Socialism is a big topic today in the United States, now that people are increasingly suffering under a rapacious and predatory capitalism. People often want to know how socialism worked in the Soviet Union. Below is a general description.
How was working class political power structured in the Soviet Union?
The Soviets understood that it is impossible to truly have all stake-holders at the public table without a complex political structure. They also recognized that bourgeois democracy with its elections was a shriveled and very narrow form of democracy.
Here in the US, we have local elections; we have state and federal elections every two years; we have presidential elections every four years. Aside from these elections, there is a giant gap between the people and the control of the halls of power: vote and hope, nothing in between the election that can enforce the peoples’ voice.
So the Soviets organized popular political power in a variety of ways. The word “soviet” means “council or assembly”. Governance was formed by two different parallel and interpenetrating structures to institute real popular political power at a given level. Here a pyramid replaces a vast separation on a daily basis of the control of government by the people. The Soviet system at its best was a far more developed form of democracy than what capitalism can offer.
1>> Every community of a thousand people or so is its own empowered political unit. At this community scale, people can genuinely meet together and deliberate. All those elected to each and all positions understand that they must report back and that they can be replaced at any time, simply by the vote of the local commune. The local commune is empowered to police itself and assess its needs, report on its concerns, and determine governmental policy within its purview.
2>> Each commune elects a representative to a district council in the city. The city is divided into districts which, depending on the size of the city, can be four or forty. These district bodies have authority over their districts and elect representatives to the City Council, or soviet. The city councils in a region of a state, province or whatever, would meet together and elect representatives to a state-level soviet that would run the state or province. State soviets would elect representatives to the national-level soviet, which would handle national policy.
3>> Recognizing the historic discrimination against women, the poor, various minorities, in local areas,and other special groups, the Soviets empowered political groups to represent these traditionally silenced voices, again organized by district or area. Women for example would, elect representatives of a womens’ district body, which would elect representatives to the city body, which would elect represetatives to the city council. The womens soviet at each level had authority over matters of concern to women within their purview. This structure likewise ran from local commune to city level to regional level to state level to national level.
Every interest group had parallel structures: minority groups, cultural workers, medical workers, scientists, trade unions, the youth, etc. These structures reflected an essential point Marx made about the differences between the state in capitalist society and Soviet society. Capitalism is the rule of the many by a tiny few, therefore it needs a large police force. Socialism is the rule of the few by the mahy, and does not need a large police force to keep social peace. But it does need specific structures that guarantee the power of each group, meeting in their own interests, and combine them together in one overall city-level (or regional, state, etc level) as workers as a class.
4>>. The Sovie Union was a vast and complex mixture of nationalities that lived in cities or regions where one neighborhood might be Kazakh bordering on neighborhoods of Russians, Ukranians or Jews. The Soviets recognized that the relation between a city soviet and these neighborhoods could not be mechanical. Therefore a wider variety of autonomous structures were established, again at all levels: autonomous neighborhoods, autonomous districts, counties, regions, provinces etc. Autonomy meant that within these structures, the people had the right to implement plans in ways that made sense and addressed their problems.
We can see, in the US, that East LA, Harlem, Chicago’s west side or Oakland’s Fruitvale district, all areas with a heavy BIPOC population, would have particular concerns about how policy is administered. Likewise, there are historical issues of equity and equality that require special attention and investment in order to guarantee broad democratic participation in the soviets. Autonomy guarantees the power of these particular nationalities to adust the application of overall decisions made by soviets.
5>> Today we are well beyond the Soviets and recognize that automation guarantees economic abundance. At the same, capitalism debases and mis-uses these wonderful tools that could heal the the metabolic rift and enhance life and the planet. They are diverted to the cancerous spread of private property, which metastically devours nature, humanity and public power. Consequently, the Soviet constitutions established by law that the means of production were owned in perpetuity by the people and administered by the government at all levels.
The job of the overall government body in this model therefore, is to fund and guarantee local basic needs for every single human being. We recognize that only a national policy can handle national emergencies and establish national structures. We also recognize that local goververnment is ultimately empowered to have whatever political power they need to guarantee public safety, public housing, public health, public education, public and democratic culture and public. The soviets at the state and national level pay to ensure this local power.
How is the economy organized under communism?
Regardless of the era or country, every economic system must produce sufficiently to replace what was used up in the last year. Replacing food, repairing infrastructure, fixing worn out machinery, etc. However economies regularly produce a surplus product over and above what needs to be replaced. This fund can be used to improve society, expand housing, develop science, establish real free health care, rationalize food production, address climate catastrophe and heal the planet. Capitalism diverts this surplus into the hands of private property and starves society instead.
The UN announced in 1998 that global economic abundance had been achieved, and the cost to raise the entire population of the globe out of the worst poverty was less than the pet food budget of Europe (or the US military budget) of the time. Abundance has only expanded since 1998 and is increasingly automated by digital technology.
So how hard much each and every person work to produce the replacement fund and the surplus product? Forty hours a week? Twenty hours a week? If the vast amount of surplus product, that is seized by the capitalist class, were actually distributed equally and without cost, how much would people have to work each year?
We can make a rough guess. At the current level of technology, a person would have to work for maybe 5 months to produce their component of the necessary and the surplus product. Certainly, we do not have to waste human creative capacity to simply take money at a store. Despite itself, Amazon is already organizing this level of distribution.
Stores across the city would be full of the necessities of life. You simply walk in and take what you need, perhaps registering what you get on a debit card. If abundance in the necessities of life is guaranteed, no one is going to hoard up all the toilet paper. And if they did, their local commune or soviet would know and be able to handle the problem in a simple way.
But what about products that go beyond the necessities of life – giant TV screens, special foods and drinks, fancy clothes, cool gagets, specialized training, travel and vacations? Also, if people only have to work 5 months a year, what do they do with theit extra time? The basic principle is “from each according to their work, to each according to their needs.”
Firstly, some jobs require people to work more than 5 months. Building a dam canot stop after the foundation is laid. In addition, projects like making a movie require dedicated participation for longer than is necessary to just receive the basic necessities. So if you work ten months, you don’t have to work five more next year.
What about when you are not “working”, ie working to make your annual contribution of necessary and surplus production? People naturally want to play, explore, create and learn. So when you produce extra, you can get extra.
We are already involved in the “like culture”. “Wow! Great foto on your page!” I’m gonna “like it” for my friends.” When someone works extra to produce music, culture, art, or engage in social and scientific experiments, whatever, we can “like” them and vote them extra points. When you accumulate sufficient points, you can use them for anything you want. Do extra child-care in your basic commune for two more months and then spend 3 weeks in Jamaica. Produce a well-received song that thousands of people like and then they vote you enough points to… attend university for free, or take time to learn capoeira, or become a chef, or….
Once we understand that the economic surplus produced every year belongs to all of us, people will find the ways to organize life along the above lines. We do not have to scheme up the details. People in a genuine communist society will figure it all out. It is actually easy to do.
Communism – from microcosm to macrocosm and back
Lessons from the Soviet Union (1917 – 1991)
Steven Miller
12 July, 2021
