Re: The Soviet Union and high technology: Correction
I thing that planning is possible nationally for agriculture, industry and the services, but planning the technological progress is possible only globally. Technology progress means unemployment, and that was not acceptable in the Soviet Union, so the bureaucracy waited for a stability in technological progress to introduce it without unemployment, but the stability never came. All Soviet planning was based on the old paradigm of petroleum, electricity, fordism and taylorism. It could not introduce the new techologies without generating unemployment in the civilian sectors, since technologies were always changing. The abolition of whole employment destroyed the popularity of the Soviet system. Renato Pompeu - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 11:25 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] The Soviet Union and high technology: Correction Should read:Planning IS NOT a property relation and socialism as a political form of property, means reproduction outside of the law system that compels private capital to follow a circuit of profitability.
Re: The Soviet Union and high technology: Correction
>Planning as a property relation and socialism is a political form of property, means reproduction outside of the law system that compels private capital to follow a circuit of profitability.
Re: The Soviet Union and high technology
the property relations remaining intact. Property relations means ownership of tools, instruments, machinery and energy deployment. Although in real life history social relations and property relations evolve as a unity they are not the same. Stated another way, the abolition of slavery was a social revolution altering the form of social relations without a preceding or corresponding revolution in the technological regime and the property relations within. What would change the social relations in agriculture is the technological regime in the form of the tractor, chemical fertilizers, etc., - and currently the biogenetic revolution. The sharecropper and the landlord planter was destroyed on the basis of the technological regime with the property relations within. Here is where the technological regime in the Soviet Union hit the wall in respects to the development of its agriculture. An industrial worker expresses a specific social relations of production that is materially different from the worker during the period of manufacture and handicraft. Marx and Engels describes this difference in all their major works. Yes, the property relations permeates social relations. A careful reading of Marx famous statement on the mode of production (CCPE - Contribution) will clarify why he uses the expression "property relations within." Allow me to develop the argument. Comrade Mark writes: >Production in capitalist society is . . .always and first of all, the reproduction of capitalist social relations. A commodity is a use-value and also the bearer of those social relations. As a thought experiment, try to conceive of any kind of socialism which is dedicated to the production of commodities, and which is not thereby just another exploiter-society to be resisted and overthrown.< Socialism is not a social relations of production but expresses a political form of property relations. "Socialist production" is short speak for industrial commodity production without private ownership of capital driving the reproduction process. Production and expanding reproduction on the basis of bourgeois property inevitably leads to the flow of capital - deployment of labor, not simply flowing to areas of profitability but concretely light industry, where the cycles of profitably turn faster. Socialism did not and cannot create new social relations of production. This is so because social relations are not property relations but configuration riveted to the stage of development of the material power of production - the technological regime, with the property relation with. I of course will be called a techno-communist, which I accept as praise because Marx states point blank it is the technological regime - the material power of production, with the property relations within that changes and compels social revolution. Socialism can only change the political form of the relationship between the various classes and groups that make up the social relations in industrial society. That is to say, socialism redefines the law defining property and the relationship of people to property in the process of production. Socialism can be overthrown because it defines a property relations not a historically evolved stage of development of society - the techno-regime. Socialism is not dedicated to commodity production as such because commodity production is a historically evolved stage of production. Commodity production is really slang - short speak, meaning "the commodity form of the social product." What human beings create as the labor process is products. It is only at a certain point in the evolution of the material power of production that these products become commodities or social products assume a commodity form. Socialism is dedicated to preserving a form of property relations and the communist revolution is the most radical in human history because it destroys property, rather than change its form. These matter require contemplation and freeing oneself from the doctrines and ideology - not political tradition, of the past. Classes and class society is not the product of property relations. Classes and class society grows out of the division of labor in society, the emergence, growth and evolution of the technological regime with the property relations within. Here is what Marx states: "At a certain stage of the development of the material power of the productive forces of society, it comes in conflict with the existing relations of production, or - what is but a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters." Here is what is meant, which is pretty straight forward At a certain stage of the development of the technological regime of society, it - (the technological regime) comes in conflict with the existing relations
