Gorbachev's dilemmas AFTER BEING postponed several times, a plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was finally held on January 27-28. Mikhail Gorbachev's marathon six-hour report marked a definite acceleration of the course of reforms that he initiated upon taking power.
What was new was that the center of gravity of these latest reforms has shifted from the economic and social-moral fields (for example the fight against alcoholism and corruption) toward a strictly political present is far from revolutionary. It remains contradictory in many aspects. The fall of the Marcos regime opened up a "democratic space," favoring the expansion of the legal mass organizations. But the "center" in political life, which was flattened under the dictatorship, has rebuilt itself behind Aquino, with the middle classes as a base.
The people's movement - such as Bayan, the KMU and the KMP, for example - has grown remarkably since the start of the 1980s. But it still needs time to consolidate before it can go on the offensive on the national scale.
The Filipino revolutionary movement, therefore, is under the pressure of partially contradictory demands: the need to preserve the people's armed forces and the underground organizations; the fight to regain the "middle forces" that are swinging to the center; the need to defend the democratic gains that came out of the anti-dictatorial uprising of February 1986 against the military right; the need to bloc the Aquino presidency's counter-revolutionary scheme; and the need to expose the role played by US imperialism.
It is not easy at every stage of the struggle to find a single policy that best suits all these needs. In accordance with their strategic options, but also with their concrete situations, the various currents in the Filipino left have made different tactical choices. A complicated debate runs through each organization. I will take up these very important questions in detail in a future article.
10. According Michael Peterson, 'Direct Action' (Australia), January 21, 1987, p. 11.
11. For the argument of an organiza. tion such as the socialist movement Bisig, see 'IV,' No. 112, January 26, 1987, p. 25.
level. ERNEST MANDEL
The three main measures proposed concerned political structures in the strict sense. For the first time in 35 years, a special party congress will be called at the beginning of next year. The form of selecting candidates for the elections to the local and regional soviets will be modified. (It is not clear if this reform will extend as well to the choice of candidates for the Supreme Soviet.)
The form of electing party leaders at several ascending levels will also be changed. (Once again, it is not clear whether the introduction of the secret ballot will apply also to the election of delegates to party congresses, as well as to the election of members of the Central Committee of the CPSU).
A series of such reforms were in the air. They were being discussed not only within the party apparatus but also among the intelligentsia, and even with foreign guests. Some of the proposals discussed, on the other hand, have not been upheld (at least, not yet), such as introducing the principle of compulsory rotation of top party positions and a limitation of terms in office, including in the Central Committee and the Political Bureau, to the life of two legislatures.
Nonetheless, it seems that Gorbachev achieved a surprise effect. While the draft report had circulated among Political Bureau members and candidates, precise details of the new modes of election had been omitted from it. It seems that they have had a bomb-shell effect within the Central Committee.
The surprise effect, the repeated adjournments of the plenums, the interruption of the session, the number of speeches following the general secretary's report (there were at least 34 of them) and the fact that the resolution finally adopted does not mention a number of the more radical proposals all testify to the • resistance Gorbachev is running into from the top echelons of the bureaucracy. The extent of this resistance is also pointed up by the fact that the infusion of new blood into the Political Bureau was more modest than expected. Shcherbinski remained a member; Boris Eltsin was not elected.
This resistance is simply the reflection at the top levels of the bureaucracy of the conservatism of the majority of the bureaucratic appara. tus. It is afraid of any deepgoing change, of any change that is more than purely cosmetic. It is apprehensive about Gorbachev's two central slogans - glasnost' (openess, that is more honest, realistic and complete information) and perestroika (rebuilding, radical reform).
All this does not mean that Gorbachev represents a fundamentally anti-bureaucratic element, a reformer in the socio-political sense of the term, in the life of the state and the party, or that he is largely isolated from the rest of the society. He represents the more lucid wing of the bureaucracy, present above all among the intelligentsia and the technocrats but also, it would seem, in the police and military apparatus, which has recognized the gravity of the crisis into which bureaucratic management has plunged the Soviet Union.
