CHAPTER SEVEN

Capitalism in Russia

 What system of society exists in Russia? Trotsky, in exile, argued that although Russia was not socialist, as Stalin claimed, it could not be described as capitalist either. He held that in 1917 the working class in Russia had seized power and had
begun the transition from capitalism to Socialism. However, owing to backwardness and isolation, what he called a ‘bureaucratic caste’ managed to usurp power.

 According to Trotsky, Russia was thus between capitalism and Socialism; it could either go forward to Socialism, but only with the rest of the world, or return to capitalism. He kept this view till his murder in 1940. Some of his followers still argue
this. Others say Russia can now only be described as State capitalism. The Socialist Party of Great Britain too argues that this is the best description. We do not, however, think that Russia set off for Socialism and ended up as State capitalism, but, as shown elsewhere in this pamphlet, that Russia did not, and could not, have established Socialism in 1917. Capitalism has always existed in post-revolutionary Russia and the working class there has never had political power.

 The social system in Russia can be described as capitalist since the essential features of capitalism predominate: class monopoly of the means of production, commodity production, wage-labour and capital accumulation. The first of these – the class monopoly of the means of production – is perhaps the hardest to grasp as far as Russia is concerned.

 Wealth is in effect the property of an individual or group if that individual or that group has a right in act against the other members of society to use it or to control its use. A class is made up of people who are in the same position with regard to the
ownership and use of the means of wealth-production and distribution. One class has a monopoly over these means if the rest of society are allowed access to them only on terms imposed by the group in control. The monopoly does not have to be legally recognised though in fact, as in Britain, this is generally so. Here the privileged minority, the capitalist class, have titles backed by law to the wealth they own.

 In Russia the ownership of the privileged minority is generally not given formal legal backing, but, as in Britain, they maintain their monopoly through control over the machinery of government. They occupy the top posts in the party, government,
industry and the armed forces. Their ownership of the means of production is not individual but collective: they own as a class. Historically this is not a new development as is shown by the position of the Catholic church in feudal times. The privileged class in Russia draw their ‘property income’ in the form of bloated salaries, bonuses, large monetary ‘prizes’ awarded by the government, and other perks attaching to the top posts.

 “The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails presents itself as ‘an immense accumulation of commodities’...” So begins ‘Capital’ by Karl Marx. A commodity is something produced by human labour with a view to
sale. Wealth in Russia, too, takes the form of an immense accumulation of commodities. The Russian revolution did not abolish commodity production; on the contrary it has been the aim of the government to extend it as widely and as rapidly as
possible.

 The existence of commodity production, though it shows that Socialism does not exist, does not necessarily mean that capitalism does. Capitalism is the most developed form of commodity production in which everything, including human
labour-power, is bought and sold. For labour-power to take on a commodity character presupposes that the producers have been separated from the means of production and that these means are concentrated in the hands of a minority.

 This has happened in Russia, especially with the expropriation of the peasantry. We have already shown that the means of production there are effectively owned by a privileged class. The dispossessed, propertyless majority make up the working class who live by selling their labour-power to the state (or co-operative or collective farm) which acts, like the public corporation and company in Britain, as the agent of the privileged minority.

 Under capitalism goods and services are not only produced for sale with a view to profit, the source of this profit being the unpaid labour of the working class, in Russia and elsewhere. The working class spend a part of their working time reproducing the value of their wages and the rest producing a surplus. Most of the latter is re-invested.

 Thus for Russia the means of production are used to exploit wage-labour for a surplus. In other words they function as capital.
Russia is capitalist and not a new class society nor somewhere between capitalism and Socialism.
  Next chapter 8