Power and Money: A Marxist Theory of Bureaucracy by Ernest Mandel, Verso (New York and London, 1992) 252pp., $18.95/£11.95
30 International Viewpoint n° 269 - September 1995
### MANDEL
1923-1995
Ernest
Over the past forty years, Ernest Mandel has been a central participant in almost every major discussion and debate among Marxist scholars and activists. Whether the issues involved the character and limits of the post-World War II "longwave" of capitalist economic expansionthe structure of the capitalist state, problems of revolutionary strategy in the advanced capitalist countries, the problem of revolutionary organization?, the origins and nature of the bureaucratized post-capitalist societies?, Ernest Mandel has made seminal contributions to these discussions from a non-dogmatic, but militantly classical, Marxist perspective. Recently, others on the left have embraced more trendy and academically acceptable theoretical positions— neo-Ricardian economics, Weberian sociology or post-structuralist/ post-modernist "critical theory." By contrast, Mandel has attempted to develop and extend the insights of historical mateCharlie Post teaches sociology in New York City, has been active in the rank and file organizng in the American Federation of Teachers, and is a member of Solidarity and a supporter of the Fourth International.] reviewed by Charlie Post Against the Current Chicago, June 1995 rialism (the foundation of all social life in the social relations and material forces of production) to new problems and phenomena not anticipated by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg or Trotsky.
His latest work, Power and Money: A Marxist Theory of Bureacracy, summarizes Mandel's earlier investigations of the problem of bureaucracy. He reiterates his critique of Stalinist, social-democratic and bourgeois-liberal theories that deny the possibility of democratically organized workers' power in the modern world. He maintains that bureaucracy — the usurpation of power by a minority of officials and experts — is not an "inevitable" product of complex, modern, "rational" societies. Instead, bureaucracy is the product of specific, historically limited relations among human beings and between human beings and the natural world— of specific social relations and material forces of production. Although his broad sweep often results in a lack of conceptual cohesion, Mandel defends and extends the classical revolutionary Marxist analysis of the labor bureaucracy in capitalist societies and the bureaucratic ruling groups in post-capitalist societies.
The emergence of bureaucracies in both the mass working class parties (social-democratic and Stalinist) and unions under capitalism and in the postcapitalist societies is rooted in the reproduction of the social division of labor between mental-supervisory and manual labor. In the case of the labor bureaucracy and the professional reformist parliamentarians, the reproduction of the division of labor between "head" and "hand" work flows from the episodic character of working class struggle. The demands of survival in capitalist society prevent the mass of workers from consistent activity in strikes, demonstrations and political life. The task of administering the institutions created by the periodic upsurges of mass activity, whether unions or political parties, falls to a distinct layer of full-time labor officials and parliamentary politicians. Removed from the daily humiliations of the capitalist labor process and free to work "for the workers' cause", the labor bureaucracy consolidates these and new privileges (higher incomes in particular) by excluding rank and file activists in the unions and parties from any real decision making power.
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International Viewpoint n° 269 - September 1995 31
In the case of bureaucratic ruling groups in the post-capitalist societies, the reproduction of the mental-manual division of labor is rooted in the material scarcity that has marked all of the societies where capitalism has been overthrown. Isolated in relatively underdeveloped capitalist social formations, all of the anti-capitalist revolutions of the twentieth century have faced the dilemma of building a new, collectivist social order in the face of extreme poverty— not the conditions of abundance the Marxian tradition believed was a necessary precondition for the construction of socialism. A layer of full-time state officials separate from the mass of workers emerged first to administer the distribution of scarce goods and services among the population. The bureaucracy consolidated its control over the state institutions and the state owned means of production as all opposition, particularly from the working class or peasantry, was dispersed and disorganized by their single-party monopoly of political power.
