The ABC’s of Communism Bolshevism 2011

Jason W. Smith, Ph.D.

 

Chapter 19: Comparative Analysis: The Simple Chiefdom Stage and the Stage of Stalinist Socialism

We can climb the height of Mt. Olympus and look back over all of human history - now that we have the completed prehistoric and historic periodization of that history - which I have summarized foregoing. When we do scale the heights to the Gods, as would Jason have done in his Search for the Golden Fleece, we see that entire panorama, and so much now becomes clear.

For those of you who have read this book carefully, and who now understand the fundamentals of causality and process in human sociocultural evolution - that is, those of you who have now become expert in the Fundamentals of Historical Materialism, the time has come. The time for what? To consider "revolution" as a serious near term objective in the USA. Looking to a short transitional period; building rapidly into true communism. We have the technological ability. We are Leninists and we will win. We will fight through to absolute victory or there will be no Americans left alive to carry the guns! We should say as Thomas Jefferson said with regard to the First American Revolution (to paraphrase) “better that there be just one man and one woman left in each country of the world than that things should continue as they have.”

First we must impose clarity on ourselves – again, this Handbook. Then act accordingly.

Now, we can see where we are, at this historical moment - where, in fact, we are in the Second Transitional Period. We are between two Sociocultural Epochs (The Servitude Epoch and the Second Egalitarian Epoch). - And, in looking back over our history, we can contrast contemporary diagnostics with the key diagnostic features of the First Transitional Period between Epochs. This was what we started out to achieve. What you wanted to achieve when you picked up this book. What I wanted to achieve when I struck out on my Search for the Foundation of Sociocultural Evolution, some forty odd years ago. (The title of my eight volume autobiographical series.) Click on “find in a library” in your browser to see the nearest library with copies. You’re looking for the WorldCat website.)

The General Contradictions

Now, remember in the first Egalitarian Epoch, the General Contradiction was expressed in the prime directive for production to be limited to Value needed, day to day (avoiding surplus social product) even though the productive potential of both Hunting- And-Gathering Bands and Tribes, and Agricultural Bands and Tribes was far greater than what was required to produce the fundamental needs of life. In the Servitude Epoch, the General Contradiction is expressed in the prime directive that production of Surplus Value be maximized regardless of the fact that the more produced the worse the working and living conditions of the producers become.

Therefore, in the First Transitional Period between these two Epochs we should expect to see both of these General Contradictions fighting their way out in both of the two Stages of the transition.

Comparing and Contrasting Typical Features

For purposes of comparison let us contrast some typical features of any sociocultural Stage - beginning with, say, the feature of population size, and seek some diagnostic aspect. What do we see in the Stage of Tribal Agriculture (the last Stage of the 1st Egalitarian Epoch) and in the succeeding Stage of Simple Chiefdoms (the first Stage of the 1st Transitional Period) in terms of the factor of population size? What we see is an initial imperative favoring additional mouths where the additional mouths helped to absorb trouble creating surplus social product. But, more hands allowed simultaneously the ability to easily create sufficient surplus product to feed many more mouths, and not coincidentally many professional specialist mouths. The more professional specialization of labor there is in a Simple Chiefdom the more effective and efficient production of all articles from food to pottery.  Population that exploded to consume surplus social product has now become essential in maintaining the increased rate of production of social product which is no longer just surplus, but often essential (needed produce) to maintain all the professional non-farming specialists. There has been a fundamental at-bottom change in the nature of population size.

In other words, in the Agricultural Tribes, surplus social product was unavoidable, and said surplus was gathered by the Tribal Council for storage (and later redistribution as needed). One way that surplus level was kept “institutionally lower” was with the additional mouths to feed that come from being able to sustain population levels higher that 20 to 60 persons (the norm for Hunting and Gathering Bands) with sedentary village life. So, in a sense, there was a new factor favoring higher levels of production, even if it could not be said to be pressure to maximize, at least to a degree, agricultural production.

Later, in the Simple Chiefdoms, with professional specialists always in need of farming products, the pressure to maximize production increased. In both cases one result was rapid population explosion. In the first case consumption was used to level the social differences caused by production, and only tangentially resulted in increased overall production. In the second case demand for increased over-all production escalated and in turn determined that an increase in population numbers would have to happen to insure the now extant higher levels of production. In that way the Simple Chiefdom rise in population assured that more production would result.

In both cases population exploded, but it requires surgically precise logic, based on accurate General Theory, to see the true significance of population increase in both of these Stages. Nothing here, is simply apparently or obviously true. If it were, there would be no need for science - would there? - And, in a nutshell, that is what comparative cross-cultural Anthropological Economics is all about.

