was a constant downward trend in the growth rates of the USSR from 1937 onwards. The growth rate and reproduction of the Soviet economy was sustained by the “massive quantitative mobilization of productive resources” (p. 68, The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience) as well as the large volume of available labour-power. The rate of growth for constant capital was many fold that of the growth of living labour, “there was no corresponding growth in the productivity of social labour.” (p. 77, The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience). In other words, the source for economic growth (or capital accumulation) in the USSR was its massive resources of labour and raw materials, yet there was stunted growth of labour productivity and stunted growth of technical improvements of the methods of production. That the methods of production, fixed capital, were notoriously and comparatively outdated and old can be seen as an affirmation or indication of the crisis of absolute over-accumulation of capital in the Soviet Union. Invention, innovation, diffusion, and incremental improvements were falling or consistently low (p. 73, The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience). Gorbachev noted that “the structure of our production remained unchanged and no longer corresponded to the exigencies of scientific and technological progress.” (p.74, The Marxian Concept of Capital and the Soviet Experience). The reason for this was that the implementation of new innovative technology in production disrupted the production process temporarily and managers obstructed this, as it threatened reaching their production quotas, with no additional future rewards as prospect.

The economic stagnation and eventual economic decline can thus be seen as the crisis of absolute over-accumulation. In an effort to correct this, the management of capital had to re-invent itself. The various reforms implemented under the rule of subsequent Soviet leaders, particularly the Liberman reforms and the reforms of the Gorbachev era, (market-oriented reforms) were intended to make capital's management more efficient.

In other words, the collapse of the USSR was due to reforms geared toward ensuring the stagnating economy would no longer stagnate by introducing market-oriented reforms which eventually lead to opening up society to liberal-democratic demands.

[RedMaterialist]

The Russian proletariat were dealt a shit hand by the material conditions of the time. They were never able to consolidate class rules, a dotp. Filling in the void, the Bolsheviks as a party divorced from the class, and not as "the party", took the reigns of a bourgeois state. Born of that was state capitalism.

So, what caused the collapse of the Soviet Union? A capitalist state that powerful should never just have collapsed. The SU survived a civil war fought against the Western Entente, survived mass famine, survived Hitler, became the second largest economy in the world, had one of the highest credit ratings in the world, had very little debt, fought the U.S. to essentially a draw in the cold war, got into space first. Does this sound like a country on the verge of collapse?

It's important to remember the actual state of the Soviet economy in the early 1980's. Most reputable western economists were saying that the Soviet economy was in pretty good shape. See, for instance, Paul Samuelson's analysis of the Soviet economy in the 1980's. (I think it was Samuelson.) Since then, of course, Samuelson has been deleted from history.

[RedMaterialist]

Is that really what it looks like for a workers' state to wither away? Use your fucking head.

Why not just make an argument without the annoying profanities?

[exeexe]

I think the reason why USSR collapsed is because deep down inside the USSR leaders knew how terrible USSR was. USSR lost in the space race, lost in the arm race. Couldn't afford to maintain their nuclear facilities and then people rebelled. The invasion of Afghanistan lead to nowhere. It was clear that it couldn't be hidden anymore. The leaders could not hide how terrible USSR was. So USSR didn't collapsed because of war or productivity or economy but on ideology. The terrible ideology that was inherited in USSR caught up with reality, and if there was something USSR couldn't escape from then it was its own ideology.

There simply was no reason to continue it anymore. It was a dead end.

[Brutus]

So, from 'revolution to counterrevolution' is a spectrum of developments, with the counterrevolutionary developments starting in early 1918 when the Bolsheviks annuled soviet elections or completely dissolved them where they couldn't get a majority...

