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"The entire history of Soviet socialism shows that class
struggle, the struggle to abolish classes, does not end with the seizure of
state power and does not end after seventy years of building socialism, although
in truth the USSR actually had far than seven decades to build socialism, since
it had to devote so much of its time to preparing for wars, fighting wars, and
recovering from them. Indeed the whole idea that the class struggle is over in a
world still dominated by capitalism and imperialism, or within the socialist
state, is itself a manifestation of the class struggle at an ideological level.
Succumbing to that idea is one of the gravest threats to building socialism."
Socialism Betrayed: Chapter 7 "Conclusion and Implications"
page 186.
Isolating selective passages from any book is a tricky game
because the context is often distorted. In the paragraph before this quote,
authors Keeran and Kenny trace what they call Gorbachev's revisionism back to
the late 1920s in the person of Nikolai Bukharin and link "Bukharin, Khrushchev
and Gorbachev" into a consistent political trend within the Soviet party.
The authors state in the previous paragraph and sentence
before the above quote:
"That the tendency that Bukharin, Khrushchev and Gorbachev
represented kept reasserting itself and finally won, bears witness to its
stubborn material roots, no longer in the peasant outlook so tenacious in the
first revolutionary decades but in the spreading commercialism and crime of the
second economy."
Anyone can shoot fish in a barrel and call it a challenging
sport. Bukharin has most certainly taken it on the chin and paid dearly for his
political body of knowledge and economic theory. I have no interest beating a
dead horse.
Another set of questions is posed upon carefully reading how
the authors pose the issues.
"Soviet socialism shows that class struggle, the struggle to
abolish classes, does not end with the seizure of state power"
. . . basically means the essence of the class struggle is to
abolish classes and one needs to be vigilant. Why must one be vigilant? Because
of bourgeois property and the world bourgeoisie and the small scale
production/producers that generates the impulse for exchange . . . the value
relationship and bad ideas of the history of capital in peoples heads.
Well, the issues seem more profound than this.
Class struggle is not a struggle to abolish classes to begin
with . . . rather the class struggle leads to the abolition of classes as they
move in antagonism. The intention is not to be petty but it seems that we have
posed the issues based on a boundary of development of the industrial system and
not on the basis of the industrial system itself as a value producing system.
We cannot abolish value as an economic category just because
we want to or because it is a good idea. Political will and decrees cannot
abolish value as an economic category or classes for that matter. Classes are
formed on the basis of the development of the means of production . . . as this
development reconfigures the form of the laboring process, with the property
relations within.
Class struggle is political. It becomes a life and death fight
to overthrow a social system and create a new one . . . and this life and death
struggle leads to the abolition of classes . . . as they move in antagonism. A
class of producers or form of the laboring process cannot be abolished by
political will or correct ideology . . . but something else must happen in the
mode of production that makes the abolition of a class possible through
implementing policy that hastens a material development . . . already underway.
This is an "economic determinists" observation or as it has
been called . . . a "techno-communist viewpoint" . . . but it seems closer
to the truth than posing the question backwards . . . and it is based on real
history in America.
The sharecropper as a material class of real people was
abolished as the result of changes in the technological regime that replaced the
form of their laboring process and this specific form of agriculture
production. They were abolished as a class. The serf was abolished as a class .
. . the landlord planter was abolished as a class . . . the slave oligarchy was
abolished as a class . . . the industrial capitalist as industrial capitalist
was abolished as a class fragment. This abolition takes place at the hands of
the advance of industry and is put into affect by political means that hasten a
process all ready underway.
One can possess the will and energy to do something or fight
but the results are going to be governed in the last instance by what is
possible during a given historical stage of development of the productive
forces.
It seem to me that what the entire history of Soviet
industrial socialism shows something very different from the idea "the struggle
to abolish classes, does not end with the seizure of state power." Something
radically different emerges from my examination and understanding of industrial
socialism.
What the entire history of Soviet industrial socialism shows
is that you cannot have or forever hope to survive with "the same economic base
as your enemy . . . the bourgeoisie."
The economic base of the bourgeoisie - capital . . . as it
stands erect on its economic legs . . . is the industrial system as a
distinct mode of production. We already know much about how capital arises as an
express of the development of the commodity form of products within the previous
mode of production . . . and everyone agrees that the feudal economic and
social system is not the economic base of bourgeois property as a world
historical force.
