It is not generally remembered that Stalin himself also tried to lean on the masses to strike blows against the bureaucracy. During the period of the first two Five-Year Plans, Stalin was compelled to try and curb the greed of the bureaucrats, who were tending to devour an excessive amount of the surplus produced by the working class. By introducing the secret ballot, Stalin intended to lean on the masses to cow the officialdom he represented. There was a mock-up of a bourgeois parliament, but with only one party. This was a farce. Even if there had been more than one candidate, only the candidates vetted and accepted by the Party would be allowed to win anyway. However, Stalin did not dare to introduce his reforms in practice. The Spanish Revolution caused Stalin to back away from his intended reforms and launch the Purges, as we have seen. The sole method which remained to keep the greed of the officials in some kind of check was police repression and terror. But this engenders a new and even more monstrous corruption, dislocates and disorganises society, and represents a movement away from socialism, not towards it.
Trotsky explained how the Stalin constitution, which on paper seemed very democratic, was intended as a “whip against the bureaucracy”. Bonapartist rule involves, among other things, balancing between different groups and classes – between the workers, the peasants, and the bureaucrats themselves – playing off one section against another. In the same way, Gorbachev was compelled to lean on the working class to strike blows at a section of the bureaucratic caste which had gained enormously from its parasitic grip on the economy and the state. Gorbachev wanted to introduce controlled reforms from above, but it was, as we predicted at the time, impossible. As soon as the grip of the bureaucracy was loosened all sorts of pent-up forces were released.
Whereas in the 1930s the working class made up around 20 per cent of Russian society, the figure in the mid-1980s was nearer to 70 per cent. Russia was no longer a backward country, but a sophisticated economy with the largest working class in the world. These reforms could trigger the Russian workers to take independent action. Despite the limited character of Gorbachev’s aims, they could set the masses in motion. Inevitably, once the workers managed to get a certain measure of control they would inevitably lead to a striving for workers’ democracy: why does the bureaucracy get more than the wages of superintendence? Why must the bureaucracy have their perks, country houses, special cars, special food shops, and so on, which can only be used by party and state bureaucrats?
A man who rides on the back of a tiger finds it difficult to dismount. Once he had embarked on the road of so-called reform, Gorbachev found it impossible to reverse the process he had set in motion. Like Stalin, Gorbachev took measures against the lower and middle bureaucrats, and even some of the higher bureaucrats, as scapegoats for the sins of the entire system. Thus, in his first 11 months Gorbachev purged 46 out of 156 of the regional Party hierarchy.
At bottom, the reforms were aimed at raising the productivity of labour through cost efficiency. By a mixture of stick and carrot (discipline and incentives) the regime hoped to get the Soviet workers to produce more. While trying to lean on the working class, Gorbachev also attempted to revive the old Stalinist method of Stakhanovism, named after a miner who allegedly produced over 100 tonnes of coal per shift (six times more than the norm!). This was an extreme version of what used to be called Taylorism in the USA – payment by results, involving extreme exploitation. In Stalin’s time, this involved the creation of a special elite of shock workers (udarniki) who were responsible for setting the norms of production at abnormally high levels.
Trotsky pointed out at the time that it was easier to motivate a minority of shock workers than the mass, but explained the contradiction between a society allegedly ‘building socialism’, which aped the worst and most exploitative features of capitalism. Instead of moving towards greater equality, this meant far greater inequality, and the establishment of a privileged layer within the working class. While some Stakhanovites were honest workers, the majority were careerists and toadies, who were hated by their workmates, who attacked, beat and sometimes killed them. This was a retrograde step even in the 1930s. But in the context of an advanced modern economy, which was supposed to be moving towards ‘communism’, the contradiction was still more glaring.
Trotsky explained that:
Wage labour does not cease, even under the Soviet regime, to wear the humiliating label of slavery. Payment ‘according to work’ – in reality payment to the advantage of ‘intellectual’ at the expense of the physical, and especially unskilled, work – is a source of injustice, oppression and compulsions for the majority, privileges and a ‘happy life’ for the few.
Instead of frankly acknowledging that bourgeois norms of labour and distribution still prevail in the Soviet Union, the authors of the constitution [the new constitution introduced by Stalin in 1936] have cut this integral communist principle in two halves, postponed the second half to an indefinite future, declared the first half already realised, mechanically hitched on to it the capitalist norm of piecework payment named the whole thing ‘principle of socialism’ and upon this falsification erected the structure of their constitution!
Trotsky went on to explain:
At the same time – and this is of no small importance – a protection by law of the hut, cow and home furnishings of the peasant, worker or clerical worker, also legalises the town house of the bureaucrat, his summer home, his automobile and all the other objects of personal consumption and comfort, appropriated by him on the basis of the ‘socialist’ principle: ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his work.’ The bureaucrat’s automobile will certainly be protected by the new fundamental law more effectively than the peasant’s wagon. (Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, pp. 259-60)
In his desperation to find a way out of the impasse, Gorbachev tried to inject some spark of life into the economy by appealing to the workers and making an example of the most malignant cases of bureaucratic control. Nevertheless, Gorbachev did not represent the interests of the workers. His reforms were intended to wage war on the ‘illegal’ privileges and perks of the officials, while steadily increasing the ‘legal’ ones. Already under his rule, income differentials steadily increased – the exact opposite of Lenin’s conception.
In fact, Gorbachev’s proposals had nothing in common with the democracy of Lenin nor of genuine socialism. The bureaucracy feared the working class. The legal and illegal perks, bribery and theft had to be curtailed. Nevertheless, in doing so, Gorbachev did not want to interfere fundamentally with the privileges of the bureaucratic caste. The ‘legitimate’ privileges had to be maintained, if not increased. In fact, Gorbachev was very careful to put forward the erroneous definition of Stalin: “We are fully restoring the principle of socialism: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his work’.” (Gorbachev, Perestroika – New Thinking for Our Country and the World, p. 31, my emphasis.) The original formulation of Marx was deliberately distorted. Marx explained that under communism there would be no compulsion to work, each member of society giving “according to their ability”. The superabundance of this classless society would allow its members to take “according to their needs”. This concept had nothing whatsoever to do with the situation under Gorbachev, and was nothing more than window dressing for his policies.