With regard to another feature: that of labor-time utilization, we see that in the Stage of Tribal Agriculture people dumped as much labor-time as possible in such things as moving-on, starting over, slash- And-burn, precisely to limit the amount of surplus being produced. In the Simple Chiefdoms people stayed in place, intensified the professional specialization of labor-power and intensified the economic infrastructure for the precisely opposite reason - or, in other words - to maximize the production of surplus.

Comparing and Contrasting Key Features

Now let us turn to Capitalism in its latter days, up and through 1917, and compare key features of its General Contradiction with that of Stalinist Socialism which is the first Stage of the 2nd Transitional Period.

The General Contradiction of Capitalism, like that of all three Stages of the Servitude Epoch, is to produce Surplus Value at any cost. The motive force is the drive of the ruling class (or in the case of the USA, the ruling trillionaire oligarchy) to maximize profits. On the other hand the General Contradiction of the Second Egalitarian Epoch lies in its drive to maximize production for the benefit of people as a whole. This is a sociocultural evolutionary Stage we have never seen and so we don’t yet have it on hand. We must hypothetically project what we shall expect to see in our STAR TREK future in perhaps the 22nd century.

Therefore, when we see on the surface of things that more and more surplus value of Stalinist Socialism is going into capital {in the economic category sense "capital" means, constant capital; i.e., machinery} the fact is that there is an amazing apparent similarity with what went before in the Capitalist Stage. But said "similarity" is only "apparent." Remember that one iron law of capitalism is that constant capital (e.g., machinery) often is the only real market for the dumping of all the surplus value being created. (People can’t eat iron, only the machinery, steel, and construction industries can use it - because of the “form” in which this surplus value comes.) - And, so it was in the Stalinist Stage of Socialism.

However, it was not for the (private ownership) PROFIT sub-column (competing with NGM) that Soviet Russia’s surplus value was being directed, as it would have been in a capitalist system, when sold by one capitalist to another. No, in Stalinist Socialist systems surplus value capital is being absorbed by NGM, but, for the sake of satisfying, at some point down the road, all the needs of the working and productive people, according to policies and programs of the CP in charge - and, in the meantime, also going into militarily oriented constant capital, in order to supply the military requirements of the working class garrison state apparatus. The working class dictatorship must be constantly on guard - consistently better and better armed, in order to defend itself against the non-stop attacks of the world’s capitalist classes. Lenin said it best when he said to paraphrase “we are socialist because we say we are building socialism.”

If the New Class gets more of the GNP than others, or if there is a wage differential throughout society (as there was and is in Socialist societies), in technologically backward countries, the question is not “should this be the case” but “since where we have power under these conditions of backwardness, it has to be the case, how do we prevent differential reward from spiraling into New Class control and conversion of the proletarian party into their own Party.” China is trying to answer that question. Can we answer that question and succeed here in the USA and the advanced capitalist countries? That is the question that communists in the capitalist countries should be asking.

The superficial resemblance in the destination of capital, and labor-time being paid at minimal Value, should not be allowed to overshadow and obscure the fact that the drawdown is never for profit of one or some group of capitalists in a First (Stalinist) Socialist Stage country, but is always for the improvement of the constant capital (industrial) base upon which the survival of the Stage is absolutely dependent, and according to a program developed by the Marxist-Leninist Party in command.

(Note: Of course, if revisionism has succeeded and the Socialist country in question is not socialist but already under the control of the New Class absolutely then this would not apply, and we would have to say that yes indeed the absorption of capital, whatever its specific destination, is part of a de facto capitalist system. However, these are two distinct categories. You should not confuse the one with the other. Admittedly this is difficult when we are as close to the forests of socialism as we are and we find the viewing of individual trees to require surgically precise observation.)

However, speaking of Stalinist Socialism as a distinct (and unsullied) Stage we see that it has featured the demand for more and more production at any cost. Yet this was because there was no choice if Socialism were to survive. This has meant, and may again mean, that generations of working people will have to sacrifice everything in the way of consumer goods. This creates unrest and necessitates stronger state responses at home. This dampens the enthusiasm of working classes in the more advanced capitalist countries for adopting the Stalinist Stage system. - And, that is understandable.

