SOVIET THEORY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19423, 7 September 1937, Page 13

SOVIET THEORY

DIFFERING PRACTICE POWER OF THE STATE "BLOW TO MARXISM" LONDON, July 27. When Lenin seized power in Russia ta November, 1917, his views on the nature oi' the State were unimpeachnbly Marxist, says a correspondent in The Times. The State, being in its very essence an instrument for the oppression of one class by another, was therefore an evil which could have no place in the classless Communist society. In order to win the victory which would lead to the establishment of the classless society, the proletariat must seize the State machine and turn it against their old oppressors, the bourgeoisie. But the State would remain (for such was its nature) an instrument of class oppression; and it would be used as such by the triumphant proletariat to crush the bourgeoisie. This was, however, only a transitional period. The dictatorship of the proletariat, wrote Lenin, was "not an organisation of order, but an organisation of war." Once the bourgeoisie had been extinguished or rendered impoent, the State would become a meaningless institution (since there would be nobody left, to oppress), and would, in the classis formula of Marx and Engels, "wither away." In 1917 this Utopian conception, taken over straight from Marx and Engels, was an integral part of Lenin's creed. There is no evidence that his faith in it was ever shaken, though in his last years he once admitted that the transitional period before the State finally disappeared might be "a whole historical epoch." And the odd thing is that this conception still figures in the official creed of the Soviet rulers to-day. It is one of the most curious of contemporary paradoxes that M. Stalin, who has constructed the most powerful and most arbitrary State machine yet known in history, is compelled from time to time (though more and more rarely nowadays) to affirm that his real aim is the abolition of the State. M. Stalin's Policy The formula invented for the last Party Congress does not lack ingenuity. "The highest possible development of the power of the State with the object of preparing the conditions for the dying out of the State," is I now M. Stalin's declared policy. The highest possible development of the State is the practice, the dying out of] the State is the theory; and what is the good of dialectical materialism if it I cannot prove in case of need that black means white and white black? The withering away of the State plays much the same role in Soviet dogma as the Second Advent in Christian theology. It occupies an essential place in every confession of faith. But since the days of the primitive Church the prospect has not been regarded as imminent or allowed to affect the day-to-day practice. Things in the Soviet Union have not gone quite so easily as that. It has become of late increasingly difficult, even in a country where the suppression of free thought is carried to the pitch of perfection, to disguise the fact that this "highest possible development of the power of the State" has knocked Marxism sideways. The State, it is true, retains the ownership and control of industrial production. But in this respect the Soviet State has only carried to its logical conclusion a development which has also made gigantic strides in many capitalist countries. If (as Engels acutely observed) the taking over of industries by the State is socialism, then Napoleon, who nationalised the tobacco industry in France, must count as one of the founders of socialism. In that sense M. Stalin may be permitted to rank with Napoleon. In any other sense his claim to be regarded as a Socialist requires careful scrutiny. Privileged Grades The "principle of socialism," we are authoritatively informed by the new Soviet constitution approved last December, is "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work." Between socialism thus defined and capitalism there seems to be no more than a hair's breadth. After all, the capitalist only takes from the worker "according to his ability," and asks for nothing better than to pay him "according to his work," unless the trade unions, more effective in democratic countries than in Soviet Russia, obstruct the adoption of this "Socialist" criterion. Of the prevalence of such "socialism"- In contemporary Russia there is no doubt. There is immense differentation of wages and salaries in the Soviet Union. The right to inheritance has been restored; deposits in savings banks and investment in State loans (with lottery drawings) are being effectively encouraged; and private incomes derived from "work and savings" are specifically protected by the newk constitution. The creation of privileged grades, whose loyalty to the regime can be counted on, may be either a deliberate part of M. Stalin's policy or a natural consequence of the industrial revolution —or both. "Side by side with the great majority, exclusively bond slaves to labour, there arises a class freed from directly productive labour, which looks after the general affairs of society, the direction of labour, State business, law, science, art, etc." This description, from the pen of Engels, of the rise of capitalism applies word for word to what is now going on in the Soviet Union. The existence in Soviet Russia of "exploitation" in the Marxist sense can onlv be denied on the unlikely hypothesis that the will of M. Stalin and the will of the worker are one and the same, and that the worker therefore is explointing Himself. But if M. Stalin chooses to apply the label of socialism to a system which exhibits so many of the most characteristic symptoms of capitalism, none of his compatriots will dare to say him nay.