The Exploitation of the Working Class

As has been said, since the "economic reform" the management personnel of Soviet industry constitute, in Marxist-Leninist terms, a new capitalist class, in that they have effective ownership of the principal means of production.

But, according to Marxism-Leninism, a capitalist class is an exploiting class, a class which exploits the working class.

The question remains: does the Soviet capitalist class exploit the working class? Does it live, partly or wholly, on the labour of the working class?

Contemporary Soviet economists and politicians strongly deny this:

"Socialist society (meaning contemporary Soviet society -- WBB).... has no exploiting classes... whose income is derived from appropriating the results of labour by the exploited classes".

(K.N. Plotnikov: Introduction to "The Soviet Planned Economy"; Moscow; 1974; p. 9).

They maintain that the principle continues to operate

"...which determines the distribution of income according to the quantity and quality of work done".

(Y.L. Manevich: "Wages Systems", in: ibid.; p. 229).

although it is admitted that this principle

"...operates.. with many deviations".

(Y.L. Manevich: ibid.; p. 229)

But, (as has been shown in Section 18: "The Distribution of Socialist Profit") "deviations" involve the receipt by managerial personnel in Soviet industry of bonuses which are up to 100 times those received by shop floor workers. Such huge differentials can, by not stretch of the imagination, be reconciled with the principle of "the distribution of income according to quantity and quality of work done". They represent, in Marxist-Leninist terminology, the exploitation of the working class.

A significant feature of this exploitation in the Soviet Union, as compared with that which according to Marxism-Leninism, occurs in orthodox capitalist countries, is the greater extent to which high political personnel participate in it. This is illustrated by some extracts from a biography of Leonid Brezhnev, who holds the post of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (and now also that of Head of state):

"If anything distinguished Brezhnev from the coterie of baggy-suited apparatchiki around Khrushchev, it was his sartorial trimness. Foy D. Kohler, a former US ambassador to the Soviet Union, used to say that Brezhnev 'must have the best tailor in Moscow'...

Publicly he is a moraliser who exhorts people to ever greater achievements with finger-wagging monotony and orthodox Communist cliches. Behind the scenes he loves the good life; expensive clothes; gadgets; fast and ostentatious cars; thoroughbred horses; stiff drinks; spicy foods...; beautiful girls; loge seats at Moscow's Dynamo or Lenin stadiums where he can watch his favourite soccer team; boar hunting; duck shooting and yachting -- in other words, the perquisites of belonging to the upper classes of Soviet society. While I was in Moscow other members of the Politburo rode in Soviet-made ZILs and Chaikas, but Brezhnev flashed about in his Rols-Royce. Subsequently he was seen in a Cadillac which Nixon gave him in 1972 and presumably he now drives about in the Lincoln Continental he got from the President in 1973 of the steel-blue Mercedes 450-SCL he received from Willy Brandt.

He is also vain. He preens himself before any mirror he passes, combing and smoothing down his wavy hair, brushing any dust or lint from the lapels of his expensive suits. He has the facial lines erased from his official portraits...

But no matter how charming he tries to be, his eyes often betray him... When he is not consciously attempting to impress, they are hard and icy..

He is conservative, prudent and cautious...

He is a manipulator of men and skilled at tuning the party instrument so that it hums to his score...

He behaves like a 'chairman of the board', albeit a chairman whose power is virtually unlimited..

Today his team in Moscow is appropriately called the Dnieper Mafia. It is a clique of powerful politicians, apparatchiki, aides, advisers and friends who started in politics, government and industry with and under Brezhnev in Dneprodzerzhinsk, Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhe in the 1930s and 1940s.

Today these men... assure him his working majority in the Politburo, give him his strength in the Central Committee, fill key positions on his personal staff, influence his views and policies, serve as his watchdogs in government administration, control the police, the KGB and party apparatus. It is a formidable list of the most important men in the Soviet Union....

Even more imporant, perhaps, than the Dnieper Mafia is Brezhnev's solid power base in the Soviet military establishment....

His signature next to Nixon's on the strategic arms limitation (SALT) treaty set a precedent in international law; it was the first time that an agreement between two nations had been signed by one man in his capacity as party leader...

In reality, Brezhnev's signature on the treaty merely underlines what has become apparent in recent years. He is the new tsar of the Kremlin, title or no title.

This build-up began in early 1970. In March of that year, unaccompanied by other Politburo members or senior government officials except for Defence Minister Grechko, Brezhnev journeyed to Minsk to review the Soviet Army's spring manoevres, an act that cast him in the role of supreme commander.

In June he set a noteworthy precedent by attending a meeting of the Council of Ministers, of which he is not even a member but whose chairman is Kosygin, and delivered what 'Pravda' called a 'major speech'...

In February 1971, when the draft of the current five-year plan was published, the Central Committee decree approving it was signed by Brezhnev alone...

The most persuasive evidence of Brezhnev's real power was provided by the 24th. Party Congress in April 1971. He spoke for six hours.... and every minute of it was telecast to the nation....

At the very moment Kosygin began to speak in the Kremlin's cavernous Palace of Congresses, Soviet television started re-broadcasting Brezhnev's report in its entirety...

At the 24th. Congress he was eulogised and panegyrised by a succession of delegates who lauded his 'tireless activity and constant concern for the welfare of the people' and proclaimed that his six-hour speech had brought 'tears of joy and pride' to their eyes...

