Rise and fall of socialism in the USSR
By Late Prof Nikolai Veduta, Founder of the Department of Strategic Planning, Moscow State University (1991).
(Taken from the Russian text “Socially Effective Economy”, 1999. Planned for publication in English; translators able to handle mathematical texts are invited.)
Rise and fall of socialism in the USSR
In October 1917, millions of workers of the Russian Empire under the banner of Marxism performed the socialist revolution.
With the transfer of power to the working class, the building of the socialist economy is not completed, but only begins. "Having created a new, Soviet type of state," said V.I. Lenin, "opening an opportunity for the workers and the oppressed masses to take an active part in the self-building of a new society, we solved only a small part of the difficult task. The main challenge lies in the economic field: To carry out strict and universal accounting and control of production and distribution of products, to increase productivity of labor. To socialize production in practice. ...We, the Bolshevik Party, convinced Russia. We took Russia away from the rich for the poor, from the exploiters for the workers. We must now rule Russia."
However, Marx, considering the development of economic social formation as a natural-historical process, as a necessary condition for the overthrow of the public system based on private property, called "the enormous growth of productive power, the high degree of its development ...", without which there can only be "the general spread of poverty", and in The struggle for the necessary items would have to begin again, and therefore the "old abomination" would have to be resurrected.
Lenin considered it possible to use the revolutionary situation that had been unbiased in the world and to lead the way in the conquest of power in a country that had a very low level of development of productive forces but huge natural and human resources.
From the early days of the Soviet regime, preventing the disintegration of the privileges of the ruling party's members became the chief's overriding concern. On November 18 (December 1), 1917, at Lenin's proposal, a resolution was adopted by the Council of People's Commissars, according to which the monthly earnings of the People's Commissars were set at 500 rubles, with an increase of 100 rubles per a disabled family member that approximated the average earnings of the worker. In his work "The next tasks of the Soviet power", Lenin considered the high, in his opinion, payment for "services" of the largest bourgeois specialists, as a compromise, a departure from the principles of proletarian power, a payment for backwardness. I read: "The sooner we, the workers and peasants, learn labor discipline and the higher technology of labor, the sooner we will get rid of any 'tribute' to these specialists."
At the VIII Congress of RCP(b) in March 1919, in a report on the party program Lenin noted that pre-war rates of specialists exceeded the earnings of workers 20 times, and in "our current rates the fluctuations are from 600 to 3000 rubles . — the difference is only five times... Of course, we are paying more for specialists now, but not only is it worth paying for science, but it is necessary and theoretically necessary."
In September 1920, at the IX All-Russian Conference of the Communist Party (B), when discussing the next tasks of party construction, it was noted that certain Communists, who held leadership positions in Soviet and economic institutions, did not fight bureaucracy, abused their position, and left its party organization and the working masses. On this issue, a resolution was adopted, whose draft was written by Lenin, which required "the elaboration of precise practical rules on measures to eliminate such inequalities (living conditions, wages, etc.) between "professionals" and responsible workers on the one hand, and the mass, on the other hand, of inequality, which ... violates democracy and is a source of the party's disintegration and the demeanor of the Communists."
However, the partisan maximum introduced at Lenin's initiative (limiting the average wage of party members to workers) did not fully protect the governing bodies from decay, especially as the party stratum was not so large. Concerned about the improvement of the party apparatus, Lenin wrote in December 1922, referring to the upcoming XII Party Congress: "Workers in the Central Committee must not be those workers who have completed long Soviet service," he said. Because these workers already have a well-known tradition and a well-known prejudice, which it is desirable to fight.
The working members of the Central Committee should include mainly workers below the layer that we had been a Soviet employee for five years, and who are closer to the rank-and-file workers and peasants..." In January 1923, however, Lenin in the final version of the article "How to reorganize Rabkrin" (Proposal to the XII Party Congress)" expressed the view that Rabkrin's employees "should be highly qualified, specially tested, with high pay, quite free ... from the current, truly unfortunate (not to say worse) situation of the official Rabkrin."
As you can see, Lenin has persistently sought a solution to the problem of preventing the decay of the persons, who receive the reins of government of a country with a low level of development of productive forces. But the severe illness never allowed him to develop the appropriate practical measures. This is the direction in which it was necessary and necessary to develop not Marxist-Leninist teaching, but on the basis of Marxism-Leninism science of socialism. Instead, after Lenin's death, the party maximum, as well as the transparent systematic purges of the party and state apparatus, were abolished. The rise of workers’ privileges, depending on their place in the hierarchical system of building a society, became steeper and steeper. Deprivation and difficulties caused by economic destruction, sabotage of the bourgeoisie, technical-economic and cultural backwardness of the country, the schemes of hostile capitalist environment, not everyone was ready to bear in the name of distant bright future of unknown generations. The Party as a leader has become attractive not so much with ideas of the movement towards communism, but with real privileges as it moves up the hierarchical ladder, the cult of personality has blossomed, with the lust of many inferior persons to the multitude of those above, who are trapped at the very top of one the face is "the leader."