The Soviet Union and high technology
(posted to marxmail by Jose Perez) >>I think that is probably correct. The Soviet Union was quite successful in negotiating the transition from an agrarian economy to an industrial one but they ran aground when they attempted to make the transition to an economy based on high technology.<< I don't buy it. Just look at the space station. It is being kept aloft and staffed by good, old, reliable, "Stalinist" Soviet tech; the "high tech" military-aerospace-industrial complex's Space Shuttle fleet has proved to be a boondoggle beyond anyone's wildest imaginings. It costs a half billion dollars or more for each space shuttle launch, that's more than $60 million a seat for the maximum design crew of eight. The Russians sell seats on the Soyuz for $20 million and that's about the complete cost of a mission. And of course Soyuz don't have the same kind of failure rate as the shuttle. That technology built and operated the MIR space station and its predecessors for a couple of decades and has been steadily refined and upgraded over the years. It forms the basis for the Chinese human space flight program and if it doesn't also become the basis for the "next generation" U.S. human space flight vehicle it will be because the U.S. has way too much money and way too little sense. The irony is that the old Soviet Union's economy could comfortably afford to build and maintain the space station, despite the supposed economic crisis. The new capitalist Russia most decidedly cannot unless they have paying passengers which is why the Spaniard went on that last flight. It was not socialized property forms that caused the real economic crisis in the old empire of the tsars; it was the reintroduction of capitalism that trashed the economy and with it the standard of living and even life expectancy of working people. As for making a successful transition to "high technology," just look at how the U.S. is doing it. There is virtually no production of consumer electronics left in the United States, nor of computer components save the CPU silicon. It is said the U.S. is moving towards an "information economy." Well, you can't drive information, you can't eat information, you can't build houses out of information. What the U.S. has been tending to keep are products where "intellectual property" -- government enforced monopolies -- guarantee such monstrous superprofits as to make direct manufacturing costs basically irrelevant. This includes all sorts of "cultural" production from vacuous corporate "strategic branding" advertising campaigns to even more vacuous movies and music. A lot of American companies are being run on the idea that advertising and design are what gives products value. They all envy Steve Jobs. But there is a reason why Apple retains only a sliver of market share in computers. Jobs and his collaborators make way-cool toys for the boys, and there is lot of money to be made in the luxury products niche. But it is just that, a niche, an extremely narrow foundation for the world's biggest economy. Each sliver of silicon with a dollar's worth of labor that Intel sells for $100 represents $99 that has been stolen from someone. Overwhelmingly that "someone" is the colonial and semicolonial world. The value is transferred through unequal exchange, the financial rape and looting of the third world, the "brain" drain (which is just a part of a much bigger "labor power" drain), predatory trade practices (subsidies, dumping, quotas, tariffs, etc.) and various other mechanisms. The problem with the "information economy" is that information wants to be free. The more information becomes detached from traditional physical substrates and becomes trivially easy to copy and distribute, the more transparent this truth becomes. The free software foundations types want it to be "free as in freedom, not as in free beer," but it is quite transparent it wants to be free in *all* senses. The only way to prevent it is by restoring the status quo ante, i.e., by making it no longer trivially easy to copy and distribute information. Thus we have Microsoft's Palladium project, corrupt audio disks, rights restricted rental ripoffs masquerading as Napster and all the rest of it. There's a bill been submitted to Congress by that copyright cartel lapdog Feinstein and some other witless bought-and-paid-for media monopoly stooge to make movie sharing on the Internet a felony. Like it's legal now, and the reason I keep having to add ever-larger hard drives every few months to my home network is that people haven't minded paying the $150,000 per file hit congress decreed for sharing files on the Internet in the mid-1990's. But the real solution is something like Microsoft's Digital Rights Management scheme, but o
[PEN-L:9212] The back-to-the-Soviet Union candidates
