Re: Roy Medvedev interview (on Putin)

[Waistline2]

Roy Medvedev: "You can't be anything but tough in Russia. We live in a country where a civil society has not yet been formed. The leading political and social force after the fall of the CPSU is the bureaucracy. The bureaucratic hierarchy from bottom to top is the framework of the state. === Response: >This was the same kind of excuse given for Stalin by some intellectuals during the 30s and 40s. The one thing missing in Medvedev's interview is a class analysis. Once upon a time, Medvedev was associated with Eurocommunism and Bukharin. His PR for Putin seems to reflect diminished expectations.<   Comment   Without question Putin is a representative and guardian of the bourgeois property relations in Russia or what is meant by the word "capitalism." A class analysis of any society presents itself as complex and one of the reasons is that everyone means something different by the word "class."    Rather than spend time trying to "classify" people (because we can classify people anyway one choices by grouping them together on the basis of a criteria) let us approach class from the standpoint of property and how people are organized to use what every state of development of the material power of production exists in their society. This way we stay within the economic framework that is the basis of PEN-L.   Keeping in mind that property relations always exist within a definable economic formation in society, class in this context means ownership rights that allows one to access the material wealth in society or as it is stated in the interview - privileges. One must keep in mind that Soviet socialism was a value producing system with property rights. Property rights means someone or class is favored over someone else or another class.   The interview contrast the privileges of various officials in government and the bureaucracy, in contradistinction to the pension funds of retired workers, who one official suggested giving cash rather then upholding the social contract providing housing, education and medical care, etc.   That such a proposal was put forth indicates the class character and content of "men" around Putin. Desiring to break the social contract with retired workers - no longer engaged in the production of material value or commodities and giving them cash instead, is a clear economic policy indicating the class content of its meaning. What is the economic purpose of such a policy? The issue is not preservation of privilege of the bureaucracy in its class content, but rather a question of altering reproduction. This is to take place by shifting from a policy of expanding that sector of the economy charged with maintenance of "historically met needs of retired workers" and giving them a chance to spend their cash stipends in other sectors of the economy.   We are talking about a political policy whose expressed aim is to alter reproduction and accumulation - of money, for someone.     Other sectors of the economy means "light industry" or what we call in the West "consumer industry" versus "heavy industry " or that part of the societal infrastructure charged with maintaining the social contract and expanding its services - food, clothing, housing, vacations, medical care, education, etc. That is to say the class content or class analysis of this policy is to shift reproduction further on the basis of the bourgeois property relations and what is profitable to individual owners of property or those regarded as capitalist.   The economic logic of a commodity producing society (a value producing society) driven by the unrestricted law of value bears examination. What bourgeois property means in the real world is that cycles of reproduction are governed by the quest and realization of profits and this in turn configures and reconfigures how industrial society takes shape. For instance, in bourgeois America, heavy industry leaped forward under the impetus of the automobile, which accelerated the growth of numerous other industries . . . glass, machine building, rubber, cloth, leather, plastics, etc.   This cycle of reproduction (individual transportation as opposed to mass transportation) is clearly stamped with the character of the bourgeois property relations or the bourgeoisie as a class of owners.   In the old Soviet Union the growth of its industry was not determined by the unrestricted law of value and consequently the 20% of the steel, 12 percent of aluminum, 10% of copper, 51% of the lead, 95% of nickel, 35% of zinc, and 60% of rubber used in America for auto production could be poured into the extensive expansion of the industrial system in the Soviet Union. One can of course add to this the cloth, leather and fabric of all kinds that go into auto production and a complex of needs created by bourgeois property as it reproduces itself as a commodity producing society.   The point is that within the description of an attempt to change the social contract from providing stable provisions for retired workers to a policy of cash payment is a class analysis, from the standpoint of the material functioning of the bourgeois property relations versus public property relations.   Class has another meaning besides property because we are talking about economic formations at a definable stage of development of the industrial system. That is to say the years 1930 and 1940 where pinpointed along with Putin's Russia of today. Given these time frames we are talking about the industrial production of commodities on the one hand and the specific circumstance Putin faces today and tomorrow.   Class and class analysis in this sense means how people are organized to utilize the means of production or the stage of development of the industrial system.  Although today it is in transition, there still remains an industrial class in Russia and most of the world, if not all of the world. There are of course a large group of soft war programmers and other "classes" being formed in Russia on the basis of changes in the material power of production.   Apparently, the policy of paying cash stipends instead of extensively and intensely expanding that part of the societal infrastructure that buttress the social contract is a class policy aimed at attacking those workers outside of the production process, who are "old style industrial workers." This class policy is aimed at redirecting money into more profitable areas of the economy and attack a section of workers outside the real time production process. This class policy recognizes that those outside the actual production of commodities has less and a less immediate impact on society, especially when they are thrown into conflict and protest.   Class is indicated in the description of the process Putin finds himself in.   The question of the bureaucracy is a class question in the sense of property and a given state of development of the material power of production. In the last instance we are talking about structures administrating "something." On the basis of the economic formations in society and a given state of development of the means of production, because "something" must exist to fall under the control of a bureaucracy. Finally we know that the material wealth of human society emerges from the division of labor.   