(restructuring) that is occurring under Gorbachev's leadership is the explicit linking of economic reform and democratization.
Gorbachev told the January 1987 plenary session of the
Communist Party Central Committee that, "democracy is not simply a slogan; it is the very essence of the perestroika."
Except perhaps for the Prague Spring of 1968 (and even here this was very much the work of forces from below), no other attempt at economic reform in the Soviet bloc has envisaged real change in the political system, characterized by the monopoly of power in the hands of the party-state bureaucracy.
The opposite is actually closer to the truth: those reforms were conceived largely with a view to averting pressures for political change.2
DAVID SEPPO
HE PRIME motive behind the
T perestroika is, of course, the need to improve economic per-
The Soviet leaderformance.
ship has recognized that the existing system of economic planning and management — the hyper-centralized system"
"command originally esta-
:, blished under Stalin at the end of the
1920s — is the basic cause of the economy's increasingly poor performance.
its terrible
This system, despite wastefulness of human and material resources, did succeed in rapidly industrializing the backward, overwhelmingly peasant society that the revolution had inherited from Tsarism. But it has long since become an obstacle to future progress.
In the command system", the vision, if not necessarily the actual practice, is that of a single immense enterprise in which the main lines of dependence, bargaining and circulation of information are vertical. Material resources are allocated by the centre, which also fixes obligatory production targets for the enterprises.
This is a system that encourages waste, gives priority to quantity over quality, holds back technological innovation and fails to motivate adequately the labour force.
Under the reform, whose final outlines are still far from clear, but which is to be definitively in place by the start of the thirteenth five-year plan in 1991, the accent is to be on "economic" rather than "administrative" means of management. That is, on horizontal rather than vertical coordination, with broad autonomy for the enterprises and a central role for the market mechanism.
Decreased role for centralized planning
The goal is to end day-to-day detailed central tutelage over the economy. The idea, we are told, is not to abandon planning, but to make genuine longterm planning at last possible through the central manipulation of economic levers, such as interest rates, taxation, centrally fixed norms, subsidies, controls over foreign trade and a limited number of key prices. Accordingly, the role and scope of centrally allocated resources and of centrally fixed targets is to be greatly reduced.4
What is the relationship between this
He begins with a quote from Lenin: "1861 gave birth to 1905", that is, the failed reform was a central cause of the revolution. In explaining the failure, Popov cites the nineteenth-century revolutionary, Nikolai Chernyshevskiy: out of economic and military necessity, "the state was forced to undertake programme which was foreign to it, a programme based upon the principles that contradicted the very nature of that state. " 5
"Need to mobilize a movement of the masses"
He concludes by citing Lenin's own conclusions: 'The main lesson and the main experience to be drawn from the reform, according to Lenin, was the need to mobilize a movement of the masses. It was necessary to seek out that social force that was most interested in the most progressive variant of the transformations...to arouse it and to base the reform on its support.... *Reforms carried out by feudal land owners cannot help but be feudal ir nature' » 6
This article was clearly intended as food for thought about the contemporary reform process. What is noteworthy (and explains the indirect, implicit nature of the commentary) is the revolutionary character of the author's conclusions.
Strikingly similar conclusions, based upon Hungary's 20 years of experimentation with the "market reform", have recently been published by another Soviet bloc economist, Janos Kornai, who argues that the move away from 1. Pravda, January 28, 1987. On the January plenum and the reforms, see also "Gorbachev's dilemmas" by Emest Mandel in /V 114, February 23, 1987. 2. W. Brus, "Socialism — feasible and viable?" New Left Review 153, September/October 1985, p.59. 3. Thus, for example, Soviet labour productivity, as a measure of overall economic efficiency, is estimated at only 40% that of the US. M-A. Crosnier, "Le New Deal de Gorbatchev", Le Courrier des Pays de l'Est 11, March 1985, p.34
For a detailed description of the "command system" and its shortcomings, see A. Nove, The Soviet economic system, Allen and Unwin (London), 1983. For a nore analytical approach, see J. Komai, The econom ics of shortage, North-Holland (Amsterdam), 1980 4. See the resolution of the June 1987 Central Committee Plenum, TASS, June 26, 1987. EKO 1, 1987, p.172. 6. Ibid, pp.174-5.
