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Socialism in the Soviet Union
Book by Aurthur, Jonathan
174 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
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July 7, 2023
This is an extremely dense work for its length so there's a lot to unpack.
This is a fascinatingly detailed, insightful examination of economic reforms in the USSR. This is true notwithstanding the tragic naiveté of its unwavering faith in the democratic entrenchment of socialism in the masses as a self-correcting systemic force. Much of the book is polemicizing explicitly against "theorists of capitalist restoration". Of course, capitalism was restored. If the author's prediction of outcomes overestimated socialism's self-corrective capacity, his estimation of the problems is more nuanced and accurate. Militarism and bureaucracy are presented in their full developmental contexts as reflecting the limited capacities of Soviet leadership, well-meaning or otherwise, rather than as mere autocratic decrees made manifest. Black markets and militarism alike existed not as a Grand Plan of capitalist restorationists over decades, but as structural reactions to material conditions whether resisted ineffectively or embraced resignedly or myopically by the State and peoples.
There is what's by now a probably standard critique of the historically-rooted limitations of heavy-industry-focused bureaucracy attempting to graft consumerist reforms onto its central planning system, as well as privileging through division of labour. Aurthur explores how the division of labour, as manifested in a conditions of siege and a legacy of backwardness, perpetuated a system of privileges. That critique draws a line from the death of Stalin, though, focusing mostly on the Cold War. There are notes about the limits faced by Soviet industry in Stalin's time and policies such as maintaining "universal production centres" (p. 32) and machine-tractor stations. This is mostly covered to show the confusion created through Khrushchev's Sovnarkhoz reforms.
There is a crucial point in pre-Khrushchev context, however: "Soviet industry was mainly built to expand extensively rather than intensively." (p. 31) Aurthur (correctly, I think) pins this as a historical necessity in the development of the Soviet economy which experienced perpetual shortages of labour and "capital" for production of intensified, not just extended, means of production. It is the struggle to adapt out of this condition that foments tension between central plans and local/regional management, that leads to bottlenecks demoralizing workers, and that shapes Soviet trade relations within and beyond the Eastern bloc.
Perhaps due to its writing in the late 70s, this critique does not take the form of attacking revisionism as a gradual, even deliberate slide toward the restoration of capitalism. Perhaps the author's critique is/would be different in hindsight with regard to the pushers of Glasnost/perestroika. In the cases of Khrushchev, Kosygin, and Brezhnev, however, they are acknowledged as a privileged clique, but one that is both tied to the Soviet political system for its privileges and unimaginatively conservative and tinkering in its proposed solutions. Absent are considerations of unintended consequences leading to the development of a counter-revolutionary clique actually situated to collapse the Union from within, but the emphasis that the failures of reforms reflect actual historical limitations of the system is nevertheless invaluable in the single largest case-study for materialist historians of socialism.
Of historical and contemporary relevance are the arguments about commodity exchanges. The author argues that their impact depends upon the broader political project in which they're extant (p. 10), but with perhaps a reductive view of monolithic bureaucratic commitment to things as they stood. Bureaucracy was not uniform, but status quo-backers had the balance of power.
The author makes an explicit distinction, early on, between the DotP and socialism, arguing that the latter was only gradually established through episodic expropriation. ("The seizure of political power by the proletariat is not the same as the economic establishment of socialism; it merely lays the basis for it. The Russian October Revolution of 1917 established the dictatorship of the proletariat, but not socialism. Capitalism...existed...only 'by degrees' being wrested from one section of the economy after another.") - (p. 26) Yet he fails to see episodic liberalization as portending capitalist restoration.
Part of Aurthur's reasoning for not seeing these reforms as a teleological slide toward capitalist restoration may be the time period in which this work is situated. There's a complicating irony that makes this author hard to judge (hinted above): Even as Aurthur insists on the inevitable final victory of socialism in a manner reminiscent of early revolutionary optimists, he presents a history of experimental liberalizing reforms that far from being a deliberate linear slide into capitalism is rather a series of attempts and retreats at reforming the central planning system. Even if such liberalization was intentional in its final culminated form, the steps enabling that later mass privatization were not at this stage done with that intent.
