Smiling Marx

It's capitalism outside, and automation is a threat to employment.

A specific kind of short-sighted pessimism leads many to wish to never experience advancements in labor productivity, to go back in time, to eternally stall technology as a solution to layoffs.

Carefully managing redistribution of the remaining work so that everyone remains employed seems unattainable to some. Forcing your company to pay for training, to guarantee a new position, or a number of months of pay so you can find a new job without dipping into unemployment - even these mild policies seem impractical, or at best, half-measures.

Compare these half-measures to the prospect of owning the economy outright. This would be the resulting mindset:

Source: This Soviet World (1936) by Anna Louise Strong

That was the sentiment in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. In fact, the Soviets had a whole movement of labor activists aiming to raise labor productivity through improving expertise and engineering. They were called the Stakhanovites, after Stakhanov, a coal miner preoccupied with getting the most coal for the least effort through proper use of technology: "my comrades and I had been thinking how to [...] force the drills to work a full shift."

There's a common bit of anti-communist propaganda that the Stakhanovites were obsessed with work, ready to work overtime out of ideological loyalty. They would laugh at these claims, as their whole philosophy was the opposite: learn better techniques, do not overwork yourself.

They would deny even comparisons with sports. A lot can be said about pacing yourself at work, but the priority is the science of improving and automating your work altogether.

It's about breaking old technical processes and finding better ones. Because like all of us, Stakhanovites hated the idea of pointless work.

What motivated these employees is that they were also the owners, and every improvement was an investment in their own quality of life:

Wouldn't you do the same in their position?

The Marxist view on crime is that first, it is defined by law which is itself a temporary necessity, and second, crime is primarily influenced by our material and social environment.

In capitalism, policing has to be divorced from the masses, happening from "outside" their natural self-organizing and even "above" it. On the other hand, formal law begins to slowly disintegrate the moment the great majority of people become rulers.

Source: This Soviet World (1936) by Anna Louise Strong

Either way, it's an observable fact that economic upheavals are followed by waves of poverty, addiction, violence. A single person might find ways to stay afloat but scaling up such prevention and help requires action on a massive scale - in other words, it requires altering the social environment.

"Soviet justice therefore aims to give the criminal a new environment," summarizes Strong.

To understand how significant that is, think of how deep-rooted the concept of justice by punishment is in European cultures. Here's a revealing interaction between French colonizers and a Montagnais group in today's Canada:

Source: Myths of Male Dominance (1981) by Eleanor Burke Leacock

The Soviet conception of justice, in my opinion, echoes that sentiment, "give us presents for this wound."

Strong recounts stories of village courts most commonly sentencing people to "do without pay some socially useful work":

In serious cases, the perpetrator is exiled from the village for months or years. But that does not mean imprisoned, nor does it mean letting them off the hook and simply sending them to another town.

The old prisons were being rapidly replaced with much more humane "labor camps", where instead of prison cells and prison guards, the exiled community members would lead a normal life, most often work a normal job with normal pay, and gain skills and friendships.

If you enjoy looking at Scandinavian prison cells with sofas and TVs, the natural progression is no prison cells at all. Normal labor laws applied to workers, families would visit and even live with inmates, libraries and theaters would be built for them, they could marry in the camp and live with their spouses:

Inmates were able to speak candidly and criticize the administration like in any town. Strong had personally visited several such camps and had to conclude that the camps intended to "establish the atmosphere of normal constructive life".

"From 1929 to 1934 sentences for murder decreased by one-half while sex crimes fell off to one-fourth."

Personally, I think these statements are too unsubstantiated, that the need to exile people so directly correlates with growing quality of life.

Additionally, while life in the camps was more or less normal, it was still rough given the conditions of the early Soviet Union in general. Manual labor was ruining people's health, some died of disease. There was a wave of prisoner executions in 1938. Still, it was an improvement from before (note: couldn't find a better chart given my time constraints):

Source: https://reddit.com/r/communism/comments/bkaq89 Sources on the chart also listed in alt text

Before a person may speak up, they must first be literate and have access to the press.

With that in mind, let us consider if Soviet policies were an improvement or a detriment to popular press. This American journalist touring the Soviet Union in the 1930s discusses the conditions on the ground before and after:

Source: This Soviet World (1936) by Anna Louise Strong

Having won for themselves food security and free education, the Soviet masses were for the first time able to participate in popular art:

Millions of people were now able to participate in press. Not only able to read it but to actively contribute.

