National Bolsheviks

[Edelweiss]

I recently got interested in an Russian author called Wladimir Kaminer, he's has written some pretty good books about Germany, which were bestsellers here, from the view of an Russian immigrant. He's without question a leftist, and so I was surprised when I read an very uncritical article about Eduard Limonow, the founder and leader of the Russian National Bolshevik party, on his website.
I signed the guestbook, and stated that that I'm surprised that he's not describing Limonow as what he is: a clean fascist.
Within hours he replied in the guestbook, here's what he said (poorly translated by me):

"From a European view Limonow is without question a fascist, since he's also insisting on to be one. The "national" in the name of his party, and several articles published by him are supporting that. But in Russian politics he's playing the lousy role of a idiot, who wants to draw attention with all kind of provocations. Like a rock star who is dropping his pants on the stage to provocate the audiance, so wants Limonow to personify all evil, and wants to be the nastiest boy in Russia, or better yet - to be hang on the red square. But the real Nazi's, who are sitting in the bourgeois partys or even in the government, and who never would name themself as such, but who always find good words to ascertain their hatred on the world with social or economic obligations, they don't recognize the likes of them in Limonow. Because he'll stay with all his vanity forever against, and forever in the underground, no matter what is happening."

[Edelweiss]

True nattedi, that's just my opnion, but after reading Kaminer's statement I can see the NB's a bit more relaxed. It seems that nobody really takes them seroius in Russia. They are not as big as I thought before.

[Turnoviseous]

It would be interesting to know from where so called ´national-bolshevism´ originates.

Because without doubt Bolsheviks were the most international party in the human history.

From point of view it is just another name for Stalinism. What do you think?

[Turnoviseous]

Quote: from Revolution Hero on 8:21 am on Aug. 29, 2002
Though Limonov is in jail, his national bolshevik's party still function. He can be considered an idiot by the russian politicians and serious fascists , but the fact that he splits the progressive leftist movement makes him dangerous. The youth doesn't consider him an idiot, but they consider him their leader. National Bolshevik's party misleads the peolple. If National Bolshevik organization have not existed, then the youth would have followed KPRF, which is the real communist party that can bring real change.

Lol. They can not make change, because they are utopian reformists and accept free-market.

[Turnoviseous]

Miloševiæ is also national-bolshevik. You know who he is and what he has done. No?

[Marxman]

National Bolshevism? What kind of a discrepancy is that? I bet it originates in a mind of a stalinist. Bolsheviks were the most international of all and now there is this slandering party out called national bolsheviks. I see that stalinists are running out of ideas, so they make contradictory annexations even to the names of their massacring party. KPRF is no different, there lies a bunch of bueracratic parasites that wait for their Stalin to arise. If there is national bolshevism, it will fail in a matter of minutes because its programme cannot exist. And as a marxist slogan goes:"All theories must face the final test, the PRACTICE."

[Marxman]

I am a marxist and I need proof of these statements. Prove it that they have a marxist programme. You shall find yourself in a dead-end and confused when you shall look into it. Don't fool yourself. KPRF are old bueracrats from the times of stalinism and they're waiting for their new Stalin. You said they have a marxist programme but all stalinists say that. Stalin, Khruschev, Brezhnev, Gorbachov all said that but in reality they differentiated a lot from marxism. Oh boy, did they lie. Like I said, KPRF is stalinist and a liar. The members are opportunists/bonapartists/centrists/mensheviks/carrerists/stalinists/yeltsinites.

[Turnoviseous]

Damn staight, Marxman. I would just like to dig out that speech of Zyuganov when he publically said that he supports free market. I will keep trying. I think it was published in socialist appeal, tho´

KPRF guy, you seem to be from Russia, go to

www.1917.com

[Marxman]

Are you trying to tell me that Khruschev and Brezhnev were true marxists? Okay, you want proof, I completely understand you, so I shall quote what Stalinists like Khrushchev and Brezhnev and Gorbachev really were.

From Stalin to Khrushchev

The victory of Stalinist Russia in the war, followed by the Chinese Revolution of 1949, and the establishment of new Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe meant the strengthening of the regime for a whole historical period. Flushed with success, the Stalinists were able to present their system as the "only form of socialism possible". The main reason for the apparent endurance of the Stalinist bureaucracy, however, was the fact that, throughout this period, it actually succeeded in developing the productive forces. From a backward, agricultural country, Russia had become transformed into the second industrial power on earth and the first military power.

For a long time it was fashionable to talk of the "German miracle" and the "Japanese miracle" after 1945. But these achievements, while undoubtedly real, pale into insignificance when compared with the colossal advances made by the Soviet Union in the period of postwar reconstruction. No country on earth had suffered such devastation as this. Twenty seven million dead, and the wholesale destruction of its industry and infrastructure--this was the balance-sheet of four and a half years of bloody war on Soviet soil. Moreover, unlike Germany and Japan, the USSR did not enjoy the benefits of Marshall Aid. Yet the war devastation was overcome within five years, not with foreign aid, but by the planned use of resources and the colossal efforts of the population.