Different classes created by changes in the mode of production
. . . that rise and become ruling class for an epoch . . . not only supersede an
obsolete class . . . but always seem to have a different economic base or form
of the organization of the productive forces than the class they sublate and
replace.
In hindsight . . . Hindsight . . .- the fundamental barrier
the Soviets hit was a historical one that was in the past simply called "the law
of value" . . . but this is to abstract and misses the question of whether
or not one can abolish the law of value. Stalin's "Economic Problems of
Socialism In the USSR" makes it clear that political will cannot abolish an
economic law and especially the law of value but we could not answer exactly why
this is so.
Those who attempted to answer the question of the abolition of
the law of value spoke in terms of world revolution in a world that was not
ready for world revolution . . . or in transition from agriculture to industry.
The law of value cannot be abolished during this transition from agriculture to
industry because humanity is being reorganized - torn from landed property
relations, on the basis of exchange itself. And this exchange relation is being
organized and implemented on the basis of an existing stage of development of
the productive forces.
The barrier was the law of value organized as industrial
production or the industrial mode of production - itself. Add to this everything
else from the question of the industrial bureaucracy,
bureaucracy proper to proletarian democracy to the small producer to
the composition of the party to denying the petty bourgeois intellectual control
of the media . . . to the physical boundary limiting the extensive
expansion of the industrial system as a specific stage of development
of electromechanical process and labor.
Socialism Betrayed covers all of these question in an easy to
read format and manner.
Keeran and Kenny covers this question of the media in the
Soviet Union and its use to break the grip of Bolshevik culture and ideology.
The Soviet communists in their booklet from forty years ago invest enormous
attention to this issue.
Fighting for the ideological purity of the party and a
proletarian outlook is important because history has revealed that the modern
communists emerged - Marx and Engles, at a moment in history where we were
destined to fight on a hostile economic basis until another change in the mode
of production was underway.
The generation of communist before us understood this to mean
industrialization was the immediate task and the primary danger was within the
agricultural sector as small producers only willing to alienate their products
on the basis of exchange. All of us were born in this same period and inherited
this framework of logic. This framework of logic made sense for many
decades as we labored within a distinct quantitative boundary of the industrial
system.
What we did not and could not understand before it began to
happen is that a new mode of production meant the leap from industrial society
to post industrial society . . . and as a consequence a radically different
organizational form of the laboring process itself.
All of us can be in historical error. It is a historical error
because no one can see around the corner . . . the "turn" . . . or a new
qualitative ingredient before its emergence and implementation.
There was no way to know in advance that the industrial system
itself is hostile to communism and communist economic organization. Thus, much
of our fight has assumed a bizarre ideological form . . . but it is only bizarre
in hindsight.
In the past this economic hostility "to the proletariat" was
basically defined as petty bourgeois production and the exchange relations based
in agriculture. Keeran and Kenny attempt to updates this theory and shifts the
hostility to the secondary economy in Soviet society. This secondary economy -
the black market, had legal and illegal operations.
Is it even possible to abolish the secondary economy as a
feature of industrial society? NO! . . . a thousand times NO! One can
suppress this secondary economy but we are talking about human being entering
exchange of commodities and bartering based of value - labor exchange.
The bourgeoisie himself . . . standing on the most favorable
conditions possible cannot abolish the black market although a thousand laws are
passed every year to prevent us from engaging in exchange outside the legal
boundary of the system of buying and selling.
The Stalin regime held this secondary economy in check but
could not abolish it. Managers and party officials with no personal inclination
toward theft or privilege entered the secondary economy for many reasons . .
. some folks simply to cut through industrial structures and bureaucratic
red tape.
Industrial infrastructure and bureaucracy is not the same
thing although both interpenetrate. Millions of people were drawn into this
vortex . . . the exchange relationship, that is at bottom a value
relationship. This happens in America right now today on a vast scale.
The Soviet communists described this process as:
"Conditions were such that even the Communists who did not
possess the necessary revolutionary stamina to sustain them through such a
complex situation were drawn into the reactionary vortex of bureaucratic
practices. Therefore, the Leninists method of dealing with the bureaucrats
demanded that it be applied even more firmly and forcefully to the Communists
who had degenerated. This is our answer to the question: Was Stalin right in
proceeding with the cleansing of the bureaucratic apparatus during the period of
his leadership . . ."