>From The Economist July 10-July16 Ukraine Grim choices K I E V NEARLY eight years after independence from the Soviet Union, many of the candidates in Ukraines presidential election, due in October, say they want to go back, more or less, to the old days. And at least three out of the seven most serious say they want to recreate the Soviet Union in one guise or anotherwith Ukraine inside it. Even candidates who claim to want reform, President Leonid Kuchma included, hark back to the Soviet Union in other respects. Mr Kuchmas heavy-handed tactics smack of the era when a vote of 99% in favour of the incumbent was pretty average. Ukraine must follow the European road, he said recently. Changing the president would mean changing the political course: I have no right to let that happen. Hardly the spirit of democracy. Certainly, if various of the proclamations by other candidates are to be believed, Ukraine would veer sharply in another direction under several of Mr Kuchmas rivals. Parliaments speaker, for instance, Oleksandr Tkachenko, has been full of enthusiasm for the (so far mainly theoretical) reunion of Russia and Belarus, clearly implying that Ukraine should join it. Piotr Simonenko, head of Ukraines Communist Party and another candidate for president, favours that three-country link too. Natalia Vitrenko, running for the Progressive Socialist Party, wants the entire Soviet Union put back together. Each of these three old-guard candidates is well up with Mr Kuchma in the opinion polls. An analyst at the East-West Centre, a think-tank in Kiev, sayswith some justificationthat the forthcoming election could decide whether Ukraine has a future as an independent state. The back-to-the-Soviet Union candidates certainly have supporters, especially in Ukraines east and south, where ethnic Russians (numbering about 10m out of Ukraines 50m people) and Ukrainians with old-left sympathies are most numerous. In 1991, even they voted for independence, thinking that Ukraine was being exploited by the rest of the Soviet Union and that independence would bring prosperity. Eight years on, GDP has fallen by two-thirds. Easterners are particularly despondent. NATOs war over Kosovo has also helped set Ukrainian minds against the West. Though the Socialist Partys Oleksandr Moroz, a former speaker of parliament, is casting himself as a Scandinavian type of social democrat (albeit with the expectation of winning a lot of communist votes), the prevailing mood may also prod him into pandering to nostalgia for the Soviet Union. Of the wily old operators, Mr Kuchma apart, only Yevhen Marchuk, a former KGB boss for Ukraine, is still clearly pro-western. In his determination to fight back, Mr Kuchma is playing dirty. Last month the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which tries, among other things, to encourage democratic habits, said his tactics could harm Ukraines relations with western institutions. Some of the presidents men have told television bosses that, if they give presidential challengers air-time, they may lose their licences or find that advertisers withdraw their business. The electoral commission has been helping the president, too. For example, it made life hard for Mr Moroz by stalling for a month over whether it would hand his party the forms it needed to get the minimum 1m voters signatures entitling him to run. Were facing a deliberate, planned campaign to stop me taking part in the election, complains Mr Moroz, who says some of his partys buildings have been set on fire and his supporters attacked. Recent events in Donetsk, the coal-mining area in the east that is a hotbed of anti-Kuchma feeling and happens also to be the countrys most populous region, have been particularly murky. Ivan Ponomarev, the head of the regions assembly and an enemy of Mr Kuchmas, mysteriously resigned in May. The chief beneficiary has been Viktor Yanukovich, the regio
Re: Ecology in the Soviet Union, part 1
On 25 Nov Louis wrote, in part: [] > Podiapolski recalls the outcome of the meeting with Lenin: > > "Having asked me some questions about the military and political situation > in the Astrakhan' region, Vladimir Ilich expressed his approval for all of > our initiatives and in particular the one concerning the project for the > zapovednik. He stated that the cause of conservation was important not only > for the Astrakhan krai [does anybody know what this means?], but for the > whole republic as well."^^ This is the first that I've noticed this query, and certainly no one has addressed it publicly. That's no misprint; a krai is simply an area of land, usually associated with a city or other distinct location. This is a very old indigenous word, not borrowed like rayon (region) or respublika; I'm not sure whether it's an administrative designation, ethnic or geographical, as I'm answering without reference material. valis
Ecology in the Soviet Union, part 1
Polluted rivers, deforestation, noxious smokestack emissions and Chernobyl. That is what comes to mind when we think of the former Soviet Union. Like much of the history of the former Soviet Union, there is another side to the story. Just as there were political alternatives to Stalin, there were alternative possibilities to the way that the planned economy dealt with nature. Douglas R. Weiner's "Models of Nature: Ecology, Conservation, and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Union" (Indiana Univ., 1988) is, as far as I know, the most detailed account of the efforts of the Russian government to implement a "green" policy. This story starts, as you would expect, with the Bolshevik revolution. While Lenin has the reputation of being a crude "productivist," the actual record was quite the opposite. Although Lenin wanted to increase Soviet Russia's productive power, he thought that nature had to be respected. The Communist Party issued a decree "On Land" in 1918. It declared all forests, waters, and minerals to be the property of the state, a prerequisite to rational use. When the journal "Forests of the Republic" complained that trees were being chopped down wantonly, the Soviet government issued a stern decree "On Forests" at a meeting chaired by Lenin in May of 1918. From then on, forests would be divided into an exploitable sector and a protected one. The purpose of the protected zones would specifically be to control erosion, protect water basins and the "preservation of monuments of nature." This last stipulation is very interesting when you compare it to the damage that is about to take place in China as a result of the Yangtze dam. The beautiful landscapes which inspired Chinese artists and poets for millennia is about to