Date: 07 Jul 97 01:29:50 EDT
From: neil <74742.1651-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: M-I: state capitalism


dear  Karl C.

Wage labor definitely existed as a commodity in the ex-USSR\
and bloc partners. Workers had to sell themselves  and were/are
mere employees. 

The managers  directed them as to where, what , under 
definite conditions how  commodities were to be produced.
If the workers didn't like it, they could be sanctioned, written
up, eventually thrown out . The  workers  managers kept 
records on this that could amount to black list . Until 1956,
 & form 1940 , workers were juridically  limited in where they could go
to even look for work .

(See STATE CAPITALISM, the wages system under new
 management, McMillan UK 1986 ed.) Pgs  73-77

After  '56, due to the needs of the Russian labor market,
workers were less penalized if they quit and went and
got another job in a different Russian "state enterprise."

Karl -the very exalting for the continuing of the  wages system 
(instead of taking  steps to abolish it ) points to
the fact that workers were subservient to  a ruling class.
Karl- where are the INSTITUTIONS of mass worker 
controll and planning for human need in the USSR?.

Real councils, assemblies , soviets of workers have
been absent in the ex-USSR since the early 20s.
Soviet power was replaced then by  a ruling cliques
that soon congealed into a  state capitalist ruling class
during NEP.

Russia , backward,  isolated in the 20s in the world capitalist 
economy never could transcend state capitalism
and this especially true when the workers soviet 
revolutions were crushed in Germany, Austria,
Hungary and Italy in the 1918-23 period by bourgeois
reaction and counterrevolution..

A market for buying labor power has been built up again
under state cap rule in Russia  and so did unemployment.
(though at probably lower levels at times  than in western capitalist
states) Sometimes the USSR govt. would hide unemployment
by shifting idle workers in cities out to the rural areas 
to do harvsting in peak seasons for a stipend.. When the
USSR regime needed  more labor in cities it had its ways of
forcing workers off the land and driving them to  needed 
areas.

Russian enterprises  would openly advertise for SKILLED workers
by employment posters at factories and would even try to illegally
pinch good-productive workers form other enterprises by
promising more (relative) remuneration and better  conditions.
(though technically illegal--this like the black market  
was widespread under the state caps rule.)

Russian managers in slack seasons did not want to lose 
their reliable workers so they they kept them on the
payrolls by hook and crook, even posting to the "planning
commissions" false data on productivity to justify a higher
wage bill, the variable capital part of expense.

State cap rule still deprives workers of control of 
the means of production and distribution and they 
remain , as in the west, wage slaves.

Th ex-USSR was NO Russia. INC.  the planning itself 
was quite chaotic and as each entersprise tried to meet
the plan goals, the managers still had to do it in a way 
that profitability was at least kept near indusdry averages.
Many 'enterprises', esp. heavy industry even branched out 
into lighter industry  areas to as to increase overall levels
of profit and keep up with other enetrprises. Much of this
was done with the "plan" changed afterwards.  . 

Anyway the ruling class  on top consciously  did this,
for their own material benefit and for power over the
exploited  waged /salaried  workers.

Neil




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