The history of the USSR has demonstrated beyond any doubt that the socialist mode of production is rife with internal contradictions both at the socio-economic and political levels. After the consolidation of the socialist revolution, it was neither economic, scientific, and cultural blockades, nor `hot' or `cold' military pressures, nor even the fascist hordes that were able to bring down the unshakable Soviet State; in the end, this heinous task would be in the hands of internal forces and would be accomplished by none other than the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), backed by a large component of the Party's membership.
In the mid-1980s, faced by a slowdown in economic growth rates, the Central Committee of the CPSU reached the conclusion that the economic management system of the Soviet Union had become incompatible with the level of development of the productive forces. The Central Committee report to the 27th Party Congress argued that central planning, which had been appropriate in the old conditions of extensive1 economic development, had become outdated. The new priority of increasing efficiency in the utilization of resources through the acceleration of scientific and technological progress would require a new economic management system based on "the need to broaden the autonomy, initiative and responsibility of associations and enterprises, and to enhance their role as socialist commodity producers." 2 As Gorbachev reported to the Congress, "This is the main thing that will, in practice, signify further improvement of the socialist production relations and will provide new scope for the growth of the productive forces." 3 Seventy years of building socialism were finally culminating in commodity production, that is, in production for exchange by more or less independent producers; in essence, the embryonic forms of capitalism.
From a theoretical perspective, the analysis of the CPSU represented a rejection of scientific socialism. In fact, Marx, whose scientific economic writings had already demonstrated the central role of commodity production in the genesis and development of the capitalist mode of production, had ridiculed the French petty-bourgeois Proudhon specifically for proposing to build socialist property relations on the basis of commodity production. In Capital, he writes that: " Just as at a given stage in its development, commodity production necessarily passes into capitalistic commodity production...so the laws of property that are based on commodity production, necessarily turn into the laws of capitalist appropriation. We may well, therefore, feel astonished at the cleverness of Proudhon, who would abolish capitalistic property by enforcing the eternal laws of property that are based on commodity production!" 4
Engels similarly criticized Dühring, an influential German revisionist, for proposing that under socialism, commodity production would persist because independent economic communes would continue to exchange the products of their labour. Engels explained that "Once the commodity-producing society has further developed the value form, which is inherent in commodities as such, to the money form, various germs still hidden in value break through to the light of day. The first and most essential effect is the generalization of the commodity form. Money forces the commodity form even on the objects which have hitherto been produced directly for self-consumption; it drags them into exchange...And despite all `laws and administrative regulations', money would with the same natural necessity inevitably break up the Dühring economic commune, if it ever came into existence." 5
Furthermore, according to Engels, if the possibility of converting local money into 'world money' (or in other words, hard currency) existed, the continued existence of a world market outside the boundaries of the socialist state would give the individual members of the communes a new motive to accumulate a hoard, get rich, exact usury; the motive to manoeuvre freely and independently with regard to the commune and beyond its borders, and to realize on the world market the private wealth which they have accumulated. The usurers are transformed into dealers in the medium of circulation, bankers, controllers of production, and thus into controllers of the means of production, even though these may still for many years be registered nominally as the property of the economic and trading communes. 6
Even these short references to Marx and Engels should already demonstrate the seriousness of the revisionism which had infected the CPSU. The economic foundations of Perestro‹ka were the autonomy of enterprises, production for exchange, and the direct access of enterprises to the world market through the convertibility of local money. Yet according to the teachers of socialism, these were the necessary and sufficient conditions for the restoration of capitalist property relations through 1) the 'generalization of the commodity form' by 'dragging' all products into exchange; and 2) providing a motive for individuals to accumulate private wealth and to transform this wealth into financial 'control' over the means of production.
However, aside from issues concerning the restoration of capitalist relations, the critical issue raised by Gorbachev's Perestro‹ka persists: that is, did economic planning and socialist property relations truly reach an impasse with the end of extensive economic growth in the Soviet-Union? And therefore, was the restoration of capitalist relations the only option left for the further development of the productive forces given the new imperative of intensive economic growth? Only a concrete examination of economic developments can verify the validity of these claims. Since, prior to becoming General Secretary, Gorbachev's responsibility was agriculture, we will focus on this sector as our example.
The main problem of Soviet agriculture was the inability to reap the grain harvest quickly enough with resulting large losses. Traditionally, harvesting was usually done by small units of people and machinery. The units worked on the basis of individual quotas and were paid according to the amount they harvested. The direct relationship between efficiency and pay was assumed to act as an incentive to increase productivity. In his biography of Gorbachev, Medvedev (1987) describes how in the late 1970s, a new method, breaking with these practices was developed by scientists in the Rostov region and implemented by Ipatovsky district (a region where Gorbachev was working as a local Party official). This new method was based on a large unit, composed of at least 15 combine harvesters, 15 trucks, and groups of people specializing in delivering fuel, collecting straw, preparing fields beforehand and cultivating them immediately after the harvesting. There were also groups to take care of repair and servicing, the needs of the workers, and ideological support. However, the essence of the system was a well prepared preliminary program which coordinated the work of all the complexes in a district. It was also expected that the coordination of the process would eventually be computerized.
