About the brochure "The Reasons for the Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR"
No. 6/82.VI.2023
The brochure by A. Redin “ The Reasons for the Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR ” , published in 2018, is a summary of the theoretical developments that were presented on the pages of the Proryv magazine, mainly in articles authored by V. Podguzov.
In short, this work is required reading for any novice Marxist - it is a good help in studying and systematizing knowledge in the field, primarily the theory of building communism. More details about the pamphlet will be discussed below, but to begin with, it is worth saying a few words about the views that are in circulation in the left movement on the problem of the restoration of capitalism in the USSR.
How does the positivist approach to the study of history differ from the scientific, that is, Marxist, approach? Where a Marxist aims to reveal the essence through his comprehensive study on the basis of diamatic methodology, the positivist will prefer to confine himself to a dry description of the facts of the process under consideration, absolutizing them and other particulars, ignoring at the same time the need to identify the general. Unfortunately, when attempting to establish the causes of the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union, the majority of Russian-speaking leftists prefer to confine themselves to the descriptive side of the study. The most common example of such a limited description is the release of certain aspects of the economic history of the USSR (the so-called Kosygin reform, the abolition of the MTS, Gorbachev's "reforms", etc.). ) for the cause of the defeat of the Soviet working class. Trotskyism, with its concepts of bureaucratic degeneration, has not disappeared anywhere in the left movement. There are even eccentrics who are trying to smuggle into the left space the Menshevik ideas crushed by Lenin about the unpreparedness of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century for socialist transformations. No matter how much the opinions of the left differ about the reasons for the rollback of our society back to capitalism, these opinions are united by the fact that they were developed with insufficient methodological consistency.
In order not to lose this consistency in the study, it is necessary to first understand the essence of such a category as “cause”. This is the opening of Redin's pamphlet. Standing firmly on the foundation of the Marxist method, the author considers the cause as an integral part of its dialectical unity with its opposite, that is, with the effect. Such a view makes it possible to avoid erroneous judgments that pass off the petty-bourgeois nature of the masses, market mechanisms of cost accounting, and other prerequisites and conditions for the restoration of capitalism as its cause. And it is precisely the absence of such a view among the majority of the left that leads to the fact that the cause of this or that phenomenon is searched for among a large number of events preceding the phenomenon through the use of philistine "common sense".
From a presentation of the diamatics of cause and effect, the author proceeds to a presentation of the diamatics of objective and subjective in the life of society, since without understanding it it is impossible to understand formational theory in general and the process of transition from capitalism to communism in particular. Anti-Marxist propaganda in every possible way replicates the myth of Marxism as vulgar economic determinism. Again, the views of many leftists who have a schematic understanding of historical materialism serve as grounds for this kind of propaganda. The schematic nature of their understanding is expressed primarily in the reduction of social processes to automatism, in the separation of society from the specific individuals in which this society manifests itself. An example of this kind of schematism is the opinion that
In fact, the successful building of communism is the conscious activity of people carried out in strict accordance with the objectively existing laws of expanded social reproduction, and therefore the success of communist construction directly depends on the degree to which the vanguard of the working class has assimilated the laws of development of society, on the ability to organize their work in accordance with these laws, from the conformity of the subject of social transformations to the requirements of objective reality—this is precisely the identity of subject and object. Accordingly, the failure of the cause of the working class in the Soviet Union can be explained by the discrepancy between the subjective factor in the person of the CPSU and the laws of building communism.
Before turning to a direct statement of the reasons for the restoration of capitalism in the country of the Soviets, Redin makes a critical review of the most popular concepts in the left environment that explain the defeat suffered by the Soviet people. Of particular interest in this section is a short but capacious essay on the history of Soviet planning, given in connection with the analysis of the idea of Kosygin's reforms as the reason for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. The author's view of the economic history of the USSR is an example of a scientific, and therefore dialectical, view of the lower phase of communism (socialism) as a process of struggle of communist relations with the rudiments of past formations, as a process of movement from formal socialization to actual socialization. Since, after the working class took power, the relations characteristic of exploitative formations do not disappear immediately and all at once, the communists have to take into account their presence; in the case of our country, this accounting was, among other things, the forced use of market mechanisms in the form of self-financing.
