The economics of peaceful co existence'

THE ECONOMIC pressure of world imperialism on the Soviet Union and the East European countries has measurably increased in recent The whole policy of 'peaceful co-existence' is being exposed as a threat to the conquests of the 1917 October Revolution and its extension into eastern Europe A series of agreements have been made by which leading capitalist firms construct entire plants under contract to the governments of these countries in lagging industries, namely those which depend upon the most advanced technology.

Less is heard now of the extravagant claims made by Khrushchev about overtaking and outstripping capitalism.

Instead there is a deep crisis in the planning system and an anxious search for a way round it which goes under the name of 'economic reforms'.

In short, having decided to co-exist peacefully with capitalism, the bureaucracy of the Soviet Union and the eastern European countries has to adopt the economies of these countries to the needs of the capitalist world market.

As Michael Varga has shown in a recent number of 'La Verité (June, 1969), this can only mean permitting the law value governed by the capitalist world market to influence the course of economic planning and to undermine the monopoly of foreign trade established precisely as a barrier against such an eventuality.

Economic development in the Soviet Union has been basically determined by the fact that it began from a level which was far behind that of the advanced capitalist countries.

Isolation from the world market and the policy of 'socialism in one country' imposed in the Stalin era interacted with the initial backwardness of Russia.

The waste and mismanagement engendered by an uncontrollable bureaucracy limited the gains achieved by the establishment of a planned and nationalized economy.

The Stalinist methods of planning, the insistence on the building up of a heavy industry as a matter of priority and the rapid collectivization of agriculture were imposed as necessary aspects of policy in the European countries after 1945. Ex-white guard whitewashes Stalin WHEN dealing with pre- WHEN dealing with pre2oth century history this book provides a competent and thorough account of the development of Russia. In the section describing the rise of Bolshevism and the Soviet State, historical inaccuracies and a trivial method of analysis predominate.

The author, Michael Florinsky, was both a White Guard opponent of the Bolsheviks and one-time student at the London School of Economics.

It is not surprising, therefore, that he can describe the early history of Russia competently, but seems completely unable to grasp the importance of political principles in the development of Bolshevism or the real meaning of the struggle between Stalin and Trotsky.

The growth of the Russian autocratic monarchy and … a vast bureaucracy began in the 15th century and Florinsky explains it in social terms.

This was the only form of government through which the kings of Muscovy could unify the vast backward country of Russia under their rule.

Tsars such as Ivan the Terrible deprived even the nobles of political power.

The aristocracy accepted their subordinate political role in turn for important economic privileges.

SERFS

For instance it was about this time that the hitherto free peasantry became serfs of the aristocracy.

The general social backwardness of Russia also retarded the growth much more than pre-revolutionary Russia upon contact with the world market: they were more industrialized, they had been fiefs of foreign capital and they were too small to possess a varied assortment of raw materials.

As a result they became highly dependent upon the Soviet Union for the latter and switched their markets for manufactures to that country.

Since 1956 more has been said about the international division of labour and the Soviet bloc countries have been brought together in the organization known as COMECON (The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance).

However, there has been no real attempt to co-ordinate planning measures and this body has been mainly a clearing house to facilitate acceptance of a common policy on external economic relations suited to Soviet needs.

While planned industrialization made headway in the 1950s, increasingly serious problems arose, especially in the more advanced sectors of the area—those which suffered most from insufficient contact with the world market.

This was particularly so in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and to some extent in East Germany.

For example, although these areas had a standard of living higher than that in the bloc as a whole, it increasingly tell behind the advanced areas of capitalist western Europe.

Conspicuous in this process was a lag in the newer industries and inadequate investment in the older type of consumer goods industries.

By the early 1960s, therefore, much industrial equipment in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was obsolete and certainly uncompetitive by world standards.

Even the rapid growth rates achieved earlier began to fall Deprivation of outlets in the world markets had serious consequences for some industries. It exposed weaknesses in the quantitative planning methods inherited from Stalin and set going considerable debate about such questions in the more "liberal' climate of the post-1956 years.