October 26, 1987 • International Viewpoint
USSR economy" to the
"command the
"regulated market" has been realized only to a limited extent. In the state sector of the economy, by far the dom-
"vertical dependence on inant one, superior bureaucracy dominates horizontal dependence on the market.""
And while even the partial change that has taken place has resulted in greater responsiveness to demand and more attention to quality and technological progress, the main improvements in the economy's performance are the result of liberalized policy in the cooperative and private sectors. (But in this area, it is important to note the role played by a significantly extended work day: "In a large number of families, members are working to the point of physical and psychological exhaustion." 8
Kornai, like Popov, offers a political ("class")
explanation for the failure introduce consistent to structural reform:
"Power creates an irresistible temptation to use it.
A bureaucrat must be interventionist because that is his role in society; it is dictated by his situation.
What is now happening in
Hungary with respect to detailed micro-economic regulation is not an accident. It is rather the predictable, self-evident result of the mere existence of a huge and powerful bureaucracy. An inherent tendency toward re-centralization major theme of the Soviet press. The reports are frank and do not hesitate to name names. For example, in December 1986, Izvestiya ran a series on the engineering industry, which was supposed to be in the process of major reform. In reality, little had changed:
TAM
jobs and operating with a reduced staff
The entire amount of wages thus saved is to be distributed among the members of the collective. Many other elements of wage levelling have also been abolished. But very few enterprise managers have availed themselves of the new opportunities. In fact, some have suggested to the USSR State Committee on Labour and Social Issues that it restrict such payments."
There is, of course, a certain amount of illogic and/ or bad faith in these of bureaucratic reports opposition to reform. For long as the overall as structure of the economy remains basically unchanged, the net effect of these partial reforms (which Gorbachev himself qualified as
"insignificant and not radical" in his speech to the
June 1987 Central Committee plenum) is often merely to make life more difficult for administrators in fulfilling their assigned tasks."
These attacks reflect the contradictory nature of the reform process, which is far from clearly worked out.
At the same time, however, the harsh criticism of
N
"bureaucratism" and
"the bureaucracy"
is aimed at softening up real and potential political opposition. For there are indeed basic interests, common to broad of the strata
"administrative class", that are threatened by the reform.
And although its predominates.
"The pioneer reformers Vladimir Kozlinsky, 1919: All power to the Soviets! wanted to reassure all the members of the bureaucracy that there would be ample scope for their activity. Their intention is understandable. The reform is a movement from 'above', a voluntary change of behaviour on the part of the controllers and not an uprising from 'below' on the part of those who are controlled. There is, therefore, a stubborn internal contradiction in the whole reform process: how to get the active participation of the very people who will lose a part of their power if the process is successful? The reassurance worked too well in the Hungarian case: the bureaucracy was not shattered. The number of people employed in the apparatus of economic administration has changed hardly at all." 9 18 Resistance to the reform within the different administrations has become a International Viewpoint • October 26, 1987
"The perestroika in the ministry so far has been of a half-hearted character and has not, therefore, yielded any noticeable end results whatsoever. In the style of the Ministry of Heavy Machine Construction, as before, direct methods of management predominate that go against the course adopted toward the strengthening of economic levers of management....