As a former officer of British Intelligence in Moscow, the writer Edward Crankshaw cannot be considered a sympathiser of the Soviet Union in any shape or form. Therefore his evaluation of the achievements of the Soviet economy can be taken as fairly objective. Moreover, these views were widely shared by Western observers at the time. Only now, in their indecent haste to bury the memory of October, do they resort to a blatant falsification of the historical records to show that nothing was really achieved by the planned economy. The following figures, cited by Crankshaw in his book Khrushchev's Russia, graphically illustrate the situation:

"On the eve of the first Five-Year Plan, in 1928, the production of steel was 4.3 million tons; of coal 35.5 million tons; of oil 11.5 million tons; of electric power 1.9 million kilowatts. At the end of the first Plan, in 1934, production had increased as follows: steel 9.7 million tons; coal 93.9 million tons; oil 24.2 million tons; electric power 6.3 kilowatts.

"By 1940, on the eve of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, production was as follows: steel 18.3 million tons; coal 166 million tons; oil 31 million tons; electric power 11.3 million kilowatts. At the end of the war, in 1945, production had declined as follows: steel 11.2 million tons; coal 149.3 million tons; oil 19.4 million tons; electric power 10.7 million kilowatts. This in spite of the fact that much heavy industry had been shifted East, and that it had absolute priority.

"In 1946 Stalin gave new target figures. First the country had to be restored, then the economy had to be sharply expanded, to make the Soviet Union, as he said, 'proof against all accidents.' He envisaged a series of at least three Five-Year Plans. And his new target figures for 1960, at the earliest, were: steel 60 million tons; coal 500 million tons; oil 60 million tons. This was as far as Stalin's imagination could stretch. The achievement of these targets in 15 years seemed not only to all outside observers, but also to the Russians and to Stalin himself, to mean at least another 15 years of privation and unrewarding toil for the Soviet people.

"And when the target was reached, in 1960, Soviet production would still be far behind American production as it was in 1950: steel 90 million tons; coal 700 million tons; oil 250 million tons.

"What in fact has happened? In all cases Stalin's 1960 targets have been surpassed: in 1958 the output of steel was only 2 million tons short of the 1960 total; the 1960 figure for coal was reached; the 1960 figure for oil almost doubled--113 million tons.

"So although we can see that Dmitri Yershov's confident boasting was a little wild (the Soviet Union was producing a good deal less than 60 million tons of steel in 1956, and in fact is scheduled to produce well under Yermeshov's 100 million tons (86-91 million tons) in 1965) yet things are moving very fast indeed. More important, they are moving against a background of increased well-being throughout the country and increased freedom of thought, above all in the economic sphere.

"The presentation of the new Seven-Year Plan in January 1959 was a paean of confidence, which, as expressed by Khrushchev, might be summed up as boom or bust. The new targets make the postwar dreams of Stalin look shabby and old-fashioned: steel 91 million tons; coal 609 million tons; oil 240 million tons." And he adds: "This is treading on America's heels with a vengeance." (Crankshaw, Khrushchev's Russia, pp. 25-7.)

Another commentator, Leonard Schapiro, who also cannot be remotely suspected of being a Friend of the Soviet Union concludes:

"In 1948 again the country had reached the point where it was beginning to overcome the ravages which wartime destruction had inflicted on it. The recovery after 1947 was indeed remarkable. In 1947 overall industrial production had still not attained the level of 1940. By 1948 it had already exceeded it, and by the last year of Stalin's life, 1952, exceeded it two and a quarter times. In accordance with the well-established policy, the main advance was in the production of the means of production; thus, in 1952, production in this category was more than two and a half times that of 1940, whereas production of consumer goods had only increased by slightly over one and a half times." (L. Schapiro, op. cit., p. 510.) Can these figures be the result of rigged statistics? The same writer adds in a footnote: "The official figures may be exaggerated [and he refers the reader to another study which makes 'minor criticisms'] but all Western experts agree that the rate of industrial recovery after 1947 was remarkable." (Ibid., p. 511, my emphasis.)

True, living standards remained low. The policy of the leadership was to concentrate on heavy industry at the expense of consumer goods, although to some extent this was inevitable, given the massive destruction caused by the war. But so long as the productive forces were being developed, the workers felt that society was going forward. The country was flush with military triumph and jubilation at the tremendous blow struck against fascism and the overthrow of capitalism in Eastern Europe and China. There were further advances in health and education. A whole new correlation of forces emerged within the USSR, with the advance of the economy and the near complete elimination of illiteracy. However, the lion's share of the wealth created by the workers was taken by the bureaucracy, while the working class had no say on how the resources of the USSR should be allocated.

Despite the low standard of living and the material hardships (the problem of housing was particularly acute), there was a general feeling of optimism. This is in stark contrast to the present position, where the collapse of living standards associated with the movement in the direction of capitalism produces no optimism, but only fear and lack of confidence in the future. This can easily be demonstrated with reference to the level of population growth. After the war, the birth rate grew rapidly. In the last five years, the birth rate has slumped, not only in Russia, but throughout Eastern Europe. This most elementary of human responses tells us far more about people's real attitude to society than any amount of election statistics.

With these successes at home and abroad, the bureaucracy looked to the future with great optimism. Their power and prestige increased in the same degree as that of the Soviet Union itself. The ruling caste looked forward to continuing its "historical mission" for centuries. At the same time, the gap between the privileged officials and the masses continued to increase far faster than the growth in production.

After the war, differentials continued to widen. Direct bribes were introduced called pakety (packets) in the higher state and party institutions. On a monthly basis higher officials received a packet containing a large sum over and above their salary. These were special payments paid through special channels, not subject to tax, and kept totally secret. "As for members of the Politburo and Stalin himself," relates Medvedev, "the cost of keeping them does not submit to calculation. The numerous dachas and apartments, the huge domestic staff, the expenses for their staff and guards rose to millions of roubles yearly. As for the cost of maintaining Stalin, that nearly defies calculation." (Medvedev, Let History Judge, p. 843.) The income of the bureaucracy is derived from "legal" and "illegal" means.