The vast scope of this crisis of the
International Viewpoint 23 February 1987
system has been known to us for a long time. We have analyzed it on several occasions. If Gorbachev described it in dramatic terms in his report to the Central Committee, if he speaks more and more of a veritable "revolution" being necessary, it is to save the bureaucratic system, not because he wants to overthrow it.
The differences between Gorbachev and the so-called conservative faction arise from the conservatives criminal underestimation of the crisis, which is "criminal" precisely from the standpoint of the interests of the bureaucracy as a whole. Facing a scalpel the Brezhnevites murmer that all that is needed is an injection.
Much evidence could be cited of points from Gorbachev's report that his objective is defending the bureaucratic dictatorship. The principle of the one-party system was stubbornly upheld, as well as the dogma that the party must always play the leading role in politics. Gorbachev sang the praises of the KGB as an institution (a command performance, perhaps?)
The "principle" of democratic centralism as it has functioned since the victory of the Stalin faction (in reality, bureaucratic centralism) was considered the touchstone of the entire political system. Its extension from the party to the mass organizations and the state structures was celebrated as the nec plus ultra [zenith Jof . Marxism-Leninism, with which, of course, it has nothing to do. And so on, and so on.
It is precisely by measuring Gorbachev's aim against the means proposed for achieving it that the dilemma he faces is most clearly highlighted.
For nearly 60 years, everything in the Soviet Union has functioned on the basis of a vertical command system, from the top down, without any initiative or self-organization by the masses. Underlying the bureaucratic dictatorship is the principle that the "material interest" of the bureaucracy is the driving force in achieving the plan and turning the wheels of the economic machine.
The monopoly of power and material privileges each flow from the other. Logically, therefore, Gorbachev has started from the top in applying his reforms.
But, there you are, the apparatus resists. It demonstrates a ponderousness unsuspected even by its most lucid critics. It sabotages, or worse still, systematically obstructs. So, it has to be shaken up. You start by shaking up the administrators administratively. Then you find more obstruction, glaring new manifestations of intertia, new partial setbacks, new delays and postponements.
But the ticking of the time bomb represented by the crisis of the system goes on relentlessly. All the time that passes is time running out. The more time is lost, the worse the crisis becomes.
So, you have to act through other social forces. Outside the bureaucracy, only the masses can be the protagonist of the "veritable revolution" that Gorbachev says the USSR needs. The technocratic and cultural intelligentsia, which is supporting him more and more enthusiastically, does not have the weight to counterbalance the millions of functionaries and inspectors defending their well-worn ruts and their privileges.
But how can some bureaucrats mobilize the masses against others and control and channel their mobilizations? The risks of such an adventure are confirmed by the examples of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, China; and the most terrifying example of all is the Poland of Solidarnosc. Give them an inch, and they'll take a mile.
Like the "liberal empire" of Napolean I and Napoleon III, or the "liberal empire" of the czars, Gorbachev's "liberal dictatorship" is literally caught between two fires. Divisions within the bureaucracy widen a breach through which sooner or later the autonomous action of the masses can erupt.
While Gorbachev talks about a crisis of the system in the gravest of terms, even alarmist ones, he cannot offer an adequate explanation of how the USSR got into this predicament. Like all the ideologues and politicians Like all the ideologues and politicians of the bureaucracy, he is incapable of presenting and analyzing the bureaucracy itself as a social force. For him the bureaucracy is only a psychological phenomenon, a sum of defects and errors in behaviour, at most a sum or system of inadequate ideas. The social roots of these superstructural phenomena are covered over. Bland condemnation of Stalin
Thus, when he condemned the Stalin period in his report to the Central Committee, he did so in such bland and purely ideological terms that it seemed an insult to the victims of the terror:
"The circumstances that we are aware of ... [in the course of which] authoritative evaulations and judgements become unquestionable truths that needed only to be commented upon."
The millions deported? A million Communists murdered? The all-embracing terror? The working class atomized, terrorized, made incapable of action? The proclamation of the omnipotence of the managers in the factories? The elimination of the right to strike? The enormous growth of social inequality? All this disappears from the analysis. International Viewpoint 23 February 1987
In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the condemnation of the Brezhnev era seems more radical than that of the Stalin era. In the case of the former, the picture is not outlined with a few fuzzy strokes but painted in big bold colors -stagnation in all areas, inertia, widespread lack of respect for the law, vast corruption, declining morality, holding back of economic and social progress, blocking positive changes, blindness to social problems. The general secretary certainly did not mince any words there!