Thus, we can see why the working classes in Europe, after the recovery of the 1950’s (supervised by the US occupiers, who sabotaged elections and strikes in Italy and France respectively, for example) were not unanimously in support of a Stalinist Stage system in their countries. Nor, in North America which was living off the fat of the world. Then the gringo ruling class had much more in the way of crumbs to drop from their fat cat table as a result of the centralization and concentration of private capital behind the Rockefeller led oligarchy. One can understand that, in both cases, giving that up, what labor thought it had, in favor of the sacrifice that seemed inherent in Stalinist Socialism found little support in their movements. All this aside from the persistent attacks of the US rulers on the revolutionary parties in organized working class activities. In the US this was an especially virulent attack that came to a peak in the late 1940's with the expulsion of the communists from most of the unions and a de facto alliance between the FBI and organized crime as its framework. (The bedding of Jane Edgar Hoover on a weekly basis by Meyer Lansky’s top boss Frank Costello didn’t hurt the program a bit, either. (For an inside snapshot of Hoover’s live-in lover Clyde Tolson, watch the recent Johnnie Depp movie Public Enemies, and the earlier Oliver Stone film Nixon.) For the inside story of Hoover’s homosexual love affair with Costello see my book The Buccaneer.}

Comparing underlying motivation in the prime moving forces of the

Simple Chiefdom Stage and the Stalinist Socialist Stage.

In the Simple Chiefdoms there were the sincere “front people” who took leadership and there were the less than sincere Chiefs. In both cases there would have been the consigliore, from the clans and/or sodalities, who had their own agendas. We have seen that within the Simple Chiefdoms it only took one person to advocate for increasing professional specialization to maximize production, with an ulterior motive, (getting thereby in a better “position” in the complex economy to improve said person’s welfare at the expense of the others) to make the general trajectory begin to move in a new and completely different direction. – And because the agricultural revolution (Neolithic/Formative archaeological stages in Old and New World prehistory, respectively) had created de facto objective inequality among family farms, the idea of greater personal prosperity via acquisition of things (property) now existed for the first time in human history, in among at least some individuals.

The Origin of Modern “Property” Concepts

Thus, invisibly, inexorably, if gradually, society was on the road to abandoning the millions of years old societal policy of “sharing for the common benefit” all that was produced, which had been, until now, eliminating envy, jealousy and coveting, and their socially dissolutional centrifugal effects, from said society. The new direction would have been impossible to see at the time, if the advocates, were good at hiding their true motivation; it was nevertheless, a move toward a society where differential reward was best supported by the maximization of surplus value in an increasingly professionally specialized Stone Age economy, and this was the point in time of the origin of modern property concepts.

What About the Restoration of Property Concepts

in the First Socialist Stage?

Is this what we see in Stalinist Socialism?

Yes and No.

It can go either way, and in the Soviet Union it could have gone either way, although what had to be overcome in order to stay on the road to Communism - or even to stay within the primitive constraints of Stalinist Socialism - would have taken a lot of luck and even better leadership than Joseph Stalin was able to provide. For, in the last analysis the achievements of the 1930's and the victory in the Second World War, and even stopping the drive of the US rulers for world domination after 1945 to his credit, Stalin did fail to properly prepare the succession. In doing so, the “classless intelligentsia” of his creation asserted themselves and in a little under four decades they restored capitalism in the new and even more hellish form we see in Russia and the former constituent Republics today.

In the 1930's, the decade of the "new class" of so-called “classless intelligentsia,” there were persons who had the motivation of getting a bigger cut of the pie for themselves, via the route of administering the publicly owned means of production. However, the Bolshevik leadership knew this, and if the political leadership (e. g., Stalin and Mao) had no intention of letting that happen (the New Class get away with separating themselves), and did what Lenin had said someone would have to do (protect the workers from the workers state), then (and only then) could Stalinist Socialism be kept on the right path. Which is to say, upwards and onwards to Advanced Socialism, Communism, etc. Here Stalin ultimately failed. Then Mao Zedong stepped forward to accept the challenge. Preventing such "new class separation" was the task that Mao set himself when he launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

The Cultural Revolution

The Chinese Cultural Revolution of 1966-1975 certainly did one thing no one would deny. What could that be? It made every person in China and billions around the world aware of the idea that New Class existence and separation was the key issue facing the international working class movement when in power.