"The bureaucracy enjoys its privileges under the form of an abuse of power," said Trotsky. "It conceals its income; it pretends that as a special social group it does not even exist. Its appropriation of a vast share of the national income has the character of social parasitism." (Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, pp. 249-50.) This fact does not contradict the numerous demagogic campaigns by Stalin and other Soviet leaders against "bureaucracy", which were carried out as a means of periodically curbing the excesses of the caste. It was not to weaken the bureaucratic elite, but to strengthen it.

In the postwar years the ratio between the real wages of an industrial worker and the salary of the highest official became incredibly wide. The wage differential between workers and the managers were in general greater than even in the capitalist West. "In a small research institute concerned with the problems of training manual and professional workers where I was employed for 10 years," recalls Roy Medvedev, "the difference between the lowest salary for research assistant, 60 to 70 roubles a month, and that of the most highly paid section head was in order of 1:13. In the larger institutes of the academy of sciences the ratio between the salary of a laboratory assistant or a junior research worker with no degree and that of a top academic in charge of a department is 1 to 15 or 1 to 20.

"In the Soviet ministries and the important military establishments the ratio between the highest and the lowest rates of pay is also 1 to 20 or even 1 to 30, but if one takes into consideration the many services available to officials at public expense (food coupons, medical treatment, holidays, personal transport, etc.) the total value translated into monetary terms would make the ratio of 1 to 50 or sometimes even 1 to 100." (R. Medvedev, On Socialist Democracy, pp. 224-5.) This differential was greater than in the capitalist West.

This situation could not last indefinitely. The working class is willing to make sacrifices under certain circumstances, particularly when it is convinced that it is fighting to transform society along socialist lines. But the prior condition for such a conviction is that there should be equality of sacrifice. But when the sacrifices and efforts of the workers are abused to create monstrous privileges for a few, sooner or later the fraud will lead to an explosion. This is all the more true in a society which purports to speak in the name of socialism and communism.

Part Six:
The Period of Stagnation
A good harvest the following year came too late to save Khrushchev. The bureaucracy decided that things had gone too far, and that the policies of the present Leader were putting the whole system in danger. They were terrified that the reforms from the top would indeed open the floodgates, just as De Tocqueville had predicted. And they acted just as one would expect a threatened autocracy to act. They organised a conspiracy to put an end to the "irresponsible reformist adventure".

In October 1964 Khrushchev was dismissed. Typically, there was no congress, no explanations, no votes. The "beloved leader Nikita Sergeyevich" was removed by a coup organised by his closest colleagues. No gratitude in politics--at least of the bureaucratic kind! Overnight the man who had been lionised by the world communist press suddenly became transformed into a non-person. Without a murmur, with no questions asked, the leaders of the Communist Parties immediately fell into line. This reminds one of something that Maxim Gorky once wrote:

"Question: What do you do when you see a man falling?
Answer: Give him a push."

The bureaucracy hoped a change at the top would lead to better times. Leonid Brezhnev rose to power. He immediately blamed Khrushchev for the past failings, reversed a number of his reforms, and even went so far as to hide the improved 1964 statistics because they proved too favourable. But under Brezhnev, the crisis of Stalinism intensified with the rate of growth steadily declining to about 3 per cent or less. New measures were needed to reverse the slow-down.

To begin with, Brezhnev was forced to abandon in practice the reactionary utopia of economic autarky ("socialism in one country"). In a desperate attempt to stimulate the economy, the bureaucracy decided to participate in the world market. In fact, amazingly, this was written into the text of the Brezhnev constitution, the first time in history that participation in world trade has ever been elevated to the level of a constitutional principle! Probably this fact reflected internal conflicts within the ruling elite.

Lenin and Trotsky argued in favour of the participation of the Soviet Union in world trade, but they did not regard it as a panacea, but only as a means of obtaining a temporary breathing space until the victory of the workers in the advanced capitalist countries would come to the aid of the USSR. The Soviet Union then was a very backward country. Trotsky predicted that, as the Soviet economy developed, it would be forced to abandon autarky and participate more and more in the world economy. But precisely because of that, the crisis in the West would have a bigger effect than in the past, albeit a marginal effect in terms of a fall of production. Far more important however, were the political consequences. Lenin correctly insisted on the need to integrate the Soviet economy as much as possible with the world economy, to get the maximum benefit from the world division of labour. The short-sighted Stalinist bureaucracy was eventually compelled, under Brezhnev, to abandon autarky and embark on at least a limited participation on the world market.

Participation on world markets could have partially provided a check on the irresponsible and uncontrolled bureaucracy. Under the capitalist system, the working out of the law of value through the market to some extent provides a check. It is true that the big monopolies distort and mangle the operation of the market in their own interests. The 500 big companies which presently account for something like 90 per cent of world trade use their muscle, immense strategic stocks, the speculative movement of funds, political pressure and outright corruption to obtain a bigger share of the labour of the working class than would be "normal" through the working of the law of value. Nevertheless, they too are ultimately compelled to operate on the basis of the law of value.