It is valid to view the issue of bureaucracy as an interactivty component in a system of production.   Let us back up a little and briefly examine the 1930 and 1940s since this was raised.  Stalin assumed leadership of the USSR with the completion of the first stages of the consolidation of Soviet political power. The First Imperialist World War had ended. The Red Army crushed the Counterrevolution. The economy stabilized. The New Economic Policy (NEP) had run its course.   Stalin turned his strength and singleness of purpose to the obvious task at hand. That task was  the gathering up of the scattered economic energy of the Soviet Union and concentrating it in the form of giant industry. Industrialization of the country was the order of the day and this was done. The capitalist countries accomplished this over a long period of time by starving the small producer out of the market.   The USSR accomplished this in a very short period with persuasion where possible and with legally sanctioned force and violence when necessary. The productive relations of industrialization were not at odds with the proletarian dictatorship because this dictatorship was a political form of property and not the economic system. The fact of the matter is that the industrial economic system is a historically specific combination of labor + machinery/electro-mechnical process and energy source. On this basis commodities are produced.   The point is that we are talking about an industrial economic system producing commodities with a bureaucracy used to suppress the unrestricted law of value. This is fairly obvious because all industrial societies are bureaucratic by definition.   Let us assume that Mr. Stalin was simply a grotesque monster who won the political battle in the Soviet Union for the sake of argument. Until we explain the economic basis of bureaucracy - for instance in America today which has an enormous bureaucracy and not simply the military bureaucracy, then we more away from the premise of Pen-L, which is a Marxist economic approach to social phenomenon. In other words bureaucracy has an economic basis in the last instance and can be understood better in the context of the various quantitative stages of development of the industrial system.   How one justify or not justify "this particular leader or that one" is the realm of party politics and ideology. Explaining a given set of actions that produce an economic result is another matter and requires at least a lay person knowledge of political economy. To my knowledge and I have followed the entire thread about the USSR - every article, no one has even mildly suggested that Putin was not a representative of bourgeois property.   Let's try and clean up the economic questions and the era of 1930 and 1940.   While there is "capitalist industrialization" or industrialization on the basis of the bourgeois property relations, industrialization is not capital(ism). Social(ism) is not an economic system but a form of property relations. The economic system or mode of production was the industrial system as opposed to the system of manufacture or feudalism - which of course had a bureaucracy.   Socialist industrialization is faster and better. It seems to me that in retrospect - having look at things for perhaps 30 years, Stalin's death occurred at the end of industrialization and with the introduction of a new qualitative stage of the productive forces, electronics. I am referring to the invention of the transition and later the semiconductor which alters the labor content of commodities by revolutionizing production technique, which must eventually alter the form and nature of bureaucracy itself.   It would seem that no one can escape the economic logic of the law of value. Let us look at Mr. Stalin in this light. There was no physical "liquidation" of the kulaks or other reactionary classes. The reason is that it is not possible to kill of a class because it is by definition connection to a stage in the development of the means of production - with the property relations within.   We can look no further than at our own history and the demise - liquidation of the sharecropper class at the hands of the mechanization of agriculture. The sharecropper was tractored off the land and liquidated by the advance of industry.   The Kulak were eliminated as classes by the liquidation of their economic bases, because they were not farmers perse but property holders. It is not possible to abolish a class that is a material _expression_ of a given state of development of the technological regime. One cannot liquidate industrial machinist "as a class" or rather they become obsolete and transformed with the development of computers and advanced robotics.   This is of course a class analysis, firmly rooted in the development of commodity production. Soviet power crushed the resistance to industrialization. Millions died in the 20 "something" defensive wars fought between 1917 and 1940. A large number went to labor camps and many died there. It seems to me these labor camps - once all the politic and ideology is stripped away, economic institutions not governed by the bourgeois property relations and required their own bureaucracy. Mr. Stalin understood that counterrevolution was possible. His place in history is precisely because he relentlessly, almost daily, worked to crush every spontaneous impulse or plan for counterrevolution. It seems to me that what he was fighting - outside the party politics which is a dirty business in its own logic, were exchange impulses (the historically evolved forms of economic exchange) that spontaneously run into the barrier of restricting the law of value. Would Mr. Stalin's critics dare compare Soviet industrialization to what happened in the USNA during its period of industrialization? These crimes include the genocidal slaughter of the Indians, the looting of Africa of perhaps 20 million human beings to transport barely a million alive into the most brutal, exploitative and complete slavery the world has ever known. They include the rape of Mexico, the destruction of the Philippine Islands and Puerto Rico, the plunder of Canada and the continuing blood-soaked exploitation of Latin America. The crimes include the "white slavery" period of Northern industrial development. The list is endless. The Stalin period was the gentlest, most benevolent industrialization the world has ever known. Apparently his greatest "crime" was to consolidate the political dictatorship of the proletariat, build socialism - an industrial system not governed by the unrestricted law of value, in one continent country and crush the fascist invaders. The world bourgeoisie has never forgiven him.   Perhaps this helps in a very small way towards making a class (economic) analysis.     Melvin P.