The bureaucracies in both the capitalist and post-capitalist societies, as they consolidate their power and privilege, develop a distinctive world view— substitutionism. Fearing that new waves of workers' struggles in the capitalist coun tries, or active, democratic participation in social and economic life by the producers in the post-capitalist countries would undermine the institutions that provide them with important material advantages over the bulk of the working class, both the labor bureaucracy and post-capitalist state bureaucrats claim that their continued, unchallenged power is necessary to defend the hard fought for gains achieved by workers in both the east and west. Thus the "dialectic of partial conquests" (establishment of ongoing workers' organizations in the west, the overthrow of capitalism in the east) gives rise to a privileged layer of full time officials who embrace an "organizational fetishism"— the belief that the preservation of existing institutions takes priority over advancing the struggles of the workers and their FROM HERE it is one short step to replacing the tumultuous self-activity and self-organization of working and oppressed people with the more staid methods of the labor bureaucracy (electoralism, bureaucratized collective bargaining, etc.) or the more barbaric methods of the postcapitalist bureaucracies (single party rule, repression, restriction on the rights to strike and organize, terror, etc.) as the best method of defending the interests of the working class. In sum, bureaucratic hegemony, whether over working class institutions in capitalist societies or over state institutions in post-capitalist societies, is
### Ernest
1923.
-1995 MANDEL
explained and justified ideologically by putting the "farsighted wisdom" of union officials or party-state bosses in the place of the democratic self-organization and activity of working people. MANDEL spends considerable time pointing out the disastrous effects of bureaucratization on both the struggles of working people under capitalism and on
The works of Ernest Mandel
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£11.95 the construction of a viable post-capitalist society. The social-democratic substitution of electoral politics and routinized collective bargaining for working class and popular mass action has led to a pro-
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Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory
Late Capitalism
The Leninist Theory of Organisation
Marxist Economic Theory
The Marxist Theory of Alienation
On Bureaucracy
Power and Money
Revolutionary Marxism Today
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1960s. As the crisis of capitalist profitability deepened, social-democracy's substitutionism gave way to realpolitik — adapting to the new "reality" of declining living and working conditions:
[The underlying assumption of present-day social-democratic gradualism is precisely this: Let the capitalists produce the goods, so that governments can redistribute them in a just way. But what if capi-
32 International Viewpoint n° 269 - September 1995
### MANDEL
1923-1995
Ernest
talist production demands more unequal, more unjust distribution of the 'fruits of growth? What if there is no economic growth at all as a result of capitalist crisis? The gradualists can then only repeat mechanically: there is no alternative; there is no way out.
(p.236)
Eschewing militancy and direct action by workers and other oppressed people, the labor bureaucracy and reformist politicians in the west have no choice but to make concessions to the employers' offensive and to administer capitalist state austerity. The spectacle of reformist bureaucrats shunning the struggle for reforms has been repeated across the capitalist world in the last two decades with tragic results: from the concession bargaining of the US AFLCIO officials, to the Mitterrand regimes' budget cuts, privatization and deregulation, to the subjugation of an ANCCOSATU led government in post-apartheid South Africa to what some have called the "sado-monetarism" of the IMF and World Bank4. The bureaucratization of the centrally planned economies in the east has had equally disastrous results according to Mandel. By substituting the party-state officialdom for the democratic decisions of workers and consumers, the Stalinized command economies are left without any mechanism for insuring the long-term and continuous development of labor productivity. While the post-capitalist bureaucracies were capable of organizing extensive growth, forcing millions of uprooted peasants to labor in plants that merely reproduced the labor processes of the capitalist west, they floundered when faced with organizing intensive growth, replacing labor with new technologies and producing new items of consumption. Lacking either the "whip of competition" that ensures that each capitalist firm continuously reduces necessary labor through mechanization (with its deleterious effect on the rate of profit), or democratic control over economic decisions by "associated producers" with an interest in reducing their labor time and increasing the provision of the necessities of life, the bureaucratic economies are under no economic or political compulsion to develop new technique or economize on the use of resources. The result is that
"a general lack of responsibility, and indifference to the factory's performance is therefore a characteristic feature of the system and threatens the
USSR with stagnation and decline."