Indeed, a relaunching of explicit de-Stalinization in the style of the Twentieth and Twenty-Second Congresses is not excluded. The regular Soviet press is mentioning Lenin's Last Testament, especially its negative judgement about Stalin. But, for the moment, it is not publishing the full text of the document or raising the delicate question of the Moscow trials, or the composition of the Political Bureau in Lenin's time, or of the Testament's generally favorable assessment of the Bolshevik leaders murdered by Stalin, in particular Trotsky and Bukharin.
However, these leaders supposed to appear on the stage, as characters in a play by Mikhail Shatrov, The Brest Peace, which is supposedly to be presented in Moscow's Vashtangov Theater beginning in May 1987. The great novelist Antonii Rybakov has reportedly written a novel devoted to the murder of Kirov, entitled Arbad's Children, in which he exposes Stalin's responsibility for this crime and the Stalin terror.
Questioned by Monty Johnstone, editor of the British Eurocommunist magazine Marxism Today, Fyodor Burlatsky, political commentator on Literaturnaya Gazeta and quite close to Gorbachev himself, still expressed himself in an evasive and delphic fashion about a rehabilitation of Lenin's companions who fell victim to Stalin:
... we must change our style of teaching the history of our party. It is now without personalities. And they must research the role of all political leaders, of leading members of the politburo, and explain what happened during Lenin's time, during Stalin's time, and after Stalin's time, dealing with every figure. It is our duty. But I can't answer now about the personalities you mentioned because it is a big question, and it is a difficult question, and maybe we'll have an answer in the not too distant future."
According to the Italian CP daily L'Unita of January 28, 1987, a rehabilitation of Bukharin is in the works.
All these questions are not merely historical or symptomatic. They go to the heart of the problem. This is why Khruschev tripped over the same stumbling bioc.
You cannot rehabilitate the victims of the Stalin purges without at the same time condemning en bloc their executioners, their jailers, and those who bore witness against them -that is, the bulk of the bureaucratic apparatus. (1) You cannot point an accusing finger at this apparatus as a whole without exposing the mechanisms of political power that made it possible to commit these monstrous crimes and the reasons why the bureaucracy tolerated (or wanted) Bureaucratic privilege vs "the communist ideal"
That takes us back to the question of the bureaucracy's material privileges, in particular their special stores, special hospital rooms, their vacation homes, their dachas and their state
There was some talk about these things before the Twenty Seventh Congress of the CPSU but a veil has been cast over them since. Gorbachev does not seem to have mentioned these questions in his marathon report to the Central Committee in January 1987.
Here appears the second dilemma facing Gorbachev. He has exposed the veritable "moral corrosion" that Soviet society has supposedly suffered since Brezhnev (and what about Khruschev's "goulash socialism'?). H has said that "Western values" "consumer society" behaviour have asserted themselves in the USSR:
"Groups have grown, including many youth, for whom the aim of existence has narrowed to the search for material well-being, for gain at any cost. The cynical position of such people has taken on the most acute forms and is poisoning the outlook of those around them." (Summary of the report in L'Unita of January 28, 1987.)
So, Gorbachev makes a stirring eulogy to moral incentives and "the communist ideal." But how can you fail to recognize that all of that sounds hollow so long as enormous material privileges persist at the top echelons of the bureaucracy? Austerity for the masses, the workers, the producers, pensioners, petty functionaries; "material incentives" for the top bureaucrats and technocrats - can anyone think for a single instant that the people are not going to notice this fraud, with or without glasnost?
How can you break out of this dilemma without striking at the bureaucracy's heart (which lies just below its wallet) and without dumping this cynical red herring of a fight against "petty bourgeois egalitarianism" (it would be far more correct to speak of petty-bourgeois opposition to equality) that, in the purest Stalinist tradition, still ! turns up in Gorbachev's report!