– And, this concern had not started then and there, but had and has a long history. After all, regardless of other factors, Trotsky had made Stalin’s bureaucracy the butt of his attacks on Stalinism – essentially accusing these bureaucrats of becoming a New Class and hijacking the revolution. Stalin himself was constantly on guard against what he perceived as attempts of his underlings to lead the USSR along a capitalist road. Mao, throughout the Chinese Party’s history after he became boss, conducted non-stop “rectification” campaigns (e. g., 1940-1941) to prevent “new class” kinds of ideology arising among Party members; and, the Great Leap Forward in China (1955-1959) had been based in part on the idea that the Party bureaucracy was hindering the people in their demand to jump far ahead in a very short time in the industrialization of the nation.

In the end the Cultural Revolution failed because it failed to deal with the New Class in any kind of final definitive ”theoretical” way. Following the failure of the Cultural Revolution leaders to step up production, China’s Party leaders turned to a New Economic Policy (Lenin’s 1921 NEP) path. This time everyone was aware of the potential danger of the New Class becoming a ruling class by transforming the Communist Party itself. Accepting the challenge, the Party embarked courageously on the path of fulfilling capitalism’s historical task while retaining state power. Exactly as Lenin et. al., had done in 1921.

Wanting and Having are Two Different Categories

Over the next three decades the Chinese leadership would come up with a “theoretical” solution, which is consistent with what I have presented herein. However, having a solution and explaining it internationally are often two different things.

Perhaps because superficial consistence is not the same as fundamental at-bottom philosophical agreement. In short, I have not heard from the CPC on their agreement or lack thereof with what is presented herein.

Furthermore, and however that may be, the Left in the West has always had an ultra-left component that wants communism NOW. But, as Lenin was forced to admit in 1921, wanting communism and being able to have communism are two distinctly different things. Emotion is not enough. One has to accept what Marx and Engels discovered, and that is the mode of production for Communism requires an extremely modern technological component. Until you have it you cannot have modern communism. – And, we don’t want primitive communism.

If it comes to that we will be far better off having to fight our way through the current transitional period, even if it means, as it has, we have to create the capitalist industrial infrastructure ourselves from scratch. It’s better to live in poverty standing up and building a common future than to submit to wage slavery and every indignity that insures.

During the 20^th century we Bolsheviks learned from practice that there is no short cut. We have tried relying principally on the ideological and social organizational components of culture, in lieu of technological advance, and in all instances these attempts have ultimately failed. Without an extremely advanced industry and agriculture communism is not possible in the post-Servitude way anyway. – And, it is not our intention to return to the living conditions of “primitive communism” (the Stages of Hunting and Gathering and primitive agriculture) in order “to share the poverty” (as ultimately was the real social program of Madame Mao and associates). Those who wish to follow that road now, after the experiments of the 20^th century, are free to do so but they are not communists nor Marxists nor Leninists – rather a modern form of the old utopian socialists that Marx and Engels first confronted, exposed and defeated. Living in a “commune” in the forests of Oregon is fine for those who wish to do so but it is not what we communists have in mind. Having read this book you know exactly what it is we have in mind – Star Trek levels of advanced technology with the living standards and conditions for everyone that go along with it.

I believe that the CPC has done everything it can do over the last three decades to see that controlled capitalism does not lead to counter-revolution They had to finally deal with the problem that was recognized as early as 1922 by Lenin and the Bolshevik Politburo – namely China’s extreme backwardness – the fact that it had barely entered the Capitalist Stage (This would be a good time to re-read Chapter 14). This time around they have placed the bourgeoisie at least partially outside the Party, by encouraging them in “business” pursuits where they are clearly identified and identifiable. As importantly, over the last thirty years the Peoples Republic of China has truly pioneered a new path forward which simply put: “…allows the fullest technological potential of the capitalist stage to be achieved while using the full resources of the socialist state (police-army) to insure that the working class Party remains in power and constructs all those facets of the Socialist Stage it can – both nationally and internationally – as circumstances allow.” This partial restoration of Capitalism in China comes about by necessity as it did in the Soviet Republic when Lenin restored Capitalism in 1921. Namely, the necessity of getting production up to the levels required to build the future we have in mind. That is a future NOT “to share the poverty” but “to share the wealth.” The great, limitless wealth it is within our power to create globally right now! – And it comes about in China in an extremely sophisticated form where the Party is constantly experimenting, testing, and examining the results of a broad-spectrum of sociocultural initiatives, great and small, within both the capitalist and socialist sectors.

The human cost of either road is high – that is, the road pursued by Stalin or the road being pursued currently by the Chinese Party. But, we have had no choice and we have no choice now. That is, we Marxists have no choice, because we are the social scientists and not just opportunist ideologues.

Why don’t we have a choice?

