economy minus the service sector, the USSR has stagnated at 67 per cent the size of the US economy since 1975.
Even given that• the figures for the US economy contain a lot of and fictitious aggerates the differences, the overall picture is clear. After five decades in which the Soviet economy progressively overtook its capitalist relative stagnation has USSR is no longer gaining in terms of economic size on the largest capitalist power.
But if there is a relative stagnation of the Soviet necessary to be clear as to the nature of this slowdown and crisis.
The USSR does not suffer from nor since the 1920s has it ever suffered La crisis of classic capitalist overproduction, It does from slumps caused by the decline in the rate of profit which affect western capitalism. There is no mass unemployment in the Soviet Union, no business cycles. All those who make analogies between the USSR totally misunderstand nature — as well as the way out of its problems.
A move made by the Soviet Union in the direction of market mechanisms, of the type discussed to some limited degree at the Soviet does not mean the USSR is moving cowards capitalism. This is important because there was a great deal of loose alk appeared in western around a year ago about how China moving peacefully capitalism by teng marke mechanisms into its economy. Trotsky: fought for workers' democracy But the relations between Chinese state and any capitalist forces within it were already outlined by Mao Tse-tung in June 1949 in an essay On ite People's Democratic Dictatorship He wrote: "The people have a powerful state apparatus in their hands -is no need to fear rebellion by the nasonal bourgeoisie.
The scare apparatus of China double which C.rival set in. The is also defends the nationalised China ly in thé USSR suffer It suppresses East europear a capitalist its troduced into the peacefully party congress, towards less Soviet the first Five Year Plan ultra-centralized, time.
agriculture centralized down to the lowest level, troduction of Stalin.
the situation.
Manifesto that: there degrees, all bourgeoisie. established by the revolution of 1949 property in not private capitalism. Equalthe entire state apparatus of the Soviet Union defends the nationalised property of that economy.
Many malor capitalist class from developing. The small traders and small capitalists which exist in some dominate large scale nationalised production defended by the state, nor do they possess political power. There are no 'market' reforms which can be reinUSSR which will LIUM papers and a capitalist ruling clare gradually restore What exists in the USSR is an economic crisis of a different type to that of capitalism, and one that requires quite ditterent solutions. It is a. crisis of an economic system that is firstly totally bureaucratised and, linked to that, far too rigid and centralised. The USSR would benefit from moving centralised planned economy. In order to understand that it is worth placing the development of the Gorbacher's reforms, in an historical context.
The model which the majority of the left in Britain has always had of a planned economy is that of Stalin during La massive, completely super planned economy. The strong critiques made by Trotsky of the Five Year Plan at the catastroomic consequences. still visible fifty years later, on Soviet development But in reality this model of an ultranationalised acleve was an inhimself always stressed that the almost complete nationalisation and centralisation of the Soviet economy which occurred during lines 1918, almost immediately after the October revolution in Russia, had been damaging and had been forced on the Bolsheviks by the political needs of the Marx had written in the Communist 'The proletariat use its political supremacy to wrest, by capital the In Russia itself the Bolsheviks had put forward just such a of programme - proposing the establishment of the state power of the working the "dictatorship of the lelarial wich wowa imitaly nol dave nationalised but controlled regulated the capitalist economy. Outbreak But because of the political situation in Russia, the outbreak of civil war early in 1918, the dictatorship of the proletariat had not been able to pass through a phase of regulation and conthe capitalists in Russia.
Bolsheviks for political/military reasons had been forced to go on to nationalise and centralise virtually the eneconolly a move which was politically necessary in the situation but extremely damaging economically.
Lenin wrote in October 1921, in his report The New Economic Policy, that: 'At the beginning of 1918 we expected a period in which peaceful construction would be possible. But we were mistaken, because in 1918 a military danger overtook us in the shape of the Czechoslovak mutiny and the outbreak of civil war, which dragged on until 1920. 'Partly owing to the war problems that overwhelmed us and partly owing to the desperate position in which the Republic found itself when the imperialist war ended - owing to these circumstances, and a number made mistake deciding to go over directly to communist production and distribution.
'We thought that under the surplusfood appropriation system the peasants would provide us with the required quantity of grain, which distribute among the factories and thus Cut us OTOCUCCON distrubution.
'I cannot say that we pictured this plan as definitely and as clearly as that; but we acted approximately on those That, unfortunately, is a fact.
I say unfortunately, because brief experience convinced us that that line was wrong, that it ran counter to what we had previously written about the transition from capitalism to socialism, namely, that it would be impossible to bypass the period of socialist accoun ting and control in approaching even the lower stage of communism.
'Ever since 1917, when the problem taking power arose Bolsheviks explained it to the whole people, pro- been definitely stressing the necessity through socialist accounting and control from capitalist society (and the less developed it is the longer the transition will take) to even one of the approaches to communist society.' The extremley tions centralisation after 1918 by Lenin put it, to 'a very severe defeat on The the economic front.' Starting in 1921, with the New Economic Policy (NEP), the Bolsheviks moved back drastically in favour of market mechanisms in the economy, allowed small scale capitalist enterprise to restart, and started making economic concessions to foreign capitalists.
similar steps today, were hailed by those outside Russia as marking a shift of the USSR reality the NEP was a necessary shift on real economic field framework of the USSR remaining a state which prevented any systematic development of capitalism in the country.
Destroy As Lenin wrote: "The capitalist class of had adopted the tactics (in 1918) of forcing us into a desperate and relentless class struggle, and that compelled us to destroy the old relations to a far larger extent than we had a first intended.
Instead Lenin argued that it had been correct that 'the state power — the proletariat - made an attempt to pass as gradually as possible, breaking up as little of the old as possible, to the new social relations while adapting itself, as much as possible, one might say, to the conditions then prevailing.' The extreme centralist command economv which was introduced in 1918 by the Bolsheviks because of the civil war, and was reimposed by Stalin in 1929 for his own bureaucratic purposes, does not provide a model which socialists aré aiming at or should take as their own. Other countries in which capitalist political power has been overthrown, as in Nicaragua, tunately been able to avoid so far the extreme measures which the Bolsheviks the were forced to take — not to mention our theoretical literature has market transitior different type which exists.
rapid nationalisa- security system. undertaken Society the Bolsheviks led, as These measures at the time, as with bureaucracy. back to capitalism. In opposed within the contemplate Stalin's 'unique' contribution.
Naturally reintroduction of greatel mechanisms into the USSR would have some undesirable concequences. It would produce at least frictional unemployment and increase a of inequality to that All these would require radical overhaul of the Soviet socia But without some loosening of the ultra-centralised economy the USSR cannot resume its major economic adSuch a loosening of the super centralised economy would, incidentally and most importantly, also lead to greater areas of ubertv in the sovie Union and create better conditions for the political revival of the working class and weakening of the position of the It is precisely because he is totally to any weakening of the bureaucracy that Gobachev is attemp ting so far to keep the reforms limited The problem for Gorbachev is that the change that is really necessary to revive the Soviet economy is the one he cannot the removal of the bureaucracy whose spokesperson he is