Harry Cleaver:
>Raya's
>analysis of the Soviet 5-year plans concluded that they were very much
>geared to as rapid accumulation as possible at the expense of workers and
>peasants, thus effectively "for profit" --understood as surplus labor and
>surplus value-- while minimizing the meeting of worker and peasant "needs"
>as much as possible. THAT was the analysis, in a nutshell.
Yes, this is the analysis and it is faulty. This type of analysis can not
distinguish between North Korea and South Korea. Both have extensive
state-owned industry and employ various forms of planning. The difference
is that the North had a proletarian revolution and expropriated the
bourgeoisie, while the South did not.
Any society, especially those in the throes of underdevelopment, have to
generate capital internally. Preobrezhensky and Trotsky argued for the
primitive accumlation of capital in the early years of the USSR. Their
arguments were beyond reproach. When Stalin turned against the Kulaks and
embarked on rapid industrialization, many people assumed that he had
implemented the left opposition's program. Nothing could have been further
from the truth. The "needs" that were being attended to were those of the
bureaucracy, not the worker and the peasant. This, however, does not mean
that the USSR had become capitalist in this period. It simply means that
the bureaucracy was taking a bigger piece of the pie than it deserved.
Resentment over the greed of the bureaucracy would generate protest. Hence
the police state.
A similar pattern existed in the Teamsters Union under Jimmy Hoffa. The
teamster bureaucracy enjoyed a bourgeois life-style while ripping off the
ranks. Any teamster who complained got his or her teeth kicked in. This
does not mean that the Teamsters Union was not a union, just one that
needed reform.
Louis Proyect