A skeptic might add: this Peasants’ Gazette could've withheld any political criticism, couldn't it have? For sure. But the thousands of local and industry newspapers had no qualms about self-criticism. In general, if anyone's goal was to stifle thought, it seems counterproductive to encourage every worker and farmer to read and write regularly.

Strong's position is that artists have to struggle against traditions and critics both before and after the printing press in every country, but that in her professional view, in socialism this struggle is easier.

Specifically, the artist's struggle for freedom of expression is made easier by decentralizing the media and greater access to publishing:

The scale of these numbers is difficult to grasp.

One of the consequences of encouraging everyone to publish articles was an explosion in literary talent that was given an avenue for practice.

You might've noticed that popular movies and art in general often reflects the zeitgeist, the spirit of the time. Think of popular memes reflecting current world events or commenting on our mental health. Think of the constant stream of Hollywood movies about "our civilization" being under attack, a great war that hopefully returns things to normal. You don't see the Avengers fighting for a brighter future, you see them protecting liberal capitalism.

There's an illuminating bit here about early popular Soviet art and its tropes:

Final note: construction workers are also artists.

See if this resonates with you:

Source: This Soviet World (1936) by Anna Louise Strong

Take for instance propaganda against the study of climate change, or staying at home during a pandemic, or simply the tobacco industry muddying health research for their profits; in worst cases even the theory of evolution is thrown out the window and race realism is brought back again.

Dismantling the underlying profit motive leaves science up to people's needs and desires.

For the Soviets, this was an even sharper break with traditions. Consider peasant life in the Russian Empire: voiceless, exploited, robbed by the higher castes, seeing no point in working more than absolutely necessary as they would see no fruits of their own labor.

Source: Rude and Barbarous Kingdom (1968) by Lloyd Eason Berry Quoting: Of the Russe Commonwealth (1591) by Giles Fletcher

Between the 1600s and the 1800s the situation improved but not drastically: serfdom only ended in 1861 and even that, formally. Serfs were made to "reimburse" their former owners before they could leave their hold, in quantities that meant many had to labor for decades. Stuck in that purgatory of poverty, pursuing science was unthinkable.

The shift from complete illiteracy to widespread scientific curiosity was so drastic that Strong even invokes Marx's concept of socialism blurring the line between mental and manual labor:

Before the revolution, things were as backwards as you'd guess:

Source: This Soviet World (1936) by Anna Louise Strong

That changed with the soviets in power. Let's look at some examples.

Urban populations were understandably more progressive:

In the countryside, it took a lot of struggle and sacrifice but with most of the organized society on the women's side, it led to successes not seen anywhere else in the world at the time:

In terms of access to employment, the law and the police were no longer an obstacle. "No trade or profession is prohibited in advance as 'unwomanly'," as Strong puts it.

In terms of civil rights, marriage was no longer tied to the church, property owned before marriage remained individual, and divorce became a basic right.

Contraception and abortion were now seen as human rights too:

Keep in mind that this was written in 1935-1936, so abortion was a relatively risky procedure, yet it was still a right.

Going from "women are hacked into bits for disobeying" to "women have secured government positions and rights to education, divorce, and abortion" in a decade is very impressive.

These anecdotes are satisfying to read:

I'd like to leave you with this prescient description of the Western world:

First, something funny. This part, superstitious peasants throwing stones at tractors, made me chuckle:

Source: This Soviet World (1936) by Anna Louise Strong

The monumental changes reminded me of these photos from China:

Source unknown

Some more specifics about national subsidies and debt relief:

In 1935, a congress of farmers adopted the following rules for collective farms, ratified by the soviet government:

This formally protected private quarters of farming families joining these farming co-ops.

And they were, essentially, private co-ops: in exchange for subsidized fertilizer and machinery which greatly increases productivity, the farm sells about 25% of its harvest to a national fund at a low price. The rest of the harvest they may divide and sell individually, or together as a collective. They may use the profits as they see fit.

A farm will have regular meetings and vote on business plans. Here's an example: a farm might plan to expand fields for more profits, improve living standards, erect new buildings, and so on:

Everyone can chip in and participate in fulfilling the common wishes. Every effort will be paid, too. Therefore, no unemployment.

Business plans of these farms get aggregated over regions and whole republics and get turned into "The Plan."

The plan is thus not imposed arbitrarily by an evil ruler but represents the coordinated wishes of all people, so that they may know and account for what others plan to do.

Apparently there used to be anti-communist propaganda twisting free daycare nurseries in the Soviet Union into "the government is taking away their children!"