In analyzing the contadictions with which Soviet planners grappled, the author, Aurthur, repeatedly emphasizes two key laws:
1. "the socialist law of balanced development" - growth emphasizing self-sustaining, rational resource allotment. (p. 33)
2. "the law of extended reproduction" - initial investment in heavy industry to lay the groundwork for capital-intensification and consumer industry. (p. 43)
The contradictions these presented may have seemed reconcilable in the system as it was, but antagonism is not fully-formed from the start--it builds. Taking the entrenchment of Soviet institutions as given, the author does not reckon with the idea that if capital's power can be wrested "by degrees", it can reclaim that power this way.
Finally, Aurthur argues that U.S. imperialism striking out in all directions will compel unity in socialist camp. If the most antagonistic contradiction was with imperialism, socialist would draw together. (p. 100) Sadly, this relies on downplaying the strength of internal reaction and nationalisms in the USSR as a "leading" socialist fulcrum. Because of the timing of this work, we hear about demoralization, popular resentment of corruption, and the moral hypocrisy of upper-level leadership condemning lower/mid-level managerial corruption while calling for workers' efficiency. We even get explicit recognition that Comecon was unable to integrate national economies in ways that would fully overcome individual republics' nationalist elements. (p. 90) What we don't get here (because the work predates it 15 years) is an analysis of how this demoralization is capitalized on by the reactionary forces, which the author admits are there, to restore capitalism.
The power in this work is acknowledging problems while rejecting a "The state was their monopoly capitalist" narrative that's shown to oversimplify the actual multivariate motivations and imperatives of state activity. Profitability was at best one performance indicator, and a transient one. A provocative point to end on: "[b]One thing to be learned from studying the Soviet economy is that a well-informed reactionary is often much more reliable than an ignorant 'revolutionary.'"[/b] - p. vii (p. 140).
Overall, a thorough overview of Soviet political economy's challenges, notwithstanding its predictions of compelled adaptability that were overoptimistic in hindisght.
This is a fascinatingly detailed, insightful examination of economic reforms in the USSR. This is true notwithstanding the tragic naiveté of its unwavering faith in the democratic entrenchment of socialism in the masses as a self-correcting systemic force. Much of the book is polemicizing explicitly against "theorists of capitalist restoration". Of course, capitalism was restored. If the author's prediction of outcomes overestimated socialism's self-corrective capacity, his estimation of the problems is more nuanced and accurate. Militarism and bureaucracy are presented in their full developmental contexts as reflecting the limited capacities of Soviet leadership, well-meaning or otherwise, rather than as mere autocratic decrees made manifest. Black markets and militarism alike existed not as a Grand Plan of capitalist restorationists over decades, but as structural reactions to material conditions whether resisted ineffectively or embraced resignedly or myopically by the State and peoples.
There is what's by now a probably standard critique of the historically-rooted limitations of heavy-industry-focused bureaucracy attempting to graft consumerist reforms onto its central planning system, as well as privileging through division of labour. Aurthur explores how the division of labour, as manifested in a conditions of siege and a legacy of backwardness, perpetuated a system of privileges. That critique draws a line from the death of Stalin, though, focusing mostly on the Cold War. There are notes about the limits faced by Soviet industry in Stalin's time and policies such as maintaining "universal production centres" (p. 32) and machine-tractor stations. This is mostly covered to show the confusion created through Khrushchev's Sovnarkhoz reforms.
There is a crucial point in pre-Khrushchev context, however: "Soviet industry was mainly built to expand extensively rather than intensively." (p. 31) Aurthur (correctly, I think) pins this as a historical necessity in the development of the Soviet economy which experienced perpetual shortages of labour and "capital" for production of intensified, not just extended, means of production. It is the struggle to adapt out of this condition that foments tension between central plans and local/regional management, that leads to bottlenecks demoralizing workers, and that shapes Soviet trade relations within and beyond the Eastern bloc.