The new method was a total success. Previously, harvesting had often taken three or four weeks. In 1977, the Ipatovsky district completed the harvest in a record 9 days 7. The plan had assigned the district the delivery of 120, 000 metric tons of grain to the state; instead 200, 000 tons were delivered 8. The success was attributed to Fedor Kulakov who was Central Committee secretary for agriculture and whose prominence immediately benefitted, placing him as the most likely successor to Brezhnev. The Central Committee immediately recommended the introduction of the method by the other regions. Despite the fact that it was impossible to reorganize the harvesting plans in other regions at such short notice, 56,000 harvesting-transport complexes were created across the country and the average productivity of each combine harvester had increased by 20 per cent 9. In 1978, following the widespread application of the Ipatovsky method, the harvest reached the unthinkable level of 237 million tons. 10
However, in July 1978, Kulakov suddenly died. Within the Central Committee, the respect for Ipatovsky district clinched the promotion for Gorbachev, who as the main protégé of Kulakov, had been assiduously promoting the Ipatovsky method in many of the Communist Party's publications. Supreme Soviet elections took place in 1979. It would have been normal for Gorbachev to run in Kulakov's constituency, Petrovsky. However, Ipatovsky district, which had achieved national fame, had been part of Petrovsky constituency. Although Petrovsky district was larger and contained a larger district center, the constituency center was moved to Ipatovo village and the constituency was renamed Ipatovsky. Gorbachev had decided to ensure the association of his name with Ipatovsky district 11. However, in a manner which eventually became his trade mark, once assured of his position in charge of agriculture, Gorbachev immediately reversed his policies and became the leader of the fight against the extension of the Ipatovsky method. Soviet agriculture would never recuperate from this betrayal. Despite increasing expenditures agricultural output would never again reach the levels of 1977-78 12.
Despite its proven superiority, the Ipatovsky method was not compatible with the whole mode of organizing production in agriculture. For one thing, the level of centralization required was incompatible with the widely used contract brigade system and with the move which was then in vogue towards giving smaller units more independence and paying them in accordance with the results of their work. Furthermore, it made no sense to expect collective and state farms to share their machinery with other farms while still retaining responsibility for any damage or poor maintenance which may have occurred. Most importantly though, under the Soviet system, control over the means of production implied material benefits for the management teams. Centralization at the district level would have implied a substantial loss of control over large sums of material wealth and of the benefits derived from this control for all administrations of smaller economic units.
This closer examination of the concrete example of Soviet agriculture demonstrates that a conflict did in fact exist between the management system and the further development of the productive forces, but the answer lies in exactly the opposite direction to what was being claimed by the supporters of Perestroïka. The biggest obstacle to productivity growth was the social base of Perestroïka, that is, the layer of administrators and managers whose access to material benefits was derived from local control over the means of production. We have seen how in the agricultural sector, increased productivity demanded greater centralization of machinery and administrative structures, and the elimination of the contract system based on a direct link between wages and output at the level of small work units. But such tasks were well beyond the capacities of the corrupted leadership of the CPSU.
Historically, the political careers of members of the Central Committee of the CPSU had always been determined by their successes or failures in their assigned spheres of responsibility. However, Gorbachev's meteoric rise in the leadership of the CPSU, despite continuous failures in his sphere of responsibility, agriculture --a sector of critical economic and political importance-- indicated a qualitative change in the Party and marked the ideological and political victory of a trend which was committed to certain pro-capitalist transformations no matter what their economic costs. These developments reflected the ascendancy of a social group whose narrow interests had come into conflict with the general interests of society. Within the womb of socialism, there had developed a group of individuals whose material interests were in direct conflict with the centralization of the means of production and therefore with both technological progress and the extension of economic planning. Over time, the growing interconnection between this stratum of administrators and managers and the upper echelons of the Communist Party meant that in the struggle between the forces of socialism and those of capitalist restoration, the working class found itself dispossessed of any ideological and political leadership. Meanwhile, the lack of democratic traditions within the CPSU reinforced the positions of its anti-socialist leadership who could not be evicted from the highest positions of the Soviet state until they had totally completed their task of destroying socialism.
Endnotes
1. Extensive economic development refers to economic growth based on the utilization of more labour and raw materials, while intensive economic development refers to economic growth based on the more efficient use of a given amount of resources.
2. Gorbachev, Mikhail (1986), Political Report of the CPSU Central Committee to the 27th Party Congress, Novosti, Moscow, p. 48.
3. Ibid., p. 47.
4. Marx, Karl (1996), Capital, vol. 1, Collected Works, International Publishers, New York, vol. 35, p. 582.
5. Engels, Frederick, (1987), Anti-Dühring, Collected Works, Progress, Moscow, vol. 25, p. 296.
6. Ibid., p. 290.
7. Medvedev, Zhores A., (1987), Gorbachev, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, p.84.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 85.
10. Central Statistical Board, The Council of Ministers of the USSR, (1979), The USSR in Figures for 1978, Statistika Publishers, Moscow.
11. Medvedev (1987), op. cit., p. 100.
12. Central Statistical Board, The Council of Ministers of the USSR, (1989), The USSR in Figures for 1990, Statistika Publishers, Moscow.
