‘Red managers and red industrialists’ It was all in the long-term interest of the newly-born state- bourgeoisie and state capitalism that the ‘privateers’ were allowed to own and operate some capital, that centralized production was abandoned, that even some ex-fellows of the former bourgeoisie were welcomed to join its ranks [the ‘red managers’ and ‘red-industrialists’ were invited to join the ‘communist’ party to become “vanguards of the proletariat”!] and foreign capitalist were called in to operate oil fields, exploit timber resources and so on. Now, the Nepmen got the business and the ‘communists’ had to learn business the way Lenin directed: “There is much that can and must be learned from the capitalists” (i. e., trade and commerce). The party workers summoned to learn “trade” (!) in the 11th party conference (May 1921) in accordance with the NEP heard Lenin asserting that the NEP was intended “seriously and for a long time”. (See Nove, op. cit., p. 120). And the same conference – that resolved it to be “established for a long period to be measured in terms of years” – also heard Lenin out to learn that it was a “retreat”. A few months later Lenin referred to it as “a defeat and retreat for a new attack”. It is this topsy-turvy that might have engendered the misconception that NEP was a temporary evil to be overcome as quickly as possible. (See Carr, op. cit., 2, pp. 276-77). Herein lies the root of the P. C. Int. (B. C.)’ s mistaken view that it was “a step backwards towards capitalism…a sort of temporary defensive shield” in the face of “… the uncertainty of this delicate period of waiting and programmatic retreat into a triumphant take off point towards the building of socialism.”. The history lies before all to see which was what. When Lenin himself treated both the pre-War-Communism and the post-War-Communism economic programmes to be state capitalist and “excessively sweeping nationalization”, “over centralization” etc. during War Communism as “errors and stupidities” – as “non-proletarian measures,” does his theory of “retreat” withstand even a positivist scrutiny, not to question its tenability in terms of a correct programme. The fact remains that the NEP was neither a “temporary” measure, nor a “retreat”, even less “programmatic”. P. C. Int (B. C.)’s error consists in their un-Marxist method of taking (mistaking?) Lenin true to his words. But if Lenin himself spoke in self contradictory terms, all who speculate about “Lenin’s great worry” and “all Lenin’s efforts” are methodologically trapped into an insurmountable dilemma, because, they lack the a priori method of judging what is what – hence of understanding in advance what is necessary for changing what of the social process (that goes on behind the backs of the producers) on account of changing conditions – and thereby lack the appropriate “worry” and “efforts” to change it before it forces itself upon them without their being conscious of it, or desiring it, or even against their desiring otherwise. If one truth of Lenin’s falsified another of his – one claim declaimed another, one “effort” expelled the other, and all these came about in relation to the same event in the same context, did, and could, Lenin remain true to his “worry” and efforts” as such? The fallacy of the method of speculation is spectacular. Even if one or, its opposite, the other, finally came out to be true, such an ex post facto truth does in no way establish the righteousness of the method itself. Speculation can never be a category of science. The science of a politico-economic programme consists not in speculating about all the programmer’s “worry” / “efforts” / motives / desires / wishes / ideas and conceptions [since, it is not the conceptions of people which create the conditions of life, but the other way round: “How real people behave and did behave depends and always did depend on the historical conditions under which they lived,” (Engels, Anti-Dühring, p. 409)], but in precisely demonstrating the class nature of the relation of production that regulates all the programmer’s programmes. As Marx says in CCPE, Marxists do not judge “an individual by what he thinks about himself” and “a period of transformation by its consciousness”. (p. 21). When products have to be turned into value, per force, it is the value that has to be distributed. Because, what is to be distributed has to be produced first. Hence, the appropriation and distribution of the surplus value amongst the various kinds of owners, and the distribution of variable capital amongst the workers are the distributive functions of the superstructure premised upon value production. The NEP-form of distribution of variable capital replaced the “makeshift” (Lenin) measures of War Communism, such as ‘free’ services and public utilities were abolished one after another. Classified rationing Classified rationing system – to begin with a three class system, then a twenty-class system during 1919 and early 1920, and again the initial one until its abolition on 10 November 1921 – reveals the existence of the wage system in a different way. (However, grain rationing was retained until the end of 1922, because, the 1921 harvest was even worse than 1920’s due to severe draught, and the NEP was not introduced in time to have any effect on 1921 harvest. But the grain ration remained free only nominally, since the workers had to pay for it by accepting deductions from their wages for the same. In 1922, a seventeen class wage-structure along with a productivity (performance) based bonus-and-fine system came into force. This normalized the labour-market that had to hide behind a form of forced-labour under War Communism. Thus, it occurred, no later than in January 1923, that the newly-born state-bourgeoisie received in salaries more than 68 times the minimum wage received by workers, exclusive of profit-sharing and so called ‘personal’ (i.e., extra salary) income. The magnitudes of the last two items were kept as state secret. On top of that there was also non-monetary income, not to mention other perks. At the 13th party conference in January 1924, Mikoyan revealed the following: One enterprise attempted to recruit a ‘red manager’ by offering the following (on top of monetary income): a house with four rooms, a horse-carriage with horse, to month’s annual leave and a summer resort house at the coast of the Black Sea. But the ‘red manager’ turned the offer down because he had found an even better one elsewhere. According to Mikoyan, similar conditions of service were quite common. (See LLM, op. cit., pp. 199-200, where he refers to Carr, The Interregnum, 1954 pp. 41-42) “Outrageous as the luxurious lives” the-then so-called “vanguards of the proletariat” enjoyed were, not to speak of the recent revelations of the pomp and grandeur of power and wealth and the lavish life style of the ill-famed ‘communist rulers’ like Ceausescu, Honecker et. al., around the world, what the proletariat must never forget is that the only source of consumption of the ‘red’-statesmen, like any other of their class, who manage the affairs of value, is the exploitation and appropriation of surplus value – the most fundamental function of the capitalist relations of production. The NEP had already normalized the labour-power market in 1921, the government recognized it by a law on 9 February 1922, and in December 1923, VTsIK’s labour decree empowered the enterprises to retain only the necessary number of workers and to shed surplus staff (who were disguised under War Communism’s forced labour), to operate efficiently and accountably on commercial basis.
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 13:42:07 +0000
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