[PEN-L:1335] Re: Nestor's reply to Gregory Schwartz

[Gregory Schwartz <grishas@xxxxxxxx>]

Nestor wrote:

> As I said on the mail I sent and Gregory criticized, if something
> depicts my vision of Russian facts is that all my opinions are both
> "worried and uninformed". These conditions may, we shall all agree,
> bring about "screwed" conclusions. I am not _that_ sure, however, that
> the particular line that Gregory has thus qualified deserves the
> criticism.

Before going any further, I'd like to clear the air regarding Nestor's
post: I was not criticizing him or his message (heeding to his warning
of being "worried and uninformed"). Mine was an attempt to present my
point of view, based on the research I have been doing on the subject
matter (i.e. Russia in transition). As for points of discrepancy between
Nestor and myself following his recent message, see below:


> After recalling one of the basic features of fascism, its indisoluble
> link with a (menaced) ruling imperialist bourgeoisie, I say:

> > > I doubt that there can be a regime more "fascist" in
> > > this sense than that of Yeltsin, I have a feeling that
> > > his is a Platonic Republic of the true Fascists, the
> > > great imperialist bourgeoisies:  so perfect that any
> > > change will have to be for worse.
> >
>
> I carefully wrote "_in this sense_", in the sense that the regime
> served the interests of the imperialist bourgeoisies -in this case, by
> melting down, or ensuring the meltdown
> of, the Soviet Union and the Soviet state.

Yeltsin did not serve the interests of the metropolitan bourgeoisie by,
as Nestor puts it, precipitating the "meltdown of the Soviet Union".
In some of my other posts I tried to emphasis that the crisis of the
Soviet Union was primarily internally developed due to the irrationality
of the administrative command system of production and surplus
appropriation in the absence of real control by the workers at the level
of production. Yeltsin, for his part, did not represent a rupture
between the Soviet and the post-Soviet moment, but constituted one
political response to the crisis of the Soviet system among many
dividing the Soviet ruling class by the latter 1980's. His neo-liberal
programme proved to hold sway over the striking workers on the eve of
the Soviet collapse, much as the neo-liberal programme has succeeded in
the West, in some part due to the failure of social democracy and
Eurocommunism to represent the interests of the working class and to
build a lasting trajectory towards socialism and equality. Simon Clarke
has an excellent article dealing with precisely this question in
_Capital and Class_, 1990, #42, "Crisis of Socialism or Crisis of the
State?" The argument can be summed up as follows: the limitations of the
administrative command system (a system primarily of class rule) played
the decisive role in the domestic transition from (Brezhnevev's)
stagnation to (Gorbachev's) crisis, which could only be resolved by
increasingly relying on the world market for balancing the major
branches
of production in the country, resulting in the increasing tendency of
the USSR to be affected - at the level of international relations - by
the impact of the crisis of overaccumulation on a world scale. On this
basis, the crisis of the USSR is comparable to the crisis of
'interventionist' states of other types. The rise of neo-liberal
policies was essentially a political response to this crisis,
representing an attempt to depoliticize economic decision making.

> [snip]

> When I say that the Yeltsin regime is a Russian form of fascism...  I
> am saying that  ...[f]ascism in a colony may well combine
> superexploitation of a section of the working class with widespread
> devaluation of industrial capital, in order to "sustain the expanded
> reproduction of capital" in the metropolis "in face of crisis",
> through _thwarting the expanded reproduction of capital in the
> colony_.  I do not diminish the differences
> between regimes that are politically fascist and regimes that are not.

Logically this makes perfect sense. I would agree with this line of
argument, particularly as it applies to the post-colonial India and its
ruling class(es?). However, Russia is not - nor was it during the Soviet
times - a _colony_ of the metropolitan centres. Despite all the efforts
by the IMF and the World Bank to turn Russia into a dependency, the
conflicts and struggles between different factions of the ruling class
(concerning the intended economic direction of Russia), as well as
between the workers and the ruling classes have in many instances come
into direct opposition to the interests of the metropolitan capitals.
This effectively has prevented the various policies of Western finance
capital from materializing, further illustrating the contradictions of
the neo-liberal pipe dream of unhampered 'global capital' or some left
wing utopia of a 'new regime of accumulation' with an appropriate ?mode
of regulation?.