However, production in the USSR was socialized in practice. Strict and ubiquitous accounting and control of production and distribution of products have become the norm. All the country's natural resources, means of production and product of labor have become state property. The State has been given a unique opportunity to organize socialist property in any form and centrally manage its functioning. State, collective-cooperative, trade-union (as well as other public organizations) and private property did not simply coexist and interacted, regardless of their common purpose, but were common socialist property. Their essence, scope and relationship were regulated by the socialist state through consciously established legal laws that more or less accurately and fully take into account the constantly changing concrete conditions of reality, as well as the strategic and tactical goals of society. The socialist property is not just a collection of its forms, but a consciously organized unity. It is this fact that allows the socialist society to manage the entire national economic complex of a huge country. At the same time, he introduces a subjective imprint into the management, requiring the art of management to be based on science.
The greatness of the transformation of the country was revealed in full force during the Great Patriotic War. In four years, under the conditions of temporary occupation of territory, evacuation of the overwhelming part of productive forces to the east, mass destruction before the war of qualified military and civilian specialists, the Soviet Union was established under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union the world's best military equipment (tanks, aircraft, missiles and other weapons), organized its mass production, achieved a great superiority in all types of military equipment over fasc. , with economic potential almost everywhere in Western Europe, the strongest enemy has been crushed. The social system - socialism, centralized management, which has not yet been able to find an adequate economic mechanism, an unprecedented heroism and selflessness on the fronts and in the rear of the Soviet people, won.
At that time it seemed that in the transition to peace-building, the transfer of all resources to the restoration of the national economy, it was very fast possible to overtake the advanced capitalist countries in economic development, to achieve the highest level of well-being in the world. Such objectives were set out in the third CPSU Program adopted at the XXXII Congress in 1961. But it failed.
True, the severe wounds suffered in the victorious war against fascist Germany healed quite quickly. It restored the pre-war economy, and it was not the world's leading position on the development of space, the energy of the atom for peaceful purposes. Then "stalled", although socialism, unlike the pre-war, became called developed. The pace of economic development has slowed so much that the period of "developed socialism" ended not with communism programmed by that date by the Party's XXII Congress, but with a state called "stagnation." The USSR's lagging economic competition with the West became an obvious fact, which swamped revisionist interpretations of Marxist laws of social development. At the same time, the energetic moussification by the media of all the shortcomings that often accompanied the socialist construction and the expression of enthusiasm for the contemplation of the "cloud-free" life of the workers of the capitalist countries led to the fact that the specter of communism threatened the bourgeoisie in the nineteenth century , in the twentieth century began to frighten the workers of all countries, both capitalist and socialist.
When it became obvious that before communism much further than it was desirable, the third program of the Communist Party was adjusted and at the XXVII Party Congress in 1986 was adopted in a new version. However, at the XXVIII Congress in 1990 it was decided to destroy socialism in the USSR. Thus, the cult of personality, which played a significant role under Stalin in strengthening the power of the socialist camp, caused its destruction under Gorbachev.
About forms of ownership
The October socialist revolution in Russia for the first time in history approved the dictatorship of the proletariat, created a new type of state — the Soviet socialist state. One of his first decrees, the Leninist Land Decree, declared: "(1) The land ownership shall be canceled immediately without any ransom. (2) The estate, as well as all the land separate, monastery, church, with all their living and dead furniture, manor houses and all the accessories, shall be placed at the disposal of the township land committees and county councils of peasant deputies. . "(3) Any damage to the confiscated property, which henceforth belongs to the entire people, is declared to be a serious crime punishable by the Revolutionary Court."
At the same time, the peasant's land order stipulated that the confiscation of the equipment did not concern smallholder farmers. Immediately, labor control and accounting of production and distribution of products were introduced in "all industrial, commercial, banking, agricultural and other enterprises with at least 5 employees (together)... It was established that the decisions of supervisors were "binding on the owners of enterprises and could only be revoked by trade unions and congresses".
Thus, even before the nationalization, the owners of the enterprises were deprived of the possibility to dispose of them as their own. In essence, when the proletariat took power, all the national wealth of the country — the property of its people becomes the national property.
Further progress on the path of socialist transformation required the construction of a single national property organization that would accelerate the development of the economy, but not lose the reins of government.
The Soviet state began to solve this problem in 1921, taking advantage of the peaceful respite.
In a situation where the vast majority of the country's population is a small farmer-producer, the success of socialist transformations can only be achieved through an agreement between the proletariat, which holds the state power in its hands, and the majority of the peasant population. To this end, in accordance with the wishes of the peasants, the production was replaced by a sales tax, freedom of trade was allowed, the cooperation of small producers and consumers was unfolded, and the course of concessions was taken. There was some "rollback" from socialism. Lenin pointed out: "With our existing structure, the cooperative ... They are not different from socialist enterprises if they are based on land, with means of production belonging to the state, i.e. the working class."
"If we were fully co-operative, we would have stood both feet on the socialist soil, but this condition of full co-operation includes such a cultural nature of the peasantry (namely the peasantry, as a huge masses) that this complete co-operation is impossible without an entire cultural revolution."
Under Stalin's leadership, the Soviet power, in its main and main features, probably shorter in terms than Lenin had expected, carried out a "cultural revolution" — carried out a "full co-operation" of small farmers — producers, the country became socialist. According to Stalin's definition, "two main forms of socialist production, the state-owned-national-collective-farm, and collective-farm-farming-which cannot be called the national-class" were formed. Note that this is not about the forms of ownership, but about the forms of production.
