RUSSIA is now a right-wing dictatorship the country's best-known democratic socialist argues. Nevertheless, he believes that capitalism will not take root, and that pressure for a centre-left alternative will eventually prove irresistible. BORIS KAGARLITSKY, a political advisor to the Russian Federation of Trade Unions and a leading member of the Party of Labour, last week visited London briefly, at the invitation of Ken Livingstone MP and Stan Newens MEP. DAVE OSLER discussed with him. BORN IN 1958, Kagarlitsky did the mandatory stint in the gulag under Brezhnev for his work on a leftist dissident journal. He is also the author of a number of academic books, and was an elected Moscow City Councillor until the council was dissolved last month.
He argues that the Russian politicians can be divided into modernisers and traditionalists, and either category can be either right-wing or left-wing. The Party of Labour represents Russia's modernising left.
It was started in 1992 as an attempt to regroup the non-Stalinist left, including left and centre-left social democrats, democratic communists and even some former anarchists: 'Heterodoxy is the orthodoxy of the party, he quips.
So far it has around 1000 members, more impressive than it sounds given that, apart from the 500,000-strong Communist Party, no-one else has more than 5000 recruits. It has 15 branches in major industrial cities, with a congress scheduled for January, and expects to register for legal recognition next year.
The game-plan is not to build a European-style social democratic party like Labour in Britain. In Russia, argues Kagarlitsky, that would be impossible:
'West European societies [have] established capitalist institutions which more or less work, some kind of functioning welfare state, and democracy which is quite well rooted in social structures. There is some surplus you can redistribute.' Puccia faces economic collapse. Neither 'the entrepreneurial groups with very different interests, which cannot be described as a class' nor the remnants of the old bureaucracy, are capable of being 'the main mortar. the main engine or development pulling the coun try out of crisis."
'We were always very critical of over-centralisation of the economy, but we want the public sector to be the core of a mixed economy. The main argument is about how to form a democratically controlled, modern and efficient public sector' Chinese examples Lack of democracy aside, 'China provides us with some very interesting examples of successful reform, using the opportunities of the market for a public sector economy. There is no visible privatisation.' Kagarlitsky's model for Russia advocates decentralised social partnership, with public enterprise co-managed by ions, local authorities and the state.
The Party of Labour has won significant trade union support. What were once 'state unions' are now in conflict with the state, Kagarlitsky points out:
"The state doesn't want any unions at all, it just wants to have an employer-dominated economy. The modernisers say we have to have proper unions, up to the task of mobilising wage labour to defend its general interests.' Despite high hopes for independent unions such as Sotsprof in the late eighties, these groups moved rapidly to the right and have largely collapsed.
Kagarlitsky predicts widespread abstention in the elections due next month, a hung parliament and the rapid breakup of the current electoral coalltions. What are the implications 'None, because the parliaway, he answers emphatically. posed new constitution, it will Duma, he believes. The Party of though some members are on But Kagarlitsky is adamant should enter the fray, if only to I asked how October's at'Why call it an atsponds. "There was a coup. Now the country. We've got a very But Russia is not yet Pinoarrested, threatened with death, confiscated his passport, but he leased from jail just for bribing tive in certain cases,' he jokes. about how far it should go, or in could go. Meanwhile, anti-Yeltsin forces have paradoxically been strengthened by the isolation of their extremist wing, Kagarlitsky argues.
Most of the British left supported parliament, which is as committed to capitalist restoration as Yeltsin, albeit by a slower route, and which readily linked up with fascist elements.
It was a very bad parliament, but most parliaments that are destroyed by coup d'état were bad parliaments.
Legitimate
It may have been a 'weak, inefficient, incompetent parliament dominated by some very unpleasant people,' but nevertheless it enjoyed democratic legitimacy.
Parliament was wrong not to dissociate itself from the fascists, who were only a tiny minority within the parliamentary camp. This allowed Yeltsin to denounce the 'red-brown bloc' on television, then promptly implement many far right policies. "The growth of the far right in the West is much more impressive than in Russia, especially if you compare the situation.
•Western politicians who back Yeltsin are wrong, not just from the moral point of view. It's very stupid to back somebody who's going to fail... The West presents Yeltsin as a kind of moderniser, but most of his support comes from the most backward, most uneducated and Yeltsin: his new parliament will have no real power. Elections are likely to face widespread abstentions. unmodernised layers of the population.' Kagarlitsky argues that Russia is already a capitalist economy in one important sense: "It's part of the capitalist world system. Because of this, it's demonstrating lots of the features of an underdeveloped economy, like a third world country. This is one of the first cases of the third-worldisation of a developed country' Yet Kagarlitsky sees Russia as basically 'a heterogeneous economy. It cannot be seen as an organic economy, capitalist or non-capitalist or socialist. There are different structures which live according to different logics.' He rules out the successful reintroduction of capitalism: In this case Russia will just disintegrate into several different countries [with] some kind of statist economies with multiple heterogeneous economic systems.
'For the consolidation of the capitalist project, you either have a colonial state or you have to have some sort of a national bourgeoisie. We have neither.' 'I don't think any of the western countries is going to conquer Russia, even economically. The level of investment needed for this purpose is just so enormous.
Centre-left
"There is a growing feeling that there is a need to follow a coherent alternative, a centre-left alternative bringing together some of the centrist forces, the non-communist left and quite probably also the CP There are certain regions where there are just no other important political forces. If you want to make the country goverable again, you have to get the CP engaged.' "The whole Russian experience was based on an attempt to build a socialist society, and this attempt failed at a certain stage and degenerated into something definitely contradicting the socialist project.
'If you just look at British history, what was the outcome of the first British revolution? The restoration of monarchy.
'What is needed for Russia nowadays is a Glorious Revolution of Russian socialism, reviving the socialist project, making it probably a little bit reformist but at the same time consolidating the basic characteristics and bringing it back.'
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 53, November 27 1993, Page 8