"These problems...are characteristic not only of heavy and transportation machine construction. Many branch industries are swamped in current work; petty tutelage over enterprises substitutes itself for the solution of strategic tasks. " 10
Resistance is also common at the enterprise level itself. "Some time ago," wrote Izvestiya on May 5, 1987, "restrictions were lifted on combining members are not organized politically to defend these interests, they nevertheless constitute the critical source of opposition to the perestroika and, in a crisis at the higher levels, they would have little trouble finding vigorous defenders amongst a certain part of the politburo.12
The most fundamental interest is job security: in the bureaucratic system, privilege flows not from property but from administrative office. The vast 7. J. Komai, "The Hungarian reform process: vision, hopes and reality", Journal of Economic Literature Vol. 24, December 1986, p.1694. 8. Ibid, p.1707. 9. Ibid, pp.1727, 1729-30. 10. "Pis' ma iz ministersiva" (Letters from the Ministry), Izvestiya, December 20, 1986; see also December 16-18. 1986 11. New York Times, June 27, 1987 12. See D. Mandel, "Sur la nature de l'autoritarisme soviétique", Critiques socialistes (Ottawa), Fall 1986 pp.93-4
personnel changes that have so far marked Gorbachev's tenure and the renewed accent on performance have already put into question what in practice had become a right under Brezhnev. (The establishment of this "right" goes far to explain the unprecedented spread of official corruption under the latter's rule). '3
Economic role of party apparatus
But the economic reform, if carried through at all consistently, would also bring severe cuts in the size of administrative staff. These would affect, first of all, the very numerous middle levels of the economic bureaucracy dozens of industrial branch ministries state committees. These people would not only have to retrain, suffering in the process loss of power, prestige and income, but many — if not most — would have to leave the capital. This would perhaps be the cruellest blow of all in a country where the material and cultural abyss between the capital (and to a lesser extent Leningrad and the larger republican capitals) and the provinces is so profound.
Politically much more significant, however, is the prospective loss by the its middle levels: republican, regional and city committee secretaries and their staffs - of what has been function for nearly 60 years as territorial economic coordinator, supervisor, pusher and fixer. 14
This economic role is an absolutely critical one in the highly centralized "command economy", with its chronic imbalances and shortages, and it has
BK:
no doubt played a central role in the party apparatus' continued dominance within the state over the
During the past months, the party apparatus has been repeatedly told that it must give up its economic managerial, "dispatcher", role. "The party organ must act as an organ of political leadership... and an organ of economic management," admonished Gorbachev in a meeting with Estonian apparatchiki.!5 At the January plenum he was even more explicit:
"It is a matter of improving the methods of party leadership so as to exclude any supplanting tutelage over, the economic organs.... But some party leaders have trouble with the perestroika - they are unable to give up the dispatcher functions that do not belong to the party, the desire to decide all questions for everyone, to hold everything, so to speak, in one's
Another interest at stake is the selection. Under the reform, party apparatchiki and higher economic administrators stand to lose at least a good part of their power to appoint managers. This is a necessary measure if managers are to be more interested efficiency than in pleasing superiors. (At the same time, it is not at all clear enterprise managers would welcome this, as they are used to the old system, which despite its presmay often seem more secure to Proposal for election of party officials
The power of appointment has been a crucial instrument for the construction of power bases and the accompanying accumulation of privilege and it will not be conceded easily. The resolution adopted by the January plenum, convened specifically to discuss and reform cadre policy, did not take up, except in the most general way, Gorbachev's proposals for the election of party officials, which included a secret ballot and multiple candidates. 18 For the time being at least, this can be taken as tantamount to their rejection. (Similar proposals played a central role in Khrushchev's downfall.) 19 Gorbachev did not hide the fact that the preparation of the plenum, postponed three times, had been very difficult. 20
The (at least partial) replacement of appointment from above with election from below, along with the accompanying freedom to publicly criticize officials without fear of retribution, mean an end to the unfettered exercise of power. And this, in turn, inevitably entails an attack on bureaucratic privi-
USSR This is so because these privileges in Soviet-type systems are never legitimate (Soviet Marxism, the official despite its bastardization, still retains its basically democratic and egalitarian character), but take the form of an abuse of power. This theme, too, has become prominent in the
In February, Moskovskaya pravda published a probing report on the capital's special foreign language schools. These, it was stated, cater almost exclusively to the bureaucratic elite.21 This exposé of "these breeding grounds of the gentry", as one reader put it, could not help but raise the more general issue of bureaucratic privilege. Among the dozens of letters the paper received, a common theme stood out:
"A system has taken shape of by no means inoffensive health, recreational, service institutions that are...the domain of the chosen few — a system that is very convenient for the 13. See Z. Medvedev, Andropov au pouvoir, Flammarion (Paris), especially chapters 9 and 14. 14. For an analysis of this role see J. Hough, The Soviet prefects, Harvard University Press (Cambridge), 1969; and A. Yanov, Détente after Brezhnev, IIS-University of California (Berkeley), 1977, ch.2. 15. Pravda, February 23, 1987. 17. 120 directors and chief specialists of major enterprises were asked to propose changes to the system of reporting. All were very critical of the existing system, but when it came down to proposing a replacement, they restored virtually all the current reporting proce dures. "Real'nost' nedezhd" (The reality of hopes), Iz18. Pravda, January 29, 1987. 19. See Z. Medvedev and A. Medvedev, Khrushchev: the years in power, Oxford University Press (London),