Yes, the soviets were organs of proletarian power, but soviets are not in themselves organs of revolutionary struggle. They become revolutionary when the Communist Party (i.e. the party of the class conscious proletariat) wins a majority within them. In some cases, the Bolshevik delegates were beaten in an election, stood down, and were promptly shot by Entente soldiers who were invited in by the newly elected Mensheviks. The annulment of soviet elections can't be called counter-revolutionary if the delegates elected held views contrary to proletarian class interests. The fetishisation of councils by some communists (and this isn't aimed at you Q, I know you're not one of them) is absolutely ridiculous. To raise democracy to a principle is foolish- as Communists we fight for the interests of the working class, whether the majority agree with it or not.

[exeexe]

To raise democracy to a principle is foolish- as Communists we fight for the interests of the working class, whether the majority agree with it or not.

So you are a menshevik?

[Brutus]

So you are a menshevik?

Where the fuck did you get that idea from?

[exeexe]

Where the fuck did you get that idea from?

they took for themselves the name Bolshevik, meaning ‘Those of the Majority. Their opponents, the faction led by Martov, thus became known as Mensheviks, ‘those of the Minority’, despite being the overall larger faction

http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/...Bolsheviks.htm

[Brutus]

http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/...Bolsheviks.htm

Apart from that relates to a dispute on the conditions for party membership, and has absolutely no relevance to what I am saying in that post.

[exeexe]

Aah ok i think i understand it now. Minority of the party and not a minority of the national election

[Tim Cornelis]

Why not just make an argument without the annoying profanities?

Why not use an argument without the annoying stupidity. ZING

Yes, the soviets were organs of proletarian power, but soviets are not in themselves organs of revolutionary struggle. They become revolutionary when the Communist Party (i.e. the party of the class conscious proletariat) wins a majority within them. In some cases, the Bolshevik delegates were beaten in an election, stood down, and were promptly shot by Entente soldiers who were invited in by the newly elected Mensheviks. The annulment of soviet elections can't be called counter-revolutionary if the delegates elected held views contrary to proletarian class interests. The fetishisation of councils by some communists (and this isn't aimed at you Q, I know you're not one of them) is absolutely ridiculous. To raise democracy to a principle is foolish- as Communists we fight for the interests of the working class, whether the majority agree with it or not.

The task is to win a majority in them, not abolish them if we cannot. Otherwise it defeats the purpose.

[Five Year Plan]

Yes, the Russian revolution was obviously genuinely proletarian in nature. It was also however very limited from the outset. Besides the problems I pointed to in my previous post, there was also the limitation that the workers council model couldn't take over the running of society as an alternative state, which was the hope of the Bolsheviks to resolve the 'authority problem'. It wasn't a solution and therefore the Bolsheviks had to step in almost immediately and merge state functions into them. This then had the toll of a political degeneration as conditions worsened and the Bolsheviks had to enforce their rule in increasingly worse ways as time went on under the conditions I pointed to in my previous post.

So, from 'revolution to counterrevolution' is a spectrum of developments, with the counterrevolutionary developments starting in early 1918 when the Bolsheviks annuled soviet elections or completely dissolved them where they couldn't get a majority (which was in many places) up to the 'Stalin constitution' of 1936 which consolidated the facts on the ground or maybe even stronger expressed in the mass executions of the old generation of Bolsheviks around the same time.

Whether or not capitalism took over from that point, as RedMaterialist contends, is another discussion. I don't think it did until the law of value could properly work again in the 1990's. In my opinion there is no need to position this as an 'either-or' (as if it could have either been socialism or been capitalism). In fact, I think this is a fallacy.

I appreciate your response, Q, and it clarifies a lot of questions I had about your understanding of how things went wrong politically. But I can't seem to find anywhere in your post where you state clearly whether you think that the state the Bolsheviks led in the early years after October was a workers' state or a bourgeois state, and, if the latter, when that workers' state was smashed through counter-revolution. Do you not have views on these issues?

[Tim Cornelis]

I think the reason why USSR collapsed is because deep down inside the USSR leaders knew how terrible USSR was. USSR lost in the space race, lost in the arm race. Couldn't afford to maintain their nuclear facilities and then people rebelled. The invasion of Afghanistan lead to nowhere. It was clear that it couldn't be hidden anymore. The leaders could not hide how terrible USSR was. So USSR didn't collapsed because of war or productivity or economy but on ideology. The terrible ideology that was inherited in USSR caught up with reality, and if there was something USSR couldn't escape from then it was its own ideology.