Basically, in order for the colonial or the postcolonial country to
become a component of metropolitan capital and to devalorise domestic
capital in order that the overproduction of commodities in the
metropolitan centres be sufficiently valorized through the
colonial/post-colonial country, there needs to be a strong state that
will deliver the colony's resources and people to the metropolitan
powers. This, then, could be the kind of fascist regime Nestor refers
to. However, the intra-class struggles (whereby the Russian state
represents nothing more than a pack of skirmishing clans) prevent
a strong state from coming about and playing the role of the kind of
'colonial' fascism referred to by Nestor. Maybe the coalition government
under Chernomyrdin will be able to consolidate a state of this nature in
Russia. There is certainly a fair degree of consensus among the ruling
classes in Russia on Chernomyrdin as the best choice. In the long run,
however, there is little hope that such a regime could be as stable as a
colonial/post-colonial fascist regime.


> In this sense, the Yeltsin regime may not qualify to Fascist (I do not
> know; however, there are some members of this list, V. Bilenkin for
> example, who think that the Yeltsin government has, at least, fascist
> tendencies). But _in the sense I used the word_, I feel that the usage
> is not "screwed".

There is no question that the Yeltsin regime, as the Soviet regime
before him, has certain fascist tendencies. Consider, for instance the
continuing reliance on the FSB (the successor of the KGB) to silence
environmentalists and certain political activists - like Boris
Kagarlitsky (especially immediately following the October 1993 bombing
of the 'White House'). This does not, however, warrant calling the
functions of the Russian state 'fascist', even in the manner Nestor
intends it. What this shows is really how little Russia has changed
(structurally) from its Soviet days.

Also, when I say that the era of the Yeltsin's regime:


> > has brough further disintegration of stability, a
> > slackening of labour discipline (through the reinforcement
> > of workers' negative control over the production process
> > by the workers, see Burawoy, 1993, NLR), a collapse in
> > manufacturing and agriculture, and greater reliance on
> > imports and foreign debt,

I reject the notion that Yeltsin or his regime did this in a planned
manner or even knowingly. From a purely methodological standpoint this
line of argument would be tantamount to suggesting that whatever
struggles take place between the workers and the ruling classes, even if
not intended, automatically result in the victory of the ruling class;
an argument too structuralist to furnish a realistic understanding not
only of the Russian case, but also of the more organized capitalist
states of the West. If anything, what we are witnessing is the
culmination of struggles that have resulted in the failure to achieve
any stabilization measures, which in effect would have meant the
subordination of the Russian economy to the whims of metropolitan
capitals. For, if we look at what really has been going on since the
beginning of the process of privatization, the IMF directed 'structural
adjustment' policies, and other macro- and microeconomics policies we
note that most of these resulted in failures or only partial victories,
with many concessions won by the Russian workers, because of the
struggles surrounding these processes. There is an article dealing with
this issue in the 1993 (vol.14) _Economic and Industrial Democracy_ by
Veronika Kabalina and Alla Nazimova, entitled "Privatization through
Labour Conflict: The Case of Russia".

Therefore,

> reducing industrial output, and collapsing local manufacturing and
> agriculture, since they imply "greater reliance on imports and foreign
> debt"

has not been accomplished in depth by Yeltsin and no great service was
deliberately rendered to "the social classes that, 'le cas echeant',
back and upholster Fascist regimes in imperialist countries." In
actuality, despite the fact that its imports of finished goods have
increased since the Soviet era, Russia - by comparison to countries like
the Czech Republic or Hungary - purchases much fewer foreign goods and
is, consequently, of less economic than political importance to the
West. What the increase in imports combined with the fall in the output
illustrates is the general level of poverty among the country's working
people. For, while imports have increased only the fortunate few,
perhaps in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhnii Novgorod and Vladivostok, can
benefit from them. Most Russians living in the country's regions are
faced with stagnant enterprises and a collapsing social infrastructure,
and with wages not being paid on order of 3-8 (in some cases 12) months
at a time in the demonitised economy that has been created by the
decline in production and in the reserve of roubles. The only mechanism
that has prevented an insurgent uprising of the Russian workers in the
face of this apparently disastrous condition have been the official
unions which, in a paternalistic union with the directors of the
enterprises, offer the workers social benefits and consumer goods; the
workers swapping the goods on local street markets in order simply to
reproduce themselves.

