Re: Query on Trotsky

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

>Lou, prior to the 1990's, did you think the USSR
>was heading toward capitalism?
>
>Michael D.

By 1988, I started to believe that perestroika would lead to
capitalism, but I held out hopes that the Russian working class would
put its foot down. The reasons why this did not happen are among the
questions discussed in an interesting article by Ernie Tate that is
available at:

http://www.mail-archive.com/pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/msg50951.html

Ernie Tate:
What at first puzzled me -- and I'm sure a lot of others -- about the
changes taking place in Russia was the lack of an organized presence
of the working class as a factor in the various crises which wracked
the country. There were some heroic strikes, especially of the miners
over such basic demands as payment of back pay, but after some
promises from the regime, sometimes false, the workers retreated and
seem to be no longer players in the open political life of the
country. At least, that is what it appears from reading the local
press. We have yet to see the working class play a significant
independent role, and in so far as it politically expresses itself
today, it tends to do that through the Communist Party, as
discredited as that organization may be.

But I think this is logical and somewhat inevitable if we look at how
the organized working class developed and functioned in Russia over
the past eighty odd years. The unions did not have the right to
strike. They were not independent and were in varying degrees
controlled by the regime, which continues even today. They
participated in the running of the enterprises -- and still do --
which often provided medical care, food, housing, and vacations in
special holiday resorts. In the past, this buffered them from the
economic deprivation suffered by other social layers. Unlike in the
capitalist world, there was no "reserve army of labour", a mass of
unemployed workers. This beneficial position in the society can be
seen in the relationship of the wages of manual workers to that of
non-manual technical employees and office workers. If manual workers'
wages are seen as fixed relative to others at a constant 100, from
1932 to 1985, non-manual technical employees' wages fell! from 265 to
approximately 115 and office workers' wages fell from 150 down to
approximately 80.(35)

The working class functioned in a culture of "making things work", of
being integrated into the administration of the enterprise.
Their"privileges" meant they tended to be the last to feel the crisis
of the regime. Unlike the workers in capitalist countries, the
working class's political formation and education was based upon
being "owners of the means of production". This probably explains the
phenomena of many workers accepting for long periods, the non-payment
of wages. This is changing however. David Mandel, in Socialist
Register, 2001 , gives some important information on changes in
working class consciousness as workers struggle with their
"corpratist" union leaderships, many of whom now support a "patriotic
bourgeoisie" in a blurring of class lines over the possibility of the
country being colonized by foreign powers.

There has been a low level of solidarity that is the result, not only
of the "partnership" strategy, but of acute poverty, social
uncertainty and the conservatizing effects of the depression.
Nevertheless, the workers are relishing their new found freedoms of
association and speech, the main constitutional benefits they
achieved with the defeat of Stalinism and the removal of the
Communist Party from power. Struggles by workers have broken out in
some work-places to transform their unions into meaningful vehicles
for economic struggle, with the setting up of some industry-wide or
regional shop floor committees to defend their interests. Mandel
describes the setting up of a totally different kind of union for
Russia in the Edinstovo car plant, which although small (3500 members
out of 120,000 employees), and suffering persecution and
discrimination, is made up of the more and active and socially
committed workers in the plant. Politically confused, its leadership
at one ! point supported Yeltsin, then General Lebed and later it
participated in Putin's election campaign committee. But it is
completely independent from management and actively supports outside
labour struggles.(36)

It is a process that continues to evolve, despite huge difficulties
amidst the shock and paralysis of one of the deepest recessions in
the history of the world. Some unions are beginning to function as if
they are in a capitalist environment. Workers in Yaroslavl Motor
Builders, four diesel with 40, 000 workers, have a history of
militant action going back to Gorbachev. During the "shock therapy"
period around 1994, when workers saw their standard of living take a
further nose-dive, they were relatively passive as were most workers,
but in 1995 and over the next couple of years, a series of strikes
were organized, one lasting five weeks, which included the tactic of
blocking highways. More conservative union committees were replaced
with strike committees, with changes being made in the unions of
other associated plants to make them more responsive to the
membership. These were some of the forces, says Mandel, which blocked
the country's rail lines during the crisis in Se! ptember, 1998, to
support the more than 200 miners who were living in a tent city
outside the White House (seat of the presidency) during that summer,
and even though the tent city got little or no support from the
official unions, it inspired activists throughout Russia to support
it.(37)

A consequence of the rise of Stalinism in Russia was the virtual
extinguishing, through political and bloody purges throughout
society, of any conceptual framework that tended to a critical
appraisal of the role of the bureaucracy, especially criticisms that
went towards the concept of political revolution. Regaining its place
as a force for social change in the life of the country means the
working class will have to raise its political consciousness to
recapture through its new freedom of association and speech some of
the ideas of workers' democracy that came out of the 1917 Russian
Revolution. It must overcome the break in the political continuity
from that time. This is now easier than at any time during the past
seventy-five years. It will also have to overcome some of its
conditioning to throw off the political shackles imposed on it over
several decades and re-enforced by the notion of being "owners of the
means of production" to come to an understanding of the true nature
of the regime at the state and enterprise level.


--
Louis Proyect, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx on 10/05/2001

Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org


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