Perhaps due to its writing in the late 70s, this critique does not take the form of attacking revisionism as a gradual, even deliberate slide toward the restoration of capitalism. Perhaps the author's critique is/would be different in hindsight with regard to the pushers of Glasnost/perestroika. In the cases of Khrushchev, Kosygin, and Brezhnev, however, they are acknowledged as a privileged clique, but one that is both tied to the Soviet political system for its privileges and unimaginatively conservative and tinkering in its proposed solutions. Absent are considerations of unintended consequences leading to the development of a counter-revolutionary clique actually situated to collapse the Union from within, but the emphasis that the failures of reforms reflect actual historical limitations of the system is nevertheless invaluable in the single largest case-study for materialist historians of socialism.
Of historical and contemporary relevance are the arguments about commodity exchanges. The author argues that their impact depends upon the broader political project in which they're extant (p. 10), but with perhaps a reductive view of monolithic bureaucratic commitment to things as they stood. Bureaucracy was not uniform, but status quo-backers had the balance of power.
The author makes an explicit distinction, early on, between the DotP and socialism, arguing that the latter was only gradually established through episodic expropriation. ("The seizure of political power by the proletariat is not the same as the economic establishment of socialism; it merely lays the basis for it. The Russian October Revolution of 1917 established the dictatorship of the proletariat, but not socialism. Capitalism...existed...only 'by degrees' being wrested from one section of the economy after another.") - (p. 26) Yet he fails to see episodic liberalization as portending capitalist restoration.
Part of Aurthur's reasoning for not seeing these reforms as a teleological slide toward capitalist restoration may be the time period in which this work is situated. There's a complicating irony that makes this author hard to judge (hinted above): Even as Aurthur insists on the inevitable final victory of socialism in a manner reminiscent of early revolutionary optimists, he presents a history of experimental liberalizing reforms that far from being a deliberate linear slide into capitalism is rather a series of attempts and retreats at reforming the central planning system. Even if such liberalization was intentional in its final culminated form, the steps enabling that later mass privatization were not at this stage done with that intent.
In analyzing the contadictions with which Soviet planners grappled, the author, Aurthur, repeatedly emphasizes two key laws:
1. "the socialist law of balanced development" - growth emphasizing self-sustaining, rational resource allotment. (p. 33)
2. "the law of extended reproduction" - initial investment in heavy industry to lay the groundwork for capital-intensification and consumer industry. (p. 43)
The contradictions these presented may have seemed reconcilable in the system as it was, but antagonism is not fully-formed from the start--it builds. Taking the entrenchment of Soviet institutions as given, the author does not reckon with the idea that if capital's power can be wrested "by degrees", it can reclaim that power this way.
Finally, Aurthur argues that U.S. imperialism striking out in all directions will compel unity in socialist camp. If the most antagonistic contradiction was with imperialism, socialist would draw together. (p. 100) Sadly, this relies on downplaying the strength of internal reaction and nationalisms in the USSR as a "leading" socialist fulcrum. Because of the timing of this work, we hear about demoralization, popular resentment of corruption, and the moral hypocrisy of upper-level leadership condemning lower/mid-level managerial corruption while calling for workers' efficiency. We even get explicit recognition that Comecon was unable to integrate national economies in ways that would fully overcome individual republics' nationalist elements. (p. 90) What we don't get here (because the work predates it 15 years) is an analysis of how this demoralization is capitalized on by the reactionary forces, which the author admits are there, to restore capitalism.
The power in this work is acknowledging problems while rejecting a "The state was their monopoly capitalist" narrative that's shown to oversimplify the actual multivariate motivations and imperatives of state activity. Profitability was at best one performance indicator, and a transient one. A provocative point to end on: "[b]One thing to be learned from studying the Soviet economy is that a well-informed reactionary is often much more reliable than an ignorant 'revolutionary.'"[/b] - p. vii (p. 140).
Overall, a thorough overview of Soviet political economy's challenges, notwithstanding its predictions of compelled adaptability that were overoptimistic in hindisght.
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