The methods used to deal with the new economic problems were essentially empirical and pragmatic.

This was especially so in agriculture and in a bumper of countries there was a complete retreat from collectivization or concessions were made to peasant pressure.

The emphasis was laid on higher returns to labour and investment by increasing material incentives, granting wider powers to Plant managers and establishing profitability on a plant basis as a criterion of production.

There was greater readiness to make workers redundant 'RUSSIA: A SHORT HISTORY' Review by capitalist class or intelligentsia. From the 17th century, industry was fostered by the state but was very much restricted by monopolies of The low cultural level obliged the sons. of the nobility to be educated abroad.

There was no opposition to the monarchy based on political principles. In fact the only political upheavals in the 17th and 18th centuries were peasant revolts and palace revolutions.

Florinsky adequately describes the development of the revolutionary movement in the 19th century. The at revolton. Both Be pe in is and engary in 93a ere mate throns othe maturing economic critis, the objective conditions for and to impose higher work loads. ..

As some counterpart money wages rose and larger supplies of consumer goods found their way into the shops and markets.

But still the situation of chronic shortage persisted and quality and variety of product continued to suffer.

The economic crisis which bears down to varying extents on the east European countries thus reflects the one-sided development imposed by the : A SHORT HISTORY' By M. Florinsky Stimulated by the democratic ideas of the French Revolution, unrest began in the very highest level of society.

The first challenge to the autocracy came from the nobles involved in the Decembrist plot of 1825.

By the last quarter of the century the Land and Freedom group formed by the politically frustrated intelligentsia was very active.

They combined crusading amongst the peasantry with heroic, futile terrorism.

In 1881 they succeeded in assassinating Alexander II.

It was amongst disillusioned Decembrists.

From left to right, Pavel Pestel (executed 1826), S. MaravyeyApostol, whose regiment, the Chernigov, supported the abortive revolution, ^. Bestuzhov, P. Kakhovsky and K. Ryleyev. policy of 'socialism in one country'..

Not integrated with each other, one-sidedly related to the needs of the Soviet Union and cut off from the world market, they have all suffered, in one degree or another, from a crisis of under-production and disproportion intensified by the bureaucratic methods of planning and management to which they have been subject.

The various policies of ' economic reform' have participators in this movement whitewash Stalin participators in this movement that Marxist ideas first took root in Russian soil.

When describing the development of the Marxist movement Florinsky descends to inaccuracy and facile explanations.

He claims from 1903 that Lenin and the Bolsheviks held the theory that the overthrow of the monarchy would immediately be followed by the establishment of a workers' government.

It was in fact only Trotsky at this period who understood the capitalist revolutions must be carried through to the full attainment of a socialist state.

He expounded this idea in the theory of the permanent revolution. Florinsky completely ignores this.

The book's analysis degenerates even further when it examines the struggle between Stalin and Trotsky.

The author can explain the development of the absolute monarchy before 1917 in social terms. The conflict between Stalin and Trotsky however is dismissed as a power struggle.

"The struggle for power was a clash of personalities rather than doctrines.

'Many of the policies he [Trotsky] advocated, rapid industrialization and centralized planning, were eventually enforced by Stalin.... It was not Trotsky's views, but the eminence, aloofness and intellectual acumen which precipitated his downfall.' WHITEWASH There is no mention of the vast conservative forces that were pushing Stalin to the fore, or of the exhaustion and isolation of the Russian working class through civil war or of the containment of the revolution within Russia.

The book continues attempted to deal with the symptoms...

By their nature, and because they do not tackle causes, they can have no more than a temporary or partial success.

An answer to certain of its problems, not unnaturally, occurs to the bureaucracy in the shape of closer ties with the capitalist world market.

This promises a quick remedy to the more pressing problems.

A market can be found for raw materials or manufactured whitewash Stalin when it explains the Moscow Trials by quoting Khrushchev with approval.