Under Khrushchev's leadership, the machine-tractor stations were transferred to the collective farms; Federal ministries, as organs of management of the economy, were replaced by republican and regional joint-stock companies. Under Brezhnev, ministries were re-established instead of sovnarkhoz. In China, private enterprises and foreign capital investments are thriving. Thus, as life has shown, after the victory of the socialist revolution all forms of ownership are not something objectively formed, but the result of the purposeful activity of the socialist state organizing the national property in any form.
In the socialist way of production, the entire product, including that intended for personal consumption, is also a socialist property. The society, represented by the State, determines the share of personal consumption in the total product, forms public funds of non-productive consumption and the procedure for their use, and regulates retail prices of the consumption of products sold through retail trade.
Personal consumption provides expanded reproduction of physical and spiritual qualities of a person. Both production and non-production consumption are always personal consumption. As a result of personal production consumption, for example, the billet becomes a certain part of the machine, not something else, or personal non-production consumption of any product must be consumed in such a way as to benefit the society. In both cases, the use of the product for its intended purpose is controlled by society.
The only difference is that in the first case the result is determined by society, in the second - reproduction of physical and spiritual qualities of a person is directly connected with satisfaction of his own needs. The intervention of society is only necessary when the society and the needs of the individual are in conflict with the interests of society, such as drinking.
The Soviet state, even without becoming socialist, could pass any law on all property matters: to be or not to be her public, private, or private. The capitalist state does not have such opportunities; personal property is not only inviolable, but protected by it. The Soviet state not only protects the national wealth of its country, but also becomes its owner, the owner.
It makes no sense to have fruitless discussions about the forms of ownership under socialism. It is important to emphasize that under socialism all means of production, land and subsoil are the common national property, which obliges the socialist state to use the common national property in all forms (public at all levels, collective, private, etc.), the combination of which in the given conditions ensures the movement towards a better life through optimal spending path.
About production
Stalin, considering the documents on the economic discussion (November 1951) held in connection with the evaluation of the draft textbook of political economy, made a number of very useful remarks. In particular, on the issues of objective nature of economic laws, restrictions of the scope of commodity production and the law of value. But he, like all academic economists who had access to the media to communicate his ideas, did not see behind the money form the manifestation of the true essence of socialism's relations, and therefore regarded them as commodity in substance.
At the same time, responding to a famous economist Notkin's criticism of his claims to reduce the scope of the law of value in the USSR, Stalin reminded him of Marxist basing definitions: "the goods are a product of production that is sold to any buyer, and when the goods are sold the owner loses ownership of the goods and the buyer becomes the owner of the goods, which can resell, put, spoodle them." Noting that in the USSR the means of production are not sold, "but distributed by the state among its enterprises", including collective farms, the state "in no way loses the ownership of the means of production ..., the directors of enterprises ..... rather than becoming owners, they claim to be authorized by the Soviet state to use the means of production according to plans taught by the state," Stalin concluded: "As you can see, the means of production under our structure can in no way be subsumed under the category of goods".
Stalin went on to comment on the regulatory impact of the value law on procurement prices of products "produced in agriculture and handed over to the state": "First of all, our prices for agricultural raw materials are firm, set by the plan, not "free". Second, the size of the production of agricultural raw materials... It's not a natural...it's a plan. Third, the tools necessary for the production of agricultural raw materials are concentrated ... in the hands of the state. What then remains of the law of value's regulatory role?"
There can be only one answer: nothing. But there is nothing left of Stalin's justifications for the necessity of commodity production in the USSR because "collective farms, as their own, are controlled only by collective farms... Other economic ties with the city, except for commercial ones, are not acceptable at the present time."
Thus, not only the means of production, but also the production of collective farms supplied to the state, "in no way can be subsumed under the category of goods". Thus, it is not possible to explain the commercial relations in the USSR by the existence of two forms of socialist production, the products of which cannot in any way be subsumed under the category of goods.
As if answering this question, Stalin wrote: "...our commodity production is not a normal commodity production, but a commodity production of a special kind,... which deals mainly with the goods of the united socialist producers (the state, collective farms, cooperation), the scope of which is limited to items of personal consumption."
Indeed, the socialist state acts as a private owner (legal entity) in all external economic relations. Here, the products produced are goods without reservation. Also, the product sold on the domestic markets, produced by peasants (and not only by peasants) on the plots of land provided for their personal use or left in collective farms after they have fulfilled all their external obligations and met their domestic production needs, becomes a product without any reservation. Its volume and price of sales are not established centrally by the state, but rather at the place of exchange by self-recognized producers and buyers.
But does the fact of commodity (without any reservation) conversion under socialism mean that socialist production is a commodity?
In principle, under socialism, there can be a commodity production. This may be, first, production in a private economy, if its user systematically produces a product specially for the domestic market, secondly, the production of a socialist country as a whole, if due to the established international specialization, the product produced in the country is planned taking into account the expediency of its realization in an external unorganized market.
In the first case, the commodity production is limited to very narrow limits, in the second - operates outside of the given society, without creating any commodity relations within it. There is no third. What was the case in the USSR with two forms of ownership of means of production, personal economy and international relations? Can the production of the state socialist industry be considered a commodity in these conditions?
The answer is self-evident. The goal of socialist production is to maximize the satisfaction of the needs of society.
