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\title{First Signs of Solidarity in the Soviet Union}
%glasno[w88,jmc]		Class relations in the Soviet Union

	The August and September 1987 issue of the unofficial Moscow
magazine {\it Glasnost} may represent 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.  More
specifically, it may be a necessary condition for {\it perestroika} to
succeed.

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

	The {\it Glasnost} articles describe a long list of worker complaints
about how {\it 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.  At least this is the opinion expressed
by everyone who has written about the problem from Gorbachev
on down and including dissident and foreign sources.

	The specific complaint about lack of democracy refers to
bureaucratic pressure to elect the bureaucrats' preferred candidates 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, and only one candidate was allowed.

	The complaints published in {\it 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 a try at some theory --- or at least some more
general considerations.

	The communists have created a society to which certain Marxist
considerations apply to a much greater extent than they do to the 20th
century capitalist societies they attack.  For example, Soviet and other
existing socialist societies are divided into classes definable by their
relationship to the means of production to a far greater extent than in
other societies.  The rigidity of societies ruled by
communism has eliminated most of the
intermediate and mixed forms that help make Marxist analysis of capitalist
classes so dubious.
%  Also the different classes in Soviet society have
%more sharply defined forms of informal class consciousness.  Inter-class
%hostility is also greater, because compromises based on respect for each
%other's power have not occurred.  [While this discussion uses some
%terminology common in Marxist writings, it isn't intended to be Marxist
%--- whatever that might mean in the 1980s].

	{\it Perestroika} further 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 {\it
perestroika} reforms.

	This has led immediately to the situations described in {\it
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 and not congenial.  Moreover, it is a much greater
personal tragedy for a Soviet manager or 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 industrial officials with the greatest authority are often the
laziest, and they have the infamous ``familial relationships'' with one
another, i.e. representatives of different organizations not dealing
at arms' length.

	What is needed in this situation are genuine trade unions that
will push back when management tries to solve its problems entirely at
worker expense.  Unless this is achieved, the most successful enterprises
in the short run will be those in which the management exploits the
workers most ruthlessly.  There will be more industrial accidents,
no genuine increase in efficiency, and the increased production will
be reduced again when the campaign lapses, as such campaigns always
do.

	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.

	An increase in worker mobility would also help limit
exploitation.  In many American industries, competition for
workers among employers limits exploitation.  Even a company
on the edge of bankruptcy cannot press its workers too hard.
However, the Soviet system subsidizes housing and ties
it to employment.   Changing jobs may involve the loss of an
apartment or going to the bottom of the line for an apartment.
The labor book that a worker must get back from his employer
on leaving also inhibits just walking away.  The lack of cars
limits the size of the area in which a worker can seek new
employment without moving his residence.  All this will make
Soviet workers more dependent on organization to improve their
condition than are American workers.

	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.  Most likely, most workers consider
intellectuals as part of the bureaucratic class.
Families are more likely
to be homogeneous in class than they are in the U.S. 

	The intellectuals often share the bureaucratic class's contempt
for workers.
% There is the regrettable 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 {\it 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 dissident 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.
The establishment intellectuals just now have some channels for
expressing some independent opinions.

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

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

	6. The dissident intellectuals that publish {\it Glasnost} have
an additional form of freedom.  They are almost all recently
released from the prisons, camps and internal exile.  The regime
cannot intimidate them.  All it can do is put them back in
prison if it is too offended by what they are doing.
However, this would have enormous political cost.  Everyone,
including bureaucrats at all levels, would take it as a signal
of a return to the Brezhnev era.

%	The success of {\it perestroika} depends on squeezing
%the bureaucrats between the leadership and the workers.  Of course,
%it may well happen that the leadership will not be able to
%distance itself sufficiently from the lower level bureaucrats.
%These classes do interpenetrate a lot.

	Suppose Gorbachev
decides
%recognizes
 that the workers need protection
from attempts to put the entire costs of {\it perestroika} on them.
I don't know of evidence that he does.  Still the natural communist
reaction would be to create some organization, e.g. some part of the
bureaucracy of the Central Committee of the Party, with the
responsibility for resolving such disputes administratively.  This
may be tried, but it won't really work.

