Stalinism, socialism and capitalism


How Gorbachev failed to save the Soviet Union

WHEN MIKHAIL Gorbachev was selected as the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union’s general secretary 20 years ago, in March 1985, it marked
the beginning of the end of Stalinist rule in the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe.

Dave Reid

The collapse of these regimes at the end of the 1980s and in the
early 1990s led to capitalist politicians world-wide stepping up their
attacks on the ideas of socialism. 

They now claimed there was no
alternative to the capitalist free market.

Not socialist regimes

However, these were not socialist regimes. In 1917 the working class
in the old Russian empire came to power and created the first workers’
state in history. It nationalised the economy and laid the basis for
socialism. But a combination of Russia’s isolation and backward economy
enabled a privileged bureaucracy to develop, with Joseph Stalin as their
figurehead. They held society in a suffocating, totalitarian grip,
destroying all vestiges of workers’ democracy.

Even though the economy carried on its back the bureaucracy’s
wastefulness, inefficiency and brutality, on the basis of the planned
economy it developed rapidly through the 1930s. The Soviet Union emerged
from the Second World War with the USA as one of the two world
superpowers.

But, once society in the USSR developed a certain level of production
and technique, i.e. became a modern economy, the old bureaucratic method
of rule from the centre could no longer work. Marxists previously
described the bureaucracy as a ‘relative fetter’ on any further progress
of these societies. Now it was becoming more and more an absolute
fetter.

What was needed was the involvement of the whole of society in
running the economy. The great Russian revolutionary Trotsky explained
that a planned economy needs democracy like a body needs oxygen.
Capitalism uses the market mechanism to regulate and direct its
productive activity. It operates anarchically and unjustly and produces
growing periodic crises, but it does provide a check on production.

Without a democratic plan, involving committees of workers on the
shop floor, transport workers, distribution workers and working-class
consumers covering every corner of the economy, a nationalised economy
cannot possibly bring together the billions of strands of activity that
a modern economic society demands.

And democracy was the one thing that the bureaucracy wouldn’t try to
revive the economy – it would mean an end to power and privilege for the
bureaucracy itself.

Lifting the lid

GORBACHEV WAS charged with the responsibility of digging the Soviet
economy out of the bog of stagnation that it had run into. The
bureaucratic elite running society understood that unless the economy
could be reinvigorated, huge social explosions would follow that would
threaten its survival.

They saw the movement around Solidarnosc in Poland that began in 1981
amongst shipyard workers in Gdansk. In its early stages this movement
posed the possibility of the bureaucracy’s rule being overthrown and the
possible birth of a genuine workers’ democracy.

Gorbachev set out with two aims, to free up the economy and to widen
the popular base of his hated regime. Perestroika was based on the idea
of shaking up industry and allowing limited elements of the market into
the Soviet economy.

These were not in themselves new ideas, previous Soviet leaders
zigzagging between centralisation and decentralisation had "zigged" to
such temporary reforms before, only later to "zag" and re-centralise the
economy. What was different this time was the depth of the crisis.

So Gorbachev attempted to get some support from a popular base to
break through obstinate opposition from bureaucrats who wanted to hang
onto their own jobs. Glasnost (openness) was proposed as an idea of a
new political regime where – in theory and within strict limits – the
working class could criticise and where there would be some elections
with more than one candidate.

Glasnost lifted the lid on huge discontent against the bureaucracy.
The relaxation of the worst repression led to posters appearing on the
walls attacking the bureaucracy: "Do away with the special privileges
for politicians and bureaucrats" and "Not the people for socialism but
socialism for the people". The loosening of repression brought forward a
flood of criticism of the pampered bureaucracy’s privileges.

At this point there was very little support for any kind of turn to
capitalism. Opinion polls showed support for capitalism as low as 3%.
What working people were moving toward in a very general way was a
workers’ democracy – real socialism.

However, a layer of the bureaucracy realised that the game was up,
that the system was irredeemably flawed and that a few reforms would not
save it. These bureaucrats were coming to the conclusion that there had
to be root and branch change.

Led by Boris Yeltsin they began looking to the West and to
capitalism. Under a real socialist system they would lose their
luxurious lifestyles and privileges and control over society. Far more
attractive to them was the installation of capitalism.

And at the same time capitalism in the West was going through a
sustained, if shallow, boom. Compared to the stagnant Soviet economy,
western capitalism looked very attractive to the elite.

Regimes tumble

GORBACHEV’S REFORMS had spread to the Soviet Union’s satellite states
in Eastern Europe where pro-democracy movements were undermining shaky
regimes in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and beyond.
Mass popular movements swept Eastern Europe demanding democratic reform
of the system i.e. real socialism, but also containing the first seeds
of pro-capitalist illusions.

In 1989 the East German regime fell to a popular revolution that
smashed down the Berlin Wall and also the Stalinist bureaucratic state
machine. In the absence of a conscious revolutionary party in East
Germany that could defend the nationalised, planned economy as well as
achieving democracy, the West through the West German government was
able to proffer the hand of the "free market" and restore capitalism.

In Russia, Gorbachev watched with alarm as the movement spread across
Eastern Europe into the Soviet Union itself which had renamed itself the
Confederation of Independent States (CIS). As the crisis developed,
Gorbachev became more and more isolated between the old apparatchiks
clinging onto the old regime and the new pro-capitalist group.

Rise of Yeltsin

In 1991 the struggle between these two wings culminated in the old
regime’s failed coup attempt against the Yeltsin-dominated parliament.
Even the coup leaders were resigned to capitalist "reforms", but wanted
to reverse Gorbachev’s minor democratic reforms and return to a
totalitarian state. The mass of workers, though suspicious of Yeltsin,
moved to prevent the coup and it fizzled out as the army’s ranks refused
to move.

Gorbachev now cut a pathetic figure. The coup leaders had arrested
him. However, the coup’s failure resulted not just in Gorbachev’s
release but also the final victory for the Yeltsin group. Gorbachev
slipped from power and onto the western university lecture circuit.
Yeltsin staggered into power and capitalism occupied Russia and the rest
of the CIS in a series of brutal reforms.

As usual the elite benefited. Most of the new Russian capitalists
were drawn from the old bureaucracy. Some became billionaires: Yeltsin
made a fortune himself. But the capitalist counter-revolution affected
the lives of hundreds of thousands as factory closures and the slashing
of state benefits devastated living standards.

The average life expectancy tumbled in one of the most dramatic falls
in history. Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev retired in comfort, but Russia’s
pensioners still have to fight for the most basic benefits.

Gorbachev later said that he always intended to impose capitalism,
but he was being wise after the event. In fact he attempted to save a
doomed system. He also said that the Russian Revolution was a great
mistake, meaning that the Stalinist system was inevitable and condemned
to fail.

The Gorbachevs and Yeltsins of the world cannot imagine a society
without privileged elites. But the main lesson of Russia is that,
instead of capitalism and Stalinism, the only way for humanity to
develop is with socialist democracy.