(p.42)
The fate of the bureaucratic command economies in Eastern Europe and the exUSSR tragically confirmed Mandel's theSIS.
Mandel concludes Power and Money with an elaborate discussion of the conditions for the development of a viable democratic socialism following a victorious workers' anti-bureaucratic revolution in the east (as unlikely as that possibility may seem today. While Mandel concedes that commodity production and exchange will not be completely and immediately abolished (particularly in agriculture), the changing boundaries of plan and market, like the character of the plan itself must be subject to the democratic decision of the "associated producers." Mandel's vision of a "self- administered" economy involves the articulation of democratic bodies (whose officials are elected by the entire adult population, subject to immediate recall and are paid the average salary of a skilled worker) at the international, national, industrial and office, factory or neighborhood level, where:
Decisions should be taken at the level at which they can most easily be implemented
And they should be taken at the level where the greatest percentage of people actually affected by them can be involved in the decision-making process.
(p. 213)
Put simply, international and national bodies should be empowered to draw up the basic outlines of the economic plan (and the boundary between plan and market), while industrial, regional or planoffice bodies should decide how to implement their particular parts of the plan in consultation with those who will use their product.
In order for democratic "self-administration" to be effective, the working class must be able to express their needs and desires in the planning process, and there must be mechanisms for the correction of social and economic miscalculations. According to Mandel, political pluralism — the right of all political currents (including ideologically pro-capitalist tendencies) to organize political parties, have
International Viewpoint n° 269 - September 1995 33 access (in proportion to their numbers) to the media and to organize demonstrations and other non-violent actions to advance their particular view point— is required to allow the working class, all its heterogeneity, to effectively control the planning process. Mandel also recognizes that formally democratic institutions and the rigorous guarantee of political rights for all sectors of the population, while a necessary condition for democratic socialist rule, is not sufficient. There are also crucial social and economic conditions, most importantly the radical reduction of working time for the mass of the population so that all "have the time to administer the affairs of their workplace or neighborhood" (p. 202). Such a reduction of the working day, so that most of humanity can spend 3-4 hours a day in the production of goods or provision of services and another 3-4 hours a day in the work of social self-administration (where everyone, and no one, becomes a "bureaucrat"), is premised on a fairly high level of material abundance and development of the productivity of labor. This, Mandel asserts, will only be possible when not only bureaucratic rule has been replaced in the east, but capitalism has been overthrown in a number of advanced industrial societies and their vast productive potential freed. WHILE MOST of the ideas presented in Power and Money are developed in his other writings on the ex-USSR and the problem of bureaucracy, Mandel does present some new historical and theoretical insights. Sensitive to the "Green" critique of both capitalist and bureaucratic economies, Mandel's analysis of the relationship of different forms of social and economic organization to the physical environment is original and provocative. Mandel address two objections to the Marxian vision of socialism raised by environmental activists in the last two decades. The first is the notion that the Marxian vision of a future society based upon the abolition of material scarcity would place an unbearable strain on the physical resources of the planet and lead to an ecological disaster. Mandel points to the scale of socially wasted resources under both capitalism and the bureaucratic command economies. The immediate abolition of the arms industry alone would free up tremendous resources for socially useful production (based upon renewable energy sources, environmentally safe technologies, etc.) that could provide an adequate standard of living for the bulk of the worlds' population without thrusting new demands upon the finite capacities of the earth. As the basic, material needs for physical security and gratification (food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education) are met, priority can be given to meeting the non-material needs for "self- actualization" (cultural, intellectual and personal development), needs whose satisfaction do not require utilizing finite natural resources.