If we look at the economic policy of the USSR in dynamics, in development, it becomes clear that the problem is not the existence of cost accounting as such, but the absence of actions aimed at eliminating the conditions that make cost accounting necessary. In the Lenin-Stalin years, the top party leadership, using market mechanisms in the economy, realized the need to overcome them as soon as possible, and therefore the movement towards the actual socialization of the means of production was successful, the policy of overcoming value relations was carried out, in the struggle between the communist and non-communist principles, the first was in the lead. In the late Soviet years, on the contrary, with the light hand of market economists, self-financing began to be considered as something taken for granted, and therefore there could no longer be any talk of any policy of building communism.
As can be seen from the history of the so-called Kosygin reforms, such actions in the economic sphere are not the cause of capitalist restoration, but a manifestation of a larger problem - the problem of the incompetence of the party leadership in the field of the theory of building communism and, more broadly, in the field of the theory of Marxism as such. Therefore, to establish the cause of the restoration of capitalism in the USSR means to establish the cause of the theoretically and practically sad situation in which the vanguard of the Soviet working class finds itself. The third section of Redin's pamphlet is dedicated to this task.
Having previously deepened the understanding of opportunism, the author states that the reason for the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union was the opportunistic degeneration, first of all, of the leadership of the CPSU. A significant role in this was played by the principle of democratic centralism, the mechanisms of which greatly facilitated the activities of the opportunists. Proceeding from this, it can be understood that the development of organizational principles that would reduce the likelihood of an opportunistic degeneration of the Communist Party is one of the main tasks of modern times for Marxists. This task is now being carried out by the activists of the Proryv magazine and the Proryvist newspaper as part of the development of the theory of scientific centralism.
Scientific centralism, excluding democracy from organizational principles, admits to decision-making only those who have proven in practice their Marxist (and therefore scientific) competence. Scientific centralism does not permit the opposition of practice and theoretical work—the actualization of Marxist theory is one of the components of communist practice. Scientific centralism, finally, is not ready to blindly put up with the illiteracy of the masses of the party—for a bourgeois party, the general illiteracy of the masses of the party is completely normal, while in the communist party the intellectual gap between the leaders and the rank and file, inevitable at first due to capitalist existence, must be overcome as intensively as possible.
Today, everyone who really wants to work for the cause of communism is obliged to actively engage in self-education, while simultaneously carrying out theoretical and organizational work. At this stage, the best, if not the only, way to carry out theoretical and organizational work is to strengthen breakthrough publications. The study of Redin's pamphlet will greatly facilitate the novice Marxist's careful analysis of the victories and defeats of the Soviet working class - an analysis without which theoretical work is now unthinkable.
E. Polovinko
15/06/2023
https://prorivists.org/82_response/
Reasons for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR
Re: Reasons for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Reasons for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR
Review of A. Redin’s brochure “Reasons for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR”
No. 2/90.II.2024
The team of authors of “Breakthrough” and “Proryvist” in almost every publication reminds us of the most important thing in the study of Marxism-Leninism, namely, mastery of scientific methodology. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin achieved heights both in the development of social theory and in the practice of transforming society because they fully mastered diamatics.
Human thinking has continuously evolved throughout history. Dialectical materialism arose on the basis and as a critical processing of materialist philosophy, the achievements of natural science and Hegel's dialectics.
Dialectical materialism is also a scientific methodology, because it brings the laws of thinking into conformity with the laws of motion of matter, and therefore it cannot but give positive results in a wide variety of branches of knowledge.
A. Redin’s brochure “ Causes of the restoration of capitalism in the USSR ”, based on the article by V. A. Podguzov “ Methodology for studying the reasons for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR ”, is a full-fledged study that, thanks to the use of the correct methodology , achieves its goal, i.e. reveals the reason why the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie was able to establish itself in 1991.
The brochure begins by revealing the category of cause. The positivist approach dominant in modern science considers the real world as a dump of randomness, and the connections between phenomena exist only in the consciousness of the subject, explaining them by a certain desire inherent in the brain to logically connect perceived chaotic sensations. Diamatics presupposes the study of the world as it is , and, accordingly, recognizes the presence of stable connections in reality itself.