Underneath this second dilemma, there is a third. For a year, Gorbachev has been gradually shifting the axis of economic reform from the sphere of consumption toward that of production. At the CPSU's TwentySeventh Congress, a lot of space was still accorded to improving the standard of living of the masses, and in particular to the promise of modern and comfortable housing for everyone by the year 2,000. But in the background, more and more a new productivist pressure can be seen shaping up. This is what makes the workers suspicious. Burlatsky admitted this in a veiled way in his interview in Marxism Today mentioned previously.
In order for the economic reform to be accepted by the masses, for the workers to take part in it or become the active force in it, it is not enough to appeal to an "ideal," above all in a society so saturated with skepticism, hypocrisy, double talk, not to say cynicism, as Soviet society is today. The workers need guarantees that extra exertions will not rebound against them, above all that such additional efforts will not put in question full employment, will not aggravate inequality.
But how can such guarantees be given while at the same time increasing the rights and powers of the managers and technocrats in the factories and giving full play to "material incentive," which remains the essential feature of the economic reform?
You can see the extent of Gorbachev's dilemma by comparing his situation with that of Deng Hsiaoping in the People's Republic of China. The Chinese old fox held a major ace. His economic reforms could sharply increase the incomes of the peasantry, even if at the price of growing inequality among the peasants. The peasantry represents the great majority of the population of China.
However, the great majority of the population of the USSR is not made up either of peasants or bureaucrats. It is composed of simple wage earners. But to these people Gorbachev does
1. It is true that unlike the Khrus. chev epoch, those who were direct instruments and active accomplices of Stalin's crimes — the Yezhous, Berias and the like — are more and more disappearing from political life and from life itself. This reduces somewhat the personally interested reticences and resistance to throwing light on this somber era.
International Viewpoint 23 February 1987
not have a great deal to offer on the the material level. Improving supply, even of food, by extending the cooperative sector, brings on a dizzying rise in prices.
In the "cooperative stores" opened in Moscow you can find high-quality sausages without having to stand in line. But the price is 10 times higher than in the state stores. No workers, not even skilled workers (who earn 300 rubles a month) can afford 10 rubles for a kilo of sausages. (The equivalent in the United States would be 40 to 50 US dollars for two pounds of sausages.) Discussion on workers' self-management
Gorbachev's only way out, in these conditions, is to offer something on an institutional level. But the contours and content of what he offers are far too vague to overcome skepticism.
An interesting discussion is going on today in the USSR on the subject of self-management of enterprises. Despite all the hue and cry about "openess," only an indirect echo of this is perceptible. A notable example is in the article by Lev Tolkunov, member of the Central Committee of the CPSU and chair of the Council of the Union of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, in No. 10, October 1986, of Nouvelle Revue Internationale. The contradictions in the "official" position defended by Tolkunov are glaringly obvious.
"Our party... has resolutely rejected the conceptions of 'barracks communism' which deny the democratic forms of workers' self-management in order to give primacy to military-bureaucratic methods. At the same time, the party has declared itself, and still does, consistently and resolutely against all petty-bourgeois [sic] anarcho-syndicalist theories of 'workers' self-management.' The latter are unacceptable to us because they counterpose to the socialist state the self-management of workers collectives. In reality, as experience shows [sic], the socialist state acts in common with the socialist organizations and the collectives of the workers, as the instrument for people's self-management" (p 57).
You can get the full flavor of this hash when you remember that since the victory of the Stalin faction, the principle of management in the enterprises has been the "unified command" of the managements, that the right to strike or to challenge the managers' decisions has been abolished, and that, as the author himself admits, until quite recently 8 the workers were simply informed of the content of the plans, and not even consulted about it!
Tolkunov proclaims grandiloquently: "As the complete masters on their home ground in the factories, the kolkhozy, the workshops or the farms, the working people must also be masters in the country" (p 65).
However, we learn in passing that in the "radical" reform that is being drafted concerning management structures in enterprises, "Workers' councils" are to be set up that will "bring together representatives of the administration, the party organizations, the unions and the Komsomol, as well as team councils, etc....
•.. it seems opportune to extend eligibility for election to all heads of teams, and then progressively to certain [!] other categories of leaders in the enterprises: foremen, chiefs of posts, of sectors, of workshops ... of sovkhoz administrations" (p 66).