The second "Green" critique of Marxism, based upon the experience of ecological disaster in the former USSR and Eastern Europe, claims that centrally planned economies are no more ecologically friendly than market- capitalist economies. For Mandel, the destruction of the environment in the east flows from the same bureaucratic mismanagement that gave rise to systematic waste of labor power and other resources. In other words, the absence of any democratic accountability on the parts of central planners and industrial managers allowed them to systematically befoul the physical environment in the east. By contrast, a democratically planned economy has the potential to avoid the ecological disasters that characterize both capitalism and the bureaucratic command economies. Workers and consumers actively involved in formulating and implementing an economic plan have a direct interest in developing labor processes that will neither destroy the health of those directly involved in production, nor befoul the air and water that all must breath and drink. (September- October 1986), 5-38.]
Ernest
1923
-1995
MANDEL
"Understand that you cannot be happier than if you know that you have dedicated your life to this defense of human rights everywhere in the world; the defense of the exploited, the oppressed, the downtrodden, the despised.
There is no better way to be a good human being in this world than to dedicate your life to this great cause. That's why the future is with Marxism."
Speech given at the New
York Marxist School, 1993
Fundamentalists in local government continued from page 8 THE OFFENSIVE of Refah has centred above all on symbolic questions; attempts to close down-town restaurant terraces where alcohol is consumed, changing street names, planning the construction ot a large mosque on the central town square, removal from municipal parks of statues deemed "pornogra-
, ostentatious celebration of the conquest of Istanbul bv the Ottomans, collective prayers to find a solution to the lack of water, penny-pinching on the budgets of municipal theatres and ballets, nomination of Islamic cadres to key posts, nominaion of secretaries in Islamic scarves to municipal positions although those who do not wear scarves have not been dis missed) and so on. But it should be noted that at each important symbolic attack the Islamic fundamentalist mayors have had to step back under pressure from public opinion, the media and the centra institutions. In the social arena, the Islamic town halls have combined populist policies (sale of bread at reduced prices, improved municipal services, and so on with practices typical of capitalist management (privatisations and layofts in the municipal enterprises). Some mayors have even developed a taste for the management of public affairs and have pursued large scale municipal projects (construction of metros, urban planning, sewers, roads, and so on), favouring in the event the enterprises directed by fundamentalists close to the party, without neglecting collaboration with foreign investments (including from the West). All this, of course, involving some big commissions. This election suited the state bourgeoisie perfectly well. It can exploit the situation either to totally integrate Refah into the system, softening its sharper "Islamic " edges, or to once again marginalise it, by revealing its incapacity to resolve problems, accelerating thus the disillusionment of the popular layers who had voted for it. The first process flows almost naturally, because of the corruption of Refah in its municipal strongholds and through a "moderate Islamicisation" of society with the agreement of the traditional parties of the centre right. The second process has two aspects. First, a project of reform of the political and electoral system and a restrained harassment of Refah by the secular bourgeois media. During the rerun of the municipal elections in three wards of Istanbul where the initial vote had een ruled invalid, fear of Refah pushed the secular electorate o cast a useful vote in favour of the best placed secular candidate. In other words, if an electoral system with two rounds was adopted, Refah could be cast aside by the regime. THE HARASSMENT of Refah by the powerful and influential private television chains and the written press is done also henceforth in a more subtle fashion; the smallest deeds and gestures of Refah leaders and their new mayors are now brought to the screen, bringing into broad daylight their incompetence and amplifying the ziz-zags in their discourse. Accustomed to acting in the shadows, the party suddenly finds itself under the spotlight, which has considerably embarrassed it. Jolted from their routine, the party cadres have become even clumsier. Their authoritarian and totalitarian leanings have, then, quickly resurfaced and they have now developed an unabashed attitude ot aggression towards their opponents, which has destroyed he credibilitv of their new "tolerant" image. Moreover, Refah projected itself as a clean party, in opposition to the corruption of the traditional parties, and as a party of the "poor" in opposi ion to the others who "defended the rich". But revelations or the illicit finances of the party, on the personal fortune of Erba-