A. Redin in his work examines the category of cause from the point of view of dialectical laws of development. The cause is separated from the effect by the leap in the transition of the first to the second, which occurs as a result of the victory of one opposite over the other in the course of their struggle. In other words, the category of cause is most closely connected with the dialectical law of unity and struggle of opposites:
“In the philosophy of Marxism, the category “cause” is adopted to designate not just a specific historical fact preceding an event (at best this is called a prerequisite or reason), but, first of all, a factor that has reached a certain degree of maturity and is in unity with its opposite, and therefore, in a state of struggle with it, denying it, which gives the investigation a strictly defined, concrete character and relatively stable appearance. Simply put, struggle and only struggle can be the cause of one or another effect. Nothing in the universe arises without struggle, understood diamatically. In turn, struggle arises where and when there is identity and unity of opposites” ( V.A. Podguzov “ Methodology for studying the causes of the restoration of capitalism in the USSR”).
The development of society is carried out according to objective laws that cannot be canceled, but can be ignored. And any “opinions” on the causes of any phenomenon, based on extracting individual facts, can only exist due to philosophical and/or general ignorance. If the truth has already been known on a specific issue, then for each effect the cause is established quite specifically, and is not “assigned” by the subject at will.
Further in the brochure the question of the relationship between the objective and the subjective is discussed. The laws of exploitative formations still operate predominantly automatically precisely because people enter into social relations without understanding their essence. Almost all the abominations of our existence are the result of the fact that leaders, with the consent of the led, rely not on knowledge, but on selfish interests, that is, various forms of satisfying animal atavisms. At the same time, the personality itself lives and is formed not in a vacuum, but under the influence of society, therefore many good and collectivist principles (not only acquired in the learning process, but also a manifestation of innate qualities) are broken into harsh reality if they are not reinforced in time by the knowledge of Marxism.
During the construction of communism, the role of the subjective inevitably grows, and the importance of the opposition between objective and subjective decreases. A necessary condition for the onset of mature communism is the scientific worldview of all members of society and the absence of objective conditions for encouraging egoistic principles in a person’s personality or keeping people in a state of ignorance.
In the brochure, in the course of analyzing the main versions of the reasons for restoration put forward by various authors, the issue of power is considered, and also gives a brief history of the development of planning in the USSR.
Erroneous versions, such as the separation of the bureaucracy into a separate class, the elevation of the party above the class, arise due to a misunderstanding of the role of the communist party in the revolution. Ignorance or ignorance of the fact that the source of power is private property, and the tool for ensuring power is ultimately violence, does not allow opportunists to understand that power in the Lenin-Stalin USSR, gradually destroying private property, replacing coercion with persuasion, was no longer in the full sense words by power, but, on the contrary, was an instrument for the destruction of power as a social phenomenon: subject to the continuity of the construction of communism, the dominance of man over man inevitably had to disappear.
The brochure also proves the inconsistency of the version about the influence of the Stalinist constitution on the reasons for turning away from the path of building communism. The idealistic idea that legal documents themselves, by their nature, are capable of having any real force is incorrect. Legal laws serve as a formal consolidation of the social situation that already exists in reality, an expression of the will of the ruling class.
Under communism, such an institution as law will not exist, since people will consciously submit to objective necessity, and not to formal legal formulations secured by coercive force:
“An objective LAW differs from a RULE in that the law reflects a connection that acts only as an objective NECESSITY, while a rule can be adopted by voting or by agreement” (V. A. Podguzov “ The Absolute and Basic Economic Laws of Communism ” ).
Thus, law exists only because opposing social classes exist.
“...A characteristic pattern is observed: the further humanity moves away from the times when the discovery of OBJECTIVE laws was the norm of scientific life, the more intensively “legislators” have to work on coming up with LEGAL laws...” (same article).