Source: This Soviet World (1936) by Anna Louise Strong

If you think about it, if you owned your company, why wouldn't you pay for a nursery right next door? Less commuting for parents. Some of the larger workplaces would have their own healthcare and kitchens too:

The first World War, the revolutions, fighting off foreign interventions, and a long history of brutal famines have left the remnants of the Russian Empire in a desperate state:

Source: This Soviet World (1936) by Anna Louise Strong

As fascism was developing over in Europe, the Soviets struggled to rebuild their life, step by step:

After the revolution, the Soviet government granted every peasant family a private farmstead, fulfilling a promise made earlier and gaining support of the poor peasantry.

A decade later, this has lead to "an ocean of medieval agriculture," a country of subsistence farms with practically no surplus sold to feed any potential industrial workforce. A real catch-22: tractors are required for farming productivity, and farming productivity is required for heavy industry.

As they saw it, there were two solutions:

Encourage rich peasants to grow their businesses, catalyze a slow and painful process of capital formation and dispossessing poorer families of their land, turning peasants into capitalists and hired workers;

Or, using economic subsidies, encourage poor peasants to link up their farms and jointly rent the few tractors that the state industry is able to produce, making the most of soviet power and the extra efficiency it may provide.

Given the constant threat of a new war and invasion, the Congress decided to bet on the faster, second option, outlining a concrete action plan for the socially-owned industry for the next few years.

I feel the need to note: Soviet collective farming was a policy designed to address specific issues of the day. It is by no means a universal part of an abstract "communist ideology."

Strong goes into her view of the subject, which I think is notable enough to quote. I recognize that today it's a heavily propagandized and emotional topic deserving a much more careful review, so I don't intend this to be "debunk" or "debate." These are my reading notes.

Suffice to say, the plan worked.

Strong's view is that the heavy costs in rich peasant riots, subsequent repression from the poorer masses, rationing, and so on, was still less cost for the massive advances in development and quality of life than anywhere else in history.

I personally think that view is somewhat callous, even if correct.

Every bourgeois economist knows about "economy of scale" - an uncontroversial observation that there is inherent efficiency gained from scaling up companies. So it was a century ago:

Source: This Soviet World (1936) by Anna Louise Strong

As much as a capitalist might salivate at higher efficiency and thus higher profits, doing that at the scale of a whole country mean giving up control over the profits. "Only owners can plan an industry and dispose of its products."

The concept of abundance, of having enough basic necessities for everyone, raises an obvious question: why even pay for them? Why privately own any of it? Why artificially restrict access to necessities?

Thus, socialist morality springs from abundance. But abundance doesn't happen overnight even after a revolution. We have to actually make necessities easy to produce and accessible everywhere.

Preferably, we get there sooner rather than later.

Strong offers a revealing comparison for the Soviet All-Union Congress of the 1930s: "a British governing assembly similarly formed would show an overwhelming majority from the dark-skinned peoples of Africa and India."

Source: This Soviet World (1936) by Anna Louise Strong

Some people like to imagine this would be fixed with liberal democracy. She notes that after the fall of tsarism, in May of 1917, "the Kerensky government of Russia refused the demand of Finland to secede."

It seems that on paper, the communists followed through with their promises as much as could possibly be expected:

According to Strong, "nearly half of [Soviet Union's] 170 million people belong to nationalities other than Russian."

In a soviet model discussed in previous posts, this would obviously give implicit support to any Russian biases remaining in the represented population. To address this, the soviets instituted a so-called "council of nationalities" alongside the representative soviets. "No legislation involving national rights may be passed without it."

"National prejudices still exist in the minds of some Russians, due to their past privilege of superiority. National grudges still remain in the minds of formerly suppressed peoples, who long learned to distrust the Russians," she writes. But I think the overall policy of rapid economic growth in the poorer republics is a move in the right direction. Being well-fed, well-rested, well-supplied is a prerequisite for every other kind of equality:

Strong gives a vivid example:

Source: This Soviet World (1936) by Anna Louise Strong

Consider modern slavery. In most countries, capitalist relations of private ownership with hired labor are dominant, and capitalists maintain power. Slavery exists but remains not only subordinate but outlawed by the capitalists.

Consider now the French Revolution. Feudal relations of landholding and land-bound peasantry were dominant, and the developing capitalist class had to wrestle power from landlords in a series of violent revolutions. Was that not dictatorial? Was that not unconstitutional?

What choice did they have? This was the only way to gain freedom of movement, of hiring and firing people at will.

