Part 9 Our "ML" attempts to explain the functioning of the state power in Soviet society in a lengthy passage of which below is a reasonable summation.
>>This is the fundamental contradiction between the Bolshevik program and Soviet reality, says Trotsky. So long as inequalities in the sphere of consumption continue, so long as âbourgeois lawâ continues to dominate, a bureaucracy is bound to rise in the workersâ state, and the state is bound to grow more and more despotic. In Trotsky's own words, âIf the state does not die away, but grows more and more despotic, if the plenipotentiaries of the working class become bureaucratized, and the bureaucracy rises above the new society, this is not for some secondary reasons like the psychological relics of the past, etc., but is a result of the iron necessity to give birth to and support a privileged minority so long as it is impossible to guarantee genuine equality.â << We need to consult Marx and compare the passage our "ML" quoted from Marx "Gotha Program" with the entire paragraph to understand how he ends up stating that socialist distribution is basically a capitalist law and since the law of value still operettas, this gives rise - birth, to a bourgeois class of property holders. First lets examine what is written. >>"so long as âbourgeois lawâ continues to dominate, a bureaucracy is bound to rise in the workersâ state, and the state is bound to grow more and more despotic . . . is a result of the iron necessity to give birth to and support a privileged minority "<< What does this mean? "(T)he iron necessity . . . to . . . support a privileged minority (and) . . . bourgeois lawâ continues to dominate, a bureaucracy is bound to rise . . . " No one disputes the rise and consolidation of a bureaucracy and the domination of the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy does not grow out of the inequality or "bourgeois right" - which is concerted into "bourgeois law" by our "ML" who states socialist distribution is a capitalist law of production. Obviously one can only distribute that which has been produced as Engels loved to state the matter. Our we to believe that one can have socialist production - industrial production on the basis of public property relations and a capitalist distribution of that, which is produced? Capitalist distribution means the exchange of commodities on the basis of the bourgeois property relations - the value of labor power, and this determines how what is produced and exchanged is distributed. This is not how Soviet society operated. In its fundamentality the bureaucracy has to be placed on the side of the equation that DOES NOT deals with the superstructure and distribution, although in real life, nothing can take place in an industrial society without a bureaucracy. No bureaucracy means no production, no nationwide distribution or nation wide transportation or nation wide educational facilities or nation wide printing companies for books, etc. That is to say we should understand "the bureaucracy" as a category of history, that in the first and last instance is governed NOT BY the property relations but the unique set of laws peculiar to a distinct mode of production proper - with the property relations within. It serve no purpose to talk about "the bureaucracy" as if seventy years have not passed and given us ample time to examine this issue. From the standpoint of actual history, we are talking about "the industrial bureaucracy" as distinct from say, "the feudal bureaucracy." Under what conditions did "the feudal bureaucracy" as an economic and social structure pass from history? If the feudal bureaucracy went the way of the spinning wheel or all flesh and is regulated to history gone, under what conditions does the industrial bureaucracy get regulated to the bin of history? Is this not the most elementary Marxist presentation of the question of the bureaucracy? Where does something come from or what is the environment of its emergence; what is its trajectory of development and when does it either transform itself qualitatively or leave the stage of history? What is "the bureaucracy?" This is going to get ugly because our "ML" sees bureaucracy as consisting of greedy party members seeking privileges and a Stakhanovite Movement accepting wage differentials and a socialist distribution that is no more than a capitalist law of production. What is "the bureaucracy?" Bureaucracy means a system of administration of something or in our context the system of administration of societal reproduction and implementation of the political laws of compliance. The industrial bureaucracy as a category of history cannot be defeated, overthrown or cast aside on the basis of political fiat. This bureaucracy does not grow out of the inequality of society except in the most abstract sense of the initial division of labor in society between men and women and the subsequent emergence of property or arise in unison with the emergence of the state, which becomes the mediator of the bureaucracy Growth and evolution. Enlarging the police force or legal and extra legal organs of the state power for the purposes or political compliance and despotic rule is not the Marxist meaning of bureaucracy and any industrial workers with a few years seniority under their belt knows the difference between police agencies and the industrial bureaucracy. Now even the police agencies are organized on the basis of the industrial bureaucracy in society. But the police and the party and the ruling clique is not the industrial bureaucracy. Our "ML" says with a straight face . . . and then claims he is not a Trotskyite, but rather a man of independent thinking that wants an objective view of what he calls the Stalin Trotsky debate: "So long as inequalities in the sphere of consumption continue . . . a bureaucracy is bound to rise." Really! Look, we are talking about the Soviet Union and the evolution of NOT the bureaucracy but the industrial bureaucracy and bureaucratic practices, and these practices do not grow out of inequality, but repetition and a non Bolshevik ideology. As an abstraction bureaucracy is the centralization of power and in real life at every level of the administration of "something" individuals as representatives of the centralization of administration - power, becomes more or less "personalities" in their particular bureau and the American people and everyone else calls these kinds of people "bureaucrats." The reason the industrial bureaucracy could not be defeated in the Soviet Union is because its defeat can only take place on the basis of changes in the mode of production that eliminates the industrial form of administration. World revolution would not and could not have defeated the industrial bureaucracy decisively. This is so because "the bureaucracy" - which is really an industrial bureaucracy, is a category of history and not political fiat or correct polemics or correct line or fighting material incentives. What can be defeated are the individuals in the industrial bureaucracy and in the Soviet Union the Leninist method was applied and folks got shot and jailed. It was Lenin that said I will put the bourgeois specialists to work even if it means putting a gun to