We reprinted this pamphlet in 1979 but circulated it amongst
ourselves several years earlier and the older comrades read it before the early
1970s. The point is that I thought that being drawn into "the vortex of
bureaucratic practices" meant a "bad style of work" . . . ideological weakness .
. . revisionism . . . petty bourgeois prejudice . . . without a conception of
the totality that is the industrial mode of production itself.
My understanding of the value system and the meaning of the
value relations would undergo a profound change in the 1990s . . . as the
syndicalist heritage was thrown off.
The impulse towards seeking a market mechanism has proven
itself in real life. This impulse does not arise on the basis of just bourgeois
property or the small producers . . . but as an attribute of the industrial mode
of production itself. This is not stated to dismiss the very real military,
economic and ideological pressure placed on the Soviets by the world bourgeoisie
as it waged a militant campaign standing on its economic base.
The industrial system itself - as a value producing system is
a hostile economic foundation for communism. "Socialism Betrayed" grapples
somewhat with the meaning of the law of value under Soviet Socialism. I have
come to the opinion over the course of my life that one can restrict the law of
value by political fiat . . . but only a profound development in the means of
production can render labor exchange . . . as economic intercourse in human
history . . . obsolete.
The impact of injecting computers and advanced robotics into
the material power of production literally destroys and begins . . . begins . .
. reconfiguring the industrial infrastructure and industrial bureaucracy and
industrial bureaucratic practices, by removing layer after layer of human beings
from production and distribution.
Thus, I have come to the conclusion at this point in my life
that the industrial system itself generates labor exchange as a primitive form
of development of the productive forces . . . and that the industrial system
itself is hostile to communism.
The industrial system is primitive in relationship to our
future . . . not our past or us comparing ourselves with ourselves.
In the context of "Socialism Betrayed" and the questions its
poses . . . it can be stated that the secondary economy or black market cannot
be eliminated at the industrial stage of development. The political and
ideological struggle is to contain the secondary economy . . . as much as
possible . . . so that it does not become an enormous drag that redirects labor
power, resources and energy outside the pathways of reproduction that raises the
standard of living and culture of citizens.
The secondary economy is not a thing in itself or an abstract
danger . . . but a danger in the sense that communists are fighting on a hostile
economic formation that is the industrial system.
This is a very complex social struggle because everyone that
enters the secondary economy becomes a "criminal" under capitalism and
socialism. Is this not proof positive that the industrial system is hostile to
communism . . . an economic system that delivers to everyone on the basis
of from each according to their needs to each according to their ability?
Marx was at least two hundred years in front of us and made
the decision that we would fight right now . . . today . . . to guarantee the
future.
I of course did not think this way a decade ago . . . partly
due to my own syndicalist heritage and the idea of federated workers as
associations and other beliefs utterly shattered by the reality of the
revolution in the mode of production and our transition to post industrial
society.
The most profound criticism is leveled against myself for
refusing to think things out and going against what I knew in my heart. I
secretly hated the industrial system and being pinned to the machine and lashed
out at the intellegenica because all of their propositions meant I had to do the
work I was already doing and was condemned to such work for eternity. My heart
told me I could not live in a society that was one big industrial machine of
electromechanical process . . . and the petty bourgeois intellectual felt the
same . . . only he conceived such a society as freedom for himself and family
and me doing another 30 year tenure.
I am getting old enough to understand that all of us can be in
historical error and the need to get honest with the keyboard. History without
historical narrative in the first person "I" and "we" is the first sign of the
"big lie." Communist over 50 years old must state their actions and impressions
as they have lived their lives as individuals molded by the industrial system.
The question deepens on the basis of its own presentation.
What does it mean to abolish classes . . . if human will cannot in fact abolish
a class in front of its dissolution as the result of changes in the mode of
production? What do we really mean by class? Class is a material category based
on a certain stage of development of the productive forces and a property
relations as a totality.
This is very painful stuff for me . . . man. I know of no
communists that could sustain their orientation in heavy industry and the trade
union over the course of three decades . . . and hundreds if not thousands of us
entered the battle in the 1970s. We hit several barriers and the historical wall
and did not know it. Ideology alone . . . hatred of our class enemy sustained us
. . . when what was required is greater and greater theoretical clarity.
"Socialism Betrayed" crashes into the historical wall and has
not come to grips with the industrial system as a distinct mode of production
and value producing system.
Melvin P. |
