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The attempts made in Russia to construct a communist society have introduced into the field of human practice a sphere which previously could be treated only in theory, at least as far as industrial production was concerned. Russia has attempted to order economic life according to the principles of communism ... and in this has failed completely! The fact that wages no longer increase to correspond with the rising productivity of labour (1) provides sufficient evidence of this. A greater degree of productivity achieved by the system of social production brings with it no commensurately greater share in the social product. This indicates that exploitation exists. Henriette Roland-Holst proves that the Russian worker today is a wage-worker. One may try to make light of the matter by referring to the fact that Russia is still an agrarian country in that private ownership of land still exists, and that because of this the very basis of wage-labour necessarily imposes itself upon the whole economic foundation of social life. Whoever finds this explanation satisfactory may indeed be perceiving the economic foundations of present-day Russia in an objectively correct light, but in respect of the gigantic attempts of the Russians to implement a communist economy that person has nevertheless learnt nothing. It is for this reason that doubts have arisen amongst many proletarians concerning the method which is being applied by the Russians, and which it is supposed will lead to the establishment of communism. It is a well-known method, which in a few words may be summed up as follows: the working class expropriates the appropriators and places control over the means of production in the hands of the state, which then proceeds to organise the various branches of industry and places them as a state monopoly at the disposal of society.
In Russia matters developed in such a way that the proletariat was able to take command of the factories and to continue running them under its own management. The Communist Party, as the sovereign wielder of state power, then issued directives according to which the factories were to link together their Workers' Councils (Soviets) at communal, district and gubernial (county) level, in order to unite the whole of industrial life into one organic unit. In this way the productive apparatus was built up out of the vital energies alive in the working masses. It was an expression of the drive towards communism which lived in the proletariat. All forces were directed towards the centralisation of production. The 3rd Congress of the All-Russian Economic Council took the decision:
"Centralised administration of the peoples' economy is the most certain means in the possession of the victorious proletariat for achieving the most rapid development of the productive forces throughout the whole country .. It is simultaneously the precondition for the socialist construction of the peoples' economy and for incorporation of the smaller enterprises into the unified economic structure. Centralisation is the sole means for avoiding any tendency towards a fragmentation of the peoples' economy." (2)
In just the same way as, at the commencement of this development, the essential element in the situation lay in the fact that control over the management of industrial production was in the hands of the masses, with an equally inexorable compulsion was it inevitable that at a later stage these powers would be transferred to the central administrative organs. If at first the directorates, communal councils etc. were responsible to the masses of workers, the producers, in the end they became subordinated to the central administration, which directed the whole. At the beginning: responsibility from below; at the end: responsibility from above. It was in this way that in Russia a gigantic concentration of productive forces as no other land on earth had ever attempted was carried through. Woe betide that proletariat which is compelled to struggle against such an apparatus of power!. And in spite of all, this is the reality which has overtaken Russia! There can now be not the slightest doubt: the Russian worker is a wage worker, a worker exploited! These workers must struggle for their wages against the mightiest state apparatus the world has ever known!
The fundamental point to which we would draw attention here is that, in the case of this form of communism, the proletariat has no control over the productive apparatus. In the mere formal sense, it is the owner of the means of production, but it nevertheless has no right of disposal over them. Precisely what proportion of the total social stock of products the producer may receive in return for the work performed is determined by a central administration which, if everything proceeds according to plan, determines this on the basis of statistics. In reality, the decision as to whether or not exploitation should take place is vested in a central authority. Even in the case in which a benevolent administration is in command, which then distributes the products in an equitable way, it remains nevertheless an apparatus which has elevated itself over the producers. The question then becomes one as to whether this state of affairs has come to pass in Russia on account of the special conditions prevailing there, or whether in this case we have a characteristic feature typical of each and every central administration concerned with production and distribution. Should the latter be the case, the possibility of establishing communism would become very problematical indeed
References
1. Henriette Roland-Holst: Klassenstrijd (Class Struggle), 1927, p. 270.return to text
2. A. Goldschmidt: Die Wirtshaftsorganisation Sowjet-Russlands (The Economic Organisation of Soviet Russia), p.43.return to text
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