Personal commodities are produced for consumption, not for exchange for other goods. Merchandise circulation, including the exchange of goods abroad, is only used in the interests of socialist production and, moreover, the share of goods in the volume of production is small. In socialist society, products are produced, not goods. Only a handful of them become a commonplace commodity without any new content under socialism.
Nevertheless, the monetary form of production and cost measurement was perceived by leading Soviet economists as commodity production in essence, preventing them from seeing the true content of socialist social relations directly.
After Stalin's intervention in the theory of political economy of socialism, all of its provisions became law for all. But after his death, scientists, blinded by the monetary form of measuring and accounting for products and costs, abandoned the progressive in Stalin's judgments, and, viewing all socialist production as commodity, went even further from the basic provisions of Marx and Engels' teachings on socialism.
At the all-Union meeting held in May 1957 at the Institute of Economics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, "Kopodni-ki" economists headed by the Director of the Institute of Academy of Sciences of the USSR Ostrovitianov dared to take a revenge: to declare the means of production in the USSR as goods not only in form, but also in substance. The socialist method of production in general became a commodity, with some reservations about its supposedly new socialist content.
At this meeting, there was still a fierce struggle between "commodity" economists and "non-traders". But the most prominent statements in defense of Marxist definitions, although successful, were not included in the published materials of the meeting, including the author's presentation of the paper. Then in the magazine "Communist" № 13 of 1957 published the article Ostrovitianov "Commodity production and the law of value under socialism", which accused the Soviet economists and between the lines — Stalin — that they didn't draw conclusions about the need to creatively revise a number the provisions of Marx, Engels, Lenin, the goods production and the law of value under socialism. "Here," writes Ostrovitov, "has been affected by the dogmatic attitude to the statements of Marx and Engels."
The "non-market" protests were not published in the press, and in the higher party bodies there was no response. Leaders of the Communist Party of the post-Stalin period, familiar with Marxism only firsthand, even in the Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, adopted at the XXII Congress in 1961, from the submission of "scientists" wrote down the requirement: "fully use the commodity-monetary relations in accordance with the new content inherent in them during socialism." Economic activity has increasingly been oriented towards the market criterion of efficiency — profit.
Science, all the more so supported by the implementation of the economic mechanism, whose destructive effects will be described below, has continued to "develop" in the same direction. Here are her pears from the latest textbook of political economy, designed for higher education under the Soviet regime: "The experience accumulated by all socialist countries without exception convinced that commodity production, its laws (including the law of value) and categories are intrinsically inherent in the socialist economy. ... The reasons for the existence of monetary and commodity relations are ultimately connected with the peculiarities of socialization of production under socialism." The features are called the following: "First of all, it is the separation of state enterprises (associations) within the framework of national ownership, the existence of cooperative forms of ownership, as well as self-employment and personal subsidiary economy."
According to Marx, so that things can be treated as goods, the isolation of producers must be such that they treat each other as persons "whose will disposes of these things: Thus one owner of goods is only at the will of the other, and therefore each of them can only, through one common act of will, appropriate another's goods, alienating his own. Therefore, they must recognize each other as private owners."
The textbook's authors went on to write: "Socialism is characterized by an organic combination of consistency and commodity-monetary relations, derived from the specifics of socialist property. Planneness expresses the unity and integrity of the socialist economy, and the commodity-monetary relations express the relative isolation of producers." According to Marx, only the products of independent, independent producers are opposed to one another as goods. But each of the producers produces the goods to be exchanged, purposefully and systematically organizing the spending of their production resources. This applies both to the individual producer and to any collective, including when the members of the collective are employed. The combination of consistency and monetary relations is not that the former expresses the unity of the economy, but the latter - the isolation of producers, but that any producer on the question of what to produce and how much is driven by the market, and the production itself is organized and operates on its basis of centralized float number management without involving any market relations. Manufacturers without a target enter into market relations. The manufacturer with a planned task in market relations, if necessary, only to fulfill the task or to use its production capabilities.
Thus, in the 40 years of its post-war development, Soviet economic science not only retreated from the teachings of Marx and Engels on socialism, but also completely perverted the original concepts of their commodity-production doctrine, created an economic mechanism that suppressed all the advantages of centralized economic management.
The incompatibility of public ownership of means of production with the economic mechanism of the market economy became increasingly apparent. But instead of working out an economic mechanism adequate to socialism, Gorbachev, becoming the leader of the party and the state, has taken on the "fit" of socialism to the demands of the market economy, i.e., for its elimination. Since its submission, the XXVIII Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has proclaimed a course to transition to the USSR from public ("no man's") ownership of means of production to private, from socialism to capitalism.
Socialism in the USSR is the first example of a new social system in human history. Whatever it was, it cost the Soviet people very much: the repression of the tsarist guard, civil war, banditry, hunger, industrialization, unjustified repression, the Hitler invasion, the restoration of war-torn economy.
All these tests he not only passed, but also created adequate productive forces in the country. But, without an adequate economic mechanism, he was defeated in an economic competition with capitalism. The sample needed further refinement on the basis of identification of deficiencies, their scientific analysis and elimination, and the quality of the sample to the level required by the system. But instead, the sample is completely dismantled. This is the crime of the century. The US celebrates a total victory in the Cold War with the USSR.