When analyzing the history of the development of planning, it is shown that it is absurd to present economic reforms as the causes of the collapse of the political power of the working class. For example, material incentives for labor are only a forced tool in the hands of the dictatorship of the working class. The need for its use was associated with the backwardness of some of the workers, the insufficient number of trained management personnel and the imperfection of the planning system. In the long term, the communists envisioned the negation of commodity-money relations, primarily by raising the level of consciousness of the majority of the population to a scientific level, because in the technological aspect there are no objective obstacles to the full implementation in the future of the principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
It is impossible to instantly get rid of the remnants of the state of class division in which society has been for several thousand years. Conscious representatives of the working class are a minority, and therefore there is a temporary need to somehow influence the rest. Enlightenment and conviction play an important role, but it does not act instantly, step by step overcoming misconceptions that have formed over the years. Therefore, in the first phase of communism, the influence on primitive feelings and interests in the form of, for example, material incentives for labor or the so-called. socialist competition. However, it is important not to lose the general direction of movement and make persuasion the basis of policy, gradually reducing the effect of market levers and reducing the scope of the law of value.
Those who implemented economic reforms did not understand the policies of Lenin and Stalin. They did not realize what Lenin was guided by when introducing the NEP. By the end of the Civil War, industry was destroyed and agriculture was in a deteriorating state. To begin socialist construction, it was necessary to ensure active trade turnover between city and countryside and introduce greater freedom of enterprise. That is, the party deliberately “turned on” capitalist mechanisms, not allowing them to go beyond the strict control of the new state. In the course of the growth of productive forces, in the course of the strengthening of communist society in society, the levers borrowed from capitalism were used less and less.
“In cost accounting, the party saw the lever for transforming the plan from a clerical plan into a real plan” (Redin).
By the time Khrushchev’s reforms were carried out, the country had already undergone industrialization and collectivization, that is, the basis of the productive forces had changed. Among other things, sprouts of communist consciousness increasingly appeared in society, which market reformers fundamentally could not take into account. Therefore, if there were people in the CPSU who were well versed in Marxist theory, they would have continued the Stalinist policy of gradually eliminating the remnants of capitalist mechanisms and tools. But as a result of the ignorance of party members, the opposite happened: instead of improving planning, everything was left to chance.
In the same way, the party actually abdicated responsibility for the development of theory, for ideological and cultural work. The party has turned from the vanguard of the working class, from its most conscious representatives, into a multitude of ignorant careerists voting for each other’s illiterate decisions. The role of the party in the construction of communism was decisive, therefore the working class, which was raised by the Bolsheviks, had qualitatively changed by the beginning of the 90s so much that without serious resistance I was converted into the proletarian mass.
The work done by the author of the brochure is certainly very important. Without understanding the reasons for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, it is pointless and naive to hope for new victories of communism. Because remaining ignorant means being a slave to circumstances:
“Freedom is a conscious necessity.”
The party will gain the trust of its class when it proves to it its competence and integrity, when the workers see in it the mind, honor and conscience of the era, and not loud-mouthed activists infected with leftism and voluntarism.
To make the right decisions, you need to master the theory and, above all, the methodology of correct thinking. The principles of spontaneous dialectics are present in the consciousness of every person. But in order to grow to the level of a researcher, these dialectical principles must be consciously developed. Engels wrote:
“...Theoretical thinking is an innate property only in the form of an ability. This ability must be developed, improved, and for this there is still no other means except the study of all previous philosophy.”
If the mistakes of the CPSU are not taken into account by the new communists, then they, finding themselves in a similar situation, will suffer the same, and possibly more crushing , defeat. It was to prevent such a situation in the future that Redin’s wonderful pamphlet was written, reading and studying of which is mandatory for any modern Marxist.
M. Severova
02/25/2024
https://prorivists.org/90_response/
Google Translator
No. 2/90.II.2024
The team of authors of “Breakthrough” and “Proryvist” in almost every publication reminds us of the most important thing in the study of Marxism-Leninism, namely, mastery of scientific methodology. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin achieved heights both in the development of social theory and in the practice of transforming society because they fully mastered diamatics.
Human thinking has continuously evolved throughout history. Dialectical materialism arose on the basis and as a critical processing of materialist philosophy, the achievements of natural science and Hegel's dialectics.
Dialectical materialism is also a scientific methodology, because it brings the laws of thinking into conformity with the laws of motion of matter, and therefore it cannot but give positive results in a wide variety of branches of knowledge.