Because, correctly, our every effort since 1917, has been to get to the point of advanced technological development Marx and Engels had assumed as a “given” before they knew society could proceed to Communism. Our job is to get to Communism. There is no “prescription” as to how that is to be done, and we have learned from experience that Stalinist forms of public property are no guarantee against capitalist restoration. So, we might as well deal with the problem of the New Class, and the Bourgeoisie in general, in the most expeditious way we can. For China, we have seen the course that seems to be working for them. For us, the matter is entirely different; we have that capitalist advanced industry and agriculture in hand and we should be able to move to Communism within a short period of time. – And, do so while protecting and gradually evolving working people’s private property rights over a period suitable to them and to us.

What Does the Outcome of the Cultural Revolution Mean to Us?

Whether these initial struggles will suffice for China is yet to be determined. So far, following the analysis in this book, the CPC has stayed on the right road. This is no guarantee that it will continue to do so. There is only one guarantee of that and that is a fully educated communist cadre that knows what it is doing and why.

But one thing we do know is that NOW, it is YOUR TASK to see that this new class does not succeed in separating itself once again, once we have power in North America. Because the New Class will be with us make no mistake about it.  In other words, the political leadership of the working classes, with state power in its hands, has free will. Now, especially after the 20th century experiments, you should be able to see that things keep going forward on course. Precisely in order to achieve the ideal theoretical objective of true Socialism, Communism and Humanist society, somewhere down the road. You know what to look for, in other words. – And, finally, it is time for North American communists to break their pattern of adhering to the gringo curse of de facto illiteracy. By which I mean the self-imposed refusal to “read” which characterizes so much of the USA including its supposedly educated members. Ignorance is often the preferred mode of preparation for bourgeois politicians but our leaders and representatives need to be educated and continually so.

– And, this is far more important than carping about what the CPC is doing in China. Before U.S. would-be communists say anything more they should bring about a revolution HERE! The Chinese have done and are doing their part. It’s time for us to do our part – a part which the founders expected us to have already played!

Now, let us turn to the question of whether the class struggle carries on in the Socialist Stages. Obviously, the class struggle does carry on - very intensively - in these Socialist Stages. (Remember our definitions: we don’t want to confuse the term “Socialism” with “Communism” - these are two different things and we have come to define Socialism as the transitional period of proletarian dictatorship. The Second Transitional Period in this presentation.) Every piece of historical evidence shows us that in the societies in the Second Transitional Period there is ongoing class struggle. Over-night capitalist restoration in the USSR proves it. The necessity to launch the cultural revolution in China to prevent capitalist restoration of the Soviet variety is another proof.

(Note: there is a big difference between (a) the sneaking subterfuge approach to capitalist restoration as pursued by the Soviet revisionists after the death of Stalin and (b) the conscious decision of honest Party leaders such as Lenin, or the post-Mao leadership in China, to openly restore capitalism as a controlled portion of the national economy, for their own good reasons.)

Finally, one should not confuse Chairman Mao and his thinking with that of his wife. Mao himself has serious doubts about the course the Cultural Revolution was following under her leadership and died before making any final judgment.

Compare and Contrast

In the case of Simple Chiefdoms the class struggle was incipient - since there were no classes there could be no class struggle - (as in subatomic physics ultra-dense objects without atoms cannot undergo fusion because there are no nucleons to fuse.) What we have in Simple Chiefdoms are special interest groups and ranks of differing privilege which will eventually separate into classes, but which have their origins in the simple part-time avocations of shaman or sodality leader.

In Stalinist Stage Socialism we have special interest groups and sectors of society, indeed ranks of differing privilege, which might separate into classes or which might not. – And, their origin is in having been part of an expanding class for six millennia! It’s a struggle. That is what class struggle is all about; although these Stalinist Socialist special interest groups are not classes strictly speaking, some of them want to be, historically they have been, and therefore the character of the struggle to prevent class separation is a form of class struggle.

As I have said, it was always chancy that things would succeed in Russia, or after October, the Soviet Union, under the best of circumstances. Russia and the Soviet Union rarely had the “best of circumstances.”

You should go on examining feature after feature, comparing and contrasting features, between these two transitional Periods. The point has been made.

In the final analysis it is always true that history is unfolding as it should. Therefore, it is proven that the Stage of Stalinist Socialism was exactly what Marx and Engels and Lenin knew it would be - in terms of being a dictatorship of indefinite length. {Because no one could predict ahead of time the specific historical circumstances and therefore the length of time it would take to secure Socialism as Stage(s) on the surface of the planet Earth.} This is obviously true, besides being necessarily true (in theory,) that the class struggle continued and will continue, within the lands of Socialism both in its first Stalinist Stage form and in its current more Advanced Second Stage form.

