Why Russia isn’t Socialist (Pt. 1)

I. Russian Capitalism

Conspicuous social divisions, wage differentials, privileges according to type of work, and a division of labour which dooms “manual workers” to the factory inferno and which reserves for intellectuals the monopoly of comfort, can these really be said to be compatible with Socialism as the CP men shamelessly assert? A villa for Kosygin, and hovels for the workers; missiles to the moon and queues in front of the butcher’s shop; a nuclear arsenal and meat and cereal shortages: are these edifying pictures of the society of the future? However, it is not sufficient merely to answer; No! For the bourgeoisie has already learnt how to skilfully exploit the disillusionment of certain workers confronted with stark Russian reality. It is as goods as says to them that since Communism doesn’t offer anything better, why not be satisfied with good old democratic capitalism? For the defenders of the “new roads to Socialism” the language is scarcely modified. Each people will have their very own Socialism which will take account of their traditions and their “degree of civilisation”!

If we, as revolutionary Marxists, wish to demonstrate that Russian Communism is false, it isn’t with the slightest intention of disgusting workers with the truth. Rather, it is to show that the defects of present-day Russian society are common to all existing political regimes, because all of them – Russia included – are capitalist.

To pronounce on Russia with these observations supposes that one knows the fundamental characteristics of Socialism, but even knowing this is conditional on first knowing the nature of capitalism, and it is precisely this which is mostly ignored by the clever persons who hold forth on the subject on radio and television or in learned “scientific” works. For it is not a matter of discerning a few accessory and incidental aspects of this mode of production, but of defining its fundamental characteristics so as to be able to recognise it in all circumstances. These characteristics can be summed up as follows:

In Capitalist society commodities are produced, i.e. human activity is dedicated in the main, to the manufacture of objects destiny to be exchanged for money, i.e. sold. Meanwhile, the great mass of producers are deprived of the means of production (as opposed to the artisan or the small peasant who possess their own work instruments).

These producers, possessing only their own labour power, are therefore forced to sell this commodity, adapted to the conditions of modern productions, associated labour, concentration of industry, high-tech production. All economic exchange, all buying and selling and especially of that particular commodity which is the workers’ labour power, takes place through the medium of money. Capital is born and develops according to the combined utilisation of all these factors.

The social class that is deprived of all the means of production and forced to sell its labour is the proletariat. This labour power is a commodity that has the “miraculous” quality of producing more wealth than it requires for its maintenance and reproduction. In other words, in a working day of 8 hours, the worker produces, let’s say in 4 hours, the value of his daily wage, but continues to work 4 extra hours for capital.

The price of labour power represents the worker’s wage. The difference between this wage and the mass of values produced remains the property of the class which retains control of the means of production: the capitalist class. It is called surplus-value or profit and this in its turn is exchanged against new labour power and new products of labour (machines, raw materials, etc.) becoming capital. This process repeated ad infinitum is the accumulation of capital.

All these elements are strictly linked within the capitalist mode of production and are therefore inseparable from it. It is therefore an insulting falsehood to deem that a society is worthy of the name Socialist when there exists within it both money – exchangeable against labour power – and wages, through which workers obtain the necessary products for the maintenance of themselves and their families, whilst the accumulation of values remains the property of businesses or the State. Well, exactly such a state of affairs exists today in Russia.

In the USSR it is possible, with roubles lent by the State bank, for a group of individuals to buy labour power and keep for themselves the difference existing between the value produced and the amount of wages paid; such is the case with the ephemeral joint-stock companies responsible for the construction of housing and public buildings and edifices, and with the kolkhoses that remunerate tractor drivers and seasonal workers as wage-earners by paying them in cash. Indeed these same kolkhoses have been forced by the authorities, for several years, into setting up preserve factories and other processing industries, using partly profits from their enterprises, and partly the salary system for factory personnel. Finally it is the same with the State businesses themselves, which both pay their workers in money, encouraging and developing wage differentials related to labour power, and which invest, i.e. the profit which is realised is transformed into capital.

In Russia the worker pays in money for all the foodstuffs and products that he needs, suffering silently from market fluctuations and even from the speculation indulged in by the individual producers, namely the kolkhosniks, who as well as having their share of the total kolkhos income, possess livestock and personal land which they are free to sell at whatever price they can get.

Finally in the USSR money yields interest. This occurs through Government stocks, which bring in profits to the stockholders (as in the classical capitalist countries) and also in the form of interest which the State derives by lending to its own enterprises.

How is all this different from the bourgeois societies of the capitalist west? In the USSR everything operates under the banner of value which in modern societies is merely a source of profit, capital accumulation and of exploitation of labour power. In Russia, everything is exchangeable with this cursed money. Everything is for sale, from the services of prostitutes to those of intellectuals, whose task consists of singing the praise of national “Socialism” and generally licking the boots of the powerful.

Later on, we will explain how it is that such a company of profiteers, toadies and parasites could arise amidst the ruins of the glorious October Revolution at the expense of the blood and toil of the Russian proletariat.

It is sufficient though to underline this essential fact: Socialism is incompatible with the categories of capitalist economy, such as money, wages, accumulation, and the division of labour.