Russian-built versions of Fiats roll off the assembly line-IS attack bureaucracy for buying on world market even if it means cheaper cars ist owners: these owners are forced by the competition or omner owners to extract the maximum possible surplus product from their workers to expand their profits and production and thereby keep themselves in business against nest rivals. 4. IS THE SOVIET BUREAUCRACY A RULING CLASS?
For Marxists the concept of the ruling class is part and parcel of the analysis of the mode of production. Under capitalism all kinds of different social layers can occupy the role of managing the affairs of the state: petty bourgeois governments, military officer corps, the labour bureaucracy and so on. But the basic pattern of class relationship is not changed by these changes of government: the bourgeoisie remains the ruling class through its competitive ownership of the means of production.
What is the situation in the USSR, where the bureaucracy has a complete monopoly of political power? Trotskyists have always argued that the material basis for the existence of a military-bureaucratic apparatus over and against the masses in the USSR or any other workers state is the existence of the appalling deprivation of the workers in an isolated workers state and the consequent struggle for scarce SUL economic management within this socialised economy is unimportant for the functioning of the economy? Far from it! The smooth functioning of a socialised economy depends crucially on the quality of economic management. Without democratic workers management the bureau cratic managers of the Soviet economy have produced gigantic waste and a permanent crisis at an appalling human COSE These features together: the socialised character of the mode of production and the bureaucratic character of the management of the economy give revolutionary Marxists their basic characterisation of the Soviet Union and the East European states as bur WEEKLY What is the position of Tony Cliff of the IS? He agrees with the Stalinists that the fundamental historical "justification for bureaucracy is its role not as a cop in the sphere of consumption but as the driving force of increased production. Specifically polemicising гасу .. cess of capital accumulation' (Russia, р. 153).
was transformed into a ruling class on the crest of the dynamism of the economy: (ibid, p. 168). For Cliff, the role of a bureaucracy: it makes a bureaucracy more necessary in a workers state!
Why does Cliff call the turn to against Trotsky, he writes: "The bureauc became necessary in me ore He adds: "The Stalinist bureaucracy rapid economic growth does not weaken exists in the USSR.
More on vietnam - mages da JOHN MAGEE reports from Belfast '61,000 ON THE DOLE' - that was the stark headline on the front page of the Belfast Telegraph on Tuesday 20 July. The official unemployment statistics for July, released earlier that day, had revealed the highest level of unemployment since 1940.
Coming in the middle of summer, when unemployment opportunities are generally at their peak, these figures confirm the gloomy prospect for Northern Irish workers of 80,000 unemployed by the end of 1976. As the official statistics never portray the full picture, a more accurate estimate might in fact be around the 100,000 mark.
At least 1 in 10 workers are now jobless in the Six Counties. In Strabane, 29 per cent of adult workers are unemployed; in Derry, Newry and Dungannon, 1 in 4 are out of work. cuts.
Of the North's 18,000 school leavers, 50 per cent have been unable to find work. That's 9,000 16-year-olds forced to exist on social security and with nil prospects of ever finding a lob For those leaving higher education, the picture is no brighter: on one science course at Belfast University, only one-sixth of this year's graduates have been able to find employment. And the normally job-confident students who have completed professional trainwhich is just as bleak as that confronting school leavers. As in Britain, few students qualifying as teachers have been able to obtain positions in schools The trade unions and political parties have of course been quick to express their concern. "Alarming', said the Alliance Party. "Intolerable', declared Terry Carlin, Regional Officer of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. Even forced collectivisation 'economic dvnamism'? The answer is that CHiTT IS trying to prove. that the Soviet bureauc racy is a new ruling class. And he is trying to prove this with Marxist categories. And to do tnis ne has to try to show that the bureaucracy has played a necessary role in the socialised and planned mode of production which He has to show this because, for a Marxist, a ruling group in any society is a ruling class only if it can be shown to play a fundamental role in the given mode of production. Having cone tnis ne wanted to prove lt vas d capuanst ruling class so as to ensure that there was no capitulation to the bureaucracy. But to show that the bureaucracy was capitalist he had to show that it was driven by objective economic forces to accumulate capital.