From a Marxist point of view, the participation of the Soviet Union in the world economy was not only inevitable, but progressive. Already in the pages of the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels explained that capitalism develops the world economy as a single, interdependent whole. It is impossible to separate off one of its component parts without introducing the gravest distortions. The experience of the USSR over half a century is sufficient proof of this assertion. By participating on the world market, the Soviet economy could have benefited from the world division of labour. Its scientists and technicians could have access to the most modern techniques and ideas. But by the same token, it was compelled to compare itself to the most advanced economies in the world, and in this mirror it was compelled to see all its defects shown up in the cruellest light.

The total trade turnover of trade for the USSR at the end of the 1970s stood at $123 billion, a big increase, but still insufficient in proportion to the size of the Soviet economy. If we bear in mind that the equivalent figure for little Holland (which, admittedly, devotes an exceptionally high proportion of its GDP to exports) was $132 billion, the discrepancy is immediately revealed. In the 1960s and 1970s, the foreign trade of the USSR went up from 4 per cent to 9 per cent of GDP. However, since world trade was growing still faster at that time, its actual share of the total decreased from 4.3 per cent to 3.8 per cent in this period. This was the amount of the USSR's share of world trade in 1979 and how it compared to other main countries:

1979 share of world trade:

USSR
3.8 per cent

Netherlands
4.1 per cent

Italy
4.6 per cent

UK
6.0 per cent

France
6.4 per cent

Japan
6.5 per cent

West Germany
10.1 per cent

USA
12.3 per cent

Others
46.2 per cent

It should be added that, although the USA held 12.3 per cent of world trade, this represented a mere 6 per cent of its gross domestic product. Subsequently, however, this situation changed. With the squeezing of living standards, and the consequent reduction of internal demand, the USA has adopted an aggressive policy of increasing its exports at the expense of its rivals, in the first place, Japan. In the 1980s, it pushed up the portion of its GDP devoted to world trade from 6 per cent to 13 per cent, and plans to increase it to a staggering 20 per cent by the year 2000. This is tantamount to a declaration of war (at least, a trade war) against its main rivals, who are all equally determined to increase their share of world markets. It goes without saying that in such a context, the outlook for a Russian capitalist regime are not very bright. But we shall return to this subject later on.

There was an immense potential in the Soviet bloc itself, if it had been organised as a harmoniously integrated whole. The Comecon was a unit of 450 million people, with a developed industry, a huge number of scientists and technicians, a vast area of agricultural land, and access to almost limitless mineral resources. The population of Comecon was 180 million more than the European economic community as then constituted. If to this we add over one billion Chinese, the staggering potential for economic development immediately becomes clear. But the prior condition for this was the formation of a socialist federation of the USSR, Eastern Europe and China.

The only obstacle for realising this were the narrow national interests of each bureaucracy bent on defending its frontiers against its "socialist" neighbours. In fact, the degree of economic integration between the countries of Comecon was even less than that between the member states of the EEC. Thus, the pursuit of socialism in one country materially held back the progress of all these countries. Instead of pooling their resources in a rational way, each national bureaucracy insisted in constructing its own heavy industry--even tiny Albania, with predictably disastrous results. The final bankruptcy was the spectacle of Soviet and Chinese troops killing each other over an artificial and irrational frontier drawn up in the nineteenth century by the Russian Tsar and the Chinese emperor.

The Soviet Union lags behind

The important advances in absolute terms did not exhaust the issue. In relative terms, although progress was made, the gap with the most developed capitalist countries remained, as the following figures show:

GDP per capita 1979 (in US$) was as follows:

West Germany
11,730

USA
10,630

France
9,950

Japan
8,810

UK
6,320

Italy
5,250

East Germany
6,430

Czechoslovakia
5,290

USSR
4,110

Hungary
3,850

Poland
3,830

Bulgaria
3,690

(Source: World Bank, World Development Report 1981, p.135.)

Nevertheless, if the USSR had maintained the average growth rate of 10 per cent, this gap could have easily been closed. Even if it had maintained a growth rate of 3 per cent per annum, by 1990 it would have attained the level of the EEC and Japan for 1980. This, in itself, would have been a remarkable success. It would undoubtedly have been sufficient to prevent the break-up of the USSR and the subsequent disaster which has befallen all the peoples of the former Soviet Union. All that would have been necessary was to reach at least the average rates of growth attained by the West at this time. Given the potential of the planned economy, this should have been easily possible. In fact, such a target is far below the real possibilities, as the period of the 1950s and 1960s graphically show. Yet, shamefully, criminally, the bureaucracy was incapable even of reaching this miserable target.

By the 1960s, growth rates had begun to decline, and with this the growth of living standards. In the period 1951-60, the growth of industrial production was more than 10 per cent and the average for the decade was around 12 per cent per year. But in 1963 and 1964, officially claimed industrial growth rates fell below 8 per cent, the lowest peacetime figures except 1933. It is no accident that in May 1961 the death penalty was introduced for a range of economic offences. Only in 1967 did industrial production increase by 10 per cent, while the average annual growth rate for the decade fell to 8.5 per cent.

The fall in Soviet economic growth was not due to the lack of new investment. In an article written in October 1966 by the Soviet economist V. Kudrov, he reveals the colossal investment that took place: "As regards overall investments, the USSR is close to the US level (roughly 90 per cent) and for the production investments and overall accumulation it has already achieved noticeable superiority. But since this superiority is observed in conditions where the national income is only 62 per cent of the US national income, a certain strain is felt in the Soviet economy." (World Marxist Review, October 1966. Quoted by R. Black, Stalinism in Britain, pp.383-5.) Despite the strains, this mighty investment still failed to bring about comparable increases in labour productivity.