About the law of value
According to K. Marx's definition, goods and values are inseparable. In the first chapter of "Capital", they have given in this regard an undoubted and precise definition of the goods: "Goods are consumer value as a commodity, and "value." Equally unambiguous on this point are F. Engels' statements: "The only value that political economy knows is the value of goods." Therefore, if monetary relations act only as an external form of direct social relations with non-commercial production in essence, there is no place in this sphere and value.
By defining the value of a good as accumulated human labor, and showing that the value is based on the duration of the human brain, nerves, muscles, senses, etc., i.e. labor costs in the physiological sense of the word, K. Marx points out that these costs should be of interest to recruit people in all social settings. But if their social utility within a single ownership of the means of production is determined in the process of production itself, independent private owners can determine the social utility of the costs only by entering into social contact with each other, i.e., by exchanging labor products. At the same time, "people compare the products of their labor as the value not because these things are for them only the physical shells of homogeneous human labor. On the contrary. By equating their various products with exchange one to
another as human labor."
This can be illustrated by the following example. Product A contains 2 hours of working time, product B - 4 hours of the same complexity, intensity, gravity, etc. of work, i.e. production B is twice as labor as production of product A. But if in the process of exchange, The product, it turns out, that the itemBisworthonly one itemA, it means: one hour of labor of the producer of product A equals two hours of labor of producer B. Such is the objectively established relative value of both goods.
Thus, the value, although determined by working time, does not coincide with it even if the labor cost per unit of working time is similar in the physiological sense of the word, because the labor spent on the production of goods "is counted only insofar as it is spent in a form useful to others. But whether labor is really useful for others, whether its product satisfies any other's needs, can only prove exchange."
F. Engels was equally clear on these issues: "Public production, like direct distribution, excludes any exchange of goods, hence the conversion of products into goods (at least within the community), and thus their conversion into value."
In the same place, F. Engels says: "When a society takes possession of the means of production," it gets the opportunity to know the amount of labor needed to produce the products within hours of working time, and this working time society "will not express itself in a roundabout and meaningless way, saying that... product has cost... The production plan will ultimately be determined by weighing and comparing the beneficial effects of the different commodities with each other and with the quantities of labor required to produce them. People will do it all very easily without resorting to the services of the famous "value".
Here, F. Engels, in a footnote, explains: "That the above-mentioned weighing of the benefits and labor costs in the decision on the question of production is all that remains in the communist society from the concept of political economy such as value, I have already stated in 1844."
It is as if it is absolutely clear that, according to K. Marx and F. Engels, where there is no commodity production, there is no value. These basic theoretical provisions of Marxist political economy are fully confirmed by long-term economic practice in the USSR. Despite the fact that such value categories as price, profit, cost, profitability, etc. constitute a set of obligatory tools used in the management of socialist economy, such as value. Practice has long defined the purpose of all these value categories and has developed well-defined principles and procedure of their calculation. When it comes to them, all economists and economists understand the same thing, although scientists interpret their essence in different ways. If it comes to cost under socialism, it is difficult to find two identical points of view among economists, there are conflicting considerations on the formation of this category, and in practice there is no calculation of it. Interestingly, in the last textbook of political economy published under the Soviet regime, which persuades readers in the organically inherent socialism of commodity production, the law of value under socialism is mentioned only once, and even then in parentheses. (See quote 1 on page 49.) No more about it.
In the conditions of commodity production, the monetary expression of value is the price of the goods. Price-to-value deviations regulate the formation of various proportions and the development of social production. The goods are first produced and then, in the process of exchange for other goods, they acquire a price that is objectively put on the market, which in a feedback way influences the development of production of further production of a commodity.
In the conditions of socialism, production is regulated by the plan, and state prices are set on products before they are received in the sphere of exchange.
At the same time, prices are decisions made by the public pricing authorities on the basis of the calculation of production costs and intuitive consideration of the many factors discussed below.
In the conditions of commodity production, the price, proportions of the exchange between different goods are established as an objective result of the operation of the law of value. In socialist conditions it is more useful to consider the issues of pricing, not to speak about the different categories of value, but about the specific meanings of the factors taken into account in price building: costs, utility, efficiency, etc., and their accounting methods. When these factors are combined in one concept of "value," the word "law" is added to it and the "law of value" is obtained, and in addition, the role of man in the reasonable construction of prices is suppressed, the person is demobilized, is reassuring, That, regardless of his will and his consciousness, the objectively operating economic law itself will correct the prices, correct the mistakes made in the management of the farm. And he does correct them, but by creating speculation and other phenomena alien to socialism.
Law is an expression of the essential and necessary connection between phenomena. The more phenomena are considered in interrelation, the more complex the law. Nature's laws usually express the connections of a limited range of phenomena. The value law is an expression of essential and necessary ties in a human society characterized by private ownership of means of production and a certain level of division of labor. He explains and dictates the entire course of development—from its beginnings to its demise—of a very definite, privately owned, historical mode of production. Understanding the operation of the law of value in private ownership is knowing the political economy of capitalism.