A. Redin’s brochure “ Causes of the restoration of capitalism in the USSR ”, based on the article by V. A. Podguzov “ Methodology for studying the reasons for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR ”, is a full-fledged study that, thanks to the use of the correct methodology , achieves its goal, i.e. reveals the reason why the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie was able to establish itself in 1991.
The brochure begins by revealing the category of cause. The positivist approach dominant in modern science considers the real world as a dump of randomness, and the connections between phenomena exist only in the consciousness of the subject, explaining them by a certain desire inherent in the brain to logically connect perceived chaotic sensations. Diamatics presupposes the study of the world as it is , and, accordingly, recognizes the presence of stable connections in reality itself.
A. Redin in his work examines the category of cause from the point of view of dialectical laws of development. The cause is separated from the effect by the leap in the transition of the first to the second, which occurs as a result of the victory of one opposite over the other in the course of their struggle. In other words, the category of cause is most closely connected with the dialectical law of unity and struggle of opposites:
“In the philosophy of Marxism, the category “cause” is adopted to designate not just a specific historical fact preceding an event (at best this is called a prerequisite or reason), but, first of all, a factor that has reached a certain degree of maturity and is in unity with its opposite, and therefore, in a state of struggle with it, denying it, which gives the investigation a strictly defined, concrete character and relatively stable appearance. Simply put, struggle and only struggle can be the cause of one or another effect. Nothing in the universe arises without struggle, understood diamatically. In turn, struggle arises where and when there is identity and unity of opposites” ( V.A. Podguzov “ Methodology for studying the causes of the restoration of capitalism in the USSR”).
The development of society is carried out according to objective laws that cannot be canceled, but can be ignored. And any “opinions” on the causes of any phenomenon, based on extracting individual facts, can only exist due to philosophical and/or general ignorance. If the truth has already been known on a specific issue, then for each effect the cause is established quite specifically, and is not “assigned” by the subject at will.
Further in the brochure the question of the relationship between the objective and the subjective is discussed. The laws of exploitative formations still operate predominantly automatically precisely because people enter into social relations without understanding their essence. Almost all the abominations of our existence are the result of the fact that leaders, with the consent of the led, rely not on knowledge, but on selfish interests, that is, various forms of satisfying animal atavisms. At the same time, the personality itself lives and is formed not in a vacuum, but under the influence of society, therefore many good and collectivist principles (not only acquired in the learning process, but also a manifestation of innate qualities) are broken into harsh reality if they are not reinforced in time by the knowledge of Marxism.
During the construction of communism, the role of the subjective inevitably grows, and the importance of the opposition between objective and subjective decreases. A necessary condition for the onset of mature communism is the scientific worldview of all members of society and the absence of objective conditions for encouraging egoistic principles in a person’s personality or keeping people in a state of ignorance.
In the brochure, in the course of analyzing the main versions of the reasons for restoration put forward by various authors, the issue of power is considered, and also gives a brief history of the development of planning in the USSR.
Erroneous versions, such as the separation of the bureaucracy into a separate class, the elevation of the party above the class, arise due to a misunderstanding of the role of the communist party in the revolution. Ignorance or ignorance of the fact that the source of power is private property, and the tool for ensuring power is ultimately violence, does not allow opportunists to understand that power in the Lenin-Stalin USSR, gradually destroying private property, replacing coercion with persuasion, was no longer in the full sense words by power, but, on the contrary, was an instrument for the destruction of power as a social phenomenon: subject to the continuity of the construction of communism, the dominance of man over man inevitably had to disappear.
The brochure also proves the inconsistency of the version about the influence of the Stalinist constitution on the reasons for turning away from the path of building communism. The idealistic idea that legal documents themselves, by their nature, are capable of having any real force is incorrect. Legal laws serve as a formal consolidation of the social situation that already exists in reality, an expression of the will of the ruling class.
Under communism, such an institution as law will not exist, since people will consciously submit to objective necessity, and not to formal legal formulations secured by coercive force:
“An objective LAW differs from a RULE in that the law reflects a connection that acts only as an objective NECESSITY, while a rule can be adopted by voting or by agreement” (V. A. Podguzov “ The Absolute and Basic Economic Laws of Communism ” ).