'Stalin was seriously sick, suffering from suspiciousness and persecution mania in his last years. This is the only rational explanation of the purges of the 1930s.' Perhaps it is not surprising that a White Guard supporter should exonerate Stalin for the murder of so many old Bolsheviks.

Finally Florinsky tries to uphold the myth beloved of bourgeois and Stalinist historians alike that the Soviet Union was genuinely supporting the Spanish working class against Franco.

"The true purpose of Soviet intervention in Spain is not known and can only be surmised.

'It is understandable that the Kremlin should wish to prevent the establishment of fascism in Spain, but it is also likely that the enticing possibility of a communist regime emerging from the turmoil of the civil war was not overlooked.' NOT ENTICING This possibility was indeed not overlooked, but the prospect was not enticing to the Stalinists.

They opposed Franco in the name of the democratic capitalist republic, but not in order to establish a socialist state.

Florinsky's book should only be read for its account of the early history of Russia.

For a real analysis of the questions he evades or distorts the following books are recommended: 'The Permanent Revolution' by Leon Trotsky; 'The Platform of the Left Opposition' by Leon Trotsky; "The Russian Revolution' by Leon Trotsky. goods which are in supply.

Similar deficiencies can be remedied through trade. By deals with the big capitalist enterprises, lagging sectors of industry can be brought up to date or wholly new ones created.

Such 'solutions' are saturated with politics — with the politics of 'peaceful co-existence'.

Friendly relations with the capitalist powers have become a necessity, not a matter of choice, if the bureaucracy is to preserve the basis for its rule.

It is not, of course, in this way that "peaceful • coexistence' is presented in the propaganda.

It is said, for example, that 'socialism' - Will be able to prove its superiority to capitalism through peaceful economic competition.

In this way the bureaucracy and its supporters in the Communist Parties quietly drop the class struggle and seek for allies in the bourgeoisie.

Arguments are also put forward about a socialist world market to try to defend the policy; as has been suggested above, this is a fallacy.

In fact, the very behaviour of the bureaucracy in seeking closer relations with capitalist countries demonstrates this.

What happens in practice 1s that the economic situation in eastern Europe and the USSR comes increasingly to reflect the influence of the capitalist world market as the bureaucracy adapts to it.

Their crisis thus becomes linked with that of international capitalism.

This becomes clear in the search for increased trade with capitalist countries.

In this trade, world prices established as a result of the operation of the law of value become the standard to which goods from the Soviet Union To answer its economic problems the bureaucracy turns to closer ties with the capitalist class, both in the form of trade agreements and even in the construction of new plants within the workers' states. Agreements such as these were made between Kosygin and de Gaulle in 1967. adhere.

But as productivity is generally lower in these countries their commodities are either not competitive or have to be sold below cost of production.

Back in these countries the crisis is thus sharpened up; so is dissatisfaction with the old forms of planning and organization.

One aspect of this is the demand for greater decentralization and more power for the individual enterprise. Another is a threat to the monopoly of foreign trade itself.

'Peaceful co-existence' thus begins to call into question the fundamental conquests of the workers' states.

This policy accepts the world status-quo the bureaucracy implicitly renounces the possibility of a defeat of capitalism by revolutionary Instead it becomes a support for the continuation of capitalist world predominance.

Meanwhile the capitalist countries also have a problem: that of realizing surplus value and turning part of it into additional capital.

Businesses which trade with the USSR and eastern Europe do so for this purpose.

Unconsciously their activities take the form of an offensive against the planned economy.

At the same time, at the political level, the bureaucracy seeks an accommodation with the bourgeoisie and its governments and in doing so it misleads and betrays the working class and creates incalculable damage to its interests.

'Peaceful co-existence' is thus designed to preserve the rule of the bureaucracy by enabling it to deal with pressing economic problems arising from the inferiority in terms of aggregate production and productivity of that part of the world which it controls.

Compromise Such a policy works against the interests of the working class not only in the capitalist countries, but also in the countries ruled by the bureaucracy.

Because the bureaucracy is concerned with its own selfpreservation, it is prepared to compromise with and strengthen imperialism.

