> Fischer said that Russia was beginning its economic reforms
> with a very weak state, while China began its with the state still
> firmly in control.
In his book Perestroika, Gorbachev wrote that "unlike capitalism, which doesn't need to be built, socialism has to be built and built consciously." Well, a social reform of the kind he wanted was supposed to be meticulously planned and executed as well. And the Marxist ABC is that politics *leads* the process of economic reforms. I know of no case of a successful economic reform -- including here the historical emergence of capitalism in Mediterranean city states, the Netherlands, England, Japan, etc., a process that allegedly didn't need to "built consciously" -- that didn't require, as a first and necessary step, a deliberately forged, solid *political* vehicle.
In Die Alternative, Rudolf Bahro mocked Lenin's initiative to oversee the bureaucracy by means of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection. It was -- Bahro wrote -- as if using Satan to fight the devil. Indeed, but how else can people constrained by history exercise control and supervision over one another if not by means of "checks and balances"?
(By the way, that is perhaps the main result of Elinor Ostrom's work on governance of the commons, which -- translated into Leninism -- is about the crucial role of the political party.) How do you circumvent political obstacles if not by organizing a political instrument fit to the task? Communism, the reabsorption of the political society by and into civil society, is not (cannot be) a process where the top delegates power to an reluctant bottom. On the contrary: the initiative has to come from below. The bottom not begging but snatching power from the hands of the top. Hierarchies do not successfully get flatten by the top giving up, but by the bottom taking over. When hierarchies dismantle themselves, whatever the intent, the result tends to be a power vacuum that gets filled with a top that is even more ruthless and authoritarian than the previous one. The problem is not power, but alienation from power -- the lack of power.
If you forgive me, I'll use another illustration that is likely to lead to some mockery here. Chávez in 1998 also inherited a heavy, useless, reactionary bureaucracy that sabotaged his every initiative. That state apparatus, by the way, has not been completely transformed and remains a formidable obstacle to further progress. But some inroads have been achieved. This began before Chavez spoke of socialism. In 2000, right after he won his first reelection and made it clear he wanted to push forth, his first order of business was the internal *reorganization* of the MVR, which led the MAS and other people to switch to the opposition. With his renovated political instrument, Chavez moved to *organize* the missions that helped him carry out his social program, getting partially around the official apparatus which was actively sabotaging his initiatives.
My impression (which I admit, is not based on any profound study of the subject) is that Gorbachev neglected his duties as a political organizer, that he got a bit too in love with himself as a result of Western adulation, that he thought his charisma and sophistication would do the job for him, that he underestimated those lacking his worldliness. After what happened to Trotsky in the late 1920s, he should have known better.