their heads. Stalin carried out the policy of Lenin, with his own twist, which is why communists separate the subjective Stalin period from the objective period of building an industrial economy without the bourgeois property relations. Stalin is not scary to us. The corruption and legendary Russian form of bribery - greasing a palm in American vernacular, and privileges to access by virtue of party membership is openly acknowledged and opposed by good communists, but this inequality is not what creates the bureaucracy. Now Comrade Stalin of course possessed no personal wealth and unlike Brezhnev, he did not keep gold rubles in his desk drawer for flunkies. With the exception of Lenin - with Chairman Mao running a close second, Comrade Stalin lived the most modest life of any international state figure in the history of the world. In other words Stalin merciless hit the individuals in the bureaucracy but the inherent nature of the bureaucracy means this fight was . . . Yep, carried out in a bureaucratic manner. Stalin perceived how bureaucratism grew no matter how hard he hit it and the new forms it engendered. Wage differentials do not create the phenomenon of the bureaucracy or the inequality of consumption. Each individual must decide for themselves what is fundamental in the growth of the bureaucracy and Lenin himself could not defeat it. His "Fewer but better" article was aimed at stream lining the bureaucracy and not eliminating it because it is impossible. Our "ML" quotes the ego maniac Trotsky, who basically calls leaders of the Comintern stupid because they did not agree with him and states: >>âIf the state does not die away, . . . and the bureaucracy rises above the new society, this is . . . a result of . . . support a privileged minority so long as it is impossible to guarantee genuine equality.â << Well, we are never . . . ever going to end inequality. What comes to an end is democracy and with it the conception of equality based on property. The women with four children working or rather laboring for 4 hours in a three day work week, should have more rights to consumption than a married couple with one child. Only a bourgeois philistine can fail to understand the revolutionary implication of the communist revolution. To prove his point that socialist distribution is actually a capitalist law of distribution (this is monstrous) our "ML" quotes Marx and allow me to quote him in full. ". . . Trotsky says: In order that the state shall disappear, "class domination and the struggle for individual existence" must disappear. Engels joins these two conditions togetherââ He continues, âbut the trouble is that a socialization of the means of production does not yet automatically remove the "struggle for individual existence.â That is the nub of the question!â . . . In these circumstances, concludes Trotsky, the duty of the stimulator â naturally falls to the state, which in its turn cannot but resort, with various changes and mitigation's, to the method of labor payment worked out by capitalism.â He quotes Marx (1875): âBourgeois law... is inevitable in the first phase of the communist society, in that form in which it issues after long labor pains from capitalist society. Law can never be higher than the economic structure and the cultural development of society conditioned by that structure.â . . . Trotsky goes on to say that this highly significant conclusion has a decisive significance for the understanding of the nature of the Soviet State: â Insofar as the state which assumes the task of socialist transformation is compelled to defend inequalityâthat is, the material privileges of a minorityâ by methods of compulsion, insofar does it also remain a "bourgeois" state, even though without a bourgeoisie â The state assumes directly and from the very beginning a dual character: socialistic, insofar as it defends social property in the means of production; bourgeois, insofar as the distribution of life's goods is carried out with a capitalistic measure of value and all the consequences ensuing therefrom.â What is Trotsky saying that has our "ML" so overtaken with joy and produced a spiritual awakening? Let reduce this to the essentials. âInsofar as the state . . . task of socialist transformation is compelled to defend inequalityâthat is, the material privileges of a minorityâby methods of compulsion, . . .it . . .remain a "bourgeois" state . . . without a bourgeoisie â insofar as it (the state) defends social property in the means of production; bourgeois, insofar as the distribution of life's goods is carried out with a capitalistic measure of value and all the consequences ensuing therefrom.â What is a "capitalistic measure of value," (that is) "bourgeois, insofar as the distribution of life's goods is carried out?" Anyone that has been in the communist movement for say thirty years or longer understands that the running joke of the world bourgeoisie has been, "if the communist overthrow world capitalism they will have to leave at least one capitalist country to figure out how to price their goods." "(D)istribution of life's goods" in the Soviet Union was not based on "a capitalistic measure of value and all the consequences ensuing therefrom.â This is an outright lie. What are "life's goods?" Is going to college a "life good" and free higher education? The distribution of college under bourgeois society is based on money possession and ones relationship to property that allows one to be treated as a capitalist or not treated as the most poverty stricken sector of the proletariat. Must we list all of "life's goods" to understand the lie? What of pensions, vacation time and access to vacation resorts, medical care, transportation, child care, abortion rights, a hair cut, beer, housing, and the sum total of "life's goods?" Lets consult Marx on this question of distribution. Allow me to state that our "ML" chooses to quote the last sentence in a six paragraph presentation by Marx that will be reproduced in full. Marx states: "What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another. Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form. Hence, equal right here is still in principle -- bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case. In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor. But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only -- for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal. But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm Marx is a beautiful thing. "Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby." Here is why I placed the whole question of the bureaucracy in the context of what Marx calls the economic structure of society and not that aspect called distribution. Marx speaks of bourgeois right and not bourgeois laws. The "ML" transforms bourgeois right into "capitalist law" or "bourgeois law" to try and fool us. He thinks us communist workers are stupid and illiterate. There is nothing left to do but break down what Marx has stated to show that our "ML" prefers Trotskyism to what Marx actually wrote. Melvin P. . _______________________________________________ Marxist-Leninist-List mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxist-leninist-list
