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WAGE DIFFERENTIALS UNDER LENIN AND LATER UNDER THE BUREOCRACY

In the avalanche of propaganda against Communism an idea is often peddled that while preaching equality, the

Communist leaders make sure their own personal position is well catered for. What this propaganda is based on is

the horrible bureaucratically degenerate Soviet Union under Stalin. Not happy with attacking Stalin, however, they

attempt to show that Lenin was no different.

Trotsky, Lenin and Kamenev in 1919In this caricature Lenin is transformed into an extremely rich bureaucrat, who hypocritically talks about wage

equality, while earning ten times the wage of an industrial worker! This - for anyone with a simple grasp of Russian society under

Lenin - is blatant nonsense.

One source of such blatant rewriting of the facts is Professor Richard Stites, a bourgeois historian who wrote a book

called Revolutionary Dreams Utopian Vision and ExperimentalLife in theRussian Revolution.The whole thrust of Stites argument

is that the revolutionary utopians were as corrupt as the old order. Side by sidewith the augmentation of power among revolutionary

leaders came the accretion of wealth goods, services, wages, and privileges for themselves and for designated 'specialists'. (Stites,p.140). The whole purpose of this book, like so many others, is to discredit the Russian Revolution and Lenin in particular.

But what was the real situation in Lenin's Russia? According to Marcel Liebman (Lenin Under Leninism):

While the place occupied by the workers in the state structures reflected their new status, the reigningideology confirmed their dominance in the country's social climate. Lenin called, as we have seen, forstrengthened discipline, output, and productivity, and advocated the employment of certain capitalistmethods of industrial management. But these appeals, inspired by desire to overcome the economic crisis,did not prevent the implantation and development of attitudes and values which, breaking with those of thebourgeoisie, reflected the traditional aspirations of the socialist movement. This was the case, for example,with the egalitarian tendencies that permeated the ideals and the social practice of Leninist Russia.In thismatter the example was set from the top by Lenin in particular, who took the initiative in fixing themonthly wage for the highest in the land, the People's Commissars, at 500 roubles, comparable to theearnings of a skilled worker. (Our emphasis).

Lenin received the wages of a skilled worker, not 10 times more. As Liebman continues:Party members were obliged to pay over to the Party any income received in excess of that figure. This wasno mere demagogic gesture. When a decision was taken in May 1918 to increase the wages of People's

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Under Stalin, differentials were to change dramatically, but even then, the process was slow to begin with. The maximum differential of

4 to 1 was not formally abolished until 1931 and a general was court-martialled as late as 1931 for having had his boots cleaned by a

private. Later, as the economy developed, the bureaucracy, which accrued vast privileges, consumed ever increasing amounts of surplus

value through wages, perks and theft. The income differential between the managers and workers, officers and soldiers, state

bureaucrats and the people of the USSR was higher than that of the capitalist countries.

As Trotsky explained:

It is absolutely impossible to describe the Soviet bureaucracy in accurate figures, and that for reasons oftwo kinds. In the first place, in a country where the state is almost the sole employer it is hard to say wherethe administrative apparatus ends. In the second place, upon this question the Soviet statisticians,economists and publicists preserve, as we have said, an espec ially concentrated silence. (RevolutionBetrayed, p.136)There is no possibility of estimating what share of the national income is appropriated by the bureaucracy.This is not only because it carefully conceals even its legalised incomes. It is not only because standing onthe very boundary of malfeasance, and often stepping over the boundary, it makes a wide use of unforeseenincomes. (ibid., p.142)

Under Stalin and his successors the bureaucracy rose further and further above the working class, reaching levels whereby the top

bureaucrats especially were living in luxury. This strengthened their tendency to look to bourgeois relations at all levels of society, to the

degree that when the Soviet Union eventually collapsed many of the same bureaucrats ruled over the transition to capitalism,

completing the degeneration that had begun under Stalin. But none of this was attributable to Lenin who stood firm on the principles he

had fought all his life for.