At the end of the conference, Marcy addressed his concluding remarks to a number of questions which had been raised, leading off with "Since Gorbachev is turning to market incentives, is he still a socialist?"
Let's remember that the capitalist market was never fully abolished in the Soviet Union. Right after the Revolution, the Leninist government attempted to abolish capitalist relations in general. But even under the rigid regime known as War Communism, they were unable to do it. The poverty and hunger, the devastation of World War I and the civil war that followed forced them to give it up after a time. In 1921 Lenin instituted the New Economic Policy, which reintroduced the capitalist market to a limited extent.
The existence of a capitalist market in and of itself does not signify an inevitable return to capitalism. At the beginning of a revolution, as we have seen also in China, in Cuba and in Nicaragua, the capitalist market may continue for a certain period of time — in Nicaragua, for a longer time because of outside pressures.
A workers' state can nevertheless exist. The dictatorship of the proletariat can deal with and discipline the market. As long as the workers' state holds the reins of power, it has the authority to administratively abolish the market when it deems necessary, or to economically defeat it by developing the planned economy.
In each of the socialist countries that we know about, there is and has been a capitalist market, where goods are bought and sold on a profit basis, but to a limited extent. Profits from market relations in a socialist country are usually highly taxed. In most circumstances the market tends to decline and decay as a result of government supervision, taxes and economic competition.
What we are seeing in the Soviet Union is an attempt to return to a condition that had been on the way out, that had been thoroughly subordinated to socialist planning. That's very different than when a proletarian dictatorship tolerates the existence of a capitalist market in the beginning and then slowly or even abruptly abolishes it.
In Eastern Europe, the capitalist market was returned more than 30 years ago as a result of the counterrevolutionary insurrections in Poland and Hungary. Nevertheless, the nationalized industries remained in the hands of the workers' state. Badly damaged though it was, it retained the full command of all the industry, utilities, transportation, communications and so on. All this was retained even after the counterrevolutionary insurrections, after the opening of market relations, and after the decollectivization of the peasantry.
We want to make sure that we understand the conditions of the Soviet Union and of Eastern Europe in concrete terms, as they exist, and not as the capitalist press sometimes presents them to us, not even as we sometimes imagine them to be.
Let's not get too worried about the expansion of the capitalist market in the USSR, or China, or perhaps later in some other countries. The cardinal question is the ownership of the basic means of production, communications, transportation and all the satellite industries that go along with them.
Of course, if market conditions continue to spiral upward, if they are broadened more and more, it has been shown that the tendency everywhere is to corrode the nationalized industries. But that is a long process. And it requires that the political leadership favor the capitalist market as against nationalized industry.
As to the question about whether Gorbachev is a socialist, a communist, that is not the way Marxists should put it. Whatever he believes himself at any one stage is not what is significant. It's what he does in the course of his leadership of the Party. The issue is: What is Gorbachev objectively?
A Marxist analyzes political personalities, social trends or other political phenomena using an objective, materialist interpretation. We ask ourselves, as the official head of the Communist Party, what is he doing in relation to political policy?
He is revising some of the fundamentals of Marxist economics and politics in relationship to the workers' state. His mode of operation leads in a direction away from what was originally conceived to be the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Gorbachev is part of a grouping that has been directly brought up in the Party apparatus, but in the course of events they became university students and some, like Gorbachev, became lawyers. Lawyers are a special kind of profession in a workers' state, one that has grown to be more and more important as politics and economics merge and as politics deals with the contrary aspects in the workers' state — especially when the legal system is not fully formed from the point of view of the rights of the workers, the rights of citizens generally. Under those circumstances, lawyers thrive and develop in the Party.
He can't claim, as so many Soviet Communists can, to have come from the proletariat, to have worked in the mines, mills and so on. No, he is strictly a product of the administrative system, of the legal system, and his whole grouping come from experiences which differentiate them socially and politically from the workers.
But having said that, he is the head of a workers' state, even though its present tendency is to move in the opposite direction.
To be able to correctly assess the Soviet Union, to be able to apprehend new phenomena in the world generally and in the USSR in particular, is the most difficult task for a communist organization. It is the one which all the leaders of the USSR in its early days had to grapple with: What was this workers' state which was trying to advance to socialism under circumstances of poverty and hunger, and how could the workers get the most out of their continued struggle?
We don't judge a workers' state by its political institutions or policies alone, but by its economic foundations, just as we judge a capitalist state. Sometimes the political leaders of the working class get derailed, either by political circumstances or by forces of a more subjective character, and leave their organization in confusion. Several years later, it may appear that the forces pulling them were not as potent as they seemed at the time.
Suppose the USSR does go further down the road to market relations. Suppose they invite the stock exchanges of New York, Tokyo and London to operate in Moscow. While this is a hypothetical question, it has already happened in Hungary. Under those circumstances, would the Soviet Union be finished? Offhand, I would say no. It depends on what is actually being done, who owns the stocks and bonds, how this has affected the ownership of the basic means of production and the working class, how it affects the national income and the workers' participation in the political struggle. What about their level of consciousness?
If for a long period of time the workers are unconscious of the political processes going on in the Soviet Union, then the road to capitalism is much more open, and even inevitable. But all these things must be examined concretely.
When it comes to the national liberation movements and the Soviet Union, we must be cautious in our approach. The Soviet Union is not going to surrender them all of a sudden. We have to watch each step. Take Afghanistan. To this day, notwithstanding the withdrawal of Soviet troops, Soviet material aid continues to be a major factor in the recuperation of the struggle there.
We note that those liberation movements which have achieved armed struggle status are reluctant to disengage themselves from the USSR. They know that dealing with the USSR is not the same as dealing with an imperialist power, even if they can now only get half a loaf when it comes to assistance. If we have clarity on this question, we will be able to support the national liberation movements more firmly while retaining our critical view of Soviet diplomacy, knowing it can change back and forth.
The bureaucracy in the Soviet Union has a dual character. Just at a time when you might think the Soviet leaders are pushing hard to embrace imperialism, their roots in nationalized, socialized property impel them in the direction of supporting the workers' movement and struggling against imperialism.
Can they not see that U.S. imperialism is continuing to arm to the teeth, and deliberately staged a mock battle between U.S. and "Soviet" troops on the very day of the opening of the Central Committee plenum?
It is a sign of the continuing irreconcilability of the class antagonisms between the two social systems.
Last updated: 19 February 2018