Which model of socialism?
OLIVER MACDONALD Abel Aganbegyan, The challenge: economes o/ perestroika: Hutchinson, £8.95. THIs Is By far the best guide vet available in English to the economic dimension of the current Soviet leadership's drive for perestroika.
Aganbegyan writes clearly, vigorously and, within the limits of what is a manifesto, very frankly. His book can form the basis for serious discussion among socialists hore attempting to make sense of and evaluate economic perestroika.
Ir is important to bear in mind that within what might be called the Gorbachev coalition ,there is not one single conception of the desired cconomic strategy and ultimate aim: and the variety of views is even wider in the field of tactics and tempo of economic reform. But for the last three years, the views of Aganbogyan and his Novosibirsk school of economists. have been the dominant influence spon Gorbachev himself and his immediate circle
Too much of the discussion on the lefi here over these issues either assumes that the most extreme marketisers /called "monetarists' in the Sovict Union) represent the real! programme of Gorbachev or that once market indicators are introduced, an iron logic of the market leads inevitably" to the conclusions of the monetarists.
The very extensive east European experience of degrees of marketisation shows that this is far from being the case.
What is true is that the introduction of market indicators decentralises decisions about economic allocations and leads to increased social differentiation within the working population by comparison with the formal-legal (as opposed to parallel-market. and corrupt network realities) egalitarianism of centralised command planning
Aganhegyan's platform is a 34 34 wholesale assault upon the traditional stalinist system of economic management, which he describes as administrative; and a call for economic" methods of management, by which he means the use of performance by state enterprises, rong with the development of co-operatives and individual
We should be quite frank in acknowledging that when we face a choice between these two systems, commandist centralised planning of exchanges between producers and consumers is not in principle in any way superior to the use of market indicators.
Neither Lenin nor Trotsky ever gave the slightest indication after 1921 that they would have supported Stalin's administrative regimentation of connomic relations as being in any way superior to NEP. Those in the Soviet Union who aro currently claiming that Stalin followed Trotsky in 1929 over economic policy are either ignorant fools as far as Soviet: history is concerned, or liars.
Some on the lelt here, on the other hand, argue that today, unlike in the 1920s, the USSR has a highly advanced cconomy, has freed itself from the contradictions of backwardness that made NEP necessary in the 1920s and consequently an adoption of market indicators is a retreat from advanced, more socialist positions.
This is simply not the case. The fact is that the commandist system has for decades operated not only alongside, but to a considerable extent through a very large market a parallel
Furthermore, the measure of how advanced the soviet economy is in this debate must be a relative onc: the strength of the Sovict economy vis-a-vis the world capitalist market, And here it remains pitiably weak, and consequentiy subject to enormously strong material
As Trotsky argued, the Bukharin-Stalin fantasy of overtaking the west and reaching arvanced socialism in isolated, autarkie development would lead to an impasse, And as fie also argued, the more advanced such an isolated economy is, the more acute its dilliculties would
None of this mcans that planning has failed. With an open public life and democratic accountability the Soviet commandist planning system would indeed have worked very much better. And no socialist economic policy of any sort can abandon strategic planningTrotsky's argument in the 1920s was precisely to combine plan and market with the voluntary development of co-operative forms of ownership alongside the state and individual-family
In the current deep crisis of the Soviet economy, there is no viable alternative to a policy of this kind. On the other hand, just as the commandist plan has great costs attached to it, so does the market. These costs of marketisation are not adequately faced by Aganbegyan.
They include the inevitable growth of social inequalities, threats of poverty for sections of the population, the domination ol Lie consumer by producer carteis, speed-up and crosion of rights at work, the dangers of powerful centrifugal pressure thanks to the accompanying upening up to western capital, new forms of corruption as a result of this, the emergence of a new "red bourgebisie as workers in Poland called those who made a killing in the increasingly marketised Poland of the 1970s.
The effects of this kind of marketisation and opening fo western capital in Poland in the 1970s led to ferment and revolt among the working class in the big factories, especially tlic workers in the Polish communist party, a revolt that eventually crupted in the form of
Aganbegyan believes that with workers self-management and greater political freedoms. together with a large strengthing of the levels of provision in social services, that kind of egalitarian revelt can be avoided. Yet the results of the selection of delegates to the June party industrial workers have not yet swung into action in a decisive way to destroy the hold of the Ligarhey wing of the party: leadership on the big plants. They haven't moved because they remain suspicious of
The answer to this crisis of the Soviet reform movement is for the reformers to genuinely take die Soviet working class ato their contidence: to open the books to the workers, explain to them the scope of the crisis, the need for austerity, the way that austerity will involve the destruction of the privileges of the burraucracy, as Yeltsin has demanded, and then put the package of measures to the democratic vote of work-place
This is the answer which trotskyists should argue for: a socialiat, democratic way forward; not a defence of stalinist commandist planning against the introduction of co-operatives and market SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no B