He continues: "During the Seven-Year Plan over one million metal cutting machine tools, over 200 forge and die presses, and many automatic and continuous-flow lines were put into operation, but their productivity was, as a rule, rather low. By and large machine tools in the USSR are younger than in the USA in age É but older in design. As a result, the USSR is catching up with the USA more rapidly in volume of capital invested per worker than it is in actual productivity." In the realm of agriculture things were much worse: "Agricultural production depends considerably on technical equipment and labour productivity," stated Kudrov. "In this respect the Soviet Union is still considerably behind the United States. We have in the USSR 13.7 tractors per 1,000 hectares of cultivated land compared with 40.8 in the USA; for harvest combines the figures are 3.9 and 15.7 respectively."

The impasse of the bureaucracy was graphically revealed by the figures of economic growth of the Soviet Union. Before the war, under the first Five-Year Plans, Russia had an annual growth rate of a staggering 20 per cent. Even by the 1950s and early 1960s, the growth rate was still around I0-11 per cent. This figure was still vastly superior to that of the other main capitalist powers. While it is true that Japan, on occasions, reached figures as high as 13 per cent, this was exceptional. The Soviet Union's growth in the period under consideration was a consistent growth rate, every year, uninterrupted by recessions. The main capitalist economies obtained at most 5-6 per cent (the rate of Britain, already in decline, was much lower), but not every year. Japan was able to achieve a higher rate largely because, under the American nuclear umbrella, it spent little on arms (1 per cent of its GNP), and was able to plough back most of its surplus in investment.

To all the other problems must be added the monstrous burden of arms expenditure. About 11-13 per cent of Soviet GDP went on arms, compared to about 8 per cent in the USA. Thus, a huge proportion of the wealth produced by the working class in both countries was wasted on what amounted to the production of scrap metal. This was also determined by the fact that the USSR was unable to extricate itself from the rest of the world and constitute itself as a self-contained, self-sufficient entity. In these figures, the bankruptcy of socialism in a single country are cruelly revealed.

Agriculture--the Achilles' heel

The situation in agriculture was far worse. Under Brezhnev, it took four Soviet agricultural workers to get the same results as one American farmer. Soviet agriculture had still not yet recovered from the forced collectivisation of the early 1930s, when peasants destroyed crops and slaughtered livestock. The number of horses and pigs fell by 55 per cent, sheep by 66 per cent and so on. Between 1930 and 1955, per head of population, agricultural production (excluding technical crops) and the number of farm animals (for pigs this applies only to 1953) were lower than in 1916, and for horned cattle and cows the figure had not reached the level of 1913 nor that of 1928. The productivity on the land remained very low. In 1982 it was reported that one agricultural worker fed six people in the USSR compared to 40 in the USA. Despite all the investment and resources, the Soviet economy was unable to take advantage of these factors. Nor was Brezhnev able to solve the problems of Soviet agriculture. On the contrary, they got steadily worse. Agriculture remained the Achilles' heel.

This had a direct bearing on living standards. The following figures for diet illustrate the difference in living standards between USA and the Soviet Union. In the USSR 48 per cent of calories were derived from grain (mainly bread), as opposed to 22 per cent in USA. On the other hand, only 8 per cent were derived from meat and fish, against 20 per cent in the USA. Soviet citizens consumed one half the meat eaten in the United States, and less than in Poland. Even on this elementary plane, Russia lagged behind. The USSR had to import grain. This cost $6.5 billion in 1984 alone. Yet potentially Russian agriculture could feed the world. Why?

Agriculture is a more complicated question than industry because here one is dealing with the elements--both natural and human. There are only two ways of securing a lasting improvement in productivity in agriculture--either by the general application of better techniques and machinery, or by securing a greater motivation of the workforce. In fact, the two things go together. Even if modern machinery is made available, unless the rural workers are motivated to work properly and get the best out of the instruments in their hands, it will not be possible to get the desired results. Such human motivation can only be secured in one of two ways--either if the peasant or rural proletarian is morally inspired and convinced of the need for socialism, or else by material incentives. The Russian bureaucracy was unable to do either. On a socialist basis, the problem could easily be solved. But the task of introducing a different consciousness into the peasant means changing his relation to society, contact with other producers, participation in the life of society, democratic decision-making, co-operatives and so on. This is impossible on basis of a bureaucratic system.

In the extreme conditions of War Communism, the Bolsheviks were compelled to resort to the forced delivery of grain in order to feed the starving workers in the cities, at a time when the collapse of industry meant that it was impossible to provide the peasants with goods in exchange for their products. But this was never seen as anything but a temporary measure forced upon the workers' state in an exceptional situation when the existence of the revolution was in danger. The policy was soon abandoned in favour of a free market in grain and the New Economic Policy. Lenin and Trotsky were in favour of gradual collectivisation by example, and, in the meantime, encouraged co-operatives. But they never considered the possibility of forcing the peasants into collectives at gun-point, as Stalin did in the 1930s. This monstrous policy led to the collapse of Soviet agriculture, a terrible famine and the deaths of millions of people. Soviet agriculture never recovered from this insane and criminal policy of Stalin.

