Response to Michael Albert

Michael Albert claims that "the distribution of income and wealth are both typically more just in Socialism I (countries) than in comparable capitalist economies." I shall try to show that this is not true. Both are unjust, but in some capitalist countries (e. g. Scandinavia and the Netherlands) far less unjust than in Stalinist (viz. bureaucratic collectivist) nations.

Albert wants to draw his comparison to the U.S.S.R. by using Brazil, which, he claims, was in a roughly comparable state of development to Russia in 1917. This is very odd. In 1915, Brazil, with a population of 30,636,000, had a total revenue of $189,375,000 (1915 was the closest year to 1917 for which I could find a revenue figure for Brazil); in 1917, Russia, with a population of about 130 million, had a total revenue of $60 billion ("National Wealth of Nations," in World Almanac, 1920). Per person revenue in Russia, then, was several times that in Brazil -- hardly indicative of a comparable state of economic development. Equally far-fetched is using Guatemala as comparable in state of development to Cuba. In 1957, before the revolution, there were 9,000 miles of railroad in Cuba, whereas Guatemala, the same physical size as Cuba, had one rail line. Before Castro, Cuba was one of the most economically advanced countries in Latin America; Guatemala was one of the most backward.

Over the years, one often heard the argument: "Look, we don't have political freedoms in the Soviet Union -- that's because of capitalist encirclement -- but we do have a better distribution of wealth."

It's untrue.

It wasn't even a goal of the Stalinists. While Lenin, in State and Revolution, called for "payment no higher than that of ordinary workers" for bureaucrats (Ch. 6), Stalin, in his six point speech of June, 1931, said uravnilovka, or equal pay, became "alien and detrimental to socialist production, a "petty bourgeois deviation," a crime against the state, a bogey word like "counterrevolution" and "Trotskyism." The early Chinese Communist leaders were just as emphatic. "We oppose egalitarianism in wage payments," said Li Li-san, then Minister of Labor (People's China, Beijing, Jan.16, 1950). And they were true to their word. In an average USSR mine in 1936, the salaries of directors, chief engineers, and administrators in the top stratum were up to 100 times the average wage and up to 300 times higher than the minimum wage. (from Moscow newspaper Trud, Jan. 20, 1936)

And how does Albert's assurance of relative egalitarianism in "Socialism I" compare to the fact that while a deputy to the Supreme Soviet was paid 1,200 rubles for four days' work, a charwoman, for the same period, received on average 14.8 rubles?

And his assurance of greater egalitarianism under "Socialism I" is also undermined by the fact that the ratio of an unskilled laborer's salary to a physicist's salary in 1957 was 1/5 in the U.S., 1/7 in the U.K, and 1/25 in the U. S. S. R.

Following was the pay scale in the Russian Army in World War II:    

1943 pay  

private in Russian Army: 10 rubles monthly;  

lieutenant " " " : 1,000 rubles monthly;

colonel " " " : 2,400 rubles monthly.

Note: ratio of private to lieutenant's pay in World War II:  

British Army: 1:4  

U. S. Army:  1:3  

Russian Army: 1:100

Of course there are those who argue that numbers don't tell the whole story: that low wages were subsidized by a social wage such as state subsidized housing and universal health care. There is something to be said for this, but not much since one must also factor in the reality that state supported housing in the old Soviet Union often obliged a family to live in one room and wait a decade or two to get an apartment of notoriously inferior construction. And the quality of health care was abominable for the average citizen, quite different from what top bureaucrats received.

The Stalinist leadership did not share Albert's illusions about the distribution of wealth in their country. In 1928, while still a full member of the Politburo, Bukharin had some interesting things to say in a speech delivered to the Program Commission of the Sixth Congress of the Communist International:

Can there exist in this society a contradiction between the restricted onsumption of the masses... and the growing productive forces? Yes, that may be. The consumption of the ruling class grows continuously... but the consumption of the masses is retarded.... The slave in this society receives his share of the fodder.... He may receive very little.... (Kommunistische Internationale, 1928, No.33/34. p.2063)

In 1962, Nicolas Spulber, after a decade of study of the Soviet economy, concluded: "Available data point clearly toward an even broader wage dispersion in the U.S.S.R. than in the West" (The Soviet Economy [N.Y.: Norton, 1962], p. 42).

The clearest index of the quality of life is just how many people risked their lives in escape attempts -- some, true, because of political repression, but many because of economic injustice. Like Bukharin -- and unlike Albert -- they saw themselves as wage slaves. This is hardly indicative of a more just income and wealth distribution in those countries.

Of course, Michael Albert is not promoting what he calls Socialism I. But he is doing a grave disservice by claiming that the distribution of wealth was something that it clearly was not.