disappear, all in the name of heightened "productiveness." What's surprising is that the Soviet government was just as protective of game animals as the forests, this despite the revenue-earning possibilities of fur. The decree "On Hunting Seasons and the Right to Possess Hunting Weapons" was approved by Lenin in May 1919. It banned the hunting of moose and wild goats and brought the open seasons in spring and summer to an end. These were some of the main demands of the conservationists prior to the revolution and the Communists satisfied them completely. The rules over hunting were considered so important to Lenin that he took time out from deliberations over how to stop the White Armies in order to meet with the agronomist Podiapolski. Podialpolski urged the creation of "zapovedniki", roughly translatable as "nature preserves." Russian conservationists had pressed this long before the revolution. In such places, there would be no shooting, clearing, harvesting, mowing, sowing or even the gathering of fruit. The argument was that nature must be left alone. These were not even intended to be tourist meccas. They were intended as ecological havens where all species, flora and fauna would maintain the "natural equilibrium [that] is a crucial factor in the life of nature." Podiapolski recalls the outcome of the meeting with Lenin: "Having asked me some questions about the military and political situation in the Astrakhan' region, Vladimir Ilich expressed his approval for all of our initiatives and in particular the one concerning the project for the zapovednik. He stated that the cause of conservation was important not only for the Astrakhan krai [does anybody know what this means?], but for the whole republic as well." Podiapolski sat down and drafted a resolution that eventually was approved by the Soviet government in September 1921 with the title "On the Protection of Nature, Gardens, and Parks." A commission was established to oversee implementation of the new laws. It included a geographer-anthropologist, a mineralogist, two zoologists, an ecologist. Heading it was Vagran Ter-Oganesov, a Bolshevik astronomer who enjoyed great prestige. The commission first established a forest zapovednik in Astrakhan, according to Podiapolski's desires Next it created the Ilmenski zapovednik, a region which included precious minerals. Despite the presence of untapped riches, the Soviet government thought that Miass deposits located there were much more valuable for what they could teach scientists about geological processes. Scientific understanding took priority over the accumulation of capital. The proposal was endorsed by Lenin himself who thought that pure scientific research had to be encouraged. And this was at a time when the Soviet Union was desperate for foreign currency. In my next post, I will cover the period of the NEP. Louis Proyect
The Soviet Union
There are many who say that the fall of the Soviet Union was the consequence of bad policy. That is the sum total of their political analysis explaining why the Soviet Union collapsed. Some people blame the policies of Gorbachov, some people blame Khrushchev. They even make a fetish of pinpointing the exact time of the betrayal of socialism, when bad policies began to destroy socialism. Reciting the policies and the results of policies of the former Soviet regime is not a scientific reflection of what occurred there, or anywhere else for that matter. Policy is a very definite formulation by a group of people who want to advocate certain things. However, if the internal basis for those certain things is not present, no amount of good or bad policies will bring them about. If the internal basis for the destruction of the Soviet Union had not existed, the policies of Khrushchev, Gorbachov and all the other revisionists would not have resulted in the destruction of the Soviet Union. The reasons, the internal basis, is much more profound than that. There is the simple example of the egg that is kept at a certain temperature until it hatches. If a stone were placed there instead of the egg, it doesn't matter what temperature or conditions are employed it will not hatch. By the 1950s the Soviet Union had developed to the initial stage of socialism. The socialist journey had barely begun. Even the economy was far from fully socialized. All the fundamental questions were yet to be resolved: in the spheres of philosophy, and economic and political theory, and all other spheres of thought. Instead of dealing with these problems of the socialist system and finding a way forward; in place of making a contribution to resolve the problems that had arisen in the relationship of human beings to the socialist society and amongst themselves, in the relations among the individuals, collectives and society; the problems of consciousness and being; and other issues that needed answers; there was capitulation to the old, to the old way of thinking and doing things. Objectively, there was in existence two groups of people which consolidated the old and together constituted the anti-human factor for the restoration of capitalism: the overthrown classes were still very strong, they had connections both within the Soviet Union and abroad and they carried out extensive activities to serve their interests; secondly, there were degenerate elements within the state structures, within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the mass organizations and military. These elements were primed to be bought out by imperialism and capitulate to the pressure for the restoration of capitalism. Externally there was the pressure of the imperialist countries, especially the U.S. All this together constitutes an objective basis for the destruction of socialism and the restoration of capitalism. However, having said this, the situation was far from disastrous. These problems were a result of the successes of