Consider the long history of even the most peaceful socialist experiments being repressed and pushed back by capitalists. Why wouldn't the masses defend their freedom from imperialism, hunger, exploitation, with just as much vigor?

It's one thing to gain political power, another to realign the entire fabric of society. It involves creative work that can't be done in a destructive revolution overnight:

In the previous post we've explored the concept of soviets.

A common trope in anti-communist propaganda is "The Regime" telling people what to do and forcing everyone to work.

We've seen how the electoral model proposed by socialists is much more expansive and meaningfully democratic than afforded by capitalist regimes. But that doesn't address the "being told what to do" part.

Consider a poor village in the 1930s exercising their recently gained right to self-govern. What would it mean to have an elected official in that village? Let's say, their program is increasing harvest yields and bringing electricity and radio to every home. Even better, let's say the program is decided by broad village meetings before the candidates are even discussed:

Source: This Soviet World (1936) by Anna Louise Strong

How would an elected committee, a soviet, do that? They are supposed to get electricity in every home. How?

This question is even clearer in larger cities. Consider having 1,500 policy proposals condensed into a whole action plan for the municipal soviet:

The answer to our question is simple: the people implement their own proposals. If a village wants electricity, they will have to put in the work.

The soviet organizes and directs the efforts: appoints experts, finds tractors for farm work, schedules trips for training electricians, takes out state loans - in short, everything necessary to achieve the goals. The actual work is done by the people, with elected deputies setting the pace.

"The Communists do not merely reflect the will of the masses, as a ballot might, or a showing of hands. They do not merely analyze what the 'majority want' and hand it out. It is their job to lead, to organize the people’s will."

In the spirit of learning from each others' experience and mistakes, let's take a look at what the soviets were. Look at this American journalist boasting about Soviet elections:

Source: This Soviet World (1936) by Anna Louise Strong

But what is a soviet? If there is anything to emulate, how? In short, it is the self-organizing, self-regulating, self-governing body of an existing social unit, such as a place of work or a village:

It is representatives chosen by the people for specific tasks.

It is, in capitalist terms, both the legislative and the executive. The representatives have the power to formulate regulations: for example, if you are elected to oversee environmental concerns, you are responsible for updating the local environmental regulations but you are also accountable for the results.

These local representatives then have the ability to link up with other soviets of increasingly higher orders to better serve their roles and oversee each other.

A self-governing body means it is the place of work or residence itself doing it. You elect coworkers to organize specific efforts but they keep being your coworkers. This is not a parliament divorced from daily life.

Even the People's Congress, the highest body in a socialist country, consists of regular people and not professional politicians. It convenes for a few days or weeks, the representatives work out matters on the agenda in their respective fields, and go back to their places of work.

Taken from: https://picryl.com/media/delegates-at-the-17th-congress-of-the-all-union-communist-party-bolsheviks-b5bd76

The Congress disbands until next year, leaving behind a committee tasked with implementing any country-wide decisions made at the congress. That is the Central Committee. The committee may in turn have internal elections for its own needs, such as electing a general secretary. In China's case, that is currently Xi Jinping.

Do not delude yourself into thinking that revolting will be the end of it. You will have to defend yourself from invasion, and you will have to match the most advanced militaries of the capitalist world.

The so-called "civilized" nations saw the formation of the Soviet Union as an opportunity to conquer more land for their empires:

Pleas for diplomacy were ignored, no matter the terms:

Only by self-organizing into a Red Army numbering millions were they able to protect the gains of the revolution from these immediate opportunistic invasions.

Source: This Soviet World (1936) by Anna Louise Strong

We all feel the consequences of war, one way or another. Therefore, protecting yourself from war protects the masses everywhere. This was true back then, and it's even more relevant today:

The policy of the Soviet Union from the very start was world peace and total disarmament. It was the imperialists that refused to disarm even partially, preparing for new attacks even as they were signing treaties, and thus forcing the Soviets to maintain a capable Red Army.

Source: This Soviet World (1936) by Anna Louise Strong

She carries on to say that a capitalist government is tasked with "adjusting relations between property and protecting it against the 'lawless' demands of non-owners."

That reminded me of a recent example:

South Korean government considered restricting constitutional rights of thousands of striking Samsung workers because their promise of a strike threatening "the economy" and there has to be "an appropriate limit" to their interests.

The mass line is the line of reasoning and decisions growing out of the common interests of the people around you. In short, holding that line is basic leadership advice to propose what the people actually want and are able to accomplish.