19
21. Moskovskaya pravda, February 18, 1987.
October 26, 1987 • International Viewpoint
REM
USSR high-ranking officials the working class.
themselves, and especially for their entourage," 22
Although this is clearly not at present the intention of the lead- TO ership, what is potentially at issue — and this is surely keenly felt by a good part of the bureaucracy - is the latter's very existence as a "class". This is certainly the aim of the most radical partisans of the perestroika. In an interview that merits quotation at length for its implicit "Trotskyism", A. Butenko, professor of economics at Moscow University, told Moskovskaya pravda:
"In the course of our past de-
This transformation of the social basis of the state is the only genuine meaning of democratization. If it were to occur, it would amount to a revolution.
"revolution" and "revolutionary changes" have indeed been used by Gorbachev and other official spokespersons to characterize the perestroika. A theoretical article in Pravda on revolutionary essence of the reanalyzed the "retarding mechanism that has come to exist" in Soviet society, and particularly since the October 1964 Central Committee plenum (that consecrated Khrushchev's fall and velopment, a retarding nism was formed. Its roots lie in serious defects of tions of socialist democracy and are directly linked to phenomena Автомобилист. of the 1930s and 1940s that occurred in the conditions of Stalin's personality cult.
"Restructuring so far has proslowly because the very same forces that blocked the implementation of the decisions of the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU Ti.e. de-Stalinization]...do not want changes and are now too impeding them.... What is involved here is something that Marx, Engels and Lenin warned about but that was dropped in subsequent oversimplified interpretations of the construction of socialism.
A terrible scare for the bureaucracy
"For the working class that has come to power, bureaucratism constitutes an enormous danger....Like Marx and Engels, Lenin also believed that as long as the division between the functions of management and execution existed, and there were managers and managed, there would be a danger of bureaucratism.