socialism and the leadership of J. V. Stalin: socialist industrialization, collectivization of the peasantry; the defeat of Nazism and fascism; the spread of communist parties throughout the world. These successes cried out to be consolidated in victory. If the Soviet Union after the death of Comrade Stalin had still been led by a genuine Communist Party, and if that Party had persisted in a stepwise way on the same socialist road of opposing those elements who were for the restoration of capitalism, those reactionary elements who were inside the Communist Party and the state structures; if the CPSU had sorted out the problems of theory that had emerged, the Soviet Union would have triumphed; it would not have collapsed but would have moved socialism to an entirely new stage. They would have accomplished this even if the U.S. imperialists had unleashed all-out war on them. In the 1970's, Brezhnev introduced a massive program of militarization of the Soviet Union. He fully committed the country to the arms race. It was openly stated that the military might of the Soviet Union was the way to protect the Soviet Union. Superiority of arms would guarantee the survival of socialism and the Soviet Union, Brezhnev stated. He also presented the imperialist thesis of "limited sovereignty" to justify the conversion of the countries of eastern-Europe into satellites of the Soviet Union, and justify the existence of the Warsaw Pact as an aggressive military alliance in contention with NATO. All of this talk to promote the arms race was merely the gibberish of those who were fully engaged in restoring capitalism. Even a simple comparison with the 1930s shows the difference of who was in control. Stalin stood against those who insisted on militarizing in the face of the Nazi threat. This was a big accusation against Stalin, that he was deliberately keeping the Soviet Union militarily weak and a
[PEN-L:8236] The Soviet Union
There are many who say that the fall of the Soviet Union was the consequence of bad policy. That is the sum total of their political analysis explaining why the Soviet Union collapsed. Some people blame the policies of Gorbachov, some people blame Khrushchev. They even make a fetish of pinpointing the exact time of the betrayal of socialism, when bad policies began to destroy socialism. Reciting the policies and the results of policies of the former Soviet regime is not a scientific reflection of what occurred there, or anywhere else for that matter. Policy is a very definite formulation by a group of people who want to advocate certain things. However, if the internal basis for those certain things is not present, no amount of good or bad policies will bring them about. If the internal basis for the destruction of the Soviet Union had not existed, the policies of Khrushchev, Gorbachov and all the other revisionists would not have resulted in the destruction of the Soviet Union. The reasons, the internal basis, is much more profound than that. There is the simple example of the egg that is kept at a certain temperature until it hatches. If a stone were placed there instead of the egg, it doesn't matter what temperature or conditions are employed it will not hatch. By the 1950s the Soviet Union had developed to the initial stage of socialism. The socialist journey had barely begun. Even the economy was far from fully socialized. All the fundamental questions were yet to be resolved: in the spheres of philosophy, and economic and political theory, and all other spheres of thought. Instead of dealing with these problems of the socialist system and finding a way forward; in place of making a contribution to resolve the problems that had arisen in the relationship of human beings to the socialist society and amongst themselves, in the relations among the individuals, collectives and society; the problems of consciousness and being; and other issues that needed answers; there was capitulation to the old, to the old way of thinking and doing things. Objectively, there was in existence two groups of people which consolidated the old and together constituted the anti-human factor for the restoration of capitalism: the overthrown classes were still very strong, they had connections both within the Soviet Union and abroad and they carried out extensive activities to serve their interests; secondly, there were degenerate elements within the state structures, within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the mass organizations and military. These elements were primed to be bought out by imperialism and capitulate to the pressure for the restoration of capitalism. Externally there was the pressure of the imperialist countries, especially the U.S. All this together constitutes an objective basis for the destruction of socialism and the restoration of capitalism. However, having said this, the situation was far from disastrous. These problems were a result of the successes of socialism and the leadership of J. V. Stalin: socialist industrialization, collectivization of the peasantry; the defeat of Nazism and fascism; the spread of communist parties throughout the world. These successes cried out to be consolidated in victory. If the Soviet Union after the death of Comrade Stalin had still been led by a genuine Communist Party, and if that Party had persisted in a stepwise way on the same socialist road of opposing those elements who were for the restoration of capitalism, those reactionary elements who were inside the Communist Party and the state structures; if the CPSU had sorted out the problems of theory that had emerged, the Soviet Union would have triumphed; it would not have collapsed but would have moved socialism to an entirely new stage. They would have accomplished this even if the U.S. imperialists had unleashed all-out war on them. In the 1970's, Brezhnev introduced a massive program of militarization