‹an. and above all press revelations (with proof that Retah hac diverted to its own funds some tens of millions of dollars 34 International Viewpoint n° 269 — September 1995 gathered from its own sympathisers under the form of a campaign of "financial aid for Bosnia", have dealt some very hard blows to this image Having said this, the new relationship of Refah with the media is not simply to the disadvantage of the tundamentalists. It will allow it also to address itself to wider layers. Some fundamentalists have also created their own private television stations to amplity their propaganda. So revelations on Retah's financial irregularities will not in themselves stop the party's growth in popularity, but could slow the rhythm. Moreover, the image of the "clean party" is not Refah's sole argument; bevond the ideological domain, the fundamentalists \ growth is fostered essentially by the economic, social cultural and moral crisis, as well as the international situation (in particular the Bosnian tragedy). The impasse on the Kurdish question is also an important factor. On this question, Refah follows a rather ambiguous policy. In essence, its position does not really differ from that of the state; territorial integrity and single national identity (but based on the religious comnunity, rather than the nation) and opposition to the [insu ectionary] Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK). In practice, on th other hand, Refah advocates reforms (teaching and television in the Kurdish language, suppression of the emergency legislation), combined with virulent critiques of "the common enemy of the Fundamentalists and the Kurdish nationalists". — Kemalism [the official ideology of anti-clericalism, nationalism and state-led modernisation]. But while Refah defends these positions in the Kurdish region, under the pressure of its local apparatus, it downplays the same themes in the west of the country and tries to give some sops to the army. And Refah deputies have even voted in favour of the lifting of parliamentary immunity for the Kurdish nationalist deputies of the DEP. THESE AMBIGUITIES could place Refah in a very uncomfortable position in the future, for what it gains in sympathy among the Kurds of the south-west and Istanbul could well be lost among the conservative electorate of central Anatolia, who's support it competes for with the nationalist far right of the Nationalist Action Party (MHP). Refah tries to occupy also the terrain of nationalism, but with an anti-western and "third-worldist" discourse (with a few neo-Ottoman imperialist accents). But it is disconcerted by the rise of the MHP, which stresses pan-Turkism and national pride, and which attacks it for its positions on the Kurdish question. As for the centre right, incapable of surmounting its internal divisions, it contents itself to take up certain ideological and religious themes of the RP, so as to gain the confidence of this electorate, and present on its lists candidates linked to Islamic circles. Nonetheless, this does not stop these deputies from acting as submarines (as is the case currently during the parliamentary debates on the "democratic" reforms of the constitution) Moreover, this attitude is disastrous in terms of the ideological struggle against fundamentalism. The evolution of Refah since its arrival in power in the municialities shows that its future depends more on external factors han its own dynamic. Certainly, Refah mayors and leaders are going to attempt to continue this policy of implantation and of building nuclei in the state apparatus and their local fiefdoms. In particular they are going to accentuate their ideological offensive and try to score some points in this field, using to their advantage the deficiencies of the system. They will attempt to maintain and enlarge their electoral base while carrying out social policies in the areas they control.
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Continued from back cover/ party elections, but she was prevented from taking power and placed under house arrest by the military State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). In her book, Freedom from Fear (Penguin, 1991) Aung San Suu Kyi spells out her political programme. It is one of western liberal democracy, founded on Buddhist ethics and sensibilities. For the national minorities, she suggests that the removal of the dictatorship would resolve their grievances. Much of the political initiative in recent years has been in the hands of the students living on the border and in Thailand, through the All Burma Students Democratic Front. The NLD by comparison has been weak and divided. Some of its members have been participating in the SLORC's "National Convention" to draft a new constitution. Most of the opposition has called for a boycott of this process, recognising it as a sham to legitimise military involvement in politics. How will Suu Kyi respond? A caged bird has been set free. Will it now be allowed to sing? And if so, whose tune will it choose? by K. Govindan, Socialist Outlook, August 1995