To understand the struggle between the two tendencies in Russia — the Congress of People's Deputies on one side and Yeltsin and his supporters on the other — we must go beyond the daily charges and counter-charges. We must take time out from the noise of battle and ask what the basic issue dividing the two camps is.
No immediate solution of this issue is in the offing. This will be a protracted struggle with a variety of incidents pointing in different directions. We can only arrive at an enlightened view of the situation if we view it in a broader, historical perspective.
We have to go beyond the so-called constitutional or parliamentary form of the struggle and get to its roots.
The struggle goes beyond this or that personality, this or that form of government. In essence, it emerges as a struggle between diametrically opposed social systems. These two social systems historically rest on different classes whose interests are diametrically opposed and irreconcilable.
This may not be immediately evident in Russia, because the form of the struggle hides its class essence. Indeed, if we could see only the domestic, Russian supporters of the Yeltsin grouping, it might be more difficult to assess the class essence of this camp at this time.
But we also see the entire imperialist camp, with hardly any exceptions, backing Yeltsin.
This makes it abundantly clear that Yeltsin's group rests on the bourgeois elements in the USSR. This includes petty proprietors, directors who hope to become owners, well-heeled bureaucrats who think they can succeed under either socialism or capitalism, elements of the technocracy and all who favor private property.
Without question, Yeltsin now stands exposed as a representative of the bourgeoisie in the USSR and an agent of big foreign capital.
But is the Congress of People's Deputies the consistent representative of the working class and of the collective peasantry?
The answer has to be no. But the qualifications to the answer are equally significant.
To understand these qualifications it's helpful to examine the historical evolution of each of the universal social systems humanity has witnessed since the early primary communist societies.
It's not unusual for an oppressed class seeking its liberation to gravitate or be pulled into the orbit of a grouping with whom they have only a temporary, conjunctural interest. They may find themselves fighting under the leadership of this grouping. But the salvation of the oppressed class lies in taking an independent direction under its own leadership.
For example, when the 18th century French monarchy was under severe economic and financial stress, it had to raise taxes. It was forced to call in the three estates — nobility, clergy and the oppressed but now rising bourgeoisie — in an effort to tax them for financial relief.
The rising bourgeoisie was the only class with money. In a position of authority, it raised its own political demands. These in turn aroused the masses against the old order. The king's attempt to bolster his finances turned into a disaster for the monarchy.
What emerged from the convocation of the three estates was not the nobility stripped of the monarchy. It was the demolition of the privileges of the nobility, the monarchy and the clergy, and the emergence of the bourgeoisie.
What a lesson. What seemed to be an orderly development instead evoked the greatest revolutionary storm of that period.
At the moment the numerically vast and economically and industrially powerful Russian working class seems to be submerged almost to the point of non-existence. But its great weight is felt as a gravitational pull on the Congress of People's Deputies.
The Congress's contradictory social interests lead it in two directions: on one hand, to a serious struggle against Yeltsin and the bourgeois restoration of capitalism; on the other, it guards itself against the emergence of the working class as a class destined to take over the reins of society. Nevertheless, the proletariat finds representation in the Congress of People's Deputies.
Another historical analogy, this one closer to home, helps illustrate how this can occur. What was the class character of the Civil War in the United States? Was it merely about states' rights and the sovereignty of the federal government? Was it about individual freedom and the rights of states to secede?
No. It was in essence a struggle between two diametrically opposed social systems, each resting on a different form of class exploitation. It was a struggle between the Northern capital's exploitation of wage labor as against the outmoded Southern slaveocracy's exploitation of chattel slavery.
Politically the North was on the progressive side. The Northern bourgeoisie was progressive as against the Southern slaveowners. The Northern bourgeoisie was interested in defeating the South to expand the capitalist system from which it could garner fabulous profits.
To defeat the South, the Northern bourgeoisie had to emancipate the slaves. So it appeared in the role of liberator of the Black masses.
We should recall in this context that bourgeois historians have for the most part obliterated the significance of the many, many Black slave rebellions during the entire epoch of slavery here and in other countries in this hemisphere such as Brazil, Haiti and Cuba. The role of the Black people in the struggle for emancipation is worthy of a full discussion requiring more space than this article allows.
Aside from the political struggles, chattel slavery was doomed to die in the struggle against capitalist development. The South could develop a splendid military establishment. It could build vast estates and garner huge profits from cotton. But in the long run the development of capitalist industry doomed chattel slavery.