Now since no such economic forces push in that direction within the USSR, Cliff declares that it was external competition from the capitalist world that forced the bureaucracy to accumulate. The pressure of the capitalist world, says Cliff, forces the bureaucracy to maximise profits and expand production This is a complete theoretical muddle. It is, of course, quite true that the USSR from 1917 - and any other workers state for that matter - has been engaged in a vicious economic, political and military struggle with world imperialism.
IS theorists, however, have to try to prove that the whip-lash of competitior with the capitalist world drives the Soviet bureaucrats into a life or death struggle to accumulate. But this does not square with the facts: if a capitalist fails to accumulate he is destroyed economicaly. he goes bust But is this true of the Soviet bur eaucracy? Not in the least. The Soviet bureaucracy are not bondholders whose dividend depends on the profits of Soviet 'capital'. The rate of accumulation can go up or down: the bureaucrats privileges are the very last thing to One other stark and simple fact blows the theory to pieces. the compuision to maximise profits and accumulate forces every capitalist to continually shake-out surplus labour and continually use a pool of unemployed. Yet half a century of bureaucratic rule has not produced a pool of unemployed in the USSR, and has not produced a business cycle. The whole attempt to prove the Ray Carter, a junior Minister at the Northern Ireland Office who ironically enough was paying a visit to Strabane when the figures were announced, got his halfpenny worth in: "There is an economic recession. The British Government has nothing immediate to offer, but I will come back to Strabane in the autumn.' The British administration here is at one with "Sunny Jim' Callaghan, who declared on his recent visit that the British Government "has no policy". The truth, however, is that the British Government has a very definite policy - slashing the democratic rights of the working class through repression and terror; slashing the living standards of the working class through unemploy ment, redundancies and social service Correctly, the trade unions in the Six Counties have made much verbal ado about the galloping unemployment, calling for a halt to all cuts in public spending. Yet the only action that the union leadership has sanctioned is the withdrawal of its representatives from the sham Economic Council, established 'to advise' Merlyn Rees. This single step has been given the grandiose title of "non-cooperation', yet these same trade union leaders continue to sit on dozens of other committees established by the British administration - such as the Police Authority - and refuse to make any call for workers' action against the twin scourges of unemployment and the cuts.
But then, with the stipends received for service on the Police Authority taken into consideration, who is going to bite the hand that feeds them?
Soviet bureaucracy to be a collective capitalist is nonsense 5. UTOPIAN POLITICS This theoretical muddle produce: disastrous political conclusions. To prove that the bureaucracy is a ruling class, Cliff gives it the historical credit for Soviet economic growth. Then he declares that such economic crowin wa capitalist! So the political conclusion is: down with expanding production in a workers state, down with economic growth.
lo prove that bureaucratic rule was necessary for economic growth, they have to argue that economic growth requires a cut in workers living standards. To prove that the drive to economic growth is capitalist in source they have to argue that a workers state must not compete with the capitalist world. And if a workers state becomes capitalist through a military and economic struggle with the capitalist world, then there is only one conciusion possible: no workers state can survive as a workers state in the capital ist world.
Here is ine despairina and utopian political core of the IS theory of state capitalism. They take for themselves the caricature of Trotskyism presented by the Stalinists. The Stalinists said: Trotsky despaired of a struggle to build up the Soviet workers state. This is false for Trotsky but true for Cliff.
And having produced this theory of despair. Cliff then puts it into prac tice. He accepts the bourgeois myth of Soviet militarv expansionism, and Soviet imperialism. If the USSR is a capitalist power it is also imperialist and imperialist powers are expansionist powers.
Where is Soviet expansionism shown? Why in Vietnam, Angola, the Middle East, presumably. And let's face it, the USSR is the strongest power in Europe. Presumably the Russian capital ists are itching to get their hands on Italy, France, Spain, etc. This is the political logic of state capitalism.
Why is this political logic not spelt out clearly in the pages of Socialist Worker? It was spelt out in the 1940s and early 1950s when the comrades were disorientated by the cold war. But today the membership of IS is not plunged in a mood of despair. It rejoices at the victories of the Vietnamese and the Angolans. So the theory of state capitalism becomes for most IS members simply an instrument of political abuse
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INSIDE FORD WORKERS IN THE FRONT LINE