Remember; do not confuse “Socialism” with public ownership of the means of production. The first diagnostic of a Socialist Stage is that a “Communist Party” (Marxist-Leninist Party) has political (state) power in its hands. - And, this should always be the critical, most important single, defining, thus diagnostic, characteristic of the existence of the Second Transitional Period in any country. Whether it is the CP in command of a “capitalist” sector economy and/or a “public” sector economy, to a greater or lesser degree, has nothing to do with the country in question being in The Second Transitional Period. That is a determination based upon whether a working class vanguard Party has state power in its hands. It is this fact of life which makes it possible to have a capitalist sector economy within a working class dominated society – and it always has been this way. Whether it was Lenin restoring Capitalism in 1921 or the contemporary Chinese leadership doing so after 1975, what makes it possible is that we have the military and the secret police in our hands.

This should be obvious and I shouldn’t have to explain this to some of you. However, Trotsky made his argument against Stalin theoretically contingent on the premise that what existed in the Soviet Union was economically socialist except for the “deformed” political structure. The idea still infects many would-be revolutionaries. It is this profound error we have to set aside. Regardless of its political utility in Trotsky’s personal fight with Stalin, the concept never had a shred of scientific substance because there was never any socialist economic structure in Russia or the other Republics other than the demand by the Party that working people be given the highest priority when possible in the allocation of national resources. Remember that War Communism turned out to be an expedient ending as quickly as the Civil War and was followed by the introduction of capitalism in the form of a market economy of private owners of industry and agriculture in 1921, with governmental enterprise pushed ahead where possible. Stalin created new forms of management of national resources in both industry and agriculture by introducing the Five Year Plans and forced collectivization of farming much later – seven years later. What made “socialism” authentic had always been and continues to be the program and intention of the vanguard Party to build as soon as it could a truly “socialist” (transitional) and then “communist” society; in this transition however “anything goes” or at least is permissible if it gets us further down the road to where we want to go.

Thus, today we have a restructured Socialist Camp which includes authentic First (Stalinist) and Second Socialist Stage countries to wit, and respectively: Cuba, China, Vietnam and Laos. (As for the situation in Korea it is impossible for me to determine from what little information I have about the situation in that country, if this is anything more than a degenerated First Socialist Stage society. Frankly, I see very little there admirable. At least not any more. Meaning that Kim Il Sung’s socialist economic program served its purpose at one time but does it any more? I don’t know because we have so little reliable data and must exclude Washington’s fascist propaganda which is why it is difficult for me to tell what is going on.) – And the Koreans have not been helpful in explaining to us (at least in languages other than their own) what it is that they may be doing we don’t understand.

The General Crisis of Stalinist Socialism

Stalinist Socialism has a general crisis too and it is specifically the product of, which is to say caused by, the backwardness of those societies in which workers first seized power. Marx and Engels had required the full development of capitalism’s productive potential, as they understood it, in then contemporary England, Germany, France, Italy and the USA for example. It didn’t happen that way. Workers in the Soviet Republic (later Soviet Union) were too few, too poorly prepared, and with totally inadequate industrial plants at their disposal, to do without the assistance of a de facto New Class of bureaucrats with its own inherent special interests, its own special privileges. No amount of talk (ideological propaganda about egalitarianism, the communist philosophy, sharing the poverty, etc.) would serve to offset this New Class’s basic interests as its members understood them. Thus, inherently Stalinist societies were on a short fuse (historically speaking) where backwardness would either be overcome, the working classes expanded and fully educated to take control, or the New Class would separate itself becoming a new ruling class in a new kind of Servitude society which would be essentially capitalist. It turned out to be the latter.

lp + t = V1, V2 + Surplus Value

  NGM / New Class         

NGM = investment in next generations of machinery

New Class = Need for New Class vs. Danger of Class Society reappearing (locus of the general crisis)

This is what happened eventually in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and in a totally different way in the People’s Republic of China. In the latter case Mao attempted to stop New Class takeover (especially in his last attempt – the Cultural Revolution.) – And, indirectly, via his successors, who understood everything I have explained so far about this process, he may have found a road around backwardness, using the New Class, while simultaneously preventing it from separating as a new ruling class. Thus the Stalinist Socialist Stage prepared the way for China to enter the Advanced Socialist Stage using a formula similar to the NEP formula Lenin devised to get the Soviet Republic out of trouble in 1921.