The North could build a transcontinental railroad as it earlier built the Erie Canal. Chattel slavery could in no way compete with this. Northern capital could enlist virtually all the rich countries from Europe to advance loans to develop capitalism. The South could get loans only with difficulty and for purposes of survival.
Yeltsin displays an overwhelming tendency to fall on all fours to get the support of the imperialist bourgeoisie. The Southern slaveocracy had substantially the same strategy toward England during the Civil War. England tried to mobilize all Europe to aid the South, but the effort collapsed. In the end, there was no way the South could win.
The expansionist power of industrial capital and the superior productivity of wage labor over chattel slavery made themselves obvious whenever an industrial project was up for consideration. The slaveocracy could not undertake or even participate in the exploration of the Northwest.
The new social system established by the Russian Revolution proved its prowess. The new workers' state defeated 14 capitalist countries, which in the few years after 1917 attempted to strangle the revolution and failed. By virtue of its new social system based upon the collective ownership of the means of production, the USSR became, in the words of its class enemies, a "superpower."
It was capable of challenging the mightiest capitalist power.
Let us for the moment, and only for the moment, put aside the cause of the collapse of the USSR and ask ourselves what the "triumph" of capitalist restoration has achieved in the time since Gorbachev first proposed his "reforms."
In a period of similar length — from the end of the civil war between the Whites and the Reds to the first Five Year Plan — the Soviet Union accomplished with its planned economy what even the capitalist world regarded as nothing less than a miracle.
The justification for every new social system that overturns the older system is that it proves itself economically superior. It raises the productive forces of society, and in the narrowest sense the productivity of labor, over that of the previous social system. It is capable of producing greater wealth faster than any previous social system.
Nobody put the achievements of capitalism in a better historical perspective than Karl Marx himself, writing in 1848 in the Communist Manifesto:
The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of nature's forces to human, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor?
The overall struggle — if we compare each of the universal social systems — hinges on the productivity of labor over a long stretch of history. In modern times, in our era, a shorter time period is more appropriate to prove its viability.
There can be no doubt that the system of which Gorbachev and Yeltsin are the principal representatives has had a sufficient time to prove its viability over socialism.
First let us clearly understand — in broad strokes — what the basic differences between Gorbachev and Yeltsin were. It is absolutely incontestable that some time after Gorbachev took over, both he and Yeltsin came out in support of the pro-capitalist reforms. So in fact did the present Congress of People's Deputies.
It is now incontestable that the reforms were oriented toward bourgeois restoration, toward private ownership. After a protracted struggle, the difference between Gorbachev and Yeltsin reduced itself to how quickly the reforms should be executed. This too is incontestable.
In the early days these reforms were disguised to appear as a means of democratizing or for releasing the individual initiative of the masses. But it became abundantly clear, especially after the 19th Party Conference in June 1988, that the Gorbachev leadership and later Yeltsin were orienting toward restorating capitalism.
So the struggle reduced itself to one of slower or faster pace.
Either under the slower pace of Gorbachev or the faster pace of Yeltsin, what has been achieved to demonstrate the superiority of capitalism over socialism? Can either Gorbachev or Yeltsin point to a single achievement of economic value to the masses? Can they point to any accomplishment?
Can they even point to a single socialist industrial enterprise which, having been privatized, became an economic success?
In these half dozen or so years, if the bourgeois system was superior, was it not possible to have at least one substantial success story?
In capitalist society, everything is measured by economic success. Marxist criteria for judging an economic system focus on how productive it is. These criteria reveal the bankruptcy of capitalism.
Yeltsin and Gorbachev can't show a success over a period that is long enough to produce one, even using their own capitalist criteria.
In the construction of socialism in the USSR the government had to struggle against world imperialism. In introducing capitalism, the domestic capitalist forces in Russia have not only the encouragement but the direct aid of world imperialism.
Now another event demonstrates the bankruptcy of attempting to overcome a socialist system by reintroducing capitalism. The Yeltsin government, unable to show any success through its rapid privatization scheme, needs to suggest that the president of the U.S. come to Russia to shore up Yeltsin's fortunes.
How can such a system succeed? The Russian working class, along with the workers and peasants in all the former Soviet republics, is bound to find the road back to socialist construction. This road will be a hard one, no doubt.
But there is no other way out. They will need the help of the world's proletariat and all the oppressed peoples of the world.
Last updated: 15 January 2018