Moreover, if dependency was something that was consciously achieved by
the Yeltsin regime, we would not see the current financial crisis
reverberate in the metropolitan centres with such intensity. Is not the
'purpose' of fascist regimes in the 'Third World' to resolve crises in
the 'First World'? For, if there was the kind of fascist regime Nestor
refers to, we would see 1). the strong state take charge of the economy
and 2). drive the workers to engage in some form of value producing
activity in order that goods from the metropolitan centres could be
purchased locally at their relative price (that is, even if they are
sold in Russia at a lower price than in the metropolitan centres, they
would still generate a higher return to metropolitan capitals, who would
be able to benefit from the relatively cheaper production costs
associated with employing workers in captive colonial/post-colonial
labour markets) 3). thereby creating Russia into a dependency and 4).
stabilizing the major branches of production of global capital. Instead,
what we have is the complete opposite of this: the continuous struggles
between factions of the ruling class and between the ruling class the
the workers, with the unions (and the aligned with them enterprise
directors who wish to reap the benefits from the delivery of state
subsidies to their enterprises) constantly forcing the state to meet
their marginal demands and, consequently, to continue borrowing money
from the IMF (not only for the enterprise subsidies but also to pay back
wages and to defend the faltering rouble in the absence of production).


> I insist once again: things in the Third World use to be the negative
> image of things in the First World. To say this is more or less the
> same as saying that the First World and the Third World constitute a
> _dialectical_ unity. So that Gregory has still to explain why does he
> think that calling Yeltsin "fascist _in this sense_" is wrong.

As I have tried to show above, this is entirely logical but is not the
case in Russia. The country certainly is a sui generis system, which
must be addressed by proceeding from the production relations at the
level of the enterprise.

> There are some other points where I would argue with
> Gregory, namely the Mandelian conception according to which
>
> > ... it is in fact much less precarious
> > for the local ruling classes to pursue accumulation by
> > remaining parasitic on the existing methods of production
> > and relations of production while becoming component to
> > metropolitan accumulation process, and only thus the
> > component to the expanded reproduction of capital on a
> > global scale.
>

Just to clarify: I was not saying this is the decided upon policy of the
Russian state, although we are certainly witnessing some of this in
Russia, primarily among merchant capitals.

> This is clearly true, but the way Gregory (and Mandel) pose
> it seems to forget that when a local ruling class chooses to
> remain parasitic and become component to metropolitan
> accumulation processes (a good way to depict the behaviour
> of the ruling classes in the Third World countries),
> accumulation _within_ the frontier of the country is
> obstructed (and even forbidden, if need be, by political
> means), a "national question" immediately arises. A
> "national question" where other classes must develop the
> tasks that "normal history" reserved to the bourgeoisie and
> carry them to victory. If we recall Isaac Deutscher's (and
> better still, Carr's) mention of the dual character of the
> October revolution, socialist and colonial, the scenario I
> depicted after the fall of the Soviet regime may be
> "logically" possible, though I agree with Gregory that the
> chances that such a ruling group carries on these tasks are
> almost nil. Though it may seem screwed (I am using the word
> this time myself), a Russian "national question" might,
> although most probably won't, imply a progressive struggle.

This is certainly true of Russia. The national question (particularly
the myth of 'great power', tradition and static 'Russian culture'
currently most fervently advanced by the Communists) is regularly
invoked. Nestor is also right that though such invocations might imply a
progressive struggle, in Russia they are of very reactionary nature.
Though, to be frank, the 'national question' has always seemed to me to
be populist in form.

In solidarity,

Greg.

--
Gregory Schwartz
Dept. of Political Science
York University
4700 Keele St.
Toronto, Ontario
M3J 1P3
Canada

Tel: (416) 736-5265
Fax: (416) 736-5686
Web: http://www.yorku.ca/dept/polisci