In socialism, when setting prices for products, one must consider what social results a particular price will bring. The low level of prices previously set by the state for collective farm products resulted in the loss of the incentive for collective farms to develop public production in collective farms and the desire to transfer them to the state sphere of production. It was in this area that the objective effect of the economic law, called by many economists the law of value, was shown, not in the area of price changes for collective farm products. Prices were changed by the state to boost agricultural production. A general economic law was taken into account for any method of production, according to which a worker always aspires to do his work where it results personally, and if this law is called the law of value, it is eternal, and it is acting through a labor force not under socialism, by the universal recognition of Soviet economists, a commodity. What is a law of value that is not valid where there are goods — in the field of commodity price formation — and operates where there is no product — in the field of labor application?
Obviously, when the prices of collective farm products were changed, not the law of value — the law of commodity production — was taken into account, but the socialist principles — the principle of equal pay for equal work and the principle of personal material interest of workers in the development of production.
In socialist conditions, planning, pricing, etc. should not be concerned with using the law of value, but with preventing its action.
Consider this example. The Volga M-21 car had the following three prices in the early 1960s, when the sale of cars to the population was extremely limited: 1) wholesale 1,800 rubles; 2) retail trade 4,000 rubles; 3) speculative 7,000 rubles.
The first two prices were set as planned, a priori, the last one spontaneously, on the market, during the exchange process, a posteriori.
The question arises: What role does the law of value play in the education of these three prices?
Obviously, the first price (1,800 rubles) was mainly the result of a simple account of production costs; The second (4000 rubles) expressed the relationship between the company and its members in terms of production, payment capacity and demand for the product; The third testified that this attitude was mistaken.
Members of the society had more opportunities and more car needs than the public would have expected by setting a retail price. The evaluation of the car by the community of members of the society was very different from that of the state, representing society as a whole.
This allowed the law of value in the whole system of the laws of socialism, socialist production and distribution to show its objective, independent action from the will and desire of the people: to create speculation, in which one member of the society with great difficulties and in long queues, and sometimes even by a roundabout, bought a car for 4,000 rubles and sold it to another without any queue and without any participation in the assessment by the state for 7,000 rubles.
Obviously, if the state had set a price for Volga M-21 of 7 thousand rubles, in addition to the increase in its monetary income, would have been eliminated queues for cars and would cease to operate in this area the law of value. In other words, taking into account the effect of the value law in the pricing practice would lead to the elimination of this action.
What was done in the USSR to prevent the operation of the law of value in the field of car sales?
Many of those who bought, and especially those who sold cars, were thoroughly punished. They banned the trade of cars outside special shops, which for a while was completely successful, since the cars and the way they were purchased were necessarily registered with the state automobile inspectorate. From buyers the state received the same money for the car as before, i.e. the state's monetary income did not increase. The queues remained the same. The opportunity was eliminated by studying the attitude of consumers to the product of this type, to know the objective price of the latter offered by the society as a whole of its members.
It took some time to think about the objective need for higher automobile prices, which was done in 1963. "Volga M-21" began to cost at the state retail price 5500 rubles. However, judging by the fact that the queues for the cars after that remained large, prices were raised little and how much they needed to be raised for a long time remained unknown, as all ways of the effect of the law of value in this area remained closed, and there were no other ways to find out the solvent demand of the population for each individual product.
In such circumstances, it would not be harmful to give a certain freedom to act the "law of value," and to introduce a flexible policy of public retail prices for non-essential items, bringing them constantly closer to market prices that counterbalance solvent demand and supply. But this has nothing to do with the operation of the law of value in the context of private ownership of means of production. It is the consideration of the objectively existing dependence of demand on prices with limited resources of payment (capacity to pay). See Section 2.5 for details.
It was thought that the law of value was the basis of self-calculation, material stimulation, etc. But it should be borne in mind that self-calculation as a system of measures to account, control and regulate production costs and the entire wage system with tariffs, salaries, rates, bonuses, etc., designed to stimulate productive work is the product of people's conscious activity , based on an understanding of objective economic laws, including the law of value.
Many missteps in economic practice in those years were often and usually rightly explained by the poor record of planning the operation of a law of value. And this means that in case of erroneous planned decisions the law of value necessarily shows itself and objectively causes to life undesirable phenomena not envisaged in the plans, break their realization, counteracting it. Therefore, unmistakable plans exclude the validity of a law of value, but do not use it and are not based on it. Knowledge of this law is necessary only to prevent its unintended operation. Similarly, the laws of burning materials are known by firefighters to prevent fires. But the effect of these laws is not that people are taking fire-fighting measures to prevent burning, but that if burning is not prevented, whatever the measures taken, things turn into ashes.
In the socialist economy, efforts should have focused on the development of methods for comparing the useful actions of different commodities, for the formation of labor inputs and for the creation of optimal production and consumption balances, not counting on the law of value and its effect, but taking into account only its possible manifestations when the purposeful creative activities of people united in socialist society.
Denial of commodity production and the operation of the law of value under socialism does not mean that a state-run centralized system of economic management can do anything. However, its great potential and its great role in this subjective factor require a clear understanding of the objective laws in force in society and the subjective structures to be managed not only as the objective characteristics of the external environment and the internal structure of the management system, but also as continuous improvement or restructuring if they do not contribute to the goal. It's about turning production management from art to science.
In this light, some of the issues of socialism's political economy, which deals with objective laws of the development of public production to be taken into account in the processes of its management, are discussed below. Practice shows that the socialist economy, all its categories, is really peculiar to the commodity-monetary form. But only form. What is hidden behind this form, which in the conditions of the socialist method of production is intrinsically inherent in its content, is the subject of the consideration of the following sections.
