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class[w88,jmc]		Class relations in the Soviet Union

	The August-September issue of Glasnost represents the
start in the Soviet Union of intellectual-worker relationships
like those in Poland.  This is the main hope for the Soviet
Union to get out of its social mess.

	The level of relationship represented by the issue is
very preliminary, and it has a long way to go.  The object of
this article is to explore the path the relationship must
follow.

	The Glasnost articles describe a long list of worker
complaints about how Perestroika is developing.  They come
under two headings - exploitation and lack of democracy.

	The articles tell how the industrial bureaucrats are
preventing the workers from earning more money by arbitrarily
raising the production norms and reducing piece-work rates.
From the articles, which simply articulate the worker complaints,
it is impossible to tell which of the complaints are justified.
After all, both worker featherbedding and bureaucratic featherbedding
exist - in the Soviet Union even more than in competitive
capitalist societies.  With the lack of worker power in
the Soviet Union, bureaucratic featherbedding
is the worse problem.  Moreover, this is the opinion expressed
by everyone who has written about the problem from Gorbachev
on down and including dissident and foreign sources.

	The complaint about lack of democracy refers to
bureaucratic pressure to elect them to posts for which
the workers must vote.  Of course, in the past the Party
leaders at every level have prevented any kind of free
choice by the workers.

	The complaints published in Glasnost are entirely at
the specific level.  No general conclusions are drawn.
Thus the intellectuals have not carried out their obligation
to provide theory and to help with organization.

	Here's some theory.

	The communists have created a society to which certain
Marxist considerations apply to a much greater extent than
they do to the capitalist societies they attack.  Primarily
Soviet and other existing socialist societies are divided
into classes defined by their relationship to the means of
production to a far greater extent than in other societies.
The rigidity of communism has eliminated the intermediate
and mixed forms that make Marxist analysis of capitalist
classes dubious.  Also the different classes in Soviet society
have more sharply defined forms of class consciousness.
Inter-class hostility is also greater, because compromises
based on respect for each others power have not occurred.

	Perestroika sharpens the class conflicts of Soviet
society.  The bureaucratic class is overgrown, fat and lazy
and Gorbachev aims to reduce it.  It is to be forced to
compete and shed excess bureaucrats.  However, this very
class is supposed to carry out the perestroika reforms.

	This has led immediately to the situations described
in Glasnost.  The higher ups put pressure on an enterprise.
to provide more goods for less money.  The bureaucrats know
one way to achieve this - make the workers work harder for
less money.  Reducing their own number is not readily done.
The ones with the greatest authority are often the laziest,
and they have the infamous ``family relationships'' with
one another.

	What is needed in this situation are genuine trade
unions that will push back when management tries to solve
its problem at worker expense.  Unless this is achieved,
the most successful enterprises will be those in which
the management exploits the workers most ruthlessly.
There will be more industrial accidents.

	Whether genuine trade unions will arise by workers
succeeding in electing trade union officials that represent
their interests or whether unofficial trade unions will need
to arise is probably unpredictable.  Maybe there will be
a mixture of the two.

	The informal class consciousness of the working class and the
bureaucratic class are at levels far beyond those of capitalist
countries.  The bureaucrats have contempt for the workers as
drunken bums, and the workers resent the bureaucrats as lazy,
overprivileged oppressors.  Very likely families are more likely
to be homogeneous in class than they are in the U.S.  It is a
much greater personal tragedy for a Soviet bureaucrat to lose
his position at any level in the system than it is in the U.S.
The reason is that there isn't the same kind of labor market
that will help him get another.

	The intellectuals belong to a substantial degree to
the bureaucratic class and often share its contempt for
workers, and the workers resent its privileges.  There is
the infamous incident of the 1970s in which the Sakharovs
refused an appeal to help in the formation of a free trade
union.  Every Soviet intellectual asked about it has said
that the worker-intellectual alliance that is the main force
for democracy in Poland is impossible in the Soviet Union.
When pressed, however, they sometimes retreat to saying that
is very difficult.  Well, it was difficult in Poland, and
the communist penetration of the working class before the
Revolution was also difficult.  However, publishing worker
complaints in Glasnost is a step.

	What do the workers need the intellectuals for?

	1. The intellectuals have and take the time to think
and write.  The workers spend their time working and then
relaxing.  An occasional worker will write on his own time,
but then he becomes an intellectual, and his natural progress
is to find an opportunity to move into the intellectual class.
This kind of social mobility has always existed in Soviet
society.

	2. While the intellectuals have been repressed, they
are not subject to the same kind of immediate retaliation
as is a worker in a factory.

	3. The intellectuals are organized to publicize whatever
concerns them.  For example, they can get their ideas broadcast
back into the Soviet Union by foreign radio stations.

	4. The intellectuals have access to foreign information
about trade unions.

	5. The intellectuals have access to the Soviet leadership
that doesn't go through channels.

	To recapitulate.  If perestroika is to succeed in making
Soviet society more efficient and prosperous, there must be
trade unions that will squeeze the bureaucrats between the
workers and the high officials.  Undoubtedly there will have
to be strikes.  To what extent Gorbachev
and the other high officials can be persuaded to see it that
way remains to be seen.

	One relevant hopeful sign is that the class-consciousness
of the new class is not explicit unlike the nobilities of old.
The nobles of old knew they were exploiting the other classes
and had every intention of keeping it that way.  The new class
pretends to itself as well as to the rest of society that it
isn't an exploiter.

	A slight revision of a Marxist formula may describe the
situation.  Socialism will turn out to be an intermediate stage
between feudalism and capitalism.  It occurs only in underdeveloped
countries with underdeveloped democratic ideology.  To bad
Marx can't be asked his opinion of this idea.