of the Soviet Union. He fully committed the country to the arms race. It was openly stated that the military might of the Soviet Union was the way to protect the Soviet Union. Superiority of arms would guarantee the survival of socialism and the Soviet Union, Brezhnev stated. He also presented the imperialist thesis of "limited sovereignty" to justify the conversion of the countries of eastern-Europe into satellites of the Soviet Union, and justify the existence of the Warsaw Pact as an aggressive military alliance in contention with NATO. All of this talk to promote the arms race was merely the gibberish of those who were fully engaged in restoring capitalism. Even a simple comparison with the 1930s shows the difference of who was in control. Stalin stood against those who insisted on militarizing in the face of the Nazi threat. This was a big accusation against Stalin, that he was deliberately keeping the Soviet Union militarily weak and a
[PEN-L:8236] The Soviet Union
There are many who say that the fall of the Soviet Union was the consequence of bad policy. That is the sum total of their political analysis explaining why the Soviet Union collapsed. Some people blame the policies of Gorbachov, some people blame Khrushchev. They even make a fetish of pinpointing the exact time of the betrayal of socialism, when bad policies began to destroy socialism. Reciting the policies and the results of policies of the former Soviet regime is not a scientific reflection of what occurred there, or anywhere else for that matter. Policy is a very definite formulation by a group of people who want to advocate certain things. However, if the internal basis for those certain things is not present, no amount of good or bad policies will bring them about. If the internal basis for the destruction of the Soviet Union had not existed, the policies of Khrushchev, Gorbachov and all the other revisionists would not have resulted in the destruction of the Soviet Union. The reasons, the internal basis, is much more profound than that. There is the simple example of the egg that is kept at a certain temperature until it hatches. If a stone were placed there instead of the egg, it doesn't matter what temperature or conditions are employed it will not hatch. By the 1950s the Soviet Union had developed to the initial stage of socialism. The socialist journey had barely begun. Even the economy was far from fully socialized. All the fundamental questions were yet to be resolved: in the spheres of philosophy, and economic and political theory, and all other spheres of thought. Instead of dealing with these problems of the socialist system and finding a way forward; in place of making a contribution to resolve the problems that had arisen in the relationship of human beings to the socialist society and amongst themselves, in the relations among the individuals, collectives and society; the problems of consciousness and being; and other issues that needed answers; there was capitulation to the old, to the old way of thinking and doing things. Objectively, there was in existence two groups of people which consolidated the old and together constituted the anti-human factor for the restoration of capitalism: the overthrown classes were still very strong, they had connections both within the Soviet Union and abroad and they carried out extensive activities to serve their interests; secondly, there were degenerate elements within the state structures, within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the mass organizations and military. These elements were primed to be bought out by imperialism and capitulate to the pressure for the restoration of capitalism. Externally there was the pressure of the imperialist countries, especially the U.S. All this together constitutes an objective basis for the destruction of socialism and the restoration of capitalism. However, having said this, the situation was far from disastrous. These problems were a result of the successes of socialism and the leadership of J. V. Stalin: socialist industrialization, collectivization of the peasantry; the defeat of Nazism and fascism; the spread of communist parties throughout the world. These successes cried out to be consolidated in victory. If the Soviet Union after the death of Comrade Stalin had still been led by a genuine Communist Party, and if that Party had persisted in a stepwise way on the same socialist road of opposing those elements who were for the restoration of capitalism, those reactionary elements who were inside the Communist Party and the state structures; if the CPSU had sorted out the problems of theory that had emerged, the Soviet Union would have triumphed; it would not have collapsed but would have moved socialism to an entirely new stage. They would have accomplished this even if the U.S. imperialists had unleashed all-out war on them. In the 1970's, Brezhnev introduced a massive program of militarization of the Soviet Union. He fully committed the country to the arms race. It was openly stated that the military might of the Soviet Union was the way to protect the Soviet Union. Superiority of arms would guarantee the survival of socialism and the Soviet Union, Brezhnev stated. He also presented the imperialist thesis of "limited sovereignty" to justify the conversion of the countries of eastern-Europe into satellites of the Soviet Union, and justify the existence of the Warsaw Pact as an aggressive military alliance in contention with NATO. All of this talk to promote the arms race was merely the gibberish of those who were fully engaged in restoring capitalism. Even a simple comparison with the 1930s shows the difference of who was in control. Stalin stood against those who insisted on militarizing in the face of the Nazi threat. This was a big accusation against Stalin, that he was deliberately keeping the Soviet Union militarily weak and a