	Gorbachev
% needs to understand that he
 cannot achieve a situation
in which the workers work hard but are not excessively exploited simply by
having administrators decide the justice of each case that arises in each
factory.  The administrators are not competent to do it and are often
corrupt or at least hopelessly subject to conflicts of interest based
on their connections with just one side of the issues.

	The workers need genuine trade unions that will advance their
interests and not merely be stooges of the industry and Party
administrators.
%
The country needs to squeeze industrial management between the workers
and the top leaders.
%
  Of course, not all worker demands will be justified and
there will be conflicts.  The resulting compromises will provide better
solutions than administrative decisions.  The workers will fight hardest
for demands they consider reasonable, and management will fight hardest
against demands they consider unreasonable, while grudgingly conceding the
more reasonable demands.  As in other countries, the workers' ultimate
weapon will have to be the strike.  The Government will, as in other
countries, do best if it stays out of these disputes as much as possible.

	Because of lack of experience, most likely there will
be more strikes for a while than is usual in capitalist
countries.

	One relevant hopeful fact is that the class-consciousness of the
``new class'' described by Milovan Djilas is not so explicit as that of
the noble classes of feudalism.  Feudal nobilites were often of different
ethnic background than the people they ruled and considered themselves as
ruling by ``right of conquest''. They knew they were exploiting the other
classes and had every intention of keeping it that way.  The ``new class''
still pretends to itself as well as to the rest of society that it isn't
an exploiter.

	Whether Gorbachev and the other high officials will ever
see that {\it perestroika} requires a genuine labor movement
remains to be seen.  The dissident movement of independent intellectuals
is the best prepared group in Soviet society to play a role in creating
it.  This issue of {\it Glasnost} is an important early step.

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

\noindent What might Americans and other foreigners do?

	1. More democracy in the Soviet Union is in the interest of peace.
This should take precedence over considerations that a more efficient
Soviet Union is more dangerous.  Also the author and many other Americans
are considerably motivated by simple good will.

	2. We cannot affect the situation very much.  Not much that has
happened in the Soviet Union, good or bad, is the result of foreign
efforts to influence it, and this will remain true.

	3. To the extent that the dissident movement thinks the
authorities will tolerate it, helping them acquire printing equipment,
e.g. desk top publishing system and copiers, may be possible.

	4. In any dealings with the Soviet Union, e.g. joint meetings,
we should make no concessions on human rights issues.  For example,
when dissident or refusenik attendance at a conference is appropriate
we should insist.  ``Quiet diplomacy'' which requests but doesn't insist
is often actually harmful.  This is because it betrays those Soviets
who don't consider themselves in a position to insist on human rights
but can find every reason to advocate acceding to foreign demands in
this area.  As of May 1988, foreign intercession with Soviet authorities
was still considered important by people in the Soviet Union when it
comes to their attendance at international meetings.

	5. Analysis of Soviet affairs by foreign writers
plays some role inside the Soviet Union.  This is because frank
analysis of Soviet problems in Soviet publications is still very
limited in spite of {\it glasnost}.  Foreign publications are
translated in restricted editions, and are sometimes circulated
to advance ideas whose advocates want to avoid going out on a
limb.

	6. Should an opportunity arise for genuine interaction with Soviet
trade unions interested in genuinely representing the workers, this should
be taken by American and other foreign trade unions, whether the Soviet
unions are official or unofficial.  If there is any sign of this, it will
become even more important than in the past to reject purely symbolic
interaction with high officials really representing Party and KGB efforts to
advance Soviet foreign policy goals.

\noindent Notes:

	The editor of {\it Glasnost} in Moscow is Sergei Grigoryants.
In May 1988 he was arrested and held for 7 days and his computer was
confiscated.

	{\it Glasnost} is translated and published in English by the
Center for Democracy, 358 W. 30th St., Suite 1-A, New York, NY 10001.
\smallskip\centerline{Copyright \copyright\ 1988 by John McCarthy}
\smallskip\noindent{This draft of sail.stanford.edu:glasno[w88,jmc]
\ TEXed on \jmcdate\ at \theTime}
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