"But these Leninist ideas were condemned to oblivion by Stalin....Power was concentrated entirely in the hands of the administrative-bureaucratic apparatus he had created....The trials and repression of the 1930s were the completion of the formation of the Stalinıst regıme, which destroyed those who defended the system of management... based upon Leninist ideas and traditions. The Twentieth Congress of the CPSU gave the bureaucracy a terrible scare, but afterwards active forces bureaucratism purging our society o closed ranks and succeeded in stopping the process of
At a round-table discussion on the ec20 onomic reform, writer G. Lisishkin was even blunter: International Viewpoint • October 26, 1987
"What does our society need most of all today? I think we have to change the division of labour that has crystallized, where one part of the population is narrowly specialized in the production of national wealth and the other - in disposing of it. What is 'other part'? The exceedingly large administrative apparatus at all levels of management and in all spheres, including not only the economy but in ideology, culture, science, leisure, health, etc....All this hangs around the neck of those who produce the wealth. For clarity's sake, in speaking of the unproductive sphere, I have in mind, of course, not the teacher, but those who hinder the teacher in teaching; not the doctor, but the superfluous bureaucrat of the Ministry of Health; not the artist or actor, but the numerous ones "above them" 24
Working class is only alternative force for change
"The question poses itself in the fol-
Union Congress in February 1987, "either democratization or social inertia and conservatism. There is no third way." 25
In thus intimately tying economic reform to democratization, Gorbachev indeed appears to have concluded that if his regime continues to lean upon the bureaucracy as its principal basis of power, the reform is doomed. But the only alternative basis that is at once interested in, and capable of, opposing the conservatism of the apparatus is the appointment of Brezhnev, who used the forum to announce the policy of "respect for caIts author, G. Smirnov, seeks to lay bare the "substance of the contradictions that have come to a head and of the antitheses that are in contention...[in order to] grasp the revolutionary essence of what is transpiring." It turns out that the causes of the braking were "subjective", that is, political: the conservative and anti-democratic policies of the post-1964 leadership, policies based "on weakness of will and incompetence, and in part on individual and group egoism. Departmental and localist tendencies, supported by bureaucratic and technocratic elements who were guided by their immediate interests, did great harm. Existing practices and existing forms and methods were to their liking."
Squaring the circle
So far so good. But then Smirnov attempts to square the circle: "Today's society does not have antagonistic classes whose elimination, and the destruction of whose ideology, would constitute an essential element of revolution....The subtlety of this problem lies in the fact that we are not talking about a social and political revolution, in which the foundations of the old system's economic relations are destroyed and a fundamentally new political regime is established, expressing the interests of the victorious class....
"We are not talking about dismantstate power, but about further strengthening the socialist state of all the people...developing popular social23. "Rozgovory o perestroike" (Conversations about restructuring), Moskovskaya pravda, May 7, 1987. 24. "Ekonomika na perepyt'e" (The economy at a crossroads), Literaturnaya gazela, June 3, 1987, p.10. 25. Izvestiya, February 26, 1987.
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A
ist self-government."
Admittedly, the Soviet system is a highly contradictory one, and the bureaucracy, as Trotsky and other Marxists have argued, is not a class in the historical sense of the term. But if one were to accept Smirnov's conclusions, why speak of revolution rather than reform?
Smirnov, publishing the authoritative central journal of the party, was expressing the current official position. For the same ambiguity is often characteristic of Gorbachev's own pronouncements on this theme. After going on for hours at the January plenum about the absolute necessity of democracy, he reassured the assembly (a gathering of the leading figures of the bureaucracy) that "it is not a question, of course, of any break whatsoever in our political system." 26 Democratic reform is so far ambiguous and limited
One can ask: was he speaking of the political system as it is officially portrayed or of the system as it really
For surely one cannot breathe life into the former without destroying the latter.
Considering his past and the circumstances of his rise to power, it would require something of a leap of faith to accept Gorbachev as a revolutionary. Further we shall see that the democratization over which he is presiding, far at least, is ambiguous and limited, aimed at weakening bureaucratic resistance by mobilizing controlled, popular pressure for reform and at reducing the dependence of managers on their bureaucratic superiors by allowing a certain amount of control from below.
But not only will such a partial democratization leave largely intact, if weakened, the power of the bureaucracy, it is also unlikely to create the necessary political commitment in the working class toward the economic
This is the other side of the link between economic reform and democratization, and we therefore must now turn to this class, which constitutes today over 60 percent of the Soviet population.2 * 26. Pravda, January 28, 1987. 27. By "working class", I mean those women and men engaged in predominantly physical labour in manufacturing, transport and construction. It is obvious that broad elements of the intelligentsia (those occupying posts - or aspiring to them - that require a post-secondary education) and employees in the service sector share many basic interests with these workers.
It is also clear that the various strata that go to make up the "working class", as defined here, are not all cut of the same cloth. Nevertheless, shared basic objective conditions, as well as the common historical experience of Soviet-type systems (most recently Poland in 198081), tend to support the validity of this definition.