>
> Justin: Charles likes the old-style Communist tyrannies.
> ^^^^^
> CB: Justin likes the even older styled, white, Capitalist
> tyrannies,
> purveying the big lie that they are the most democratic in
> human history.
Boy, you really haven't learned anything from the time pamphlets like this were published, "Trotskyism: Counter-Revolution In Disguise, " by M.J. Olgin. Same Stalinist amalgam. Accusing left opposition of covert or overt alignment w/ the Right. "Most democratic in human history, " cf. claim at the time the 1936 Stalin Constitution was, "The Most Democratic in the world, " http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1936-rev/ch10.htm Leon Trotsky’s Revolution Betrayed What is the Soviet Union and where is it going? Chapter 10 THE SOVIET UNION IN THE MIRROR OF THE NEW CONSTITUTION
Work "According to Ability" and Personal Property
The Soviets and Democracy
Democracy and the Party
1. Work "according to ability" and personal property
On the 11th of June, 1936, the Central Executive Committee approved the draft of a new Soviet Constitution which, according to Stalin’s declaration, repeated daily by the whole press, will be "the most democratic in the world." To be sure, the manner in which the constitution was drawn up is enough to cause doubts as to this. Neither in the press nor at any meetings was a word ever spoken about this great reform. Moreover, as early as March 1, 1936, Stalin declared to the American interviewer, Roy Howard: "We will doubtless adopt our new constitution at the end of this year." Thus Stalin knew with complete accuracy just when this new constitution, about which the people at that moment knew nothing at all, would be adopted. It is impossible not to conclude that "the most democratic constitution in the world" was worked out and introduced in a not quite perfectly democratic manner. To be sure, in June the draft was submitted to the "consideration" of the people of the Soviet Union. It would be vain, however, to seek in this whole sixth part of the globe one Communist who would dare to criticize a creation of the Central Committee, or one non-party citizen who would reject a proposal from the ruling party. The discussion reduced itself to sending resolutions of gratitude to Stalin for the "happy life." The content and style of these greetings had been thoroughly worked out under the old constitution.
The first section, entitled "Social Structure", concludes with these words: "In the Soviet Union, the principle of socialism is realized: From each according to his abilities to each according to his work." This inwardly contradictory, not to say nonsensical, formula has entered, believe it or not, from speeches and journalistic articles into the carefully deliberated text of the fundamental state law. It bears witness not only to a complete lowering of theoretical level in the lawgivers, but also to the lie with which, as a mirror of the ruling stratum, the new constitution is imbued. It is not difficult to guess the origin of the new "principle." To characterize the Communist society, Marx employed the famous formula: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." The two parts of this formula are inseparable. "From each according to his abilities," in the Communist, not the capitalist, sense, means: Work has now ceased to be an obligation, and has become an individual need; society has no further use for any compulsion. Only sick and abnormal persons will refuse to work. Working "according to their ability”—that is, in accord with their physical and psychic powers, without any violence to themselves—the members of the commune will, thanks to a high technique, sufficiently fill up the stores of society so that society can generously endow each and all "according to their needs," without humiliating control. This two-sided but indivisible formula of communism thus assumes abundance, equality, an all-sided development of personality, and a high cultural discipline.
The Soviet state in all its relations is far closer to a backward capitalism than to communism. It cannot yet even think of endowing each "according to his needs." But for this very reason it cannot permit its citizens to work "according to their abilities." It finds itself obliged to keep in force the system of piecework payment, the principle of which may be expressed thus: "Get out of everybody as much as you can, and give him in exchange as little as possible." To be sure, nobody in the Soviet Union works above his "abilities" in the absolute sense of the word— that is, above his physical and psychic potential. But this is true also of capitalism. The most brutal as well as the most refined methods of exploitation run into limits set by nature. Even a mule under the whip works "according to his ability," but from that it does not follow that the whip is a social principle for mules. Wage labor does not cease even under the Soviet regime to wear the humiliating label of slavery. Payment "according to work”— in reality, payment to the advantage of "intellectual" at the expense of physical, and especially unskilled, work— is a source of injustice, oppression and compulsions for the majority, privileges and a "happy life" for the few.
Instead of frankly acknowledging that bourgeois norms of labor and distribution still prevail in the Soviet Union, the authors of the constitution have cut this integral Communist principle in two halves, postponed the second half to an indefinite future, declared the first half already realized, mechanically hitched on to it the capitalist norm of piecework payment, named the whole thing "principle of Socialism," and upon this falsification erected the structure of their constitution!
Of greatest practical significance in the economic sphere is undoubtedly Article X, which in contrast to most of the articles has quite clearly the task of guaranteeing, against invasion from the bureaucracy itself, the personal property of the citizens in their articles of domestic economy, consumption, comfort and daily life. With the exception of "domestic economy", property of this kind, purged of the psychology of greed and envy which clings to it, will not only be preserved under communism but will receive an unheard of development. It is subject to doubt, to be sure, whether a man of high culture would want to burden himself with a rubbish of luxuries. But he would not renounce any one of the conquests of comfort. The first task of communism is to guarantee the comforts of life to all. In the Soviet Union, however, the question of personal property still wears a petty bourgeois and not a communist aspect. The personal property of the peasants and the not well-off city people is the target of outrageous arbitrary acts on the part of the bureaucracy, which on its lower steps frequently assures by such means its own relative comfort. A growth of the prosperity of the country now makes it possible to renounce these seizures of personal property, and even impels the government to protect personal accumulations as a stimulus to increase the productivity of labor. At the same time—and this is of no small importance a protection by law of the hut, cow and home-furnishings of the peasant, worker or clerical worker, also legalizes the town house of the bureaucrat, his summer home, his automobile and all the other "objects of personal consumption and comfort," appropriated by him on the basis of the "socialist" principle: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his work." The bureaucrat’s automobile will certainly be protected by the new fundamental law more effectively than the peasant’s wagon. <SNIP>
-- Michael Pugliese