No-where was the dead-hand of bureaucracy clearer than here. They tried to blame the weather. True, the Russian winter poses problems unknown in more benign climes, but with modern technology it would have been possible to overcome this to a large extent. The problem was not the weather but the disaffected attitude of the rural population. Even where silos were built, the harvested grain was often left out in the rain to rot on the ground. A tractor driver was paid in terms of the area that was ploughed, so more would be gained the greater the shallow ploughing. All the evils of a bureaucratic system were here multiplied a hundred fold--mismanagement, swindling, chaotic conditions of transport--combined with the still backward conditions of the Russian countryside--all combined to produce sabotage on a vast scale.

In the past agriculture had been neglected, but this was no longer true. The problem was not now lack of investment. The bureaucracy was investing vast sums in agriculture, which now amounted to one-third of the total civilian investment. Yet they could not get the desired results. The USA, for example, spent only 5 per cent of Gross National Income on agriculture but obtained much better results. Despite large-scale investment and tractor production on the collective farms, agricultural productivity of labour was officially about a quarter--actually it was much less--than the USA. With almost one-third of the population (27 million) still working on the land--six times the American figure--the Soviet Union had 20 times as many agricultural workers per tractor as the US. The average income of a Russian collective farmer was half of an industrial worker. Youth were leaving the villages at the rate of two million a year. There was a huge subsidy to agriculture, which received 27 per cent of total investment.

The USSR was the biggest producer of tractors in the world. Its harvested area was two thirds bigger than that of the USA. However, owing to poor quality and inefficient repairs, the average life of a Soviet tractor was only five or six years. This meant that about 300,000 tractors had to be replaced every year. Despite the increased number of tractors, the annual yield per tractor on collective farms in the 1960s, far from rising, actually went down--in the period 1960-67, by 17 per cent. The Soviet Union was a vast subcontinent. Yet only a third as many trucks were used in agriculture as in the United States.

"At the present time," wrote Medvedev in 1972, "an agricultural worker in the United States is in effect as well equipped with the means of production as an industrial worker and in some respects is even ahead of him. In 1960, each American agricultural worker had 39 horsepower at his disposal, compared with a mere 5.4 for his Soviet opposite number. By 1967 the supply of power to an agricultural worker in the United States had increased to 78 hp--it had exactly doubled. The equivalent figure in the USSR for the same period was only 8.8 hp, an increase of about 65 per cent." (Roy Medvedev, On Socialist Democracy, p. 12.)

Between 1966 and 1970, 1.5 million tractors were delivered to the collective farms, but 1,150,000 were written off from existing stock. Half a million combine harvesters were also delivered, but more than 350,000 were written off. This explains the worried tone of Brezhnev's speech at the 23rd Party Congress in 1966:

"The Central Committee considers it necessary to draw attention to yet another problem, that of utilising machinery at collective and state farms, The countryside is steadily receiving and increasing the number of tractors, lorries, harvester-combines and other machines. Labour there is acquiring the features of industrial work. Yet, in recent years, there has been a drop in many key indicators of the utilisation of the fleet of machines and tractors. Machine operators tend to leave their jobs, causing fluidity in the labour force. all this creates difficulties. Facilities for repairing farm machinery must be enlarged to the utmost, the Selkhoztehnika enterprises and the collective and state farms supplied with modern equipment, and machine operators given better training and bigger material incentives," and so on. (Report of the 23rd Congress CPSU, pp. 89-90.)

Reading between the lines of this report, we get a picture of collective farms equipped with old, out of date machinery, or machines of poor quality which continually break down, and an ill-prepared workforce with no motivation, which does not look after or repair this machinery, and which has to be bribed with more material incentives in order to perform the most basic tasks. The picture had changed little since Trotsky wrote: "The tractor is the pride of Soviet industry. But the coefficient of effective use of the tractors is very low. During the last industrial year it was necessary to subject 81 per cent of the tractors to capital repairs. A considerable number of them, moreover, got out of order again at the very height of the tilling season." (Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, p. 12.)

In the 1950s, as a result of Khrushchev's reforms, agricultural output improved. But under Brezhnev, the position worsened again. In the 1950s, the annual growth rate of agricultural production was 4.9 per cent. In the 1960s, it fell back to 3 per cent, and later to a miserable 2 per cent. And in the 1970s there was actually a decline in agricultural productivity. Yet investment in agriculture had enormously expanded. Agriculture absorbed 20 per cent of total national investment--twice the prewar level. The production of fertiliser increased greatly. Yet the value of net farm output was four fifths less than that of the USA. Productivity of labour in agriculture remained stubbornly low. This was partly connected to the outflow of youth from the villages, and the resulting manpower shortage. By 1980 only 20 per cent worked on the land, and they were mainly old people. But this cannot explain everything. In Western Europe there was an even bigger shift from country to town, yet the productivity of labour in agriculture enormously increased.

The real root cause was the passive resistance and sabotage of an alienated agricultural workforce, plus the colossal waste, mismanagement, inefficiency and corruption of the bureaucratic system. Brezhnev attempted to increase the motivation of the rural workforce by allowing small private plots in the kolkhozy. He actually included this in article 13 of the new constitution. Such a measure was not incorrect, given the situation. Until such time as the development of the means of production is sufficient to guarantee the rural population a decent standard of life, until the collective farms, properly equipped with modern machinery, have demonstrated in practice their superiority over small-scale individual production, it is necessary to make concessions to small businesses in both the town and, especially, in the countryside. Under Brezhnev, small private plots accounted for only 3 per cent of the total, but produced one-third of meat, milk and vegetables, more than one-third of eggs, and, surprisingly, almost one-fifth of the wool.