Thus, law exists only because opposing social classes exist.
“...A characteristic pattern is observed: the further humanity moves away from the times when the discovery of OBJECTIVE laws was the norm of scientific life, the more intensively “legislators” have to work on coming up with LEGAL laws...” (same article).
When analyzing the history of the development of planning, it is shown that it is absurd to present economic reforms as the causes of the collapse of the political power of the working class. For example, material incentives for labor are only a forced tool in the hands of the dictatorship of the working class. The need for its use was associated with the backwardness of some of the workers, the insufficient number of trained management personnel and the imperfection of the planning system. In the long term, the communists envisioned the negation of commodity-money relations, primarily by raising the level of consciousness of the majority of the population to a scientific level, because in the technological aspect there are no objective obstacles to the full implementation in the future of the principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
It is impossible to instantly get rid of the remnants of the state of class division in which society has been for several thousand years. Conscious representatives of the working class are a minority, and therefore there is a temporary need to somehow influence the rest. Enlightenment and conviction play an important role, but it does not act instantly, step by step overcoming misconceptions that have formed over the years. Therefore, in the first phase of communism, the influence on primitive feelings and interests in the form of, for example, material incentives for labor or the so-called. socialist competition. However, it is important not to lose the general direction of movement and make persuasion the basis of policy, gradually reducing the effect of market levers and reducing the scope of the law of value.
Those who implemented economic reforms did not understand the policies of Lenin and Stalin. They did not realize what Lenin was guided by when introducing the NEP. By the end of the Civil War, industry was destroyed and agriculture was in a deteriorating state. To begin socialist construction, it was necessary to ensure active trade turnover between city and countryside and introduce greater freedom of enterprise. That is, the party deliberately “turned on” capitalist mechanisms, not allowing them to go beyond the strict control of the new state. In the course of the growth of productive forces, in the course of the strengthening of communist society in society, the levers borrowed from capitalism were used less and less.
“In cost accounting, the party saw the lever for transforming the plan from a clerical plan into a real plan” (Redin).
By the time Khrushchev’s reforms were carried out, the country had already undergone industrialization and collectivization, that is, the basis of the productive forces had changed. Among other things, sprouts of communist consciousness increasingly appeared in society, which market reformers fundamentally could not take into account. Therefore, if there were people in the CPSU who were well versed in Marxist theory, they would have continued the Stalinist policy of gradually eliminating the remnants of capitalist mechanisms and tools. But as a result of the ignorance of party members, the opposite happened: instead of improving planning, everything was left to chance.
In the same way, the party actually abdicated responsibility for the development of theory, for ideological and cultural work. The party has turned from the vanguard of the working class, from its most conscious representatives, into a multitude of ignorant careerists voting for each other’s illiterate decisions. The role of the party in the construction of communism was decisive, therefore the working class, which was raised by the Bolsheviks, had qualitatively changed by the beginning of the 90s so much that without serious resistance I was converted into the proletarian mass.
The work done by the author of the brochure is certainly very important. Without understanding the reasons for the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, it is pointless and naive to hope for new victories of communism. Because remaining ignorant means being a slave to circumstances:
“Freedom is a conscious necessity.”
The party will gain the trust of its class when it proves to it its competence and integrity, when the workers see in it the mind, honor and conscience of the era, and not loud-mouthed activists infected with leftism and voluntarism.
To make the right decisions, you need to master the theory and, above all, the methodology of correct thinking. The principles of spontaneous dialectics are present in the consciousness of every person. But in order to grow to the level of a researcher, these dialectical principles must be consciously developed. Engels wrote:
“...Theoretical thinking is an innate property only in the form of an ability. This ability must be developed, improved, and for this there is still no other means except the study of all previous philosophy.”
If the mistakes of the CPSU are not taken into account by the new communists, then they, finding themselves in a similar situation, will suffer the same, and possibly more crushing , defeat. It was to prevent such a situation in the future that Redin’s wonderful pamphlet was written, reading and studying of which is mandatory for any modern Marxist.
M. Severova
02/25/2024
https://prorivists.org/90_response/
Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."