Basic economic law
After defining the socialist economy as centrally managed, the question of the purpose of governance naturally arises. The goal sets the behavior of the governing body in the management system, and the governing body sets the behavior of all parts of the system. The aim of managing the socialist economy was called the basic economic law of socialism. Stalin formulated the essential features and demands of the basic economic law of socialism as follows: "ensuring the maximum satisfaction of the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the whole society through the continuous growth and improvement of socialist production on the basis of higher technology."
After Stalin's death, Soviet economists repeatedly "clarified" this phrase. The last revision is as follows: "The production in the interests of the welfare and free and comprehensive development of the association of workers and each of its members is the content of the basic economic law of socialism."
Regardless of the wording, the law expresses the objective desire of everyone to meet their own needs to the maximum, and in this sense it is the universal law of human development. However, this aspiration manifests itself in different socio-economic forms. Under capitalism, the owner of the means of production seeks to meet his needs by accumulating capital and expanding the production of profit based on the exploitation of the working class, and the worker by selling to the capitalist at a higher price than his labor force.
Socialism is the first socio-economic form that theoretically eliminates the possibility of raising the welfare of one person at the expense of another, although the condition of exploitation is high productivity of labor, allowing to produce a product in excess of the need for labor inputs, which is maintained and further developed. In a socialist society, everyone should raise their level of well-being only on the basis of their own labor costs and the development of social production, not at the expense of anyone else. The interests of all members of society coincide, the basic law is the law of the conduct of all the elements of the system, the activity of each of them is systematically fed into a single purposeful stream, i.e. the most important feature of socialism, which distinguishes it from all the preceding social and political formations, is again reduced to the fact that this flow under socialism We control the system.
With regard to the above-mentioned wording of the basic economic law of socialism, it should be noted that the level of satisfaction of needs and the level of well-being can move in opposite directions. Increasing a country's defensive capacity under the pressure of the international environment damages the well-being of members of society, but not the level of satisfaction of their needs, for the latter includes the need for increased defensive capacity. It is therefore better to speak not of well-being but of needs. It should be borne in mind, however, that the direction of all the purposeful activities of society — maximizing the level of satisfaction of the growing needs of society and all its members — is achieved with the full use of resources and the distribution of material and spiritual benefits in society, on the basis of the consciously established principles conducive to the development of production. Such a principle under socialism is the principle of labor distribution.
As a result of socialist socialization of means of production, there is an objective necessity and a real possibility of managing the entire socialist economy. The aim of governance is to continuously increase the level of meeting the growing needs of society and all its members. It is possible to exclude human exploitation by man. Production relations from a relationship of domination and subordination become a relationship of cooperation and co-operation of producers in the process of coordinated conduct of public production for the benefit of the whole society. They correspond to the social character of productive forces, open up their development an
unlimited space.
These traits of socialist production relations are objective, they do not depend on who likes them or not. But at the same time they are formed and act in conditions that have become objective for them, but created as a result of subjective, purposeful activity of people. Such conditions include, first and foremost, as already stated, public ownership of means of production, the coherence of the conduct of public production with the interests of society. All of this is the result of the activities of a large number of people who are members of the socialist society, whose management, like the coordinated conduct of public production in general, is an objective necessity.
Therefore, the administration and subordination in production, the subordination of each member of society to the society as a whole, in the person of its representatives and not only in the process of production, but also outside it, are integral features of the production relations, the method of production based on public property.
"This subordination," wrote V.I. Lenin, "may, with the perfect consciousness and discipline of the participants of the common work, remind more of the gentle leadership of the conductor. It can take sharp forms of dictatorship — if there is no perfect discipline and consciousness. But, one way or another, unquestionably subordinating to a single will for the success of a work process organized like a large machine industry is absolutely necessary."
On the basis of the above, socialism is a way of production, in which all the country's natural resources, means of production and products of labor belong to the society as a whole, and the state - people. Its economy is a single State-managed complex, covering all aspects of social production, distribution, exchange and consumption.
On the basis of scientific knowledge of laws, socialist society is able to anticipate trends in the development of the economy, constantly improve the system of planning and management of the national economy, using wide-ranging computer technology and mathematical methods.
CONCLUSIONS
Marxist teaching is a teaching about objective laws of human development. These laws, as in any science, are immutable in time and independent of their veracity. Conversely, knowledge is endless. But it deepens, relying only on what has already been learned. That's the essence of science development.
Not everything was known about socialism, but much: public ownership of means of production, the highest level of development of productive forces, centralized management of the functioning and development of the economy, the domination of man over the natural forces of social development, the first economic law in the conditions of collective production — saving and systematic allocation of working time in the branches of social activity, the absence of human exploitation, the working time of each serves as a measure of individual participation in the collective labor and therefore in the individually consumed part of the whole product. "Public relations ... as Marx wrote, it remains clear both in production and in distribution."
As for the construction of socialism under the backward multi-layered economy, Lenin, starting with it, lamented: "Even Marx didn't know to write a single word on this and died, leaving no precise quotes and undeniable instructions. That's why we have to get out ourselves now."
The underdevelopment of the economy not only required a huge labor effort to overcome it (the peoples of the USSR enthusiastically did so), but what happened was that the role of the subjective factor in the development of society has increased unbelievably. The political economy of socialism, both science and science, was not created because of the suppression of all dissent.