The workers cannot determine what they produce, how they produce it, or to whom their product is to go. The workers who are the "complete masters on their home ground in the factories" have only recently been given the right to elect the factory manager, as they do in Yugo. slavia, to say nothing of the higher ups in the trusts and groups of factories. The state, as the instrument of "people's self-management" is supposed to represent this "people" over and above the workers' collectives. One could not give a better illustration of bureaucratic centralism. (2)
What characterizes the Gorbachev team is mistrust of the workers. What characterizes the workers' attitude is mistrust of the Gorbachev team. This cannot be overcome by propaganda. On both sides, such misgiving by no means reflects any lack of clearsightedness.
This mutual mistrust clearly outlines Gorbachev's dilemmas. It will not be overcome with propaganda. So far, Gorbachev has proven to be a great public relations expert. He has remained far from expert in dialogue with the working class.
In recent years, a real public opinion gradually formed in the USSR. But it was a public opinion confined to social "mini-milieus," that is, a fragmented public opinion that, by the same token, reflected a fragmented consciousness.
The new fact that we are now seeing, and one that is obviously not unrelated to Gorbachev's offensive in the name of glasnost', is the emergence of a social consciousness embracing social problems on a much vaster scale.
The writer Yevtushenko summed up this situation as regards the youth with the lapidary formula: "Those who are finishing high school today are more interested in the spiritual [human] sciences than in the natural sciences or technical matters." (Der Spiegel, February 2, 1987.)
The Chernobyl catastrophe unleashed a real debate over ecology in the USSR, which despite all the references to glasnost', remains largely unknown to the broad public. This is how Burlatsky referred to it in his interview in the February 1987 issue of Marxism Today:
"But at the informal level there are different views, especially among the scientists and the writers, and there are views something like those of the greens in Western countries. Some writers argue that we should not place nuclear power stations near towns or rivers but instead maybe in Siberia or in other places where it wouldn't be so dangerous. You can see this mentioned in some speeches and articles especially by the writers. But, I repeat, Chernobyl is a very painful question. Therefore there are not such big and open discussions about it." Women's councils
Moreover, feminist consciousness has advanced by leaps and bounds in recent months. The under-representation of women in the leading bodies of the party and the state is creating a real scandal today. The Gorbachev team has reacted. Discussions have taken place on the subject of institutionalizing "women's councils."
Although this may appear as a way of getting around the question of direct representation of women in the organs of power properly speaking, at the same time it creates a possibility for a debate on the social demands specific to women - not just an offensive against discrimination in pay but also and above all demands calling for a drastic extension of collective social services; improvement of the system of distribution and public transport to reduce lost time; and re-examination of the problem of. the official attitude to the nuclear family, whose breakdown is manifest.
2. The idea that there is a preestablished harmony between the interests of the working class as a whole, the interest of each workers' collective and the interest (that is, the concrete functioning) of the state was already severely criticized by Lenin in the trade-union discussion in the Russian Communist Party in 19201921. At that time, Lenin recognized that strikes were justified (and therefore implicitly workers' autonomy) by the fact that the state was "workers' state with bureaucratic deformations."
International Viewpoint 23 February 1987
(This latter problem is finally being discussed more frankly in the press, instead of being hidden behind hypocritical references to the "disturbing rise in the number of divorces," as was the case for decades.) (3)
It must, however, be stressed that the reappearance of this broader social consciousness in the Soviet Union has not yet been accompanied by a real politicization of broader mass layers, even within the intelligentsia. The reason for this is twofold:
First of all, the leaders themselves discourage this. Monty Johnstone asked Burlatsky whether he envisaged the possibility of groups of citizens who take positions similar to those of the Greens getting permission to organize and express their point of view within the framework of a more populist society. He got a very curt reply: 'That is not usual for our society."
Secondly, the masses themselves hesitate to set out on that road -once burned, twice shy! A recent event attests to this. The current sensation in Moscow - more than the Central Committee plenum - is the showing of Abuladze's film Repentance, which is a violent critique of the Stalin terror, but in an allegorical form, without the dead dictator being named. (This is obviously no accident; nor is it any accident that the dictator is presented with features that recall those of Beria more than those of Stalin).