There simply was no reason to continue it anymore. It was a dead end.

That assumes a lot of altruism and benevolence on the part of the Soviet ruling political elite. It sounds very implausible.

Why not just make an argument without the annoying profanities?

But seriously, answer the question. It's very convenient for you to focus on that 'profanity'. The ruling political elite conceding to an independent mass trade union and holding liberal-democratic elections is what it looks like for a workers' state to wither away?

[Q]

I appreciate your response, Q, and it clarifies a lot of questions I had about your understanding of how things went wrong politically. But I can't seem to find anywhere in your post where you state clearly whether you think that the state the Bolsheviks led in the early years after October was a workers' state or a bourgeois state, and, if the latter, when that workers' state was smashed through counter-revolution. Do you not have views on these issues?

It was a mix. The soviet form was a clear attempt to establish a workers' state, which failed. Under the pressure of the civil war, one man management was introduced and many people of the old bureaucratic tsarist apparatus were put back to work. Many institutions of the old tsarist state were recreated. Then again, the tsarist state itself wasn't fully 'bourgeois', it still had lots of feudal leftovers. This then begs the question of what makes a state 'bourgeois' in the first place?

Anyway, by recreating many of the old institutions and thereby reintroducing top-down rule, it became a concrete expression of the counterrevolution, be it under a 'red banner'.

[Five Year Plan]

It was a mix. The soviet form was a clear attempt to establish a workers' state, which failed. Under the pressure of the civil war, one man management was introduced and many people of the old bureaucratic tsarist apparatus were put back to work. Many institutions of the old tsarist state were recreated. Then again, the tsarist state itself wasn't fully 'bourgeois', it still had lots of feudal leftovers. This then begs the question of what makes a state 'bourgeois' in the first place?

Anyway, by recreating many of the old institutions and thereby reintroducing top-down rule, it became a concrete expression of the counterrevolution, be it under a 'red banner'.

I don't understand what you mean by saying the state was a "mix." Are you suggesting it was half bourgeois state and half workers' state? The Marxist understanding of the tsarist state was that it was a feudal state presided over by an absolutist regime that harnessed power away from the landed aristocracy on the basis of incipient capitalist development.

[Q]

I don't understand what you mean by saying the state was a "mix." Are you suggesting it was half bourgeois state and half workers' state?

I explained in the rest of the paragraph what I mean by it.

[Five Year Plan]

I explained in the rest of the paragraph what I mean by it.

You seem to be confusing a type of state with the modes of production that operate in the society controlled by that state. So in Russia in 1910, you had a society predominantly feudal but also capitalist, so the state in your view, was a little bit of both. I have rarely seen Marxists speak this way.

[RedMaterialist]

But seriously, answer the question. It's very convenient for you to focus on that 'profanity'. The ruling political elite conceding to an independent mass trade union and holding liberal-democratic elections is what it looks like for a workers' state to wither away?

Gorbachev conceded to a trade union? When did that happen?

The ruling military attempted a coup against Gorbachev and Yeltsin in August 1991. That coup failed because by that time the Soviet State was essentially an empty shell. Gorbachev resigned, the Soviet Union was dissolved, and power was handed over to the drunk Yeltsin.

I don't pretend that anyone agrees with my theory. Or that it is plausible. I do think it is an attempt to explain the collapse of the SU in class terms and particularly in terms of the class structure of the state.

The other explanations are simply not believable or not supported by any evidence:
1. Ronald Reagan ordered Gorbachev to tear down the wall and Gorbachev, terrified, complied.
2. The economy of the SU disintegrated because of military spending forced on the SU by Reagan's cold war build up. No evidence whatsoever.
3. The socialist command economy finally fell apart. No evidence.
4. The Soviet bureaucracy finally became unbearable to the working class which rose up and smashed it. There wasn't much smashing. The whole thing collapsed.