The authorities were concerned at the serious problems in the countryside because there is a direct link between agriculture and the production of consumer goods, and therefore the standard of living. In his economic report to the 1966 Party Congress, Alexei Kosygin pointed to the slowdown in the growth rate of real incomes, which he linked, in part, to the low productivity of labour, but also to agriculture:

"As a result of the lag in agriculture, the food and light industries fell short of their targets and this could not help but slow down the growth of the national income and of the nation's prosperity." (Report of the23rd Congress CPSU, p. 175.)

A series of bad harvests culminated in the disaster of 1972. In March 1974 the regime then hailed a big turnaround when 225 million tons had been produced. However, there was a shortage of storage facilities and only 180 million tons were saved. This catastrophe was directly linked to bureaucratic mismanagement, the scourge of Soviet agriculture. Grain was left to rot on the ground for lack of silos, transport dislocation or simple bungling. Later Soviet leaders attempted to overcome the problems of agriculture, but to no avail. The problem was inherent in the bureaucratic regime itself.

Living standards in the 1970s

Before the war, when Stalin announced the dawn of "a happy life", Trotsky pointed out that in the Soviet Union there was only half a pair of shoes for every worker. Under Brezhnev this was no longer the case. In 1979, the USSR was producing more shoes than any other country and there were five pairs of shoes per person. For a period of 30 years after the death of Stalin the rate of consumption grew by an average 3.6 per cent per annum. Living standards more than doubled. True, living standards in the USSR at the end of the 1970s still lagged far behind the West. Nevertheless, consumption continued to rise under Brezhnev, as the following table shows:

Soviet Living Standards 1965-78:


1965
1978

Monthly wage
96.5 roubles
159.9 roubles

Number of doctors
554,000
929,000

Families with TV sets
24 per cent
82 per cent

Families with refrigerators
11 per cent
78 per cent

Living space per person (urban areas)
10 sq. metres
12.7 sq. metres

Consumption of meat/meat products per person
41 kilograms
57 kilograms

Consumption of vegetables per person
72 kilograms
90 kilograms

Consumption of potatoes per person
142 kilograms
120 kilograms

Consumption of bread/grain per person
156 kilograms
140 kilograms



(Source: The Guardian, 17/8/81. Quoted in F. Halliday, The Making of the Second Cold War, p.139.)

However, the growth in living standards gradually slowed down in the 1970s, as the following figures show:

Increase in consumption 1966-78:

1966-70
5 per cent

1971-75
2.9 per cent

1976-78
2.1 per cent

Food consumption in the same period increased in the following proportion:

1966-70
4.2 per cent

1971-75
1.7 per cent

1976-78
0.6 per cent

Marx assumed that the starting point of a movement in the direction of socialism would be a high level of living standards. Only by completely satisfying all the material aspirations of men and women will it be possible to arrive at a level where such aspirations cease to dominate people's lives and thoughts, preparing the way for a qualitatively superior level of human civilisation. So long as scarcity exists, and with it the humiliating struggle for material things, class barbarism, and all its attendant evils, will never be overcome. The vision of a classless society will remain a tantalising phantom, like a horizon which recedes further into the distance as you approach it. This explained the growing mood of scepticism and even cynicism among layers of Soviet society in relation to the hypocritical speeches of the bureaucrats who lived in luxury while the ordinary Soviet citizen had to stand in endless queues to obtain scarce goods.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the living standards of the Soviet population did experience a dramatic improvement in comparison to the past. According to a report in The Guardian in the mid-1980s:

"Almost every home now has a TV set and a refrigerator. Seventy per cent of households have a washing machine, and 40 per cent have a vacuum cleaner and about 15 per cent have a car. Nearly half have a motorbike or a moped." (The Guardian, 7/2/86.)

Moreover, these figures do not tell the whole story. The growth in living standards was achieved with virtually no inflation. Above all, the prices of basic necessities were kept low. Bread was so cheap that the peasants would feed it to their livestock instead of grain. A particularly important gain was low rents. Whereas a worker in the West spends anything between a third and a half of his wage on rent, the situation in the USSR was totally different. Out of a 200 rouble monthly wage, only 10 roubles a month went on rent, and this included hot water, central heating, and, at least in Moscow, free local phone calls. There was a completely free education and health service, no unemployment and a month's free holiday at resorts run by the trade unions. The Soviet Union probably had the best public transport system in the world, with extremely low fares--five kopecks for any distance in Moscow, for example.

However, despite these improvements, living standards still lagged behind those of at least the most advanced capitalist countries. The housing shortage remained serious. Living conditions for the great majority were still very cramped, and in many cases intolerably bad. One quarter of families shared a bathroom and/or kitchen. The workers no longer suffered from the privations of the earlier period. There was no real shortage, at least of the basic commodities. There were queues, of course, but eventually people got what they were waiting for. But the quality of the goods produced under the bureaucratic system was another matter. Trotsky already pointed out before the war that quality escaped the bureaucracy like an elusive phantom. The nearer the product stood to the consumer, as a rule, the poorer the quality. The lack of democratic control revealed itself most glaringly in the field of consumer goods. Above all in a society which claimed to have built "socialism", the material well-being of the population cannot be measured purely in terms of how much bread and potatoes are consumed, or, for that matter, how much meat and butter.