As the crowds leave the movie theaters, groups form discussing the film's message and the balance sheet of the Stalin era vigorously, if not passionately. These discussions seem entirely spontaneous and free. But, at least so far, they have been limited to the past. They have not at all touched on current questions, either on the political structures presently in place or Gorbachev's reforms.
The British weekly The Observer also points out in its February 8, 1987, issue that during a pop concert in a suburb of Moscow, a young singer alluded in his song to the absurdity of the war in Afghanistan and to the human losses incurred (there is a similar reference in a recent film by Yuris Podnieks). The youthful audience applauded him frenetically. But there was no political discussion. Only the deaths of Soviet youths were deplored.
For the broader masses, political discussion, political criticism and the development of political awareness can arise only out of practice and a spontaneous political apprenticeship at the base. Marx laughed at those who thought that under the enlightened absolutism of Prussia they could teach swimming without letting the pupils into the water. He ridiculed the "jumping teachers" who tried to prepare for vaulting a precipice with a tape measure. Gorbachev's enlightened paternalism is running up against the same obstacle. Likewise, science cannot progress without free discussion. For their political apprenticeship, the masses need free activity. Such political freedom is not provided for by Gorbachev's reforms. Elimination of censorship needed.
That means that the masses -above all the workers and the youth -are waiting for a whole series of tests in order to judge the real portent of these reforms. These can be summed up in the following 13 points, which are given by way of examples (supplementary points could easily be added.)
1. Elimination of the censorship. The right for any given group of citizens (not just writers and journalists!) freely to publish books, pamphlets, magazines, periodical press organs, leaflets, etc.
2. Repeal of the articles in the penal code that restrict freedom of expression, in particular those that prohibit "anti-Soviet agitation" and "slandering Soviet power," articles that clearly concern neither spying nor criminal activities (terrorism, and so on) but institutionalize crimes of opinion and prevent or obstruct the exercise of democratic rights by the masses. (4)
3. Release of all the political prisoners, that is, all those who are in prison or in the camps for crimes of opinion.
4. Establishment of habeas corpus. Any persons arrested must be presented with a precise charge within 24 hours of their arrest, and have the right to a freely chosen lawyer to defend them. And these lawyers must have the right to see the evidence on which the charge is based.
5. As a protection against police arbitrariness, anyone arrested must have the right to appeal to the local soviets. The local soviets must have the right to do their own questioning of any person arrested, without the police present. The Soviets have to have the right to investigate police operations.
6. The right for any group of citizens, above a certain minimum number, not only to propose candidates for election to the soviets (including the Supreme Soviet) in nominating assemblies - that reform is contained in Gorbachev's report to the Central Committee - but to run candidates in the elections themselves, if these candidates get a given minimum of votes in the nominating assemblies.
7. The right of these candidates to publish their platforms and distribute them to all the voters, with no political restrictions, even if they are different from those of the CPSU.
8. Free election of trade-union delegates, members of the "Workers' Councils" and the "Women's Councils" in the enterprises, with the right to put forward several candidates, without any restriction. For a transitional period, for the reasons indicated by Gorbachev himself, the freedom of such elections would have to be assured by a secret ballot.
9. The right for the freely elected trade-union members of the "Workers' Councils" in the enterprises to contact each other, to consult and organize "vertically" within an industry, and above all horizontally in the neighborhoods (in the great urban centers), in the smaller cities, in districts, regions and republics. Elimination of the principin of demons, ie central.
enterprise groups, "Workers Councils" and all mass organizations.
This principle, even in its original Leninist (that is, genuinely democratic) form makes sense only when applied to persons freely associated on the basis of shared conviction, and not to class or state bodies. At this level, to assure that the masses will genuinely exercise the real power, the guiding principle must be that of delegated authority based on a mandate that can be taken back at any time by the electors who gave it.
10. Re-establishment and guarantee of the right of the workers to strike or carry out any other kind of action pursuant to their demands.
According to the Paris daily 'Liberation' of February 3, 1987, Valentina Tereskhkova's report to the con. ference of the Union of Soviet Women on January 30, 1987, was really explosive. According to the report, the greater part of Soviet women still have to work at laborious and unskilled manual tasks, lose hours every day standing in line for poor quality products and have to do household work that amounts to a second workday. The report denounced the lack of places in daycare centers, the lack of sanitary precautions responsible for the spread of infectious diseases among children and growing infant mortality, which is double that of the developed capitalist countries.