• leans on woria capitalist › maintain its own politic: stranglehold.

As a consequence it is driven into collision with its own working class.

The political revolution in the workers' states thus becomes an objective necessity and not simply a programmatic demand.

This means that the overthrow of the bureaucracy is actually being prepared by a maturing economic crisis which sharpens the conflict between the bureaucracy and the working class in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe.

The main components of this crisis have already been discussed.

Its political manifestations Derlin, star akiaosition in the soviet Union itself which calls for a return to Leninism.

The way in which the crisis arises from the world market is shown also in the rivalries between different national sections of the bureaucracy which develops from a need for increased independent links with world capitalism.

This has shown itself most forcefully in the case of It was also demonstrated in Czechoslovakia.

Controversy over economic policy is also a central issue in disputes national sec tions of the bureaucracy the sort which came to a head in Czechoslovakia after the fall of the Novotny regime in February, 1968.

The question of relations with the USSR appears to be at the centre of all these rifts.

If a section of a national bureaucracy wants greater 'independence' it is clearly in order to make its own deals with capitalism.

It is precisely this that Kremlin bureaucracy is not able to tolerate.

It wants to remain deciding voice. countries were brought into the Soviet sphere of policy, the local CP leaders were expected Moscows needs. policies to Only Tito refused and was To on lo make his ou deal capitalism and Yugoslavs sought their own to the problems which were to beset the whole of eastern Europe After the death of Stalin in 1953, and still more after 1956 oracies oh eastern the bureau Europe had established their own Dasis, tensions with Moscow began to become general throughout the area.

The revolutionary move.

in Hungary and in Poland brought matters to a head.

The basic issue was whether the east European bureaucracies were prepared to accept the continued paramounty of the Kremlin and not "liberalization' or anything of that sort.

Golmulka was a 'liberal' who gave the right guarantees:

prepared keep Poland as a dutiful satellite.

Nagy of Hungary was nOT The east German leaders were hard-line Stalinists who must have had bitter misgivings about many post-1956 policies of the Soviet bureaucracies—but they were able to inswerving obediencantees give the right of The Rumanians have tried their own way and the tendency Czechoslovakia had similar leanings.

The task of the Soviet bureaucracy • to COMECON and the economic influence of the USSR to keep Ine east European Dureallcracies in a position of continued subordination If they will do what is required by the policy of 'peaceful co-existence', , as interpreted of external economic policy, • the Kremlin in the spnere some discretion is left dio vary home according special conditions. that at fact, it is even accepted make contracts with firms for the construction new plants as well as for the supple floods.

attempt establish closer relations with the capitalist Word маткет order to overcome internal economic prodiems serious difficulties.

rew oroducts of the USSR and eastern Europe are real!! able to compete on thi world market in the face of tariffs and trade discrimination and of the estriction: and delationary policies made neces sary in those countries having balance of payments difficulties Only the continued growth in world trade as a whole has made possible the increase in trade between eastern Europe and tne canitawora A standstill or contraction in world trade would certainly affect these countries severely.

Signincant as these economic factors are, it is their political consequences which expose the Coleted behind the erase 'peaceful co-existence' In seeking an accommodation with capitalism, the Soviet bureaucracy jeopardizes conquests of the 1917 October Revolution.

Meanwhile, in the name o ocialism, the working class i the countries which it rules are called upon to increase work norms ana lo consume less than the workers in the capitalist countries of western Europe.

In these countries the Communist Parties pursue a policy and seek alliances. so-called progressive "peace-loving' sections of the bourgcoisie.

In defence of its own interests, from its fear of its own working class at home and in opposition to revolution any bureaucracy becomes a ulwark of worlo capitalism.

The policy of peaceful coexistence' is thus a policy of betrayal, of counter-revolution and defeat.

Marxist answer

receives support from the crisis easter Soviet Union which prepares the objective conditions for the political revolution as well from the growing crisis of the world capitalist system

PAGE FOUR Friday, November