At first sight the Soviet political system strikes most observers as an alien, unfathomable labyrinth that defies comparison with anything in the West. In many ways it is, but there is one possible analogy: New York's Tammanny Hall.

At its height, Tammanny represented... a system of political conrol centring around a single powerful figure -- the boss -- and a complex organisation of lesser figures -- the machine --.. To obtain some idea of the Soviet system one should imagine a 'super Tammany' with political monopoly exercising virtually unchallenged control of the press, the police, the economy, the military, the judiciary, even the cultural establishment.

Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev is the Soviet 'boss' today. He got where he is through patronage, intrigue, manipulation, maneuvering and political influence peddling...

The heart of his political machine is the Dnieper mafia...

Brezhnev's political machine is undoubtedly a precision instrument....

Llleonid Ilyich Brezhnev... is omnipresent. His portrait is on every wall of nearly every government and party office from Brest-Litovsk to Vladivostock. It is held aloft, icon like, by thousands of marchers each 1 May and 7 November. It hangs in super-dimensional form from the facades of public buildings on important state occasions and holidays. His name appears in 'Pravda', 'Izvestia' and countless other Soviet newspapers every day. It is mentioned on radio and television several times daily. It appears in headlines and has become a household name around the globe. His speeches are mandatory reading for millions. His books stand on the shelves of all libraries in the USSR....

For half of their married life they (the Brezhnevs -- WBB) have lived in the same apartment house -- reserved for high-ranking party functionaries. By Moscow standards it is a posh neighborhood...

It would be an idyllic picture of upper-middle-class Soviet life were it not marred by the problems of so many upper-middle-class apparatchik families: the un-Soviet like airs of the children.

Next to affairs of State and Party, Galina (Brezhnev's daughter -- WBB) has been Brezhnev's greatest problem. Her penchant for men from the circus and her romantic escapades were the primary reason why her daughter Viktoria lived not with her but with Brezhnev... Motherhood is not her thing. By comparison, her brother Yuri, 40, is a paragon of good behaviour... On a recent trip to Paris, in January 1972, he made news of his own by going to the Crazy Horse Saloon, the French capital's best-known and most expensive strip-tease club and allegedly paying the head waiter a $100 tip...

Leonid Brezhnev has been a member of the elite since 1931, and he is now at its apex. Government dachas and limousines for his private use, servants, Black Sea vacation villas and, above all, the right to buy in special Central Committee and Kremlin stores where premium Soviet-made and the finest imported merchandise is available at cost and below -- these have been his privileges for nearly two decades. He takes them for granted. Though he also denies them...

If Brezhnev even has a salary, then it is probably not more than 1,000 rubles ($1,350) per month -- less than what he was earning as a lieutenant-general -- which is approximately eight times the average monthly wage (122 rubles) of a skilled industrial or white collar worker. But salary is not the issue, for like all other members of the Politburo and the Secretariat, Brezhnev is entitled to an 'open account' at the State Bank from which he may draw and spend as much as he wishes, for anything he pleases.

Naturally, he has a flat-roofed, California style bungalow with fire place, swimming-pool and patio in the Politburo compound at Kolchuga, a village 18 miles west of the centre of Moscow. A restricted area, it is surrounded, like most of the dachas of the elite, by a ten-foot-high wooden fence and a small army of grim-looking uniformed police and security men who guard the access roads... By Soviet standards it is opulent. So incidentally is Breshnev's Kutovoski Avenue apartment...

His fleet of automobiles is legendary, but in addition to those he has a whole park of Kremlin and Central Committee limousines, including foreign-made ones, from which to choose. And what was it he told Willy Brand? Oh yes, he has another, bigger yacht than the one in which they cruised off Oreanda....

A Kremlin physician measures the water temperature before Brezhnev takes a dip in the Black Sea...

The fact is that Communism in the Soviet Union has given birth to a new upper class which enjoys and guards its privileges just a jealously as the old one. It is very much a hierarchical system in which each step up the ladder brings with it greater and additional perquisites...

He (Brezhnev -- WBB) is neither an intellectual nor culturally inclined...

He likes technical things. The intricate push-button and telephone panel sunk into the top of his Kremlin office desk, heatable swimming pools, automatically operated sliding doors -- those are the things he shows visitors with pride....

The sport about which he is most enthusiastic.. is hunting. He claims to have shot everything from hares around Moscow to bears in Kazakhstan. His favourtie area is a Savidovo... There the Politburo maintains a private 140-square mile game preserve with hunting lodges... Brezhnev also claims to be a conservationist.

Leonid Brezhnev is a conservative".

(J. Dornberg: "Brezhnev: The Masks of Power"; London; 1974; p. 15, 18-19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 31-2, 274, 275, 283, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 294).

The unique feature of open (i.e., unlimited) bank accounts for the higher echelons of Soviet managerial personnel (to which Dornberg refers in the above-quoted passage), although not officially admitted, has been confirmed by other investigators:

"Nachalniks (i.e., administrative personnel -- WBB).. are put on what is called an 'open bank account', which means that all their needs and those of their immediate family are freely supplied... by the state".

(Z. Katz: "Patterns of Social Stratification in the USSR"; Cambridge (USA); 1972; p. 82).

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