Burlatsky and the other Gor. bachevites use the formula "freedom of discussion, but no freedom socialist ideas." Deng Hsiao-ping and Peng analogous formulas in People's Republic of China. But how can it be explained, then, that in the USSR many Great Russian national chauvinist and openly anti-semitic writings, such as those by Iseran Solodar, are tolerated even if they do not have official blessing, while the writings of fiercely anti-capitalist communists, socialists and anarchists are banned?
International Viewpoint 23 February 1987
11. Generalized workers' control over all economic activities, at all levels of the plan and management, such as over stocks and movements (shipments out and in, transport) of raw materials; use of, and demands for, equipment; calculation of current production costs; the establishment of production and wage norms; the targets of the plan within the enterprise and in other enterprises; the general priorities in plans governing employment; right of veto over layoffs and other forms of reducing employment, etc.
This is a key measure for increasing real, and not merely formal, "public relations" participation by the workers in management. This is a decisive step toward the economic democracy that Gorbachev talks so much about, Leonid Brezhnev (centre) in 1945 (DR)
KPAH • and which is supposed to be the "updated" version of the "democracy of the producers" that was talked about in the wake of the October revolution.
Interviewed by Business Week's Moscow correspondent, the Soviet historian Roy Medvedev reported a protest movement that broke out in December 1986 among the workers in the Kamaz truck factory to the east of Moscow. (5)
"When the inspectors who checked the quality of the products discovered a series of problems, they stopped the assembly line, which interrupted work in 20 workshops of the giant complex. The workers protested against the reduction of production bonuses that resulted from this. They complained about losing money through the fault of the management."
No wonder. Such injustices cannot be avoided or even reduced unless the workers themselves can supervise and correct the management of the enterprises on their own initiative.
12. Elimination of the special stores and reserved wards in the hospitals, vacation homes, special restaurants, etc. Workers' control (and citizens' committees) to assure that these measures are applied.
13. Introduction of the principle that no state functionary, including at the highest levels, can get greater remuneration (including non-monetary benefits) than a skilled worker.
In view of the tight interlocking of the state and the CPSU in the USSR, the extension of a series of demands about "openess" to the structures of the CPSU does not reflect illusions about the nature of this party but rather elementary democratic demands. "Really revolutionary changes"?
Since for the moment the only real political debates that are going on in the USSR are taking place within the Central Committee of the CPSU, it is logical for critical soviet citizens to demand that these debates be published. Since Gorbachev proposed that there be election by secret ballot of the members of the CPSU's committees, it is logical for the citizens to demand that these elections not be mere shows, but there be a choice of candidates distinguished by representing real opposing platforms.
All this, obviously, in no way detracts from the importance of demanding a multiparty system, that is, the right of Soviet workers and peasants freely to form political parties of their choice.
Is advocating such demands in the USSR "too much," "too soon"? Does this strengthen the position of the conservatives opposed to Gorbachev's reforms? That is one of the most moth-eaten of arguments. Already on the eve of the revolution of 1848, the liberals accused the communists (the revolutionary socialists) of the time of "playing the reactionaries' game" by putting forward their "excessive" demands. The
5. Roy Meduedeu was a sort of "loyal oppositionist" under Khrushcheu and Brezhnev. He even proposed his candidacy, not without some success, at a prenominating meeting for the elections to the Supreme Soviet in Moscow's Central district.
International Viewpoint 23 February 1987
USA real problem lies elsewhere. It lies in the class nature of political activity, in the different social interests that are to be expressed and linked up.
Thinking that you can make "really revolutionary changes" (Gorbachev's phrase) in the Soviet Union as it is today without the working class moving is believing in Santa Claus. Thinking that you can get the working class to move without appealing to its interests is falling into the most sterile sort of voluntarist and idealist utopianism.
The main roads of both material and moral incentives for the workers follow the markers of solidarity, justice, equality and real decision-making powers that have been well known for more than 30 years.
To those who say that you cannot go too quickly without running into more and more obstacles, we