Why in all of history has there never been anything even remotely similar to what happened in the Soviet Union? A massive world superpower simply collapsed. It's as if Hitler decided one day in 1943 to just call it quits and retire to Argentina.

[Tim Cornelis]

Gorbachev conceded to a trade union? When did that happen?

Hey smart ass, I asked about Poland.

"Let's look at the first Eastern bloc state to "wither away", Poland: Does this sound like a state that withers away because of the absence of class antagonisms? A state that represses a mass trade union that uses strike action to defend and expand workers' rights? A state that declares martial law? A state that withers away by finally conceding to this trade union and then holding liberal-democratic elections?"

That you try your very best to not answer this question by changing the topic reveals to me that you don't have an answer.

The ruling military attempted a coup against Gorbachev and Yeltsin in August 1991. That coup failed because by that time the Soviet State was essentially an empty shell. Gorbachev resigned, the Soviet Union was dissolved, and power was handed over to the drunk Yeltsin.

I don't pretend that anyone agrees with my theory. Or that it is plausible. I do think it is an attempt to explain the collapse of the SU in class terms and particularly in terms of the class structure of the state.

It is a rather terrible attempt to be honest.

The other explanations are simply not believable or not supported by any evidence:
1. Ronald Reagan ordered Gorbachev to tear down the wall and Gorbachev, terrified, complied.

No one says this. This is, presumably, a strawman argument of:

2. The economy of the SU disintegrated because of military spending forced on the SU by Reagan's cold war build up. No evidence whatsoever.

Well I'm not entirely familiar with all the evidence, but that the military ate up 20% of GDP or government spending (not sure), I suppose a reasonable argument can be construed around it.

3. The socialist command economy finally fell apart. No evidence.

That's because no one phrases it like that.

4. The Soviet bureaucracy finally became unbearable to the working class which rose up and smashed it. There wasn't much smashing. The whole thing collapsed.

No one says that. Not that I'm aware of.

And where is the theory supposed by empirical evidence which I provided? That the economy begin its gradual decline already in the late 1930s, eventually stagnating in the 1960s, and declining in the late 1980s, that this was due to the absolute over-accumulation of capital, and that subsequent Soviet leaderships sought to remedy this decline by implementing market-reforms which ultimately resulted in the perestroika and glasnost; which, on their turn, caused for the Eastern bloc and Soviet Union to finally crumble.

Why in all of history has there never been anything even remotely similar to what happened in the Soviet Union? A massive world superpower simply collapsed. It's as if Hitler decided one day in 1943 to just call it quits and retire to Argentina.

It's not like that at all. IF you want to draw an analogy with world war II, Japan is your candidate. Imperial Japan, a world super power, that just collapsed in a matter of a day, sort of. How? Why? How could an empire like that just collapse? Well, with Japan it's obvious it was the nuclear bombs and US military advances. With the USSR it was more hidden, but the structural ineffectiveness of its economic system proved incurable within its own scope.

Anyway, just because the collapse of the Soviet empire is unique does not in any way lend credibility to your hypothesis. The theory I explained here is perfectly capable of explaining why, supposedly, nothing similar has ever happened.

The collapse of the Mayan state was unique -- which was also a superpower of sorts that 'just' collapsed. That doesn't mean anything (in and of itself).

"The fall of the Maya is one of history’s great mysteries. One of the mightiest civilizations in the ancient Americas simply fell into ruin in a very short time. Mighty cities like Tikal were abandoned and Maya stonemasons stopped making temples and stelae. The dates are not in doubt: deciphered glyphs at several sites indicate a thriving culture in the ninth century A.D., but the record goes eerily silent after the last recorded date on a Maya stela, 904 A.D. There are many theories as to what happened to the Maya, but little consensus among experts."

http://latinamericanhistory.about.co...cient-Maya.htm

The Mongol Empire also collapsed in a matter of years.

When the Chinese 'communist party' loses control of China and Tibet and Xinjiang secede, will you also claim that the state withered away? Because that would be quite similar to the collapse of the Soviet Union.