PEN-L message, Re: Why did the USSR fall

In a message dated 5/1/2004 11:14:46 AM Central Standard Time, michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

I fall half way between Chris & Lou. A more social democratic
government could alleviate poverty a la US New Deal, but in no way
would it eliminate it. On the other hand, from what I gather Putin is
challenging a few of the oligarchs, but what is he doing about the
general level of corruption?

A friend's parents were trying to purchase an appartment, but had to
pay all sorts of bribes just to make the papers go through. Only an
anectdote.

What chance do the poor have to attend elite colleges?

Comment

I abstracted more practical political conclusions from this exchange. The first has to do with the intelligence agencies from which Putin emerged. Intelligence as a bureaucracy or a bureaucratic structure in society has no real loyalty and gyrates on the basis of who is in power and in the case of Russia or rather the former Soviet Union, the existing property relations.

The good news is that we can most certainly count on a huge section of the intelligence agency defecting and going over so the side of the slow . . . but evolution Third Edition of the American Revolution.

Without question Putin serves the demands of bourgeois property in Russia, as he understands matters and is under intense pressure by various political grouping and the masses of Russian society who deeply feel the state is the employer and provider of last resort. In my estimate Putin will jail anyone not willing to dispense their wealth to uplift the Russian people and solidify his leadership as legitimate - according to his individual vision.

I do not state that Putin is ideologically or emotionally against the bourgeois property relations and its unique signature of reproduction, but he is a product of Sovietism and has a certain "dislike" for the capitalist class in the flesh.

I do not believe Putin to be a Russian version of Bush Jr., or Clinton for that matter but something else. He has inherited recent Soviet history and as the send largest armaments exporter is going to remilitarize Russian society or get kicked out of office by a powerful wing of intelligence. He also inherited the economic relationship of Russia proper to its less developed regions - vassals, and this economic relationship will not be broken.

This series of articles have given us another opportunity to get a glimpse of the arms industry in Russia and what one would not be wrong to called the reemergence of another level of deterrence to American military might. The echo of the political antagonism between bourgeois America and Sovietism remains, because the strife between two value producing societies underlay the political antagonism. It was a question of markers and who controls what.

No, Marxist worth their salt despute the collaspe of Soviet power occurred as the precondition to overthrow its property relations and create a system of laws to allow, not simply the "integration of Russia into the world market," - it was already integrated into the world market, but rather its integration on the basis of the operation of the law of value under the bourgeois property relations. Its integration into the world market was on the basis of the identity of interest that all industrial societies must have in common as value producing society.

The reports from the from Soviet Union or rather Russia, indicates a certain recovery in internal consumption and production and the heritage of the Soviet system is to a large degree responsible for this. Unlike China the Soviets . . . pardon, Russian cannot field a wide array of products on the world market as the basis of exchange. Oil is bascially it, in respects to the economic centers of gravity in the imperial centers - Japan, America and the EU.

Bribery and corruption in the old Soviet Union and Russian society in general is legend. Nothing new here.

"Why did the USSR fall" is the title of the thread and that is the key thread I am looking at. Was it based on the "lack of revolution or socialism in rest of the world" - an external agent, or based on internal political factors generated on the basis of its internal economic logic?

I opt for the latter and not a mythical view of "world revolution."

I believe the latter although there is no Great wall of China that separated the fact of the industrial socialism being part of the world market. The economic factors has to do with the operation of the law of value and what wall the Soviets hit - not "socialism in one country." The Soviet Union was not "one country." How the political people - the "higher ups," sought to resolve the problems arising from the "wall" they hit is the flesh and blood story of real people.

Pen-L allows me to develop a deeper view of the meaning of property, exchange, accumulation and real time commerce. I wish I had signed on before my 401K went belly up, several years ago. Oh well.

I cannot predict the future and we have to see what unfolding in the next ten to twenty years, a minuscule time in human history. What is absolutely fascinating is the role of intelligence agencies, which I believe has very important meaning for us in America. The economic logic - hitting the wall of of value on the basis of industrial society is very important.

I believe what happened was not something called the "inherent flaw of Stalinism and a one party state" but profound economic logic and technological development that cast these old form of political rule aside and to the ash bind of history. I do not believe it was the quality of "democracy in the factories " and the non-hierarchal structures of "working class rule" but some rigid laws of economics, that unraveled and lead to the collapse of Soviet Power. How these laws were understood by men and women and the various segments and strata of society is why we have intellectual discourse in the first place.

The human drama is important - how Gorby understood what he was faced with and those around him. It is not like winning a political position in any country on earth or in any field makes one an economist or economic expert.

Ideological pronouncements explain nothing.

Yes, I have been studying economics intensely.

Melvin P.