There is an intimate connection between economic growth and living standards. Above all, the correct balance between heavy and light industry, and between industry and agriculture, is a fundamental question. In 1971, the Ministry of Light Industry received complaints about 7.6 million pairs of shoes, 1.5 million pairs of hosiery, 1.7 million items of knit wear, and 175,000 suits. In the first half of 1971, the retail network in Moscow alone rejected 33 million roubles' worth of industrial goods. In the same year total losses from rejected industrial output were estimated at over Rbs600 million, but the journal Finansy USSR commented that "such losses were actually much larger". In 1970 and 1971, 50 per cent of the goods checked by the Inspectorate of the Trade Ministry of the Russian Soviet Republic did not meet official minimum standards. This resulted in the stockpiles of unsold goods in the warehouses increasing yearly. From 1968 to 1971, the unsold surplus came to 32-52 per cent of sales. By early 1972, the surplus totalled Rbs3,400 million.

Here we see the fundamental defect of bureaucratic planning. Without the democratic control and participation of the working class, it inevitably leads to an uncontrolled flourishing of waste, corruption and mismanagement. This was always true--even in the best period in the USSR--but under the conditions of a sophisticated modern economy, producing a million different commodities each year, it became a nightmare. The Soviet press in the period under examination was full of the most appalling examples of bureaucratic bungling. The following is a typical example:

"The more expensive the material is, the fewer clothes required to fulfil the plan!É The cheaper the model, the more cars needed to be manufactured in order to fulfil the plan, and that would require additional capacity and manpowerÉ A power engineer once praised me for leaving the electric light on: 'Good for you! The more energy you consume, the bigger our bonus!' The director of the Riga Electro-Mechanical Plant commented: 'Any quantitative index used as the basis for planning and evaluation will inevitably be one sided and ultimately damaging. If the ton is the measure, output will get heavier. If the rouble is the measure, it will get costlier. If consumer satisfaction were used as the base, then production volume would certainly never be the measure'." (Managers quoted in Literaturnaya Gazeta, November 1976.)

The purely quantitative approach to planning inevitably produced the most grotesque distortions in the absence of the democratic control and participation of the working class:

"If the director can get away with producing only a few styles of shoes, he will have long production runs and be able to cut costs. If he can bias his production toward small-size shoes and away from large ones, he can save on leather inputs. Finally, although the state sets the prices for his shoes, different styles will yield him different profit markups. The director can try to specialise in those styles which offer the highest profit.

"How far the director can go in all this depends on his bargaining position. In the past, this position has been good, indeed. Always less has been produced than the customers would buy. Thus, wholesalers have been fairly easy to deal with; since they could sell anything, why antagonise the producer in a sellers' market? Only the final customer complained bitterly about the results of this system." (David Granick, The Red Executive, p. 34.)

Trotsky pointed out that to portray economic growth purely in terms of volume is like attempting to demonstrate the strength of a man on the basis of chest measurement alone. The purely quantitative approach to targets led to the production of the most heavy and cumbersome vehicles, so that a given number of tonnes would meet the target; or so many thousands of shoes would be produced, but all left-footed. Of course, such "mistakes" would be noticed by the workers, but, in the absence of free speech and independent trade unions, there was no way of denouncing them. Too outspoken criticism would only lead to problems, dismissal, imprisonment, confining in a mental home. It was better to keep your head down and your mouth shut, get your pay packet at the end of the month, and hope that things would get better, which in many ways seemed to be happening.

In a speech at the Party Congress in 1986, Gorbachov described the position in Soviet light industry:

"Last year millions of metres of fabrics and millions of pairs of leather footwear and many other consumer goods were returned to the factories or marked down as inferior grade goods. The losses are significant: wasted raw materials and the wasted labour of hundreds of thousands of workers." And he added: "Bureaucracy is today a serious obstacleÉ Bureaucratic distortions manifest themselves all the stronger where people are held less accountable for what they do." (The Times, 27/2/86.)

Freed from all popular controls, the bureaucracy behaved in an absolutely irresponsible manner. They showed the same short-sightedness, the same criminal disregard for the broader interests of society as the big monopolies. In general, they were just as bad as the bourgeois in relation to the environment. This was shown by the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, by the destruction of the Aral Sea, the poisoning of the Caspian sea and lake Baikal and the sinking of nuclear vessels in the Arctic Ocean.

The absolute mess and chaos was indicated by the crazy proliferation of ministries of all kinds. In the machine-tool sector alone there were no fewer than 11 separate ministries--the Ministry of General Machine Building, the Ministry of Heavy Machine Building, etc. In transport there were five ministries, and so on. There were many examples of the problems caused by this situation. For example, natural gas was discovered in Central Asia. But in order to commence exploitation, they had to obtain the signatures of 27 different ministries and departments. This took seven years, after which the gas had been

THERE, a complete truth and there is more where that came from. These chapters are from a great book called "Russia:from revolution to counter-revolution", which profoundly describes Russia from 1917 to 1996. I suggest you read what your so-called marxists after Lenin did to its programme and stop convincing me that they were Leninsts 'cuz you're starting to be pathetic. These chapters are just a few pieces of the puzzle, so I can post more if you like.




(Edited by Marxman at 8:10 pm on Sep. 2, 2002)

[Edelweiss]

The KPRF has the majority of seats in the Duma, right? I can't see anything postive which they have achieved since they have the majority...

[Marxman]

Exactly, Malte, exactly. Indubitably, they do not even act as a state apparatus. Like I said, they're waiting for holy Stalin to come.

[Anarch]

Uh, yeah, ever heard of the Red-Brown alliance?