Whom I identify with and Why

[Vladimir Bilenkin <azarov@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Louis: I just read an article by Vladimir Bilenkin in Mothly Review from
>October 1995 about the ideology of the two major factions in the former
>Soviet Union who will be opposing each other in the up-coming elections.
>Is that you or just a coincidence? Who do you identify with in the FSU
>politically? Kargalitsky and those folks? Or some other group? I don't
>mean to be nosy, but this would be most interesting for list members to
>hear about.

Yes, this is my piece.

Politically, I identify with those FSU workers who believe that their
emancipation can be achieved only by the working class itself and only
if it succeeds in creating its own class organizations independent from
the bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy, and the social groups ajacent to
them.  Such organizations do not exist yet in the party form. Only the
molecular processes that lead in this direction are under way.  No
genuine working class party can be created immediately in the wake of a
historical defeat of such magnitude and after the decades of the
political non-existence of the working class.  Those parties that do
exist only confirm this point.  Their premature organizational unity
has been paid for by sectarianism, theoretical vapidity, and isolation
>from the working class. In different ways they all share one
fundamental quality: their social imagination, methods, language,
political psychology and mentality are essentially bureaucratic, i.e.
determined by their distrust and fear of the working class.

Let me briefly describe these parties. Reformism is represented by the
Communist Party of Russian Federation (CPRF) presently dominated by the
Zyuganov-Kuptsov group and the Party of Labor (Kagarlitsky, Buzgalin,
et al.). They are both extreme forms of right opportunism but of a very
different provenance and orientation. The latter is a belated child of
"euro-communism." During the "pink" period of perestroika Gorbachev
even made Buzgalin a member of his Central Committee. They preach
"market socialism," "democracy" above all, and even the notorious
"universal human values."  Objectively, they work hand in hand with
Eltsyn's regime by stigmatizing the orthodox communists as "extremists"
who stubbornly hold to such "totalitarian" ideas as the dictatorship of
the proletariat.  At best, they are as sterile and ineffectual as their
Western counterparts.  The Party of Labor is a "pocket" party,
sometimes called the party of the "computer programists." It consists
of a small group of people who came from the leftish dissident circles
of the late 1970s and who are hopelessly flesh and blood of the Soviet
middle-brow intelligentsia. As it is often the case, their visibility
in the West is completely out of proportion with their weight in the
Russian Left. The reason for this is that they are "literary" or
"academic marxists" virtually indistinguishable from the middle-class
left establishment in the West. Thus, Kagarlitsky - a prolific writer
who, to my knowledge, has never published a book in Russian - is an
incomplete Russian edition of S. Aronowitz. With one Russian twist
though. While the American original suffers through ideological
"evolution" in time, his Russian edition - free from the controls of
Western intellectual order - can enjoy holding opposite views
simultenuously: to "plea for "derevising" Marx at the NYC Brecht Forum,
and to dismiss the Marxist "mythology of the proletariat" in the
"prestigious" bourgeois journal in Moscow. Enough of this ilk.

I do not want to repeat what I have said about CPRF previously. Its
last Program of '95 has been aptly described as the "encyclopedia of
right opportunism." In contarst to the Party of Labor, the opportunism
of CPRF is entirely homebread and therefore works so much better.
Zyuganov is crafty Realpolitiker and a nationalist.  His ideological
tracts are secondary, and he himself acknowledges that this is a sort
of a new mythology for the masses. But Zyuganov has realized that the
majority, including the majority of the working class are not going to
buy any orthodox communist project.  Russian anti-communism is a very
serious thing indeed. He has therefore not only rejected
internationalism but actually made it his master explanation of all the
evils that have visited Russia and SU.  Hence, Gorbachev and Gaidar are
Trotsky's progeny. Hence, Nicolas II and Stalin belong to the forces of
light. He has tapped the resorces of Soviet nationalism, this
combination of a "great power" pride and "social justice."  While
calling Gorbachev a "Judas" he espouses the social-economic ideology of
Gorbachevism, i.e. markert economy, the coexistence of different forms
of property (with 60 to 80% of state ownership), and multi-party
system.  It is important to keep in mind that CPRF has a rather liberal
party regime.  The Zyuganov-Kuptsov group has come to leadership not
without some serious infighting. The left wing of the party is much
more radical and if Zyuganov moves further to the right the split is
guaranteed.

There are two major reasons why, in my opinion, the advanced workers
should vote for Zyuganov.

1) If Eltsyn stays there will be a major crackdown on radical communist
and workers organizations. In fact, yesterday Anpilov announced that
"Toiling Russia" was planning to go underground.  It means that RCWP
and other "extremist" parties will have to do the same. Not that it
will help a lot. The leadership and the active have been long under
surveillance so these organizations will be quickly decapitated. As to
the rank-and-file activist workers and grass-root organizers, they have
already been working under regime of terror. And it will intensify
manifold after the elections. Russia is not a Peru or a Salvador. What
underground resistence means Russian workers know only from Soviet
movies about the Revolution. And I am not sure this knowledge will be
of great help.  Everything will become much more difficult.  It will
take a number of years and many lives to recuperate.

2) Eltsyn's second term will also mean a continuation of the
neocolonial comprador mode of Russia's integration into the world
capitalist economy that is, among other things, de-population and
de-industrialization of the country.  The latter threatens the working
class with its own disintegration. Already now there has been a massive
de-skilling of the industrial labor force, with almost no supply of
skilled young workers since the Soviet system of vocational education
has been completely demolished.

There is also an important international dimension to this scenario. If
E. Mandel was correct in predicting that in the 90s capital would have
to attempt to establish a regime of super-accumulation in order to
enter the upward swing of a new long-wave cycle then the neocolonial
trajectory of Russian restoration could strongly facilitate this
process.  The Fortune magazine has recently announced that Russia
remains the only place on the earth where $1 investment brings $100
return.  Russia has also become a dumping ground for inferior goods and
obsolete technologies which otherwise would not have been capitalized.
On the other hand, Zyuganov's victory would mean the formation of the
state-monopoly capital, protectionism, more assertive foreign policy
(rapprochement with China and Cuba) and much closer integration with
some of the CIS countries which also means the reintegration of the
dismembered Soviet working class.

But I have promised to be brief.

I'll describe some other sections of the Russian Left some other time.

Vladimir




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