In order to create something new, it is necessary first of all to provide information support of creativity: conducting scientific research, presenting the product in drawings and other documentation, developing technological processes of its manufacture and testing.
The construction of socialism in the USSR began without sufficient information support. Everything was created by the touch, in the darkness, illuminated only by the general light of the distant communist future. So, first, mistakes became inevitable; Second, the unity of command, leading the construction with a "strong hand"; Third, the suppression of dissent in everything, including in science, which proved to be the most flawed.
As a result, the world's first centrally managed economy, after entering a long period of peaceful development, has been defeated economically against capitalism. Central management's capacity to develop the economy was not utilized, but was fully utilized to create their own privileges for managers.
At the same time, the development of the economies of the advanced capitalist countries has made considerable progress during this time.
The main reasons for the failure of the socialist experiment are:
— the low initial level of development of society, which has shattered the power methods of strengthening the country and has therefore not allowed to avoid the most gross violations of the principle of the distribution of material benefits "to everyone by work", to prevent the subordinates in the hierarchical system of centralized management to their superiors the erection of the supreme leader to the rank of chief; the flowering of the cult of personality on this basis, the suppression of dissent;
- deviation of economic theory from the most important provisions of Marxist-Leninist doctrine, misunderstanding of the essence of relations between people under public ownership of means of production hidden behind the commodity-monetary form; consideration of the socialist method of production as a commodity;
- introduction into the centrally managed economy of the economic mechanism of the market economy, aimed at maximizing profit and self-financing of enterprise development.
The theory of "socialist commodity production" has proved harmful to socialism in the following practical positions:
— first, the recognition of Soviet money by money, not by working receipts, allowed the country's leadership to maintain its prestige by irresponsible increase of the population's cash income while failing to ensure equal growth of material and spiritual benefits paid for by the population. The result is an impression of the state consumer market's weakness, the flowering of the shadow economy and crime.
— Secondly, the orientation of the enterprise's production activities to maximize profits, which is best maximized by higher prices and the production of high-value products, regardless of their acute need and efficiency of their use, and most difficult by mastering the production of new products. This was a good path for state leaders, as it created the appearance of growth of national income, gross social product, productivity of labor, capital investments, etc. Only the level of economic development did not rise higher;
— third, in accordance with the theory of commodity (capitalist) production, the costs of living labor in production were estimated at the "cost" of labor, i.e., the costs of wages, not the costs of the "generator" of living labor - human. This created the appearance of high profitability of production of products, significantly underestimated the economic efficiency of mechanization and automation of living labor;
— fourth, self-financing by enterprises of their own technical development, reducing the centralized resources of one-time (capital) expenditures, was directed towards the reduction of the rate of development of social production, as the total resources were spent with efficiency below the limit in society.
The economic mechanism, built on the recipes of the flawed theory of socialist commodity production, could not ensure the realization of the advantages of the socialist method of production.
The cult of personality and the suppression of dissent prevented Soviet economists from opening up a truly socialist production relationship behind the money, and the workers from controlling the fairness of the distribution of their life benefits.
The economic-mathematical modeling of production and economic relations as a technological process with the public ownership of means of production allows to see how on the palm the essence of such economic categories as wages, price, taxes, profits, the closest relationship between them, it is appropriate to manage them. They are all a monetary form of expression of social labor costs: wages — live labor, prices — hard work, taxes — live and hard work, paid by the state; Profit is a public assessment of the usefulness of labor results. As gram is the unit of measure of the universal property of things, mass, so the ruble is the unit of measure of the universal property of products, the emblematic labor and their consumption value.
All these categories, in the centralized management of the economy, have nothing in common but the monetary form, with the commodity production. Understanding their objective essence is absolutely necessary and sufficient to realize the goals of optimal centralized management of public production. This misunderstanding led to the breakup of the first socialist model in human history and caused enormous damage to the idea itself.
The most difficult problem of building a socialist society remains the popularity — overcoming the alienation of the "people" who gained power from the people who elected power.
The management of public production is, in the main, the solution to the distribution of the means of production in society. It is the business of professionals, not labor collectives, especially unsuccessful traders in a market economy. People of physical labor do not manage the production of material valuables, but produce them. Without the product's workhands application, there is no product. However, workers must play a decisive role in the distribution of the benefits of life. To this end, the workers, by organizing the Labor Collective Councils without participating in them, the administrations creating on their basis territorial Unions of labor collectives, must achieve at the constitutional level the creation of their own chamber in parliament.
If the activity of the leaders of socialist construction in the USSR had not gone out of the control of the working masses and the Soviet academic economists didn't think after Stalin's death to "update" Marx's provisions on socialism - to consider socialist production as a commodity and to introduce into it an economic mechanism based on the laws of market economy, in Socialism would not have been defeated economically in a competition with capitalism, and the Soviet Union would be today the world's most powerful and prosperous power.
The development of electronic computing and other information technology, as well as information modeling of the processes of managing the development and functioning of the economy has already reached such a height when it is possible to set and solve the task of automated management of the national economic complex of the country. People will be left with creative improvement of the system of management and technology of transformation of the substance, energy and information, in line with the constant growth of material and cultural needs of society.
Posted by Parichoy Gupta
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